S Ranked Reincarnation: My Infinite Leveling System

The crater where Haven once stood glowed faintly beneath a fractured sky, its swirling reds and ashen blacks reflecting what little was left of the city's bones. Stone had melted. Towers had crumpled. What remained was a wound torn open to the underbelly of the world.

Ning Que stood at the rim of it all, the wind clawing at his coat, hair whipping into his eyes, but his gaze never shifted. The breach pulsed at the center of the ruin—a spiraling rift of impossible light, Riftlight, threading downward like veins into the dark. It wasn't just destruction. It was transformation. A place rewritten by memory and magic.

Behind him, Aeris' voice was taut with restraint.

"You go down there, you might not come back."

He didn't look at her.

"I didn't come this far to stop now."

Her boots crunched against loose gravel as she took a step forward. "And if what's left of her is already gone?"

Ning said nothing. The silence hurt more than an answer.

Then Lyra moved toward him, quiet as snowfall, and placed a hand on his arm. Her touch grounded him.

"Let me go with you," she said, her voice threaded with worry, but steadier than he expected.

He turned. His gaze softened, if only for her.

"If I lose myself in that place," he said, holding her hand tighter for a breath, "I need someone out here to pull me back."

She didn't argue. Instead, she reached into the folds of her belt and pressed something small and cold into his palm. A silver crystal, engraved with her family crest—a phoenix in bloom.

"Memory stabilizer," she said. "So you remember who you are. Who you were."

He nodded once, quietly thankful.

And then, without hesitation, he stepped off the edge.

The descent felt like falling through thought. There was no gravity here. No logic.

The Rift wasn't a tunnel, or a pit. It was a hallucination made real—a broken dream, stretched thin between time and space. Stone spiraled like ribcages. Metal flickered in and out of shape. And light—not sunlight, but memory light—burned through the cracks like wildfire. He didn't fall. He drifted, weightless, swallowed by remembrance.

He landed on something soft. It wasn't ground. It was thought given form, shaped from the ruins of the sub-level.

Haven was gone. But something older had awakened in its place.

The air shimmered with presence. Walls pulsed like living flesh. Floating doors hovered midair, each frame glowing faintly, opening to impossible rooms.

Through one he saw a version of himself laughing with Denz, younger, freer. Another showed him standing alone in a ruined temple, flames swallowing his silhouette. Another made him stop breathing entirely—he knelt beside a broken body he could not name.

He kept walking.

> {Warning. Memory field unstable. Emotional Anchor drifting.}

"Keep talking to me," Ning whispered to the system. "Keep me sane."

The corridor that emerged was a cathedral of silence. Vines—black, thorned, and breathing—climbed the walls in pulsing spirals. The cold sank deeper than skin.

And then he saw her.

Suspended like a prayer in the center of the vaulted chamber, Mireya floated. Her body arched slightly, as though caught mid-fall. Riftlight curled around her like chains, wrapping her wrists and ankles, spinning in constant motion. Her hair drifted like ink in water. Her lips moved, whispering something he couldn't hear.

He stepped forward. And the memory hit.

Her final smile. The unbearable heat of the collapsing gate. The way her body had gone still in his arms.

He dropped to his knees, breath hitching.

> {Stabilizer active. Thread conflict contained.}

Mireya's eyes opened slowly.

She looked at him. She did not smile.

"You came," she said.

He nodded, his voice nearly lost. "I had to."

"I didn't think I'd still remember you. But some memories... don't bleed away."

He stood shakily and reached toward her. "I'm getting you out."

She shook her head, sadness painting every word. "You can't. I'm tethered to the gate. If you break the thread, the whole seal destabilizes."

"Then I'll find another way."

A pause. Her expression flickered.

"I wanted to die with my soul intact. But I've been here too long, Ning. I'm not whole anymore."

He reached up and brushed her ankle with trembling fingers.

"I don't care."

She inhaled sharply. Her voice shifted, deepened—as if something else was speaking through her.

"If I lose control... I'll kill you."

He stepped closer, voice steady. "Then I'll die with you."

Something growled in the dark.

The chamber trembled. Cracks split the walls.

From the far shadows, three Rift-beasts emerged. Their forms were humanoid but warped, faceless, dripping with silver corruption. They moved like liquid shadows.

Mireya screamed, the threads pulling taut. "They're drawn to the tether!"

Ning stood and summoned his katana in a blaze of crimson flame.

> {Technique: Rift Conscience — active. Memory-binding protocol initiated.}

He slashed the air. The blade tore through time and thought, wrapping two of the beasts in loops of their own existence—trapping them in the echo of a single forgotten moment.

But one broke free.

It lunged.

Ning turned and took the hit.

Claws shredded his side. Blood spilled, searing hot.

He didn't fall.

He drove his blade through its heart and twisted.

The Rift shrieked like a dying god. The other creatures vanished.

He fell to one knee, panting, drenched in pain.

Mireya strained against the chains. "You can't hold me here forever!"

"I'm not going to."

He stood, staggered forward, and placed his hand over her chest.

"I'm going to bind you to me."

Her eyes widened, horrified. "No. Ning, that will—"

> {System Alert: Sovereign Thread merge requested. Risk: Cataclysmic. Proceed?}

"Yes," he whispered.

The threads unraveled from her body and shot into his.

He screamed. The pain was endless.

Mireya fell forward, collapsing into his arms. Her body trembled violently, her breath shallow.

He held her close. Held her like the last time.

> {New Thread Bond Created: Sovereign Twin-Link. Emotional Resonance: Active. Memory Synchronization: 18%.}

Time passed in stutters. The chamber calmed.

Then Mireya stirred.

"I can feel your heartbeat."

Ning exhaled. "I can feel your grief."

She smiled faintly. "That's not mine. That's yours."

He helped her stand.

"Can you walk?"

"I'll run."

Together, they began the climb.

Above them, the Rift churned with warning. Each step returned them closer to the surface, to light, to consequence.

Halfway up, Mireya looked at him.

"They'll come for me now," she said. "Because I didn't die."

He nodded, eyes burning. "And because I didn't let you."

She touched the stabilizer still glowing in his coat. "And because you remembered."

As they breached the crater's rim, the sky above split in four directions.

The clouds bled gold and violet light.

They stepped into a world forever changed.