Darkness.
Cold stone pressed against Vlad's cheek. The metallic taste of blood coated his tongue, sharp and familiar. His eyelids felt like lead weights, refusing to open despite his desperate attempts.
Am I...alive?
The last thing he remembered was the searing pain of betrayal—Elena's blade sliding between his ribs, her tears mixing with his blood as the world crumbled around them. The Final War. The destruction of everything he'd sworn to protect.
A faint blue glow pierced through his closed eyelids.
[SYSTEM REACTIVATION INITIATED]
[HOST VITALS: STABLE]
[WELCOME BACK, DESTROYER OF WORLDS]
Vlad's eyes snapped open.
Floating text materialized in his vision, ethereal letters pulsing with otherworldly energy. His heart hammered against his ribs as memories crashed back like a tidal wave.
The system. His curse. His power.
No. No, this can't be happening.
He pushed himself up on trembling arms, debris cascading from his shoulders. The ruins stretched endlessly around him—twisted metal beams jutting from cracked concrete, skeletal remains of skyscrapers clawing at the crimson sky. This wasn't the battlefield where he'd died. This was...
"Home," he whispered, voice cracking.
New Genesis City. Or what remains of it.
[TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT DETECTED]
[CURRENT DATE: MARCH 15, 2157]
[TIME SINCE LAST DEATH: 247 YEARS, 3 MONTHS, 12 DAYS]
Two and a half centuries. The number hit him like a physical blow. Everyone he'd known, everyone he'd failed to save—they were dust now. Ancient history.
But the system's glow intensified, and new text cascaded across his vision:
[ANALYZING CURRENT WORLD STATE...]
[WARNING: DIMENSIONAL BARRIERS COMPROMISED]
[WORLD RIFTS DETECTED: 1,847 ACTIVE RIFTS]
[THREAT LEVEL: EXTINCTION CLASS]
Vlad staggered to his feet, his legs unsteady after centuries of death-sleep. In the distance, he could see them—jagged tears in reality itself, bleeding violet light into the world. The Fractured World. World Cracks. Gateways to the Void Realm that humanity has fought desperately to keep sealed.
They were everywhere.
"How many survived?" he asked the empty air, knowing the system would answer.
[CURRENT HUMAN POPULATION: ESTIMATED 12,000 INDIVIDUALS]
[SURVIVAL RATE: 0.0003%]
The number was a knife to his chest. Twelve thousand. From eight billion, down to twelve thousand scattered souls clinging to existence in a broken world.
His fault. All of it.
The familiar weight of guilt settled on his shoulders like an old coat, but something else stirred beneath it. Something darker. The system pulsed, responding to his emotional state.
[EMOTIONAL RESONANCE DETECTED]
[UNLOCKING DORMANT CAPABILITY...]
[PREVIOUS POWER LEVEL: DESTROYER CLASS]
[CURRENT POWER LEVEL: DORMANT]
[REACTIVATION SEQUENCE AVAILABLE]
Vlad clenched his fists. The last time he'd used his full power, reality itself had screamed. Continents had shifted. The laws of physics had bent until they were snapped.
But looking at the dying world around him, at the tears in space that promised even worse horrors to come, what choice did he have?
"Show me," he growled.
The system responds instantly:
[REACTIVATION REQUIRES SACRIFICE]
[AVAILABLE OPTIONS:]
[1. ABSORB 100 VOID ENTITIES]
[2. CONSUME 1 WORLD CRACK CORE]
[3. RECLAIM ORIGINAL POWER SOURCE]
The third option pulsed with ominous red text, and Vlad's blood turned to ice. His original power source. The thing that had made him into a walking apocalypse.
Elena's heart.
Still beating somewhere in the ruins of the past, preserved by the same temporal magic that had brought him back. The system had kept it safe, waiting for this moment.
A distant roar echoed across the wasteland—something massive moving through one of the nearby World Cracks. The sound sent primal terror racing down his spine. Whatever was coming through those rifts, it was beyond anything humanity had faced before.
The system's text shifted, taking on an almost eager quality:
[COMPLETE ANALYSIS]
[CURRENT WORLD STATUS: TERMINAL]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL COLLAPSE: 47 DAYS, 16 HOURS, 23 MINUTES]
[INTERVENTION REQUIRED]
Vlad stared at the countdown, watching the seconds tick away. Forty-seven days until the end of everything. Again.
The system's final message materialized slowly, each word itself burning into his retinas:
[QUESTION DETECTED IN HOST'S SUBCONSCIOUS]
[PROCESSING...]
[QUERY: "CAN I SAVE THEM THIS TIME?"]
[RESPONSE GENERATING...]
The text flickered, error messages cascading across his vision before stabilizing into a single, devastating line:
[ADVISORY SYSTEM: "ARE YOU READY TO REPEAT THE DESTRUCTION?"]
Vlad's world tilted. The system had never spoken to him directly before, never used Indonesian, never asked him questions in return.
This wasn't just a reactivation.
This was a choice.
Save the world and become the monster again, or let it die and keep its humanity.
In the distance, another roar split the air—closer this time, hungry and alien. The World Cracks pulsed brighter, and shadows began to pour through the dimensional tears like liquid nightmare.
Vlad closed his eyes, Elena's face swimming in his memory. Her last words: "Promise me you'll find another way."
He'd failed that promise once.
The system waits, patient as death itself, for his answer.