The Seven Sovereign of Emotions snarled. “We’ll try again. He’ll break. Even steel breaks when heated enough times. Even diamonds shatter under the right pressure.”
But this wasn’t steel.
And this wasn’t about pressure.
This was something else.
Nameless Death opened his eyes in the next nightmare.
This time, he was a young man standing in front of a crumbling shrine. Alone again. He had no memory, or a guide.
All he had was an old sword and a sky full of ash.
He took a step forward.
Not because he remembered.
Not because he knew what waited.
But because something inside him refused to stop.
One foot. Then another.
The wind howled. The shrine collapsed behind him.
And he kept walking.
Inside the prison, the woman watched that cracked diamond pulse once more. It was a slow, steady beat, and the pulse was stronger than before.
She stepped back from the soul. Her fingers curled. The smile faded from her lips.
“He hasn’t given up.” She bit her nails. “Does he even know the meaning of giving up?”
The Seven Sovereign of Emotions narrowed their ever-shifting eyes.
They said nothing.
But for the first time, they hesitated.
The seven Sovereigns of Emotion turned to the woman.
“We only ask for a little more time,” The Sovereign of Despair said quietly.
The Sovereign of Joy followed, his tone pleading. “There must be something else we can try. A different path, a delay, anything.”
But the woman’s expression was unreadable. Her eyes, once patient, now carried the weight of finality.
“There’s no time left,” she said. “The Nameless Death will be taken by the Alliance in a month. That’s already been decided.”
The Sovereign of Rage clenched his fists. “We could stop them. Your Majesty, you should not listen to those—”
“Silence.” Her voice cut through him, calm but firm. “You all had your chance. You failed to awaken him.”
The Sovereigns fell silent.
One by one, they looked at her, hoping to find hesitation in her gaze.
Instead, they saw a cold, steady will.
There was no room left for pleading.
“I don’t have any use of you anymore,” she said. “Leave.”
None of them moved.
Then she looked at them, and they shivered.
That gaze wasn’t one they had ever seen from her.
It was the gaze of someone who had discarded doubt. Someone who was about to take a final step, no matter the cost.
They turned away.
The Sovereign of Anger vanished first, then the Sovereign of Fear, then the Sovereign of Hope.
One after another, the Sovereigns disappeared, leaving her alone in the quiet chamber. Alone with him.
The Nameless Death still lay motionless, bound in silence.
The woman walked forward and knelt beside him.
Her hands trembled for just a moment. Then they stopped.
White flames emerged from her fingers.
The power of Willpower Element flickered and surged into the air, coating the space around her with heatless intensity.
Normally, she would break a person’s willpower before absorbing it.
It was the only safe method.
Even a weak foreign willpower could pull her in, contaminate her essence, merge with her mind if she wasn’t careful.
But she had no time for caution.
And she couldn’t weaken his will even after trying to do so for centuries.
His willpower was smaller than hers, but purer.
It was dangerous to absorb it.
But the woman had made her choice.
After absorbing others for eons, her own willpower had grown massive, layered with countless echoes of others.
But the density and purity of his willpower, was unmatched.
It would make her a Heavenbreaker.
So she began the fusion.
The white flames around her intensified. Her body stiffened. She could feel the pressure of his will meeting hers. Their minds brushed, then collided.
In the next breath, the chamber disappeared.
She found herself standing in a vast and empty white space.
It was ‘his’ mental world.
He was there.
The Nameless Death stood a short distance away. His gaze was calm as he stared at her. There was no surprise in his eyes, or fury.
The woman frowned slightly and walked forward.
“I expected you to be angry,” she said. “Or to attack me. After all, you must remember everything now. So why are you calm?”
“Do you really want to become a Heavenbreaker?” he asked, instead of answering her.
Her expression tightened. “What are you talking about?”
He looked at her with that same unsettling stillness.
“I don’t remember anything,” he said. “But there’s a voice inside me. It told me to say this: You can’t become a Heavenbreaker through borrowed willpower. It has to be yours. You have to overcome your own weakness—not steal someone else’s strength.”
She didn’t speak immediately.
Inside a mental world, lies were impossible.
Here, everything one said was a reflection of their true self.
If those words came from the Nameless Death, then they carried truth, even if he didn’t understand it.
Her frown deepened. But before she could respond, he continued.
“I’ll help you,” he said. “I’ll help you become a Heavenbreaker.”
She raised an eyebrow, cautious. “You will?”
“I will,” he repeated. “But the voice inside me says it will be dangerous—”
“Do it,” she interrupted.
He blinked.
“Whatever it is,” she said. “Do it. I’ve come this far. I won’t back down.”
He studied her for a moment longer, then sighed softly.
“Very well.”
He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.
The white world collapsed in an instant.
All light disappeared, swallowed by a chasm of silence.
The woman found herself in a black, bottomless void, without form or edge.
She was suspended in nothingness.
He spoke, though she couldn’t see him.
“Do you know why I’m not angry at you?”
His voice was calm, distant.
“It’s because I pity you. You touched something you don’t understand. You want to become a Heavenbreaker, yet you’ve never seen despair. You don’t know what it looks like, and yet… you’ve decided to embrace it.”
She turned, trying to locate him in the dark, but he was gone.
There was no presence, or sound.
Only the emptiness remained.
The woman tried to move, but her body wouldn’t respond.
She tried to speak, but no words came.
She tried to leave, but there was nowhere to go.
All that remained was thought. And time.
Time to reflect.
Time to wait.
Time to see what it truly meant to seek the power of a Heavenbreaker.
Time to understand True Despair.
And for the first time in a long while, the woman felt something unfamiliar crawling at the edge of her mind.
Uncertainty.
She closed her eyes.
And waited.
And waited.
She continued to float in the void, stripped of sensation, voice, and form.
Time had no meaning here.
Seconds might have passed, or centuries. She didn’t know, and couldn’t know.
The darkness didn’t shift, didn’t stir.
It wasn’t suffocating or loud.
It simply was.
At first, she waited.
She believed this was a test. This scene must be something the Nameless Death experienced, which helped him train his willpower.
So, this would end soon.
He had said it would be dangerous. But as time passed she realized something.
This wasn’t danger, or a test. This was… despair.
His despair.
She tried to speak again. Tried to call out, even just to hear the echo of her own voice.
But nothing came. Her thoughts became her prison, and they began to fray.
Memories floated in and out—faces, names, wars, victories—but even those felt distant. Detached. Meaningless.
And then she began to understand what True Despair was.
It was not shaped by tragedy or loss. It was not born from sorrow or broken dreams.
It was the realization that nothing mattered. That no matter what she did, no matter how strong she became, this emptiness would always be there—silent, patient, waiting.
True Despair didn’t scream. It didn’t need tricks or memory erasure.
It only needed silence.
And when someone finally met that silence, they would understand it was impossible to defeat.
The horror of True Despair broke the woman as she spent eternity in the dark, empty void.