"So, tell me, Karna, from the things you have found out till now, what do you think is Ankhseram's aim? The clues are already there in what you told me just now, and the rest of the pieces can be achieved by researching magic as a whole. And in the two decades you have spent living in Earthland, you have the missing pieces recorded in your head, right?" Jason asked with a smile.
"Yeah." Karna smiled slightly, thankful that he had spent the time when he was a baby to create a mind palace, which helped him record tons of information he had come in contact with over the years. Unlike the normal mind palace with limits, the mind palace method given by the system had helped him create an infinite memory source within his head.
It only took some time for him to find out what Ankhseram was planning.
"He intends to gain absolute control over the domain of life and death," Karna finished, and the missing pieces clicked into his head.
He had read about different kinds of domains while researching magic all these years. According to the records he found, every god has a domain connected to them through magic. But the gods do not punish people for accessing that domain as long as they pay the appropriate price.
This can be considered benevolent, but it cannot be true. Other than the god of death who curses those who access his domain, all the others turn a blind eye—or more accurately, they are unable to react in any way.
But later research done by Karna revealed that the price paid to access these dimensions may include training, sacrifices, or acquiring knowledge—and using magic as fuel to access it allows one to gain that power. This led Karna to the realization that the gods who command the domains, according to the records, had actually not created the domains. Instead, the domains themselves had created the gods to act as a bridge between themselves and the real world.
Essentially, a domain by itself is an obscure concept which cannot be physically accessed directly. They only appear at the moment of their realization. Time, by itself, passes every second. Each second that passes cannot be taken back, according to the natural laws of the world, and in a way, it is not a tangible energy. War is the battle between two or more communities. At the same time, we can be in the middle of a war, we can even participate in it, but while we are participating in it, the concept of war in its physical form is still not present.
The only way to access these powers from the domains is by the medium of magic. Ultear can use time magic to control aspects of organic and non-organic beings, as long as they are not fauna. One of the Zeref cultists of Avatar later managed to use a sacrificial ritual to summon a conceptual god of war, who would only stop after killing a certain number of human beings.
So basically, these obscure concepts act on their own and have no owner. The gods mentioned in records are inanimate puppets used to connect with living beings. So the fact that just researching the spell gets you cursed doesn't make sense—unless you also affect the ones who later use those researched spells.
This means only one thing. Someone had gained control of the majority of the domain of death and is now cursing anyone who even comes close to having the intelligence and power to access it. Karna thought that it might be the person who accessed it trying their best to keep the power to themselves.
But something told Karna that it was way deeper than that. So he decided to inspect the curse further on his own. Ever since he met Mavis, he had decided to change her fate from what it was going to be. Originally, he was planning on releasing both Zeref and Mavis from the curse directly, making them pass on just like in canon. But after spending time with her for all these years, and also silently accepting her as his mother figure, he decided he was going to release the curse in his own way.
His plan was to release the curse in such a way that she would continue aging normally from the moment she was frozen—basically giving her a chance to live a full life. That's why he decided to research and understand the curse even more.
And that led him to understand the curse at its deepest level. He knew that simply putting the curse would not ensure that it stayed on a person forever. It requires a source of magic to sustain it. Even if it was made to absorb the magic from the wizard it was cast upon, it would not have worked, as it requires magic to be created in the wizard's body. A malnourished or dismembered wizard would not be able to create magic in their body, and therefore would be unable to sustain the curse within themselves. In the canon, Zeref had found Mavis, who was trying to kill herself by starving for months, and Zeref mentioned that he had decapitated himself and still did not die.
This led him to believe that the killing of all living beings around the curse bearers is not because of the curse of contradiction acting due to their care for life. It is, in fact, a vital part of the spell through which it absorbs energy. The absorbed life energy supplies the curse to make the bearer immortal and, at the same time, powers the curse of contradiction within them to warp their mind, most of the time forcing them to make dangerous decisions.
But if that's what it means, then their death at the end of the story—simultaneously falling in love and killing each other—should not have worked. Since they believed that the curse of contradiction was killing life around them due to their love of life. But it has now been proven that the killing of life was a way for the curse to sustain itself, and aside from mental problems, the contradiction part of the curse does not seem to be doing anything tangible in the real world at all.
So, their death was decided at that moment. That is, the one who put the curse on them decided it was time for them to die.
But why? Why at that moment, after cursing them for centuries and making them suffer?
It didn't take Karna long to find the clues.
A/N- hope you like it and powerstones are welcome.