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System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Sixty-Seven
Oliver's heart pounded like a drum in his chest. His breaths came quick and shallow, each one barely filling his lungs before the next came. He stretched out his arms, reaching desperately for something to hold on to—anything that might stop the endless fall—but his fingers closed around nothing. Only empty air.The silence around him was thick, heavier than anything he had ever felt before. It pressed against his ears, his mind, his very soul. It was as if the whole world had been swallowed by a great beast, and now he was trapped inside its belly, sinking deeper and deeper into the dark.Then, out of nowhere, a voice whispered."Welcome home."Oliver flinched. The words did not come from in front of him or behind him. They did not come from above or below. They came from everywhere at once. They curled around him like cold fingers, slipping into his bones, into his blood. The voice was not loud, but it filled the space completely, as if it had been spoken inside his very soul.His h
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Sixty-Eight
Oliver hesitated at the edge of the ruins, his fingers curling at his sides. The figure had disappeared into the darkness ahead, their steps swallowed by the eerie silence of the forgotten city. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to turn back, to run—but there was nowhere to go. No way out.So he followed.His boots scraped against the stone as he moved, his breath shallow. The dim glow from the cracks in the ground flickered with each step, casting strange, shifting shadows along the ruined walls. The cold air bit at his skin, carrying the scent of damp earth and something faintly metallic—blood, perhaps, or something worse.The city stretched endlessly before him, an ancient graveyard of towering structures that had long since crumbled. Once, these streets must have been alive. Now, they belonged to ghosts."Keep up."Oliver flinched at the voice. The hooded figure had stopped ahead, standing near the remnants of a massive archway. Its jagged edges clawed at the sky, a silen
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Sixty-Nine
Oliver followed Wren deeper into the broken city. The buildings around them were old and crumbling, their walls cracked, their windows shattered. The streets were empty, filled only with dust and scattered debris. But the silence was the worst part. It wasn’t just the absence of people—it was something heavier, something watching. It made Oliver’s skin crawl.He tried to shake off the feeling as he walked, but every step sent echoes bouncing off the ruined walls, making it sound like someone—or something—was following them. He glanced behind him more than once, but the street was always empty.Wren, on the other hand, moved like they belonged here. Their boots made no sound against the stone, their movements careful and deliberate. They never hesitated, never second-guessed where they were going. Oliver, however, stumbled more than once. Loose rubble shifted under his feet, nearly sending him to the ground. He cursed under his breath, his hands twitching at his sides.He wanted his fi
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Seventy
Oliver stood in the middle of the ruined city, watching the fire flicker in his hands. The flames danced, bright and wild, casting long shadows against the crumbling walls around him. The heat licked at his skin, warm but not painful. It felt right, like it belonged to him, like it was a part of him. Yet deep down, a question gnawed at him, refusing to leave.Who had given him this power? And what would they ask for in return?Ahead of him, Wren walked with steady, silent steps. Their hood was pulled low over their face, hiding their expression. They never once looked back at him, never said anything about the fire he kept summoning, watching as it curled and flickered between his fingers like it might disappear if he didn’t hold on tight enough.Oliver followed, but the silence between them was thick, heavy, filled with too many things left unsaid. The wind whispered through the ruined city, carrying the scent of dust, stone, and something else—something old and metallic, like rusted
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Seventy-One
Oliver barely had a moment to breathe. His chest rose and fell quickly, his heart hammering like a drum inside his ribs. The ruins around him trembled, and the ground beneath his feet shook so hard he thought it might split apart at any moment. Broken columns groaned and rattled, loose stones tumbling to the cracked ground. Dust rained down in thick clouds, making it hard to see. The air itself felt strange—thick, heavy, and charged with something unseen yet terrifying. It was as if the whole world had taken a deep breath and was holding it, waiting for something terrible to happen.Oliver tried to steady himself, pushing against his aching knees as he looked around. "What now?" he gasped, his voice barely more than a whisper.Wren's head jerked up. Their sharp eyes widened in horror. "Move! Now!"There was no time to question. Oliver ran.A deep crack splintered through the stone behind him, opening like a jagged wound. From that dark fissure, heat blasted upward, as if something mo
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Seventy-Two
Oliver gasped as he tumbled through the endless dark. His body was spinning, but there was no ground, no sky, nothing to hold onto. It felt like falling, but not in the way he had ever known. There was no wind rushing past him, no sensation of weight pulling him downward. Instead, he floated in emptiness, dragged forward by something unseen. It was like being caught in a great river, carried by its current with no way to resist.Then, suddenly—impact.His back slammed against something solid. A sharp pain shot through him as the air was forced from his lungs. His vision blurred. For a moment, all he could do was lie there, gasping for breath, tasting blood in his mouth. He groaned and tried to move. His fingers found the surface beneath him—cold, damp stone. The texture was rough, uneven, slick as if it had been polished by time or something far worse.Slowly, Oliver pushed himself up. His muscles trembled, his limbs aching from the impact. Around him, the darkness was not complete. T
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Seventy-Three
Minutes passed. Then hours.Oliver walked through the dark passageways, his boots scraping against the cold stone floor. His breath echoed around him, the only sound in the empty corridors. The air was damp, heavy with silence, pressing down on him like an invisible weight.He kept moving. Left, then right. He ran his fingers along the rough stone walls, hoping for something different, something new. He took out his dagger and scratched a mark into the wall—just a small cut, a sign to remind himself that he had been here before. If he found it again, he would know he was walking in circles.But when he passed through the hallway once more, the mark was gone.Oliver stopped. His stomach twisted. His throat felt tight. He turned sharply, retracing his steps, counting each turn in his head. Left. Right. Down the spiral path. He whispered the directions to himself, over and over, trying to hold onto them. But no matter how carefully he moved, no matter how many turns he took, he always en
System Activated: Divine Talent Granted Chapter Seventy-Four
The cold air hit Oliver’s face the moment he stepped through the doorway. It was sharp, like a blade cutting through the heavy dampness that had clung to him inside the labyrinth. The sudden change made him suck in a breath, his body tensing as the wind curled around him. His tattered cloak flapped wildly, its frayed edges snapping like worn-out flags. The cold slipped beneath the fabric, slithering along his skin, making him shiver. He took a deep breath, letting the crisp, fresh air fill his lungs, washing away the stale, suffocating atmosphere of the labyrinth.But the world beyond the doorway was not what he had expected.Oliver found himself standing on the very edge of a jagged cliff. The ground beneath his boots was cracked and crumbling, small stones tumbling down into the valley below. He barely dared to move, his heart hammering in his chest. A vast expanse stretched before him, covered in thick, rolling mist that shifted like something alive. In the distance, towering mou
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Chapter One Hundred-Five
The air smelled of orange blossoms and honey. For a long time, Oliver didn’t move. The sun warmed his face, and the wind was soft—like breath against his skin. A tree above him rustled gently, its leaves whispering secrets he couldn’t quite hear.He was lying in the grass. Real grass. Not cracked stone or ash-covered ground. Grass that tickled his arms. The sky was impossibly blue, like an ocean flipped upside down, and the clouds were like boats drifting with nowhere to go. No fire. No screaming metal. No sword in his hand.Only peace.He sat up slowly. His ribs didn’t hurt. His hands were whole. Even the scar across his chest, the one he’d earned in the fourth siege of Halron Keep, was gone. He touched his face, then his chest. Nothing. Clean.“Oliver,” a voice called.He turned.Azrael was walking toward him—alive. Smiling. That smile, that impossible, heart-breaking grin. His long black coat danced in the breeze. His boots didn’t crunch against the ground because there was no war
Chapter One Hundred-Four
With a roar that was not merely fury but grief, exile, and ancient betrayal turned into thunder, the colossus lunged forward, not as though it were a creature that had waited so long to be born, but as if with the terrifying speed of a thing that had long waited to be born.Oliver didn't pause; he took up instinct against design. His body moved then, not from muscle memory, but as if some deeper code had written this moment into the very fibersHis boots ignited sparks across the scorched floor, his every step a scream of resistance against impossibility, his blade trailing light that pulsed like a second heart, running in to the chaos. The monster-instance of his own image, by time and torment-raised a fist the size of a tombstone and every bit of it fell on Oliver, who attempted to fling himself to the left. The sheer force of that impact sent shockwaves through the rock, bursting fissures out across the obsidian floor and launching shards into the air like the jagged wings of a dyi
Chapter One Hundred-Three
Oliver was trudging up the stone stairs with the realization that he was moving painfully slow. The air weighed heavy, and each step felt more strenuous than the previous one. His hands were trembling. His chest felt tight. For no apparent reason. Just a feeling—a gut instinct of bad omen.And then it happened.The Rift didn’t just open within himself. It tore apart.An invisible stroke ran through his chest, like a lightning bolt striking it, but there came no sound. Only the pain: the marvelous, jagged, cutting right through him. He fell on one knee and gasped. The cracked stone of the stair came alive. Then the bubbling began—like wax being melted at the flame's edge.Heat erupted from inside him. First it was orange; then it turned white; now it was blue. The fire pouring from his chest was a tempest: rushing up, a whirl, furious, flashing. It burned quietly, but its heat howled. The sword slipped from Oliver’s grip, falling to the ground with a clang.For something too blinding,
Chapter One Hundred-Two
The light just seems to vanish from out of nowhere. A second ago, there it was-an object glowing brilliantly and warmly-and suddenly, it was all gone. The sky blinked, like an eye closing down. Everything turned to black. Then there were only the stairs. They curled upward. Cold, grey stone. One spiral staircase and no end in sight. It twists into the sky, through clouds of gold and fire. There are no walls-no railings-just air all around and far beneath, nothing. No ground. No sound. No color. No time. Just dark bottomless space..Oliver stood at the bottom of the stairs. Or maybe he was standing there for a long time already. He was not so sure. There was an ache in his chest, like it was torn from inside. Smoke rose from his skin, and his clothes burned and worn away. There was blood dripping from his hands. He tried to breathe, but it hurt. Still, he looked up. All that remained were those stairs. So he stepped forward. Slowly. Cautiously. His foot touched the first step. And t
Chapter One Hundred-One
No noise. No light. Only movement. Only pain. Only war. Oliver opened his eyes, or thought he did; nothing felt different in that place whether he kept them shut or not: no light change, no shapes, no borders, no floor, no sky, nothing but an endless void, pressing in from all sides with pressure like the deepest ocean. But he moved, so something must still exist.Smoke entered his lungs. Ice left his mouth. Every thud of pain in his ribs, pain that etched itself into his bones as fatigue, and yet he managed to keep going. Something else moved, too- around him, behind him, inside him. The monsters had come without the luxury of a warning, without the snarl of rage, or the cry of rage. They had come with silence.The first was but a shadow of a hand--a hand that pulled back from the dark and closed around his throat, its grip a grasp of memory, regret, and betrayal he had never healed from; as he shoved it away with his bare fingers, its form twisted, arms growing long, then thick, onl
Chapter One Hundred
The fall ended prematurely. Oliver hit an unyielding surface and felt all the wind slam out of his lungs. The force from the collision shot up his spine like fire through the nerves. In the darkness, there were no echoes, no sky, no ground—only an endless, choking absence of sound. He coughed. Blood smeared his lips. His fingers trembling, he began to push against the foreign black stone under him.Then he saw it.A space, vast and perfect in shape. A circular polished obsidian, with walls smooth and towering, but with no ceiling—the sky above, gone. Instead, an infinite void opened upward, with stars twisting sluggishly across an empty canvas. A quiet hum vibrated beneath the skin.It was in the center of this bizarre room that a mirror stood.It was higher than any mountain, wider than any battlefield. The frame was a molten silver flowing with red and gold veins that pulsed like living metal. The glass was too transparent, too deep- sheen might not be the appropriate word; it migh
Chapter Ninety-Nine
Each heartbeat pounded in Oliver's ears, almost as if his heart were beating within the recesses of his skull. The pain in his body seemed endless. There was not a part of his body that didn't hurt. His skin, once smooth, now shone with silver cracks running like lightning beneath his armor. It was strange yet felt familiar, a constant reminder of how far he had fallen. His legs felt heavy; his feet dragged across shattered ground as he stumbled onward. Breathing was becoming increasingly difficult. Each step was a battle, and each breath could have been the last unto his burning lungs, perforated by a kind of abandonment. It was a dull ache haunting Oliver, smoldering within him, refusing to die even if alongside him lay a body yearning for death.He tried to balance again, but the first thing he saw was them breaking through the shadow. Too many limbs had they! Bodies stitched with mismatched pieces of skin. Mouths sewn shut; gone were the eyes, replaced by empty, hollow sockets. C
Chapter Ninety-Eight
There was no time in the Forge. There were no clocks hanging on the walls, there was also no sun rising, even the view of a falling moon was nowhere in sight. Only pain existed-pain that never stopped, that almost felt intimate-comforted by the memory of a whisper against the skin. Oliver slammed down hard onto the ground; it thudded loud enough for the sound to all come rushing out of his lungs in one loud note. For a moment, he could not breathe. The ground hurt, not like normal stone; it felt sharp and strange, like bones mixed in with old broken swords. It groaned under him, like it was alive. He rolled onto his side, coughing. Cuts graced his skin. It flowed down his arms and legs. Some places in his body were hurting so badly that he couldn't figure out how he was even still moving. He tried to haul himself up, but the ground was pushing him down. It was like it didn't want to let him up. Above him were shadows. Huge, dark shadows moving silently. They were watching him. The
Chapter Ninety-Seven
Everything was painted the same shade of red. And that wasn't a mere view from the eye. It was deep and heavy, as if a storm waited for millennia to return, sad and angry and pained, almost like a storm in the sky.Oliver was frozen. Blank and stoned by the light, which wasn't warm but cold and sharp. Not fire; living. It wanted to eat everything, thoughts, and memories too. More than light, it was that feeling wrapping around his bones and pulling into the pieces in him.His body started to tremble. From fear? No. From deep down inside. His bones ached. His skin felt foreign to him. His heart beat dangerously. It was fast, too speedy, as though to catch up to some thing. It was then like the very world itself folded in on itself. Bent, twisted, tore. But he didn't fall. He didn't scream. Rather, it felt like being taken apart.Oliver could neither see nor hear anymore. Not even the wind or the beat of his own heart. But he felt pain, starting from his chest and spreading out to the e
