The void stretched endlessly in every direction, an infinite expanse of absolute nothingness. No light. No sound. No sensation of up or down, forward or back. Just emptiness that consumed everything it touched.
Dale Silver drifted through this abyss, his body suspended in the crushing silence. His once magnificent form, the body that had shielded humanity for over half a century, now hung broken and defeated. The icy blue hair that had become his trademark across the world floated around his face like frozen streams, matted with something that might have been blood or simply the residue of his fading existence. His golden eyes, those same eyes that had struck fear into the hearts of demons and inspired hope in countless souls, stared at nothing with a hollow emptiness that matched the void around him.
His breathing came in shallow, ragged gasps. Each inhale felt like drawing sand through a crushed windpipe. The finely trimmed beard he'd maintained even through wars and catastrophes now looked unkempt, as if even vanity had abandoned him in this place beyond places.
Then, cutting through the oppressive silence, a voice emerged. It carried no warmth, no inflection, yet Dale had known it longer than any companion in this world.
"Host. Your Aether reserves have depleted to zero point zero zero one percent. Total essence exhaustion imminent. Corporeal dissolution will commence in approximately seventeen minutes."
The System. His constant companion. His greatest weapon. The gift that had transformed a confused transmigrator into humanity's avatar.
Dale's cracked lips twitched. A sound escaped him, something between a laugh and a sob, hollow and brittle.
"Seventeen minutes," he whispered, his voice barely audible even to himself. "Seventeen minutes until Dale Silver ceases to exist."
"Affirmative, Host."
Another shuddering breath. His chest ached with more than physical pain. Dale closed his eyes, though it made no difference in the darkness.
"The mark." His voice cracked. "System, tell me the mark will work. Tell me it will actually transfer."
"The Successor's Mark has been successfully implanted. Upon Host's complete dissolution, all designated parameters will transfer to the marked individual. This includes the System Core, accumulated experience indexes, skill frameworks, and evolutionary pathways. The transfer success rate is calculated at ninety nine point seven percent."
"And your memory?" Dale pressed, desperation creeping into his tone. "Everything you've recorded? Everything about me, about what I learned, what I faced?"
"Memory archives will undergo complete transference. The successor will have access to all recorded data upon System reactivation."
Dale's throat tightened. His eyes remained closed. "Good. That's good. He'll need everything. Every scrap of knowledge. Every failure I made."
"Host's tactical database contains one million four hundred seventy three thousand two hundred and nine combat encounters, seventeen thousand nine hundred and twelve unique skill applications, and three thousand four hundred and one strategic innovations. The successor will benefit greatly from this accumulated wisdom."
Dale's response came as a chuckle, dark and pained. It evolved into something else, something raw and broken. His shoulders shook. The sound that escaped him was primal, wrenched from somewhere deep in his chest where he'd kept it locked away for nine years.
He was crying.
Tears flowed freely down his weathered face, floating away into the void like tiny crystalline stars before dissolving into nothing. His whole body trembled with the force of emotions he'd suppressed for so long, emotions he couldn't afford to feel while protecting the world, while being humanity's unbreakable shield.
But here, at the end, there was no one to be strong for.
The System remained silent. In all their decades together, it had learned when to speak and when to simply observe.
Images flooded Dale's mind. Not the battles. Not the conquests. Not the moment he'd struck down demons or claimed territories or exceeded every limit placed before him.
No.
He saw her.
Maria.
His Maria.
The memory crystallized with perfect clarity. Their first meeting, at a grand ball held in the Duke's estate. He'd been there on official business, still relatively new to his role as humanity's rising champion. She'd been standing near the gardens, her golden hair catching the moonlight like spun silk, making her seem almost ethereal. Those blue eyes, deep as ocean trenches, had met his across the crowded hall, and everything else had faded away.
The daughter of a Duke. She could have had anyone. Nobility lined up for her hand, powerful families seeking alliances. But she'd chosen him. A nobody from nowhere who'd stumbled into power.
He remembered their first conversation, how nervous he'd been approaching someone of her station. How she'd laughed at his awkwardness, not cruel but genuinely delighted, putting him at ease with her warmth.
He remembered the exact way afternoon light had caught in that golden hair the day he'd confessed his feelings. How he'd stammered through his words, the great Dale Silver who'd toppled demon lords, reduced to a lovesick fool. Her blue eyes had sparkled with unshed tears of joy when she'd said yes.
Their wedding. It had been a grand affair, befitting a Duke's daughter, though Maria had claimed she would have been just as happy with something simple. She'd worn white that made her golden hair shine like a crown, and when she'd taken his hands and promised to stand beside him, he'd believed for the first time that he might actually deserve happiness in this world.
The quiet mornings. Gods, he'd forgotten about those until now. Mornings where they'd simply existed together, her head on his chest, that golden hair spilled across the pillows like liquid sunlight. Her blue eyes would open slowly, meet his, and she'd smile. No demons. No System notifications. No world to save. Just them.
"I failed you," Dale whispered into the void, his voice breaking. "Maria, I failed you so completely."
The memory shifted, grew darker. Her final moments. The thing that had killed her had moved so fast, so impossibly beyond anything he'd faced. He'd been there. Right there. His hand outstretched. And he'd been too slow. Too weak. Too utterly insufficient.
Those blue eyes, always so full of warmth and life, going dim. Her golden hair matted with blood. The sound she'd made. The light leaving her gaze as she fell. The way her hand had reached for him one last time before going limp.
"I couldn't save you. I wasn't strong enough. All this power, all these abilities, and when it mattered most, I wasn't enough!"
His voice rose to a shout that the void swallowed greedily. Fresh tears carved hot paths down his face.
But the memories weren't finished with him.
Now he saw their son.
Ciel.
Perfect, beautiful Ciel. The boy had been only five years old, so impossibly small, with his mother's delicate features and gentle nature. He'd inherited Maria's golden hair, those same lustrous strands that caught light like precious metal, and Dale's golden eyes that seemed to burn with inner fire even in childhood. The combination was striking, breathtaking even. Everyone who saw him stopped and stared at the boy who carried both parents' most distinctive features in perfect harmony.
Dale remembered teaching him. The boy had been so eager to learn, mimicking his father's sword stances with a wooden practice blade too big for his tiny hands. That golden hair would fall into his face as he concentrated, and he'd brush it back with an annoyed huff that was so like his mother it made Dale's heart ache. He'd fall down, scrape his knees, and pop right back up with a determined expression that had made both parents laugh.
"Papa, watch this!" Ciel's voice echoed through the memory, high and excited. The boy had managed to channel a tiny spark of Aether, barely enough to make a pebble levitate for half a second. But he'd looked at Dale with such pride, such pure joy, seeking approval. Those golden eyes had been so bright, so full of life, burning with the same intensity Dale saw in his own reflection.
Dale had swept him up, spun him around, told him how amazing he was. Maria had joined them, her golden hair mixing with Ciel's identical golden locks as she wrapped her arms around both her boys, completing their little circle of happiness. Mother and son, their hair shining like matched treasures in the sunlight.
"You'll be even stronger than your papa someday," Dale had promised, tapping the boy's nose. "I just know it."
Ciel had giggled and hugged his neck tighter, that golden hair soft against Dale's cheek. "I wanna be just like you, Papa!"
The memory shattered.
Dale's eyes snapped open in the void, fresh anguish tearing through him. More tears came, endless, drowning him from within.
"And I failed you too, Ciel. I failed you too."
His son's face the day he'd left. Ciel had known something was wrong, had clung to his father's leg with desperate strength. Those golden eyes, mirrors of Dale's own, had been wide with fear and confusion. "Papa, don't go! Please don't go!"
Dale had promised. He'd looked his five year old son in the eyes and promised he'd come back. That he'd return after dealing with the threat. That everything would be okay.
Nine years ago.
Nine years his son had waited. Nine years Ciel had lived without his father, had grown up alone, had faced the world as the heir to a legacy he'd never asked for.
"I told you I'd come back," Dale sobbed. "I promised you. What kind of father breaks a promise to his son? What kind of man am I?"
The tears wouldn't stop. His chest heaved with each gasping breath. Every memory was a knife, cutting deeper than any wound he'd suffered in battle.
"I left you alone. Just a child, and I left you to face everything by yourself. You needed me. You needed your father, and I wasn't there. I wasn't there for your sixth birthday. Your seventh. Your growth, your struggles, your pain. Nine years, Ciel. Nine years you've been without me."
His fists clenched uselessly at his sides. What could he grasp in this void? What could he hold onto when everything was already lost?
"The world," he continued, his voice raw and hoarse. "I failed the entire world. Humanity's avatar. Humanity's shield. What a joke. I couldn't protect what mattered. I couldn't save my wife. I can't return to my son. And those things are still out there, still waiting. The veil won't hold forever. Twenty five years, maybe thirty if I calculated correctly. And then what?"
He laughed bitterly, the sound twisted and wrong.
"I gave them time. Time to prepare. Time to get stronger. But will it be enough? Will anything ever be enough against them?"
The System processed his words but offered no response. There was nothing to say. No data point that could ease a dying man's regrets.
Dale's form flickered. Just for a moment, so brief it might have been imagined. But he felt it. The beginning of the end.
"Host. Dissolution has begun. Twelve minutes remain."
Another flicker. His left hand became translucent, nearly invisible against the darkness before solidifying again.
Dale looked at his hand, watched it fade and return, fade and return. Each time it came back slightly less solid than before.
His expression twisted. Pain. Anguish. And beneath it all, something darker. Something hot and consuming.
Rage.
"It's all because of them."
His voice dropped to a growl, low and dangerous. The broken man began to burn with fury, with hatred so pure it seemed to push back the void itself.
"THEM!"
The shout echoed through the emptiness, carrying the weight of every loss, every failure, every drop of blood spilled.
"I had everything. Skills that could reshape reality. Abilities that made me functionally immortal. I could level mountains. I could freeze oceans. I mastered techniques that took others lifetimes to learn in mere days. The System gave me power beyond measure."
His right arm flickered out of existence for three full seconds before snapping back.
"And it meant nothing. NOTHING! I couldn't kill even one of them. Not one. That thing took Maria, and I couldn't even wound it. I pushed myself beyond every limit, burned through reserves I didn't know I had, and it barely noticed. It looked at me like I was an insect. An annoyance."
His breathing grew ragged again, but this time with fury rather than sorrow.
"Fifty years. Fifty years I protected this world. I vanquished demon lords who'd terrorized humanity for centuries. I closed dimensional rifts with my bare hands. I stood alone against armies and won. And against them? I was nothing."
More of his body flickered. His torso became translucent. Through his own fading chest, he could see the endless void beyond.
"But they have something coming."
Dale's golden eyes blazed with an inner fire that defied the encroaching dissolution. His voice steadied, growing cold and absolute.
"They think it's over. They think eliminating me solved their problem. They have no idea what I've done. What I've put in motion."
A grim smile crossed his fading features.
"My son."
The anger softened just slightly, tempered by something that might have been pride. Might have been hope.
"I had nothing when I came to this world. No talent. No special bloodline. Just knowledge from another life and the System. Everything I became, I had to build from scratch. Every skill, every technique, every victory was earned through blood and determination."
His legs flickered, became ghost like, reformed.
"But Ciel? Ciel is different. Even as a toddler, he showed talent I never possessed. The way he channeled Aether before his third birthday. The sword forms he replicated perfectly after seeing them once. His ability to sense energy flows that took me years to perceive."
Dale's voice grew stronger despite his body growing weaker.
"Everyone noticed. The faction heads. The academy instructors. Even the demons we captured spoke of sensing something unique in him. My son isn't just my heir. He's something more. Something better."
Another flicker. This time his entire lower body vanished for five seconds. The dissolution was accelerating.
"If he puts his mind to it. If he embraces what he is, what he can become. Ciel will surpass me. Not might. Will. I'm certain of it."
The grim smile widened slightly.
"And when he does, he'll destroy them. Every last one. He'll do what I couldn't. He'll protect what I failed to protect. He'll be what I should have been."
Dale's chest tightened. Not from pain this time, but from an emotion he hadn't expected to feel in his final moments.
Pride.
"That's my boy. That's my son. He has my System now. My knowledge. Everything I learned. But he has something more. Something I never had."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"He has talent."
The flickering intensified. Both arms faded in and out. His torso became a translucent outline.
"Host. Four minutes remaining. Recommend final preparations."
Dale nodded slowly. He'd said what needed to be said. Mourned what needed to be mourned. Raged against what needed to be raged against.
But there was one thing left.
One final truth he needed to acknowledge.
"I promised to come back."
His voice cracked again, the anger draining away to leave only hollow regret.
"I looked him in the eyes and promised. Five years old, clinging to my leg, begging me not to go. And I promised I'd return."
Tears fell again, slower now. Almost gentle.
"Ciel, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Your father is a liar. A failure. I won't be coming home. I can't keep my promise. I can't watch you grow up. I can't guide you. I can't be there when you need advice, when you struggle, when you achieve great things."
His body was more void than substance now. Nearly gone.
"But I'm still your father. And even if I can't be there, even if I've broken every promise, I can still give you everything I have. Everything I was. Everything I learned. It's yours now, son. All of it."
Dale Silver took one final breath. Or tried to. His lungs were no longer solid enough to hold air.
His golden eyes, the last part of him still clearly visible, stared into the infinite darkness with absolute conviction.
"My son!"
His voice rang out, clear and powerful despite everything. A father's final words. A dying man's last gift.
"Be the protagonist I never got to be and climb even higher, so that the whole world and even the cosmos and galaxies themselves would revere the name Ciel Lee Silver!"
The void swallowed the words hungrily.
Dale Silver smiled.
And vanished.
The emptiness rushed in to fill the space where humanity's greatest champion had been. The System, now without a host, drifted in that same void for a timeless moment. Then it too faded, pulled toward its new destination by the Successor's Mark.
Nine years passed in an instant and an eternity.
Somewhere far away, in a world still shielded by a dying man's final spell, a boy slept.
The room lay shrouded in absolute darkness. Every window had been barricaded with thick curtains that permitted no light to enter. The space was large, fit for nobility, dominated by a king sized bed that seemed to swallow the small form curled upon it.
Ciel Lee Silver, fourteen years old and heir to the Silver Faction, lay cradled like a newborn. His body was drawn in on itself, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs. The posture of someone trying to make themselves as small as possible. Trying to disappear.
His breathing was slow. Even. The breathing of someone who spent most of their time asleep because dreams were easier than reality.
In the darkness behind his closed eyes, there was nothing. Just more black. More emptiness. The same void he'd been drifting in for nine years.
Then, something changed.
In that internal darkness, a spark appeared.
A flame.
It blazed into existence without warning, without preamble. Blue fire shot through with gold, burning with an intensity that should have hurt but somehow didn't. The flame grew, expanded, consumed the void of his dreamless sleep.
And from within that fire, a voice spoke.
It was like nothing Ciel had ever heard. Firm. Commanding. Authoritative beyond measure. Like the roaring of thunder rolling across mountains. Like titans clashing in the heavens themselves. It resonated not just in his ears but in his bones, in his blood, in the very core of his being.
Yet beneath all that power, beneath that overwhelming presence, there was something familiar. Something Ciel recognized even through nine years of absence.
It sounded like his father.
But different. Deeper. More. As if Dale Silver had been amplified, had become something beyond what he'd been. The voice carried weight that pressed down on Ciel's soul, demanding attention, commanding response.
"Do you..."
The words hung in the blazing void, each one a hammer strike against reality itself. Space stretched between them, pregnant with meaning.
"...have what..."
The fire burned brighter. Hotter. Ciel's sleeping form twitched, his breath catching.
"...it takes..."
Something stirred within him. Something that had been dormant for nine years. Something forgotten.
"...Do you..."
The voice rose, grew more insistent. More urgent. A question that was also a challenge.
"...have the..."
Ciel's eyes moved behind closed lids. His fingers twitched. His breathing quickened.
"...FIRE!"
The final word crashed over him like a tsunami, the flames exploding outward to fill everything, to consume everything, to become everything.
And in that moment between sleeping and waking, Ciel Lee Silver felt something awaken deep inside him.
Something ancient.
Something powerful.
Something that had been waiting.