He woke before dawn.
The ceiling above him was wooden, cracked, familiar.
His childhood room.
That alone should have calmed him.
It didn't.
Because the world felt… layered.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The First Realm was awake.
Stone beneath the house.
Air in his lungs.
Time moving forward without asking permission.
This was the realm all others relied on.
And its god was dead.
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The mortal world had never been alone.
Earth was one version of it.
Murim another.
Countless technological civilizations spun alongside them.
Some thriving.
Some already ruined.
All of them existed because the First Realm anchored reality.
Without it—
No realm could descend safely.
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He stood and moved to the window.
Beyond the city, unseen but present, the layers pressed down.
The Second Realm fed life into the world.
The Third waited patiently for souls.
The Fifth warped reality where martial will overruled physics.
Murim cultivators didn't know they were borrowing power.
They never needed to.
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Higher still—
A cold precision lingered.
The Sixth Realm calculated progress.
The Seventh held the scars of ruined futures.
The Eighth enforced law and divine contracts.
And above all—
He felt it.
The Twelfth Realm.
Heaven.
Watching.
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You feel it now, the voice said quietly.
He didn't jump.
"Because I've already been here."
No, the demi-god replied.
Because the system is failing earlier.
He swallowed.
"Hell and Heaven still exist."
They always will, the voice said.
Garbage disposal and oversight are the last systems to fail.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
His chest tightened.
A fragment surfaced.
A ruined Earth.
Sky burning red.
Machines praying to nothing.
Murim sects slaughtering each other over dying qi veins.
He exhaled slowly.
"So this time… I stop it earlier."
A pause.
No, the voice corrected.
This time, you make sure the gods can't ignore it.
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Outside, morning prayers began.
Faith rose toward the Ninth Realm.
Heaven recorded it.
Hell waited.
And somewhere beyond the Twelve—
Something watched the system crack.
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