Kairos felt nothing.
No pain. No weight. No air. Only silence and emptiness, a void that pressed against his body and mind with suffocating stillness. For a fleeting moment, he thought he had finally died, that the Overseer's blade had severed not only his life but his very existence.
But then came the whisper.
"Fragment."
The word cut through the silence like a sliver of light, sharp and foreign. It was not a voice, not in the way humans spoke. It was something deeper, resonating in the marrow of his bones, in the cracks of his battered soul.
Kairos opened his eyes—or maybe he didn't. He couldn't tell, because what greeted him wasn't the Iron Sea Realm, nor any world he recognized. The void stretched infinitely in all directions, filled with jagged fragments of light and shadow.
Each shard spun lazily in the emptiness, reflecting distorted images—cities burning, towers crumbling, armies locked in eternal battle. The shards pulsed with faint energy, as though they were alive, their fractured surfaces shifting and shimmering.
Kairos tried to move, but there was no ground, no air, nothing to push against. He floated, weightless, adrift in the void.
"What… where am I?" he muttered, his voice swallowed by the silence.
The whisper returned, louder this time. "The Fractured Abyss."
The name meant nothing to him, yet it stirred something deep within—a faint sense of recognition, like a half-remembered dream.
"The Fractured Abyss," he repeated, the words tasting strange on his tongue.
"The graveyard of Sovereigns. The birthplace of rebellion. And now… your home."
The fragments began to shift, spinning faster as if in response to the voice. One shard drifted closer to Kairos, its surface rippling like water. He reached out instinctively, his fingers brushing against the shard.
Pain exploded in his mind.
A flood of images surged into his consciousness—memories that weren't his own. He saw a city of silver spires, its streets teeming with life. Then came the Sovereign, descending from the sky like a god. The people cheered, their voices raised in reverence, even as the Sovereign's power tore their city apart.
The memory ended as abruptly as it began, leaving Kairos gasping for breath.
"What was that?" he demanded, his voice trembling.
"A fragment," the whisper replied. "A piece of what was lost. A piece of what the Sovereigns destroyed."
Kairos stared at the shard, his chest heaving. He looked around, and for the first time, he truly saw the Abyss. It was not empty—it was filled with memories, echoes of shattered worlds.
"They did this," he said, his voice low and bitter. "The Sovereigns. They destroyed everything."
"They built their thrones on the ashes of countless realms. And when there was nothing left to take, they turned to those who defied them… and cast them here."
Kairos clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms. The fragments pulsed around him, their light flickering like dying flames.
"They cast me here," he growled. "But I won't stay."
The fragments began to converge, spinning into a vortex around Kairos. The air—or whatever passed for it in this void—grew heavy with energy, a palpable force that made his skin crawl.
From the center of the vortex, something began to take shape.
It was a sphere, about the size of a clenched fist, but it was unlike anything Kairos had ever seen. Its surface was a swirling mass of light and shadow, constantly shifting and reshaping itself. It pulsed with raw, chaotic energy, each beat sending ripples through the Abyss.
The whisper returned, reverberating through Kairos' very being.
"The Fragmentation Core. The heart of the Abyss. The key to rising, and the key to breaking."
The Core floated toward him, its energy growing stronger with every pulse. Kairos could feel its power, a chaotic storm that threatened to consume him even as it called to him.
"Take it," the voice urged. "Claim it. But know this—the Abyss does not give without taking."
Kairos hesitated. The Core radiated both promise and danger, like a blade poised at his throat. But he had nothing left to lose.
With trembling hands, he reached out and grasped the Core.
The world erupted.
Kairos screamed as the Core's energy surged through him, tearing into his body and mind. Pain unlike anything he had ever known wracked his frame, burning away everything he thought he was.
But alongside the pain came something else: power.
It flooded his veins, raw and untamed, reshaping him from the inside out. His mind was assaulted by visions—glimpses of worlds destroyed, of Sovereigns waging war, of the laws of reality bending and breaking under their might.
The fragments around him began to respond, their light intensifying as they spun faster. They slammed into his body one by one, merging with his flesh, his bones, his very soul.
Kairos fell to his knees—or at least, he thought he did. In the Abyss, there was no ground, no gravity, no sense of direction. But he felt the weight of the Core's power pressing down on him, threatening to crush him.
And yet, he held on.
"Rise, Kairos," the whisper urged. "Rise, and claim what the Sovereigns have stolen."
When the storm subsided, Kairos was no longer the same.
He stood in the void, his body trembling but whole. His hands glowed faintly with energy, the fragments embedded in his skin like scars. The Core pulsed within him, its power now a part of him.
He looked at his reflection in a nearby shard and barely recognized the face staring back. His eyes burned with a faint, otherworldly light, and his features were sharper, more defined.
But it wasn't just his appearance that had changed.
He felt it in his chest—a fire that burned with purpose, with hatred, with ambition.
"No chains," he said, his voice steady and unyielding. "No overseers. No Sovereigns."
The Abyss seemed to shudder in response, the fragments vibrating with energy.
Kairos clenched his fists, his lips curling into a grim smile.
"This time," he said, "I'll write the rules."
The Core pulsed again, and the fragments shifted, forming a path through the void. Kairos stepped forward, each step echoing with the promise of rebellion.
The Sovereigns wouldn't just fall.
They would shatter.