The battlefield was silence and storm.
Dust and divine fire churned across the scorched skies of the Eternal Plane. Ash fell like snow from the heavens, thickening the air with grief and sacrifice. The scent of scorched stone mingled with blood and ozone. Cries of agony were swallowed by the chaos, but amidst it all—Zhao Lianxu stood still.
Still.
His breath trembled, not from fear, but recognition.
Before him stood himself—a twisted echo pulled from the frayed edges of broken fate. The First Calamity had assumed the most intimate weapon of destruction: the version of him that had chosen differently. A version forged by rage and regret. One that had given in to vengeance instead of mercy.
The corrupted Lianxu's robes were tattered fragments of space and time, cloaked in collapsing realities. His eyes bled shadow. His sword was a darker mirror of Voidrend—named Heartsunder, a blade forged not to protect, but to punish.
The sight of it gnawed at Lianxu's soul.
"You are not me," Lianxu said, voice low but steady.
"No," the echo replied, tilting its head, "I am what you fear you might become. I am the truth you bury beneath love and illusions."
Yurei, still clutching her ribs, looked up from the stone where she'd been shielding injured sect members. Her voice was faint, but clear.
"Lianxu, don't listen to it…"
But part of him already was.
It whispered with the ease of knowing everything he'd ever hidden from the world. The guilt. The ambition. The secret wish for it all to end. Not because he wanted peace—but because he didn't believe he deserved it.
His doppelgänger stepped forward. "You think love makes you strong?" It gestured toward Yurei. "She killed you. In another life, she will again. You were born to be betrayed."
Lianxu's fingers tightened around Voidrend.
"No," he whispered. "I was born to overcome betrayal. That's the difference between us."
The creature's smile didn't falter. "Then prove it."
The sky cracked open.
Light collided with dark.
Two versions of the same soul surged toward each other—one forged in pain, the other tempered by hope. Their swords clashed with a shockwave that tore through the cloud-veiled horizon, splitting the war-torn plane into halves of day and night.
The battle wasn't just physical—it was spiritual.
Every blow was a memory.
Every strike a scar reborn.
They leapt between shattered monoliths and burning towers, across time-rifted stone and fields made of fractured memories. Lianxu saw images as they fought—visions flickering in and out of existence.
His mother, eyes glowing crimson, cradling him in a realm of fire.
His father, Xuan Zhao, alone on a throne of silence, blood on his hands.
Yurei, weeping beneath a cherry tree that no longer existed in any realm.
Each moment drove deeper into his soul than any sword.
The corrupted version of him—this Calamity Echo—was faster, crueler. It didn't hesitate. It anticipated his moves with surgical precision. Each parry made his arms scream. Every defense pushed him closer to the edge.
"You're hesitating," the Echo mocked. "You still believe she can be saved. That the realms can be united. That you can be loved."
Lianxu was panting now, sweat and blood stinging his eyes.
"I fight," he grunted, "because I still believe."
The Echo snarled, raising Heartsunder for a strike that would cleave his chest—but it was met by a wall of black fire.
From the rear, a roar shattered the mountain above.
Descending from the crags was Vaelion, the last of the Void Phoenixes—an ancient spirit Lianxu had once rescued in the Trial of Evernight. Its wings spanned galaxies, its feathers shone with collapsing stars. With a cry that seared the sky, it breathed obsidian flames across the battlefield, separating the Echo from Lianxu.
Yurei looked up in awe. "I thought the Void Phoenix had died…"
"It dies in every other timeline," Lianxu said hoarsely. "Except this one."
From the smoke and fire emerged more of the allied forces.
High Mistress Xialin, her robe now shredded, stood beside three Sect Elders, channeling healing runes across the injured.
Empress Veyra herself rose from a fissure in the earth, her blade dancing in tandem with her shadow-army of demon generals.
The armies had unified, even if briefly. Demons, saints, beasts, and outcasts—all stood together, forming a circle of resistance around the central battle.
Yet Lianxu knew… none of them could stop what was coming.
The Echo stepped through the flame, laughing.
"You brought them here… for what? To die with you?"
"No," Lianxu said. "To remind me who I am."
With renewed clarity, he threw his sword high into the air. Voidrend shimmered, dividing into five spectral blades—one for each element.
Fire.
Water.
Wind.
Earth.
Ether.
They spiraled around him like celestial guardians. He closed his eyes, feeling their presence as more than techniques. They were parts of him. Of the people who'd shaped him.
He whispered the incantation only a Multiuniverse Body could hold.
A technique forbidden to all but one bloodline.
"Samsara Reversal."
The ground pulsed. The stars stuttered.
A seal burned into the air above his head—a lotus forged from time, shadow, and light. As he struck, the blades moved with a synchronicity beyond physical comprehension. They didn't just hit the Echo—they struck through him, into the fragments of time that sustained him.
The First Calamity screamed—not in pain, but in realization.
"You dare sever the root of design?"
"I dare rewrite it."
The lotus bloomed.
In that instant, the corrupted version of Lianxu split apart—layer by layer, like paper soaked in truth. His form crumbled into memories—Yurei's death, the burning of the Demon Realm, the genocide of the Celestial Sect—all unwritten as the technique devoured their causality.
The sky turned white.
The realms paused.
And then… silence.
A soft breeze blew across the broken stones. The First Calamity's anchor was destroyed. Without the Echo, its form shriveled, unable to sustain itself in the current plane. It wailed into the void before collapsing into a shower of stardust.
Lianxu collapsed to his knees.
He was alive—but barely.
The realms around him began to repair. Time flowed again. Sect masters and warriors slowly opened their eyes, stunned by what they'd witnessed. The sky above them was no longer split. The war, for now… was over.
Yurei was the first to reach him, falling beside him, pressing her head to his chest. She trembled as his heart beat against her ear.
"I thought you were going to die," she whispered, eyes brimming.
"I did," he said weakly, "in every world but this one."
She laughed through her tears.
Xuan Zhao approached, a grim nod upon his face.
"You chose the impossible," he said. "And made it real."
"No," Lianxu replied. "I chose to believe in people. That's not impossible. Just rare."
Xuan stepped back, gazing toward the stars. "Then the next war will not be for survival… but for unity."
Behind them, the sects and dynasties began to kneel—one by one, facing Lianxu, their blades buried in the ground. A thousand voices rose in one unified chant:
"Long live the Lord of Realms."
Zhao Lianxu's eyes widened. "I didn't do this for a throne."
Yurei smiled. "Then maybe that's why you deserve one."
The sun rose.
But even as its warmth spread across the rebuilding world, deep beneath the surface of reality, something darker stirred.
For in the realm of Utter Chaos, beyond even the reach of time… a woman watched through a mirror of obsidian.
Her eyes were violet flames.
Her lips whispered a name.
"…Lianxu…"
And she smiled.
The next game had begun.