Chapter 378: THE AVATAR OF ETERNITY
Kaelen’s breath caught. The core of his chest felt as though it were suddenly being split in two, not by pain, but by a tidal surge of overwhelming, impossible power. He staggered back, the very ground under his boots fracturing into spiderweb cracks as white-gold light poured from his skin.
"What are you—"
"Final unison," Eternity said, calm and inevitable. "You and I... no longer wielder and weapon. No longer bearer and burden. One."
The words hit like thunder. The moment they were spoken, Pandora — the magic he had carried and fought to keep from Endless — stirred for the last time like an ancient beast opening its eyes. Its black-violet essence erupted from deep within him, coiling up his arms, wrapping around the Blade of Eternity in luminous streams. But instead of resisting one another, the two forces met... and intertwined.
And then—
The Ruptured Sky screamed.
A soundless scream, so vast and all-consuming it shook every atom of existence. Lightning and inverted storms froze mid-motion, as if time itself faltered. High above, the fractured heavens that had hung like a cursed scar over the world for millennia simply... stopped moving.
At the Isle of Halor, the great tower that anchored the Ruptured Sky shuddered violently. Around the base, Morris nearly fell to one knee as the tremor ripped through the ancient stone. Guinevere’s hand instinctively tightened on her staff, her hair whipping in a wind that wasn’t there a second ago. Ethan swore under his breath, sensing a surge of mana so sharp it burned in his lungs.
"Can Kaelen try and make his upgrade less dramatic!?"
And Eirana — along with her Voidcloak — froze, her hood whipping back, eyes widening as the Voidcloak itself behind her quivered. "This power..." she whispered, voice shaking.
The Keepers of Halor, guardians who had stood for centuries without flinching, looked up with faces pale in awe.
The tower’s apex split.
Far above, in the crumbling sky, chains of light shattered — the final seals on Judgement, the Eternal who had been trapped for ages. From the abyss, a figure of unblinking cosmic authority stepped free, her presence alone bending reality. Judgement’s eyes turned, briefly, toward the Isle... and lingered as she spoke in a tone so solemn that the very air trembled to it.
"So he actually achieved it, didn’t expect it will help me in the end"
At the tower’s heart, Kaelen was no longer a man standing with a sword. He was the sword. He was the light pouring from it. His flesh burned away in streams of molten gold and shadowed violet, reshaping, reforging.
Eternity’s voice spoke one last time, not in his mind, but through him — as him.
"We are no longer separate. We are the God that was, and the one who is to come. We are... Eternity."
The last of the tower gave way with a roar like the breaking of continents. Stone exploded outward in a storm of dust and magic as a figure shot free — Kaelen reborn.
He emerged in his Armor of the Eternal Guardian that seemed woven from starlight and black-violet abyss, his eyes twin horizons of endless time. In his hand, the Blade of Eternity pulsed not as an object, but as an extension of his will — seamless, alive. The air around him warped, bending to the authority he now bore.
Above, the Ruptured Sky ceased to exist, the tear in the world healing into a seamless expanse. But its end marked the beginning of something far greater — the rise of the Avatar of Eternity.
And from the shore of the Isle of Halor, Morris, Guinevere, Ethan, Eirana, and the Keepers watched... silent, breathless, knowing they had just witnessed the rebirth of a god.
After a while, the light that had swallowed the heavens finally dimmed, leaving behind a fractured silence over the Isle of Halor. The once-looming Tower of the Ruptured Sky was now nothing but colossal fragments suspended briefly in midair before they gave in to gravity, plummeting into the sea with deafening, earth-rending crashes. Mist and saltwater surged upward in tidal fury, but even those forces seemed to hesitate in the presence of what now descended from the void above.
Through the last wisps of divine radiance, Kaelen emerged—no longer the man they once knew. His very steps bled ripples through space, and yet each movement was slow, deliberate, like a monarch gracing foreign soil. His figure was illuminated by a residual sheen of starlit threads wrapping loosely around him, remnants of the union between his soul, the Blade of Eternity, and the magic Pandora.
Morris, Ethan, Guinevere, and Eirana stood unmoving on the cracked, trembling surface of the Isle, their eyes fixed upward. The Voidcloak that stood beside Eirana’s form billowed and curled as if recoiling from the raw divinity pressing down from above. For the first time in their lives, each of them felt that speaking—simply forming words—might be a transgression.
Kaelen touched the ground. His transcendent aura, which moments ago had been a hurricane of time and infinity itself, began to fold in upon itself, sinking into the very marrow of his being. It wasn’t an aura fading—it was an ocean being sealed away in a chalice. The Blade of Eternity, still glowing with quiet omnipotence, shimmered once in his grasp... and then dissolved into pure light that was drawn directly into his chest, vanishing as if it had never existed.
Guinevere’s lips parted, her breath shaky. Ethan stepped forward, the urge to speak warring with the fear that his voice would shatter this fragile, godlike stillness. Morris’s fists clenched—not in hostility, but in the overwhelming knowledge that whatever Kaelen had become, it was beyond the scale of mortal comprehension.
But before the first word could escape them, the air was split by a surge of authority.
WHOOM!
They materialized from shimmering rifts in the air—dozens of figures cloaked in obsidian and gold, their faces concealed by helms carved with sigils older than the first era of the realm. The keepers of the Isle of Halor. Their arrival was as sudden as it was absolute, their formation locking around Kaelen like a cage of living law. Their voices echoed as one, deep and resonant with ancient judgment.
"You have tainted the Isle of Halor. You have desecrated the sanctity of the Ruptured Sky. You will submit to confinement."
Their hands rose in perfect unison, conjuring chains of pure voidlight, each link humming with the power to suppress even an Eternal. The ground beneath them pulsed with the seal-scripts of the realm, ready to bind.
Morris instinctively stepped forward, but Kaelen’s calm, unreadable gaze froze him in place.
Kaelen’s voice, when it came, was not loud. It didn’t need to be.
"No."
That single word seemed to tilt the Isle itself. The keepers hesitated, some imperceptible tremor passing through their ranks.
One stepped forward, voice sharpened like a blade.
"You will—"
He didn’t finish.
Kaelen moved—no, not even moved. He simply willed. The next heartbeat saw the front ranks of keepers collapse as if reality had simply decided they no longer belonged. Not a flash of the Blade of Eternity, not a ripple of visible magic—only the sudden, terrible absence where they once stood. The void they left behind took seconds to close, swallowing the last whispers of their forms.
The remaining keepers faltered, their intricate formation crumbling under a pressure so complete it stripped them of the concept of resistance. The sea roared around the Isle as Kaelen’s gaze swept across them, his eyes cold and ancient.
"If you cannot understand what has been undone, then you cannot stand in my way."
And just like that—without lifting a hand, without so much as a flicker of divine steel—he erased them. One breath, they were there. The next, only drifting motes of gold and black ash spiraled away into nothingness.
Silence returned. The kind of silence that felt eternal.
Kaelen turned then, finally meeting the eyes of Morris, Ethan, Guinevere, and Eirana. And though the godlike weight still lingered around him, his expression was almost human again. Almost.
Although the tremors had faded a while back, but the air still crackled as if the world was holding its breath.
Morris, Guinevere, Ethan, and Eirana stood frozen, their eyes locked on the figure slowly approaching them through the fractured light above.
Kaelen.
No longer shrouded in the overwhelming transcendent aura they had felt moments ago, his steps were deliberate, almost... human again. Yet every movement still carried an unshakable weight, as though the ground itself bowed to let him pass. The Blade of Eternity — once blazing like a fragment of creation itself — was gone. No, not gone... absorbed into him, as though it had never been a separate weapon at all.
None of them spoke. Not out of politeness, but because words felt too fragile for the enormity of what stood before them.
Eirana’s fingers twitched near her Voidcloak, her instincts screaming caution. Guinevere’s eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but in the kind of fear reserved for forces that defy comprehension. Ethan shifted uneasily, his usual banter stripped away, while Morris... Morris could only feel the pulse of Kaelen’s existence pressing against his own soul.
Kaelen glanced at them — a faint, knowing smile on his lips.
"It’s... different now," he began, his voice carrying a resonance that made the Isle of Halor’s very air quiver. "In the Ruptured Sky, I—"
RUMBLE!!
But right at that moment, the rest of his sentence was stolen by a sudden, deafening rupture of sound above them.
A tear in the heavens opened, not wild and chaotic like the Ruptured Sky, but deliberate, precise — summoned. From within its impossible depths, a presence poured forth that made even Kaelen’s newfound aura dim in comparison. The very colors of the world seemed to fade, leaving only stark light and shadow.
Then, he descended.
A figure clad in armor that gleamed like judgment incarnate, her form bound in loose chains of celestial light that barely held against the pressure she radiated. Her gaze was neither hostile nor kind — only absolute.
"Kaelen Dragonyx," the voice rolled across the Isle like a decree from the dawn of creation, "you would speak of your trials... but the truth is beyond your telling."
The figure’s eyes — brighter than molten suns — locked onto the group, but her words were for all realms to hear.
"This mortal, this warrior... is no longer merely of your world. In the Ruptured Sky, he has bound himself to the slumbering Pandora and the God of Eternity and has become..."
Chains cracked as the Eternal’s presence flared, and the name he spoke made the Isle of Halor tremble anew.
"...the Avatar of Eternity."