The silence after the Mirror Trial was suffocating. Yeo stood still in the void of light, his own heartbeat the only sound anchoring him to reality. Before him floated the final version of himself—the one who had embraced domination over salvation.
A dark crown hovered above the man's head, flickering like corrupted code. His eyes were cold—not hateful, just… hollow.
"So, you chose the middle path," the Tyrant King said, voice layered with power and weariness. "You won't save them. You won't destroy them. You want to rewrite them."
Yeo met his gaze. "You were me. But you forgot why we wanted power in the first place."
The Tyrant King's lips twitched. A smirk? A grimace? "I remembered. I just stopped caring."
He raised a single finger—and the entire Mirror World began to fracture.
[System Alert: Temporal Layer Breach Detected.]
[Chronicle of Ash Protocol Activated.]
The dark version of Yeo stepped forward. "You can hack the system all you want. But the system fights back. You'll learn… just like I did."
And then—
[Warning: Incoming Memory Injection – Error Signature: YX-VOID-KAEL]
Yeo's body tensed. A wave of memories not his own surged through him—futures he never lived, deaths he never faced, victories he never earned.
In one, he became the Godslayer. In another, a broken exile. In another still… he never existed at all.
The Tyrant King's voice echoed:
"The system doesn't fear gods. It fears us. It fears what happens when the unwanted… take control."
The Mirror shattered.
Yeo was thrown backward, crashing into his own body with a burst of black fire.
---
He woke in the ruins of the ancient temple, Leiran kneeling beside him. Her hand on his chest, her eyes wild with concern.
"Yeo—what happened? Your body stopped breathing—your veins turned to shadow!"
Yeo coughed, then whispered:
"I met what I could become… and it hates me."
The Chronicle of Ash floated beside him, its pages glitching with red warnings.
And in the sky above—an old constellation had changed shape.
The gods were watching again.
But this time, Yeo was watching back.