The sky tore open above him, the heavens themselves unraveling as though they had been nothing more than paper. Icarion Veyr, eyes wide with disbelief, watched as the world he had fought to protect bled out, a ruinous cascade of light and shadows. His body, battered and broken, lay sprawled upon the obsidian stones of the Citadel, where the final battle had been lost.
This isn't the end.
It couldn't be. Not like this. The flickering embers of his failing world burned brightly in the dark expanse, as though mocking him. The Grand Abyss Labyrinth—the heart of their last hope—loomed in the distance, its blackened spires stretching into the torn sky. He had failed. He had failed to conquer its 30th floor. The floor where all hope died.
"Why...?" Icarion whispered, his voice hoarse, barely a breath against the shrieking winds. His hand, trembling, reached for the torn remnants of his armor, clenching a shard of a broken amulet that once symbolized the last remnants of humanity's hope. The Labyrinth's final guardian had crushed it all.
His world, crumbling like ash in the wind, offered no answers.
But then—there was a voice.
"Such a waste."
The sound of it was like a crack in the fabric of reality, smooth and piercing, reverberating through his very soul. He looked up.
Above him, silhouetted in the jagged shards of a fractured moon, stood a figure. No, not a figure—a presence. He couldn't make out details, only a sense of profound power radiating from the being like the pull of a distant star. It was as though reality itself bent to its will.
"You're amusing," the voice continued, a trace of curiosity swirling in its words. "But you're flawed."
Icarion's vision wavered, and his breath came in sharp gasps. "Who... Who are you?"
"I am... an observer," the voice answered. "And you, Icarion Veyr, are a broken toy—one that would be far more interesting if repaired."
The figure extended its hand, and with it came the sudden sensation of weightlessness. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the ground beneath him cracked and splintered. His heartbeat quickened, the world spinning around him as if caught in a storm. His heartbeat quickened, the world spinning around him as if caught in a storm. He reached out instinctively, but his body betrayed him—slipping, failing to hold on to the remains of a broken world.
"I will give you another chance," the voice said, and in an instant, everything stopped. The wind, the chaos, the crumbling ruins of humanity's last stand—everything stood still. The voice was not an offer. It was a command. "Reborn, but not as you were. Your fate, your timeline—it resets. But you will rise again. And this time, I'll make it... interesting."
Before Icarion could even form a response, the world split open, a rift in space and time pulling him into it. His body was ripped from his place of death, his soul disassembled and reassembled, until there was nothing of him left but the essence of what was.
As darkness fell, the voice lingered in his mind:
"Step forward, Icarion. You will climb, with each floor, you will grow. But remember—there are no guarantees in this game. Not even for you."