The Glorious Evolution

He fought through the pull and his shattered body, trying to ignite the jets again, trying to push back... but nothing worked.

The Hungering Dark was absolute... Every force he used was swallowed like it never existed.

Desperate, he looked around and spotted a massive meteor tumbling through the chaos... He forced himself toward it, slamming onto its surface hard enough to crack it. He coughed another mouthful of blood, but he toughed through it and summoned his staff.

He held it with his shaking hands and drove it deep into the rock... then he used his aetheric chains to bind himself and the staff tightly to the meteor.

But now... all he could do was watch helplessly as the spatial tear pulled more and more of the world into itself... rubble, cities, even the horizon.

This was a live viewership of a planet getting devoured... only a very few had lived the experience and lived to tell the tale.

But Levi didn’t care about any of this... all he wanted was his brother and friends to be safe, but not even delusion was enough to make him believe...

The Titan’s soft voice came through to confirm his worst fears...

”...Levi. There’s no way out of a Dominion... Once it’s opened, no one escapes unless the Emperor allows it or someone stronger than he brute forces it... You should either use the dimensional gate to leave this place quickly, or at least use Umbral Crown to survive the corruption.”

Even Ash’Kral sighed, his voice faint. ”I’m sorry.”

Levi didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His heart felt hollow... His flames dimmed against his will and were replaced with shadowy tendrils, covering his entire form.

Arthur... Shia... Nurah... Jojo... Jasmine...

His head remained low... incapable of looking in the direction of the spatial tear any more... he knew that nothing he could do was going to save them.

The moment a Dominion was used, only another Dominion could break it apart or force an entry... not even his Divine Forms would make a difference when he couldn’t summon his own Dominion.

In simpler terms... they were trapped inside until the mad Emperor was done with them. Levi knew this, too, as much as he hated to accept it.

Now...

The only thing he was left feeling was a heavy sense of guilt in his heart... heavier than the pull around him. It was slow, crushing, suffocating, leaving him breathless.

The only thoughts roaming through his mind at the moment were negative ones.

They wouldn’t have touched the Sun Amulet if I were there... they knew better... They always waited for me before acting... They wouldn’t risk it without me... they wouldn’t...

His breathing turned ragged, each breath taken felt like a dagger stabbing his chest... both physically and metaphorically.

’So it’s me... I killed them.’ His grip on the staff tightened until his knuckles turned white. ’If I hadn’t tried to play the hero, if I had just listened to Shia and Nurah, none of this would’ve happened... They’d be alive, my little brother... sob, not him too... why, just why...’

He bit his lip until blood ran down his chin, mixing in with the blood from before...

’I wanted to be kind, like how my mom raised me... I wanted to prove I wasn’t a monster like them... And now... my kindness killed them.’

If he had eyes... they would be shedding tears while looking as empty as the bottom of the Hungering Dark.

Although Levi wanted to kill the Leviathan for its materials, his decision was still made with the priority of helping the other two teams... if he had simply turned a blind eye and left them to handle their own business, he wouldn’t have bothered with the Leviathan and would have stuck with his team.

It was the best decision.

It was the smartest decision.

It was the rational decision.

And yet... he chose to be nice.

Then, Ash’Kral’s infamous quote echoed in his mind... words he once dismissed as nothing more than cold cynicism.

”Kindness is Death.”

Levi closed his trembling lips.

Now, he finally understood what that meant... experiencing it firsthand.

With each decision made... consequences always followed.

And when those decisions were made with kindness or goodwill leading the way, the consequences always seemed heavier... like the world punished those who tried to do the right thing.

Every time one tried to help, someone suffered... Every time one chose mercy, something precious was lost.

It was as if kindness itself demanded a price... a cruel balance that never failed to collect what was owed.

This was what Ash’Kral and The Titan understood over eons of experience... for kindness to work, everyone needed to be kinder to each other. But this was nothing but a bad dream.

And now, Levi had his first major experience.

”Sorry, Mom... I tried it your way,” Levi whispered, his voice shaking as his world of darkness was filled with nothingness. ”I tried to believe that kindness could fix things... that being good was enough to change the world. But all it ever did was break me a little more each time...”

He continued as the image of his sweet mother surfaced in his mind... She was standing in front of the window, wearing a beautiful yellow sundress. However, the sunlight blocked her face, leaving only her mesmerizing soft smile showing under the blinding light.

But... this image slowly started to get corrupted... the light was fading slowly as the darkness around Levi devoured it bit by bit.

”You told me to help people, to see the good in them... but no one ever tells you how much it costs to keep doing that. How much does it take to keep forgiving, to keep hoping. I thought if I just kept trying, if I stayed true to what you taught me, everything would make sense one day...”

His voice cracked as the darkness kept consuming the image...

”But it doesn’t, Mom... it never did... Kindness doesn’t fix monsters. It doesn’t stop disasters. It just gets people killed... it got Arthur and my frie... sob... killed.”

”Maybe I wasn’t strong enough for your way... or maybe your way doesn’t work in a world like this... but, I can’t, Mom... I can’t... I am not you.”

As he let out a long exhale... Levi lifted his head at last and gazed at the distant spatial tear, but he was already too far; he could no longer see anything.

The darkness before him represented the state of his heart... shattered, silent, and cold.

The realization that he was the last of his bloodline... that his decision caused this disaster in the first place... and that he was the last survivor... was enough to murder any sense of happiness and kindness in his heart.

However, as he was wallowing in the void... his audible vision showing him nothing but darkness and silence, a sudden echo resounded in his ears.

Inkrith!!!

The instant he heard it, Levi’s shattered heart started beating again as he swiftly lifted his head and started looking everywhere like a madman.

’Is that them? Are they alive?!’

Agitated beyond anyone’s understanding, Levi channeled everything he had to his ears... using echolocation to its maximum range, and then he shouted at the top of his voice, the lack of oxygen leaving him coughing almost immediately.

Yet, the shout traveled as ripples everywhere, bouncing on anything they touched... this painted Levi’s darkened world with gray auras of rubble and destruction.

He didn’t give up and kept focusing on the fading ripples until... they painted a humanoid gray aura for a brief millisecond before everything went silent again.

However, the moment Levi and his tenants saw the humanoid phoenix-like figure, they had a mixed reaction.

Ash’Kral and The Titan were stunned, while Levi’s shattered heart was bathed in nothing but unfiltered hatred... his echolocation didn’t land on his brother and friends, which confirmed his worst nightmare... the mad Emperor had killed them inside the Dominion.

Unbeknownst to him, Jasmine’s erasure white sphere erased his soundwaves the instant they touched it, which made it impossible for him to spot them.

The only string of hope he was still clinging to was the uttered word... Inkrith. He didn’t know why the Emperor shouted it out loud, and Levi wasn’t planning to stay here and think about it.

”Sorry, Mom... moving onward, there is only one way...” Levi whispered as he gave himself and body to the Void.

The moment he willed the emergence of Oblivar’s Divine Skin, his body surrendered to darkness.

His skin vanished beneath an abyssal black, an endless void where no feature remained... no face, no scorched mark, no mouth... only the infinity circle on his forehead and in his chest, illuminating in a deep amethyst hue.

They weren’t just sparkling softly; they moved in slow, hypnotic circles, weaving around one another, resembling the celestial rivers around him meeting in a single point... the Hungering Dark... But in his case... it was the infinity circle at the center of his chest.

With him being surrounded by the void of the Shadow dimension, Levi glanced at his hand, feeling like he was at home... he felt cold, empty, and slowly getting emotionally detached from everything like the first time he used it.

But these feelings didn’t stand out anymore... they were the same feelings he was buried in just a few moments ago... The Void Form only amplified them to the point he believed they were the norm.

Before, Levi would have fought those feelings... but now? He embraced them as his own.

The moment he did, the whispers he heard for the first time were consumed by the void... by his void.

They wanted him to return the universe to its natural state of nothingness... but they didn’t need to... if he was given the strength to save his friends and, most importantly, his brother... Levi realized deep down that he didn’t care.

As long as his little brother was alive... he genuinely didn’t care what happened to the universe or anyone living in it.

This time... his mother’s voice wasn’t there to set him straight.

Levi picked up his staff, which was covered in darkness, and slowly walked out of the aetheric chains like they were holding onto nothing.

In a sense... this was exactly what Levi had become.

The embodiment of Nothingness.

This meant...

As he floated within the celestial river of devoured celestial bodies, the pull affected him not at all, and even the rubble either passed through him or he passed through the largest fragments.

Levi ignored this bizarre experience and faced the direction of the mad Emperor, as he could see him getting closer and closer... both of them were pulled in a single direction, but the Emperor was accelerating it.

Then, he extended a single finger forward and intoned, continuing from before, ”My way...”

When he spoke, his voice didn’t sound human anymore... it echoed like it came from inside a deep cave... low, heavy, and layered with a faint cosmic ring. Like the universe itself was afraid to echo him too loudly.

As Ash’Kral and the Titan saw this, they glanced at each other with solemn looks.

’Good luck bringing him back.’ The Titan sighed.

’...’

Ash’Kral remained silent, knowing that he couldn’t stop Levi from abusing his Void Form... but at the same time, he knew that if he used it extensively, he might never be the same again.

’So be it... descend into the void... this might be exactly what he needs to fulfill my goal. No more foolish talks about mercy, kindness, and such fatal weaknesses. Now, he will become complete.’

In the end, his expression remained indifferent... allowing it to happen.

And so it did...