Location: The 7th Chaos of Heavens Depth Layer 9: "God-Tomb Fields"
Darkness didn't just fall here. It bled.
For twenty years, something… someone… had crawled through broken realms and shattered time. Not a man. Not a god. Something in between. Bones fractured and reforged. Memories lost, recovered, then burned again by the Archons keepers of torment, judges of the damned.
Chains screamed against skin not meant to heal. Whispers echoed across skies made of screaming stars. But he never stopped walking.
"You are not meant to leave," the Archons hissed.
"You are the exile. The betrayer. The killer of kings."
He didn't answer. He couldn't. His mouth was sewn by reality itself.
But his eyes burned.
Not with rage.
With purpose.
Above him, ancient runes began to spiral etched by time itself, powered by a name long erased. The same runes that began to appear on Earth. The same chant heard in every broken world:
"𐤔𐤕𐤓 𐤅𐤍𐤍... 𐤒𐤓𐤉𐤀𐤕 𐤏𐤌𐤁𐤓𐤒..."
The 7th Chaos Of Heavens shook. Storms of fire and void collided.
A tear opened in the bleeding sky.
He stepped through.
And for the first time in two decades, the prisoner the demon killer escaped.
On Earth, no one noticed.
Not yet.
But in the farthest corners of reality, old forces stirred.
And deep inside Ironsoul Tower, an AI feed flickered for just one second showing a man standing in fire… before glitching out.
Location Earth Himalayas Night
Wind howled like dying gods across the frozen ridges.
Atop the summit, nothing human should have survived. And yet, something crouched among the bones of monks and frostbitten explorers. A thing not made of flesh alone.
It had followed the tear in the veil.
It had escaped the 7th Chaos too.
The Pale Echo a creature stitched from regrets and forgotten faith. Its breath froze time. Its claws harvested memory. It had no face only a hollow mouth that whispered names it had consumed.
It moved silently across stone, hunting children of power. Of light. Of legacy.
But it was not alone.
A single figure watched from the higher ridge. Cloaked in black, face hidden beneath a war-scarred hood. His body bore wounds that never fully healed gifts from the Archons' torture. His veins still burned from their divine needles.
He spoke no words.
He only drew the blade.
Forged in the 4th Ring of Chaos. Unnamed. Unmatched.
The Pale Echo froze.
It turned.
It recognized him.
And for the first time in centuries… it ran.
But there was no escape.
He vanished from the snow and reappeared behind it, driving the blade through the beast's spine. No blood spilled. Instead, a scream echoed that shattered every frozen peak for miles.
He twisted the blade once.
The Pale Echo dissolved into dust and vanished into the wind.
Then silence.
The man stood still… breathing hard… but victorious.
He looked to the stars. To Earth.
Not yet.
Not now.
But soon.
The world would know he had returned.
Just not who.
Not yet.
Location: Himalayas 2 Days After Arrival Through the Rift
The cold here didn't bite.
It pierced.
He had faced hell.
Faced chaos.
But this… this was a slower death.
His body wasn't built for Earth anymore. Not fully. Not after twenty years in the 7 Chaos of Heavens. The laws of physics were different there. So was time. Gravity. Even air.
Now, everything hurt.
His fingers were blackened with frostbite. His skin cracked and bled in the wind. He hadn't eaten in five days. His mouth was sewn shut by divine law but the pain kept trying to scream through it anyway.
He collapsed against a stone face buried in snow. A statue? Or was it just another frozen corpse?
He didn't care.
He let the wind take him.
Let his body go still.
Let himself…
fade.
And as the snow buried his chest… something strange happened.
He dreamed.
Of Earth.
Of Atlas.
A younger brother he had never held.
Never spoken to.
But always watched.
"I'm sorry, Atlas…"
"I was supposed to protect you… not disappear…"
Then…
warmth.
A hand.
Lifting him.
No words. No voice.
Only golden light. Gentle. Radiant. Soft as breath.
He barely opened his eyes just enough to see a silhouette with wings of burning snow, neither angel nor demon. A being not made of flesh, but memory.
The figure placed a hand on his chest.
A pulse of heat surged through him.
Wounds closed.
Frost retreated.
He gasped his mouth finally unstitched by unknown power.
"W-what are you…"
But the being was already gone.
The mountain winds roared again.
And he… was alive.
Alone again.
But not broken.
Not this time.
Minutes later a cave beyond the wind, hidden in the Himalayas.
He awoke in firelight.
Not warm fire. Not natural.
It was blue.
Flickering strangely.
Like it remembered ancient stars.
He lay wrapped in thick, fur lined robes. Breathing slow. Pain still gripped his bones, but his mouth his voice was free.
And across the cave, sitting perfectly still beside a smoking censer of herbs, was an old man.
Not just old.
Ancient.
His skin looked like paper soaked in centuries.
His beard was long, silver white, braided with small black stones.
His robe was layered part Buddhist monk, part desert nomad, part something far older.
But what truly caught his eye was what the man held.
A massive book. Bound in dark bronze. The pages shimmered. The script… shifted.
And on the cover, etched in spiraling sigils of reality-bending geometry.
GNOSTIC QUANTUM
The man spoke his voice low, both kind and terrifying.
"You are the exile."
The assassin nodded, slow.
"I was."
The man opened the book. Pages flipped on their own. Symbols pulsed softly.
"Do you know what this is?"
"No," he rasped.
"This is truth your gods couldn't read. This is the language of pre-divinity. The science of soul and cosmos before order claimed the throne."
He looked up eyes white with power, yet utterly human.
"You escaped a realm meant to erase the self. That's no small thing."
"Who are you?"
The old man smiled.
"Names are for men."
He shut the book.
"But once, before language, they called me Gamaliel. I was scribe to the Watchers. Librarian to the Dreaming Citadel. And now, I wait."
"Wait for what?"
Gamaliel stood.
"For you to understand why you were saved."
He stepped closer.
"You weren't spared from death. You were selected. The Pale Echo was just the beginning. Something ancient is waking in Earth's underlayers. Not myth. Not demons."
"The Archons banished you for what you might become…"
"But now, they will fear what you already are."
He pressed the book against the assassin's chest.
"When the sky chants again, and runes bleed from the oceans, you will open this."
"And remember who you truly are."
The wind outside roared. Snow danced like ashes in a storm.
And the brother forgotten by time… took the book.
Location Ironsoul Tower Midnight
Atlas Vale couldn't sleep.
Even with the world quiet, even with peace officially declared, something haunted his chest not the Dreadlight Core but something beneath it. A pulse that didn't belong to any machine.
He stood alone in his private observatory, eyes fixed on the stars. San Francisco below slept. But he… was listening.
To what, he didn't know.
And then.
"He bleeds across the ice, but the fire clings to him."
Atlas turned.
No one there.
His AI flickered.
"Error: Unknown frequency detected."
Atlas raised his brow. "Source?"
"No physical transmission detected. Origin: Non-local. Possibly extradimensional."
He stared into the screen. Into a ripple of static that glitched once… then showed a symbol.
A sigil he had never seen.
Or so he thought.
Something stirred in his mind.
Old.
Impossible.
The same shape burned into the armor core he forged long ago from Mythralite in Isle Terra.
He touched his chestplate, where the ancient rune was etched. His fingers trembled.
"What is this?" he whispered.
The screen pulsed again. A voice not robotic, not alien human… but weathered by pain and time.
"Atlas."
Just his name.
Spoken like a warning… and a promise.
Then the system crashed.
Meanwhile Hidden Sanctuary beneath Mount Kailash
The stepbrother sat beside Gamaliel, book open across his lap. The fire hissed low.
"He heard me."
Gamaliel nodded.
"You are blood. That bond cannot be silenced."
"But he's not ready," the brother muttered.
"He doesn't need to be," Gamaliel said calmly.
"The world will make him ready. The song has already begun."
He gestured toward the book. The runes moved like breath.
"And when the time comes… you won't just protect him."
"You'll stand between him and the end of all things."
The brother looked toward the stars same ones Atlas watched. His eyes dimmed with memory.
"I don't deserve to stand beside him."
"Then fight," Gamaliel replied, "so he never has to fall as far as you did."
---To be Continued...