Immortal Paladin

163 Refractions of Fate

The scenery changed again. I didn’t move, but the world shifted around me. One blink, one breath, and we were no longer in the void or the ruins of memory. Instead, we were in a place too ornate to be recent and too well-maintained to be a ruin. Divine Possession was still active, tethering me to Nongmin’s mind, and the Heavenly Eye still whirred behind the scenes. Everything I saw now… this memory, this vision… was his.

It looked like an auditorium. No, a courtroom. A great round chamber with rising seats like bleachers that stretched into the walls like the inside of a coliseum. In the center stood a circular table… four chairs, evenly spaced. No throne, no clear seat of honor. I understood immediately: this was the World Summit.

“This is today,” I said.

Nongmin, beside me, didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The memory had already begun to play.

People trickled in from entrances at staggered heights, filing into the gallery of seats. Representatives from distant continents and minor realms. Advisors. Bodyguards. Political parasites. I recognized some faces. General Zhu Shin, flanked by Liang Na and an unfamiliar person. Zai Ai, who was seated beside her disciple. Liu Yana, Queen of the Promised Dunes, took a seat high in the inner ring, clear indication of her status.

And at the central table, the four greatest powers in the world took their seats:

Nongmin, the Heavenly Emperor of the Grand Ascension Empire, sat straight-backed, his golden robes almost dull in the daylight pouring from the dome above.

Yi Qiu, the Strongest Martial Master Under the Heavens, leaned casually in his seat, one leg draped over the other, fingers twitching like he was resisting the urge to spar with someone.

Tian En, the Heavenly Grace and Worldly Mother of the Heavenly Temple, glowed faintly with soft pink light. Her presence felt gentle, but her eyes were sharp, wary.

And last… Shan Dian, Accursed Lightning of the Seven Colors, representative of the Union. Her aura sparked and twisted, her expression unreadable beneath the colored glimmer of her hood.

I was there, too. In the memory. Just behind Zai Ai, arms crossed, and expression very much unreadable. I remembered none of this. It hadn’t happened yet. And yet…

The memory glitched.

My head snapped as a loud hum pierced the scene, like a crystal chime splitting under pressure. I blinked. Just one blink.

Suddenly, Shan Dian’s head rolled across the polished floor.

I stood above her, wearing my armor, helm included, and sword glowing with the afterimage of her execution.

“What the hell…” I started, but the vision blurred again.

The other me… no, a version of me… moved like a phantom of death. Tian En wept glowing blood as she unleashed divine fury upon him. Yi Qiu roared with martial might, his fists creating shockwaves that rippled like torn fabric. Nongmin fought like a cornered emperor, commanding puppets and formations in tandem with his Heavenly Eye. But it didn’t matter.

I overwhelmed them.

I abused Reflect. I triggered critical hits with absurd timing. My gear was too refined, too ridiculous. I tanked divine judgments and shrugged off internal ruptures with powerful regeneration. The battle reached its height…

And then it glitched again. White static. Screaming silence.

The memory collapsed.

I looked at the image of myself mid-swing and muttered, mostly to myself, “This… this happens today.”

Nongmin stood beside me and nodded slowly. “Yes. You will slaughter us all.”

“Why?” I turned on him, anger boiling beneath my skin. “Why the fuck would I do that? Why would I go to a diplomatic summit just to murder everyone?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and there was no sarcasm or cunning in his tone. “But I’ve seen the alternatives. Worse things happen if we don’t go.”

The scene shifted again.

I stood alone in the heart of the Empire. Cities burned around me. The sky was black with ash. I was destroying everything. And no one could stop me.

Nongmin’s voice floated from behind. “We have a better chance of subduing you at the Summit. We’ll all be there. Surrounded by Tenth Realm masters. It’s our best shot. But even then… I’m not confident we’ll survive.”

I turned to face him. “Then why are you telling me this? What the hell is that cryptic nonsense about being fine with me hating you and your Empire dying with you? That bit about people being reborn in my love… what the hell does that mean, Nongmin!?”

He looked at me, pain in his eyes, and snapped his fingers.

The world twisted again.

We were on a cliff overlooking a civilization in flames. This wasn’t just war. This was cleansing.

“This,” Nongmin said. “We call it the Cleanse. Something I only learned after I got a seat at the table, representing the Empire.”

The skies above the burning city turned crimson as we watched strange airships… decorated with the symbols of the Union… release plumes of violet gas into the streets below. People fell. Men, women, children. Their bodies disintegrated or melted, their screams echoing into the void.

“Genocide,” he whispered. “Of foreign species. Every time the world detects an intrusion… Outsiders, invaders, anything that doesn’t belong… it triggers the Cleanse.”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak.

“Of course,” continued Nongmin, “the ‘Outsiders’ the rest of the sovereign nations see is different from the one that the Ward fights… If anything, the different civilizations and powers from beyond could have been refugees for all we know.”

He was trying to provoke me, so I didn’t let him.

Nongmin looked at me. “So tell me, David… if you don’t kill us all today… what are you going to do when you realize we’ve done this for centuries? Millenia?”

I stood frozen, fists clenched, heart shuddering under the weight of this revelation.

Tears pricked at the edge of my vision… not because I was weak, but because I didn’t know which version of me would show up today.

Would it be the teacher?

The God of War?

Or the executioner?

“You’re not making sense, Nongmin,” I said, more exhausted than angry.

The world still burned beneath us: cities collapsing in pillars of smoke and people reduced to ash, but he remained calm, like a man who had seen the apocalypse too many times to be afraid of it anymore. He didn’t turn to face me as he spoke, didn’t even flinch.

“The practice originated with the Heavenly Temple,” he said, his voice hollow, like he was reciting from memory. “Back then, it wasn’t about Outsiders. That word hadn’t even been coined yet, since it was a time before Ward was created. The Temple just saw beings from beyond as invasive species, something foreign to our soul rhythm. Unnatural. Corrupting.”

“And so they killed them,” I muttered.

“They cleansed them,” he corrected, and I heard the bitterness in his tone. “That’s what they called it. A righteous act, they claimed. Eventually, the Union caught on. But for them, it wasn’t about purity or divine alignment. They just wanted to cull opposition and take territory while waving a sanctified flag. The Martial Alliance followed, not out of belief, but because they feared falling behind. Resources, lands, spoils… why let morality get in the way?”

He finally turned to me then. There was no pride in his face. No regret either. Just the weariness of a man who had held the wheel of a ship charting straight toward the abyss.

“As for me,” he said quietly, “I didn’t have a choice. If I wanted a seat at the Summit, if I wanted to make change from within, I had to condone it. Or at least… not stop it.”

He paused, expecting me to say something. But I couldn’t. I stared at him, silent, until the words finally tore themselves free from my chest.

“I won’t ask more than twice,” I said, stepping forward. “Why are you showing this to me?”

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Nongmin’s mouth twitched… something between a sigh and a bitter smile. “Because fate,” he said, “is impossible to divert. Harder still to manipulate. So struggle all you like… it still comes to this. To our confrontation. To my death.”

My stomach turned. He said it like he was reading it from a script.

“But that doesn’t mean we’re helpless,” he added quickly, his eyes locking with mine. “We can still tilt the table. I can’t change what’s coming, but I can rewrite the narrative… by enacting the prophecy myself. And you will play your part.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Prophecy? You mean the one where I become the executioner?”

“Yes,” he said. “I tried to speak with the other you… the version who slaughters us… but I couldn’t reach him. Something… someone… was interfering.”

The air grew still. Even the wind seemed to pause.

“So we play it by ear?” I asked, disbelief bleeding into my voice.

“It’s the only way,” Nongmin said. “The best idea I have is for you to begin the slaughter… before the trick kicks in.”

I blinked. “You want me to start the massacre on purpose?”

“No,” he said, and there was iron in his voice now. “I want you to own it. Take control of the moment. Twist the script. If you’re the first to act, the prophecy still plays out, but you remain yourself. Not the puppet. Not the butcher.”

He took a slow breath. “I’ve tried seeing it from a dozen angles, through dreams, visions, the Eye’s reflections… I can’t find the source of the trickery. Whoever… whatever… is hiding it is beyond me.”

My hands trembled. Not with fear. With fury. “Are you going to die?”

Nongmin looked away.

“I’ll be fine,” he said softly.

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “You know I’m a lie detector, Nongmin. You know what I am.”

Without waiting for permission, I called upon Soulful Guiding Fire. The emerald flame sparked into life at my fingertip, and from it bloomed a single butterfly of green fire. It flitted gently in the scorched air, then turned… and led me to a thread of memory tangled in the stillness between time.

I reached out and touched it.

Nongmin’s scream echoed across the room. Blood spilled from his chest. A blade was buried deep inside him. His golden robes soaked crimson as the sky above fractured. Not just metaphorically. The sky cracked.

Then came the eclipse. A sun that should not have darkened… darkened. The world shuddered. And then the end began… not with a bang, but with a silence so loud it killed hope.

I staggered back from the memory, cold sweat running down my neck. The butterfly burned away in a flicker of jade.

“I kill you,” I said, voice hoarse. “I start the slaughter. And then the world ends.”

Nongmin nodded once, as if I had finally caught up.

“But not because I choose it,” I muttered. “Because something takes me. Turns me into…”

“The executioner,” he finished.

I turned to him, heart pounding, mind spinning with a dozen questions and no answers. “And what if I fail to take control?”

“Then we all die,” he said. “This world. If you fall, there’s no one left strong enough to resist what comes next.”

“You can’t say that for sure…”

“I’ve been in a stalemate against fate a long time,” Nongmin said, his voice quieter now, heavier. “And I finally found a breakthrough. You.”

He didn’t smile when he said it. No triumphant gleam in his eye, no smug tone. Just resignation. Weariness. The kind of admission that felt like it had cost him something irreplaceable.

I looked around. The memory, or whatever realm this was, had started to fracture. Cracks webbed through the air like shattered glass suspended in time, and through those cracks I glimpsed them… giant silhouettes moving beyond the veil. Their forms were more suggestion than solid: massive wings that folded over the sky, limbs that bent at unnatural angles, too many eyes watching too closely. Eldritch. Angelic. Demonic. Cryptic. Familiar, almost.

The world trembled as though buckling under the pressure of being seen.

It reminded me of Shouquan’s memories… the ones he’d shared with me in that Divine Possessed memories under the stars, before the current Hollowed World was shaped. This same sense of scale, of a world unspooling at the seams.

“That’s not all there is to it,” Nongmin said. He waved his hand, and the dreamspace lurched. The memory advanced.

The destruction faded, replaced by something else: a throne. Carved from white stone veined with gold, it pulsed faintly with light. I was sitting on it. Alone. Not a single soul in sight. No empire, no court, no survivors. Just me.

“You lived,” Nongmin said, gesturing toward the memory like a professor pointing out the conclusion on a chalkboard. “That means the people can survive. Keep them in your pocket dimension if you can. At least, if everything went wrong and I found myself more helpless than I realize.”

I frowned. “I don’t have a pocket dimension.”

“Yes, you do,” he insisted. “You call it the Item Box.”

My lips parted, then shut again. I’d never thought about it that way. The Item Box was a system function. Inventory. A game mechanic in a world that didn’t have games. It stored things… yes…but living people?

“I don’t think I can store people in there,” I said. “At least not living ones.”

“Then you take the dead,” he said without missing a beat. “And resurrect them later. If that’s what it takes.”

I stared at him. “Dude… this is getting into a direction that doesn’t even qualify as relatively sane.”

He didn’t disagree. That, somehow, made it worse.

“I need to know something,” I said, stepping toward him. “You said I’d die, right?”

He looked away.

“Oh, come on,” I muttered. “Don’t get coy with me now.”

“There are contradictions in my visions,” he said after a pause. “I’m trying to swing it toward the version with the minimum loss. Even if that means my death.”

I chewed on that. Something wasn’t adding up. My thoughts buzzed like a broken circuit board. The eldritch entity in my head… was that the cause? Or maybe the lecherous skull that had been teaching Alice and Joan? No, that felt too small. Too recent.

I summoned my Soulful Guiding Fire. The emerald butterfly flitted forward, a faint glow in the dark. I focused, narrowing its target, and let it drift toward the moment of my death.

But just as it reached the memory…

Everything froze.

My breath caught. The air went still.

And the version of me in the memory looked straight at me.

I didn’t move. Neither did he. We just stared at each other through the frozen veil of recollection. Then he spoke, and his voice echoed not from the memory, but from behind the curtain of reality.

“Hey there, me.”

I felt it then. Something clicked in my head. An echo of understanding I couldn’t put words to.

Suddenly, Nongmin was gone. Ejected like a bug in a system error. The dream warped again… only this time, it was Earth. I stood in a city. Skyscrapers loomed above. Cars rolled by. Neon signs glared at my eyes. I knew this place. Not exactly… no familiar streets… but the feeling. This was 21st-century Earth.

And standing beside me was… me.

Or at least, someone wearing my face. He looked overwhelmed, like a man who’d seen God and found out He was real, and a mistake.

“I see,” he whispered. “So it’s real. It’s not a myth at all. The [4f+3Pi1!f3] is real.”

His voice distorted, glitching like corrupted audio. His words turned to static halfway through. I couldn’t understand. My ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton.

He turned and looked at me with a deep, aching sorrow in his eyes.

I swallowed. “Is that you, Aixin?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not her.”

Then he smiled, and something in that smile made my heart drop.

“See you soon, Anomaly.”

I blinked.

And I was back.

My body felt heavy again, like I’d returned from orbit. The world was darker than before. My skin prickled. I didn’t know what that was. A memory? A warning? A time loop? A bug in the code?

Nongmin was gone.

And for the first time, I wasn’t sure which version of me was real.

“Nongmin! Nongmin, where are you!?”

I stared around, heart pounding. Same walls. Same silence. It was Nongmin’s room… where we’d been staying since arriving here. No eldritch echoes, no throne, no fragments of memory breaking apart like shattered dreams. Just stone, paper, and the faint smell of tea that had long gone cold.

But I wasn’t in my own body.

A bit of willpower let me test the thread of connection. The weight of Divine Possession still clung to me, heavy and strange. I was still inside Nongmin. Somehow, even now.

He appeared through the haze, like a shadow stepping out from fog. His face was tight with thought, his brow furrowed. I stepped closer.

“What happened?” I asked.

He met my eyes, frowning. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Something… strange. I vanished inside my own Heavenly Eye. That shouldn’t be possible. I didn’t see that coming.” His voice dropped. “It’s peculiar.”

I shared what I’d experienced: the warped memory, the version of me that wasn’t me, and the moment we were both ejected from that collapsing space. He listened quietly, then took a slow, deliberate breath.

“That entity,” he said, “the one you encountered… it’s probably the one trying to push you into madness. Into slaughter.” His tone was too even and too clean.

He walked toward me and took my hand. I didn’t like the look in his eyes… some mix of pity, desperation, and something else I couldn’t name.

“David,” he said softly, “you have to kill us. All of us. We’re bad people. We need to be punished.”

The words landed wrong. Like a child rehearsing lines from a play he didn’t understand.

“I’m serious,” he pressed. “Kill us… Then resurrect us. Or do not resurrect us! It doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is that you see this through!”

I yanked my hand away, eyes narrowing.

“You think this’ll work on me?” My voice cracked with anger. “You think I’ll play your game just because you say the magic words?”

I could see it now… his manipulation. His tactics. This was a man who’d leaned on prophecy so long he forgot how to speak like a person. He was trying to make me angry, trying to push me toward something I couldn’t take back. But his foresight was dimmed. I could feel it. His grip on the threads of fate had slipped. And without that power behind his words, they just felt pathetic.

“I don’t want to kill anyone!” I shouted. “I don’t want to become that version of me. The one who turns the World Summit into a bloodbath! The same guy who killed you in too many fucking iterations!”

His expression shifted… grief, frustration, maybe even fear. Then, in a low, guttural cry, he spat the words back:

“Fail to do so, and this world will be left for the Outsiders to devour!”

He grabbed my shoulder, his fingers digging into my robe.

“I will make you into a God, David,” he growled. “And then you will protect this world. Forget the other you. Forget wanting to go home. Forget wherever home was. This is your home now. These people… you care about them…”

He didn’t finish.

Because I punched him in the face.

He stumbled back, a hand to his jaw, blinking in stunned silence.

“Fuck you…”

The words left my mouth before I even registered the swing. My fist connected with his face again, this time square on the nose. There was a sickening crunch, and blood sprayed across the polished floor.

“I fucking hate your guts, you son of—”

I stopped.

My whole body trembled with rage, but my tongue froze. Because there was no way in hell I was going to drag Xin Yune’s name through this. She was the only decent part of his twisted, thousand-year odyssey. His pain, maybe. His compass, even if he’d long since tossed it aside.

I stood there, chest heaving, fists clenched, and teeth grinding.

“I don’t want to be a God,” I said finally, my voice shaking. “I just want to make the right choices. I won’t kill anyone… and even if I did, I’d start with myself. Do you understand me?”

He didn’t flinch. Blood dripped down from his nose, staining the front of his robe, but his eyes… those impossible, radiant eyes… burned hotter.

“You have no choice,” he said, voice low and cold. “I will not allow you to leave this place unless you agree to my demands.”

He stepped forward, light rippling off him like the shimmer of heat above flame. The world bent slightly around him… he was holding back a tide of power, and I could feel it trying to escape his skin.

“I don’t care if you kill me after I make you God, you ungrateful sorry sod,” he hissed, “but you will say yes to me.”

Then he leaned in, those twin suns burning inches from my face, and spat the words with venom.

“Also… fuck you.”

I should’ve been scared. I should’ve felt small in front of him. He had built an empire from dust, turned fate into a puppet, rewritten memory and law to serve his designs. But all I saw was a man who’d been at war with the universe so long he’d forgotten what peace looked like.

“No,” I spat back. “fuck you.”