Heavenly Archmage

"So, this is how far you will go, Selvaris."

The voice echoed across the broken sky, calm and stripped of emotion. The battlefield beneath the Celestial Spire lay drenched in the remnants of magic, the air hanging heavy with the scent of burning mana. Thousands of shattered crystals littered the ground, their light fading as the brilliance drained from them. The world that once thrived on magic was ending, and the only one who stood untouched in the storm was Ardyn Valen, Archmage of the Celestial Spire and the strongest mage the world had ever known.

Across from him, Selvaris raised his staff with silver hair matted with blood and eyes burning gold. Around him the divine army loomed like a tide of light, faceless and infinite.

"It is not betrayal, Master," Selvaris said, his voice trembling beneath the divine pressure that clung to him. "It is transcendence. You taught me that magic is understanding, that knowledge is freedom. I simply followed the path further than you ever dared."

Ardyn studied him quietly, his eyes devoid of any warmth as the wind tore through his cloak and scattered pages of ancient scripture. These pages once held the foundations of his spells, now reduced to fragments in the chaos. "You speak of understanding, yet you do not understand yourself. You claim to have reached truth, but you cannot even look at your hands without fear."

Selvaris's grip tightened around the staff, his knuckles white. "The gods showed me that fear is the price of eternity. They have offered me perfection, something you could never give me."

"Eternity without meaning is emptiness, Selvaris. It is death stretched beyond its limit, and perfection earned through surrender is no perfection at all."

The younger man's expression twisted with rage and desperation as his voice collided with the weight of his conviction. "You are afraid because you know they are right. The gods will erase you, and I will stand among them. You are nothing without your magic."

Ardyn stepped forward and the ground beneath him cracked as the air rippled. The CODEX OF ETERNUM floated to his side, its pages burning one after another until a soft hum filled the silence. The entire battlefield seemed to kneel to the sound, the essence of mana bending in submission.

"Nothing without magic?" Ardyn's lips curved faintly, not in amusement but in pity. "Selvaris, I am magic."

The Codex grew brighter, its runes aligning into perfect symmetry and forming countless circles of light that hovered in the air like orbiting stars. The heavens began to distort and the divine army recoiled as if the fabric of reality itself was being rewritten.

Selvaris took a step back, the golden energy around him flickering with uncertainty. "Your circuits are sealed. That spell will kill you."

"I know," Ardyn replied without hesitation, his calm acceptance cutting deeper than any counterattack.

The calmness of the answer made Selvaris hesitate as the golden energy bestowed upon him by the gods pulsed violently, reacting to something beyond comprehension. Ardyn's gaze never wavered, his expression not that of a man seeking revenge or salvation but that of one final calculation being executed with absolute precision.

A student who misunderstood my intentions. A world that no longer deserves what it was given. Perhaps the gods were right about mankind's limits, but they will never define mine.

Ardyn raised his hand slowly and the sky above began to collapse inward, bending into a singular spiral of light. The world trembled and the divine army cried out in panic. Even the gods hidden beyond the veil of heaven recoiled from the presence of a mortal reaching into their domain.

"ARCANE REVERSION – World Collapse."

The words were spoken softly yet they reached every corner of existence. The spiral of light expanded, consuming the horizon as mountains vanished into white nothingness and the air turned to pure mana that screamed as it was unmade. Selvaris's divine blessing began to tear him apart, golden light pouring from his eyes as he fell to his knees.

"Master, please, stop this," Selvaris gasped out, his voice breaking under the weight of unmaking magic.

Ardyn's body was dissolving, fragments of his soul scattering into the torrent of mana that surrounded him. He looked at his dying student with neither hatred nor mercy, only the cold resolve of someone fulfilling a duty. "You wanted to stand among the gods, so then stand in their grave."

The light swallowed everything. The Celestial Spire was erased, the divine army dissolved, and the Arcane Continent vanished from existence as if it had never been. Only one consciousness remained adrift within the storm: Ardyn Valen's.

Knowledge betrayed me, faith failed me, and yet I remain. Perhaps that is my sin.

The last remnants of his body disintegrated completely, leaving only his soul suspended in the void between worlds. There was no sound, no time, no concept of beginning or end, only the endless drift of thought.

If the world rejects me, then I will find another where magic can live.

A faint pull stirred in the darkness, a ripple unlike any he had felt before. Something vast and foreign brushed against the edge of his consciousness, not mana but a force that felt alive and vibrant and ancient. It called to him, drawing him forward.

The light swallowed his vision once more. The void shattered and for the first time since the collapse, he heard something that resembled life—a distant heartbeat, weak yet persistent, followed by a cry.

The cry of a newborn.

Ardyn opened his eyes to a world of soft light and unfamiliar warmth. His limbs were small, his body fragile, his senses overwhelmed. Figures hovered above him, their faces blurred as their words fell like distant echoes he could barely understand.

"Congratulations, Sect Leader, it's a boy," they said with voices trembling between relief and joy.

Ardyn did not share their emotion. He lay still, eyes unblinking as the memory of another world flickered behind them. The weight of eternity pressed against his infant consciousness.

So, this is where I have fallen.

He felt the new world's flow of energy, gentle and ordered, but it was not mana. It was something heavier, slower, bound to the primal rhythm of breath and blood. Different, yet familiar in its own way. It obeys the body, not the mana.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. The warmth of his mother's arms enveloped him, yet his mind was already calculating, already adapting to this strange new existence. Yeon Arin. That would be his name in this world. Yeon Arin.

"So be it," he whispered in the small, weak voice of an infant, his will as sharp as ever. "If magic cannot survive in one world, I will teach it to breathe in another."