Lord of the void realm

The forest was quiet again.

Smoke still drifted from the crater where the Sky Messenger had fallen, her broken body now nothing but scattered fragments. Raizen didn't look back.

He walked deeper into the ruins, through shattered stone halls and silent corridors where echoes hadn't lived in years.

The underground vault was bigger than it seemed from above.

Walls carved with strange symbols. Long-dead bones. Broken weapons too old to recognize.

But Raizen wasn't here for treasure.

He felt something call to him.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't glowing. It was buried—like the heartbeat of something that should've stayed forgotten.

He found the door behind a collapsed statue. It was sealed with ancient spatial locks, most of them broken, one still faintly glowing.

Raizen didn't hesitate.

He pressed a hand against the stone. The void within him shifted—just enough to slide through the last barrier without alerting anything above.

The wall dissolved, and the room opened before him.

Circular. Silent. Clean.

At the center stood a platform lined with seven dull crystals. Not spirit stones. Not beast cores. Something... else.

The lines connecting them formed a pattern—not a formation for attack or defense. Not for teleportation.

Something more complex.

Raizen stepped in.

A memory flickered in the room, faint and unfinished. Light danced on the walls—images of failed creations, energy overloads, broken vessels.

Someone had tried to build something here.

But they couldn't control it.

Raizen stood in silence, then placed his palm gently on one of the crystals. It didn't react at first. Then a pulse, faint and soft, buzzed through the lines and into the floor.

The void inside him answered—just enough to stabilize the fading current.

One crystal flickered.

Then went dark.

Raizen watched it without emotion.

He wasn't ready.

Not yet.

But he'd seen enough to understand what this place could become. It wasn't a weapon. Not directly.

It was a foundation.

One day, when his strength allowed it, when the world finally stopped watching the surface and forgot to look beneath the dirt… he'd return.

And when he did, this forgotten ruin would become something else entirely.

A place where the impossible would be built again.

Raizen turned and left without a word.

He folded the space behind him, sealing the room completely. Not with spiritual energy. Not with formation stones.

With absence.

To anyone else, the room would no longer exist.

---

Far away, five cloaked figures stood at the edge of a sky realm.

One stared down toward the mortal world.

"He's hiding something," the tallest said.

"But what?" another asked. "The messenger didn't last ten seconds. She couldn't see anything."

The third figure spoke coldly. "That place… something below it pulsed. That's all we know."

"We don't need to know," the leader replied.

"We just need to stop it before it grows."