The halos had collapsed. The remnants of shattered light spilled across the forbidden realm like the last, dying embers of a once-brilliant fire. The twelve halos—each a symbol of Dawn's progress, his sacrifices, and his journey—were now nothing but fragments. Whispers of their radiance floated like fading dreams, casting an eerie glow upon the ruined landscape. They fell like dying stars, one after another, consumed by the very air they once illuminated.
And yet, there was no pain.
No finality.
Dawn knelt, his breath ragged, his body battered from a fight he thought he could never win. His mind, torn by the ferocity of his battle against the perfect reflection of himself, struggled to hold onto consciousness. Each beat of his heart seemed to stretch time, a cruel reminder of his limitations.
He should have fallen by now.
He should have ceased to be.
But he didn't.
Instead, there was something deeper that refused to break. Something that burned brighter than the shattered halos. It was his Desire—a primal, burning need that rose from the depths of his soul, unrelenting in its hunger.
The shattered halos—those symbols of his failures—did not fade away. They did not vanish. Instead, they began to flow, drawn not by will but by something much more profound—his Desire. It was a force not governed by logic or reason. It was pure. It was raw. And it was unstoppable.
The first flicker came, small at first, like a single ember in the wind. But it grew.
And as it did, so did the world around him.
The Void Radiance, born from nothing but his will, stretched outward. Not in violent bursts, but in quiet, immense power. The air shimmered with its pull, and the very fabric of the realm began to bend. It responded, as if recognizing the force of his will.
The halos—each one broken, each one fragile—began to coalesce.
Not separately. But together.
A single halo.
It was not bright, not burning with an otherworldly light. It was void, as empty as the abyss itself, yet there was a strange, deep radiance within it—quiet but certain. It circled him, not like a crown, but like the very core of his existence. It was both nothing and everything.
A TRANSCENDENT HALO.
A halo born from the collapse of everything that had come before. It wasn't something earned. It was something seized. A crown no king could ever claim, but a mark of something far more profound—Ascension. It was the very act of transcending the limits of mortality, of reaching into something beyond his understanding.
And as the halo settled around him, the broken reflections—the twelve Dawns he had fought—began to tremble. Their shattered forms flickered, their mirrored bodies unable to maintain their grip on the reality they had once represented. One by one, they began to merge, their light swirling like the remnants of broken glass reforming into a single, unified shape.
Dawn watched as the reflection—the perfect replica of him—began to approach. It stepped forward, its gaze locking with his, and for a moment, it was as though time itself stopped.
The reflection was not just a mirror. It was everything he was and everything he had been. It was the pain, the struggle, the loss. And in its eyes, he saw not just himself—but the parts of him he had tried to forget.
The reflection stood tall before him, then stepped into his eyes, vanishing inside him with a quiet shudder. It was as though it had never been there, and yet it was now a part of him.
Dawn blinked.
And the world shifted.
Below him, his shadow—once broken and twisted—began to move. Not in the erratic way it once did, but with purpose. The monstrous silhouette, torn from the fragments of his own self, rose. It stretched out, larger than life, but not a threat. It was his avatar, born from the most primal parts of him—the broken and twisted parts he had never acknowledged.
It was a shadow torn from a boy who had endured, and a shadow that now stood as a measure of his strength.
But that wasn't all.
In his gaze, where once there had been only the weight of shattered light, now there was a strange depth—an empty, radiant abyss that held everything and nothing at once.
The reflection was gone. But its presence remained, now embedded within the very core of his being.
It was not just a change in form. It was an embodiment.
And then, the realm itself responded.
The Forbidden Realm, once a place of chaos and restriction, seemed to hum with life. It had always been a prison for those who dared trespass, a place where even Celestials feared to tread. But now, it was different. It yielded. It did not reject him. It accepted him, for he was no longer merely a part of it—he had become it.
It seemed as though everything Dawn had endured—the endless struggles, the fractured reflections, the pain of losing everything—had led him here, to this singular moment of truth.
He stood, not as the boy who had entered this realm, but as something far more. His eyes, burning with the radiance of the Void, pierced the world around him. His shadow, now a beast of power and purpose, spread across the realm like the dawn of a new era.
The Grand Instructor watched from a distance, his gaze steady as he saw what Dawn had become. He had thought the boy's sacrifice would be for nothing, a fleeting moment of defiance. But he had been wrong.
Dawn had transcended.
The old man lowered his hands, his thoughts distant. So this is the power of pure desire. He has become something... far greater than I had anticipated.
And then, he saw it. Dawn's figure, standing amidst the shifting realm, the halo of Void Radiance around his body, and the reflection of his true self burning within his eyes and the shadow that seemed to stretch infinitely.
The grand Instructor breathed out slowly. It seems madness has taken root in me as well, he thought.
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End of Chapter 86
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