CHAPTER 18 - THE CREATOR

The world had disappeared.

Not an explosion. Not a collapse. Just... absence. A pure subtraction. As if someone had erased the entire page from the book, not just the words. Everything had been swallowed, diluted, absorbed by a void deeper than silence.

I wasn't falling. I wasn't floating either. I was there, suspended in a kind of primitive, raw existence. Without weight. Without body. Without skin. A lone consciousness, reduced to its barest pulse.

Nothing was visible. Not even darkness. It wasn't black. It wasn't white. It wasn't. And that's what terrified me the most. The fact of feeling something... when there was nothing.

My last image was the Heart. I had touched it. I had purified it. At least... I believed I had.

And then?

The world had split. The system had glitched.

Then: nothing. No voice. No system. Not even Sae.

I reached out with my mind — a foolish reflex of the living. But there was no air. No waves. Even my own thoughts seemed to slow down, as if the void were trying to absorb them.

Then, something vibrated.

A beat. Very distant. Very faint. Like an echo without a source. Or rather, a pre-echo: the kind of vibration you feel before a sound, in your ribcage. Not in your ears.

The void... contracted. Literally.

I felt it tighten. Fold. Stretch around me like a giant muscle that had suddenly become aware of my existence. I was no longer in nothing. I was being targeted by nothing.

That's when it appeared.

Not a silhouette. Not a light.

First, it was a shiver. A compression of my perception. As if a presence was being injected into my skull, drop by drop, from the inside. Then a shape took form. Slowly. Like a thought being forced into birth.

A humanoid. White. Smooth. Featureless. Sexless. Mouthless. But present.

A voice reached me. Not through the air — there was none. Not through my eardrums — they were gone.

It imposed itself inside. A sentence. A thought. An injunction branded into my consciousness like a red-hot iron.

"You broke the cycle."

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

"And you unbalanced the world."

The entire void pulsed once.

Around me, nothing had changed. But inside? Something had just begun.

The white form stood there. Still perfectly neutral.

No eyes. No mouth. And yet, I felt it looking at me. Not with sight, but with intent. The feeling of being naked before an ancient will. As if I bore, carved into my skin, a guilt I hadn't yet understood.

"You seek to understand," whispered the voice in my head.

"You think the world is summed up by your suffering. Your betrayal. Your sex."

I clenched my teeth. I didn't know if I could still speak. I didn't even know if I still had a tongue. But in that formless darkness, my anger remained intact.

"You're not the first to desire."

The humanoid slowly raised a hand — or rather, a white protrusion, barely sculpted. And the void split.

One by one, three symbols appeared around us. Hanging in the void. Floating.

They weren't written. Not drawn. They simply were. Like living runes. Laws in raw form.

"I designed three systems. Three pillars. Three keys."

The first symbol pulsed. A golden, aggressive light reverberated in the void.

"The Hero System."

"A code of light, of growing power. Designed to protect. To inspire."

Then... a screeching noise. A static hiss. The symbol glitched for a moment, and its full name was lost in a mental cacophony.

I recoiled, teeth clenched. A dull migraine hit me.

"You are not authorized," the voice simply said.

The second symbol spun on itself. Dark red. Dense.

"The Demon King System."

"Meant as a counterbalance. Rooted in darkness, in individual sovereignty, in the power of rejection."

Same phenomenon. The final word slipped from me. The void crackled again, as if my consciousness rejected access.

"You are not meant to see them. Not even name them."

The third symbol appeared, smaller. Unstable. Vibrating. Its glow was different. Damp. Visceral. A... carnal light.

"The third did not exist."

The voice turned almost amused.

"It was only a fantasy. An embryonic program I let... grow."

The Lust System symbol pulsed once. Then again. And on the third pulse, it tore the void around it. Fragments fell, like dead skin.

"A system of pleasure. Of tension. Of collective arousal."

Silence fell again, but this time it had form. A scent. Something sticky, like the memory of sweat on a stranger's skin.

"This system... was not ready."

I didn't move. But deep inside, I knew what was coming. And I was afraid of what I was about to hear.

The symbol kept pulsing.

Not like light. Not like a spell. But like a body. It vibrated with an almost sexual rhythm — a low, insistent, wet beat. Each wave brushed the inside of my chest, like a breath that wanted to go deeper than my lungs.

I swallowed. Or at least, it felt like I did.

The Creator — or whatever it was — stayed silent for a moment. Then spoke, without raising its tone. It never needed to shout.

"It was too early. This system was not meant for this era."

Its body shifted again. It took the form of a naked woman, entirely white, with heavy, smooth breasts, faceless, with no visible sex. Just... a sensuality diffused by posture alone. An abstract perfection. Inhuman.

"One of my former servants, a priestess lost in her desires, initiated the implantation. Without my consent."

I understood. The ritual. The betrayal. The resurrection. It all traced back to her. To her love. Or her madness.

"And the Lust System took root."

The symbol began to melt. Literally.

Drops of viscous energy fell into the void. They didn't vanish. They burrowed. Slowly. Like acidic fluid, divine cum that would dissolve the foundations of the world.

"The world wasn't ready. The system overflowed. It infected. Bodies, places, desires."

I saw Darnem again. Its slick corridors. Its panting walls. Its organic traps. Its moaning voices.

"It was never meant to exist this way."

"You were just a vessel."

I almost screamed. But my mouth didn't exist.

"I reset the world."

The word made the entire void tremble.

"Darnem no longer exists. Not in that form. It has returned to its original state."

A silence. This time, heavy. Terrible.

"But you, Sora, still carry the system. And I can't remove it."

The void briefly opened beneath me. I felt myself fall for a split second. Just long enough to understand:I was the anomaly.

"And when a system can't be balanced... it seeks a counterpart."

My breath froze.

"The Lust System duplicated. To survive. To adjust."

Another beat.

"It implanted itself in another being. In this generation. In this loop."

I wanted to scream, protest, ask who. But already, the Creator was laughing.

A slow laugh. Choppy. Glitched. A laugh of corrupted code that shook even the void.

And I understood, without it needing to say.

— Ah... ahah... aH–gGRRhh–ahhh... ahahAhAHAH... ! ...RRRkhhh ! hhhahHah—ghhh...

The world was going to send me... against him.

The laughter died. Slowly. Like an engine still running on empty, by reflex, even though everything was already dead.

Then silence.

But it wasn't the same silence anymore. This silence... waited.

The Creator took on a more stable form again. Neither man nor woman. Neither light nor matter. An ambiguous silhouette, standing in the void like a faceless judge.

"He has been named Hero."

"He is Aedan."

"And now... he carries two systems."

I didn't react. I couldn't. Everything I knew... had just collapsed.

"Two codes. Two wills. Two cosmic mechanisms... fused in a single mind."

The sentence fell like a death knell.

"This has never happened. It is never supposed to happen."

It slid slowly through the void, still without emitting a breath.

"The Hero System. And now... the Lust System. Rewritten. Adapted. Fused."

A distant rumble vibrated the space around us. As if the world, even reset, rejected the idea.

"He has become a core of instability. An aberration in armor."

I felt a shiver pass through me. Not of fear. Of awareness.

"I am the Creator. And I obey the law of balance."

It stopped. Stared at me. In a way even a god shouldn't be able to.

"That's why I'm speaking to you, Sora."

"You are the counterweight. The only one."

"You possess only one system. But you are aware. You have already died. Already returned. Already bonded."

"And if I didn't warn you... the world would collapse without even realizing it."

I remained silent. But inside, everything was boiling.

"You will be sent elsewhere. Far. Where your system will not harm the immediate balance."

"The Demonic Continent."

A forgotten land. Wild. Monstrous. But... free.

"There, you will build. You will corrupt. You will fight."

A red fragment was born before me.

"And you will not be alone."

"Sae will be reborn at your side. By the bond. By the mark. By the soul."

A silence stretched. Then:

"You must create your own faction. Your own power. Because he, Sora... he is building too."

"He is worshipped. Followed. Protected."

"And now, he has no limits."

I raised my head. Even without a body.

"You are chaos. He is perverted order."

"And the clash is inevitable."

"Prepare yourself."

One last beat passed through the void. Deeper. Lower. Like a war drum struck by a divine hand.

Then everything began to vibrate. Not just around me — inside me.

The Lust System reacted.

[SYSTEM // Soul Link: Active][SYSTEM // Partial Rewrite: Complete]

[SYSTEM // Anchor Point: Detected][

SYSTEM // Transfer in progress...]

I felt my thoughts collapse. One by one. As if my entire being were being dismantled and rebuilt, raw, line by line.

"You are going to be reborn, Sora," whispered the voice of the Creator. "And this time, history will give you no rest."

A red flash swallowed me.

I didn't have time to scream.

Only to fall.

Into a new world. Into a new body. With war etched into my blood.