A cataclysmic aftershock shook the entire core structure of the Aethelgard temple. The transparent walls enclosing the room fractured into a thousand pieces, revealing a cosmic apocalypse unfolding outside on a scale that was simultaneously magnificent and terrifying.

The world of Aethelgard collapsed within minutes.

Thousands of floating islands in the sky abruptly lost their balancing gravity, colliding with one another at high speed. The impacts between the giant islands generated explosions of stone shards, cosmic dust, and flashes of crystal energy filling the skies like a meteor shower. Massive chunks of earth alongside inverted waterfalls plummeted downward into the white cloud abyss, swallowing everything in their path.

"Davin! Over here!" Valeri shouted in panic.

The woman, alongside the surviving members of the wanderer group from the previous battle, hurried toward an emergency evacuation platform—a small inter-dimensional craft belonging to the predecessor explorers parked on the outer temple landing pad.

Davin sprinted to follow them, but his steps halted as a deafening roar of twisting metal exploded directly overhead.

Crack... Swish—!

A hundreds-ton temple roof support stone pillar snapped instantly from the impact of another island crashing into the temple's side. The giant pillar plunged downward, heading straight toward the evacuation path where Valeri and the wanderers were running.

"Look out!" Davin screamed.

Without a thought for his own safety, Davin lunged forward. He thrust both hands upward, activating the Echo ability with maximum energy deployment from The Ledger.

A golden-blue energy shockwave exploded from his palms, arresting the giant stone pillar's descent in mid-air. Muscles across Davin’s body stiffened rigidly, the veins in his neck bulged outward, and his breathing raggedly rushed as he fought gravity and thousands of tons of pressing rock weight.

"Get out of here, fast!" Davin barked in a raspy voice, turning toward Valeri, who stood frozen staring at him.

"Davin! You can't hold that alone! Come with us to the ship!" Valeri screamed hysterically, refusing to board the evacuation craft unless Davin came along.

"This path is collapsing! If I let go now, these ruins will block your ship's hatch!" Davin replied firmly, his eyes telegraphing unshakeable iron resolve. "Go, Valeri! Save them!"

Valeri bit her lip until it bled, her tears falling amidst the chaos. She knew Davin was right. With a heavy heart, she turned and shoved the remaining wanderers into the emergency evacuation craft's cabin.

On the outer pad, the ship's engines flared brightly, emitting a blue plasma burst as it surged away from the ruined temple landing pad.

Seeing Valeri and her group safely entering the evacuation route, Davin let out a sigh of relief. He released his concentration on the stone pillar.

Boom!

The giant pillar crashed onto the landing floor directly behind him, destroying the remaining pathway and cutting off all access to the evacuation zone entirely.

Davin turned, intending to head toward another platform. Yet, before his foot could take a step, the entire temple floor slab before him suddenly gave way into the dimensional void abyss.

Crack-wham!

The landing pad where Davin stood splintered into tiny fragments. The loss of Aethelgard's system root tore space and time in that world apart completely. A dimensional abyss yawned wide before him, spewing a wildly spinning white vortex storm that erased the boundary between land and sky.

Davin pitched forward, tumbling across floating rock shards. He whipped his head up quickly.

Valeri’s evacuation ship had already streaked far across the sky, while the sole emergency route before him had been sealed off by massive ruins and an open sea of dimensional vortexes.

No more bridges. No more paths back.

Amidst the chaos storm tearing Aethelgard's reality apart, the hourglass symbol on the back of Davin’s hand blazed with a blinding silver light, pulsing wildly as though forcing his body to immediately escape this dying world.

Davin stood at the edge of the landing pad ruins, now reduced to the size of a small rock. Before him, the bottomless dimensional abyss yawned, ready to swallow anything.

Without system guidance, without coordinate calculations, and with no other choices left, Davin Ronan took his final breath in this world.

He took a single step forward, hurling his entire body into the center of the terrifying dimensional vortex abyss, letting himself be dragged away God-knows-where in the most reckless leap of his entire journey.