The battlefield was drowning in death.
Blood pooled in uneven streams, sinking into the dirt like the earth itself was drinking deep. The scent was suffocating—metallic, thick, refusing to fade. Corpses lay twisted in unnatural shapes, some still warm, others already stiff. Mouths frozen in soundless screams, fingers curled mid-reach, eyes wide and glassy. The air, thick with rot and something more primal, pressed down on the living like a weight.
And yet, despite it all, their eyes were drawn to him.
He moved through the carnage with a slow, deliberate grace—untouched, unbothered, as if he belonged here.
The survivors knew. They understood, on a level beyond words, that this was his doing. That the massacre stretching before them was nothing more than a game played in the palm of his hand. That knowledge should have filled them with terror. And yet.
Their breath caught for an entirely different reason.
His beauty was something that should not exist in a place like this. It was cruel, unnatural—something meant to be gazed upon, even when it should be feared. His abyss-like black eyes drank in the light, reflecting nothing back. His smile, delicate yet sharp, seemed to hold something just out of reach, something none of them could grasp.
A contradiction. A nightmare draped in the skin of a dream.
It was that realization that made the horror settle in even deeper. Because this wasn't just the work of a monster.
It was the work of something beyond them.
A single voice broke through the suffocating stillness.
"Did you all enjoy the game?"
It was soft. Almost gentle. Yet it cut through the battlefield sharper than a blade.
The reaction was instant.
The burly man flinched, his breath hitching as if a phantom hand had closed around his throat. The woman's body tensed, fingers twitching at her sides. The skinny man sucked in a sharp breath, his already dry throat choking on nothing. Not a single one of them had moved until this moment—but his voice startled them more than the corpses at their feet.
Someone let out a broken gasp. Another instinctively want to walk away but cannot move. No one could process it. The words were too light, too casual for the massacre around them.
And yet, it was precisely that indifference that made it terrifying.
Linglong couldn't turn her head, but she could see. Even through the haze of pain, she saw the slow, unhurried way he moved. Saw the bloodstained ground beneath his steps, yet not a single drop clung to him. Saw the way the others—those who didn't recognize him—still looked at him with something dangerously close to admiration.
She wanted to laugh. Or cry.
They didn't understand. They were still caught in his presence, still captivated by the beauty of a nightmare wearing a human face.
But Zhang understood.
His mind, usually cold and calculating, was racing at a speed he couldn't control. He had expected many things. But not this. The sheer weight of Yanwei's existence pressed down on him—not just as the mastermind of this night, but as something far worse.
Something inevitable.
Yanwei tilted his head slightly, his abyss-like eyes scanning the silent, trembling figures before him. His smile remained, unreadable, untouched by the horror around him.
And then—
A voice was heared.
"…Aren't you dead?"
Zhang's words weren't loud, yet they rippled through the silence like a pebble dropped into still water.
For a moment, no one reacted.
"What?" The burly man's brow furrowed. His breath was still unsteady from the overwhelming pressure earlier, but now, something else gnawed at him. What kind of question was that?
"Dead?" The woman repeated, glancing between Zhang and the figure before them. She wasn't scared—she just didn't get it. What was Zhang even implying?
The skinny man frowned, his usually sharp mind grasping at something just out of reach. "Wait… why would you say that?"
The murmurs spread.
Among the cannon fodders, disbelief flickered.
"W-Wait, what does he mean 'dead'?"
"Hah? Isn't he standing right there?"
"Zhang must be talking nonsense… right?"
There was no real fear in their voices—just confusion. Some of them even chuckled nervously, as if Zhang had cracked a joke that no one understood. Because really, what the hell was he talking about?
They had never even seen this guy before.
…Right?
The woman's eyes narrowed slightly. She tried to recall—when did that man even show up? She was sure he wasn't there before. So why did it feel like he'd always been standing there?
Something wasn't adding up.
Yanwei didn't reply immediately.
He just looked at Zhang.
A quiet smile rested on his lips—calm, effortless, unreadable. The kind of smile that didn't answer anything but instead made the question itself feel… insignificant.
Zhang's fingers twitched slightly. A strange pressure built in his chest—not fear, not yet, but something far worse. Something that clawed at his mind, demanding to be understood.
His breathing slowed. His voice, when it came, was steady. But there was an edge to it now.
"…I'm going to rephrase what I said."
The others stirred slightly, their confusion thick in the air, but Zhang ignored them. His focus was locked on the man before him. On the impossibility standing right there.
"The number one demon under heaven…" His words carried weight now, pressing down on the silence. "The assassin feared not only by those at the pinnacle of the world—" his gaze sharpened, "—but by other races. The one whose name alone was enough to halt wars before they began."
His jaw clenched.
But instead of fear, confusion filled the air.
The cannon fodders exchanged uncertain glances. The burly man's brows knitted together, his mind racing. The skinny man swallowed, his throat dry. If this man was truly a figure capable of shaking the world, why had they never once heard of him? Why had no rumors of his existence ever reached them?
A Rank 1 as the strongest? Who would even believe that? Even Zhang's expression—stricken with something between recognition and horror—made no sense to them.
Who the hell was this man?
And then—
"Heaven's Reverie Paragon, Yanwei."
The moment the title was spoken, everything changed.
A silence, heavy and unnatural, settled over them.
Then—
A weight.
Not a pressure that could be fought, not a force that could be resisted, but something deeper. Something raw and primordial.
Their bodies locked in place. Their breath turned shallow. The pulse of life within them felt fragile—like prey caught in the gaze of an unseen predator.
They didn't understand why.
The title meant nothing to them. They had never heard it before. And yet, their souls recognized it.
An unspoken dread took root in their chests. The feeling of something being profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
And amidst it all, the woman ignored the weight pressing down on her.
Because she knew.
She knew that title.
Heaven's Reverie…
It wasn't something to be questioned, only avoided. Elders spoke of it with wariness, if they spoke of it at all. The weight of that name alone carried an eerie finality, as though acknowledging it might invite disaster.
But she never thought—never believed—it could be real.
It had been a fortunate inheritance, a stroke of luck that led her to that book. A record of figures whose very existence shaped history, those whose names could shake the world even long after their deaths. The book had contained only a handful of names, and Heaven's Reverie had been among them. Yet, unlike the others, his legend was strange—unfathomable.
Because there were no details.
No feats recorded. No known history. Just a name.
A name, and a warning.
Heaven's Reverie is not a man. He is a calamity.
She shouldn't have believed it. But—
Her gaze flickered to Zhang.
Zhang, who was honed by a sect, whose knowledge far surpassed hers. Zhang, who stood before this man, looking as though he had seen a ghost.
Zhang believes it.
That was enough.
And now, as the weight of the title bore down on the battlefield, as confusion turned into an instinctual, inexplicable dread—
She realized something.
No one knew Heaven's Reverie.
A name that should have been etched into time itself. A man that should have been legend.
But the world had erased him.
Not out of ignorance. Not out of failure.
But out of dread.
Because his existence was not meant to be remembered.
Because his title was not a legend.
It was an anathema.