Chapter 462 – Inverted Sky
Kaden had many types of power. Soul energy, blood manipulation, the stars aspect within his origin, and even flas.
All of that without even counting his Will, the Intents he carried within himself, his Emptiness, or his sword skill.
His power, in all honesty, was above and beyond what should have been considered normal at his level.
What would happen... if everything just blew up at once?
In that mont, where the gods’ rciless hands reached out to him from all sides — wishing nothing but to siphon out the brilliant light he was — Kaden realised he had never truly used his power at its full potential.
That day was a day of surprise.
So Kaden did sothing he had never dared to do before. He let everything go. He stopped unconsciously limiting himself. He stopped fighting with only one or two powers at a ti.
He used all of them. And to call the result disastrous was being generous.
"You asked for it." He uttered in a calm, final tone.
Naless had no ti to react as the house they were in exploded into wrathful, devouring fire, the screech of Blanche piercing through the chaos from within.
It was the kind of wrath that consud even the purest of souls.
The house beca nothing but smouldering ash that joined the rest swirling through the strange realm.
Naless coughed, its body still locked in a cage of fire. It rose, its strange face twisted into outrage, and whirled toward Kaden.
The man himself stood still, holding Rea gently against his chest, looking at Naless with cold eyes.
Naless opened its mouth to speak — then closed it. It had noticed Kaden’s face. Bleeding all over.
Not only that.
His body was cracking like dry stone. Through the cracks, a wave of power slamd into Naless like a physical wall.
It drew a deep, painful breath and raised its head skyward, fear rising through its heart.
"Oh gods below..." it cursed.
Kaden smiled. Blood dripped and splattered across Rea’s lips.
Overhead, crimson stars bloated the sky, swelling like wounds that refused to close. Dozens. Then hundreds. The sky glutted with them almost instantly, each one pulsing with a dim, arterial light that pressed down onto the surface below like a rciless hand.
That was when sothing phenonally impossible, and terrifying, occurred.
The realm may have returned to its previous state, erasing every trace of the war Kaden had fought and bled through.
But it was never easy to cleanse the blood of the Lord of Blood without his consent.
So when the crimson light of the stars touched the surface, it found his scattered blood all throughout the Warren.
And every drop answered the call of its master.
The blood erupted upward in long, irregular spikes, each one jagged and alive, zigzagging through the space with no respect for geotry or direction.
They multiplied, branched, intersected — corridor after corridor of crimson that sealed the Warren into one suffocating maze.
Naless let out a sharp cry as the spikes went in and out of it like it was nothing but a doll being stitched back together. It opened its mouth to speak, and two more spikes went in.
The spikes were not rely blood.
Each one was coated in soul energy, causing Naless to whimper without pause, feeling the silver of its soul writhing in soundless pain.
It looked at Kaden with imnse difficulty and saw him still standing, despite half his face having broken apart and fallen away.
He was using everything inside himself. But his body was not strong enough to bear the weight of all his power unleashed at once, with such intensity.
Yet what truly sent fear flooding through Naless was Kaden’s gaze. That unyielding crimson stare. The gaze of a man who had known death, accepted death, and made himself one with it.
There was no doubt.
Kaden would not stop even if death greeted him at the end of this. The confirmation ca as the crimson stars began to plumt.
The Echo of Warren wept in both horror and strange recognition.
Each star was wrapped in killing intent so compressed it had beco sothing beyond emotion; a will given mass and velocity. It was no longer the desire to kill. It was the certainty of it.
His Intents and Will were set free, for only intent could kill intent. Only will could kill will.
And Kaden wanted to kill everything.
"H-How—!" Naless shouted, but the sound died before it could form. The noise was killed. Even silence was killed.
What remained was sothing worthy of the Warren of Madness, and Naless found itself standing at the very edge of it.
Yet it was not over.
Just before the stars struck the surface...
The crimson maze glowed.
Every spike, every corridor, every branching wall of soul-coated blood ignited from within, then detonated. Not violently outward, but upward and inward simultaneously. Collapsing into itself and erupting at once, dissolving the entire maze into pure, unfiltered, chaotic crimson dust that flooded every corner of the realm in a single breath.
The dust did not scatter.
It rose.
It gathered above the surface — beneath the original sky — and inverted, crystallising into a second sky.
A crimson sky, hanging beneath the first like a mirror that reflected nothing recognisable.
The Echo of Warren now had two skies.
The real one above, godly and indifferent. The crimson one below, breathing, waiting, hungry for a vengeance deeper than most.
Kaden and Naless stood between them.
Kaden’s body was now a churning mass of swirling blood, holding Rea tightly as she was bathed in it.
Naless was on its knees, bleeding all over, staring up at the inverted sky as though it were sothing pulled from a nightmare.
It watched. And watched as the crimson stars finally pierced through it.
All the powers Kaden had unleashed t in a single point. The detonation was not loud. It was total, all-encompassing.
A crimson wave erupted outward from the point of collision. It was neither explosion nor shockwave, it was sothing without a na.
It was energy that churned and swirled across the entire realm at once, wailing like a god writhing on the ground, grief and magnitude beyond comprehension. And yet laughing like a madman caving his own skull into the earth, beyond pain, beyond broken, existing in a state that could not be called suffering or joy because it had consud both and beco sothing the Warren had no category for.
It did not travel across the Warren.
It beca the Warren.
Every surface. Every inch of air. Every layer of space churned, swallowed, and remade in that single catastrophic instant.
Then everything stopped.
The crimson energy dimd slowly, like a fire running out of things to consu. It dissolved upward in thin threads.
The god was no longer wailing. The madman had stopped laughing.
One being — or perhaps two — remained in that place.
A man made of blood, holding his untouched fiancée in trembling arms. And a kneeling creature whose body could no longer be recognised.
Kaden stood in a world wounded by his anger, on the very sky he had birthed, his life running out. He had minutes left, he realised.
Yet he was indifferent to it.
He looked at what Naless had beco — noticing sothing strange within it — then cocked his head upward, toward the original sky of the Warren, wide open, one pair of eyes peering down at him.
Kaden grinned savagely.
"Forbidden."
He rasped.
"Have you co to witness my spectacle? I am sorry, but it’s already over."
The eyes — the Eyes of the Forbidden Alchemist — narrowed for a brief mont, then broke into loud laughter.
"Oh, but I witnessed it." He said, cackling harder. "Oh, Warborn. Warborn. Warborn. Amid all the lineage of the dead God of Death, you, truly, are the best."
—End of Chapter 462—
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