Chapter 112 – The Silence After Eternity

The crown lay shattered at Kael’s feet, its fragments dimming like embers sinking into ash. For the first time since stepping into the abyss, the silence wasn’t oppressive. It was hollow, weightless—like the world itself had paused to acknowledge the impossible.

Kael stood still, his blade lowered. Every breath carried the heat of battle, but his eyes—once clouded with rage—now burned with a sharper fire. He hadn’t just defeated a husk. He had defied the chains of eternity.

The abyss shifted. The black waters calmed, the storms of stars dissolved, and the endless void shrank into something less infinite. It was no longer a battlefield, but a graveyard of fallen divinity.

Aria’s presence brushed against him, faint but certain. Her voice wasn’t audible—it was memory, faith, hope—but it steadied his heartbeat.

You returned. Against every chain, you returned.

Kael sheathed his blade, the runes along its edge still glowing faintly. His reflection shimmered across the abyssal water. For a fleeting moment, he almost looked human again—not shadow, not husk, not prophecy’s mistake.

But then the silence cracked.

The void rippled, and whispers bled into the air. They weren’t the husks’ cries, nor the remnants of gods. These were different—clearer, heavier. The true gods had seen.

The anomaly endures.
The shadow resists.
Erase him at the root.

Kael’s grip tightened on his sword. The whispers didn’t frighten him anymore. If anything, they confirmed what he already knew: the abyss was never his end. It was only the threshold.

He stepped forward. The void opened into a narrow path of light, stretching upward. At its end, faint and distant, he saw a horizon not bound by darkness—but by fire.

The world above awaited.

And Kael would return not as a forgotten mistake… but as defiance itself.