Its body began to twist.
Limbs inverted, heads split open and reformed. The Advent's runes—erratic, glitching, chaotic—were flooding into it. But so too were the World's runes—systematic, cold, stable. They weren't harmonizing.
They were fighting.
Blue and multicolor slashed across its body like internal lightning, each damaging the other in their collision.
Kaelix groaned, dragging his mangled frame from the crater he'd made.
He stared up, squinting through blood, ash, and static.
The entity was screaming.
It didn't have a mouth anymore—not a proper one. But the sound it made was agony incarnate. Because the transformation wasn't empowerment—it was punishment.
It had taken in too much. More than anything should. And the two opposing systems now warred inside it.
"So that's the tradeoff..." Kaelix thought grimly. "Power... for pain. Control... for corruption."
His mind processed the grotesque shifting of the entity's body—its growing limbs erupting with burst veins of blue and flickering rainbow static, entire sections of it spasming in revolt.
The entity saw him—focused on him.
And charged.
Kaelix roared as blood gushed out of his body in an explosive rocket of red fire to meet it.
They collided once more.
This time—there was no elegance. No technique. Just war.
Limb to limb. Flame to skin. Runes to runes.
Kaelix's runes swarmed, hundreds upon thousands now, carving at the entity's frame. The Advent's runes attacked them in kind, the World's runes tried to suppress them all.
Still, his crimson tide grew. Cannibalizing. Devouring.
The entity struck his chest—caving it in.
Kaelix poured his blood over its waist— which ignited and scorched its hip.
The battlefield warped under them, every strike carving new scars into the land. The remains of the stage were long gone.
Earth cracked. Air vibrated with the density of conflicting systems.
And Kaelix was winning.
His rage had momentum. His wounds weren't healing, but they were being used. His pain was recycled into resolve.
The entity's form was growing too unstable to fight cohesively—its limbs unresponsive, its reactions lagging.
It stumbled back, runes flickering around its neck.
And then—
It changed.
Its face.
From the undulating mess of malformed features, it pulled forward a shape.
Two eyes.
A mouth.
A nose.
Nick's face.
His brother's face.
Pale. Frightened.
Bleeding.
"K-Kaelix... please."
It was a perfect imitation. The shape. The tone. Even the way the lower lip trembled when scared.
Kaelix froze mid-step.
His mind split wide open.
No.
NO.
The moment he let himself feel, it felt like glass slicing through his ribs.
You don't get to use his face.
Not after what you did.
Not after what I've become because of it.
Not after the Advent.
The scream that left Kaelix was silent.
No jaw.
No throat.
But his will howled.
He surged forward—crimson flame bursting from the wounds on his useless leg to propel him like a missile. The entity staggered, still wearing Nick's face.
Kaelix didn't stop.
His last remaining bone of an arm stretched forward, broken bones splintering outward like jagged claws.
He jammed it into the entity's mouth—shattering teeth, ripping flesh.
He pushed deeper. Through the throat.
His ulna burst through the back of the entity's head and clawed down.
With one final pull—he ripped the throat open.
Inside... he saw it.
Where a heart should have been was a dense mass—a swirling, chaotic core of runes. Advent and World. Fighting. Screaming. Collapsing into themselves.
Kaelix felt bile rise.
He coughed.
He gagged.
And from his shredded lungs—he puked blood onto it.
The moment the first drop touched—
Runes—his runes—erupted from the blood. Wild. Insatiable. Hungry.
They devoured.
Like starving wolves, they surged into the core and began to consume both the Advent's and World's runes alike. Not clashing. Not resisting. Feeding.
The entity buckled.
It spasmed once—
Twice—
Then—
It collapsed.
Its frame cracked apart like dried mud. Runes poured out in every direction. The face it wore shattered into fragments of false memory.
Kaelix dropped.
His body hit the dirt with a dull crunch.
He didn't move.
Couldn't.
But he felt it.
The Runes.
Crimson—more than ever. Thousands. No—millions.
They rushed toward him.
Swirling.
Orbiting.
Converging.
Then—
They entered him.
All at once.
It was not painful.
It was relief.
And then they assembled. Before him. Not in the air—but in his mind, a burning procession forming a message.
It looked like nothing before—like something torn between two systems. The characters glitched and shimmered like the Advent's chaotic code, but they alligned in perfect symmetry, sterile and cold like the World's logic.
[You have defeated the Adversary[Unknown King Class-Unnamed Entity]
[You have defeated the Source Adversary of the Unknown-Tier Advent-Unnamed]
[You have done the impossible]
[You have performed madness]
Kaelix let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
It escaped him as a soft, broken exhale through the hole where his jaw used to be.
His vision swam.
The sky above him was broken.
And as he stared up into it—silent, bloodied, and victorious—he felt something he hadn't felt since Nick had died.
Relief.
Not peace.
Never peace.
But relief.
He had done it.
Kaelix lay on the scorched ground, his body barely stitched together by stubborn will and the residual crimson runes still flickering across his skin like molten scars.
Above him, the sky had not returned to normal.
It was still that same warped mess of black and grey, swirling like thick oil smeared across glass—vicious, sickly, wrong. Not an echo of the heavens he once knew.
"Huh," he muttered, voice raspy and torn from the screaming. "Guess the bastard was right… It is permanent."
The Advent had fully sunk its claws into the world. The scars weren't fading.
But that wasn't his problem.
He hadn't fought to save the world. He didn't care about its laws or its balance.
He fought to kill that thing.
To bury it with the full weight of his rage and grief.
He turned his head slightly, neck creaking like broken gears.
There, a few feet away, lay what was left of the entity's body. A ruined heap of malformed flesh, its stolen human guise—his brother's face—reduced to indistinct tissue, its final trick shattered.
No illusions now.
Just death.
And still… it stirred something in him.
This all actually happened, Kaelix thought.
If someone had told him this morning that he'd watch his brother open a forbidden Tome, trigger an Advent, die, be reborn as an Adversary, awaken Worldforged powers, and then kill the Adversary that took his brother body...
He would've laughed in their face.
Now, it was just… Tuesday.
His eyes fell back on Nick's mangled remnants, and the cold returned.
"If I could give back all this power," he whispered. "All this damn worth... just to bring you back."
His voice cracked.
"I would."
But that wasn't an option.
And he knew it.
As his thoughts spiraled, something shimmered at the edge of his vision. Kaelix blinked, focusing. From the remnants of the entity's form, small motes of light began to rise—floating, twitching, flickering like sparks pulled from two different fires.
They weren't crimson like his. They were glitching and static.
One side jagged and chaotic—the Advent's runes.
The other cold and surgical—World's runes.
Kaelix sat up slightly. "Shit…"
Were they attacking again?
But no—something was different.
They hovered toward him not with malice, but purpose. They settled onto his body—onto the open wounds, the scorched flesh, the broken bone—and began to shift.
Their color bled into crimson. His crimson.
And then, they sank into him.
He didn't resist.
He couldn't.
Warmth flooded his ruined form—like a breath taken after near-drowning. Like standing at the edge of death and realizing you're still alive.
And then the messages came.
[You have forcefully taken power from the script of the World that does not belong to you]
[You wield the heart of an Adversary independent of the Advent]
[Your actions have brought the ire of both the World and the Advent]
Kaelix let out a dry, bitter chuckle. "So what?"
The World didn't care about him.
The Advent didn't care about him.
So why the hell should he care about their so-called ire?
Fuck them.
Both of them.
[Your will remains strong and resolute]
[You have already made your worth known by doing the impossible]
[Thus, you are free]
Another pulse of warmth—deeper this time. His thoughts slowed. His breath steadied.
[You have absorbed adequate Lorerunes of both forces]
[Your existence is unraveling to begin anew]
[Your life, once full of mediocrity, has created its own worth]
[Whether you live or die from your choices now is yours to decide]
[Liberation has begun]
Then it hit him.
The transformation.
The real one.
This wasn't the pain of breaking apart. This was the euphoria of being rebuilt.
It began in his bones—cracking, dissolving, reforming with agonizing precision. His entire skeleton turned hot, like molten ore being poured into a divine mold. Each new joint, every fragment of bone, reshaped itself under the guidance of the crimson runes now burning bright beneath his skin.
His muscles came next, tearing and weaving, new fibers made from living fire. They wrapped around bone like coiled serpents—no longer human, no longer ordinary. His ligaments snapped and reformed. His spine twisted, lengthened, straightened, stronger.
His blood boiled—but not with pain. With purpose. Each droplet now glowed faintly with red light, the runes dancing through his veins like symbols given life. His organs twisted inside out and back again, reborn with each beat.
And at the center of it all—his heart.
It had once been destroyed. Replaced by a flickering flame. But now…
Now it was becoming.
The flame began to condense. Crystallize. Blood poured into it—his new blood—and the crimson runes began to seal it together. Beat by beat, it solidified into a thing of beautiful horror: a living furnace, not just pumping blood but purpose. It didn't just keep him alive—it declared he deserved to be.
And then—
Above him, the air split open.
Runes gathered—not on his skin, but around him. Glitching. Shimmering. Stabilizing.
They spiraled, twisted, collided.
And they formed a book.
An ethereal tome of blood-red energy, its pages written in flame and defiance. It hovered above Kaelix like a crown—like a title bestowed, not given.
A book not of fate.
A book not of destiny.
But a book of choice.
A story that had never been written.
Until now.
Kaelix looked at it with wide, exhausted eyes. And for the first time since his brother died… he smiled.
Not with joy.
But with understanding.
The ethereal book above Kaelix pulsed once—then opened.
Its pages flipped rapidly, faster than the eye could follow, as if rifling through every truth and possibility that now lay before him. Runes flickered across the air, the same crimson symbols that had once hovered before his gaze. Now, they obeyed something deeper—him.
And then, the book began to change.
The glowing energy condensed. Hardened. The swirling aura of fire and glitch turned to blood and heat. A real object began to form in its place—solid, tangible, claimed.
The cover was dull black, its surface etched with shifting crimson engravings that danced like living veins.
The pages inside were a pale white, and the moment they solidified, the runes in the air dropped down like raindrops, embedding themselves into the dark parchment.
The pages flipped again—but now with purpose.
[Your existential Liberation is complete]
[Your body, mind, and soul have simultaneously undergone Adulteration and Forging]
[You have fully been Liberated]
The words were silent but thundered through his mind like a divine truth being etched into reality.
[Your Codex has fully formed]
[Your Nexus Core has fully formed]
[Your Nexus Soul Spark has undergone mutation due to your Minor Rune]
Kaelix's breath caught in his throat. Something deep inside him flared with blinding heat. He felt it—not just physically, but metaphysically. Something had changed in the very spark that made him him.
[Mutation Complete]You have gained the Nexus Soul Rune: Fury Flame.
[Your Codex has fully connected with the Will of Existence]
The tome shimmered with a final pulse.
[Rewards for defeating the Adversary have been granted]
[Congratulations]
[You have finally risen]
And with that, the book burned.
It didn't fall. It didn't close.
It ignited—without flame. Without smoke. It simply unraveled into glowing red ash, dissolving into particles of purpose, and sank into Kaelix's chest like embers into a forge.
The moment it touched him, he felt the full weight of what he had become.
Not a pawn. Not a mistake. Not a victim.
Reborn.
His breath came easier. His thoughts were clearer. His pain—gone.
The weight of broken bones and scorched flesh had lifted. His body had no wounds now. Only scars of meaning—subtle, luminous etchings beneath his skin, runes barely visible, like whispers of the journey carved into him.
Kaelix rose.
Or… tried to.
The second he moved, dizziness stabbed into his skull like a blade. His vision blurred, his limbs suddenly weighed a thousand tons.
The hell…?
He staggered, then collapsed back onto the ground. Hard.
What is this?
Why now?
Did I burn through that much energy?
He lay there, panting, body numb, as a strange green hue began to creep into the edges of his vision—like the flickering border of a corrupted screen.
The world dimmed around him.
No… not now. I just—
Then he heard it.
Footsteps.
Soft. Slow. Deliberate.
Each one felt like it echoed from miles away and yet somehow landed right beside his head. A cold spike of tension ran down his spine.
Someone else? How?
Did they do this to me?
The footsteps stopped.
And just before the last of the green light overtook him, just before the void of unconsciousness swallowed his senses whole—
He saw a figure.
Blurry. Distant. But unmistakable in silhouette.
Green hair.
And then—
A voice. Calm. Clear. Deeply amused.
"Now that was interesting..."