“Surrender the Flaxseed clan’s spirits,” the drifting radiance said, “And I might let your body remember breathing.”
The promise slithered across the marble, looking for cracks inside him. Jared stopped at the Chamber’s center, sword lowered but ready. His reply came steady, clipped, immune to bargain. “Return what you stole, or there is nothing here for mercy to do.”
A rumble of laughter seeped from the light, low and amused, as though Jared were a pet certain to misbehave. “Hahaha! Spare me?” it echoed, softly cruel. “Chaos bearer, the instant you entered this realm, every ending you own was already chosen.”
An eyebrow rose before Jared could stop it. “Is that so?” His tone held curious boredom, but his pulse sped. “Chosen for what?”
“To feed me.” The light pulsed, as though pronouncing sentence. “You will be absorbed, a nutrient for the law of cycles I tend. Your chaotic force disrupts my order, yes, but this domain belongs to me. Here, the rules of rebirth answer only my will. You cannot win.”
The air clenched. Every mote of reincarnation aura burst into frantic motion, swirling as if startled bees had remembered their stingers. Gray-white chains erupted from empty space, writhing toward Jared like serpents that had never known sunlight. They carried sigils that spoke in the bones: birth, decay, debts repaid, spirits reborn. This was not mere force; it was the script of existence aiming to rewrite him.
A prickle of fear surfaced, and Jared sliced it away with motion. The Chaotic Domain roared open, a storm of shifting dusk, and the Dragonslayer Sword carved arcs of gray lightning into the chains. Steel-bright clangs rang out, impossibly loud inside the hollowed hall. Each chain shuddered under the blows; runes flickered, dimmed, then burned alive again, unbroken.
A dry snap cut through the roar. From every direction new chains of law surged, bright as molten iron, weaving over the old layers until Jared’s Chaotic Domain felt like a lung being wrapped in wire. The shimmering boundary that had once stretched three hundred paces away collapsed—two hundred, one hundred, then fifty—each contraction slamming against his eardrums like a drumbeat swallowed too late.
Pressure punched inward, sudden and absolute. Deep in his core, the Chaos Star spun madly, spraying filaments of raw force to patch the fissures crawling across the Domain, yet every pulse cost him more than the last. Jared could feel the deficit yawning open; give another inch and the chains would reach bone.
“Pointless!” The voice of the Lord of Reincarnation drifted across the grinding metal, empty of warmth. “Inside this realm I am the statute, I am the design. Your chaotic force can scorch my cycle, yes, but you bring a teacup to drown an ocean of fire!”
Jared let a breath scrape out of his teeth. “Is that so?” Heat flared behind his eyes, hotter than fear. “Then watch which comes first: your sea smothering me, or my blade boiling your precious cup dry.”
He stopped holding back. The Primal Unity Refinement Tome roared to its full rhythm. Four currents inside him slammed together, fusing until the Chaos Star erupted in a radiance that painted the hall in newborn dawn.
“Chaos Origin! Genesis of Heaven and Earth!”
Both hands closed around his sword. He drove the edge forward, a single arc aimed at the pulsing light that marked the Lord’s heart. Every lesson Jared had carved from the chaos rushed into that strike—split the fog, name the space, coax form from nothing. Order would not be begged for; it would be hammered out of the void.
The blade‘s glare parted the ashen aura like curtains ripped from a window. Chains of law snapped one link after another; the entire throne hall quivered, dust sifting from vaults that had never known tremor. For the blink of a heartbeat, the realm’s choke loosened, leaving a raw corridor straight toward the Lord of Reincarnation. The sword light crashed into the gray-white core.
A searing hiss tore the air. The sphere convulsed, its pallid sheen dulled, and from within came a smothered grunt.
“Well done. A true Chaos Genesis…” The Lord’s voice wavered for the first time, astonishment smeared with a hint of delight. “Your potential surpasses every estimate. If I consume you, my reincarnation law may transcend its flaw.”
Jared‘s lips peeled back over his teeth. “Try it. Let’s see if you can stomach me.” With a guttural breath, he carved another slash, refusal sharpened to steel.
But the Lord refused to remain a target. The dim core ballooned, unfolding into a gray-white giant ten fathoms tall. Its face blurred like wet chalk, yet its eyes were twin vortices, gray spirals swallowing horizon after horizon.
“Reincarnation! Rebirth Tribulation!”
The colossus lifted a monumental hand and leveled one finger at Jared. The air before him folded inward, pregnant with something older than death. Pressure slammed down before Jared could form a thought. It did not push from above or press from the sides; it simply existed everywhere, heavy as a verdict already written.
The force drilled deeper, past flesh and thought, toward the hidden axle where karma, destiny, and the endless wheel of reincarnation meshed. Colors burst across his sight like torn banners. Before one shape settled, another ripped it away. A newborn‘s cry, thin and confused, rattled inside his own lungs. Calloused childhood fingers bled against training rods. The first throat he cut opened again, warm and metallic on his palms. Friends faded into funerary smoke.
A final scream pitched him back into molten darkness. Every echo belonged to a life Jared had already survived, yet the parade refused to end, as though someone rewound the same reel just to break him. Then the scenes tilted forward, unfurling into roads he had never walked. Each road glittered with possibility and dripped with threat.
One vision shackled him inside a hollow husk, will gone, body marching under another mind. Another hurled him onto a battlefield where the Door of Reincarnation devoured his shattered soul. A third crowned him victor, only to watch the core of his path collapse, brittle as over-fired clay. Possibilities masqueraded as memory, demanding equal weight.
Past, present, and what-might-be crashed together, shards spinning, slicing at the thin membrane of his mind. The storm whispered promises of comfort if he would only forget who Jared was.
Forget, dissolve, return to the wheel.
Blood salted his teeth, but he ground them together and hissed the words through the taste. “Monstrous… Reincarnation sorcery…”
Jared’s Chaotic Domain shrank to a flickering shell three feet across, every grain of its swirling mist barricading the onslaught. The pressure receded only long enough to gather again, thicker each time, like tides obeying a frozen moon. Above the chaos, the towering phantom of the Lord of Reincarnation lifted its stone palm.
“Reincarnation! Karma Severance!”
Pale threads unraveled from the void—thousands at first, then countless. One thicker than the rest pulsed between Jared‘s chest and the phantom’s heart. The phantom clenched that cable and ripped.
Wet heat exploded from Jared’s lips. Pain did not flare; it bloomed, thick and sudden, and his vision tunneled as ruby droplets sprayed the dark. Strength fled him in fast, frightened gulps. No blade had touched him; the wound lived somewhere nobody could bandage. Only the roiling film of chaotic force around his organs kept his foundation from shattering outright.
The phantom’s voice thundered again: “Reincarnation! Destiny Alteration!”
Its fingers twisted, as if rerouting a river on a map that only gods could read, flipping the symbol by his name from life to death. A chill sluiced through his veins, sucking warmth from marrow first, then muscle, then skin. Breathing became an unearned luxury.
“Damn it… Is this the power of someone who truly owns the Laws?” The admission tasted worse than blood, a grain of helplessness swelling into a boulder against his ribs.
