When Marc awoke, it was obvious he wasn't at home. Yet it didn't feel like the other world either.
He looked into his hand—and to his relief, Lavoisi's book was still there, intact. But this time, it pulsed with a crimson, blood-soaked aura.The moment his eyes landed on it, he felt like a gun was pressed against his temple.
The cover was nearly identical to the previous one, except this one was drenched in blood and covered in weapons.
Every kind of weapon imaginable lined the edges: a missile launcher loaded with a nuke, a black odachi, and countless others too numerous to name.
At the center of the cover, drenched in red, was a black skull. Blood poured from its empty sockets and gaping mouth. It had no eyes, yet it stared straight into Marc's soul.
It was the first time he had ever truly looked at a book's cover… and the first time he'd ever wanted so badly to throw one away.
He remembered the first book—its aura had been deadly, but soft. Like a slow descent into the abyss.
This one?
It stabbed. It shot. It nuked. It executed. It harassed Marc constantly, with no mercy, no pause.
He could almost see the odachi leaving the cover to slit his throat.
Hovering above it, in golden runes like before, was a different inscription. The runes floated above the cover, casting an eerie shadow.
"What the hell are you playing at, Lavoisi?"
Marc was tempted to crack it open—but first, he had to figure out where he was.
Cause it wasn't his world.
A massive red sun was setting on the horizon, taking up nearly half of it from where he stood.
On either side of him, crimson swords were planted into the blood-soaked ground.
Because yes—the ground itself was liquid blood. It stretched endlessly, like an ocean or still lake.
The sky, the clouds, everything was red. A horrifying, oppressive red.
"Where… am I? What the hell is this place?"
Marc stood up, trembling under the weight of the blood-colored world.As he looked around, trying to understand what was happening… he saw something in the distance.
A small white dot approached from the horizon.
It was one of these beings from the other world—holding a crimson katana, walking slowly toward him.
"Just one?"
As if to answer him, more began to appear. Dozens… hundreds… thousands…
Each one held a different blood-red weapon. Marching in sync.
Their numbers grew. Millions. Maybe billions.
Marc froze in terror.
His entire body trembled. His heart pounded violently.It felt like trying to count grains of rice in a 10kg bag—no, ten bags.
"What do you even want from me?! Why are you trying to kill me?! I'm just trying to save my world! You want to destroy it instead?! Say something, dammit!"
Once again, as if answering him, one of the white beings opened its mouth.
Marc expected a voice. But what came out was a chant.
A holy, cathedral-like hymn echoed across the bloody land. The kind that made you shiver—even if you'd never once stepped foot in a church.The kind that dragged your soul to the seventh heaven… while squeezing your heart until it broke.
"What…?"
Marc could no longer move. The last thing he expected from them—was to sing. But there it was.
The horror of the scene grew tenfold. More joined in. A second voice. Then a third.
One by one, those pale beings from the horizon added their voices. A massive, blood-drenched choir, singing in perfect harmony, approached.
Marc was paralyzed.
The blood on the ground rose into waves, crashing against them—but they didn't stop. These emotionless creatures marched forward, weapons in hand, eyes locked on Marc, undisturbed by the rising tides.
And then...
Marc understood....
They were singing his execution.
He could no longer move. The song paralyzed him. He couldn't think. Couldn't tremble...
Eyes wide open, heart frozen—Marc was a statue of fear, locked in place as the choir sang his death.
And then they stopped.
Their expressionless faces still turned toward him, Marc collapsed to his knees.
From the far edge of the horizon, a voice echoed—soft and childlike.
It was a voice Marc would remember for the rest of his life.
"We're sorry, slave of fate. But we can't let you live."
It was a little girl's voice. Sweet and innocent. And it had just sentenced him to die.
Marc heard. But his brain couldn't process it. Blood ran from his nose.Then his ears and his eyes.
He wasn't looking anymore. His eyes were turned toward the enormous sun, but they saw nothing. The white beings resumed their march—walking, then running—toward him.
Weapons raised.
Marc heard nothing. Saw nothing. Moved not an inch.
His soul had gone silent.
They all charged.
The first one reached him. A massive, blood-stained axe was raised high—and brought down. Marc's eyes reflected only the weapon and its wielder.
Time slowed.
The axe descended toward his face.
His soul… still didn't answer.
**
"A mistake? Was it a mistake… to gather all our power to destroy the cursed child? No. That wasn't the mistake. The mistake was believing… that this was enough."
**
When his soul finally returned to him, Marc jolted, feeling his heart and motor functions suddenly working again.
However, the horror he had just witnessed was still etched deep into his limbs, and his body took time to move.
He took a few seconds to try and remember what had just happened.His head hurt terribly, and his heart began to beat wildly again. He was in pain. Terrible pain. His body trembled like a leaf.
He was lying in the blood, his face hovering just above the foul-smelling red liquid. He didn't dare move. In fact, he couldn't really.
And suddenly, curiosity struck him. Why was he still alive?
He leaned on his right arm and slowly lifted himself—Then… his eyes widened at the sight before him.
The army of white beings… the billions of creatures from the Other World, whose eyes revealed space and stars—All lay collapsed to the ground like billions of hailstones fallen from the sky.
Some had their weapons lodged in their throats. Others were evaporating into thin air. Some were simply lying there, faces buried in the ground.
The red sun now stood at its zenith, and Marc stood at the center of the carnage.
"What? Did I do this?"
He looked around in terror. His eyes reflected panic and horror. His pulse quickened, his breath shortened. All around him—blood, terror, corpses. Under a red sun, surrounded by bodies he never even fought.
Marc turned in circles, over and over. He stumbled many times, even swallowing some of the blood on the ground.
He was looking for answers to what had just happened.
"It wasn't me. That's not possible."
He tripped again. Blood clogged his airways. He cried, coughed—But even his tears were made of blood.
He quickly realized that all these corpses around him… were his fault.Because his black, macabre aura was raging—lashing out wildly in every direction, tracing his path during his escape.
Marc screamed in the middle of corpses, blood, weapons, and a crimson sun.
Suddenly, Marc heard footsteps from the horizon. Someone else was emerging.
His eyes widened even more, in shock, his body drenched in blood.
When Nathanaël had handed him the paper, there had been a photo with it.The photo of the little girl who had burned with the house.
"A...lie."
She stood there. She looked like one of the white beings, but wore a small dress that suited her perfectly.
She walked toward Marc with gentle steps, walking on the red liquid.
"Marc Zeymond."
Marc slowly got up, realizing she hadn't come to help.
It was far too much emotion for one day. His soul vibrated intensely, making his body shake with it.
"Alie... Tielgate."
"I'm not Alie. That little girl died because of you. I should've come to kill you myself. I didn't know you'd be this strong."
"What?"
"If I don't kill you here, you'll carry the fate of the prophecy… and I won't be able to stop you."
Marc no longer understood anything.
"What are you..."
Suddenly, an intense aura burst out of the little girl. Her hair turned red and rose with the growing aura. The aura screamed. It was the first time Marc had ever heard an aura.
Yet, when it reached him…He felt strangely better. As if all his pain and burdens had vanished in an instant.
He closed his eyes to enjoy the strange sensation, but in a sudden pulse, his own aura expelled the girl's.
She didn't look surprised. Or even annoyed. On the contrary—it only seemed to confirm her suspicions.
"Just as I thought. You must die now."
She summoned a crimson scythe, three times her size. The weapon looked like it was made entirely of blood.
Marc, snapping out of his trance, grabbed the sword he had brought with him. But he couldn't even see her move.
The little girl was already in front of him before he could react.
In a soft and calm voice, she said:
"Die."
"That's enough, Obelia !"
A woman stepped in between them.
Marc recognized her instantly—Her dress made of dust, her gratifying aura.She had blocked the scythe with a hat woven of webs. Her fragile hands, like shards of glass, had stopped the blood-stained weapon.
It was the Lady of the Ruins.
The one they saw in the church, and the one who appeared atop the castle in the Other World.
The little girl showed a look of pure shock.
"Geomia? What are you doing here? Why are you interfering?"
"I don't want you to kill him."
"You're on their side? Haven't you heard of the prophecy?"
"I have. But I still don't want to."
Suddenly, a sound rang out from far away.
From where it came, the space began to crack. The sky started bleeding and the sun fell violently and extinguished.
A familiar voice echoed from the fissure.
"Marc."
Elie had done something.
The place they were in seemed to latch back onto reality—As if they had been in a giant room that had always been part of the real world.
The little girl didn't care about the place crumbling around her.
She was enraged.
"Geomia… do you realize what you've just done?!"
The Lady of the Ruins didn't reply.She began to crumble, vanishing into grains of dust without a word, while the little girl melted into a puddle of blood.
"I won't leave empty-handed."
Just as the place was about to completely vanish, she lunged toward Marc, reaching out to grab him.
Elie stepped in, blocking with her sword and casting a dark glare at the girl.
"Don't touch him."
The girl was shocked by the defiance.
"You… How dare you? How DARE you?"
Those were her final words before she vanished into the blood, which then drained into the debris of the house.
Marc saw all of it like a dead spectator.
Now that everything was over, he tried to regain his senses and looked at Elie with a tormented gaze.
"Elie..."
The girl turned to him.
"Yes?"
"Thank you."
She gave him a faint smile.
"Don't mention it."
Marc slowly lowered his gaze to the Lavoisi book. His heart still pounded, but his soul had finally stopped vibrating.
Yet, when it did—when it stopped for good—the shock was so great that he lost consciousness again.
He had endured a brutal day...
Chris could only watch the end.From his point of view, Marc had vanished before Elie struck the air with her fist.
Then he saw what looked like the Other World.
His eyes widened in disbelief, realizing the scale of this quest—The magnitude of this story.
He saw a lady made of broken glass and spider webs stand against a little girl, pure white, wielding a blood-made scythe.
Then the world shattered, cracks appeared in the air, and everything fell like glass.
Marc emerged from the red dimension, where the sun had gone out.
It was… absolutely beyond anything he'd ever imagined.
"Marc… So this is what you've been living through..."