Chapter Text
The world believed he died screaming, they were wrong.
The sea burned.
Not with fire—but with will.
The sky above God Valley cracked open with thunder that refused to obey the heavens, clouds torn apart as if the world itself recoiled from what stood beneath it. Blood soaked the rocks, heavy and dark, slipping into the ocean like secrets that would never surface again.
Davy D. Xebec lay broken—but unbowed.
His laughter had finally faded, his body failing where his spirit had not. Every breath scraped like rusted iron through his chest. The monsters of his era stood over him—dog of the fake god—they were here to finish him off, yet none of them met his eyes.
Because Xebec was still smiling.
Not wide, Not mad.
“They’ll write me as a devil,” he rasped, voice raw, carried away by the wind. “They always do.”
No one answered.
The World Government never answered dying men.
His vision blurred, but his thoughts sharpened—cutting, clear, furious.
God.
What a laughable word.
A throne hidden in shadows. A crown no one was allowed to question. A fake god sitting above the world, deciding who was allowed to breathe freely and who was meant to kneel.
Xebec had seen it.
The rot beneath the order.
The lie behind the justice.
The fear masquerading as divinity.
He had challenged it—and lost.
But loss was not the same as the end.
“…I don’t regret it,” he muttered, blood at the corner of his mouth. “Not a single step.”
The wind picked up, carrying his final words out over the sea, over the centuries yet to come.
“I only wish…” His fingers twitched against the stone. “…I could see it.”
Someone scoffed quietly nearby.
Xebec’s smile widened just a fraction.
“To see whether this world stays afraid forever,” he whispered. “Or if, someday—someone rises.”
His breath hitched.
“Someone reckless enough to laugh at gods.”
“Someone stupid enough to punch the sky.”
“Someone who doesn’t bow—no matter how high the throne is.”
For the first time, there was something like hope in his eyes.
“Tell me,” Xebec breathed, staring past the present, past his enemies, past death itself—
“Does anyone in the future dare challenge the lie?”
A final exhale.
“…Does anyone topple the government?”
The sea swallowed his words.
History buried his name.
But wishes made at the edge of an era had a way of echoing.
And somewhere in the future—
A boy would grin at the world.
A fist would rise against the heavens.
And the gods would learn how fragile they truly were.
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A wish was never supposed to matter.
Not one whispered by a dying man. Not one drowned beneath history. Not one made by someone the world had already decided to forget.
And yet—
Somewhere beyond time, beyond names, beyond the lies carved into stone—
Something laughed.
It was not a sound meant for ears. It rippled instead—through freedom, through defiance, through the part of the world that refused to stay quiet.
Nika heard it.
The wish did not reach him as words.
It reached him as intent.
A challenge. A question. A dare thrown across centuries.
Does anyone topple the fake god?
Reality bent.
Not shattered—not yet. Just… tilted. As if the world leaned closer, curious. Amused.
History was a straight line only when Nika allowed it to be.
And right now—
He didn’t.
The sea after God Valley was wrong.
Too still.
The storm clouds had scattered, the battlefield swallowed by distance and silence, yet the air felt thick—heavy with unfinished business.
That was when the world skipped.
No warning. No pain. No logic.