After seventy-two hours of sinking into the abyss of unconsciousness, the clouds of coma finally lifted from Arius's eyes. He opened his eyelids with great effort, beholding a world devoid of its usual crimson hue; no whips, no hateful faces—only a dim light seeping from medical devices pulsing with a gentle rhythm, as if apologizing to him for everything he had endured.
"Arius?! Arius!! He's awake!!" Ramin's trembling voice, overflowing with joy, was the first thread tying him back to reality. Behind him came Kane's deep, steady voice, as solid as an ancient rock: "Don't move too fast, boy… you've been absent from existence for three days."
His vision cleared; Ramin stood there with anxious features and eyes glistening with restrained tears, while Kane stood with imposing posture, his hands clasped behind his back. Arius whispered with a faint smile, as though afraid the scene might vanish: "You… you're not a dream… right?"
Ramin let out a bitter laugh mixed with relief: "You idiot! You almost died! We thought you were gone this time." As for Kane, he stepped forward, his eyes studying Arius's body as though reading a sacred text: "There's something in you that refuses to perish. Medically, your heart should have stopped the moment Nahira's hand touched you… but you endured. As if your soul has claws gripping onto life."
The Shadows of "Celestine" and the Descent to the Bottom
The two friends left, leaving Arius alone with thoughts that gnawed at his mind more fiercely than the soldiers' whips. "Celestine"… the word Nahira had hurled at him like an ancient curse. What did it mean? Was he the remnant of an extinct race? Or an unfinished weapon yet to be fully forged?
He tried to leave, to reclaim some fragment of his dignity, but the palace lay in wait. Every corridor he walked became a trap of humiliation. Commanders kicked his shoulder, soldiers spat in his path, even his food was served mixed with dirt and mockery. He tried to escape… once, twice—no, ninety-two times! Each time, he was dragged back by his hair to his "pen" amid the elite's laughter: "Look at the pampered dog, trying to fly with broken wings!"
The breaking point came in the final training yard. Arius lay drenched in his own blood, staring at Nahira standing over him like an unstoppable goddess of destruction. He cried—not from pain, but from unbearable oppression. "Please… just kill me… please, I can't take this anymore…"
Nahira looked at him coldly, a gaze that suffocated the air itself: "I alone decide when your usefulness ends. And with all this pain, your power is still stuck at six million? Disappointing." She left, leaving behind the wreckage of a human being. In that moment, the old Arius died. The flame of resistance was extinguished, replaced by pitch-black darkness… a terrifying void that began devouring all his emotions.
The Throne Hall: Final Judgment
The next morning, Arius was dragged into the throne hall, shackled in iron and despair. Nahira, with her lethal beauty and majestic throne, declared her decision before a crowd of commanders: "Sixteen years of attempts, and the result is zero. Today, I decree the exile of this failure to the lands of the Sultans, to be sold as a humiliated slave to filthy creatures. This is your fate, Arius."
The commanders sneered, the soldiers laughed—but something within Arius awakened. It was not the power of the "Celestine," but a pure hatred refined through years of torment. He raised his head, his eyes blazing with an unfamiliar madness: "Damn you all… damn you, Nahira… to hell with your false world!"
With a sudden burst of desperate energy, Arius lunged forward! He bypassed the guards like an arrow, trampled heads, and evaded swords with suicidal movements. He was not running toward life—he was running away from his former self.
The Fall into the Beginning
He reached the "Edge of the End." There, where the void sways and gravity whispers secrets of nothingness. The "Gate of Oblivion," feared even by titans, appeared to Arius as the most merciful embrace in existence.
He stood at the edge, the wind tearing through his blood-matted hair. Behind him, an army of killers shouted: "Stop! Your very atoms will be erased from existence!" He turned to them, drawing the most beautiful and most dangerous smile ever seen on a living being: "Perhaps in nothingness… I will finally be… free."
He closed his eyes and let his body fall backward, plunging into the black abyss. In that moment, everything fell silent. The soldiers' breaths halted, and Nahira trembled on her throne for the first time. It was not a fall of death—it was a leap of faith into absolute darkness.
As his body sank into the void of the gate, he felt no fear. Instead, he felt something warm beginning to pulse deep within his marrow… something that had been waiting for this very fall to awaken.
The universe did not witness his end… it witnessed the moment when the wreckage chose to become a storm.