I Was Summoned to Die, so I’m Climbing the Pantheon for Revenge!

The Brume Whale’s psychic wave did not discriminate. It washed over demon and general alike, an invisible tide of stolen existence that ignored armor, magic, and rank.

Cain staggered, clutching his head. The golden rings around his irises flickered. Through Nova’s filtering, the foreign memories became muted—but not silent. He saw fragments: a young girl laughing on a swing; a blacksmith hammering a sword; an old man whispering a prayer as his village burned. Thousands of lives, thousands of deaths, all compressed into a single, agonizing moment.

Beside him, Sebastian caught his arm. “Steady, My Lord.”

“I’m fine,” Cain lied. His nose was bleeding again. “The others?”

The demon soldiers had broken formation. Some wept. Some stared blankly at the sky. A few had fallen to their knees, their mouths moving in silent, forgotten prayers. The mana-cannons stood unmanned, their crews lost in the fog of borrowed memories.

But the Generals were holding.

Malakor roared, slamming the butt of his axe into the snow. The shockwave snapped several soldiers back to their senses. Sylas raised her staff, casting a chilling aura that numbed the mind, blocking out the psychic noise. Xaroth’s skeletal form seemed unaffected—he had no memories of his own to disrupt. Vane gritted his teeth, his military training overriding the invasion.

Scarlet landed lightly on a rock, her scythe dripping with whale ichor. She shook her head, annoyed. “Rude. I was having a nice daydream.”

And Sofia—

Sofia stood perfectly still.

Her crimson eyes were open, but they saw nothing. Her hand, raised to command, hung frozen in the air. Her chest rose and fell, but her expression was utterly vacant.

“Sofia?” Cain called.

She did not respond.

Inside the White Void

Sofia opened her eyes.

She was not in the frozen valley. She was not standing on snow. There was no fog, no whale, no war.

There was only white. Endless, featureless white, stretching in every direction. The ground beneath her feet was smooth, like polished marble, but cold. The air was still, silent, and heavy.

She turned in a slow circle. Nothing. No walls, no horizon, no shadows.

“Where am I?” she whispered.

Her voice did not echo. It simply faded, swallowed by the emptiness.

She walked. There was no direction, no destination, but her legs moved of their own accord. The white did not change. It was the same flat, blinding expanse no matter how far she traveled.

And then, she saw it.

A flicker. A distortion in the white, like heat rising from summer pavement. She approached, and the distortion resolved into an image—blurry at first, then sharp.

A room. A small, warm room with wooden walls and a fireplace. A woman sat in a rocking chair, her face obscured by shadow, humming a lullaby. A child sat at her feet, playing with a wooden toy.

Sofia reached out toward the image. Her fingers passed through it. The vision rippled but did not break.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The woman did not answer. The child did not look up.

Sofia tried again. “What is this place?”

The white void offered no reply. But the image shifted. Now the child was older, perhaps ten, standing at a window, watching rain streak down the glass. The woman was gone. The room felt empty.

Another step, another distortion. A piano. A little girl with silver hair, playing a melancholy melody. Sofia did not recognize her, but the music stirred something deep in her chest—a memory of a memory, a ghost of an emotion she could not name.

She kept walking. The images came faster: a battlefield, a crown of thorns, a golden throne, a face she almost knew. Each one slipped away before she could grasp it.

“This is not real,” Sofia said aloud. “This is the whale’s doing. I must return.”

But her feet would not stop. The white void pulled her deeper, and somewhere, far away, she heard a voice calling her name.

The Battlefield – Exterior

“Sofia is trapped in a memory loop!” Zephyra shouted, her shadows writhing in agitation. She had seen this before, in the spy’s report. The whale did not just steal memories; it ensnared its victims, forcing them to relive fragments of their past while their bodies stood helpless.

Cain forced himself to focus. His head pounded. The foreign memories were still leaking through Nova’s filters.

<Host. I can isolate the whale’s psychic signature and create a counter-frequency. But it will require you to get closer. Much closer.>

“How close?”

<Within the whale’s ventral grooves. Inside its body.>

Cain looked up at the creature. It was still descending, wounded but not dying. Its ventral grooves pulsed, and through the translucent skin, he could see the silhouettes of trapped souls—including one that looked like Sofia.

“You want me to jump inside the memory-eating whale.”

<Correct.>

“Of course you do.”

He turned to Sebastian. “Keep the artillery firing. Don’t let it recover. And don’t let anyone else get trapped.”

Sebastian bowed. “As you command, My Lord.”

Cain activated his [Shadow Phase] skill. His body dissolved into a streak of darkness, shooting upward, weaving through the whale’s decoys. The ghostly copies lunged for him, but he passed through them like smoke.

He landed on the whale’s flank, just above a ventral groove. The flesh was cold, slick, and pulsing. He could hear the echoes of stolen memories—whispers, cries, laughter—seeping through the skin.

“Nova. Now.”

<Initiating counter-frequency. Warning: Extended exposure may cause permanent memory cross-contamination.>

“I’ll risk it.”

He plunged his hand into the groove.

Inside the Memory Stream

The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of images.

Cain saw battles, births, deaths, lovers parting, children growing, ships sinking, stars exploding. The memories of thousands of souls rushed through him, each one a knife of emotion.

But he forced himself to focus. He reached through the chaos, searching for the one familiar presence.

Sofia.

He found her in the white void.

She was walking, endlessly walking, her face blank. The images around her flickered faster and faster, threatening to overwhelm her.

“Sofia!” Cain’s voice echoed through the emptiness, a foreign sound in the silent white.

She stopped. Turned. Her crimson eyes focused on him, but they were distant, confused.

“Cain? Where… where are we?”

“Inside the whale’s memory. You’re trapped. I’m getting you out.”

She looked around at the white expanse. “I saw… I saw a woman. A child. A piano. I think I knew them. But I cannot remember.”

“You don’t need to remember now,” Cain said, grabbing her hand. His fingers were solid, real. “You just need to wake up.”

He activated [End of Absolute Level Error]—not to erase, but to sever. A pulse of absolute negation rippled through the white void. The images shattered. The emptiness cracked.

And Sofia’s eyes snapped open.

The Battlefield – Aftermath

Sofia gasped, stumbling backward. Sebastian caught her elbow, steadying her.

“Welcome back, My Lady,” the butler said, his voice calm.

The whale shrieked. Its ventral grooves convulsed, and a torrent of freed memories erupted from its body—souls, finally released, streaming into the sky like shooting stars.

Cain dropped from the whale’s flank, landing in the snow. His hands were shaking. His eyes were ringed with exhaustion.

“It’s wounded,” he said. “But not dead. Keep firing.”

The demon soldiers, rallied by Malakor’s roar, raised their magi-rifles once more. The cannons reloaded. The Generals prepared their final assault.

Sofia looked at the whale, then at Cain. Her voice was soft, almost fragile.

“I saw something in there. A part of myself I had forgotten.”

“Then when this is over, we’ll find the rest,” Cain said. “But first, we kill the whale.”

Sofia nodded. The Demon Lord’s aura flared, brighter than before, tinged with something new—not just power, but purpose.

“Agreed.”

✦✦✦