Darkness.
Not the peaceful kind.
This one pressed on his mind. His body. His soul.
It wasn't void—it was stillness. The kind that only came after everything inside you had been broken, and there was nothing left to hold onto.
Raizen opened his eyes slowly.
He was lying on something soft. Not cloth. Not earth. Something... in between.
A silver mist curled around his limbs.
His body refused to move.
Pain wasn't stabbing or sharp—it was hollow. Deep. Like something inside had been taken and hadn't come back yet.
He looked down at his chest.
Cracked.
Void energy leaked from multiple fractures along his ribs and spine. His left arm barely responded.
He didn't speak.
He didn't curse.
He remembered.
The battle. The endless wave of immortals. Gods. Godkings. The pressure. The pain. And then—right before the hammer struck—
The pull.
Something… no, someone, had yanked him through space.
Not his own power.
Someone else's.
And then he heard it.
A voice.
Ancient.
Worn.
But not broken.
"You lasted longer than most."
Raizen turned his head.
An old man stood a few meters away, wearing torn robes faded by time. His long white hair shimmered like slow-burning mist, and his eyes held the silence of the stars.
He wasn't alive.
Not fully.
The air around him twisted faintly—like his presence was tied to the realm, not to a body.
"So you're the one."
Raizen's lips barely moved. "Who... are you?"
The man smiled. Not warmly. Not proudly. Just… honestly.
"I was called many names. The Void Tyrant. The Pathless One. The Heretic of Realms."
"But the one that stayed with me was the one no one dared speak."
"I was the last unbound."
Raizen's heart slowed.
The stories. The legends. The one void cultivator who never bowed, who erased the gods of an entire realm, and was never seen again.
"You're the Great Sage."
"The one they said died from age."
The old man nodded.
"I lived long enough to see friends fall, enemies rise, and truth twist into lies. I refused every offer, every throne, every 'peace.'"
"They couldn't kill me."
"But I had no heir."
He stepped forward.
"Until now."
Raizen tried to sit up, but the pain returned instantly.
The sage raised his hand, and a pulse of ancient void surrounded Raizen, sealing the injuries—not healing them, just preserving him.
"Don't move yet. Your body is broken. Your soul is cracked."
"But your will..."
He knelt beside him.
"Your will is why I chose you."
A swirling orb of deep black and shimmering silver formed in his palm.
It wasn't just power.
It was creation.
The missing piece.
"You tried to create life from void."
"But what you lacked wasn't energy. It was the essence of origin."
"Void alone destroys. But what stands at the edge of destruction... can also form."
"It took me a lifetime to understand that."
He pressed the orb to Raizen's chest.
Raizen gasped.
And then everything inside him ignited.
He saw stars collapse.
He saw newborn realms.
He saw void not as death, but as potential.
"With this," the Sage whispered, "you won't just erase…"
"You'll forge."
"You'll craft souls, energy, and laws. You'll build legions not from faith or steel, but from your will alone."
Raizen's vision blurred. His body felt like it was melting. But in that chaos, something clicked.
His void responded.
Not wildly.
Not greedily.
But complete.
And in the core of his soul, a new spark bloomed—
Void Genesis: Creation from Absence.
The Sage stood and took a step back.
"You'll still be hunted."
"Even more now."
"But the next time they come... you won't be alone."
His figure began to fade.
Raizen forced his hand to move. "Wait—"
"No need," the Sage smiled faintly. "I already chose you."
"Live better than I did."
"Don't just survive the heavens. Rewrite them."
And just like that—
The last unbound vanished.
Leaving Raizen alone.
But never weaker.
Only evolving.