The air in the room felt thick, suffocating—more like the air of a forgotten temple than the sterile environment of whatever this pce was. Xen took a deep breath, steadying himself as he stared at the cracked sky outside. The sky was bleeding—its fracture lines glowing with a strange iridescence, as if the fabric of reality itself was being undone.

  The system was there, humming in the back of his mind, a quiet reminder that his fate had been sealed.

  > [System Status: Apocalypse System Initialized.] [World Cssification: Grade-A Apocalypse World.] [Camity Progress: 17%.] [New Objective: Survive the Fall of the Dao.] [System Path Unlocked: Camity Devourer.]

  Xen's heart thrummed in response to the system’s message. "Camity Devourer," it said. As if such a title could belong to a man—if he could even call himself that anymore.

  His hands—small, pale, noble—felt the foreign weight of the world pressing down on them. He flexed his fingers, searching for a connection to this new form, this new existence. The silver hair, the golden eye, the strange mark beneath it—a crescent, like the faint echo of a long-lost moon. He didn’t know who he was now, not really. But he knew one thing.

  He wasn't the same.

  In the back of his mind, that whispering shard—an ancient memory, one that didn’t belong to him—gnawed at the edges of his consciousness. It whispered of a world dying, of gods who turned to dust and of ancient forces beyond the stars. It filled him with an unsettling hunger—a need to devour, to consume, to become something greater.

  "Let the world break itself." He smiled, the words tasting strange on his tongue. They were a promise. A vow.

  Xen didn’t want to just survive. He wanted to transcend.

  He took a step forward. Then another. The room around him felt colder, the shadows stretching unnaturally long, as if the very space was bending to the will of whatever power he had become. His feet moved without his command, guided by the whispers of the system, pulling him toward something. Something that had been waiting.

  The door creaked as he approached, as if reluctant to open, but Xen pushed it open without hesitation. The air outside was thick with the scent of burning cities and the distant cries of the forsaken. The ground trembled beneath him as he stepped into the corridor of a crumbling citadel—once a pce of knowledge, of power.

  Now, a ruin.

  The walls around him were etched with symbols in a nguage he didn’t recognize, but somehow, he knew. Every curve, every line—they sang to him in a nguage older than time. The architecture was alien, yet familiar, like the bones of some forgotten god.

  Above him, the fractured sky glowed, the eyes watching.

  > [World Status Update: The Dao is breaking.] [System Path: Camity Devourer unlocked. Option to consume local camity detected.] [Would you like to begin devouring? Yes/No.]

  Devour.

  Xen’s hand clenched. The urge to destroy, to consume, was irresistible. It was as if something inside him screamed to tear apart the dying world around him. The power in his chest—a fragment of something ancient, something forbidden—burned hotter.

  He had no time to question the logic of it. No time to think of consequences. His path was set. The system had marked him. Devour, it said. Survive, Adapt, Transcend, or be erased.

  His golden eye flickered.

  “Yes,” Xen muttered, the words barely a whisper.

  In the moment that he spoke, the world around him shuddered.

  The walls of the citadel cracked as if the very fabric of reality was pulling apart. Xen felt the void—the apocalypse—reaching out to cim him. The Camity was not just the end of a world; it was the beginning of something far more primal. A force of nature, unstoppable and unyielding.

  The ground buckled beneath him, and a wave of Negative Aether surged from the depths of the world. Xen’s body jerked violently as the energy wrapped around him like chains, squeezing, pressing, threatening to tear him apart.

  But instead of succumbing, Xen drew in the power, feeling it consume him—flow through him, until it became part of him. The Aether cshed violently against his will, but he resisted. He couldn’t let it take him.

  No. He wasn’t done.

  Xen inhaled deeply, feeling the power course through him. It was his now. The system had chosen him. The apocalypse had chosen him.

  > [Camity Devourer: Stage 1 - Assimition Complete.] [Warning: The Dao is unstable.] [New Objective: Devour the Breaking Dao and Unlock New Paths.]

  He raised his hand. From the broken citadel, the ruins themselves answered. The earth shifted, and the very air around him became charged with raw, chaotic power.

  The Dao was breaking.

  Xen was not merely a survivor. He was the harbinger of the apocalypse. A force to match the colpse of the universe itself.

  The fractured sky trembled.

  He had come into this world not to live… but to reshape it.