The Great Catastrophe drew its final, weeping breath beneath a dying sky.
The battlefield where Baal had finally been brought down no longer belonged to the living world. Mountain ranges that had stood for millennia were entirely gone, melted down into endless, bubbling oceans of molten rock and shattered earth. Rivers of dark, choking blood ran thick through the ruins, mixing with the violently erratic glow of burning mana. The broken corpses of humans, elves, dwarves, monsters, and Celestials lay tangled together across the scarred wastes—resembling the scattered, lonely debris left behind after the end of creation itself.
The long war was over. But humanity had not won. They had merely outlasted the slaughter.
Out of the five legendary, first-generation Mage Lords—the absolute pillars of mortal hope—four were completely gone. Those four had died during the final, desperate clash against Baal, intentionally burning away their own souls to immobilize a nightmare that could never truly be killed. The lone surviving Mage Lord barely remained anchored to his physical body, his life force leaking like water as he forced the grand sealing artifact to lock alongside the weeping Mage Queen.
And yet, as the dust settled over the graves of millions, one final, agonizing task remained.
They had to transport Baal.
Even heavily restrained beneath a thousand layers of conceptual sealing chains, Baal remained a horror beyond human comprehension. The passive pressure leaking from his bound form poisoned the very air, turning survival into a luxury. Low-ranking mages died instantly if they stepped too close, their veins bursting violently beneath their skin before their bodies collapsed into pools of blood. Ordinary soldiers could not even look toward the heavy iron carriage without vomiting uncontrollably or falling into sudden, terrifying comas. Some lost their minds entirely, screaming at a sky that had abandoned them.
Yet leaving Baal there was impossible. If the seal weakened by even a fraction of an inch, the nightmare would begin anew, and a broken humanity would simply cease to exist.
Long before the final battle, the Mage Queen and the first-generation Mage Lords had prepared a final prison in absolute, heartbreaking secrecy.
The Central Tower.
Far from the warmth of civilization, suspended over the dead center of a colossal, bottomless lake, an enormous floating island waited beneath layers of impenetrable magical barriers and cold dwarven machinery. Constructed using the very last of the world's floating mana crystals, ancient magical engineering, and resources desperately gathered from destroyed kingdoms throughout the war, it existed for a single, tragic purpose: to cage a god forever.
The transportation operation began three days after the final battle. Thousands volunteered, knowing exactly what it meant. Mothers, fathers, and young prodigies stepped forward into the rot.
Most never returned.
Massive, roaring suppression engines built by grief-stricken dwarven engineers surrounded Baal's sealed body, humming with a heavy, bone-rattling frequency. Elite mages marched alongside them in continuous, grueling shifts, desperately weaving their own lifelines into the containment formations to prevent the chains from collapsing. Even then, the surrounding air remained choked with corrupted, suffocating mana.
The closer one approached Baal, the harder breathing became. Mages coughed up thick, blackened blood constantly during the journey, staining the snow and ash. Some collapsed dead while merely carrying mana supplies to the frontline escort teams, their hearts giving out from the sheer weight of his malice. Others suddenly began weeping, clawing frantically at their own faces until their fingers tore flesh, driven mad by inhuman whispers that no one else could hear.
And through it all… Baal laughed.
Even bound and bleeding, his mocking laughter echoed from beneath the heavy mountain of restraints—a low, terrifying sound like iron dragging across bone, reminding them that their sacrifices were nothing to him.
The surviving Mage Lord continued forward regardless, his boots dragging through the blood of his comrades.
For fourteen days, he continuously poured his own mana and ebbing life force into the sealing artifact to stabilize the shifting prison. By the fifteenth day, his skin had already begun cracking open, weeping glowing silver mana instead of blood from sheer mana exhaustion. By the twentieth day, witnesses claimed parts of his hands and face had started turning gray and brittle, crumbling away like cold ash in the wind.
Still, he refused to stop. He couldn't. Everyone in the column understood the silent, terrifying truth. If his heart stopped beating before they reached the lake… humanity would disappear.
The journey toward the floating island became a funeral march through death itself. Tower monsters, drawn by Baal's overwhelming aura like moths to a flame, constantly ambushed the ragged transport convoy. Entire escort squads were quietly slaughtered in the dark, their bodies left behind in the mud just to protect the sealing engines from the charging hordes.
One night, an SS-class monster descended from the heavy storm clouds above, a living titan of teeth and shadow. It annihilated three hundred combat mages in a single, horrifying sweep. Weak, broken, and running on nothing but sheer willpower, the surviving Mage Lord stepped forward and personally tore the monster apart using the absolute remnants of his soul's strength.
By the end of the journey, only a meager handful of the original escort force remained alive. The rest were ghosts left along the trail.
And finally, the Central Tower appeared.
Rising above endless, pitch-black water beneath a blackened sky, the floating island resembled a massive, lonely fortress suspended between heaven and earth. Countless intricate magical formations illuminated its underbelly with a cold, haunting blue light, while enormous dwarven engines groaned under the weight of maintaining its position above the lake.
At its dead center stood the Tower itself. Black. Massive. Silent. A monumental tomb built for a god.
The surviving forces dragged Baal through layer after layer of freezing sealing barriers, their numbers dwindling with every door they locked, before finally reaching the highest chamber deep within the bowels of the Central Tower.
The prison chamber.
Thousands of heavy, runic chains wrapped around Baal's motionless body, pinning him to a dais while suppression formations covered every square inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Dwarven engines roared beneath the floorboards, vibrating so violently that the stone wept dust, while elite mages maintained a continuous, exhausting mana circulation through the room.
Only then did the surviving Mage Lord finally release the final stage of the seal.
The entire floating island trembled violently. Massive, conceptual magical chains erupted from the architecture of the Tower itself, tearing through the air and piercing directly into the sealing formation surrounding Baal.
For several terrifying seconds, Baal's eyes snapped open.
The sheer, concentrated pressure released from that single movement killed dozens of mages instantly. Blood exploded from their eyes and chests before they could even realize what had happened, their bodies falling lifelessly to the stone floor.
Then, the final seal locked into place.
Baal stopped moving. His eyes went dark. Silence—total, heavy, and profound—returned to the world. For the first time since his terrifying descent, the world could finally breathe again.
The surviving Mage Lord stood entirely motionless before the prison chamber. He was already dead; his body just hadn't realized it yet. Deep, jagged cracks of silver mana spread across his skin, flaking away into dust, while a steady stream of blood flowed continuously from his sightless eyes. Every remaining mage present stood in absolute, tearful silence. They knew he would not survive another hour.
But before his death, the Mage Queen's final, cruelest order still remained unfinished.
The truth about Baal could never spread.
Fear alone would destroy what little remained of civilization before humanity could even begin to rebuild its broken homes. If ordinary citizens learned that an immortal, unkillable monster remained sealed just above their heads, panic, paranoia, and absolute chaos would consume the survivors. They would tear each other apart in the dark.
So, the Mage Queen had prepared one final, mercifully cruel spell before sealing the heavens herself. A memory seal.
The surviving Mage Lord slowly raised his trembling, ash-covered hand toward the ceiling.
An enormous magic formation materialized across the sky outside, its golden and silver runes large enough to cover entire cities. A soft, brilliant silver light spread across the corners of the world like flowing water, washing over the ruins of empires.
Every surviving person across the lands felt it. A gentle pressure. Like a fading, warm dream.
The people still remembered the Great Catastrophe. They remembered the brutal war against the Celestials. They remembered the destruction of their homes and the tragic sealing of the heavens.
But the memories connected directly to Baal slowly began to dissolve into nothingness. His name. His terrifying appearance. His horrific existence. The eternal prison hidden beneath the Central Tower. All of it faded from ordinary minds like the fragments of a forgotten nightmare upon waking.
Only a select few individuals were cursed to retain the complete, heavy knowledge: the highest authorities of the Mage Places, the future Mage Lords, the chosen guardians, and the forbidden archivists. They would bear the scars so the rest of the world could smile.
The truth was buried beneath thick layers of absolute secrecy.
The surviving Mage Lord looked one final time toward the sealed prison chamber, watching the chains hold. Then, with a quiet, exhausted sigh, his body completely collapsed into a pile of gray ash beneath the floating sky, carried away by the cold wind.
And thus, the first generation disappeared from history forever—forgotten by the very world they had died to save.