His Awakening

The voice was gone. It vanished, as if it had never existed at all. However, the weight lingered like an unbearable trap.

Joo-Hee stood frozen in the red void, her knees trembling, her nails digging crescent moons into her palms.

Her breath came in short, ragged gasps as the pressure that lingered from the Master Key Holder's divine presence crushed against her chest like a vice.

Her entire body screamed to collapse, to surrender, to yield, and to just DIE.

But she didn't.

Couldn't.

Not now.

Not yet.

Because something inside her burned. Beneath the fear, beneath the paralysis, something else began to churn.

Rage.

It started as a flicker. Then a spark. Then a swallowing flame.

Fear was slowly replaced. First by confusion. Then bitterness. Then hatred.

Hatred for those bastards who put her through this.

Her teeth gnashed, biting down so hard she tasted blood. Her vision blurred with tears, not of sorrow, but of wrath. Her whole being trembled with fear and pure, unfiltered fury.

The sealing continued, the [Alphaterium Cell] inside her trembled, crying for help. Every inch of her body felt like it was being branded, twisted, choked by invisible chains. It was excruciating.

And yet… she stayed standing.

Her fists clenched so tight her knuckles turned white, her lips torn from biting down.

And then she screamed internally.

'Y-YOU FUCKER!! WHY?! W-WHY?! J-JUST... WHY?!!'

She wanted to rip her body, her whole existence, to shreds. Her voice wasn't just a cry—it was a detonation of utter rage and fury.

It ripped through the silence, cracked the stillness like thunder in a chapel.

'What the hell are you talking about?! Protect me?! By giving me this garbage system that won't even function unless I feed it with soul artifacts from gods-damned nowhere?! Help?! Since when?!'

'From the start, I've had to claw my way up, step by agonizing step! Not a single explanation, not a single hand to hold, just riddles, basic skills, whispers and pain! You call that help, you b-bastards?!'

She stumbled forward, her body wracked with pain—but her eyes, now burning with defiance.

Her eyes continued to stare at the spatial fracture as if she could see through it.

'I was grateful at first… do you know that? I thanked you in my thoughts for letting me experience what another world is like. I thought maybe... just maybe, a divine being took pity on a pitiful soul like mine. That I had been given a second chance.'

Her breath hitched. Her inner voice cracked, but she kept going, fury and heartbreak twisting together like poisoned roots.

'But no... I was just a delusional piece-of-shit... So that's it? Lifetime here, circle of life there—what a load of celestial horseshit!'

'You mock me… like I'm supposed to understand what I did?! and w-WHO I WAS?! HOW?! How am I supposed to know the past I can't even remember?!'

She screamed into the void, her thoughts echoing back as if the world itself refused to answer.

'You want repentance from a clueless soul?! You want obedience from someone you banished like trash into a Worldview she jokingly wished?!'

She bellowed the next words, blood dripping down her chin. Her bloody nails and teeth punctured through her very own flesh.

'What the heck are you afraid of?! What am I to all of you that you need to keep me bound and blind?! Let me speak, you freaking bastard!!'

Only silence answered her—cold, heavy, and full of unspoken hatred.

At that moment, her breathing grew ragged, franticair in, panic out. Her vision blurred, and her tears, once clear and soft, began to shift.

Slowly… violently… they turned crimson. Blood.

Transparent droplets became streams of red, gushing like flowing water from her eyes. Her body trembled. But her mind? It was consumed.

'I… I'll k-kill y-you…'

'Y-You bastard… I'll make you bleed the next time we meet—I swear it!'

'I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU ARE!'

'I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE A GOD, A MONARCH, A DAMNED CELESTIAL—!'

'I-I SWEAR—ON EVERYTHING I HAVE LEFT—!!'

'I'LL END YOU!'

'I'LL RIP YOU APART WITH MY OWN HANDS!'

'You think you can break me?'

'No…'

'I'll show you what it really means to suffer.'

'Every wound, every scream, every second I begged for mercy—I'll carve it into you, piece by piece. You'll feel it. Every! Last! Bit!'

With every curse that echoed in her mind, more blood spilled, staining her face in anguish and wrath.

Her once cerulean blue eyes were no longer recognizable. What remained were crimson pupils filled with blinding resentment.

And deep inside her, far deeper than flesh or mind, something stirred violently. Something shook. Something struggled.

Within her soul realm, no, his soul realm, something cracked.

An olden fragment of his soul, long shackled and forgotten, stirred—a part of him that should have awakened long ago, but had been delayed.

Mustered by her last breath, her final strength, her final blood-tears and fading heartbeat, Joo-Hee screamed—a cry not just of pain, but of defiance:

"I—I… WILL… MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE FATELESS, YOU F*CKING BASTARD!!"

And then—it finally shattered.

BZZZZT—CRACK—!

A surge of silvery black, golden, and ghostly white energy erupted from her body. Veins all over her glowed, glimmering with a divine madness, radiating pure, broken will.

Threads of Golden. Black. White.

The four-colored chains that bound her cracked frantically and snapped at last.

She dropped to her knees, head thrown skyward, as her mouth, eyes, and every pores released an overwhelming outpour of ethereal energy.

It wasn't magic. It wasn't mana. It was an essence that belonged to each being.

In that moment, the very fabric of space groaned.

Hundreds of otherworldly chains burst from unseen fractures in space itself, trying to bind her once more. To lock her down. To silence what was broken once more.

But as they neared her radiant form, each chain disintegrated, unraveling like thousands of threads before fire.

Note that Lee Joo-Hee was already an Awakened.

But the soul within?

Jake Garcia was not.

Not until NOW.

...

And somewhere far beyond the known bounds of the Worldview of Solo Leveling, beyond the faded reach of Monarchs or even the hands of the Rulers themselves.

A single presence stirred.

In the heart of cold, infinite silence, nestled beneath a towering four-colored divine willow, it watched.

The willow pulsed with eternal seasonality: spring's renewal, summer's fury, autumn's decay, and winter's stillness.

From its every leaf radiated the weight of Time itself, a power near-infinite and absolute.

The being seated beneath it smiled. Not kindly.

Maniacally.

Its robes shimmered a deep, eldritch green, shifting in pattern as if ink bled through ancient silk. One languid hand lifted, brushing through the trunk of the tree.

A single leaf fell… and the moment it touched the ground, it fractured into dozens of golden-threaded chains, dissolving into the void as they slithered like serpents toward a temporal wound—a space fracture he himself had torn open.

And through that fracture, he witnessed what should have been impossible and never before recorded nor scribed on the Library of the Overseer.

The awakening of the Fateless unfolded with flawless precision, each motion echoing an instinctive grasp of how Fate weaves, restructures, and reconfigures the very fabric of realities.

The very place become a coven of endless learning to comprehend Fate itself.

"This is absurd…" he smiled and scoffed softly, voice like velvet soaked in timeless grace. "To think… a newly-born outsider, unanchored to fate or timeline, broke the Chains of Timeless Leaves."

He stood now, hands behind his back, eyes aglow with curiosity.

"Sure, I weakened them a ten-thousandfold… but to shatter something crafted by a Celestial Lord? Impressive..."

He clapped.

And at once, two childlike entities emerged from behind the flowing bark of the willow. They were reflections—identical in every way, from their silver eyes to the floating glyphs orbiting their wrists.

"You called, Master?" they said in perfect unison, voices unnervingly hollow.

"I did," he replied, voice now sharp as frost. "The two of you—abandon your child. Sever its tether to the Mother Library. It must not grow stronger together with the Anomaly. Remove everything at once. I'll not have any more fragments of me lingering within that Worldview."

The twins nodded without question.

But the Celestial Lord's gaze turned westward. His eyes glowed.

And the massive willow behind him opened a thirteenth eye, vast and divine, burning with swirling light and shadow.

"Tsk. They're coming again," he muttered bitterly. "Why can't they just let go? These pest are as pesistent as always."

The willow groaned in response, and the space around them cracked.

"Prepare for war!" he ordered coldly. "Summon the others."

The twins vanished in a blink, the sound of chimes trailing behind them.

And now, he looked back one last time—toward the fracture that still flickered, the gateway to the Worldview where a boy named Jake had just become something else.

A soft, amused whisper slipped from his lips:

"Goodbye, little kid. If we ever meet again… show me why the Overseer hates you to the core. Show me what it truly means to be... Fateless."

His tone shifted, bitter yet mockingly reverent.

"And you… dear Mistress. I'm sorry. Do clean up what I started."

"And if you're lucky…"

"…maybe you'll live or die by his hand."