The walk away from the cave was uneventful at first.
Zane had just left behind a dumbfounded army, an unconscious mage, and the remains of a storm that nearly tore the sky apart. He could still feel the weight of the ritual lingering in his bones—like he was walking around in a body too powerful to be contained by this world.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: Power calibration complete.]
Zane paused mid-step.
[Initiating Transdimensional Sync...]
"What now?" he muttered.
The world around him stopped. Time didn't slow—it ceased. The wind froze mid-gust. The dust he'd kicked up was suspended in the air like flecks of glass. Even the light from the sun dulled to a pale shimmer.
Then his feet left the ground.
He didn't resist as his body lifted. A ring of symbols—system runes, pulsing with energy—circled beneath him, spinning faster with every second. His artifacts began to glow in unison. The Endblade hummed, the Ring of Auric Dominion sparked faint temporal flickers, and the Phantom Chain wrapped around his torso like a seatbelt.
"Nyx?" he asked aloud, sensing the familiar presence.
"This is beyond me," Nyx responded quietly. "The System is taking you somewhere... no realm I know."
Reality cracked like a mirror around Zane.
A tunnel of absolute void opened, stars and fragments of unknown dimensions blinking past as if the very code of the universe had opened a developer console just for him.
[SYSTEM TRANSFER IN PROGRESS]
[Destination: ??? – High-Class Plane: Rift of Origins]
"What the hell is a 'Rift of Origins'?" Zane asked, his voice echoing through the void tunnel.
[A realm outside the influence of known gods, laws, and logic. A place for testing limits... and rewriting fate.]
"Oh." He grinned. "Now you're speaking my language."
As the tunnel swirled violently, he noticed a faint silhouette in the distance. A floating island? A fractured temple? It was hard to tell.
Zane's body surged forward like a comet, the system's voice echoing in his mind.
[You've grown too powerful for this world. Let's see how far you can go when nothing holds you back.]
And with a final pulse of shadow and light—