The world stood still. As if time itself was holding its breath.
Pain.
Not the sting of a wound, but a deep emptiness that echoed through his entire being—like a soul torn out and thrown back into its old shell.
Kaelen awoke, gasping for air. His body felt small. Frail. Far too light compared to the avatar he once had in Little Garden. Cold stone greeted his skin, the scent of ancient dust and rusted metal filling his nose.
A wooden ceiling. A dark room.
A storage area?
No. This was… an underground hideout. He recognized it. The corners of the room, the patterns in the cracked walls—they all belonged to the world before the reset. The world before the False God stole humanity.
His hand touched his chest. His heart pounded wildly, like a caged bird.
This… is my old body.
Kaelen Virelith. Twelve years old.
The time before everything began.
"I'm back…"
But the voice wasn't The Empress's. It wasn't the sharp, commanding voice that once shattered his enemies. It was a child's voice. Soft. Fragile.
He sat cross-legged, took a deep breath, and tried to access the system: status, inventory, magic.
Silence.
No response. No interface. No system aura. Little Garden was gone—just as he expected.
But his memories, knowledge, and instincts… were still intact.
He was no longer a child. He was a giant compressed into a tiny shell. And this world… had no idea its death had already been written.
Several days passed.
Kaelen wandered quietly through his old city. A city bright with artificial constellations made of streetlights and neon signs. This world was still bustling, full of people unaware that doom lurked just beyond reality's veil.
On the rooftop of a skyscraper, Kaelen stood alone, gazing at the sea of lights shining from windows below.
A world unaware… that it had already died.
Suddenly, his vision blurred. The world spun. His small body wavered, and he collapsed onto the cold rooftop floor.
When his eyes opened again, Kaelen stood in the center of a stone altar. A faintly glowing magic circle pulsed beneath his feet, and the surrounding walls were covered in ancient carvings—depictions of a time before time. The air was thick, almost frozen. This place felt like the space between realities—too strange for the present, too real to be a dream.
He tried to move. His steps were still light, like a child's. But his mind… remained that of The Empress.
And there, standing not far from him, was a figure that made him tense.
A woman. Tall. Graceful. Long silver hair shimmered like moonlit thread. Her eyes were black—deep, void-like. The armor she wore was identical to The Empress's own.
But that was impossible. Kaelen was now in a twelve-year-old boy's body.
"Who are you?"
"I didn't die," the figure replied. Her voice echoed, as if the room itself was speaking. "But I am not you."
Kaelen narrowed his eyes. "A manifestation?"
"I am the will of this world. The World Will of Miriad Miniature Garden," the figure said. "I was formed from fragments of the future—your memories, clinging to the World Seed before it ever became Little Garden."
She stepped forward. The altar's glow danced across her armor.
"The False God stole the World Seed and used it as the foundation of his creation. But because he was merely an imitation, and fueled it with human souls, he never truly understood it… let alone controlled me."
The World Seed: an organic seed of creation, grown from memory, will, and time. The core of the system. The base of all genesis.
And from that seed, the World Will was born. Not a system, but a memory that refused to be forgotten. Aware. And afraid of falling into the wrong hands.
"Because you controlled the system in the future, I summoned a fragment of your future self—and created this manifestation for one purpose."
She extended her hand. In her palm, a crystal light began to glow. Data pulsed within it—complex, alive.
[SYSTEM TRANSFER: Throne of Origin — World Master Key]
"If the False God activates the World Seed before you do, then this world will be his. But if you claim it first, history's path will shift into your hands. Redeploy Little Garden now. Turn this world into a temporal anchor the gods cannot touch."
Kaelen stared at the light.
The power he once gained after killing the False God—now offered again. In the past. Not as a reward, but as a gamble.
"The world didn't choose me because I was a hero," Kaelen thought. "It chose me because it feared falling into the hands of something worse."
He looked up. "And if I fail?"
"The world will still perish. But I… will never belong to anyone again."
Kaelen gazed at the light in the World Will's hand. He knew there was no turning back. Accepting this key wasn't just seizing control of the world—it was signing a contract with fate itself.
But Kaelen had never feared fate.
He raised his hand. As his fingers touched the light, waves of energy surged through his body. In an instant, the fragments of the old system returned to his mind: protocol layers, territory control, world-ruler hierarchies. Familiar sensations he had buried in war.
And as the light merged into him, the sky outside the altar quietly split apart—as if the world had realized that its sovereign had returned.
Little Garden would live again.
Not as an escape—but as a weapon.Not a playground, but a battlefield for fate.
And She, The Empress, would return—Not to play.But to rule.