Power shapes realms. But will shapes gods.
The sky no longer obeyed.
It cracked, rippled, and twisted — not from chaos, but from choice.
Across the celestial planes, cultivators began rising too fast, too far, along paths that had been buried for millennia.
The seals writ by the God trembled.
The Nine were climbing.
And it terrified the One who had created them all.
From the Throne Beyond Sound, the God moved for the first time in centuries.
It did not speak — it willed.
And that was enough to shatter four ascended realms.
Meanwhile…
In the Mortal Sphere, Elun stood upon a floating plateau of shattered laws. Below her, thousands of cultivators gathered — some kneeling, some resisting, all afraid.
The Nine had begun to fracture Heaven.
But the God would not go quietly.
From the burning sky, a voice came — not in sound, but in pressure.
An ancient divine will descended, invisible yet undeniable.
One by one, the Nine staggered.
Morrow bled black flame from her eyes.
Saerin's futures vanished, one by one.
Korr lost all direction — even space abandoned him.
Relith laughed as her skin peeled into smoke.
And Elun simply closed her eyes… and remembered.
> "You are not meant to ascend."
The Will of the God fell upon them like chains of light.
> "Divinity is not your right. It is my design.
Elun opened her eyes.
Her voice was still, like a mirror that remembers what it once reflected.
> "Then your design is broken."
The Nine stood.
Together.
They focused not their strength… but their will.
And the flicker responded.
Because the flicker wasn't power.
It was permission.
To exist.
To choose.
To become.
In that moment, the pressure faltered.
The God's will blinked.
And a fracture opened not in the sky…
…but in its mind.
For the first time since it crowned itself ruler of form and law…
The God hesitated.