PROLOGUE

  The universe was not a kind place.

  It was a graveyard of forgotten gods and shattered dimensions, where time bled like an open wound and space twisted itself into impossible shapes. Here, the weak were erased before they could even scream. The strong? They became legends—or they became corpses.

  And Sylasta would be no corpse.

  His presence alone warped reality. Nebulae bent around him like supplicants bowing to a king. Stars flared and died in the wake of his passing, their light extinguished by the sheer weight of his existence. His eyes—twin supernovae trapped in the face of something far older than creation—cast long shadows across the void.

  He was Zephyran.

  A prince of the Zephyrs, the eighth mightiest race in existence. A being born from the collapse of universes, forged in the crucible of dying dimensions. His brethren could shape cosmic matter with a thought, could dance between realities like children skipping through fields.

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  But Sylasta was different.

  Where they drew power from dying stars, he *consumed* them. Where they bent space, he *shattered* it. The others spoke in hushed tones of his birth—how the void itself had trembled when he first drew breath, how ancient entities older than time had turned their many eyes toward his cradle of collapsing realities.

  Now, a whisper slithered through the infinite black:

  *"You were made for more."*

  The **Blood Tournament** loomed—a grand slaughter where gods and monsters clashed for supremacy. A crucible where the weak were ground to dust and the strong ascended. To win meant to rise beyond the constraints of his race, beyond even the **Arkho Gods** who shaped existence with their whims.

  Beyond everything.

  To the Omnix Threshold.

  To him.

  Lael.

  The Omnix God. The unbroken, the unchallenged, the eternal. A billion years of absolute rule. A throne built upon the bones of would-be usurpers, each more powerful than the last.

  Sylasta's fingers curled into fists. Reality *screamed* as the void between atoms tore apart.

  Let the cosmos tremble.

  Let the gods watch.

  He would climb. He would break. And when the last of them fell, he would stand atop their ruined thrones—Voidborne, and infinite.

  ---

  "There are no heroes in the abyss. Only survivors. And Sylasta intended to survive them all."