Chapter 205: Shackles

Chapter 205 — Shackles

The meeting between the siblings ended, and each of them had gone back to their territory.

And in Mortis’s domain—also known in the shadow realm as the Domain of the Corrosive Original—Mortis himself sat inside a room filled with black fog. A fog that anyone under Supreme Rank, even if they just inhaled a little, would instantly die from. And even Supremes... wouldn’t survive here for more than ten seconds.

But Mortis sat inside it, completely unbothered. No pain. No strain.

His eyes were closed. His breath even. His body calm.

’How far am I...?’ Mortis asked himself inwardly. And immediately, as if his thoughts alone had power, the corrosive black fog thickened around him—growing darker, heavier. Looking less like fog and more like pure shadow.

It flowed freely around him... before slowly entering his body. Deep. Deeper. Past the flesh. Past the soul.

But into his very existence.

And there, at the very core of his being, was something that looked like—

A shackle.

A deep, boundless shackle. One moment it looked like black void, the next like pure gold, then again like decaying corruption—changing again and again and again.

It didn’t just change color. It changed shape. It changed weight. It shifted constantly.

The power leaking from that single shackle was enough to flatten billions of middle worlds... and crush millions of high-level worlds into dust.

It was just that powerful.

And Mortis, with cold determination, directed his corrosive shadow toward it. Slowly. Carefully.

But even before the shadow could touch it, it disintegrated—no, vanished—like it never even existed.

"Arghh...!" Mortis growled, blood splashing violently from his mouth, black and burning.

Another failure.

But instead of cursing, instead of losing patience, Mortis smiled. A small, bloody, cracked smile.

"This time... I was a little closer," he whispered, half-laughing under his breath.

He might not have succeeded. But he felt it. He was closer. And if he kept going...

"I’ll reach it. Even if it takes me thousands... or billions of years. I don’t care. Time doesn’t matter to me," Mortis said, voice slow but filled with fire.

Because this time, he wasn’t going to accept it. He wasn’t going to seal his big sister again.

No way in hell.

And if it meant going against Ebony?

So be it.

He stood up, wiped the blood from his lips, then spoke calmly into the fog, "Make sure Ebony’s forces don’t find big sister. Make things difficult for them, subtly. Use the power of the worlds under us if necessary."

And at his words—

"By your will, Lord Mortis."

Then silence again.

Mortis closed his eyes.

He wasn’t done.

It was time to continue.

Though, as he felt the pain crawling through his insides again, he muttered with a twitch in his brow—

’Fuck... I need to finish this soon so I can go back to being lazy. Damn. I miss my big sister.’

Truly... what a hardworking lazy shadow.

...

While Mortis was pushing forward in his own way—his little sister, Sylphira, was doing the same.

But Sylphira’s case was... different.

Because her power wasn’t like Mortis’s. Her power was strange. Tricky. Insanely powerful... but hard to use.

Sylphira had the power to possess anything that had a shadow—anything. As long as she had the will for it.

And let’s be honest. Only rare things in the world don’t cast shadows.

Even the shackle deep inside her being cast one.

But here came the problem.

She had to dominate the shadow to possess it.

And to dominate the shadow of the shackle?

She needed a will stronger than it.

But did she have it?

Hell no.

The will of the shackle could erase billions of her own stacked together.

Billions...of the will of an Original.

That’s insane, right?

But it was the truth.

Still, if there was one thing she shared with Mortis, it was the will to break free.

And so,

Sylphira made her decision.

She would make her will stronger.

No matter how.

And the fastest, most brutal way?

Suffering.

Real suffering. Real pain. Real endurance.

So, right now—

Sylphira was inside the flame of hell. Literally.

Not metaphorically.

A real, physical flame. Black and red. It melted her mind. Burned her soul. Shattered her being. Reduced her existence to screaming, agonized fragments.

Her eyes—if you could still call them that—were gone. Melted.

Her brain...gone.

Her heart...vaporized.

Her flesh...peeled and stripped and gone.

Even her bones, made of shifting shadow and chaos, were melting—slowly, horrifically.

This pain—if Justicia felt just one nanosecond of it—she would lose her mind forever.

But Sylphira held on.

Because she was an Original. Because she was Sylphira.

Even in this state... she was still thinking.

Thinking of her big sister.

Of the guilt.

Of the regret.

Of how she failed her.

And all of it—every regret, every shameful whisper—was fuel.

Fuel to endure.

Fuel to break free.

She suffered in silence, while her lips, though scorched, whispered faintly—

’Once all this is over... big sister will spoil me again.’

What a thought.

What a ridiculous, adorable thought.

But it kept her going.

...

If you think Mortis and Sylphira were the only ones who cared—

You’re wrong.

Ebony cared too.

But Ebony... was different.

She didn’t act on feelings. She didn’t move for emotion.

Ebony moved through logic. Through cold, calculated reasoning.

And that’s why, back then, she had been the one to convince her siblings to accept that damn deal.

Not because she hated Shadeva.

But because she loved her too much.

And the only way to avoid her death—or theirs—

Was to bind themselves.

But Ebony’d been the first to search for a way out.

She tried for eons.

And in the end, there was only one truth.

They couldn’t escape.

Not like this.

Not with the power they had.

And maybe not ever.

"...But they’re so stubborn," Ebony muttered, sighing as she lay on her bed—which, strangely, was just a plain wooden bed.

Her room looked like any normal woman’s room. Organized. Clean. Everything in its place. Nothing out of line. Not even a wrinkle on her sheets.

"They want to escape, but they’ll learn the truth eventually," she said again.

She had told them before.

It was impossible.

They didn’t listen.

So now?

She let them.

Let them do what they wanted.

And when the day came—when they failed—she’d be there. She’d welcome them back.

Because deep down, she knew:

They will fail.

That was the issue with people like Ebony.

So rational. So logical.

They couldn’t imagine anything outside their lines.

And because of that...

They never saw the impossible coming.

—End of Chapter 205—