The woman studied willpower the same way a smith examined metals.
In her eyes, most people’s willpower looked like a ball of gas.
It was light, ever shifting, and easy to take apart. All it took was a tug—a little fear, a little despair—and it would drift apart like smoke.
She didn’t even need to try hard.
Then, she would absorb their willpower to strengthen her own.
Demigods, Gods, Planets.
She had taken willpower from all sorts of being.
Some resisted better than others.
Their willpower didn’t scatter so easily.
It wasn’t a gaseous sphere but something heavier – a clay.
The sphere of clay would be thick, packed, molded by their life experiences and beliefs.
Still, she could dig her fingers in, squeeze out bits of their resolve, and slowly break them apart. It just took more effort.
The woman had lived billions of years living a life like that.
She had reached a realm where her willpower was at the tipping point.
Now, she didn’t need quantity, but quality.
She needed a willpower that was different from anyone elses.
If she could absorb it, becoming a Heavenbreaker would no longer be a dream.
‘Huuuh…’
‘This is it.’
‘I can get it from him.’
Nameless Death.
She stared at his willpower. It was no sphere of gas, or clay.
What floated before her was a perfect sphere, cold and shining like a diamond.
It was flawless, and immovable.
Her fingers couldn’t squeeze into it. Her influence couldn’t stain it. No amount of despair or grief could make a dent.
At first, she found it fascinating.
Then irritating.
And then, maddening.
He stood in front of her, eyes hollow from the weight of what he’d endured, and still he didn’t break.
His posture trembled, but his gaze didn’t falter.
She, and the Sovereigns, poured nightmare after nightmare into his soul. He should’ve bent after a few hours, or perhaps a few days.
But he had lasted centuries.
And he still stood.
The Sovereigns of Seven Emotions, wrapped in shifting veils of color and voice, laughed in frustration.
“No matter how strong your willpower is,” they whispered, circling him, “it will break sooner or later. All things do.”
Nameless Death didn’t respond.
That was part of what made it worse. Not the words he said, but the silence. It wasn’t defiant. It wasn’t peaceful.
It was stubborn.
It was an unmoving mountain in the middle of a storm.
So they changed their methods.
They stopped trying to overwhelm him with raw despair. Instead, they rewrote the torment.
Each time he fell asleep—or was forced into unconsciousness—he woke up in a new life. With no memory of who he truly was.
A coward in a doomed village.
A knight with a broken oath.
A king betrayed by his people.
A warrior fighting a war he could never win.
A scholar trying to save a dying world.
A lover torn from the arms of someone he would never see again.
Each version of him had its own story.
None of them remembered the past iterations.
But each one ended in ruin.
And every time, when that persona collapsed, his soul was dragged back into the core of the prison. Each time, it was cracked a little more, tired a little more. Then forced into another life.
Those lives weren’t nightmares.
They were reality.
The woman, the God of Death of her world, sent him through multiple reincarnations.
She made sure his soul couldn’t recover, and forced his soul to bear the pressure brought by mountain of despair.
The wounds built up. Layer by layer. Cut by cut. But she never let the soul break entirely. She forced it remain, and thus caused it to rot from within.
After a hundred years, the Nameless Death shed tears.
After three hundred years, his soul trembled before each descent into the next life.
After four hundred years, the cracks on his willpower were visible. They were deep, and sharp.
The woman could feel it they were near the end.
“He’s close,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else. “Just a little more. He’ll finally break.”
The Seven Sovereigns of Emotions hovered near him, their presence shifting like fog and fire.
“How does it feel,” they asked, voice layered in dozens of tones, “to lose everything over and over again and still not remember why?”
Nameless Death didn’t speak.
In that moment, he was waking up again.
In a new life.
A simple farmer in a dying land.
His wife was already gone in this story. His son fell sick a week later.
He sold everything for medicine that never arrived. His village burned, and he was blamed for it.
They hung him on a tree beside his son’s grave.
He died with dirt in his mouth and fire in his eyes.
When the soul returned, she checked it carefully. The cracks had widened. Tiny shards had started to chip away.
But the willpower was still too big for the woman to absorb.
If she fused such pure and giant willpower, it could be her that was absorbed, not the Nameless Death.
So…
Just a bit more.
But as time continued to move, his willpower never shattered.
It cracked, true. But as if something invisible was holding it togethere, it remained as one.
That was proof that Nameless Death had not been broken.
“Why do you keep standing back up?” she muttered. “There’s nothing left. You’ve lost every identity. Every dream. Even your sense of self.”
And still, when the next nightmare began, he moved forward.
Each life started the same. He had nothing. He was someone else. He didn’t know he was trapped.
But something inside him—something deep—pushed him on.
Even when he broke.
Even when he failed.
Even when he screamed, cried, begged for it to end… he always got up.
Always.
Sometimes crawling.
Sometimes dragging himself through mud or blood or fire.
Sometimes walking into his own death just to buy someone else another day.
None of it made sense. Not to them. Not to the Sovereign. Not to the woman who watched his soul like a scientist watching a test subject.
It wasn’t supposed to work like this.
Nobody was supposed to last this long.
Not without hope.
And yet, he endured.
He cried blood when the torment became too much.
He broke when his family betrayed him in one life, handing him to the enemies he had fought to protect them from.
He howled in agony when his daughter—the only bright spot in one of his lives—was taken from him.
But he never stopped moving forward.
He swallowed his tears and woke up the next day again to work.
He killed his the enemies and returned to his family to ask them why they betrayed him.
He fought until his last breath to protect his daughter and give her a safe future.
The cracks in his willpower deepened. But the diamond – the visual manifestation of his willpower –never shattered.
Instead, it became purer, and larger.
The woman stared at it and felt something new. Not irritation. Not frustration. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Doubt.
“What… are you?” she whispered.
The Seven Sovereign of Emotions snarled.