Day 58.
Raven was no longer afraid of pain.
He had been burned. He had been frozen. He had been mocked by the darkness itself.
Yet Level Space was not done punishing him.
He stepped into Level 77 a fractured zone forbidden even to Rank-6 agents of the Anomaly Foundation. No official designation existed for it. It was only known as The Void Pulse Chamber.
Here, reality was incomplete.
Time reversed without warning.
Sounds came before their cause.
And space… did not obey direction.
But Raven walked forward.
He had lost hope so what difference did it make, facing the irrational?
Then he saw it, standing in the middle of the darkness.
A figure humanoid only for a split second.
Its body flowed like liquid shadow, and in its open chest, a molten core pulsed like a living heart of magma.
"A198H/X: Drex'Velh."
Class: Hard+, borderline Extreme.
Raven couldn't move.
Not because of fear but because reality itself refused to let him.
Drex'Velh didn't strike with claws or teeth.
It attacked with the concept of suffering.
Each step it took shredded the meaning of existence.
And as it approached, Raven felt
as though he had never existed at all.
"No one remembers you, Raven," the entity whispered. "You're not human. Not a creature. Not a name. You are... residue."
Drex'Velh slashed through the air, and Raven's body came apart not like flesh torn from bone, but like existence peeled from foundation.
He wasn't just wounded.
He was erased.
He saw his mother.
His father.
But twisted distorted like counterfeit memories, as if Level Space was mocking him with hope that had never been real.
"Stop…" Raven whispered, blood dripping from his lips.
But Drex'Velh didn't stop.
It carved into Raven's soul, pulling out fragments of his identity, smashing them again and again before the eyes of a consciousness that refused to die.
"Feel it," Drex'Velh whispered.
"A death that does not release you."
And Raven died.
But remained aware.
Like waking from a nightmare only to find the dream was reality.
"This…" Raven muttered, "...is worse than death…"
He couldn't cry.
Couldn't speak.
Couldn't feel.
Only disconnection from time, from space, from body, soul… and meaning.
He was now nothing but a reverberation of agony, spreading slowly through empty air.
And in the center of that ruin...
...he let go.
Then at the edge of the colorless chamber Drex'Velh stopped.
It stepped back.
Its eyes or whatever it used to perceive narrowed.
The world fell still.
And Drex'Velh whispered:
"No… this does not belong to you…"
Something was rising from Raven's wreckage.
Something with no voice, yet deafening.
Something that was not will… but instinct for massacre.
An aura of slaughter.
Not like a beast.
Not like a soldier.
But like the void itself had decided to hate.
It burned and froze at once.
And the half-Extreme-class entity… backed away.
It said nothing more.
It simply vanished.
Raven's body was still formless.
But something inside pulsed.
Not hope.
Not vengeance.
But the purity of suffering longing to spread.
One word surfaced in his mind, in a language not born of men:
"Rise."
And as Level Space stirred again, Raven had no flesh.
But reality began to rebuild him not from muscle and bone, but from the memory of wounds.
He did not survive the encounter.
He was born from it.