Chapter 40: He Dies Like a Firework, and Will Be Reborn with the Rising Sun
A tremendous roar rolled across the desiccated plain.
The pale storm spun like a living thing gone mad, slamming itself again and again into the gigantic barrier that had unfolded in front of Rowe. Each impact came with a shriek that sounded less like wind and more like pain.
The refugees who had been running for their lives stood frozen.
Who was that?
Who could stop a natural disaster with nothing but flesh and blood?
Shock turned their minds blank, and while they stared upward, an old, heavy voice spoke beside them.
"It seems your destiny has not yet arrived."
They jolted and turned.
An old man had appeared at some point without them noticing. He wore a tattered black hood and leaned on a wooden staff. His beard was wild, his posture hunched, and his presence was like a shadow that belonged nowhere under the sun.
"You… who are you?" someone stammered.
Even a fool could tell this man was with the one standing against the storm. Neither of them were ordinary.
"Who this old man is does not matter," Ziusudra said, lifting his lined face from beneath the hood. "What matters is that you should be grateful to the one who allowed your destiny to continue."
He raised his staff and pointed skyward.
Everyone followed the gesture back to Rowe.
His robe snapped violently in the gale. His arms were spread wide. The pressure he was enduring was so immense that the air around him seemed to tremble.
After his recent research, Rowe had grown far more proficient in the Key of Heaven's authority. Simply blocking the Bull of Heaven did not even require the Gate of Babylon.
He had opened the space before him into a door, then sealed it. Once shut, that door became an absolute barrier, vast enough to stop calamity.
If his only goal was restraint, this would have been easy. The Bull of Heaven had not fully descended yet. With the Key of Heaven, Rowe could have locked it into a single region and dragged out the fight at his leisure.
But that was not what he wanted.
He had waited too long for a moment like this. He was not here to be careful. He was here to answer the gods in the only language they respected.
The roaring grew harsher. The storm swelled even more violently.
Rowe did not retreat.
He kept one hand braced against the barrier.
Then he raised the other and pointed to the heavens.
Gold rippled outward.
The Gate of Babylon manifested.
Dozens of portals opened in the air. Countless swords poured from them like a rain of judgment.
They fell straight down.
Streams of light erupted, each dragging chains that spiraled and coiled through the air. They pierced into the storm as if it had flesh and blood, then bit deep.
The Chains of Heaven tightened.
Moo.
The Bull of Heaven was not fully formed, but the descending main body had already poured part of its essence into this storm. It let out a cry that carried real pain.
Bound by the Chains, the storm began to take shape. A bull outlined in cloud and wrath emerged, huge horns thrusting into the sky, hooves stamping again and again at the dying earth.
Its eyes locked onto Rowe.
Below, the refugees were too terrified to breathe.
Then someone whispered, voice shaking.
"Wait… golden light, chains… That is Adjutant Rowe, the one who suppressed the demon beast in the west before."
"Adjutant Rowe? The friend of the King? The great figure who annihilated a nation overnight?"
"Is it truly him?"
Recognition spread like sparks.
Ziusudra remained still, staff resting against the ground, his silence heavier than any answer. Rowe's fame had already traveled far. After the incident of a city state wiped out in a single night, there was hardly a soul on the plain who had not heard his name.
Yet Ziusudra's eyes were not on the crowd.
They were on Rowe.
Under the hood, a faint blue light flickered.
The hermit who had lived since the last world ending flood could see the violent power boiling within Rowe's body. It was not the rise of energy before a clean release.
It looked like a star about to collapse.
"Rowe intends to grievously wound the Bull of Heaven at the cost of his own limits," Ziusudra realized.
Even if death by exhaustion came first, Rowe would erase the Bull of Heaven's influence entirely.
A resolve sharp enough to cut his own life in half.
"Those who seek life die, those who seek death live," Ziusudra murmured in his heart.
"Such courage… no wonder he can become a savior in disaster."
He understood.
He did not understand the joy in Rowe's chest.
Rowe felt a fierce satisfaction, like a splinter finally torn from the soul. He had vented everything he had been swallowing.
And he felt something sharper than joy.
Excitement.
This moment was perfect.
To push beyond limits.
To burn himself dry.
To force the Bull of Heaven, weakened and enraged, to strike down the frailest version of him after he exhausted everything.
Only a being like the Bull of Heaven could make that death feel inevitable, natural, worthy.
His robe whipped in the hurricane.
He laughed, bright and reckless.
"Hmph hahaha… Beast, are you afraid?"
Moo.
The Bull's cry did not deny it. Fear flickered in that roar.
It was not fear of a man.
It was fear of a madman who would tear down the heavens even if it meant tearing out his own spine with them.
The Bull of Heaven had not fully descended. Its manifestation could not be interrupted. But that did not mean it could not be wounded.
If the impact reached far enough into its essence, pain would come.
Injury would come.
Even death.
Instinct screamed at it to turn and flee.
But it could not move.
The Chains of Heaven pinned it in place. Divinity existed within it, and the unformed power in its descent was not yet enough to break a divine restraint.
So in that instant, Rowe lifted the hand holding the barrier open.
He ignored the depletion tearing through his body.
He forced the Key of Heaven beyond its limits.
The ground beneath him became another colossal door.
He drew all the dust upon that door, all the concept of drought, into his palm.
Below, the refugees felt it first.
The air grew heavier with moisture.
A man stumbling over cracked earth saw water spill from a spring that should not exist.
Someone collapsed and gasping lifted their face as sweet rain fell from above.
The downpour thickened into a torrent.
The hard ground softened, then darkened, then burst with green. Riverbeds stirred back to life, overtopping their banks with resurrected water.
All of them looked upward.
They saw the lone figure standing between them and the storm.
They did not know his name.
They did not need to.
They would remember this moment.
That once, a human body had stopped calamity.
Rowe believed that too.
That even after thousands of years, people would still speak of the day a man held the vast earth in a grain of sand and shifted the stars.
That was enough.
Boom.
The power he had dammed within himself burst like a broken floodgate. Endless brilliance drowned the world.
Moo.
The Bull of Heaven screamed, a desperate shriek dragged from it by annihilation. In terror, it charged instead of retreating, raising its cloud like horns into the light.
For an instant, the world went white.
From afar, the falling streams of light bloomed like flames, scattering across the sky like a thousand flowers of judgment.
The Bull of Heaven vanished.
The storm that had taken so long to condense was dispersed in a breath. Only wisps of cloud remained, drifting weakly in silence.
Then something fell from the brightness.
A figure.
He landed standing.
His robe still fluttered in the lingering wind.
But his eyes were closed.
His body had no breath.
"Lord Rowe…" someone whispered, voice hollow. "What happened to him?"
"He… is dead."
Rowe was dead.
He died without hesitation.
He died with a resolve that never once looked back.
That death was splendid, burning bright, warm as the sun.
The crowd stared in disbelief.
Only Ziusudra remained calm.
Because he knew.
He died like a firework.
And he would be reborn with the rising sun.
…
"Rowe… why are you here?"
A clear voice sounded in his ear.
Rowe opened his eyes with the slow resignation of someone woken from a dream they had finally enjoyed.
Before him was a throne built from piled wreckage.
Upon it sat a girl with flowing golden hair. Her crimson eyes were wide and startled, as if she could not tell whether she was seeing a ghost or a trespasser.
She blinked once, then asked softly, half confused, half surprised.
"Are you… here to see me?"
"Rowe?"
Rowe stared.
Rowe: "…"
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