The void did not forgive those who lingered.
It watched. It whispered. It remembered.
Jiaren walked with pain trailing behind him like a tattered cloak. His body was no longer mortal—but it wasn't divine either. It was something stitched together with fire and frost, desperation and defiance.
Each step echoed without echo. There was no floor. No wind. Just the pulsing glow of fragments drifting through a darkness that hated light.
His palm still burned with the mark of Flame, its ember-red glow fading in and out with his heartbeat.
> "One shard…"
"...and I'm already hunted."
He could feel it—a ripple in the distance. Something descending. Not a god. Not yet. But something sent by one.
He didn't care.
Let them come.
---
He stopped near a jagged cliff suspended in the void like a broken thought.
There, nestled in the crevice, was a fragment unlike the others.
It didn't glow.
It bled.
Slick, dark-red energy pulsed from it, staining the void like spilled ink. It had no shape—just a screaming presence. Jiaren's spine shivered as he stepped closer.
> "Blood Law."
He didn't recognize the voice that whispered it. Maybe it was the void. Maybe it was his soul breaking again.
The fragment pulsed, and he saw visions:
A child sacrificing a parent.
A warrior turning on their comrades.
A lover choking the one they swore to protect.
This was no passive power.
This was rage.
He reached for it.
The fragment recoiled, shrieking as if alive.
It did not want to be taken.
It wanted to be earned.
---
Jiaren knelt, teeth clenched, and pressed his hand to the shard.
Instantly, something pierced him.
Not pain.
Not blade.
Memory.
A hundred lives poured into him.
He gasped. The lives were not his—but he lived them:
An assassin stabbing his own brother.
A warlord bathing in the blood of innocents.
A healer slaughtering a village to cure one child.
> "What… is this?"
The shard fed him suffering. And demanded more.
Suddenly, he saw himself.
Back on the Ascension Platform.
The exact moment his master betrayed him.
The blade through his back.
The divine light turning its face away.
And in that moment, Jiaren hated more purely than ever before.
> "You want blood?" he growled.
> "Take mine first."
He slammed his palm deeper into the shard.
It drank from him.
It screamed.
And then… it obeyed.
The pain stopped.
A new mark burned into his chest: 血 — Blood.
His vision cleared. His breath returned. His body…
...was stronger.
Not just magically. Physically.
His veins pulsed with raw power, and his heart beat with the rhythm of forgotten drums.
> "Three shards," he whispered.
"Flame. Ice. Blood."
> "I'm becoming… something new."
---
A tremor rippled through the void.
He looked up.
Someone was coming.
The light shifted. A tear opened in the sky.
From it descended a figure clad in celestial armor, face hidden beneath a mirror-helm, wings of light unfurled like judgment incarnate.
An Executor of the Celestial Court.
> "By the Law of Order," the voice echoed,
"Jiaren of the Mortal Realms, you are condemned."
Jiaren stood.
No weapon in hand. No shield. Just fury.
> "Then come," he said softly.
"Condemn me."
---
The Executor struck first.
A blade of pure light descended, faster than thought.
Jiaren leapt sideways, flame bursting beneath his feet. He countered with a wave of blood-force—a screaming arc of red mist that cut through the darkness.
The two forces collided—law versus broken law.
Jiaren screamed as the Executor's strike seared across his shoulder, carving through flesh and law both.
But his counter connected too.
The Executor staggered.
> "He touched Law—how?!"
Jiaren grinned through blood.
> "You think I stole power."
> "I earned it."
---
They clashed again.
Jiaren ducked under a blade strike, and with a roar, slammed his palm against the Executor's chest.
Blood Law activated.
The Executor's heart stuttered. His blood pulsed backwards. His limbs trembled.
Jiaren followed with a blast of Ice Law—freezing the angelic wings mid-flight—and then flared Flame Law, exploding the ice shards outward in a fiery burst.
The Executor was hurled into the void, half of his armor melted away.
He didn't rise.
Jiaren stood over the broken divine weapon and took a slow, ragged breath.
> "First of many."
---
Far above, in the realm of order, the Celestial Arbiter watched in silence.
Around him, lesser immortals whispered in terror.
> "He's killed an Executor…"
"Impossible."
"The Void obeys him…"
The Arbiter raised a hand. The whispers stopped.
> "He is not ascending," he said quietly.
"He is becoming."
---
Jiaren knelt beside the fallen Executor.
Not out of pity. But curiosity.
Inside the being's chest—a single glowing fragment remained: Judgment.
He hesitated.
This was not like the others. This wasn't stolen from the void.
It came from above.
He reached for it—
—then stopped.
> "Not yet," he murmured.
> "Some powers must be taken only when you know who you are."
He stood.
And walked away, leaving the fragment behind—for now.