In the dreamstate, the GodKing's eyes snapped open. The right wooden beam shuddered, then tore itself from the crimson quicksand with a sound of grinding stone. It drifted horizontally across the void, locking against the left pillar with a final, resonant click that seemed to seal a law of reality itself. The completed cross hung before him, thrumming with a power that was ancient and utterly alien.
In that same instant, fire erupted in his veins. He stared at his left palm, the sensation a brand searing into his very essence. His consciousness didn't just return—it was wrenched back into the world.
His form became a blur of violent starlight. He tore through the Great Hall, across the temple grounds, and launched into the void, the fabric of space shredding in his wake as he became a comet aimed directly at L'uminix.
From her balcony, the Keeper of Time and Fate watched the streak of light tear across the starfield. Her golden sands stilled for a heartbeat.
"So it has begun,"she murmured, the words a solemn verdict.
The GodKing, whose speed could outrace light itself, should have already been there. Yet, for the first time in eons, a new sensation coiled in his core, cold and foreign, slowing him not physically, but spiritually.
Fear.
Not the calculated risk of battle, nor the strategic withdrawal from the Void Emperor. This was a primal, cosmic dread—a warning shrieking from every particle of his being that the path ahead led to an end from which not even he could return. It was a premonition that clawed at the very foundation of his immortal certainty.
---
In the veil of time, Ezmelral could only watch her master.
Raiking stood motionless—his gaze fixed on the scene below, a statue carved from grief. The chaos had long subsided into a terrible stillness, yet he did not move, did not speak, did not pull them away. It was as if his very soul had been nailed to that moment, condemned to witness the culmination of a tragedy he had always known was coming.
Below, the crowd began to disperse, their hushed debate finished, their verdict rendered. The murmurs faded into a hollow quiet. The fate of the fallen was sealed.
Ezmelral's heart hammered against her ribs. She reached out, her trembling hand finding his. Her grip was desperate, human.
He jolted, the contact shattering the trance that bound him. When he turned to her, the pain in his crimson eyes struck her like a blow—a raw, soundless scream of anguish that no battle cry could equal.
"Raiking…" she whispered, the name trembling from her lips—her first time ever daring to speak it.
He had always stood before her, unshakable, a shield against every storm. But now, seeing him hollowed by grief, she understood: this time, she had to hold the umbrella.
"...Let's go."
She pulled him forward, phasing them both through the veil. Time bent to her command, the world rippling around them until they stood beneath a bleeding sunset, outside the Paladixtus sanctuary.
The scene that awaited them was a meticulously orchestrated nightmare.
Air Essence users levitated timber through the air, assembling a grim lattice of beams. Twelve were turned crosswise and fixed to thirteen more—a geometry of death, coldly precise. From the hall, guards emerged, dragging the lifeless bodies of thirteen souls: her lookalike, and the twelve Consilium Disciplinae. Behind them came the treaty's witnesses—the kings, queens, and generals—faces pale with a grotesque blend of horror and righteousness.
The guards laid the bodies before the wooden frames. Fire Essence users stepped forth, their flames not for cleansing but for cruelty, melting through flesh and bone to carve holes in each palm. Ice Essence users followed, forging jagged spikes. One by one, the nails were driven home—their echoes a rhythm of desecration.
Earth Essence users opened shallow graves in the soil. Air Essence users raised the crosses, anchoring them in place with final, resonant thuds that rolled through the ground like the heartbeat of a dying world.
Ezmelral could not look away.
Her lookalike and the twelve hung in the crimson dusk, their bodies silhouetted against the twilight—a tableau of sacrifice, betrayal, and unbearable quiet.
Her fists clenched. Her teeth ground together. A silent, seething rage bloomed behind her eyes, slow and terrible.
Then… the air changed.
A pressure descended, vast and undeniable. The crowd froze as the horizon itself seemed to bow.
And there he stood.
The GodKing.
Star-forged armor shimmered in the dimming light, each plate refracting sorrow rather than glory. He did not speak. He did not need to. His presence alone silenced the world—a god mourning the death of his disciple.
---
The King of the Northern Region saw destiny before him—a unified throne, the fractured world of L'uminix finally his to command. The fallen woman on the cross had made it possible; her death had cleared his path.
So when the strange, armored figure materialized amid the aftermath, he assumed it was merely a final, desperate loyalist of the Paladixtus.
A chance to display dominance. To crown himself in authority.
He stepped forward, his hand raised imperiously.
"You there—"
He ceased to exist.
There was no motion, no sound. The GodKing did not strike, did not gesture. The King simply vanished, his form unraveling into a fine, crimson mist that lingered in the air for a moment before raining down like dew.
Silence. Then, panic.
The representatives of Gomorrah, spurred by outrage, drew their blades and charged. They made it no more than three steps.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Wet, percussive bursts echoed through the courtyard as their bodies exploded from within, limbs and blood cascading across the paving stones in a macabre rain.
Those who turned to flee met invisible walls. The air itself had solidified.
The GodKing's Gravitational Essence had sealed the perimeter—an unseen cage turning the sanctuary grounds into a slaughterhouse with no escape.
Osculi Iudæ, veins still blazing with the Eldest Elder's false gift, saw not divinity but a final adversary. His fury drowned his fear.
"How dare you!" he roared, surging forward, blade aimed for the GodKing's helm.
He froze mid-air.
A grotesque pressure twisted inside him, beginning deep in his abdomen. Something alive writhed upward, tearing through his organs and throat until it forced its way out of his mouth—a small, black object pulsing with vile energy.
The pill.
It hovered before the GodKing, a trembling seed of malevolence, before dissolving into dust.
As it vanished, so did Osculi Iudæ. His body imploded from the inside out, collapsing into a rushing tide of blood that spattered across the already-soaked ground.
The Queen of Sodom stumbled back, one trembling step—
Splat.
Her body burst. Then another. And another.
One by one, every soul trapped within the invisible prison ruptured like overripe fruit. The air filled with a muffled symphony of bursting flesh.
The ground disappeared beneath a rising, shallow sea of blood—a silent, churning testament to a wrath that would accept no survivors.
---
The GodKing moved through the aftermath with deliberate grace, each motion echoing the stillness of his dream.
Once, in that crimson vision, he had been trapped—sinking helplessly into the red sea until understanding had taught him how to stand upon it. Now, that lesson was made flesh.
His boots pressed into the blood of the fallen, ripples spreading across the scarlet pool as he walked. The silence of the dead followed him like a prayer.
He stopped before the wooden beams.
The cross bearing his disciple dissolved at his presence, its form unraveling into motes of light, sighing out of existence like a memory finally released. Her body fell—heavy, lifeless—but he caught her gently in his left arm as he knelt amid the carnage.
With his right hand, he brushed a gloved finger across her brow. Their memories intertwined.
Her longing. Her struggle. The unrelenting burden of leadership and sacrifice. All of it poured into him in a silent communion—a chronicle of pain and purpose written directly onto his soul.
He held her close, the gleam of his armor dimmed by her blood. For a long, aching moment, nothing existed but the quiet bond between them.
Then, slowly, he placed his right hand over her abdomen.
When he lifted it, a sphere of blackened light emerged—the Seed of Corruption, condensed from every sin she had borne for her people. He closed his hand. The orb shattered into vapor, its essence released in a soundless sigh as the burden returned to the world from which it came.
Rising, he gathered her in both arms and began to ascend—his figure a silhouette of grace and sorrow against the ruin below, a god carrying his fallen disciple toward the heavens.
Beneath him, the ground convulsed as the released corruption rejoined the living.
The people of L'uminix—freed, yet not redeemed—collapsed under the flood of resurrected memory. Screams tore through the silence, the air alive again with grief, as every soul relived the agony of Deatheny's invasion.
And the GodKing did not look back.
Corruption returned. Memories returned. And with them, the PraLuminix rose—an inexorable tide, unleashed upon a world now stripped of its savior. A fate they would have to face alone.