​The moment my consciousness faded, descending into what should have been a well-earned, impenetrable slumber... I opened my eyes.

​I was not in the warm, temperature-controlled bed. Nor was I in the luxurious, heavily fortified penthouse that I had spent a small fortune to secure in the upper echelons of Zirathion’s underground rings. The hum of the advanced mana-generators, the soft texture of the imported silk sheets, the absolute certainty of my safety—all of it was gone, wiped away as if it had never existed.

​I was in a black place.

​It was not merely a dark room or a night sky devoid of stars. It was a place that fundamentally broke the physical laws of vision and space. An absolute, suffocating void, with no floor to anchor gravity, no ceiling to cap the emptiness, and no walls to define boundaries. It was just an infinite, conceptual darkness that seemed to actively devour light, sound, and the very essence of the human soul.

​I looked down. The ground beneath me—if it could even be called that—looked like an endless mirror made of perfectly polished obsidian stone. It reflected my image with horrifying clarity: my pale face, my crimson eyes wide with an unfamiliar emotion, my tense posture. Yet, paradoxically, it did not reflect a single particle of light.

​My first instinct, honed by months of brutal survival and endless calculations, kicked in. I reached inward, trying to summon the Forgotten Blade. I attempted to ignite the circuits of my Aetra, to call upon the SSS-rank skill that had allowed me to weave through the threads of fate.

​Nothing.

​My Aetra was not just blocked; it was completely paralyzed, frozen at the molecular level as if a predator had injected a conceptual venom into my spiritual veins. The SSS-rank skill, my ultimate trump card, was utterly silent. I was stripped of any power, naked of any defense, reduced to a mere mortal standing before an abyss that did not care for my arrogance.

​And suddenly... the abyss shifted.

​From within the absolute void, at an undefined distance ahead that felt both miles away and right against my throat, something formed. The darkness coalesced, condensing into physical matter.

​It was a massive chair. A colossal throne, gothic and grotesque in its design, seemingly forged from a material that looked like the fused black bones of dead titans and shards of charred, stellar steel. Jagged, asymmetrical spikes rose from its back, resembling the jaws of a primordial beast frozen in mid-roar.

​The throne had its back facing me.

​I couldn’t see who, or what, was sitting on it. But the aura...

​My God of the heavens... the aura.

​I had stood before Saint Ilarious and felt the crushing weight of his absolute authority. I had stared into the eyes of the old Volider and watched him cut through the very concepts of reality. I had danced with death in Elysium and mocked the strongest beings known to humanity.

​But the entity sitting on that throne... was something else entirely. It did not belong on the same scale. It did not belong in the same dimension.

​It possessed a spiritual weight that bypassed the physical body entirely, pressing directly against the soul, making the fragile human psyche wish to tear itself apart, to commit spontaneous cessation of existence just to escape the agony of its presence. It was a pressure akin to the gravity of a supermassive black hole suddenly manifesting in the center of my mind, crushing my carefully constructed strategies, my logic, and my sanity into a singular point of despair.

​I was trembling.

​I, the Black Joker, the man who manipulated the timeline and treated the elite Transcendent ranks like chess pieces, had involuntarily fallen to my knees. In this dream world, my physical avatar was failing me. I was panting heavily, my hands slamming against the cold, black obsidian ground just to keep my torso from collapsing. I was entirely unable to withstand the passive spiritual pressure radiating from merely the back of this being.

​Then... the entity began to speak.

​It didn’t move an inch. It didn’t turn around to acknowledge me as an equal, or even as a subject. To it, I was an insect catching a glimpse of a god.

​Its voice was not a single, coherent sound.

​It sounded like thousands of voices merged together into one agonizing frequency. The voices of ancient men, weeping women, roaring beasts, and whispering children. They all spoke in unison, forming a metallic, deep, dramatic, and overwhelmingly grand tone that echoed endlessly through the black void. It didn’t just reach my ears; it pierced my skull with tangible physical force, vibrating my teeth and rattling my bones.

​"That girl... Kyle..."

​The entity spoke my name. Just my name. Yet, the utterance of that single syllable was enough to make my eardrums ache with a sharp, stabbing pain within the dream. It felt as though my identity was being dissected and judged by the cosmos itself. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

​I forced myself to raise my head, fighting against a pressure that threatened to snap my cervical spine. I gritted my teeth until I tasted phantom blood.

​The girl? My mind raced, sifting through millions of variables despite the crushing agony. Does it mean the little thief in the market? That filthy, ungrateful, blackmailing street rat who spat on my shoes?

​"Take her. Find her. Take care of her."

​The entity continued, and its tone was not a request. It was not a suggestion or a plea. It was a supreme command engraved directly into the fundamental code of spacetime.

​It was a command carrying a grandeur that allowed absolutely no room for interpretation, and a suffocating arrogance that permitted no concept of refusal. If I said no, I knew with absolute certainty that my soul would be erased from the cycle of reincarnation forever.

​"Who... who are you?" I forced the words out of my throat, gathering every single shred of my remaining pride, my ego, and my defiance to whisper that question. I was practically suffocating, my lungs burning as if I were inhaling shattered glass.

​"And why... why her?" I spat, the Joker’s stubbornness refusing to die quietly. "She’s just street trash! A filthy thief with no Aetra, no talent, nothing!"

​The entity did not turn. It did not dignify my insult with a direct reaction. But the atmosphere changed. The void grew heavier, colder.

​Its voice shifted, carrying an ancient sorrow so profound it could drown a world, and a cosmic rage sleeping quietly beneath the ashes of dead, forgotten universes. When it spoke again, its voice felt like a formal declaration of the end of time itself.

​"This... is for all of us. So that the throne does not fall into the unseen void. Protect the core, O bearer of the Forgotten Blade. She is the final key."

​The moment it uttered that final, cryptic word...

​The black throne exploded. It didn’t shatter; rather, it erupted with a blazing, blinding crimson light. It was a radiance so intense, so violent and absolute, it felt as though a dying star had gone supernova directly against my retinas!