Lucien stepped onto the fourth level of the dungeon.
The mont his boots touched the ground, two familiar presences stirred.
Life and Death Slis.
They bounced lightly in place as if they were welcoming him. They looked like they understood that this mont was the end of a long journey.
Lucien’s gaze drifted upward. Floating in the air above them was the final shard. It pulsed faintly with otherworldly radiance.
Within it, a vision took shape.
The Primordial Sli.
It doesn’t look like a colossal beast of legend nor so divine monstrosity that towered over the world. It was a simple... translucent sli.
It was surrounded by a halo of blinding light... yet retaining the sa humble form as the weak, pitiful creatures Lucien had fought in the Academy dungeons.
It was almost laughable. That sothing so unassuming had once carried the weight of the world itself.
But even without a grand or imposing form, the truth was undeniable. The aura it radiated was imnse. It was so boundless that Lucien instinctively felt his soul shrink before it.
A soft sigh escaped his lips.
"This is it..."
The shard pulsed brighter as though acknowledging his words.
The twin slis responded to his resolve. They bounced toward him and their bodies rippled with a strange kind of joy... or perhaps sorrow.
Lucien tightened his grip on his blade. The weight of all ninety-nine lives pressed against his chest. The end of the journey, and the final truth, waited just beyond this mont.
The slis leapt.
And his blade moved to et them.
•••
The scene shifted.
Lucien’s vision blurred and when it cleared, he felt sothing was wrong. This life... it was different. He wasn’t a man, nor beast, nor an echo.
He was sothing else. Sothing vast yet incomplete. Sothing heavy yet fractured.
That’s when realization struck him like lightning.
He was... a fragnt of the Origin Core.
The truth stunned him. That could only an one thing...
The Origin Core was alive.
It had always been alive. Watching. Choosing. Waiting.
Through this existence, he felt what the fragnts felt.
The sheer incomprehensible weight of creation itself. Power beyond primordials. Power that could birth or annihilate the entire world.
But it was poison as much as it was gift. When so fragnts fell into monster hands, their essence twisted. The Essence warped into sothing twisted.
Miasma.
A corrosive force that devoured land. It caused an unbalance in nature. And it drove whole races into madness.
It’s the complete opposite of divine energy.
Lucien could feel the hunger of those who once carried him.
Mortals, Monsters, Primordials alike.
Every touch had been soaked with greed. It was insatiable and absolute. To hold even a piece of the Core was to taste eternity, to stand at the edge of immortality.
And few could ever resist.
The Primordials exploited this chaos with precision. They whispered lies into the world.
That the slis, the friendliest of creatures, hoarded fragnts in secret. That whisper was enough.
Soon, entire races turned their blades upon them. Slis were hunted, butchered and erased. Their very existence dwindled until only echoes remained.
Lucien as the fragnt felt the consequence of that slaughter. The weakening of a great presence.
For a Primordial Being, influence was asured not only by power but also by presence.
Followers, worshippers, vessels of mory. These were the anchors of their existence in the world. With its kin slaughtered, the Primordial Sli’s hold weakened. Its reach diminished.
And yet even then... it endured. For ages uncounted, it had silently healed the broken world. It bled away its own essence to nd rifts no other could see. Without it, creation would have shattered long before.
But now... it could endure no longer.
Through Lucien’s borrowed existence, he felt the Primordial Sli stir. It’s a presence older and deeper than any void-born lord or cosmic god.
When it rose, all creation trembled. Mortals bowed. Primordials faltered. For this was not just another being... it was the will of life itself.
With more than a hundred shards gathered into its body, the Primordial Sli enacted its final act.
The world was split.
One half drowned in a sea of black mass. Miasma itself was made into prison. There, monsters would thrive, fight and evolve... But never again would they be able to spill their corruption across creation.
It was their paradise... but also their cage.
The other half was given to the thousand races. It’s the last chance to rise, to stumble forward, to live. Away from corruption.
The barrier between the two was absolute. None could cross... unless they wielded strength surpassing the wall itself... or carried a fragnt of the Origin Core.
But even that was not the end..
With the last of its essence, the Primordial Sli did sothing greater.
From the fragnts of the Origin Core, it wove hundreds of small worlds. Each was crafted not as sanctuaries but as crucibles. They were seeded with legacies, inheritances and trials.
Not salvation but preparation. It’s like a forge through which humanity and its allies might endure, learn and grow strong enough to rise again.
It was not rely an act of creation but also of safeguard. For humanity had lost its final protector. The Human Ancestor was gone... and soon the Primordial Sli itself would follow. Without guardians, they would be swept away by the chaos.
And so, the Sli bound powerful guardian beasts into these worlds, anchoring them as watchers and shields.
It was the last gift of a dying creator... ensuring that even in its absence, hope would not vanish.
...
And that’s when it happened.
Lucien who still embodied a fragnt of the Origin Core could feel himself unraveling. He was being pulled into one of those small worlds. He saw his essence being bound into the murals.
And in that mont, he finally understood. He was part of the inheritance... one of the fragnts the Primordial entrusted to the future.
And when the final light of creation dimd, the Primordial Sli was gone.
•••
Lucien’s consciousness returned to his real body to the 4th level.
He stood in silence. His thoughts drowned beneath the weight of all he had witnessed.
The truth pressed down on him like an immovable stone. He didn’t even know what to feel anymore.
Fear? Awe? Grief? Or perhaps all at once...
Then his eyes caught it.
The last shard of the murals. It floated gently in the air. It shimred with a faint glow yet remained motionless as if waiting.
And then, sothing impossible happened.
Every mural around him...
The lives he had lived. The bodies he had worn. The faces he had seen...
They began to stir. The figures peeled themselves out of the walls as though stepping through a veil of paint and light.
Lucien’s breath hitched. Every hair on his body rose.
It was a chilling sight. An army of the lives he lived. Their eyes fixed upon him.
Then as though bound by a single will, they all raised their hands toward the final shard. Their fingers extended and from each fingertip erupted a beam of searing brilliance.
Dozens of streams of light converged upon the final shard.
The chamber rang with a deafening crack like glass shattering across the heavens.
The shard split open.
When the radiance cleared, Lucien’s vision locked on what lay within.
It was not another mory. Not another image. But a piece of sothing beyond comprehension...
A fragnt of the Origin Core itself.
His heart stopped. It was beautiful in a way words could not capture.
It was dazzling yet terrifying. It was both fragile and eternal. Its presence pressed on his very soul.
The fragnt drifted slowly toward him, hovering before his chest.
Lucien froze. His hand trembled. Should he take it? Could he even dare?
Hesitation rooted him in place. But then, he looked around.
Every version of himself... nodded in unison. It’s as if they were telling him... ’This is yours. This has always been yours.’
Lucien swallowed hard.
Slowly... he unclenched his fist and raised his palm.
The fragnt quivered in the air then descended, resting just above his hand.
A mont of stillness...
Then...
It sank into his flesh, into his veins, into his very core.
Light exploded within him.
"Guhhh—!"
The surge hit him like a tidal wave. His knees nearly buckled as the overwhelming force tore through his veins. It rattled every fiber of his being. It wasn’t pain. It was deeper and stranger.
Sothing within him was changing.
Lucien gritted his teeth, forcing his body to endure as light burned across his skin, searing from the inside out. His groans echoed in the vast chamber... until at last the radiance began to subside.
He gasped. The light dimd, leaving only a quiet afterglow that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
And then he felt it.
Life.
Not his own breath or pulse. A second rhythm, steady and vast, now resided within him. It wasn’t simply power. It was existence itself. A fragnt of creation intertwined with his soul.
Lucien stood frozen as the truth sank in. Inside him... there was life.
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