The moment Rey crushed Adrien's head, the domain began to fall apart.
It wasn't just a collapse of space, but of concept itself. Adrien's dimension had never been part of existence. It had existed beside it—an interstitial wound, carved from anti-reality. A space with no beginning and no end, built by a man who sought to defy truth itself.
And now, its master was gone.
Rey stood at its crumbling heart as the weightless debris of a dimension's soul floated around him—silence, symbols, broken time. The world Adrien made unmade itself. But Rey didn't move.
He closed his eyes.
He opened himself.
The void sang.
It welcomed him—not as an intruder, but as one of its own. The moment he defeated Adrien, something deep within the domain had begun to stir. Something ancient and unshaped, deeper than the domain itself.
Adrien had built this space, yes—but he had not truly understood it. He had merely found a corner of that which lay beneath all worlds and tried to master it.
Rey didn't fight it.
He absorbed it.
He welcomed the unmaking.
The non-existence properties—the particles of reality's absence—rushed toward him like a maelstrom of forgetting. It wasn't pain he felt, nor power. It was detachment. He felt himself slipping from the structure of all things, becoming a concept unbound by rules or systems, names or definitions. No longer bound to cause or consequence. No longer measurable.
He had severed his ties to existence.
The domain, robbed of its final anchor, howled as it collapsed. Reality clenched shut like a closing eye, imploding inward until there was only—
Silence.
Nothing.
The observers from H'Trae could only watch.
From the highest tower in the capital, Lucielle stood with wide eyes as the last remnants of the foreign sky fell apart. The color, the pressure, the distortion—all of it vanished. No trace remained. Not a sliver of mana, not even a spatial scar.
"Rey...?" she whispered, voice trembling. "Where… where is he?"
Her knees buckled, tears blurring her vision. She couldn't feel his presence at all. Not even a thread of it. As if he'd never existed.
Beside her, the others stood frozen in stunned silence.
But Ater?
He smiled.
"Don't lose heart," he said softly, his voice steady like ancient stone. "My Master will return."
Lucielle turned to him with wet eyes. "How do you know?"
"Because he is no longer bound by this world," Ater said, folding his arms. "He's gone to meet the rest of it."
"The rest of what?"
For a moment, Ater remained quiet and watched with a glint in his eyes.
"What lies beyond…"
**********
Somewhere beyond the end of everything, Rey opened his eyes.
There was no ground beneath him, no sky above him—only an endless sea of darkness. Not the absence of light, but the presence of nullity. This was not a place. It was the idea of a place that had not yet been imagined.
And in that formless black… something stirred inside him.
A vibration.
A resonance.
From the deepest reaches of his being, something rose—a spark, a memory, a realization.
Before him, a translucent panel appeared.
Not the System window he had once known.
This was different.
It bore no name, no sigil, no source.
It simply read:
You have reached the End of Your Story.
Class Awakening Complete.
New Class: [He Who Remains] – Tier: Primeval
Rey's breath hitched.
And then…
The void responded.
The darkness surrounding him suddenly pulsed, shifting like fluid thought. Six radiant sigils emerged, each one a floating star made of luminous fractal patterns, each pulsing with power that defied definition.
They spoke without a voice.
They introduced themselves: [Doppel]. [Skill Creation]. [Architect]. [Clairvoyance]. [Alter]. [Reset].
They floated around Rey in a perfect circle—six stars in the abyss.
Then they moved.
Without resistance, they entered him.
Each one sank into his being, not as power borrowed, but as authority granted. He didn't explode. He didn't glow. He simply became.
And in that moment, the darkness that had surrounded him began to shift.
From the void, a light began to rise.
He was the source.
The nothingness rippled outward, and Rey's body—his true self—emitted a radiant glow, brighter than suns, more profound than sound. The darkness recoiled, not in fear, but in deference.
He was no longer just Rey.
He was no longer a variable.
He was no longer a part of the story.
He had become the one who holds the pen.
His body rose through the sea of black, shimmering like a star wrapped in human form. As he rose, the pressure of countless realities passed through him—he felt them, each one a breath, a whisper, a heartbeat.
Until finally…
He breached the surface.
And above him, he saw it.
A sky with no end.
A cosmic ceiling filled with infinite stars.
But these were not mere stars.
Each one burned with unique color, each one pulsed with rhythm, language, and lore.
And Rey understood.
His eyes widened.
Every star… was a universe.
A world.
A story.
Endless possibilities.
Endless lives.
And here he stood, beneath the vast library of reality, no longer an extra, no longer a bystander.
But the one who would decide what came next.
"Is this what you wanted to see, Adrien?" Rey murmured, eyes wide open as his luminous form began to process all that he witnessed.
He was beneath all of reality… in the realm of nonexistence.
But that allowed him to see the world for what it truly was, and what it truly was not.
'Not special… none of it is special.' He whispered. 'At least, not innately.'
At this point, he had become intimate with nihilism, and truly was not supposed to exist or have meaning himself. He was supposed to be part of the endless sea of nothingness, having no meaning in itself.
But—
'I became one with non-existence before arriving here, and by creating a singularity of my Primeval Skills combined with my Class, I have become the only thing herw with a consciousness.'
The only thing with meaning.
'I'm still anchored to a world… which is why I haven't faded yet.'
But that meant he had to hurry.
His world was still dying, and he could feel his Primeval Skills—which were exclusive to H'Trae—slowly fizzling out. If he lost access to them, he would drown once again and be hopelessly lost in the sea.
'I have to save H'Trae from this point, but how? The sky is too far above, and I am merely a single light. What can I do?'
At this point, Rey suddenly felt a presence emerging from the murky depths.
'W-what is that?!'
The creature was black—blacker than black.
It had no shape or form that could be naturally perceived or explained. The closest thing to conventional description that language would allow was that it was shrouded in unnatural tentacles, having the strange silhouette of a feline.
It had horns, and ears, and tails, and things which made no sense at all.
Most importantly, it was grinning.
"Who are you?" Rey asked the figure, who stared at him and remained silent for moments that felt like eternity encapsulated within a second.
After waiting for far too long, the figure finally spoke.
"I should be the one asking… who are you? Where is my fallen fragment?"