Chapter 71: Cosmic Genesis

A sharp, violent pulse of deep violet light erupted from her hand, crackling through the air like dark electricity and striking Ren directly between the eyes.

"AAAAAAARGH!"

Ren screamed out in unadulterated agony as the dark energy surged into his mind, tearing through his suppressed memories like a physical blade.

The world shattered into a billion glittering shards. His physical form seemed to dissolve into nothingness as his consciousness was yanked backward through the corridors of space and time. The agony vanished instantly, replaced by an eerie, weightless silence that resonated through the depths of his soul.

Ren opened his eyes, but he was no longer standing within the ruined coliseum.

He was floating in the cold, silent void of deep space. Beneath his feet, hyper-dense star clusters blazed like pockets of liquid diamond against an endless ocean of pitch-black ink. Cosmic dust swept past him in vibrant nebula streams of sapphire and amethyst, expanding across light-years in real time.

He rotated his body, looking at his own hands. They were translucent, shimmering with a faint spectral glow.

"What... where am I?" Ren murmured, his voice producing no sound, yet echoing clearly within his mind.

Before he could process the sheer scale of the cosmos around him, the void flared with a suffocating, hyper-dense aura. The starfields dimmed as two incomprehensible forces manifested a short distance away.

Ren turned his head slowly, his eyes wide with astonishment.

Floating at the edge of a dying solar system was an entity cloaked in absolute darkness—a towering, formless silhouette of void matter, its surface flickering with unstable, high-frequency kinetic static. Facing this abyssal shape stood a figure suspended in the void.

Ren’s breath hitched in his chest.

The figure wore sweeping obsidian robes lined with dark violet trim, a heavy, flawless purple crystal hovering directly before his collarbone. His countenance was cold, vacant, and utterly terrifying in its absolute apathy—yet the face was unmistakably his own.

’That’s... me?’ Ren thought, his mind struggling to comprehend the vision. ’No... that’s the unsegmented form of the Dark God, Nyx.’

"Dark Lord Nyx," a deep, booming voice echoed from the void silhouette, vibrating through the fabric of space itself. "I require your divine intervention to eradicate Planet Novaris-2."

Ren drifted closer, keeping his ethereal form suspended behind a floating asteroid field to observe the exchange.

Nyx didn’t turn his head. His vacant purple eyes remained fixed on the vast expanse of the galaxy before him, his posture completely unyielding.

"Celestial Judgment," Nyx spoke, his voice carrying a freezing, absolute authority that made the surrounding space warp. "I crafted your core with planetary-destruction authorities. I granted you advanced tactical schematics capable of tearing solar orbits from their gravitational anchors. And yet, you stand before me, begging like a mortal servant."

The void silhouette—Celestial Judgment—lowered its colossal head into a gesture of deep, bitter shame. "Dark Lord... it is not a matter of military insufficiency. Planet Novaris-2 has been shattered to cosmic dust on multiple occasions. Yet, through an anomalous temporal paradox, the planet continuously restores itself to its prime state."

Nyx’s brow creased into a tight, sharp line.

Hiding behind the floating stone debris, Ren stroked his chin, his mental faculties working at maximum speed to process the flood of information.

’Novaris-2...?’ Ren analyzed, his eyes darting between the two cosmic entities. ’Are there other human civilizations existing across the cosmos beyond Earth and Lumiris?’

Back when he was still Elian, living a mundane life on Earth, the concept of extraterrestrial life was merely a theoretical topic found in science fiction novels. Transmigrating into this fantasy realm had shattered his narrow perspective, but hearing of a far-flung, hyper-advanced human world named Novaris-2 brought a fresh wave of shock to his system.

Ren listened intently as the conversation continued to unfold.

"Elaborate," Nyx commanded, his tone dropping into a dangerous, low register.

"Dark Lord," Celestial Judgment lowered its voice, the dark static around its form pulsing nervously. "We must act swiftly. The human population on Novaris-2 is accelerating its biological and magical evolution at an exponential rate. If left unchecked, their collective combat threshold will breach the divine realm, leading to an inevitable rebellion against the supreme pantheon."

Ren’s pupils dilated. ’The humans of Novaris-2 are that powerful? How can a mortal race survive planetary annihilation and continuously reset their own timeline?’

"A temporal paradox..." Nyx mused, his cold eyes narrowing. "You believe their star system is anchored within an artificial time loop?"

"Precisely," Celestial Judgment affirmed, bowing lower. "Through centuries of hidden surveillance, I have deduced the root origin of this temporal anomaly. To permanently sever the future of Novaris-2, we must first enact absolute destruction upon Planet Lumiris."

Ren’s jaw locked up. *Lumiris?!*

"Explain your logic," Nyx demanded, his tone remaining cold and detached. "Why must I personally intervene to crush Lumiris? Can your planetary strike forces not handle a single terrestrial world?"

"I have monitored their historical lineage for millennia," Celestial Judgment revealed, its voice laced with deep caution. "The human civilization currently thriving on Novaris-2 consists entirely of survivors who escaped the initial cataclysm of Planet Lumiris."

The cosmic revelation struck Ren like a physical strike to his chest.

The pieces of the grand puzzle began locking together with terrifying clarity. The timeline was not linear—it was a cyclical wheel driven by desperation. The future of Lumiris was absolute total destruction. Yet, somehow, a surviving fragment of humanity had managed to escape the apocalypse, migrating across the void to settle on Novaris-2. There, they evolved, built their power, and manipulated time itself to preserve their existence against the dark gods who sought their extinction.

’Lumiris and Novaris-2 are bound together by an unbroken chain of causality,’ Ren realized, his chest heaving as the weight of the lore settled in his mind. ’As long as Lumiris falls, the refugees will always flee to Novaris-2 and restart the cycle. To stop them, Celestial Judgment wants to erase Lumiris before the escape can ever take place.’

"What is your proposed course of action, Celestial Judgment?" Nyx asked, his cold gaze piercing the void.

"We must identify the entity responsible for facilitating the human evacuation from Lumiris to Novaris-2," Celestial Judgment advised. "My authority is strictly bound to planetary demolition. I lack the divine perception required to trace subtle temporal signatures across mortal populations."

Nyx fell silent, his vacant eyes staring into the dark expanse of space as he pondered the dilemma.

"Very well," Nyx declared, turning his back on the void entity. "If a mortal has managed to outmaneuver the divine order, then I shall personally descend to Lumiris to purge this architect from existence."

Ren held his breath. ’The architect...? Who could possibly possess the power to transport an entire population across galaxies during a planetary collapse?’

"However," Nyx added smoothly, "to slip past the planetary barrier without triggering the localized temporal alarms, I must divide my divine soul into two distinct vessels."

Celestial Judgment raised its head in shock. "Divide your divinity into two...?"

Nyx ignored the void entity’s concern, extending both hands into the air as dark violet energy began to condense around his chest with deafening, atmospheric pressure.

"I shall reincarnate into the mortal realm as twin entities—one male, one female," Nyx proclaimed, his voice echoing across the galaxy like thunder. "Though their mortal minds may not initially remember their true divinity, my core authority will be split fifty-fifty between them. In time, my influence will guide them toward their true objective."

Nyx glanced back over his shoulder, his cold violet eyes gleaming with absolute authority. "The male shall be named Ren Celestial... and the female, Velista Celestial."

Ren’s mind went completely blank. His breath caught in his throat as a violent shudder ran through his ethereal body.

’The vessel I inhabit... Ren Celestial... is the literal reincarnation of the Dark God Nyx!’

"Desolation is at hand," Nyx issued his final command to the void entity. "Rain down the violet meteors upon Lumiris. Infect their local deities with the dark contagion, drag their celestial guardians into madness, and plunge the continent into absolute chaos."

Celestial Judgment bowed deeply, its form dissolving into black smoke as it departed to execute the divine decree.

Ren stood frozen in space, his mind reeling from the horror of what he had just witnessed. ’The purple meteors that destroyed ancient civilizations... the corrupted gods... the origin of the Aberrant plague... it was all engineered by Nyx from the very beginning!’

Before he could process the thought further, Nyx let out a low, echoing roar.

His body erupted into a blinding sphere of deep violet energy. With a violent crackling sound, the massive sphere cleaved down the middle, splitting into two distinct, high-velocity streaks of purple light that tore through the void at warp speed, leaving Celestial Judgment’s empty realm far behind.

WOOSH!

In an instant, the cosmic void vanished, and Ren’s vision shifted violently once again.

He found himself standing atop a high stone balcony in the heart of an ancient, breathtaking metropolis.

Ren’s eyes widened in sheer awe.

Sprawling across the horizon as far as the eye could see was a magnificent, hyper-advanced magic-tech civilization. Towering spires of white marble and polished gold pierced the clouds, connected by soaring archways and floating transit platforms. Thousands of citizens dressed in elegant, high-grade robes walked the sunlit avenues below, their faces bright and full of life. There were no defensive walls, no barricades, no fear—this was the golden age of Lumiris, long before the sky fell.

Suddenly, the bright blue sky turned a deep, unnatural shade of crimson.

The peaceful atmosphere vanished in a single breath. Sirens wailed across the golden towers as panic erupted in the streets below. People screamed, trampling over one another as they fled in pure terror.

Ren looked up at the sky, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

Tearing through the upper atmosphere was a colossal, burning meteor enveloped in deep violet flames—a cosmic projectile of pure destruction, flanked by hundreds of smaller atmospheric warheads.

The planetary guardian gods of Lumiris—glowing entities of pure divine light—soared into the heavens, combining their magical barriers to form a multi-layered golden shield across the sky.

They fought with everything they had, unleashing catastrophic elemental arrays to deflect the incoming threat. But it was completely futile. The violet meteor punched through their divine barriers like thin glass, crushing the guardian gods in a blinding flash of kinetic heat.

BOOM!

The meteor slammed into the center of the continent.

A shockwave of sheer destruction rolled across the land like a tsunami of fire and stone. Golden spires collapsed like toothpicks, mountain ranges were pulverized in milliseconds, and the roaring ocean surged over the burning land, drowning entire kingdoms beneath thousands of tons of displacement water.

Ren stood on the balcony, trembling uncontrollably as the wall of fire and pressure swept directly over his form, erasing the golden age of Lumiris from the surface of the world in a matter of seconds.

As the apocalyptic fire washed over his perception, a single, burning question burned in his mind:

’If Nyx designed this total extinction... how did the purple crystal end up on Earth? And who brought my soul from Earth into this broken world to inherit the body of Ren Celestial...?’