DEMON SOVEREIGN'S REIGN

The winds of the west were dead things.

Dry, howling, empty of life, they carried no scent of earth or blood—only the scent of time itself, rotted and forgotten.

Liu Shen stood atop a blackened ridge, eyes fixed on the horizon. Behind him, the core team of the Sect of Shadows gathered: Yu Meixing, Lei Qing, Elder Qin, and a dozen elite shadow disciples.

Before them stretched a wasteland of petrified bone-trees and crumbling chasms. The sky here was not blue, but a cracked mosaic of gray and violet clouds—the edge of the Withered Abyss.

"Long ago," Liu Shen murmured, "before even the heavens ruled the mortal plane… a god died here."

The wind shrieked like a grieving mother.

Yu Meixing adjusted her cloak. "You said this god was buried beneath the abyss."

"No," Liu Shen replied. "It was devoured by the abyss. What remains is not buried—but chained."

Lei Qing frowned. "And we're here to wake it up?"

Liu Shen gave her a sideways glance. "We're here to steal from its memory."

---

Nightfall – Encampment at the Abyssal Edge

Their first campfire flickered beneath a dome of protective seals. Elder Qin muttered ancient incantations to repel soul-wither.

The younger disciples kept glancing into the darkness.

"Keep your fear tight," Meixing warned them. "The shadows here listen."

Suddenly, a cry rang out.

"Elder! One of the disciples—he's gone!"

They found only a black smear where the boy once stood, as if erased from the world.

Lei Qing knelt beside it. "No aura left behind. No blood. No soul echo."

"Time eats fast here," Liu Shen muttered. "We're close."

---

Later That Night

Liu Shen wandered beyond the camp, alone.

The Abyss whispered to him.

Memories flickered across the landscape—visions of golden palaces, shattered divine artifacts, and a familiar voice.

> "You abandoned me."

He turned.

A figure cloaked in tattered red stood amid the bones—a mirror of himself, eyes hollow, voice brittle.

> "You left me to die at the Peak of Oblivion."

Liu Shen stepped forward. "You're not real."

> "I was. I'm what remains of your past that even death refused to keep."

A hand reached for him—burned, broken.

> "We were supposed to ascend together."

Then the figure disintegrated into ash.

Liu Shen stood still.

"I came back for a reason," he said to the silence. "And it wasn't to apologize."

Behind him, the sky cracked.

A massive golden arm erupted from the ground—chains wrapped around it like prison vines.

The Corpse of the God had stirred.

---

The Following Morning

The group assembled before the rift.

It was a pit so wide it seemed to swallow sound. Within, they could see layers of divine bone structures, veined with silver fire and etched with archaic seals.

Elder Qin fell to his knees. "This… This is not just a corpse—it's a sealed reality."

Liu Shen smiled faintly.

"It was once a god who defied the Celestials. The heavens killed it. But even they couldn't destroy its truth. So they locked it away."

He stepped forward.

"Let's break in."

---

Inside the Corpse-Temple

They descended carefully through layers of godbone and decayed reality.

Each level pulsed with forgotten divinity.

"Careful," Liu Shen warned. "This isn't just death. This is frozen rebellion."

They passed murals depicting a god of dusk—a towering being wielding a scythe of starlight, battling heavenly armies across a shattered firmament.

Meixing read the inscriptions aloud.

> "He who dared burn the Book of Ascension… was sentenced to eternal silence."

Lei Qing ran a hand over the mural. "He looks like…"

"Like a Sovereign," Liu Shen finished. "Because he was."

---

At the Heart of the Temple

A divine heart still beat—slow, seismic, suspended in crystal stasis.

Floating before it was a Memory Core—a shard of the god's final thoughts, wrapped in soulsteel.

Liu Shen reached out.

Meixing gripped his wrist. "Are you sure? This might infect your mind."

He looked at her, and in that moment, the fire in his gaze wasn't demonic—it was human.

"I need to know how he resisted. How he broke fate."

She let go.

He touched the core.

---

Vision – The Final Stand of the Dusk God

Screams of light.

The Dusk God stood against seven Celestials, body broken, heart pierced. But he did not fall.

Instead, he roared—and rewrote a law of fate mid-battle.

> "Even the heavens bleed!"

A celestial screamed as its wings were torn.

But the Dusk God paid the price.

His soul was split and scattered.

His truth sealed beneath time.

---

Back in the Present

Liu Shen staggered back, eyes bleeding black fire.

"He didn't win," he whispered, "but he made them bleed. He proved it could be done."

Elder Qin was weeping. "His path… It wasn't cultivation—it was defiance woven into existence."

Liu Shen turned.

"This is what we'll forge—a system that doesn't rely on heavenly approval. A Sovereign's Path free of fate."

Meixing knelt beside him, steadying him.

"And the heavens?"

He grinned.

"They'll learn to kneel."