The bells of Kal-Setan had not tolled in ten thousand years.
But now they rang.
Once the grandest of the dream cities, Kal-Setan was carved from living obsidian and divine marrow, a throne-city of one of the 13. Its towers reached so high that they threaded into the star-veins of sleeping gods. Its temples sang with the breath of creation.
Now… they howled.
The sky was ruptured.
From the tear stepped a war.
The Voidling Warlord descended like a wound opening across the heavens. Its form was wrong—impossible, bloated with mouths and wings that whispered the undoing of reality. Behind it, time twisted into chains and entropy walked like a pet.
On a balcony of gold and bone, a god stood.
Highlord Setraal—Patron of Light's Reflection, one of the Thirteen.
His hands trembled.
Not from fear.
From the recognition of something older than him—stronger than the war he once helped win.
"The Warlord walks," Setraal whispered.
His followers waited for a command.
He gave none.
Instead, he stepped backward, folding his form into light, vanishing from the world he once ruled.
Kal-Setan began to die.
The Warlord raised a single hand.
And above the dream city, a sphere of coalescing void energy formed—black, flickering with the memory of destroyed stars. It dropped slowly.
Like judgment.
And when it hit, the city sang one final time.
Then there was only silence.
Nightfell — The Temple Beneath the Ash
Kiro screamed as power surged through him.
The echo of Kuni had vanished into dust, the final trial complete. But pain had not left. His body was no longer just his own—it was a crucible now, burning with something old, something sacred.
Before him, the last Naught remained chained.
Its form shimmered between states—sometimes a man, sometimes a storm, sometimes just a voice.
"You have passed the first gate," it said. "But now comes the drowning."
Kiro knelt, breath shallow. "What… what is this feeling?"
The Naught regarded him with a gaze that remembered universes.
"Ascended Viora," it said softly. "The art of not just channeling the river of life and power—but becoming its current. The gods sealed this technique. Only we… the First Made… remember it."
It stepped closer, shadows of chains dragging across the black stone.
"You will not master it in days. You will not live through it unchanged. But if you survive… you may strike at things the gods themselves fear."
Kiro nodded. He didn't ask for rest.
He only asked: "What am I fighting?"
The Naught paused.
Then spoke.
"They are called Voidlings. But that is the name given by cowards. We called them the Reclaimed."
Kiro's brow furrowed. "Reclaimed?"
"They are the result of what happens when the universe takes back its mistakes. Not born. Not bred. They are uncreation—things that evolve by breaking the rules of reality."
And then the Naught lifted its hand.
A mural of starlight formed in the air—a swirling ladder, descending into nothing.
"This is their hierarchy."
"Soldiers." The lowest. Claws. Teeth. Endless. "Not smart. But fast. Deadly in swarms."
"Captains." Hardened with stolen minds. They remember being something else—once.
"Magnus Guard." Taller than cities. Silent. Each bonded to a Warlord. Their blood can melt continents.
"Warlords." Like the one Kiro had seen. "They lead conquests. They are chosen, not born."
"Kings." Only a few. Seen once during the fall of the Dreamworld's outer walls. Their very steps unravel matter.
And above them all—
"Emperors." There is no record. Only silence. Even the gods do not speak their names.
Kiro's blood chilled.
"I'll have to fight them," he said.
The Naught smiled.
"You already are."
Chains cracked. Wind howled.
And Kiro rose into the flame of Ascended Viora.
Somewhere far above, in the ruins of Kal-Setan, the Voidling Warlord turned its many eyes toward the earth below—
Toward Nightfell.
And it began to descend.