The silence after their awakening was more terrifying than any monster's roar. The air itself seemed to recoil from them, the crimson sky swirling away from the void Zero had created and the dead earth Jade had birsthed. The Hunting Grounds, for the first time, knew fear.
Jade stood, one hand gripping his evolved scythe, the other pressed against a wound on his side where his own vitality had been consumed. The weapon pulsed in his grip, a satisfied, predatory rhythm. It was no longer just a part of him; it was a partner. A demanding, hungry god that had chosen him as its vessel.
Zero stood as still as a monument, but his stillness was different. It was no longer the calm of a mountain, but the absolute null of the space between universes. His eyes held a terrifying clarity, as if he could see the hidden code of the world and was merely deciding which line to delete next.
The System tried to speak, its prompts flickering like a dying star.
{ [WARNING]... Reality... Stability... [CRITICAL]... }
{ Anomaly... Classification... [INSUFFICIENT DATA]...}
From the bleeding horizon, a new threat emerged, drawn by the catastrophic power they had unleashed. It was the Tyrant of the Hunting Grounds, the floor's final, natural predator. A being of shifting, iridescent crystal and searing light, a creature that fed on the very concepts of power and ambition. It saw them not as prey, but as the ultimate feast.
It did not roar. It spoke, its voice the sound of shattering galaxies.
"CONCEPTS OF ANNIHILATION AND NULLIFICATION. YOU ARE THE PINNACLE THIS REALM CAN OFFER. I WILL INCORPORATE YOU."
Jade spat a glob of bloody phlegm onto the dead ground. He lifted his scythe, the purple-black aura around it flaring, distorting the very light.
"You want to incorporate us?" Jade's voice was a raw, dual-layered snarl. "My partner here just erased the concept of a swarm from existence. And you think your shiny shell can contain us?" He grinned, a bloody, psychotic slash across his face. "Come. Try. My scythe is still hungry."
The Tyrant moved, a blur of refracted light and cutting edges. It was fast—faster than anything they had faced.
But they were faster.
They didn't need to speak. Their movements were a perfectly synchronized dance of absolute destruction.
The Tyrant lashed out with a blade of solid light. Zero didn't block it. He looked at it, and the blade un-formed midway through its swing, dissolving into harmless photons.
"Your offense is a variable I have set to zero," Zero stated, his voice flat and absolute.
The Tyrant recoiled, its form flickering in confusion. That was the opening Jade needed.
He didn't charge. He let the scythe pull him forward, a willing passenger on its wave of hunger. He didn't swing for the body. He swung for the idea of the Tyrant.
"WORLD-ENDER'S THIRST: CONSUME!"
The black blade didn't touch the crystal. It bit into the space the Tyrant occupied, and the law of its invulnerability was torn away. The iridescent crystal dulled, becoming brittle, mortal.
The Tyrant screamed, a sound of pure, conceptual terror.
Zero finished it. He didn't even raise his hand this time. He simply willed it.
"I sever your connection to this plane of existence. You are an error. Be corrected."
The Tyrant of the Hunting Grounds didn't explode. It was decompiled. Its form fractured into a billion lines of shimmering, useless data that then faded into the hungry void of Zero's will.
Silence.
The crimson sky began to pale. The fleshy ground for miles around was dead, gray ash. They had not just conquered the floor; they had scoured it.
A final, broken System prompt appeared, its message simple, almost respectful.
{Floor 4... Cleared. }
{ Returning... to Sanctuary...}
A stable portal, white and serene, swirled open behind them.
They took a single step toward it together—and then collapsed.
The divine power they had channeled abandoned their mortal frames, leaving only the wreckage. Jade hit the ground first, his body convulsing, black veins spreading from the wound where his scythe had fed on him. The weapon clattered beside him, its purple aura guttering like a dying star. Zero fell to his knees, then onto his side, blood streaming from his nose and eyes, his skin cracking like porcelain under the strain of containing a power that could rewrite reality.
They had become gods for a moment. Now their bodies were paying the price.
The portal dragged them in, spitting their broken forms out onto the cold, pristine floor of the Sanctuary's Gateway chamber.
The other ascendants gathered there gasped and recoiled. This wasn't a victorious return. This was a delivery of corpses. Jade wasn't breathing. Zero's heartbeat was a faint, irregular flutter.
Then, the air grew heavy. The Curator materialized between their bodies, his face grim. He knelt, placing a hand on each of their chests.
"Foolish children. To grasp at power even the gods fear to wield." His voice was not angry, but filled with a terrible, ancient sorrow. "The price for such divinity is your very existence. But your story is not yet over."
A golden light, warm and impossibly ancient, flowed from his hands. It fought against the divine corruption eating them alive. Jade's black veins receded. Zero's cracking skin sealed. The Curator was not just healing them—he was rewinding the damage, forcing their mortal bodies to remember how to live.
When it was done, the Curator stood, looking paler, diminished. He glanced at the watching, terrified ascendants, then at the two unconscious anomalies at his feet.
"Remember this sight," he told the crowd, his voice echoing with finality. "This is the cost of challenging the heavens. Pray you never have to pay it."
He vanished.
In the silence, Jade's scythe, now dormant but eternally hungry, was the only thing that seemed alive.
High above, in a realm of solidified light and silent music, an entity seated on a throne of frozen time opened eyes that held dying stars. Its gaze pierced through the floors of the Tower, through the Sanctuary's shields, and settled on the two broken forms and the hungry scythe. A smile, cold and infinitely curious, touched its lips.
"Well, well, well," its voice was the sound of destiny being rewritten. "What do we have here? Two little moths who didn't just singe their wings at the flame... they drank the fire. And survived." The entity leaned forward, its interest palpable. "The game was growing stale. Perhaps... it's time to introduce new players."