The purplish hooded figure hovered before the deep valley between the twin mountains, its shadow stretching long against the jagged cliffs.
Its gaze blankly stared into the abyss, where... rainbow colours flickered restlessly, weaving across the darkness of the valley.
"Hmm... that would be enough for it," the figure muttered, its voice low, carrying both amusent and weariness. It turned back and saw... the tiny hooded figure hovering silently behind.
"Get the items... the progress has reached its limit already," it ordered.
The tiny figure bowed its head and nodded before a portal tore open in the air, black edges twisting and sparking. The purplish hooded figure inserted its hand through the swirling void and... pulled out a headless body, pale and rigid, that looked uncannily similar to Kai’s.
The one that Xara created in her experint!
Placing the corpse gently on the Ebon stone, the figure extended its hand again and withdrew... a massive pale hand.
Its fingers twitched even now, like so part of it still clung to life.
"Don’t worry, One... you will be fine," the figure whispered, its tone almost tender. It placed the pale hand upon the neck of the headless body. The mont the flesh made contact, the hand trembled, clenching slightly as though unwilling to be discarded.
For a second, nothing happened.
Slllsss~
But then suddenly, the fingers began to dissolve, their shape unravelling into thickened milk, before slowly being absorbed into the body through the raw flesh of the neck.
The body twitched violently, jerking left and right, as though sothing unseen clawed its way inside. The convulsions ca quickly and sharply before it finally froze.
Then the figure reached into the portal once more and withdrew another... Mother’s root.
The root pulsed with a dull heartbeat of its own. The figure stared at it with unreadable eyes before placing it upon the chest of the body.
But nothing happened.
"And finally... the virtue," it muttered, almost reverently, as it raised its fingers. Power rippled in the air. Suddenly, a purplish sphere, no larger than a golf ball, flickered to life in its palm.
Sshhh~
Like a flower blooming in slow, deliberate defiance, the purple layer peeled away in thin shards of light before revealing what lay beneath.
A pure white radiance burst forth, blooming from inside, expanding gently. The white sphere pulsed, breathing, growing larger as it descended slowly toward the motionless body.
It touched the root first.
Suddenly, the root shuddered, then flared into a blinding brilliance that spread across the body. The corpse ignited in radiant energy, its lifeless flesh caught in a holy inferno.
The figure waved its hand, and... the body along with everything—the stone, the root, the light—tumbled into the deep valley.
The figure’s gaze did not falter. It stared into the abyss, watching as the glowing light fell deeper and deeper, light breaking apart as it sank into the blackness, until only threads of brilliance remained, thinning as though consud by the endless dark.
BSssshhh~
The entire valley erupted. White light surged upward, flooding the gorge like a river unleashed, as though a hidden sun had been buried beneath and now burned through.
The jagged cliffs shone, the mountains trembled, and the rainbow colour shattered into pure radiance.
The figure humd, a low sound of satisfaction, before finally turning back. It walked away in silence, but not before saying, "When you finish your work, co to our usual place."
It vanished into the portal that shimred open before it.
The tiny hooded figure glanced once at the great valley, still flickering with restless white light, before silently turning and following after the other figure... disappearing into the portal until finally, nothing remained.
For a few minutes, nothing stirred.
Only the faint shimr of white light pulsed weakly from the valley below... until, at last, it began to die out.
The glow thinned, faded, then vanished.
Then—
The valley stirred.
Tuck, Tuck... Tuck!
A sound, dry and sharp, like rattling bones echoing and rose from the depths. The noise clawed upward, spreading until it reverberated across the twin mountains.
From within the abyss, sothing began to move. Bones... thousands of them, rose as if swimming through unseen currents, writhing upward from the blackness like pale serpents climbing toward the surface.
First, a single white bony hand broke through, landing heavily on the rocky ground. Small, fragile, almost pitiful.
Its skeletal fingers dug into the stone as though it had weight beyond its size. Slowly, it pushed upward, dragging with it a skull, aged and cracked, almost the size of a ten- or twelve-year-old child.
It seed like a child.
And yet—
Its hollow sockets suddenly burst alive with rainbow fire, eyes glowing dangerously.
Ttrcccckkkk~ Ttttrccckkk!
The jawbones snapped, trembling violently, before the skull let out a twisted, guttural scream.
The sound echoed through the valley. One by one, more fragnts followed... skeletons dragging themselves upward, crawling, twitching, erging piece by piece from the endless darkness below.
But they were not rising as individuals.
No... every bone, every fragnt, every sacrifice thrown into this cursed abyss, was being pulled.
Snapped together like pulled by magnets, they clattered toward each other with relentless force.
Vertebrae rattled as they aligned into spines, ribs locked into rib cages, femurs slamd into sockets, skulls twisted until jaws clicked shut with eerie precision.
The clatter, the scrape, the ceaseless cracking echoed across the slopes between the twin mountains. And then—
Rumble.
From the pit rose a single spine, impossibly tall, extending skyward until it towered higher than the cliffs, reaching nearly twice the height of the mountains themselves. The earth groaned beneath its impossible weight.
Stone cracked.... The valley shook.
Piece by piece, it assembled, until at last—
A colossal skeleton, forged from thousands upon thousands of bones, stood upright in the gap between the mountains.
It did not move at first. For a second, perhaps two, the entire world seed frozen.
Zzzz~
A faint breeze flowed in the air... Then, the empty eye sockets of the giant flared alive, burning with pure rainbow light.
"KYARR!!"
With a roar that split the sky, the colossal skeleton raised one titanic hand, its claw-like bones screeching as they scraped together. The massive fingers slowly converged toward the twin mountains themselves, shadowing everything beneath their reach.
Tttrrkkk!Tttrrkkk!Tttrrkkk!
The sound of shifting bone thundered as the hand closed around the mountains, its skeletal fra moving like a serpent, curling, wrapping tighter and tighter around the peaks.
Clench!
The bones locked.
Thud!
The earth shook as the mountains themselves groaned beneath the grip.
Those who dwelled upon them—beasts, creatures, monsters—scread in panic. They ran, they clawed, they tried to flee, but the bones crushed them all without rcy.
Blood poured from the slopes, flowing down the cliffs like rivers, staining the stone in crimson.
And above it all, the colossal skeleton’s eyes glowed brighter, rainbow fire blazing within the sockets, hungering for more.
"KYARRR!!"
Its spine twitched violently as the colossal skeleton bent forward and lifted the twin mountains in its massive grip.
The ground trembled and shattered, fissures racing outward as stones cracked and broke free from their roots. The bedrock groaned with a thunderous rumble before splitting apart.
CRACKKKKKK!
The sound split the sky as the twin mountains tore free of the land, wrenched upward into the sky. Debris rained down in an endless storm—boulders, dust, shattered cliffs collapsing into the valley below.
"KYAARRRR!!"
The skeleton scread again, a roar so deep and primal that even the wind seed to flee.
It held the mountains aloft like toys, brandishing them as though they were crude weapons of a forgotten age.... stone-age clubs reforged into divine punishnt.
Its hollow sockets flared with rainbow fire. [Imgincmt]
Then it swung.
With strength, it slamd one of the mountains downward.
BOOOMMMM!!!!
The impact thundered across the land. The entire mountain ca crashing down upon the proudly standing... Ebon Stone.
A shockwave burst outward like a god’s breath, tearing through everything.
Almost everything.
The blast carved devastation across the land. For kilotres in every direction, the earth collapsed into a massive crater, swallowing forests, rivers, and villages alike. The long-abandoned city on the horizon disintegrated into nothing but dust, swept away by the pressure wave of the colossal impact.
The entire empire felt it... Subtle!
Yet, the Ebon stone just barely lowered half of its previous height.
Dora flinched in her empire, her eyes narrowing as the floor beneath her feet quivered. She turned sharply toward the others, who were still seated, arguing, oblivious. "I felt sothing," she muttered.
Everyone frowned as she rose and strode out of the eting chamber.
Outside, she saw.... The Origin Pillars were stirring again, it glowed dangerously with white and black particles.
It rose higher from the ground like one step!
Everyone followed her outside.
anwhile, Aether’s eyes widened as he looked at his Log.
!~Ding~!
[LOG 2.0 Initiating... 55%↑]
!~Ding~!
[Remaining Ti: 15 days 22 hours 21 minutes 12 seconds]
!~Ding~!
[Remaining Ti: 12 days 24 hours 60 minutes 60 seconds↡]
The numbers flickered violently. Two entire days were gone—in re seconds.
"What the hell is going on here!!"
Back in the Naiadae Empire—
The colossal skeleton raised its other hand, its fra groaning as bones scraped against one another.
"KYYARRR!!"
BOOOMMMMMM!!!
It brought another mountain down again, slamming it against the Ebon Stone, hamring it as though nailing sothing into the world itself.
The impact drove deep, stabbing into the ground, into the veins of the earth.
The "nail" connected sothing beneath, piercing into foundations.... sothing that Aether once glimpsed in space.
The Ebon Stone flattened completely into the ground like the nail finally hamred into the wood.
And this ti... the wave spread farther. Every empire felt the wave as if it were pulled off from it.
The nail was no re strike—it was a connection.
Buildings trembled subtly, trees swayed.... Across Empires, towers swayed as people stumbled in terror.
Aether and the others staggered as the subtle shift passed through them.
Step!
The Origin Pillar stepped up again, one step, its glow intensifying.
"What’s going on here, Father!!" Kaelen shouted.
Aether gritted his teeth. His fists clenched as his eyes darkened. "Everyone get ready..." he said, furious and wryly,
"We’re about to get fucked again!!"
User Comments
0 comments from readers