KHILESH_KORE

He was once the Crown Heir to the Great Dominion of Valrion — respected, admired, loved… until they turned on him.
His own family. His closest friend. His beloved.

Falsely accused of treason, stripped of his powers, and burned at the stake, Aedric Valtoris died cursing the gods. But the heavens heard him. And now — reborn 10 years in the past — with memories of betrayal carved deep into his soul, Aedric will tear through the realm with only one goal:

Revenge.

But in a world filled with gods, demons, blood contracts, and forbidden magic, he must fight not just for vengeance…
…but for the right to rewrite destiny itself.

The Boy Who Burned the Heavens

"From the ashes of obedience, a darker faith was born."

Location: Former Ruins of Sil'Vaenn, now called the Hollow Chapel.

Twilight bled across the sky like a wound that refused to close. Among the crumbling ruins of Sil'Vaenn, once a majestic Aetherian city of logic-bound architecture and radiant mana trees, shadows now lingered far longer than they should.

Where pillars had once held runes etched by the System's hand, they now bore carvings—scratched with blood, ash, and bone. Not words. Not magic. But symbols no one alive remembered.

And yet, those symbols glowed faintly in the dusk.

The air shimmered. The silence was not empty.

At the heart of the ruins, deep within the cathedral's collapsed vault, a gathering took place.

Hooded figures knelt in a perfect circle, their robes stitched from scavenged quest scrolls, broken UI fragments, and tattered remnants of player banners.

Eyes blindfolded. Fingers inked in System-blue.

Her name was Maelra—but the cult knew her as the First Reclaimer.

She was once an Archsage of the Third Tier.

But without the System… her visions had turned to screaming voids.

But… something that claimed it was before them both.

A primordial logic that had watched this world spin long before algorithms or mana.

"Our god was slain by a man," Maelra whispered, voice trembling with ecstasy and sorrow. "And from the corpse of the code, a new gospel rises."

Former bosses. Discarded NPCs. Fallen adventurers.

Some once real. Some once scripted.

"Our prophet—the False Sovereign—refuses divinity," she continued. "But we shall take his sin and forge salvation."

From behind her robe, she pulled a severed arm.

It was… mechanical. A jagged, twitching limb of silver-veined chrome.

"The relic of an Echo Core," Maelra whispered. "A piece of the hidden backup layer of the System. Buried where the world forgets. And now—it breathes."

"Soon… the Reinstallation shall begin."

Far from the ruins, Aedric walked alone through the Ashen Wastes.

But because something had shifted in the Aether.

A new ripple in the leyline paths. A subtle glitch in mana streams.

Selene met him near the stone monoliths, her eyes worried.

"Yes," he said, gaze narrowing toward the east. "Something is trying to resurrect the System. But not as it was."

Caelen arrived next, his blade crackling faintly. "Someone's gathering forbidden tech—old code, dead nodes, memory vaults. And worse—they're weaponizing identity shards."

"Fragments of characters," Aedric muttered. "AI ghosts."

"They believe you're a god, Aedric," Selene said softly. "And they're ready to resurrect their version of you."

"They don't want freedom. They want someone to blame."

Maelra placed the mechanical arm upon the altar.

It pulsed. Hummed. Then released a soft click.

A single interface window—pale, flickering, incomplete—blinked into existence above it.

And for a single second, the last surviving ghost of the old System spoke.

The Followers of the Lost Code