Chapter 4: The Echoes of a Ruined Universe
The aftermath of the Strength Test had left the Royal Academy in a state of paralyzed terror. While the instructors scrambled to contain the political fallout of a shattered relic, Sai Marx had retreated. He did not go to the infirmary, nor did he seek the comfort of his luxurious dormitory. Instead, he sought the only place where the world felt as hollow as his soul: the Forbidden Caverns beneath the northern cliffs of the Academy.
The silence inside the cavern was not peaceful; it was heavy, like a shroud made of ancient lead. Sai sat in the oppressive dampness, his back against a jagged pillar of stone. The only sound was the rhythmic drip-drop of icy water falling from the stalactites, echoing through the dark chambers like a ticking clock toward doomsday.
He looked down at his palms. They weren't just shaking; they were vibrating with a frequency that didn't belong to a mortal. The lingering residue of Volt's crimson mana still burned in the air, a scent like ozone and dried blood.
"Sakuna..." Sai whispered, his voice cracking and bouncing off the damp stone walls. "Why? Why do you stir every time Volt's rage spills over? What is this tether between his fury and your awakening? You are bound to me... yet you react to him."
From the deepest, darkest corner of Sai's consciousness, a sound emerged. It wasn't a voice at first, but a low, guttural vibration that made the very air feel thick with sulfur. Then came the laugh—a cold, hollow sound that felt like shards of glass scraping together in a vacuum.
"You understand so little, little pawn," Sakuna's voice echoed, dripping with ancient malice that seemed to vibrate in Sai's very marrow. "You think you are tapping into my reservoir? Fool. You think I am the source of the darkness you felt today? What bleeds from Volt's soul isn't a gift from me. It is the lingering, suffocating ghost of the True Demon King."
Sai's breath hitched. "What do you mean? Volt is a peasant. A failure."
"Volt is a vessel," Sakuna hissed, and the shadows in the cave began to writhe as if they were alive. "And you... you are merely a witness. Close your eyes, Little Prince. Let me show you the era before the suns were tamed."
The Flashback: 9,000 Years into the Void
In an instant, the damp cave vanished. The sensation of stone beneath Sai's feet dissolved into nothingness. He wasn't sitting anymore; he was suspended in the heart of a dying cosmos, a place where time and space had been shredded into ribbons.
Before him stood a figure that defied every law of existence.
This was the Ancient Demon King.
He didn't look like a monster; he didn't have the grotesque features of the demons Sai had studied in textbooks. He looked like the end of all things. He was a silhouette of absolute darkness, draped in a cloak woven from collapsed stars and distilled void-matter. He stood in the silent center of the universe, and his presence alone was an insult to the act of creation. Behind him, entire galaxies flickered like dying candles in a hurricane, threatened by the sheer, crushing gravity of his hatred.
The Demon King didn't just want to rule a kingdom or conquer a planet. He wanted to return the universe to the silent, perfect dark that existed before the first "Let there be light." He was the cosmic 'No' to the Divine 'Yes.'
"Behold the arrogance of the Divine," Sakuna hissed in Sai's ear as the vision shifted.
Sai saw them then—the Gods.
Tens of thousands of celestial beings descended from the higher planes, glowing with a light that should have been blinding, a light of pure, unadulterated holiness. They rode on chariots of solidified lightning and wielded blades forged from the cores of dying suns. The collective mana of the Heavens was unleashed in a single, unified assault—an attack meant to rewrite the fabric of reality and erase the shadow forever.
The sky—if you could call the cosmic void a sky—was set ablaze. Holy spears the size of continents rained down. World-shaking spells, capable of incinerating solar systems, converged on the solitary figure in the black cloak.
But as the divine strikes reached the Demon King, something terrifying happened.
The cosmic fires didn't burn him. The holy spears didn't pierce him. The reality-warping spells didn't even make him flinch. They were... absorbed.
The Demon King didn't even raise a hand to defend himself. He stood there, an immovable monolith of spite, a black hole of existence. The most powerful strike from the King of Gods—a bolt of primordial light meant to restart the universe—hit the Demon King's aura and shattered. It didn't explode; it simply broke, like cheap glass thrown against the side of a mountain.
The Gods, the creators of life, the architects of the stars, couldn't even leave a scratch on his armor. They couldn't break a single brick of his fortress of silence. They were gnats screaming at an eclipse.
Sai watched, frozen in terror, as the Demon King finally raised his gaze. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. When he looked at the army of gods, the stars behind them began to crack. The very vacuum of space began to moan in agony.
"They feared him," Sakuna whispered, the voice now filled with a strange, dark reverence. "They feared him so much they tore the universe apart just to seal him away in a thousand cycles of reincarnation. But you cannot kill the Void, Sai. You can only delay it."
The vision began to fracture. Sai saw the Demon King's face for a fraction of a second—a face that looked hauntingly like the boy he had just seen destroy the Strength Crystal.
"Volt..." Sai gasped, his spirit being pulled back toward the physical world.
"Volt doesn't know what he is," Sakuna's voice began to fade as the cave walls returned. "He feels the anger, but he doesn't remember the throne. He feels the betrayal, but he doesn't remember the names of the gods he slaughtered. But the power... the power remembers."
Sai snapped his eyes open. He was back in the damp cave. The water was still dripping. Drip. Drop. Drip.
His hands were no longer just vibrating; they were cold. Colder than the ice on the stalactites.
"If he is the King..." Sai whispered to the darkness, "Then what am I? Why do I have your power, Sakuna?"
"You?" Sakuna laughed, and this time the sound was truly deafening. "You are the key. Or perhaps, you are the lock. Either way, Little Prince, the silence is coming. And this time, there are no gods left to save you."
Sai stood up, his legs weak. He looked out of the cavern toward the Academy, where the sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows over the stone towers. He knew now that the hierarchy of the school, the ranks of the mages, and the petty squabbles of nobles were all meaningless.
A god-slayer was walking their halls, and he was beginning to wake up.
Directed by: Ahmed Barozh