The golden pillar of light bathed the ruined Savage Lands in a warm holiness. Ren Hanshin stood at the epicenter of the destruction, his midnight black coat billowing in the gentle, descending updraft. Before him, hovering on a pristine cushion of white velvet, was the Crown of the Zenith. It was forged from pure starlight, emitting an aura of authority. To wear it meant to be officially recognized by the Universal System as a true demigod, granted a seat in the lower echelons of the Astral Pantheon.
He had bled for it. He had shattered his mortal bones, outsmarted omniscience, severed death, and humiliated war. He had broken the Avatar of Mischief. He took a step forward, raising his right hand toward the artifact.
[System Notice: The Victor approaches the Zenith.]
[Commencing Coronation Protocol...]
Ren's fingertips brushed the warm, golden starlight of the Crown. Suddenly, the golden light curdled. The warmth of the starlight turned into a freezing sludge. The pristine white velvet cushion turned black and rotted away into ash. The Crown of the Zenith sparked, vibrating before it was forcefully pulled upward, hovering fifty feet out of Ren's reach.
[SYSTEM FATAL ERROR!]
[Override Code Authored by: Sovereign Council.]
[Coronation Protocol: CANCELLED.]
Ren slowly lowered his hand. His crimson eyes narrowed, looking up at the sky. The golden clouds of the Savage Lands were tearing open, but not to shower him in glory. The sky was fracturing into three massive, jagged rifts, each radiating a suffocating, apocalyptic killing intent that made the thirty-fold gravity of The Executioner's Block feel like a gentle breeze.
[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: OVERRIDE.]
[The Sovereign Pantheon rejects the Victor.]
[Entity 'Ren Hanshin' is declared an Illegal Anomaly. A virus within the Tapestry.]
[Commencing Divine Eradication.]
The voices didn't come from a chat box. They boomed from the heavens, shaking the tectonic plates of the continent.
"DID YOU THINK WE WOULD ALLOW A DOG TO SIT AT OUR TABLE?!" roared the God of War, his voice a grinding of iron and blood.
"YOU SEVERED MY SHADOW, MORTAL. NOW I WILL SEVER YOUR TIMELINE," hissed the God of Death, his voice a rotting whisper that wilted the remaining jungle for miles around.
"YOUR INSOLENCE ENDS HERE, GLITCH," echoed the God of Magic, the sky flashing with billions of complex, lethal arcane runes.
From the three rifts, three colossal pillars of pure divine energy descended. They were not SSS-Rank spells. They were the manifestations of the Sovereigns' wrath, Judgement Pillars designed to erase a target from the universe's physical and conceptual code.
Ren stood at the center of the converging pillars. His Divine Perception screamed. His instincts, honed by Jubei, went numb. There was no intent to read, no concept to sever, no attack to dodge. This was the weight of three gods deciding that a mortal was no longer allowed to exist. If those pillars touched him, his Divine Vitality wouldn't save him. The memory of Ren Hanshin would be permanently deleted from the cosmos. He gripped the Severance of Destiny, but his arms felt heavy. For the first time since he entered the Draft, he realized the terrifying gap between a Demigod and a true Sovereign, but as the three Judgement Pillars plummeted toward him, the crimson chat box didn't flash with frantic warnings. It simply disappeared. The silence that followed was the most terrifying sound in the universe.
CRACK!!
The sky above the Savage Lands shattered like a fragile pane of glass hit by a sledgehammer. The obscuring gold, the rusted iron of War, the dark rot of Death, and the glowing blue runes of Magic were instantly swallowed by a suffocating wave of crimson.
[SYSTEM WARNING: CRITICAL VIOLATION OF COSMIC LAW!]
[A SOVEREIGN CONSTELLATION IS PHYSICALLY BREACHING THE MORTAL REALM!]
The continent groaned as the laws of physics begged for mercy. The three descending Judgement Pillars, attacks meant to erase reality, slammed into an invisible barrier a thousand feet above Ren's head. They simply unraveled. Millions of glowing crimson threads shot across the sky, tangling around the divine pillars of War, Death, and Magic, crushing them into sparks in a fraction of a second. The golden sky was gone. The Savage Lands were now encased in a dome of pulsating, living red silk. It looked like the inside of a beating, cosmic heart. Ren looked up.
Descending slowly from the shattered heavens was a woman. She walked down the empty air as if invisible crimson steps had been laid out exclusively for her feet. She wore a flowing dress made of the same midnight black and crimson fabric as Ren's coat. Her skin was as pale as moonlight, utterly flawless. Her long, cascading silver hair flowed behind her, weaving into the red tapestry that now covered the continent, but it was her eyes that froze the blood of every entity watching across the universe. They were shimmering crimson, burning with an obsession so heavy, so psychotic and violent, that the mere sight of them caused the minor gods in the celestial viewing galleries to fall to their knees in terror.
The God of Fate had arrived.
"You dare," she whispered. Her voice was not loud, but it echoed through the core of the planet, shattering the remaining obsidian mountains of the Savage Lands into dust. "You dare touch what is MINE?!"
She didn't even look at the three jagged rifts in the sky where the hostile gods were watching. She flicked her wrist. A massive wave of crimson threads shot upward, piercing into the celestial rifts. The Gods of War, Death, and Magic let out roars of genuine, cosmic pain as the Weaver's threads lashed their ethereal forms, slamming the dimensional tears shut and locking them out of the Savage Lands. The overwhelming, crushing pressure of the hostile gods vanished, replaced by the intimate warmth of the Weaver's Domain.
She continued her descent, landing on the glassy earth, mere inches from Ren. The sheer density of her manifestation in the mortal realm locked his muscles in place. He was standing face to face with the true sovereign, the architect of his power and his isolation. She was shorter than him, forcing her to look up slightly. She reached out with pale, trembling hands. She didn't look at his scythe, or the carnage around him. Her crimson eyes frantically scanned every inch of his face, her breathing heavy.
"My beautiful, perfect king," she whispered, her melodic voice cracking with overwhelming emotion. "You did it. You killed them all. You were so magnificent."
She reached up, her cold fingertips gently cupping his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw. The touch sent a shudder through Ren's chest, the brand over his heart throbbing in sync with her physical presence.
"They tried to take your prize," she murmured, a dark smile curling her lips. She raised her free hand.
The Crown of the Zenith, which had been hovering out of reach, plummeted into her grasp. She looked at the starlight artifact with disgust.
"A pathetic trinket from a pathetic system," she said. She placed the Crown upon Ren's dark hair. "But it looks perfect on you."
Ren stared down into her crimson eyes. "You broke the cosmic law. You manifested physically. The Pantheon will declare war on you."
"Let them," the Goddess whispered passionately, stepping closer until her body was pressed flush against his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, standing on her tiptoes. "I have grown so tired of the tapestry, Ren. So tired of the strings and the rules. I will burn their realms to ash. I will unravel the universe until there is nothing left but this room, and you, and me."
Her grip tightened, her nails digging into the collar of his dark coat. "You belong to me now, Demigod. Mind, body, and soul. Forever."
Before Ren could speak, before he could pull away, the God of Fate pulled his face down and pressed her lips desperately, forcefully against his. It wasn't a mortal kiss. It was a sealing of a conceptual contract. The moment their lips met, Ren felt an explosive surge of power rush into his core. The 37% synchronization rate shattered, she was permanently bonding her sovereign aura to his vessel, officially elevating him to the pinnacle of the cosmic hierarchy.
The Savage Lands vanished into blinding crimson light. The broadcast to the universe went dark. The mortal boy who carried bags for a Guild was dead. The Demigod of the Crimson Thread had been crowned, and the Heavens were preparing for an apocalypse.
****
Far away from the mortal realm, far away from the crimson light of the Weaver's wrath, lay a dimension of pure, swirling chaos. The Realm of Mischief was a void of shifting colors, levitating staircases that led nowhere, and endless halls of shattered mirrors.
In the center of the void, sitting upon a throne made of gold and playing cards, was a massive, shadowy silhouette. The true form of the God of Mischief was impossible to perceive, changing and blurring, but two massive emerald eyes pierced the darkness, accompanied by a wide, jagged, cheshire cat grin.
Standing before the throne, leaning casually against a silver cane, there was a smaller silhouette. The figure adjusted the lapels of his purple suit. He brushed a speck of dust off his shoulder, unharmed.
"Well," Loki Vance said, his voice echoing in the chaotic void. "That was certainly dramatic. I must say, the Weaver throws a terrible tantrum. All those red threads... very gaudy. Terrible for the aesthetic."
The massive, shadowy sovereign chuckled. The sound was like breaking glass and carnival music.
"The Pantheon believes you are dead, my champion," the God of Mischief's voice warped playfully. "The Executioner severed your core. The Weaver has claimed her prize. The board is set for war."
Loki smiled, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket and fanning them out. He pulled the Joker card, the same card Ren had seemingly destroyed to break the domain. It was perfectly intact.
"They think in straight lines, my Lord," Loki said, his bright green eyes flashing with arrogant brilliance. "They think a sword cuts. They think death is an ending. They didn't realize that the Avatar they killed in that crater was nothing more than an S-Rank parlor trick wrapped in my coat."
Loki tossed the Joker card into the void, where it exploded into a flock of white doves.
"The Executioner is so strong," Loki admitted, tapping his cane, "but he is playing a game with rigid rules, and we... we are the ones who write the mischievous lines."
The massive silhouette of the God of Mischief leaned forward, the grinning teeth glowing in the dark.
"That is why," the Constellation whispered, the chaos of his voice reverberating through the dimension, "You are called the Fool, Loki."
Loki offered a theatrical, sweeping bow to his God. "The curtain has fallen on the draft, my Lord," Loki grinned, his eyes fixed on the burning red tear in the cosmos where the God of Fate had breached reality. "But the real magic show... is just about to begin."
How was Loki still alive?