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Chapter 25 – The Decaying Mind, the Ascending God

The sky had forgotten its stars that night. As if the universe itself recoiled from witnessing V’s transformation, darkness devoured every inch of the heavens—like a void thirsting for eternity. The Shadow Realm was silent; not a silence born of death, but a divine stillness that whispered of something ancient shifting. Even time, in reverence or fear, had retreated. No leaves stirred, no breath dared to be heard.

V knelt upon the broken remains of the battlefield, absorbing the dissipating energy of the Watcher he had vanquished. Shadows seeped from his skin, and the darkness flowing through his veins danced as though bending the fabric of space and time itself. His eyes did not gaze forward—they turned inward, focused on the abysses within his own soul. Energy was no longer a mere source. It had become the essence of evolution. And this essence was on the verge of lifting him into the fifth echelon.

Then, the sky split—silently, without a scream, yet with overwhelming might. The texture of the Shadow Realm cracked as if the very dimension were kneeling before a new sovereign. V’s body trembled. His muscles tore and reformed. His bones shattered in brilliant flashes, only to be reconstructed, stronger, darker. The darkness spilling from his eyes was no longer just power—it had become an essence that twisted reality, space, and time.

And then, a voice echoed—not from his mind, but from somewhere far deeper, from a place words could not map…

“You still carry the name of a man… but the infinity within you can no longer be bound by such trivial limits.”

V laughed. Yet this laughter bore a divine undertone—reverberating with the cracking of a mind under too much weight. It was not pure. It was hollow—a haunting resonance that suggested reason was starting to rot.

“The one who bore that name… lost me long ago.”

He raised his hands toward the sky. In the voided dark, energy writhed in his palms—drawn not just from shadow, but from space itself. He was no longer merely the lord of darkness. He now defied the very laws that governed existence.

With a snap of his fingers—

Time ceased.

High atop the furthest peaks of the Shadow Realm, a bird froze mid-wingbeat. A river’s flow hung in the air, suspended like a portrait of divine command. The fabric of time itself had bowed to his will.

V walked slowly—stepping across the surface of water without sound. The delicate veil of halted time wrapped around him like a cloak of obedience.

“They say time flows like an arrow. I broke that arrow,” he muttered to himself. His voice echoed, again and again, within his own mind—yet each echo came back… altered. A whisper. A scream. A commandment. With each word, his voice carried the signs of a mind unraveling.

Then he opened his hands. From the tips of his fingers, deep violet energy flickered and pulsed—waves of pure spatial force. Each strike laced with this power defied reality itself. A sword swing bent mountains. A punch cracked the horizon.

And then… came the black holes.

In the midst of this evolution, V began to forge a spell unlike any the realms had seen. Not a construct of magic, but a strike against the pulse of the universe itself. He wove it with his hands—threads of time, layers of space, and the infinity of darkness coalescing into one abomination.

A black hole—born not of nature, but of his very being.

Those who looked into it did not face eternity… but the mirror of their own nonexistence.

“This is no spell,” he uttered with a rasping tone. “This is a vow.”

The black hole swelled in an instant, then collapsed with a single flick of his finger. But it left its scars: warped gravity, twisted light, and mangled truth.

Each piece of power carved a new weight into his body. His mind, in turn, began to reshape to carry it. But it was no evolution—it was decay. V no longer possessed a single mind. Another voice screamed within him. Another self whispered commands in the dark.

“Command them.”

“Devour them all.”

“Take what is yours.”

“Silence!” he roared.

Yet there was no one around.

Even the shadows fell still.

But the screams within refused to quiet. They were no longer commands—they were the new laws of a remade nature. A curse too great for even gods to ignore.

He approached the throne at the heart of the Shadow Realm. Not carved from stone, but woven from the very essence of shadow, this seat shimmered with the weight of ages. As he sat upon it, the world seemed to tilt. The horizon trembled. The sky bent.

“I am now the child of devoured epochs. I am sanctified by the curse of forgotten gods.”

He stood slowly, each step echoing like the closing of an era.

Then a smile appeared upon his lips. A smile not of joy, nor triumph, but like a venom poised to consume the last piece of his fading humanity. Were the mightiest gods to face him now, even they would flinch before that expression. For there was no sorrow in it. No regret.

Only a truth:

Everything belonged to him.

And there remained nothing—yet—that could stop him.

But then, in the far distance, a thunderclap broke the silence.

And the sound froze his smile, just for an instant. For a power unknown even to darkness itself was descending… to Midgard.

*

But that was a story for the next chapter.