The heavy high-velocity swing of the steel butcher knife came to a sudden dead stop.

The power in the strike was completely nullified.

Klaus’s bloodshot eyes widened.

The Second King had caught the sharp edge of the descending butcher knife between his index and middle finger.

He held the blade effortlessly, as if he had just plucked a floating feather from the air.

"GARRRGH!" Klaus roared with his feral grin stretching into a grimace of pure exertion.

He pushed.

He drove his bleeding feet into the concrete, throwing his entire body weight forward, leaning into the handle of the knife, desperately trying to force the blade down just a single inch to slice the god’s pristine fingers.

His muscles bulged with his teeth grinding together so hard they threatened to crack however the blade didn’t move a single millimeter.

The Second King looked at Klaus’s straining bleeding face as his grin widened into a mocking cruel smile.

The god’s luminescent white eyes glowed with superiority.

"Look at you," the Second King whispered. "So full of rage. So full of desperation and yet, so utterly, completely useless."

The god casually twisted his wrist.

SNAP!

The thick, heavy-duty steel blade of the butcher knife shattered like cheap glass.

Klaus stumbled forward as the resistance vanished, holding nothing but the broken rubber handle.

Before Klaus could recover his balance, the Second King’s left hand shot out with blinding supernatural speed.

The god’s fingers wrapped securely around the collar of Klaus’s blood-soaked high school uniform.

With a single, effortless, terrifying display of divine physical strength, the Second King hoisted Klaus entirely off his feet, lifting him into the air as if he weighed nothing.

The god took two steps backward, holding Klaus out over the vast, terrifying, empty abyss of the city skyline.

One hundred and twenty stories of empty air stretched out beneath Klaus’s bleeding dangling feet!

"You couldn’t save your mother," the Second King mocked softly, leaning in close to Klaus’s terrified face. "You couldn’t save your father. You couldn’t save your pathetic little girlfriend and you certainly cannot save yourself."

The god tilted his head, his pristine smile shining in the moonlight.

"Try again next time..." the Second King said.

He opened his hand.

Klaus dropped.

For the first second, there was only the sickening, stomach-dropping sensation of weightlessness then, the gravity of the world violently asserted itself.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Klaus screamed.

The feral madness instantly evaporated, replaced entirely by primal terror.

The wind roared in his ears, tearing the scream from his throat as he plummeted down the side of the massive skyscraper.

The city lights blurred into a continuous chaotic streak of neon colors. The massive concrete base of the plaza rushed up to meet him at a terrifying velocity.

He saw the floodlights.

He saw the hanging bodies of his family rushing upward and the air pressure violently battered his face, making it impossible to breathe.

The fall felt like an eternity, stretching out his terror into a prolonged agonizing nightmare.

The ground arrived.

PLOP!

It was a wet violently sickening explosion of the human body.

Klaus hit the solid concrete of the plaza at terminal velocity and his frail human body was instantly pulverized.

The impact shattered every single bone in his skeleton simultaneously, turning his femurs, his ribs, and his spine into jagged shrapnel.

His internal organs violently burst upon impact, completely liquefied by the force.

His skull caved in, spraying a thick dark mist of blood, brain matter, and bone fragments across a fifty-foot radius of the pristine concrete.

He was instantly reduced to a massive grotesque red smear on the pavement directly beneath the dangling feet of his hanged family.

The transition back to the interstitial space of the trial room was cold, quiet, and instantaneous.

Real Klaus was lying flat on his back on the invisible floor of the endless white void.

A massive glowing red system tab hovered directly above him, glaring with unforgiving indifference.

[Your Trial Is Over!]

[You have Failed.]

[Penalty: 25% of your Lifeforce has been drained.]

But the system did not eject him into the waking world of the Endless Tower...

The trial wasn’t over and the void didn’t collapse.

[You will be kept here for the Fourth Trial until it is completed.]

The Second King, having secured the overwhelming advantage, was keeping the host trapped within the dimension, seamlessly preparing to initiate the Fourth and Final Loop to digest the very last dregs of his soul.

Real Klaus didn’t just feel older... He aged physically right there in the void...

In a matter of seconds, he aged from where he was before close to his death bed... He looked like a mummified corpse barely clinging to life. He was moments away from his biological clock running out.

Sitting on the invisible floor a few feet away from him, completely whole again after the system reset, was Regret Klaus.

The younger avatar was staring at his own hands, his chest heaving with violent, uncontrollable sobs.

He had felt the impact... He had felt his bones shatter... He had felt the absolute, pathetic futility of his charge against the god.

He looked up at the withered, dying, ancient husk of his older self. The guilt was too much... It was crushing... He had wasted their life.

He had let his selfish need for a fake goodbye destroy their only chance at survival.

"I’m sorry," Regret Klaus bawled with tears streaming endlessly down his flawless, youthful face. He scrambled across the invisible floor on his hands and knees, hovering over the dying old man. "I’m so sorry! I was stupid! I couldn’t reach them! I couldn’t cut them down! He threw me away like garbage! I wasted it! I killed us!"

Real Klaus lay there, his ancient chest barely rising and falling. His breath rattled weakly in his throat.

He slowly, painstakingly turned his head to look at the crying teenager.

He didn’t glare neither did he offer a lecture on failure. He didn’t curse the boy for falling for the trap.

Real Klaus understood perfectly.

He had needed the boy to fail... He had needed the naive, desperately hopeful part of his soul to realize that running away to the past, running away to the illusions of what could have been, would never, ever save them...

The only way out was forward and that was the only way out was through the fire.

Real Klaus slowly, agonizingly raised his trembling, frail, spotted hand. His joints popped loudly in the silence.

He reached up and gently, warmly rested his palm against the younger boy’s tear-streaked cheek.

"Don’t cry," Real Klaus whispered.

His voice was a dry, raspy wheeze, but it carried an oceanic depth of unconditional comfort.

It was a comfort he had never received in his life. It was the forgiveness he had sought at the bottom of every dungeon and in the blood of every monster. He was finally, truly, forgiving himself.

"You weren’t stupid," the old man continued softly, wiping a tear from the boy’s face with a shaking thumb. "You just missed them and that’s okay. It’s okay to miss them. It’s not a weakness to love your family but they are gone. And we are still here."

Regret Klaus sniffled, leaning into the warmth of the old man’s hand.

"I can’t beat him. He’s too strong. He’s a god."

"You can’t," Real Klaus agreed, a weak, fierce smile playing on his deeply lined, withered lips. "But we can."

The old man lowered his hand, extending it out toward the teenager.

"I can see it in your eyes," Real Klaus whispered, his gaze locking onto the brown eyes of his youth. "It’s my turn now."

Regret Klaus looked at the extended, withered hand. He wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve.

He took a deep shuddering breath as the terror faded away and was replaced by a deep trust.

He reached out and grasped the old man’s hand firmly.

KRA-KOOM!

The endless white void violently, instantly shattered.

A massive, blinding, roaring surge of pure, white spiritual energy washed violently over the withered, dying body.

The two halves of the fractured psyche slammed together in a perfect synchronization.

The Fourth Loop began in a blaze of apocalyptic light.

...

BAM!

The sounds of dense practice steel colliding against its twin echoed sharply across the pristine sun-drenched training grounds of the main estate.

Hundreds of miles away from the apocalyptic blizzards, the blood-soaked snow, and the mind-shattering horrors of the Haunted Winterlands, the Capital of the Erell Empire basked in a serene untroubled afternoon.

The sky overhead was an unblemished azure.

The massive training courtyard was paved with perfectly cut, smooth white marble, bordered by immaculately trimmed rose bushes and tall, elegant statues of past clan patriarchs holding stone swords.

It was a place of safety, luxury, and refined martial art... It was a place that currently made Sylvia want to vomit.

She stood in the center of the courtyard, holding a heavy practice sword.

The heat of the sun beat down on her shoulders, but she felt entirely cold inside.

Directly across from her, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, was her younger brother, Julian.

The boy was not a weakling. He was a scion of the main branch, trained by the finest tutors gold could buy. He took a deep breath, dropping his center of gravity.

Suddenly, Julian’s eyes flared, glowing with a brilliant, vibrant, luminescent gold.

"Here I come!"

It wasn’t mana... It was his internal Aura flaring outward. The golden light enveloped his body like a second skin, supercharging his muscles, his reflexes, and his speed.

He wasn’t holding back as he wanted to impress his legendary older sister.

Julian exploded forward.

The marble cracked slightly under his boots as he crossed the distance in a golden blur.

He unleashed a relentless, high-speed, high-technique barrage of precise, lethal strikes.

He aimed for her shoulders, her ribs, her knees, chaining the attacks together in a flawless textbook display of advanced clan swordsmanship.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sound of sparking steel echoed like rapid-fire gunshots across the courtyard and sparks flew into the air as the heavy practice swords collided again and again.

Sylvia didn’t retreat.

She didn’t even ignite her own Aura... She stood her ground with an expressionless face.

Her footwork was completely devoid of wasted motion.

Sylvia didn’t use massive sweeping arcs to block. She simply shifted her wrists with precision, deflecting every single one of Julian’s golden strikes with the absolute minimum amount of effort required.

Julian gritted his teeth, frustrated by his inability to break her guard.

’She’s even stronger...’

He channeled a massive surge of golden Aura into his legs.

He blurred, vanishing from her front and reappearing directly on her right flank in a fraction of a second, attempting a high-speed devastating overhead cleave designed to shatter her defense entirely.

Sylvia didn’t panic.

She simply pivoted on her left heel, sliding her blade down the descending crossguard of his weapon, using his own momentum against him, and twisted her wrists violently.

"Huh...?!"

Her younger brother let out a startled gasp as the leverage was entirely, brutally ripped from his grasp.

His practice sword was violently wrenched from his hands, flying through the air and clattering loudly against the white marble twenty feet away.

Before the boy could even blink, the dull, heavy tip of Sylvia’s steel was resting a fraction of an inch from his sweaty throat.

Julian froze, the golden glow in his eyes instantly fading as he dragged in exhausted breaths of the warm summer air.

Sweat poured down his face, soaking the collar of his expensive, custom-tailored fencing tunic.

He looked at the blade at his throat, and then up into the striking, golden-blonde hair and cold blue eyes of his older sister.

"I yield," Julian panted, holding both of his hands up in surrender, a mixture of awe and absolute exhaustion on his youthful face.

He took a step back as she lowered her weapon, resting the tip on the marble.

"By the Goddess, Sylvia... your swordsmanship is incredible. It’s completely unmatched. I didn’t even see you shift your stance until the sword was gone."

Sylvia stood perfectly still. She wasn’t breathing heavily and there wasn’t a single bead of sweat on her flawless brow.

She looked at her younger brother. She looked at his clean clothes, his soft hands, and the naive, eager admiration shining in his eyes.

He thought this was combat. He thought crossing blades in a sunlit courtyard, surrounded by fifty armed guards and a dozen healers waiting on standby, was what it meant to be a warrior.

A hollow ache throbbed in the center of Sylvia’s chest.

She remembered the dark-haired commoner who she had left behind... Compared to that, this spar felt like a pathetic meaningless dance.

Sylvia didn’t smile at her brother’s praise as her expression remained an unreadable mask.

"Your footwork is sloppy on the retreat, Julian," Sylvia said with a sigh. "You dragged your left heel when you parried. If my blade had been live, and I had aimed for your hamstring instead of your weapon, you would be bleeding out on the marble right now. Train harder."

Julian flinched slightly at the harsh critique, but he nodded respectfully. "Yes, sister. I will."

Sylvia didn’t offer another word.

She sheathed her practice sword, turned her back on her brother, and walked away from the manicured training grounds.

She needed to leave.

The oppressive perfection of the main family estate was suffocating her.

Every time she walked down the gilded, vaulted hallways lined with ancestral tapestries, every time she sat at the massive polished mahogany dining table covered in perfectly roasted meats and candied fruits, she felt a sickening, twisting guilt tying her stomach into agonizing knots.

The air here was too sweet and the floors were too clean.

It felt like a beautifully gilded cage built on top of a graveyard.

She walked past a line of bowing, terrified handmaidens who held out silk towels and perfumed water to wipe the non-existent sweat from her brow.

She didn’t even look at them.

Their subservience made her skin crawl.

She had abandoned her party... She had abandoned the man she loved for this... For politics... For safety... For a clan that viewed her as a political asset rather than a living, breathing human being with a beating heart...

She had traded the genuine warmth of his back pressed against hers in a freezing tavern for the sterile lonely safety of silk sheets and royal decrees.

Sylvia bypassed the main gates entirely.

She ignored the confused calls of her personal handmaidens and the salutes of the armored estate guards.

She walked out into the bustling, paved streets of the Capital, pulling a heavy, dark wool cloak over her distinctive, golden-blonde hair to avoid the staring fawning eyes of the commoners and lesser nobles.

Her destination was not a tavern to drown her sorrows, nor was it a grand library to bury herself in ancient texts.

She didn’t want distraction as she wanted punishment.

She navigated through the affluent upper rings of the city, her boots striking the cobblestones rigidly.

She walked for nearly an hour, moving away from the crowded commercial districts and the towering spires of the royal palace, until the pristine white marble streets gave way to a massive, imposing perimeter of high, ancient stone walls overgrown with thick, dark ivy.

This was the private estate of her Grandmother, Aurelia...

Unlike the compounds of every other high-ranking noble in the Capital, which were heavily fortified with dozens of armed sentries, glowing magical wards, iron portcullises, and layered checkpoints, Aurelia’s estate had absolutely zero guards posted outside.

There wasn’t a single sentry in sight. The massive wrought-iron gate were simply pushed wide open, practically inviting anyone to walk right through.

There was no need for guards.

No assassin, thief, or political rival in the entire continent was stupid enough to trespass on this specific plot of land.

To step onto Aurelia’s property with hostile intent was not just a crime... it was tantamount to a drawn-out horrifying suicide as the Matriarch did not take prisoners.

Sylvia walked through the open gates, her heart already beginning to beat a fraction faster.

The transition was incredibly jarring.

The sounds of the bustling city... the clatter of wooden carriage wheels, the shouting of merchants hawking their wares, the clinking armor of passing paladin patrols were instantly swallowed by a suffocating silence.

It felt as though she had crossed a dimensional boundary.

The interior of the estate wasn’t a manicured lawn or a paved, pristine courtyard... It was a massive artificially grown forest.

Towering, ancient oaks with trunks as wide as carriages stretched high into the sky, their thick, overlapping canopies completely blocking out the afternoon sun, plunging the estate into a perpetual twilight gloom.

Thick, damp moss covered the ground like a carpet, muffling her footsteps, and wild, untamed vines crept up the stone walls of the distant, brooding main manor like the grasping fingers of the earth.

Aurelia had cultivated this forest from the ground up, shaping the massive trees with her bare hands and her terrifying mastery of Aura over the decades.

It was a slice of the violent wilderness dropped directly into the center of the civilized world, a physical manifestation of the Matriarch’s soul.

Sylvia followed a narrow, winding dirt path through the thick trees with the air growing noticeably cool and damp against her skin.

’Why can’t she just live normally? Must it be so hard to find this woman?’

She could feel the pressure of the forest pressing against her lungs.

She eventually reached a large, open clearing near the back of the manor.

A grand, elevated stone terrace, carved directly from the bedrock, overlooked the wild woods.

Lounging casually on a plush, oversized velvet chair on the terrace was the Matriarch of the clan.

Aurelia did not look like a typical noble grandmother.

She didn’t wear suffocating corsets, heavy, restrictive silk dresses, or ornate jewelry.

She wore loose, comfortable, dark martial arts trousers and a simple, breathable white linen tunic that clung loosely to her beautiful frame.

Her hair was a striking pure silver, lacking the golden hue of the main branch, tied back in a messy braid.

This was her real self... Not the disguise she had been in before.

She had one leg thrown carelessly over the armrest of the velvet chair, her dark boot dangling in the air, and she was currently in the process of chugging directly from a dusty, unlabeled bottle of ridiculously expensive century-old Elven wine.

"Grandmother," Sylvia called out, stepping out of the dark tree line and into the clearing, pulling her dark cloak from her shoulders.