For the love of the goddess.
Which, in truth, wasn’t much love at all since the goddess didn’t give a damn about them.
And for the love of whoever was listening, calling sothing cursed "your precious" was never a good sign.
Damon glanced at the golden ornant.
A ruby red gem glowed faintly at its center. The shape was wrong sohow. It didn’t look like a jewel.
It looked like an eye.
Before the knight who held it could even react, Damon closed his fist.
The shadow in his hand crumpled like paper.
The knight froze.
His eyes went dim.
And then he died.
Just like that.
His body collapsed to the ground without a wound on it, the golden ornant slipping from his fingers and clinking softly against the deck.
Damon had crushed his shadow.
It was an insidious way to die. Damon imagined it was unbearably painful, yet so fast the victim never had ti to express the full extent of their suffering.
A collective breath of cold air passed through the deck.
None of the knights moved.
Every one of them stood frozen, silenced by Damon’s cold, ruthless action.
Damon ignored them.
He bent down and slowly picked up the ornant.
He was about to throw it into the sea when he felt it.
An insidious ntal attack.
It slid toward his mind like poison seeking an open wound, trying to burrow into his soul.
Damon didn’t even flinch.
The crown resting on his head shimred faintly.
The Ascendant Armor rejected the attack completely.
No illusion.
No corruption.
No madness.
Nothing touched him.
Still, Damon knew better than to relax.
There were no absolutes in this world.
Even divine protections could fail under the right conditions.
So instead of throwing it away, he stopped and decided to appraise it.
A faint blue screen appeared before his eyes.
[Morticai Nirvana Eye]
The phoenix were a divine race.
Powerful and terrifying, rivaling dragons.
Their bodies were ford from living fla, immortal and ageless, their existence bound to cycles of destruction and rebirth.
But ti was rciless to all beings.
Even the phoenix.
To purge the impurities that accumulated within their immortal existence, they burned their own bodies to cinders, reducing themselves to ash in a ritual known as nirvana.
It was an agonizing process.
From that ash, only a purified soul remained.
The suffering endured during this rebirth had twisted many phoenix. They ca to resent all things they considered impure.
This object was once the eye of Morticai.
It carried his will.
And the impurities that once tainted him before his nirvana.
Those who carried the eye would face Morticai’s lingering will and the corruption that festered within his forr body.
Damon gnashed his teeth.
Of course.
Of course it was that bastard.
"I see," Damon muttered darkly. "So it’s you, Morticai."
So this was what he ant when he said he had cursed them.
Damon looked down at the eye in his palm.
So he was a phoenix.
Damon had no idea what a phoenix truly was beyond the description the system had given him, but if it was a divine race then it wasn’t sothing to take lightly.
His fingers tightened around the eye.
He couldn’t keep it.
But Damon also didn’t want to simply throw it away without doing sothing to hurt Morticai in return.
He turned toward Seras with a cold expression.
"Can you destroy this thing?"
Seras blinked.
She clearly hadn’t expected that question.
Damon sighed and rubbed his temple before explaining.
"This is the eye of that voice we encountered in the Bone Hallows," he said.
"The one who called himself a follower of the God of Souls."
He deliberately avoided saying the na.
Even with his resistance to fate manipulation and the unknown god’s protection, it was still wiser not to speak that na unless absolutely necessary.
So nas had a way of hearing themselves being spoken.
Seras was quiet for a mont. She was unsure how to react. Slowly she took the orb from Damon’s hand. The mont she touched it she felt sothing try to latch onto her mind. She imdiately cloaked her hand in magic and forced the presence back.
"Hmm... I see. This is a part of that entity."
She could sense a will inside it. It was faint and indistinct, but it still had direction.
"Its his eye from what I... erhm... figured. He’s a phoenix. A divine being or sothing. Never heard of one. Have you?"
Seras slowly shook her head.
"First ti hearing of one too. Whatever this phoenix is, its not good."
The world of Aetherus had no phoenix in its long history. Dragons existed and were well recorded in ancient texts, but a phoenix was unheard of.
"Can you destroy it?" Damon asked.
"Yes. Yes, I can."
Damon nodded, but then Seras narrowed her eyes.
"Though we’d have to do it off the ship. The rebound will sink the whole vessel."
He nodded slowly and glanced at the dark blue waters surrounding them.
"Alright then. The ship should move a few miles away while we stay behind to destroy it. Matia can create an ice platform."
Seras nodded in agreent.
"That leaves us with the option of swimming back to the ship... or flying."
Damon shook his head.
"Leave that to ."
He could tell what she was thinking. Flying across the ocean carried its own risks. Sothing could attack them midair or strike them down with magic. Swimming was no better. Anything lurking beneath the waves could simply drag them under.
A dark armored knight descended toward the water, her fairy wings spreading wide behind her. They glittered with drifting snowflakes, each beat scattering frost through the air.
As her boots touched the waves, the sea reacted instantly.
The water beneath her feet began to crystallize, spreading outward in sharp white patterns. Frost raced across the surface, turning the restless ocean into solid ice.
Within seconds a wide frozen platform ford.
Behind them the ship slowly began to move away, the sails catching the wind as the captain guided it several miles out, just as planned.
Damon and Seras jumped off the deck.
Their boots struck the cold ice with a solid crack, the frozen surface groaning faintly beneath their weight as they steadied themselves.
Both of them stood silently for a mont, watching the ship grow smaller in the distance.
Seras crossed her arms and glanced at the departing vessel.
"You know, you could have just tossed that thing into the ocean and called it a day."
Damon looked down at the golden eye in his hand, the ruby center faintly glowing like it was watching him.
"Yeah," he said calmly. "And I could have forgiven that wretch too."
His fingers tightened slightly around the object.
"Forgiveness and letting things go is not my way."
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