Chapter 350: Threads of Collapse I
The Ancient Lineages had no idea what was coming.
They slumbered in their pride, stretched across their fragntary dominions, believing ti would always bend to their whims. But power…true power, had always demanded a price.
And power had just changed hands…silently!
Far beyond Ethemia, past the veil of stars that folded light into wonder, there lay the Star Seas!
Endless seas stars that stretched for millions of miles.
Star Seas that stretched out for…Light Years!
In a small, insignificant corner of these Star Seas.
A sea of starlight, viscous and thick, where stars pulsed like hearts and ancient moons drifted like slow-thought dreams could be seen.
Rivers of purple blue aurora wound through the region, glistening with the breaths of collapsed suns, and cots sang trails of glasslight behind them.
Within this majestic quiet, a ripple ford.
Then a scream.
It wasn’t sound, not exactly.
It was wrongness.
Sothing vital unraveling at the seams.
Somwthing that stemd from…a Crimson Eye!
“OOH!”
The scream was heavy as if sothing was being put down.
It stemd from…
Andras!
No longer proud. No longer still.
A colossal eye, wet and furious, wreathed in hundreds of crimson-black tentacles that spun erratically, no longer under command. His form flickered with pulses of chaotic crimson light, beams lancing out at random, scorching star fragnts, bending auroras, and tearing minor teors into ribbons of boiling plasma.
He trembled.
Violently.
Unstable pulses surged from him, each one a cry of loss.
Then, monts later, three others crimson eyes appeared.
Each one a different expression of the Crimson Shroud Vortex lineage.
The first shimred like molten ruby glass, its iris braided with spiraling runes. The second bore serrated winged tendrils, gliding over the starlight like a predator of echoes. The third was bulbous and ridged, its eye rotating in slow, circular distress as it studied Andras.
“Brother Andras, what’s happening?!” the molten one asked, its voice dripping with alarm and resonance.
But Andras did not respond.
He couldn’t.
His body rippled with dissonant frequency, an Existence unraveling in real ti. Strings of matter peeled from his tentacles, curling into vapor. The iris of his great eye twitched as if pulled in all directions.
The second Crimson Shroud’s voice cracked like thunder through the stellar sea. “Sothing has happened…”
The third recoiled. “We must take him to the Elder Shroud!”
They needed no further command.
The three flashed in unison, bodies shimring with starlight beyond the range of Astral Core Ascension. Very likely Empyrean Star Nexus Transcendence!
Their crimson trails burned across the Star Seas, and they vanished.
—
Elsewhere in this sea of ti-drenched void, a thousand-mile shattered star floated like a broken throne. Its crust glead with fractured light, veins of red obsidian webbed across glowing fault lines.
Here, the lineage had gathered.
Hundreds of Crimson Shrouds, lined in grim rows upon the broken star’s fragnts, their forms coiled in stillness, each one a titan of shadow and hunger.
And at the forefront…
The Elder Crimson Shroud.
Its eye dwarfed all others, crowned by spiraling crimson arcs. Its tendrils moved like living Regulations, slow and heavy.
Atop its crown floated a ring of pulsating glyphs, a Crimson Crown forged not from tal but bound star light!
And across from it…
A man.
Tall. Lean. Clad in flowing white robes threaded with shifting Living Script. His hair was ocean-blue, cascading like moonlit rivers down his back. A white crown, simple and sharp, hung loosely on his brow, as if it barely chose to sit there at all.
He was as laid back as one could be!
He was known as… King Edmond.
And behind him, twenty armored figures, each garbed in blue-crystal suits laced with starlight, hovered with unreadable silence. Their helms bore no eyes. Only mirrored faces.
They had been in talks and negotiations with the Crimson Shroud Vortexes.
But the discussions ended the mont space tore apart like silk behind them.
BOOM!
Andras arrived, carried by the three who had retrieved him.
His body pulsed with violent collapse, crimson light bleeding from his core in twitching waves. The unraveling could no longer be hidden. His eye was barely coherent, split down the middle by a crack that bled starlight.
The Elder’s iris narrowed.
“What happened?!” it asked, voice low and glacial, echoing across the hollowed star.
The three Crimson Shrouds hovered in place, their forms stiff.
“We… we found him like this,” one answered. “His weavings…his Existence is unraveling. We do not know the cause!”
The Elder’s tentacles froze mid-air as its eye shone with a terrifying light.
But before it could respond, King Edmond floated forward.
He crossed the shattered star slowly, the folds of his robe trailing in his wake like suspended silk. His blue eyes glimred with keen interest, and his crown glowed faintly above him.
He stopped just short of Andras’ flickering mass.
“Oh?” he said, voice smooth as starlight against glass. “Your lineage… it’s rather unique, isn’t it?”
The Shrouds did not move.
Edmond smiled.
“Three hearts of Existence. Only one needs to survive for the body to live.”
His head tilted.
“So, if a body starts to unravel like this… it ans the Major Heart has already been destroyed, and in an extrely traumatic way at that to even affect thr remaining Minor Heart.”
…!
Silence fell.
Crimson Shrouds bristled subtly across the star, their tendrils shifting as tension blood.
Edmond didn’t stop.
“This one,” he gestured toward Andras, “was the body you all refused to bring to these negotiations? The one you were just ntioning would lead us?”
His smile widened, gleaming.
“Because he’s the only one who ever found the prized Plane of Existence you’ve all been searching for since it disappeared….”
HUUM!
The Elder Crimson Shroud did not answer.
Because it was true.
Edmond’s voice darkened with certainty.
“If the major heart in that body has been destroyed this traumatically… then this one will die in the next minute.”
…!
Andras trembled harder. The crack in his eye widened. Crimson mist seeped from his form like dying blood.
“If he dies, you may lose that Plane.” Edmond continued. “No way to trace what struck this one. No way to locate that hidden Plane of Existence even after the Barrier fades maybe. Maybe not.”
He looked up.
“But I have a way.”
…!
King Edmond smiled wryly.
The Elder Crimson Shroud’s iris constricted, burning deep with suspicion.
“What do you propose… King Edmond?”
The man with the white crown gave a slow, beautiful smile.
“I can walk the spaces between possibilities. My gift lets thread the dying weavings of an existence back to the mont they were torn.”
He raised a single hand.
“If you let devour this dying body… I can trace its collapse. I’ll get a ping on the location of the Plane where the major heart was destroyed.”
The offer hung there.
Electric. Irrevocable.
And beneath them, Andras twitched, his body sagging.
The mont of choice had co!
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