The sky over Abyss-Sanction fractured.
No thunder. No fanfare. Just stillness—as if even sound refused to exist in the presence of what was coming.
The boy stood at the edge of the central spire, overlooking the Voidforge Basin, where the pulse of his realm beat in artificial rhythm. The Crucible crackled with alerts behind his eyes.
❖ Incoming Threat: [Outerverse Entity Class: Choir of Silence]
❖ Count: Two
❖ Realm-Impact Probability: 97%
❖ Suggested Protocol: Evacuation
He didn't move.
Evacuation was not an option.
He wasn't building a realm to run from enemies. He was forging it to confront them. Nullfang hovered beside him, its newly embedded paradox core humming with unstable energy.
"Show me," he said.
The Crucible displayed an ethereal projection. Two figures drifting down through the breach in the sky, wreathed in silence—no wings, no energy trails, no flames. Just presence. Each of them wore armor made from pure compressed void, trimmed with starlight, and masks devoid of identity. They were not soldiers. They were instruments.
They were The Choir.
The last time a Choir had been unleashed, a realm ceased to exist within seven minutes of contact.
❖ Warning: Choir of Silence enforces Multiversal Concord. No diplomacy possible.
❖ Directive: Anomalous Realms = Annihilation
The Crucible wasn't afraid, but it was programmed to survive.
He wasn't either.
The Choir descended without motion. Their feet never touched the ground. Instead, every step forward folded space beneath them, like reality bowed unwillingly. The sky dimmed. The realm began to mute—birds stopped chirping, wind fell still, even the ambient hum of his realm's mana died.
Silence was not absence here.
It was enforcement.
The first figure raised a hand. A black circle bloomed in midair—compact, smooth, and filled with symbols that didn't belong to this universe. From it emerged a blade shaped like a tuning fork, forged from crystallized silence.
The second figure's mask cracked slightly. No face, no expression. Just a single symbol glowing across its front:
[NULLIFY]
The boy raised Nullfang.
The paradox embedded within it stirred. His new skill—Symphony Cut—had not yet been tested. It didn't respond like other attacks. It didn't aim to slice flesh or armor. It severed laws.
"Crucible," he said calmly, "Engage Realm Defenses. Tier 2."
❖ Command Accepted.
❖ Activating [Oblivion Wards], [Time Mesh], and [Fracture Pulse Cannons]
Dozens of shadow-cannons emerged from spires across the basin, charging with blue-black energy. Time Mesh grids rippled across the air, slowing anything within its radius. Oblivion Wards etched sigils across the land to reduce the Choir's movement.
They moved anyway.
Not walking. Not teleporting.
Just becoming.
One of them appeared behind him without warning. No ripple. No sound. A blade swung.
He spun. Nullfang met it. The impact shook the world—but only for a second. Because immediately after, the Choir's sword emitted a pulse.
And silence consumed the clash.
He was thrown back—not from force, but from denial. The realm itself rejected his movement, reorienting him midair like a corrupted file being rewritten. The Choir stepped toward him again.
He triggered Symphony Cut.
A single swing. Nullfang glowed violet, then fractured the air with a note that sounded like a screaming violin played backward.
The Choir member froze.
Its blade glitched. Its mask cracked again, this time spiderwebbing across its surface. From behind the cracks, a voice hissed—not from the entity, but from the void itself:
"UNSOUND…"
The Choir did not expect a paradox to exist in a realm forged from nothing.
The other Choir member reacted. Both arms raised. A second circle emerged—this time, a glyph representing [CANCELLATION]. Spires of anti-energy erupted across the battlefield. Anything touched by the light was unmade instantly: stone, ward, even sound itself.
He dodged.
But barely.
Half his torso was grazed by the pulse. Pain didn't come. Only stillness. That part of him simply refused to exist for a second.
He channeled again.
❖ Skill Activated: [Paradox Step]
The skill didn't move him through space. It moved him through contradiction—he blinked left, then right, then neither. When he reappeared, Nullfang had already slashed upward in a wide arc. He didn't aim to kill.
He aimed to fragment.
The blow didn't strike the Choir directly—it struck their memory of their own form. And for a second, both entities phased, unstable. They began to bleed… not red, but white—a thick, memory-fluid that hissed like steam.
He landed, panting.
That skill cost him more than stamina. It chipped at his sanity like a whispered truth he wasn't ready to hear.
But he had no choice.
The Crucible fed him an alert:
❖ Choir Status: Structural Integrity at 74%
❖ System Stability: 61%
❖ User Consciousness Fracture Threshold: 39%
If he kept using Paradox Blade techniques, he'd begin to lose sense of time, space, maybe even self.
But stopping meant death.
He raised his hand. "Activate Phase Lock."
The Voidforge Basin obeyed.
Pillars of phase-anchored light erupted across the battleground, each locking down a quantum thread of existence. For the first time, the Choirs moved. One staggered. The other shielded its mask.
❖ Phase Lock Effective: Null-Space Ripple Suppressed
❖ Action Window: 7 Seconds
He surged forward.
Nullfang burned with the weight of ten broken rules. His foot met the Choir's shoulder, launching himself into the air, spinning. He slashed downward.
This time, he didn't aim for form.
He aimed for intention.
The Choir tried to raise its blade. Too late.
The swing shattered the glyph of [NULLIFY]. Shards of silence flew into the wind, breaking the quiet like a flood. Sound returned in a scream—the real sound of a realm gasping for breath.
The second Choir lunged at him, desperate.
He turned mid-air, flipped the blade, and stabbed downward.
❖ Paradox Core Overloaded
❖ Critical Hit: [Memory Stream Severed]
The Choir staggered. Its mask peeled away.
For just a moment, a face emerged beneath it—young, feminine, terrified.
Then gone.
Both Choirs collapsed.
Their bodies dissolved into raw code, absorbed into the Crucible's memory bank for later analysis.
The Crucible pulsed.
❖ Realm Defense Complete
❖ Hostile Entities Neutralized
❖ Threat Level Returned to Moderate
He collapsed onto one knee, blood dripping from his nose.
His mind swam. Not from exhaustion—but from splintering.
Every time he used Symphony Cut, a piece of him warped.
A voice echoed in his head.
Not the Crucible's. Not his own.
"Paradox is not a weapon. It's a curse… and you're already too deep."
He looked down at Nullfang.
Its edge shimmered, no longer stable. It wanted more. It needed more.
He stood.
"I don't care if I break," he muttered. "As long as I break them first."
Behind him, the sky healed—slowly, as though reality needed time to remember what it was supposed to be.
But a new alert pinged.
❖ Multiversal Council Now Aware of Realm [Abyss-Sanction]
❖ Incoming Designation Request:
– Name: Unknown
– Title: Thronebreaker
– Status: Exile-Level Threat
– Status Approval Pending…
He laughed. Bitter. Tired. Triumphant.
Let them send more.
Let the multiverse watch.
He wasn't done breaking things yet.