They did not call it a ranking.
Not publicly.
To the masses, it was introduced as a *safety framework*—a way to "ensure harmony" in a world where power had begun to outpace reason.
But within the sealed chambers of the Empire…
It had a different name.
The Ascension Index.
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It began as ink on paper.
Then it became law.
Then it became something far more dangerous—
A belief.
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Tier 1 — The Measured
The foundation.
Hunters. Soldiers. Minor mages. Those who had awakened Skills, but whose influence remained contained within the limits of physical reality.
They could kill.
They could survive.
But they could not reshape the battlefield itself.
To the Empire, they were manageable.
To themselves, they were replaceable.
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Tier 2 — The Altered
This was where deviation began.
Warlocks who borrowed power from unseen contracts.
Sword Mages who fused martial instinct with arcane flow.
And those who awakened affinity with the four lesser elements—
Fire. Water. Earth. Air.
Dwarves and Beastkin were also placed here—not because they were weak, but because their power followed predictable patterns.
This tier was not feared.
It was weaponized.
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Tier 3 — The Distorted
At this level, the rules began to bend.
Archmages.
OR
Wielders of Light and Dark.
Power here was no longer just force—it was influence.
Light could purify… or erase.
Darkness could conceal… or consume.
Those in this tier did not simply fight.
They changed the conditions of conflict.
The Empire labeled them "high priority assets."
Privately, they were called unstable constants.
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Tier 4 — The Chosen
Not trained.
Not self-made.
Chosen.
Those blessed by Spirits.
Elves who moved as if the world itself favored their existence.
And higher demons—those who had taken humanoid form, shedding chaos for something far more dangerous:
Intent.
This tier marked the first true divide between mortal evolution and external intervention.
The Empire did not control Tier 4.
It negotiated with it.
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Tier 5 — Calamity Class
This was where names stopped mattering.
A single individual in this tier could destabilize entire regions.
Cities did not fall to them.
They were erased.
Records of these beings were incomplete—often contradictory.
Because those who witnessed them rarely survived long enough to agree on what they had seen.
The official term was Calamity Disaster Rank.
Unofficially—
They were called walking endings.
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Tier 6 — Myth Threshold
Here, certainty collapsed.
Entities suspected to exist at this level included:
Dragons.
And something far more feared—
A being the Empire refused to confirm, yet could not deny.
The Demon King.
No verified sighting.
No confirmed death.
Only patterns.
Wars that should not have happened.
Power that could not be traced.
This tier was not documented.
It was inferred.
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Tier 7 — Unclassified
This was not a rank.
It was an admission of failure.
Anything that could not be measured, predicted, or understood was placed here.
Artifacts.
Beings.
Events.
Including—
The Tower.
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Tier 8 — [Redacted]
The records here were sealed.
Not destroyed.
Sealed.
Mentions of "winged entities," "descending light," and "judgment phenomena" appeared in fragmented war logs.
But no official classification was given.
The Arbiters left it marked as:
Unclassified.
Even as some among them began to suspect the truth—
Not all higher powers had revealed themselves yet.
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Tier 8 — World Gods
A contradiction.
Or perhaps a correction.
Entities tied not to existence…
But to the world itself.
They did not rule.
They were-
Mountains that thought.
Oceans that remembered.
Skies that watched.
The Empire did not attempt to measure them.
It simply hoped they would remain indifferent.
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Tier 9 — Demi-Gods
Fragments of divinity.
Not complete.
Not stable.
But undeniable.
They walked among existence without belonging to it.
Some were worshipped.
Others hunted.
All were dangerous.
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Tier 10 — Gods
True divinity.
Or what the Empire defined as such.
Beings that existed beyond cause and effect.
They did not awaken.
They did not evolve.
They simply were.
And if they ever chose to act—
There would be no war.
Only conclusion.
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Tier 11 — Elder Gods
Even the Arbiters hesitated to write this.
Not because they doubted it.
But because acknowledging it felt like an invitation.
These were not gods of the world.
They were not bound by its laws.
They were older than structure.
Older than balance.
Older than meaning.
The few references that existed described them as—
Observers that forgot how to look away.
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Tier 12 — The Anomaly
There was no description.
Only a statement.
Written once.
Then never again.
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"If something reaches the anomaly classification,
it is not part of the system.
It is the reason the system fails."