Wes Carter lay sprawled against the jagged stone, his body broken, his breath ragged. Blood pooled beneath him, warm and slick, sinking into the cracks of the cavern floor. The black sword embedded in his chest pulsed with a dark, sickening hum, its corrupted steel drinking away the last remnants of his strength.

It had done more than just wound him.

It had pierced his dantian, shattering his mana core, erasing twenty-five years of cultivation in a single stroke.

His limbs trembled, fingers twitching uselessly near the hilt, but the pain had long since dulled. What remained was emptiness.

A void inside him where his power had once been.

His hazel-green eyes, dulled but still burning with something fierce, stared upward, flickering as the cavern ceiling blurred at the edges. His black hair, matted with sweat and blood, clung to his forehead, strands falling across sharp, weathered features.

A warrior's body—built through battle, through pain, through sheer will. He had never been the tallest, never been the strongest, but he had endured.

Yet now, his breath came slow, shallow. His own blackened blood bubbled up from his throat, thick and clotted like tar, spilling from his lips in slow, shuddering coughs.

Still, despite it all—despite the agony, the cold creeping into his limbs—he was alive.

The cavern was silent.

The battle was over. No voices, no footsteps. No one left to bear witness.

Except him.

Yet, even through the haze of pain, a memory surfaced.

This wasn't the first time.

This wasn't the first time he had seen those void-black eyes.

The first time had been when he was a child.

When he had been made a Null.

That night had never left him.

The man had come from the dark—a shadow given form, eyes like endless pits, face unreadable. There had been no warning, no explanation.

And then the burning began.

It was not fire. Fire would have been merciful.

This pain was something deeper, something absolute. It had crawled into him, searing, unraveling something fundamental within his very being. When it was over, something had been taken.

He could never use a Void Crystal.

That choice had been stolen from him.

Most who were made Null gave up. Cast aside, deemed broken, destined to be lesser.

But Wes had refused.

He had built himself without it. He had bled, clawed, and survived on his own terms. He had turned himself into a force that even the gifted feared.

And now, all of it—the years, the struggle, the victories hard-won—had been undone.

By the same black-eyed monster who had stolen his fate in the first place.

Wes grimaced.

Then, he smiled.

No regrets.

That was a lie.

Tens of thousands of civilians were dead.

His enemies had set him up. Had given him a choice. His comrades or the civilians.

And he hadn't hesitated.

He chose his people.

His troop had escaped.

But the city? It burned.

Their screams had echoed through the battlefield, lost beneath the roar of mana fire and collapsing stone.

He knew how this story would be told. How history would remember him.

Not as a warrior. Not as a man who had fought for survival, for his people.

No.

He would be the villain.

The murderer who let thousands die.

Twenty-five years.

Twenty-five years of clawing, pushing, breaking past every limit. He had been so close—so damn close—to leaving Earth, to stepping onto the grand stage beyond the stars.

And now, he would never know what lay beyond that final step.

But he wasn't dead.

Not yet.

His eyes fluttered closed, his body heavy, the pain dragging him deep. His mind drifted, pulled back—not to the war, not to the betrayal—but to the beginning.

To the day Earth surged with mana.

The day everything changed forever.