CHAPTER 23: THE DESCENT OF THE GOD WHO LOOPS

The air in the Glass Tower had turned to liquid, thick and vibrating. It hummed with an unnatural frequency, and Kaien could feel it in his bones. The battle had barely finished, but the rules of reality had already begun to unravel.

The Architect was down, his once-imposing form now crumpled at Kaien's feet, blood leaking across the fractured floor like dark ink. But the true threat was yet to come.

Kaien's gaze shot to the ceiling. A gaping wound had appeared in the fabric of reality, jagged and oozing raw, black energy. It was no longer a part of the tower. It was a tear in the very nature of existence. Through it, a hand the size of a city block reached down.

The God Who Loops.

It was both a presence and an absence. Its form was indescribable—shifting, expanding, and contracting as if it existed across every timeline, every reality. The hand, massive and shadowed, slowly descended into the tower, its fingers curling like the claws of a beast.

Riven stumbled back. "Kaien... What the hell is that?"

Kaien's mind raced. The Architect had warned him. He had been the final line of defense, a buffer between the mortal realm and whatever lay beyond it. The God Who Loops wasn't just another boss—it was an entity that bent time and space to its will. The one who controlled the loops, the one who had caused them.

He had no more time to think.

The black hand reached the floor with a sound like cracking thunder. It pressed down, and the entire tower shook. The very foundation of the Glass Tower trembled under the weight of something ancient, something infinitely powerful.

Kaien narrowed his eyes and raised his blade.

"Riven," Kaien said, his voice cold. "Get ready. This isn't just another fight. It's the end of everything unless we stop it."

Riven didn't respond, his face pale. He nodded, clutching his weapon with a white-knuckled grip.

The hand withdrew, and with it, the black void spread, covering the entire tower. Time fractured—Kaien could see the world folding over itself, looping within loops, impossible tangents connecting where there shouldn't be any. The God Who Loops had arrived, and it wasn't going to play by the rules.

> SYSTEM ALERT: CODELOCK INTEGRITY FAILING. SYSTEM BREAKDOWN IMMINENT.

The message flashed before Kaien's eyes, but there was no time to process it.

The God Who Loops emerged fully from the breach, a silhouette in the shape of a towering figure draped in shadows. Its face was a blur of countless faces, morphing and changing as if it were the composite of every soul trapped in the infinite timelines it controlled. It spoke, its voice a thousand whispers overlapping at once.

"You... Kaien Vale. Loop-18. You were never meant to be."

The world around him shifted again, and Kaien felt his body pull in multiple directions at once. He was outside himself, inside himself—he had stepped beyond the threshold of time itself.

"You are nothing but a ripple," the God continued, its voice echoing through Kaien's very soul. "An aberration. A mistake in my perfect design."

Kaien gritted his teeth. He could feel the weight of the loops pulling at him, the endless cycles trying to trap him. His head throbbed with the pressure. But one thing was clear: he had no intention of being its mistake.

"I'm not here to argue with you," Kaien said. "I'm here to end this."

The God's laugh resonated like an earthquake. "You think you can stop me? You can't even stop yourself from looping, from fading away into nothing. I am beyond you. I am beyond your understanding."

Kaien's hands trembled for a split second, but he steadied himself. The Parallel Soul had unlocked something in him—a power born from the fragments of his own timeline, and those of others who had fallen before him. His blade glinted, fueled by the weight of every life that had led him to this moment. He had never been stronger. He had never been more certain.

And then, without warning, he moved.

The first strike was a blur. Time bent, his movements outpacing the reality around him. He slashed through the God's shadowy form—only for it to reform almost instantly, the wound sealing as though it had never existed.

"I don't have time for this," Kaien muttered.

> [FINAL SKILL ACTIVATED: TIME FRACTURE – INFINITE EDGE]

Kaien's blade shattered the fabric of time itself, cutting through not just the God's form, but through the very concept of reality. Fragments of timelines exploded around him—alternate versions of himself, fragments of possibility, hundreds of Kaien's shadowed forms, each one swinging their own blade in perfect synchrony.

The God Who Loops recoiled. It twisted, distorted, trying to escape the storm of infinite Kaien fragments that descended upon it like a thousand blades of chaos. The world around them dissolved and reformed, each new reality crashing into the last.

"You cannot break what is eternal," the God hissed, its voice seething with rage.

Kaien grinned. "That's exactly what I'm going to do."

And then, with a single motion, Kaien shattered time—all of it. Every possible loop. Every reality. The universe fractured.

Silence.

For a single, fleeting moment, everything ceased to exist.

And then it came crashing down.

—