Ten years have passed since I reincarnated into this world.
It feels strange, thinking about how long it's been. In my previous life, I was just an ordinary high school student, living the life of someone who would never have imagined such a fate. But then again, who does? Reincarnation isn't something you expect. It's something that, in all honesty, I thought was just a myth—one of those stories people told themselves to cope with the mundane reality of their lives. Yet, here I am, living proof that reincarnation is real.
My story wasn't like the typical fantasy reincarnation stories. I didn't die heroically in battle or sacrifice myself for some noble cause. There were no magical beings offering me a second chance in a fantastical world. No grand titles of "Chosen One" or "Hero of Fate." No, my story was far simpler, far more twisted than that.
My name is Finn Kaelthorn. At least, it was. The name I carried in my past life, before the world as I knew it collapsed in on itself.
You could say I was a genius, but I never liked the term. It was a label placed on me by others—teachers, peers, family. "Heavenly Genius," they called me, the boy who could solve complex problems before they were even fully explained. But, to me, those things were meaningless. My talents, my intellect, they didn't bring me joy. They were just tools to make the mundane bearable.
I didn't have dreams of grandeur. My life was a quiet one, sitting in class, staring out the window of the Aeo Building, watching the clouds drift lazily across the sky as Ms. Amelia droned on about the human body's organs. The subject didn't interest me. Nothing did. It was all so irrelevant. I was already thinking beyond biology, beyond the constraints of a classroom. The world felt like an endless loop of repetitive lessons, one after another, none of them holding any true value.
Ms. Amelia, ever the perceptive one, knew that I wasn't paying attention. I didn't need to, she knew. I had already mastered the subject. To her, I was an enigma, but not someone to be concerned about. She let me slip through her lessons with the understanding that I had outgrown them. My classmates, too, accepted my indifference. They saw me as someone beyond their reach. They called it genius, but I saw it as a prison. A gift that had no purpose, no meaning.
But that day... that day was different. As usual, I was lost in thought, looking out the window, when the ground beneath us began to tremble. At first, I thought it was just my imagination, but the shakes grew more violent, and the room was soon filled with the panicked shouts of my classmates.
"It's an earthquake!" someone yelled.
I barely spared them a glance. In a moment, my mind shifted gears. I calculated the magnitude in seconds. *7.6 on the Richter scale*. My heart skipped a beat. That was no ordinary earthquake—it was powerful enough to collapse the entire building. I stood up, my voice calm but urgent.
"Everyone, get out of the building. Now!"
But before they could react, before they could even process my warning, the ground beneath us shattered. The Aeo Building crumbled in on itself like a toy being crushed by a giant's hand.
*Boom*.
*Thud*.
I didn't even have time to brace myself. The world went dark. The last thing I remember was the deafening crash of stone and steel.
---
When I woke up again, I was no longer in the classroom. I could feel it immediately—the disconnection, the strangeness. My body felt like it was mine, but it was... different. The surroundings were unfamiliar. I stood in a vast expanse, surrounded by millions of people, all lined up, some walking, some standing still, but all with an undeniable aura of emptiness around them.
And then I realized... *they weren't alive*. They were souls. And they were fading.
The feeling of emptiness that emanated from them was suffocating. It was as if their essence was being slowly drained away, their vitality lost to time. I looked at my own hands, and they were no better. My skin seemed to shimmer, as if I were made of dust.
A voice echoed through the emptiness, harsh and unforgiving.
"Hello, souls," it said. The voice reverberated, seeping into every corner of my being. "You have all died across the universe at the same time. But your lives were unfinished, unfulfilled. That is why you are here—for reincarnation. But the process comes with a price."
The sound of that voice sent a chill down my spine. A devilish tone, full of malice.
"You see," the voice continued, "your bodies are fading, and in order to gain them back, you must absorb the souls of others. There are one million souls here, and only one of you will have the chance to reincarnate. In order to claim your body, you must break the soul cores of one million others. Do it within three hours, or your existence will be erased forever."
The words hit me like a hammer. Absorb a million souls? Break their cores?
Before I could process it, chaos erupted.
Screams filled the air as souls turned on each other, fighting tooth and nail, tearing each other apart in a desperate bid for survival. I was no different. My survival instincts kicked in. I didn't know why, but something within me snapped. I felt the power within me—power I hadn't realized I had before. It was like a beast awakening inside me, thrashing, hungry, craving.
Three souls attacked me, desperate to seize my core. Without thinking, I retaliated. It was almost effortless. I broke their cores one by one, their souls dissolving into nothingness. But the power I felt… It was intoxicating.
And so, the battle continued.
I absorbed souls. I crushed them, shattered their cores. They fought, but I was unstoppable. I didn't even care. All I knew was that I had to survive.
Three hours passed.
The devil's voice echoed once more. "Well, I see you've managed to survive. Congratulations, Finn Kaelthorn. Only one remains—you."
I stood atop a mountain of shattered crystal cores. The other souls—now nothing but fragments—lay at my feet. My hands were covered in the remnants of those I had absorbed. But I felt no remorse, no guilt. It was simple survival.
The devil laughed, a cruel, hollow sound. "Your existence is secure. You will be reincarnated."
And with that, the void around me started to swallow me whole.
As I stood there, the void wrapping around me like a suffocating embrace, I heard a voice—one that seemed to cut through the oppressive darkness with terrifying authority. It was not the devil's voice that had spoken before, but something far more powerful, more ancient.
"Devil 01," the voice thundered, shaking the very fabric of the void. "You are to be punished for allowing a mere soul to enter the cycle of reincarnation for the supremes. You allowed a normal soul to absorb the power of one million supremes! You have disrupted the Game of the Supremes, and because of you, the Supremes are no more!"
The words echoed, reverberating through the emptiness, and my mind struggled to grasp what was being said. The Supremes? What did that mean? The devil's usual calm and collected demeanor shattered, replaced by a frantic confusion.
"Wh-what? Supremes?" the devil stammered, his voice wavering. "But wasn't this batch supposed to be a normal soul batch? How could this—"
But before he could finish, the voice silenced him. There was no explanation, no further words, only a deafening, unsettling silence that filled the void. The air seemed to grow heavier, thicker with the weight of something inevitable.
Then, in an instant, the devil's screams shattered the silence. It was a sound of pure agony, as though something was slowly tearing at its very essence. A high-pitched, agonized wail echoed through the dark expanse, reverberating endlessly. The devil's form flickered, as though it were being devoured by something far beyond its control. I could feel the pain, even though it wasn't mine, as if the very fabric of its being was being unraveled.
I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. All I could do was witness the unraveling of the devil, its form writhing and twisting in the unseen agony.
Then, without warning, the void trembled. A massive explosion of energy erupted in the space around me. The force was immense, like the collapse of a star, and I could feel the energy pulse through me—raw, chaotic, and utterly overwhelming.
But just as the explosion reached its peak, before I could even comprehend the full extent of its power, I felt myself being pulled away, sucked into the void once more. The energy that had erupted around me, the force of the punishment being dealt to the devil, could not touch me in time.
Everything went black again.