The Transmigrated Author

Rel's eyes snapped to the older Rel and the distance between them had never felt so vast.

His legs wouldn't move. Not from paralysis. From recognition.

He knew what this spell was. He knew what it meant. And he knew, with a clarity that sat cold and absolute in his chest, that he couldn't reach Prime in time to stop it.

This is the end of everything I could become.

"You're not chanting," Rel said. His voice came out steady that it surprised him.

Prime's hand was still raised, black lightning coiling around his wrist like living restraints. His expression was unreadable.

"I don't need to. I've cast this spell enough times to skip the ritual."

"How many times?" Rel's throat tightened.

A pause. The black lightning intensified.

"Enough to know I shouldn't use it on you." Prime met his eyes.

"But you asked for this."

I asked for this.

The thought didn't feel like an accusation. It felt like an epitaph.

He'd wanted to see what he'd become. He'd demanded it. Provoked it.

And now he was showing him.

DING!...DING!...DING!...

The system warnings were still flashing at the edge of his vision, but Rel didn't see them anymore.

His eyes were locked on Prime's raised hand.

"Sloth's Embrace. Pride's Descent. Wrath's Spiral."

Three names. Simultaneous. Not recited—listed. The way someone might read a grocery list. The names rolled off his tongue in a single phrase, overlapping each other, and the void answered.

Three rifts tore open.

Not in sequence. All at once.

Above Rel, a wound in reality split the white horizon, blacker than darkness, deeper than nothing.

From its depths, thousands of unblinking eyes emerged.

They filled the sky like a constellation of nightmares, staring down from every angle, and behind them, something vast was taking shape. A hand. Colossal. Shadow-made. Descending.

Gooooh....Goooh....Gooooh...

To his side, a golden rift burst open, blinding and divine.

GRAHHH!

The upper half of a skeletal giant dragged itself through, bones of old ivory gleaming with inner light.

Ornate golden armour clad its torso, drinking the ambient glow around it.

Its eye sockets burned with cold blue fire.

In its hand, raised high, the Golden Spear of Destiny aimed with the authority of a god-king passing judgement.

RAHHHHH!!!

Behind him, a volcanic rift bled magma and smoke into the void.

Three massive dragons emerged, already interlocked in black, gold, crimson spiralling into a triple-helix drill.

Dominance Aura. Mana. Anti-Magic.

They plummeted toward the void floor faster and faster, a synchronized pillar of destruction.

─── ⋆⋆⋆⋅☆⋅⋆⋆⋆ ───

Spell Arts #99

Divine Godless Impact.

Triad Of Perpetual Sin.

─── ⋆⋆⋆⋅☆⋅⋆⋆⋆ ────

Rel saw all of it in a single moment.

All three attacks converging on his position.

The hand from above, the spear from the side, the dragons from behind.

Their speed... it was all too fast.

And survival probability.

Low. Very low.

And yet, he didn't run.

There was nowhere to run.

No gap to slip through. No clever adaptation. No trick.

Just three different kinds of death arriving at the same second.

BOOOOOOOM!!!!

The shadow hand touched the ground.

A massive black dome erupted from the point of contact. It expanded outward at the speed of sound compressing, vaporising, erasing everything it passed.

The void beneath it didn't crack. It simply ceased to be.

BOOOOOOOM!!!!

The Golden Spear struck.

A cataclysmic mushroom cloud of gold and white swallowed the horizon.

The kinetic shockwave pulverised the air itself.

Then came the blackness not darkness, but the absence of light, of colour, of hope.

It drank the sky like a plague.

BAMMMMMMM!

The dragons hit the ground.

A fireball erupted behind him with the pressure of dominant aura, mana, and anti magic combining for a cataclysmic blast.

The void melted into a sea of bubbling black-gold-red glass.

All of it, consuming everything that had somehow survived the other two.

Three different kinds of death.

Three different kinds of absence.

All arriving at the same second.

And Rel stood at the centre of it evaporating at death.

***

[Rel's POV]

Everything went white.

Then black.

Then nothing.

I didn't feel the impact. I didn't anything the hands, or the spear, or the dragons.

One moment I was standing at the center of three converging deaths.

The next, I wasn't standing at all. I wasn't anything.

The void swallowed me whole, and for a stretched-out second that felt like it didn't belong to time, I simply didn't exist.

Then the system spoke.

[Congratulations! You have completed the quest: Hold Out Against Your Future Self.]

[ERROR!...ERROR!...]

[Error: User: Axel Saint Rel Laurence has died.]

[Evaluating results...]

[50%...]

[75%...]

[100%]

[Results have been calculated.]

[Death penalty has not been administered. Fate Reprieve will be used in exchange for receiving the quest reward.]

[Fate Reprieve [5/5] — Activated.]

I couldn't read the description.

But I knew what it was. I knew what it meant.

[Fate Reprieve has been used.]

[4/5 Remaining.]

FWANG!

***

HAAH!...

I gasped.

My eyes snapped open and sweat poured down my face.

When I looked up the void was still white. Still endless. Still silent except for the sound of my own breathing.

I was alive.

I didn't feel alive but my hands were shaking and my heart was slamming against my ribs like it was trying to escape.

But I was breathing. I was here.

Whatever "here" meant after being erased by three different kinds of death at the same time.

"You're back."

A shadow fell over me.

I looked up.

My older self was kneeling at my level.

His eyes were tired again now and the cold intensity from before settled back to the way it was before.

He moved across my face like he was reading something he didn't fully understand.

"That's not how I remember it."

His voice was quiet the kind of voice someone used when they were working through a problem out loud.

"...?"

I tried to speak but nothing came out.

My throat closed around the words and I swallowed trying to speak again.