The collapse of Layers 1 through 10 was not the end.
It was the alarm bell.
And something ancient… answered.
Deep within the ever-churning core of the Abyss—far beyond the known 99 layers—Ashura awoke.
Not a god.
Not a demon.
Not a being made for understanding.
Ashura was a concept that had once been rejected by reality: Pure, Undying Rage given form.
It had no face. It had no past. But when the Layer Collapse struck and chaos recoiled inward, it took the pain personally.
The Awakening
Ashura did not rise with noise.
It rose with silence.
A pressure settled across all Abyssal domains, like gravity had tripled. The creatures within the 11th to 99th layers suddenly dropped to their knees, screeching or gibbering as their instincts were overridden.
Even the Tier 7 and Tier 8 entities froze.
The Abyss itself warped to accommodate its general's fury.
Ashura didn't speak.
It bled heat.
Not fire—anger. The emotion, turned into force. It melted flesh, stone, memory. The worlds beyond the Abyss had pierced its domain.
And now it would return the favor.
Echoes in the Outer Worlds
In hundreds of skies across different universes, cracks began to form—blood-colored lightning streaking through space itself. In the capital of the Arcana Federation, stargazers saw entire constellations shift as if something were pressing on the outer edge of existence.
In the Dream Forests of Jaalun, time stood still for two entire minutes.
Birds fell from the air.
Rivers boiled backward.
Mages across worlds began coughing up black bile—those who were attuned to cosmic flow screamed about an impossible storm that was approaching.
They didn't know its name. But they knew something old was coming.
The First Sign: The Fire Tunnels
Layer 10's collapse created a breach deeper than expected.
Ashura extended itself upward through it.
The ground beneath the ruined layer tore open into tunnels of molten logic—reality behaving like lava, flowing, melting, reshaping. Every soldier who remained behind in Layer 10 was instantly incinerated, their data, souls, and essence devoured.
What emerged from those tunnels were not soldiers.
They were Ashura Fragments—beings shaped in the Wrath's partial image.
Eight-armed titans, each screaming in perfect synchrony. No mouths moved, but their presence roared into minds.
They attacked the nearest world: The Core Gardens of Ryus, a world of crystal logic and planetary-scale minds.
It fell in under an hour.
Ashura's Avatar
Not content with mere emissaries, Ashura began shaping an avatar—something capable of direct traversal beyond the Abyss.
Within Layer 13, a tower began to form: a spine made of extinct universes. Each vertebra radiated heat and agony. From it, Ashura began to coalesce a form:
Nine eyes that blinked out stars
A body made of mirror-shattered armor, forged from the deaths of champions
A soul made of inverted memory
The Avatar wasn't complete yet. But even in its half-born state, it influenced the battlefields.
Everywhere Abyss creatures fought, they now fought harder. Smarter.
With intent.
With rage.
The war had gained a mind.
Panic Among the Alliance
The outer worlds—though varied in belief, form, and even physical law—shared one truth: they could no longer ignore what was coming.
In a hastily summoned grand conference, 137 world powers convened via multi-dimensional link.
The reports were clear:
Seven outer worlds had fallen in three days
Abyssal portals were no longer predictable
The "Ashura Field" was disrupting probability, causing weapons to malfunction, spells to misfire, and machines to behave like they were angry
All agreed: if Ashura reached full form, the Abyss would no longer need to expand layer by layer.
It would punch through existence in one blow.
A Glimpse from the Inside
One surviving member of the deep strike force—Varik, a void-channeler—was rescued after drifting across the border of a destroyed world.
He brought with him a fragment of Ashura's essence. Not physical. Not magical. Emotional.
He described it like this:
"Imagine if vengeance itself had a heartbeat. That's what I felt. It wasn't evil. It wasn't even cruel. It was just… pain that wants the universe to understand how it feels. Even if it has to destroy everything to do it."
The alliance scientists tried to contain the fragment.
It burned through seven layers of containment glass.
A Dark Decision
In desperation, the Coalition of Outer Worlds approved a dark plan: to awaken their own ancient threats—sealed gods, cursed weapons, timeline devourers, and void-eaters once locked away out of fear they'd destroy everything.
Now, the Abyss was worse than their worst nightmares.
And if Ashura reached full power…
There might not be anything left to save.