Uriel should’ve been dead. And maybe he was.

But maybe he wasn’t.

He didn’t know. The system didn’t know. And Miquella didn’t seem to know either, her smile having vanished, replaced by a deep frown.

Part of her wanted to look away, but a bigger part of her refused to. She wanted to remember.

’The price of weakness.’

....

Everything broke. Uriel tore it all apart.

In his madness, with the endless power of the fallen dragons fueling his body, he broke himself down and plunged himself into a hell of his own making.

But when he broke everything... he broke everything.

[Your Mage Tool, Eye of Ciel, has shattered!]

[The Core-Bound Artefact Attire, Flawless Scholar’s Set, has been destroyed!]

[The Core-Bound Artefact Weapon, Broken Fang of Hate, has been destroyed!]

A hollow carcass knelt in the center of the brazier, made of nothing but charred remains and darkened bones. The flames danced between the crevices of the body, and the torn heart lodged in the corpse’s ribcage was still.

Dead. It was a corpse.

The corpse was featureless, with only its once radiant ivory eyes remaining, frozen in a frame of agony.

It was quite the horrifying sight.

SHI!

In the depths of Uriel’s body—no, deeper, in the depths of his Heart Palace, beyond even the Mind Palace—in a part of the soul his spark had never shown him, his soul revealed itself.

It was a small, trembling brazier of gold and white, streaked with malicious crimson. Small, yet pure. Faint, yet radiating endless heat.

In its depths, the shadows of four moons could be seen.

SHOO!

A gust of pure manifested Will—Uriel’s own Will, his mad Will to tear and shatter—swept through, and just like that...

[Your Soul has shattered!]

...his soul was no more.

....

The brazier fell silent.

Having sensed nothing but death, the flames returned to their usual cold, and the corpse froze over, turning into a frigid sculpture of charred ruin.

"..."

His body was dead. His soul was gone. And yet, the light in his frozen eyes still burned.

[You have di-... You have di-... You have di-...]

Every time the system tried to announce his death, his gaze flickered; radiant white flames burning in their depths, wildly dancing as if to protest the decree of the system, of the heavens.

The cycle continued, again and again, and the longer it went on, the more pressure built around Uriel. It was as if the more he resisted his fate, the more he angered the heavens themselves.

The pressure that gathered seemed to pull in the broken fragments of his soul, his mind, and his lingering intent, compressing everything into a single point within his solar plexus.

A singular point that stood between his triple cores, cores that remained untouched even in the face of the heavens.

His body was dead. His soul was shattered. But his Will still burned.

It burned like the most radiant of stars.

"..."

In his life, Uriel had never truly wanted anything. To desire was to invite agony. He had always known he would die sooner or later, so he made himself empty.

He was nothing, and thus, he wanted nothing.

That had changed, for a time, in the ivory desert. But upon returning to the world of the living, entangled in the schemes of Ithuril, he had been reminded.

Reminded that he was nothing. That his Will didn’t matter. That his life held no meaning.

Who was he before Thoryl? Enoch? Lucianna? Godwyn? The Gods?

He was nothing. Nothing but a pawn in their vast game. And unlike most, he had accepted it.

He was no one, and nothing. He would die a pawn, just as he had been born a lamb. It was all the same. Choice was a luxury he had no right to claim.

But.

As he burned, Uriel felt something new. Desire. True desire.

He wanted to choose.

For the first time in his life, his Will burned with something other than apathy, madness, or sorrow. It burned with a pure and unrestrained desire to choose.

As long as he did not choose to die today, then he would not die.

Whether it be the Gods, the Spirals, the Heavens, or those beyond, none would be able to shatter his Will.

Like a stubborn cancer, Uriel forced his Will into the fabric of the world, anchoring himself to existence and dragging himself deeper into madness.

He didn’t even want to live. He didn’t care about life itself.

All he wanted... was choice.

Just once.

[You have-...]

This time, it wasn’t Uriel’s Will that interrupted the system.

It was something else, something far greater.

The Weaves of the system rippled, as though someone had finally taken manual control of what had always run on its own.

As though its owners had finally chosen to pay attention.

[...that’s interesting.]

The voice was soft and soothing, as androgynous as it was regal.

The Will it carried was just as gentle. It flowed like water across a silent sea, like light descending from a distant star, like aether drifting from a world unseen.

And yet, it was vast.

So impossibly vast that even infinity felt like an inadequate measure. It was beyond comprehension.

If it was the light of a star, then that star was the size of a universe. If it was the flow of an ocean, then that ocean was deeper than imagination itself.

It was inhuman. It was divine.

KAH!

The moment the voice echoed, it was instant, Uriel’s Will shattered into countless fragments.

The faint sparkle in his ivory gaze was snuffed out with violent finality, and the backlash tore through what little remained of him.

The last fragments of his Will faded into ash under a single, crushing realization that seemed to hurt more than the flames themselves.

He had not been shattered by an attack. Not by malice. Not by anger. But by weakness.

He was unworthy of the entity’s Will.

And just like that, the last part of him died.