Cillian frowned slightly. He'd been aware of the strange mutations occurring within the Mist Realm for some time now. After all, the divine fire sigils had vanished twice in a row without reason. No one with half-a-brain would ignore such a pattern.

"I already know about this," he said.

Across from him, Pandei smiled, that round-faced man who always looked as if he knew a little more than he should. "Hehe, if I were just another information broker, I'd stop there. But I, Master Pandei, am not ordinary."

The laughter faded from his eyes as his tone turned low and serious. "They say the Mist Realm is nearing a state of death."

Cillian's brow arched. "Death state? Explain."

Pandei rubbed his cheek, hesitating for a moment as if trying to phrase something difficult to explain. "How do I put it… Imagine the secret realms we explore and harvest from every day, the places filled with divine energy and fractured rules, as living entities, each with their own awareness."

Cillian didn't flinch. "That's plausible."

As the creator and overseer of the Endless Abyss, he'd long since accepted that every layer of existence held its own will, even worlds could dream, and dreams could evolve into life.

"…Your ability to accept the absurd really is terrifying," Pandei sighed softly. "Anyway, according to what the ancient immortals recorded, all secret realms, including the mist realm, are alive. They grow, decay, and are reborn just like living creatures."

He leaned forward. "When a secret realm nears its end, everything inside begins to collapse. The old dies, and a new world takes its place. But because there are countless such realms across the divine lattice, no one can truly confirm how or when this happens."

He paused. "And when a realm enters its death state, that's when it becomes most dangerous."

"Why?" Cillian asked.

"Because in those final stages, the layers closest to the void begin to stir. The [monsters] sleeping there awaken and consume everything, sometimes even breaching into our reality."

Cillian gave him a skeptical glance. "That sounds like a myth peddled by bored explorers."

He had heard too many legends to count since arriving at Grimstone's divine faculty.

Forbidden zones, sleeping gods, beasts born from broken laws, every rumor carried a fragment of truth wrapped in plenty of fantasy. In truth, the danger of a secret realm came mostly from system backlash, from invading a world's origin too deeply, or losing one's divine fire sigil in the process.

He stared at Pandei with calm indifference.

But Pandei only grinned wider. "No, there's logic to it. Think, why do the so-called Sequence Lords, those supreme gods, spend eternity inside secret realms instead of ruling from the heavens? Why call them Guardians?"

He tilted his head, voice lowering. "If their duty was temporary, that would make sense. But they've been stationed in those realms since history began. Why would beings of unimaginable power choose to remain there forever?"

Cillian said nothing, but a faint crease formed between his brows.

"That's unreasonable, isn't it?" Pandei continued softly. "Think carefully, young creator. The history of this world seems seamless, one era following another, but can you swear it's all true?"

For an instant, something flickered in Pandei's eyes, curiosity mixed with a strange light, as if he were testing whether Cillian was ready to glimpse a truth forbidden even among gods.

"What if the history of our world has already been rewritten?" he whispered.

Then, with his usual careless grin, Pandei waved a hand. "Anyway, if you plan to capture the rule fragment inside that secret realm, I'd go early and come back early. I've heard whispers that one of the Sequence Lords, the venerable one ruling Mount Heaven, has already dispatched his low-gods there."

"…"

——————x——————

After receiving the coordinates, Cillian left the meeting in silence. But his thoughts were no longer calm. Pandei's words had struck deeper than he cared to admit.

He found himself questioning not just the Mist Realm, but the very foundation of the divine world itself, the systems, structures, and the hierarchy of gods.

"With entities that powerful, should this world's order truly work the way it does…?" he murmured under his breath.

Before leaving the exchange hall, his gaze drifted toward a beast-spirit from the upper realms. The creature, humiliated before a crowd of laughing gods, had lost the radiant form it once possessed. For a heartbeat, their eyes met,his calm met its trembling, and in that brief reflection, he saw resentment, pain, and the shadow of rebellion.

Cillian smiled faintly. He turned away, pushing open the door.

"Who cares," he said softly. "All I want is the throne above all gods. Everything else can burn."

Back within his domain, Cillian began transferring the spoils of his recent ventures.

Fifty resource continents, each composed of pure attributeless elements, descended into the incubation pools of the Endless Abyss. The energy released was enough to sustain multiple large-scale wars within his divine ecosystem.

Along with them, he cast in several secret creatures, anomalous beings he'd captured for their unique genetic potential. Within the Abyss, evolution was currency, and no form of life was ever wasted.

Power in the Endless Abyss was not measured by morality, but by survival.

When the last of the offerings vanished into the black currents below, Cillian turned his gaze toward the horizon of his creation.

The Mist Realm awaited.

A world whose rules had broken past the ceiling of divine evolution, hidden deep within the fog, far beyond the safe layers. It would take time, even for him, to reach it.

And this time, he'd be careful.

He placed dozens of divine fire sigils along his route, each a mark to anchor his consciousness within the void. Slowly, step by step, he descended through the fog, toward the place where the realm's breath grew faint, and the edge of creation touched the cold silence of the void itself.

"Arrived…"

Cillian's voice was low, his gaze fixed on the expanse ahead. "According to the coordinates, this should be the one. The world he mentioned."

He hovered in the void for a moment, eyes narrowing as he took in the sight before him. "Though… I've never seen a world shaped like this." A faint, dry smile touched his lips. "No wonder that fat fool was so curious."

After nearly a week of drifting through the void currents, he had reached his destination, and what unfolded before him was unlike anything he had encountered before.

Suspended in the silence of the mist was a secret world shaped like the figure eight, an ancient world dying below, and a newborn realm rising above it, connected by a thread of luminous energy like a divine umbilical cord. The sight alone was enough to make even a god pause.

Below lay the corpse of the old world — a realm long dead. Its lands were gray and hollow, its skies dimmed into eternal dusk.

Even its core formulas and rule structures, had decayed into brittle remnants, drifting like ash through the void. Yet from those ashes, Cillian could still feel the power that once was.

"A medium-tier divine world," he murmured.

Even now, after all this time, fragments of its brilliance lingered. By observing the residual energy patterns, the ruined laws and faint echoes of divine circulation, he could tell what level of order this world had once sustained.

The strength of any realm could be measured by the number and complexity of rules it could host, by how perfect its law structure was, and by how many core formulas it could bear without collapsing. This one had clearly reached impressive heights before succumbing to entropy.

But its death had meaning.

Because above its corpse, life had returned.

The upper half of the "8", the new world, had already begun to drain the old world's remains, feeding on its divine marrow to forge a new cycle of creation. Its landscapes glowed faintly with unrefined potential, the outlines of rivers and mountains still shifting between states. From its depths, new creatures were emerging, pale, half-formed things woven from raw rule fragments.

Cillian stared, the corner of his mouth lifting. "Interesting."

Even as the creator of the Endless Abyss, as someone who had witnessed countless realms crumble into nothingness, he had never seen one reborn so vividly, devouring its own predecessor like a phoenix feeding on its own ash.

He watched for a while longer.

Then his expression hardened. "But I didn't come here to observe this."

The divine fire within him flared, and a deep hum rolled through the void. Behind him, a vast vortex of black and crimson light began to unfurl, the gateway of the Endless Abyss. From within, a chorus began to echo: low, broken notes like the mourning of the living and the dead, the Song of the Abyss materialized.

"The abyssal resonance… it's grown stronger again," Cillian murmured, his eyes closing for a moment. "Even the song of despair is becoming real."

Then his body dissolved into dark mist, vanishing into the vortex.

When he opened his eyes again, he was seated on the throne at the bottom of the Endless Abyss. This time, he made no attempt to analyze the crystal wall or extract the world's rules directly.

It was time to experiment.

He wanted to see if the Demon Princes, the elite warlords he had bred from the Abyss' deepest layers, could invade and conquer a world on their own.

The Mist Realm was mutating, the clock was ticking, but there was still time for a test.

If his princes succeeded, it would prove their independence. If not, they would be recalled and reshaped.

Cillian's thoughts stirred across the void, and the entire Abyss responded.

A tremor rippled through the endless darkness, awakening countless eyes that glowed with hunger and madness. When they sensed their creator's call, they turned as one toward the throne below.

Moments later, rifts opened one after another. Through each portal stepped a Demon Prince, dozens of them, twistedand magnificent in their horror. Their appearances varied wildly, some wrapped in iron and flame, others robed in shadow or stitched flesh.

Yet still each one radiated malice and reverence alike.

"Lord…"

"Lord…"

"Lord…"

Their voices were deep, guttural, resonating through the abyssal halls.

Cillian's eyes opened, twin flames of black and red. He did not waste words.

"You will invade a new world."

The moment those words fell,a surge of excitement rippled through the crowd of princes. For beings born of torment, war was ecstasy.

Cillian continued coldly. "During the invasion, you will face three barriers, the crystal walls of the plane, the distortion of unfamiliar laws, and the resistance of countless enemies. You will receive no aid from above."

The hall fell still.

"Mirethane, Osiris, and Zeke will not intervene. The Mother, Laktovia, and Damon will not take part either. You will rely solely on your own legions and territory. The rest of the Abyss will remain silent."

His tone sharpened. "This war has a time limit. When it ends, half of you will be stripped of your titles and replaced by those who prove more valuable."

He rose from his throne.

"The title of Demon Prince is not a throne. It is a privilege, one which can and will be

lost to weakness."

"Now go," Cillian commanded. "Gather your armies."

One by one, the princes vanished, their portals collapsing behind them like dying stars.

Cillian remained seated on the throne, eyes half-lidded, observing the spread of his will through the layers of the Abyss. Each portal that opened in the void above corresponded to a Prince's march, their armies forming from shadow and flame..

In his view, this invasion was nothing more than a test, the simplest proof of concept.

Each prince should be capable of invading a world alone. To send them together was almost mercy.

"If even this they fail," he murmured, "then they have no reason to exist."

He leaned back on the throne as the first tendrils of war began to unfurl.

From the heart of the Endless Abyss, dozens of colossal tentacles of black light reached outward, wrapping around the twin-layered world.

And Upon each tendril marched an army, legions of demons screaming hymns of the abyss.

Their descent marked the beginning of the First Demon Prince Invasion.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.