The moment Ryan entered the black hole in his spiritual form, the world around him turned upside down.

There were no directions anymore. No right, no left, no above, no below — only pure, crushing pressure tearing his very existence apart.

"Ahhhhhhh!" Ryan screamed in his spiritual form, but not even a grain of sound escaped him. The black hole did not care about his pain.

It simply tore his soul apart, again and again, with the indifferent patience of something that had existed long before words like mercy were invented.

Yet the strange thing was that Ryan never lost his sense of self. Not even for a single second.

Instead, he felt that every time his soul was ripped apart, it returned to its original shape stronger and purer than before — at least, that was how it felt until a certain moment.

The pressure increased, became overwhelming, and this time it did not merely crush him.

It fused with him.

The essence of the black hole began merging with the essence of Ryan’s soul, and amid all the tearing and distortion, he could see his spiritual form being stained with black — the same black as the hole itself. A black untouched by light. A black without even the faintest glimmer.

However, his radiant white half did not yield its ground. It held firmly to its side, preserved itself, and pushed back against the new and chaotic force with everything it had.

Ryan was certain of one thing: if not for the spiritual experiments he had conducted over the past years, and if not for the reconstruction his soul had just undergone when the black hole first tried to devour him, his soul would have lost easily. It would have turned completely black.

After countless collisions between the two halves, the places where they overlapped began to multiply — yet each overlap grew smaller and smaller, the clashes condensing into finer and finer spaces, until Ryan felt that if either half faltered even for a single instant, his soul would dissolve entirely into the void.

But as the seconds stretched on and the pressure and that strange, unique spiritual pain grew even more severe, the explosion Ryan was bracing for never came.

Instead, the conflict between the two halves began to quiet.

The struggle became less and less visible, until even Ryan could barely sense it.

Doom.

The two powers settled into perfect balance — no pushing, no clashing, only complete and total equilibrium.

At that moment, the pain began to lessen, fading so quickly that Ryan thought it would disappear entirely and he would finally be expelled from the black hole.

But to his even greater shock, it did not stop.

In the next instant, it multiplied several times over.

The agony was so absolute that Ryan’s mind went blank. He could not even react. Because this time, it was not his soul being tempered or crushed.

His soul was being erased.

Literally.

Ryan’s soul began to disappear from within the black hole at a visible rate, and he could do nothing — and then, without leaving even a trace behind, it vanished from the black hole completely.

In a different world, under completely different laws, a soul appeared from nothing.

Its descent caused the void itself to tremble, as though the emptiness were paying its respects to something it had never encountered before.

It was a beautiful soul. A soul unlike any other.

A dual soul.

One half pure white — bright, flawless, untouched by even the smallest stain. The other half deep black — a darkness that had never once tasted light. It was still. Strangely featureless.

Yet it had not arrived alone.

The moment its presence was sensed, something else descended swiftly after it — a majestic presence that filled the void with a weight all its own.

Arrogant, dark, demonic. It circled the motionless soul with an almost obsessive interest, drawn to it in a way it could not seem to resist.

But in the next moment, it sensed another presence approaching. A presence similar to itself, yet completely opposite.

Without hesitation, the demonic entity rushed forward, trying to claim the soul as its dwelling before the other one arrived.

Unfortunately for it, it had chosen the wrong soul entirely.

This soul had passed through a chaotic existence whose purpose was unknown, and it did not tolerate intruders. The black half devoured the demonic entity without hesitation — as though it had finally found what it had been searching for all along.

The entity realized what was happening and immediately tried to break free.

But it was already too late.

The other entity — its counterpart, similar yet utterly opposite — had already arrived. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"Hoho. Are you trying to keep such a treasure all to yourself, @#$%&#@?"

The newcomer’s presence was just as overwhelming as the demonic entity’s, though this being carried itself differently — calm, balanced, somehow sacred. And before the demonic entity could wrench itself free from the dual soul, the sacred entity rushed in as well, fighting for dominance.

But that was the worst possible choice either of them could have made.

They understood that only when the dual soul seemed to finally become complete — because in the next moment, rather than the black half simply devouring the demonic entity, the white half began absorbing and suppressing the sacred entity, weaponizing it against the demonic one.

"No! What are you doing, you @#%&#@?! Do you not fear destroying this one-of-a-kind soul with your actions?! This is the first of its kind!" The demonic entity’s voice cracked through the void.

"That would be better than letting your kind claim it," the sacred entity replied.

But it was clear that neither of them had ever encountered anything like this before, because in the next moment they both realized that the soul had not collapsed under the combined pressure — as they had fully expected it to.

The pressure seemed almost insignificant to it. The soul continued merging them together, forcing them into the space between its two halves.

Exactly in the center.

"What in the world is this soul trying to do?" the sacred entity said, its voice still unnervingly calm. "This cannot happen. Something like this is forbidden by the laws of the world."

It still expected the soul to give out at any moment.

But as time passed, the two entities began to lose control over themselves. The soul was weakening, yes — visibly, rapidly — yet strangely, impossibly, it continued to endure.

"What is this?! This is impossible—" They spoke in one voice.

And in the next moment, their cores were destroyed.

The fusion process accelerated by several stages, and the soul continued weakening at a speed that defied reason, as though the world itself were rejecting the existence of such a thing — yet the soul endured, shielding itself using the very essence of the two entities it had just absorbed.

After several more seconds of continuous weakening and relentless fusion—

The merger was complete.

The soul vanished from the void.

Then, a sudden awareness ignited within the dual soul’s mind.

[Ding!]

[Fusion complete.]

[The soul has escaped the chains of fate.]

[Host has obtained the Forbidden Entity: Sovereign Pride.]

[The host’s soul will now be transferred into a suitable body.]

[Suitable body found: Ravian Veyr.]

[Transfer in progress...]

Somewhere in that same world, inside a house that could barely be called a house, in one of the poorest alleys of the City of Light, a pale and frail body lay perfectly still.

The youth had white hair and unremarkable features, and every trace of vitality seemed to have long since abandoned him.

At least, until now.

In the next moment—

"Haaah!"

His eyes snapped open as he drew in a sharp, shuddering breath — the first breath of a life that was no longer entirely his own.