The rain turned to ash before it even touched the ruins of Tartarus.
The air above Sector 4 was completely still. A heavy, unnatural silence had crushed the industrial wasteland.
High above the shattered roof of the prison, three figures descended.
No hover-crafts. No spells of flight. They simply stepped down from the sky as if walking down an invisible staircase.
White armor. Seamless. Faceless.
The Saints of Silver-Blood.
The moment they touched the ruined concrete, the world seemed to lower its head. The ambient mana in the air didn't just swirl around them; it bowed.
The Saint in the center didn't look at the bisected corpses of the Vanguard. He didn't look at the melted crater of acid.
He raised a single, gauntleted hand.
A brilliant, blinding silver light expanded from his palm, instantly forming a massive, inescapable dome over the entire prison facility.
The air inside the dome didn't just stop moving.
It froze. The falling raindrops hung perfectly still in mid-air.
Time Dilation Barrier.
"Target confirmed," the Saint's voice echoed. Not loud. Not angry. Just a flat, mechanical drone. "Contamination level: Absolute. Erase the anomaly. Leave no ashes."
They began their descent into the abyss.
...
Deep underground.
Below the slaughtered guards. Below the melted Troll King.
At the end of a corridor that, according to the blueprints of Tartarus, led to a solid wall of bedrock.
Arthur Pendelton stood before a door that wasn't there.
His body trembled violently. Black blood dripped continuously from his nose and ears. Under his skin, the green lightning of the [Corrupted Dragon Soul Shard] spiked erratically, tearing through his mana veins.
[Mythic Integration Timer: 46:12:03]
[Warning: Host physical collapse imminent.]
Arthur wiped the blood from his chin. His vision was swimming.
He looked at the space in front of him.
Level 3.
There was no door. No handle. No runes.
It was just... a black square cut out of the concrete.
But it wasn't black like darkness. Darkness was the absence of light.
This was the absence of everything.
It didn't reflect light. It didn't emit cold or heat.
It was a glitch. A typo in the fabric of reality.
The moment Arthur took a step toward it, the furious, ancient roaring of the Dragon Soul inside his pocket... stopped.
The draconic hatred that had been trying to devour his mind for an hour suddenly vanished, replaced by an absolute, primal silence.
Even a Mythic Dragon Lord was terrified of what lay beyond that threshold.
Arthur didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward.
And the universe disappeared.
...
There was no sound.
No ground beneath his feet. No sky above.
Arthur tried to inhale, but there was no air. Yet, his lungs didn't burn for oxygen. He tried to look down at his hands, but there was no light to see them by.
He was floating in a sensory vacuum.
System, Arthur thought. Analyze environment.
...
...
System. Activate Domain of the Dead.
...
...
For the first time since he had awakened at eighteen, there was no blue screen.
No familiar 'Ding'.
No mechanical voice.
He was alone. Truly, utterly alone.
Then, he noticed it.
The erasure wasn't just external.
He looked down, and he couldn't see the [Mantle of the Fallen Lord]. The Epic artifact was simply... gone.
He tried to feel the green lightning of the Dragon Shard. Gone.
He looked at his right hand. The fingers began to blur, dissolving into the gray nothingness around him.
The Void didn't attack. It didn't hate.
It just... unmade things. It observed them, and in doing so, erased them from existence.
Arthur's heart hammered—or at least, the memory of his heart hammered. He couldn't feel his chest anymore.
Panic, raw and human, clawed at the edges of his mind.
If he stayed here for another minute, Arthur Pendelton would cease to exist. No one would remember him. Even the System would have no log of him.
I need to forge it, Arthur realized, his thoughts slowing down as the Void began to eat away at his consciousness.
He tried to remember his own name.
Arthur...
For a terrifying, suspended second... he couldn't.
The erasure was reaching his core.
He reached into the nothingness where his pocket used to be, trying to grasp the Mythic Shard.
But without the System... how could he use [Absolute Synthesis]?
He had always relied on the system prompt. [Target 1. Target 2. Fuse.]
He felt his identity slipping away like sand through an hourglass.
No, Arthur's mind roared against the fading light.
He didn't hold onto the good memories. There were none.
He held onto the rage. The cold, isolating anger of being stepped on. Of being F-Rank trash. Of Oliver's sneer.
He held onto the feeling of Oliver falling to his knees.
The System... Arthur thought, his eyes burning with a terrifying, pitch-black authority that defied the emptiness.
...was never the source.
It was just a tool.
The power... was always mine.
With a monstrous, agonizing exertion of pure willpower, Arthur reached into his own soul and ripped out the [Corrupted Dragon Soul].
He didn't use mana. He didn't use the System.
He used the sheer, unadulterated force of his hatred to crush the Dragon's essence and violently mash it against the fabric of the Void itself.
Manual Synthesis.
It was like trying to stitch two opposing universes together with bare hands.
The pain was absolute. It transcended physical agony.
Arthur's soul screamed.
To bind a Mythic soul to the concept of 'Nothingness', a toll had to be paid. The universe demanded balance.
Arthur felt it happen.
A specific, irreplaceable piece of his humanity was ripped away as the binding agent.
He forgot the sound of his own laugh.
He forgot what it felt like to be afraid of death.
A cold, hollow cavity opened permanently in the center of his chest.
He tried to breathe. He realized how close he had just come to total erasure.
He searched for the panic. He searched for the fear that should have been drowning his mind.
He found only silence.
The fusion... held.
CRUNCH.
The sensory deprivation shattered.
Color, sound, and gravity violently slammed back into existence.
Arthur fell to his hands and knees on the cold, hard concrete of Level 3.
He gasped, air rushing back into his lungs.
The familiar blue screen flickered back into existence before his eyes.
[SYSTEM RECONNECTION SUCCESSFUL.]
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED MANUAL SYNTHESIS DETECTED.]
Arthur didn't care about the warning.
He looked up.
Hovering before him was not a massive beast. It wasn't a towering knight.
It was a heart.
But it didn't beat with blood. It pulsed with absence.
It was a jagged, pitch-black singularity, roughly the size of a human fist. The light around it physically bent, dragged into its gravity. The shadows on the floor didn't just stretch toward it; they crawled, desperately trying to touch it.
No sound escaped it. Even the hum of the prison machinery died when it got too close.
[Ding!]
[Mythic Forging Successful.]
[Item Created: The Abyssal Heart (Mythic)]
[Description: A singularity born from a Dragon's Soul and the Void. It actively distorts reality. It requires a physical vessel to manifest its true form.]
Arthur stared at the Abyssal Heart.
He didn't smile. He didn't feel triumphant.
He felt... nothing. Just a cold, calculating emptiness that mirrored the object in his hand.
He reached out and grabbed the singularity. It was freezing cold, and it pulsed with apocalyptic, world-ending power.
BOOM!
The ceiling of Level 3 violently ruptured.
Concrete rained down as a blinding silver light flooded the dark corridor.
Three figures descended through the hole, landing perfectly around Arthur in a triangular execution formation.
The Saints.
The same dome of frozen time that had sealed the prison above now stood between them and the rest of the world.
But this time... Arthur was the anomaly inside it.
The leader raised his gauntlet, pointing a glowing silver blade directly at Arthur's head.
"Target located," the Saint droned, completely devoid of emotion. "Commencing eradication."
Arthur stood up slowly, dusting off the [Mantle of the Fallen Lord].
He looked at the three S-Rank Saints. He looked at their blinding holy light, and the crushing pressure that made the air bow to them.
He felt the hollow space in his chest where his humanity used to be.
He looked down at his own shadow.
"General," Arthur said softly, his voice devoid of any inflection.
"I found you a heart."