Chapter 35: "Harbinger of the End"

I was wrong; the world wanted my suffering to continue at least until it had ended my humanity, until my spirit was tortured by my mind.

Floating below me, I impacted against a small stone structure. The floor was tilted toward a hole in the room, whose fall would mean my death. I rolled over it, incapable of moving until, desperate, I clung to the edge.

Since I met her in the mansion, she was my partner. We went through many things together, even came to face Gods. How sad, what an agony.

To my mind came the good moments we spent together. It wasn’t easy, yet we kept advancing. I rescued her from Lodric, didn’t I? It was me who supported her after what we lived in Eryndor. I even took her to Syrb, who told her the truth about her parents.

Beneath me, the cliff claimed my flesh. The pain ran over my body, paralyzing me. Even so, it wasn’t my awful state that gnawed at my spirit.

It destroys me to think that Milo and Zenith did the same in front of adversity. They abandoned me, left me to my fate. No, they betrayed me. They were traitors—traitors like Zera.

I lifted myself, spending the last energy I had left. The place was a small prison whose tall walls prevented escape. It didn’t have a roof; from there, the condemned to death entered.

The wet stones were the only barrier that separated me from the sky, from the wrathful winds. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean I was safe.

If she had the Sacrum element, then it means that Zenith convinced her to be in her ranks. But why? Didn’t Zenith want me to search for her forgiveness? Isn’t that the reason I have the Wound of Consummated Penance? I don’t understand…

The tilted floor toward the abyss sought my eventual collapse, draining the force in my legs until they gave in, and eventually I’d fall defeated toward my end.

Confusion unmakes my reason. Wasn’t she my partner? My friend? The person for whom I’d lose my life? I don’t understand…

Then, why…? Why did she throw me into helplessness? She forces me to face a loneliness I had never felt before. How miserable, how dastardly.

An insatiable seclusion oppressed my chest, as my impotence for having let myself be betrayed reminded me with hammer blows how useless I was.

If this happened, what could occur in the future? How many times will this misfortune repeat itself? No, it’s unacceptable. This will never happen again.

A spark of anger filtered through my heart, propagating itself like a plague that devoured every emotion, every thought, every hope I had placed in others.

No. Stop. I’m starting to have the same ghosts I had during my whole life again, the ones that destroyed me so much. I must listen to Lumen, they haven’t been disloyal.

From inside me, three souls sprouted, clinging their abstract mass against my body, surrounding me in a suffocating embrace.

“Don’t you think they are traitors? That they used you?” One said in a retorted, sickening voice.

“They fulfilled their purpose, using you as a guardian.”

“Once Zera saw the truth of her parents, she disposed of you.” Another explained, opening something that seemed to be its mouth.

That’s right, she betrayed me. I feel deceived, humiliated. But above all, it’s the pain that doesn’t let me find counsel. It attacks me. It’s tired of waiting, frustrated; it wishes to get out and devour everything.

Slowly, my legs started to give in: the floor’s inclination in that prison pulled me closer to the abyss. Below, in the distance, I spotted Aurethys in a far more sinister way.

“She submitted you before death’s door, she confined you to this space.”

“If you don’t escape soon, you’ll have a fall from which you’ll never recover.”

“We are the only ones that can help you. After all, we went through the same as you.”

They are right — I was an idiot. I made the same mistake that cost my past life. Haven’t I learned anything from all the years I’ve roamed these confines?

“Stand up against her. Cause her end; be her ruin. When her life is at your mercy, have the same mercy she had with you. Did she hear your pleading? Did her soul falter at your heart’s honesty?

“If you have been ignored, don’t do the same to your suffering. Return it; make that internal feeling of destruction know that its fury is answered.

“She deserves what she did to you and more. Your blood thirst is not a mistake, it’s justice. That’s why, sow in her the same pain she inflicted on you.”

The fact that she has caused this damage justifies me returning it, to enjoy seeing her body twist before my eyes.

My feet circled the edge, touching a frozen wind that came from the hole. There wasn’t much left until I fell in it.

Aurethys waited for my death, impatient.

“She is no more than an echo, a poison dressed up with the face of a loved one.”

“There's no case for you to contain your fury: she left her humanity.”

“Someone who breaks their bonds for greed is an animal blinded by their nature.”

My anger erodes my essence with more fury with every instant. Her memory burns my head, her hollow words destroy my eardrums, her cold glare is stabbed in my mind like a thousand daggers.

Despising her is not enough: suffering in silence what she did to me. I need to tear her off this world, to erase even her shadow. Only then will the fire that burns in my mind find rest.

My time had come. Legs were shaking with fatigue, they couldn’t hold me any longer. I slipped and fell over the structure, until the lower part of my body remained floating in the sky’s immensity.

“It’s not oblivion, nor forgiveness that will shut your sorrows up, but vengeance, human.” Said an oppressive voice, whose echo perched in the deepest recesses of my body.

Obstructing the abyss, an insidious figure emerged from the veil of existence. Its head was the first thing to form. It was a hand with thousands of fingers, curved like claws. On its palm, a crystalline eye was forming. It looked weak and sensitive compared with the atrocity that was the rest of the body.

“Accept that you have been cracked, that nor the most indulgent and benevolent existence will correct that.” It continued in a harsh tone, capable of shredding my skin.

It started to manifest completely. Its colossal, dark and unsustainable figure crumbled over itself: the more it grew, the more its own body phagocytosed itself.

It had deformed, lacerated arms, with articulations that creaked like rusted doors.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Akula, the Devourer of Time. I’m one of the curses that prevented The Genesis from spreading in this world. I’m a loyal follower of The Ruin, whose power will reign the seas and skies once liberated.” When pronouncing that name, the souls stopped suffocating me and leaned onto him gently, at ease with his presence.

He lifted his arms with an imposing gesture. Then he broke the prison walls, letting an angry wind shake me.

“I’m the God that the rebels of Kaleron thought they had killed thousands of years ago. But be not afraid; have compassion for yourself. Don’t doubt your fate again.”

“Why do you say that? What do you mean?” I asked, contradicting myself, scared by his bizarre figure.

“Because I’ve seen the fall of the universe since Creation. That’s why I know what a furious nature like yours is capable of. I’m something that surpasses death and time itself; nothing compares to me.”

A scythe formed from him, replete with holes and demarcated by decay. He placed it against my neck, slowly pulling me toward him.

He picked me up with one of his hands: a grotesque limb whose protruding bones, covered with tense skin and black veins, looked like an amalgam of meat and metal.

“You wish to have your revenge, isn’t that right?” He muttered, and his voice sounded like the one that offers a pact and damnation at the same time.

“Yes, that’s the reason why I’m still alive.” I answered, decided, wishing to sow a chaos from which the world will never recover.

From the inside of the Devourer of Time sprouted an hourglass carved in exposed flesh: a blasphemy. Its structure palpitated; the sand were worms that crawled and fell.

It is wet, pulsating, and condemned to fall apart at every turn.

“Then, allow me to give you this.” Said the World God as from its interior materialized the Feather: a dark instrument that shone as if it had drunk the moon and the blood of a thousand nights.

The Feather itself won’t be enough to annihilate them: I need more power, a sacrifice, a greater force to summon my subjects.

Then, I went to Neryuth, the city of the Order of the Infected, carrying on my back the promise and threat that now accompanied me.

I’ll make the apocalypse fall upon the world, and the Feather will guide me through my inexorable judgment.