[Soul Integrity at 2%... Assimilation failure imminent. Commencing soul-disintegration protocol...]

The system's final verdict was cold and impersonal, the voice of a machine reporting a minor error before deletion. Edward felt the last of himself coming undone. The "I" at the center of his being, the core of his consciousness, was fraying like old rope. His name, his face, the feel of a sword in his hand—all were being sanded away by the cosmic storm of the avatar's power. He was a story being erased, a candle flame about to be snuffed out by an indifferent universe.

The billion voices of the Oblivion Core swirled around the last remaining piece of his identity. It was a single, fragile memory: Sarah, standing in the lamplight of their small room, a gentle, trusting smile on her face. It was the memory he had refused to sell to the abyss. It was the only thing left of Edward Ross.

The system, in its cold, orderly process of erasure, moved to take that final piece. The storm of divine energy reached for that tiny, warm ember.

And for the first time, something in the universe pushed back.

It was not a surge of power. It was not a hidden skill or a secret bloodline. It was something far more fundamental. Deep within the dissolving wreckage of his soul, a single, tiny point of light ignited. It was not a raging fire, but a point of absolute, unyielding stillness in the heart of the hurricane. It was the core of his being, the part of him that was not a class or a rank, but simply him. It was the part that had made choices.

This was the Sovereign's Spark.

It was the spark that had driven a Rankless, powerless boy to shove a stranger to safety, taking a goblin's spear through the heart without a moment's hesitation. It was the will that had clawed its way through the Howling Abyss, refusing to die when the system demanded it. It was the resolve that had faced down armies, assassins, and monsters, not for glory, but to protect the few people he called his own. It was the defiance that had looked a creature of the abyss in its non-existent face and refused its tempting offer, choosing a memory over survival.

The Oblivion Core could grant power, it could inflict pain, and it could issue commands. But it could not comprehend the sheer, stubborn force of a human soul that had made a choice and refused to let it go.

The Spark was not a gift from the system. It was a weapon forged in defiance of it. And as the divine energy tried to erase his last, most precious memory, the Spark roared a single, silent word into the chaos:

NO.

The effect was not an explosion. It was a shift in the very nature of reality within him. The dynamic of the flood reversed. He was no longer a man trying to hold back a tidal wave. He had become the dam, and he was now seizing control of the river.

The billion screaming voices of the Core suddenly faltered. Their chaotic rage met the immovable object of his will and broke against it. He pushed his own consciousness, his own identity, back against the tide. The voices that had tried to overwrite him were now silenced, bent, and broken by the sheer force of his refusal to die. The storm did not cease; it was subjugated.

The divine, golden energy that was tearing him apart stopped its assault. It was still pouring into him, an endless torrent of power, but it was no longer dissolving him. He was grabbing it, wrestling it, forcing it to obey. His own dark, abyssal nature, born of the souls he had devoured, wrapped around the divine light, not to extinguish it, but to consume it, to make it his own. The golden light was tainted, twisted, reforged into something new. It was no longer the light of a machine-god. It was the light of a sovereign will.

His HUD, the system's window into his soul, began to flicker and glitch, unable to process what was happening.

[Soul Integrity… ERROR. Recalibrating…]

[Host is… ERROR. Redefining parameters…]

[Class: Soul Reaper… ANOMALY DETECTED.]

The words on his screen dissolved into a frantic scramble of corrupted code and error messages. The system was having a breakdown. It was trying to categorize something that, by its own rules, should not exist. A mortal soul was not just resisting a divine entity; it was consuming it, dominating it, and rewriting its own code from the inside out.

Finally, the frantic scrolling stopped. The old text faded, replaced by new words that burned with a quiet, terrifying authority.

[Class: ??? (Sovereign Override)]

In the physical world, the storm of golden light around Edward abruptly went calm. He stopped falling. He simply hung in the air, a few feet above the altar, bathed in a soft, steady glow that was neither holy nor demonic, but something entirely his own.

The battle below had reached its fever pitch. Seraphina, her face grim with determination, had just disarmed the High Priest, her rapier at his throat. Fenris and Selene, fighting back-to-back, were surrounded, their bodies bruised and bleeding, but still holding the line against the last of the elite cultists.

Then, everything stopped.

Every person in the cavern, friend and foe alike, froze as they felt the shift in the air. The oppressive, divine pressure from the rift was gone. They all looked up.

Edward floated in the air, his body no longer cracking with light. He was whole. He slowly lowered himself back to the surface of the altar, his feet touching down without a sound. He raised his head, and his eyes opened. They were no longer the eyes of a feral predator or a haunted man. They glowed with a calm, absolute, and terrifying power. It was the gaze of a king who had just conquered a god.

He looked at the gaping, roaring rift in the sky, the wound in the world that was still trying to birth monsters into their reality. He showed no emotion. No anger, no strain. He simply raised his right hand.

The roaring of the rift stopped. The swirling vortex of blackness froze mid-motion, as if the moment itself had been turned to ice. The entire cavern was plunged into a dead, unnatural silence.

With a slow, deliberate motion, Edward clenched his raised hand into a fist.

The rift did not close. It did not seal. It shattered.

Like a pane of black glass struck by a hammer, the gaping wound in reality broke apart into a million silent, glittering shards of darkness. The shards hung in the air for a single, breathless moment, then simply faded away into nothing, leaving behind only the cold, stone ceiling of the cavern.

The battle was over. The god was devoured. The door to the abyss was broken.

The High Priest, disarmed and defeated, stared up at the man on the altar, his body trembling uncontrollably. The serene, golden mask he wore now seemed like a grotesque mockery. All his faith, all his conviction, all his belief in the supreme power of the Core had been shattered in a single, impossible moment. He was staring at a being that had consumed the very divine essence he worshipped.

"What…" the High Priest stammered, his voice a choked, horrified whisper that barely carried in the sudden silence. He was not speaking to a man. He was not speaking to a monster. He was speaking to an impossibility.

"What… what are you?"

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