Reborn with the Devil's system-Chapter 40: The Hollow king: Sovereign Flame march

The wind over Ashenveil shifted.

Not a breeze.

A warning.

It howled through the valley like something trying to speak but without a mouth. Birds fled the skies. Trees bent away from the mountains. And every blade of grass shivered.

In the capital, shrines of flame went out for the first time in recorded history.

Somewhere far from them, in a chamber wrapped in moonlight and rune-etched marble, Elias Black stood motionless, fingers twitching against the grip of a blade forged from his own soul.

The Hollow King had spoken.

Not in words. Not in dreams.

But in command.

> "Sovereign... there is no place left for you in the world you tried to save."

---

Preparations for War

Elias’s eyes narrowed as the echo faded. Around him, the Sovereign Council began to gather—his closest allies, each wielders of unique dominions across the post-System world.

Kael, still smirking despite his missing arm. Myra, always calm but deadly. Ceryn, returned from scouting a tear in time-space that now bled shadows.

And a new face.

A young woman named Liora, the last known psychic born before the fall of the Architect. Her eyes glowed faintly with static blue.

"The voice you heard," she said quietly, "I saw it too. In the Veil. Murael isn’t just waking... he’s leaking into everything."

"Leaking?" Myra asked, brows arched.

"Reality. Thought. Even truth. It’s... becoming corrupted."

Elias finally spoke. "Then we fight before the disease spreads."

---

The Herald Arrives

That night, while fires burned high in preparation, a rift opened in the outer districts of Ashenveil.

Not like a portal. Not like a gate.

Like the world sliced open by a scalpel dipped in entropy.

From it stepped a figure in armor made of bone, stitched with black veins of forgotten memory. Its eyes were voids. Its weapon was a blade made of pure denial—a weapon that didn’t cut flesh, but erased your place in the world.

> Name: The First Herald

Class: Void-Eater

Purpose: Deliver the Message

Target: Elias Black

The Herald marched through the city like wind through flame. Buildings withered. People forgot they existed mid-sentence.

It stopped only when Elias himself arrived—white fire burning at his heels.

---

First Clash

"You were warned," the Herald said, voice like a dead god reciting scripture.

Elias stared at the creature. "Then deliver your message and begone."

The Herald raised its blade.

> "Murael invites you to fade. Join the silence before it becomes a scream."

Elias didn’t respond with words.

He charged.

The clash tore the sky.

His white flame struck the Herald’s null-armor with force that would melt cities—but it didn’t burn.

The Herald’s sword cut sideways, missing flesh, but grazing existence.

Elias flinched—his timeline split. For a second, there were two versions of him. One dead, the other coughing blood.

He forced them to fuse again, roaring as his Sovereign Flame surged.

> [System Ability Activated: Law-Eater – Consuming Anchor Code...]

Success. Fragment of the Herald’s presence absorbed.

With a savage twist, Elias embedded his white blade into the Herald’s torso and lit the Void inside it aflame.

The Herald screamed—not in pain, but in protest.

And vanished.

---

The Council Reacts

"That was a scout," Ceryn said flatly.

"And a message," Myra added. "He’s daring you to come."

Elias didn’t speak.

Instead, he walked into the map chamber and stared at the spiral of rifts now blooming across the globe. A dozen tears. A hundred whispers. Thousands of faint signals where reality was... wrong.

The Hollow King wasn’t trying to rule.

He was trying to rewrite the concept of existing at all.

Kael stepped beside him. "When do we burn it all down?"

Elias turned, calm and precise.

"Now."

---

The System Evolves

That night, Elias meditated in the Chamber of Sovereign Core.

The flames around him dimmed. frёewebηovel.cѳm

A new update pulsed into his consciousness.

> [System Authority Expansion Unlocked]

You have begun the Path of Total Dominion.

New Traits:

– Existence Lock: Prevents timeline corruption within 20 meters.

– Burn of the Beyond: White flames now inflict conceptual damage.

– Eidolon Memory Access: You may see fragments of failed realities.

New Objective:

Seal the Rift-Gates before the Hollow Seed awakens.

Estimated Time Remaining: 8 Days, 3 Hours

---

A Glimpse of the Hollow King

As he opened his eyes, Elias felt it—a gaze.

No Herald. No minion.

The Hollow King himself, looking through time, watching him.

A figure formed briefly in the chamber’s mirror.

Tall. Robed in history itself. No face. Only a swirling mass of forgotten events, spinning like a slow hurricane inside a hood.

> "You cannot kill what was never born," it whispered. "You only delay the echo."

Elias stared straight back.

"I’m not here to delay anything," he said. "I’m here to end you."

The Hollow King smiled.

And vanished.

The war began at Vaelmir.

Once a flourishing city of innovation, it now stood silent, split by a pulsating rift that bled violet mist into the skies. Roads twisted like serpents. Buildings hung upside-down, frozen in loops of time. And from deep within the heart of the rupture...

...came whispers that unmade sanity.

Elias stood on a ruined watchtower overlooking the corrupted valley. The sky above him trembled. Lightning flashed—in reverse—and a flock of birds flew backwards across a sun that no longer moved.

> [Warning: Rift-Gate Detected]

Type: Hollow Tear

Anchor Host Detected: Herald-Class Entity

Stability: Collapsing

Estimated Time Before Expansion: 36 Hours

Kael approached from behind, slinging a fusion rifle over his back. "You sure about this, boss? We go down there, we might not come back the same."

Elias’s white-flame eyes glowed. "We don’t come back at all unless we close that gate."

---

The March Begins

At the base of the watchtower, the Sovereign Flame Guard assembled—elite warriors imbued with fragments of Elias’s power.

Each wore armor etched in flame runes. Their weapons glowed with soulfire. They were not just soldiers—they were manifestations of his will.

Myra, dressed in her signature spectral blue, placed her hand on the map rune. "We’ll flank west with Kael’s team. Liora will keep the anchor sealed mentally. The rest is yours, Elias."

Ceryn stepped up. "And what do we call this operation?"

Elias smiled faintly, stepping toward the pulsing edge of reality.

> "Sovereign Flame March."

"We burn a path through the impossible."

---

Into the Rift

The rift resisted them at first.

Time stuttered. Space rewound. The moment Elias crossed the threshold, gravity vanished, and reality screamed.

He didn’t falter.

His white fire flared wide, carving a bubble of stable law around his team. Through that bubble, they marched into the void.

And what they saw within the rift—

Was a mirror of Vaelmir, twisted and wrong.

Corpses walked the streets, stuck in death loops. Buildings bled memories instead of bricks. A child’s laughter echoed endlessly from a burning church that had never been built.

And in the center—

A towering Herald, cloaked in armor forged from stolen dreams.

It held a banner of silence and carried a blade made of apology.

---

The Battle Unfolds

"Eyes up!" Kael shouted, firing his rifle.

The Herald turned, eyes like gaping mouths, and let out a shriek that shattered weapons into salt.

Elias leapt.

Mid-air, he twisted the System to his will.

> [Ability: Burn of the Beyond – Active]

[Trait: Existence Lock – Radius Expanded]

You have sealed the Herald’s ability to erase timelines within 50 meters.

The flames surged. The Herald swung—but Elias met the strike with both hands, catching the blade, and letting it cleave through his shoulder—on purpose.

"Your mistake," Elias whispered.

He gripped the blade, and through pain, forced the Herald into submission with his Sovereign Codex flaring open behind him.

> [Law-Eater Triggered]

Herald’s Memory Eater Trait stolen.

Elias snapped the blade in half—and the Herald began screaming in reverse.

Kael charged through the chaos, sword drawn, slicing through echo-entities that bled liquid doubt. "We’ve got more coming through the gate!"

Myra conjured a sphere of binding light. "Seal it! Elias—we don’t hold long!"

---

Elias Ascends Again

The Herald stabbed itself, splitting its own body into three echoes.

"Cute," Elias growled. "Let me show you what a real timeline split looks like."

> [System Fusion Trait – Eidolon Memory Access Activated]

Three versions of Elias blinked into existence—each from a different doomed future. One wielded a scythe. One had wings of burning script. The last bore a crown of iron silence.

Together, they unleashed hell.

The Herald didn’t even scream this time. It simply ceased—unmade by possibility itself.

As its body crumbled, Elias merged with his fragments once more and stepped toward the heart of the Rift.

> [Anchor Node Detected]

Would you like to purge corruption and reseal the Rift?

Y/N

"Yes," Elias whispered.

White light exploded.

---

The Aftermath

The corrupted Vaelmir screamed as it was erased from the rift dimension. The Sovereign Flame Guard emerged on the other side—bruised, exhausted, but alive.

Elias dropped to one knee as the ground stopped shaking.

Liora knelt beside him, pressing a hand to his chest. "You’ve pushed the Dominion Flame too far. You’ll burn out."

"I’ll recover," Elias said, though his veins glowed dangerously bright.

From the hill behind them, Kael raised a torn banner—the Sovereign Flame sigil—into the air. "One down."

Myra exhaled, gazing at the now-closed sky.

"Eight to go."

---

The Hollow King’s Laughter

As night fell, Elias stood alone near the edge of the crater where Vaelmir once stood.

A whisper rode the wind. No echo. No trace.

Just laughter.

> "You’re faster than the others," came the Hollow King’s voice.

"But all flames go out eventually."

Elias clenched his fists.

"No," he whispered. "This time... the fire will consume you."

His Codex flickered—white text glowing against the backdrop of starlight.

> [New Quest Unlocked: Break the Hollow Chain]

Target: The Hollow King’s Nexus Root

Estimated Threat Level: Absolute

Time Remaining: 7 Days, 10 Hours

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