Chapter 1524: To the abyss

BAM!

BANG

BANG!

It was as if the clamor of the heavens and the violent quakes of the earth suddenly stilled in that fleeting instant. The deafening chorus of battle, the trembling of towers, and even the shrill wail of the Planet’s Spirit seemed to have been seized and strangled mid-breath, trapped in her throat.

Nothing remained for the ear to catch—nothing except the grisly thud of Morgana’s severed head striking against the tower as it fell.

The echo of bone and flesh crashing against stone reverberated like a funeral bell. Then came the hollow sound of the head rolling across the mound of corpses, bouncing, striking ribs, slipping over broken armor... until at last it came to rest.

Her eyes, once abyssal and unyielding, still quivered faintly, droplets of blood dribbling down her pale cheeks. One could watch, with cruel clarity, the fragile light of life ebbing away second by second from the expression on that severed head—until finally, inevitably... it dimmed and extinguished completely.

("Noooooooo!!") The Planet’s Sprit shrieked, clawing and tearing at her own scattered locks of hair. Her voice cracked the air like a thunderclap. ("Nooooooooooooo!!")

"Shh!" one of the Nexus States barked, waving upward with irritation. "Begone! She has met her end—it is finished! Do not force us to act against you!"

("Remember this well... remember this well...") The words dripped with venom, each syllable carrying centuries of loathing. Her eyes were nothing but abysses of hatred as her form dissolved, withdrawing slowly, step by step, into the storm until the last shred of her aura vanished from sight.

"Tsk~ what a damned lunatic," one of the World Cataclysms chuckled darkly. "I wanted to call her a whore, but then—she doesn’t even have a body to insult, ahahaha."

"Do you think she’ll actually follow through on that threat?" another Cataclysm asked, more serious, his tone wary.

One of the Nexus States pressed his brows together. "What could she do? We have a thousand ways—ten thousand ways—to force her into slumber whenever we wish."

"Strange..."

"Hm?" All heads turned instantly toward a single voice, for it was unmistakable: the voice of their leader.

The high-level Nexus State still stood beside the mutilated corpse, his expression far from mockery, his left hand raised in puzzlement. "Truly... strange."

"What is strange, my lord?" one asked cautiously. There were not many phenomena left that could unsettle a being who had lived for millions of years.

"Do you see something floating above my finger?" the leader asked, bewildered.

"...No?" Confusion rippled among them. Some even activated their spiritual senses, scrutinizing his fingertip with piercing clarity, confirming over and over—there was nothing there.

"I know!" the high-level Nexus State said, voice taut, "Then tell me why there is nothing? With this technique, I should have extracted her whole soul domain at the moment of death, without the slightest chance of error. So where is it? Where is Morgana’s soul domain?"

"...Perhaps she never had one?" one of the World Cataclysms mumbled hesitantly.

SMACK!

"How can any living being exist without a soul domain?" a Nexus State beside him roared, striking the back of his head. "This is truly... baffling."

"Hmm, especially since she was clearly a Royal Soul Master—we all saw it in battle with our own eyes. Where was she storing her soul force?"

"...." The high-level Nexus State lowered his gaze from his empty finger. Slowly, almost reverently, he knelt beside the corpse. His eyes scanned each wound, each scar, each pool of blood, as if the flesh itself might yield the missing answer.

Finally, another voice broke the silence. "I don’t know... maybe she was simply unique. Those specters inhabited her, touched her unending times. Perhaps her domain was always crumbling, living on the razor’s edge of annihilation."

"Hmm. That is... possible."

"I support that theory."

"Yaaah~ what a pity! The specter shepherd’s soul domain could have been a treasure beyond measure for this planet. Our profits would have multiplied a hundredfold!"

"..." Seeing his subordinates nodding, grasping at this convenient explanation, the high-level Nexus State exhaled. He too finally gave a slow nod, rising to his feet. "A loss indeed. Return to your posts." His eyes sharpened, landing on two Cataclysms in particular. "And you two—double the slaughters in the coming days. Make up for the specters we lost in today’s battle."

"Yes, my lord!" The two Cataclysms saluted instinctively, almost militarily, before rushing off to harvest more sacrifices. The others bowed lightly and dispersed, scattering in every direction: some to guard the great gate, others toward neighboring planets. Their routine resumed, as if nothing monumental had just transpired.

Only the leader, the high-level Nexus State, lingered a moment longer. His eyes locked on the corpse. In the end, he stooped, lifted the body, and with a subtle gesture drew forth the severed head—the head of the shepherd Morgana. Both were slipped into his void ring before he, too, vanished.

-------------------------

Moments earlier—

A single drop of blood trailed down Morgana’s full black lips, trembling, hesitating, hanging as if it sought to resist gravity itself... before surrendering at last.

DRIP

//Ahh~ this pain is unbearable... these five blades... they cut deeper than the flesh, deeper than the soul...//

With immense effort she lifted her black eyes. Above, the skies convulsed, heavens split, and the Planet’s Soul appeared, shrieking in despair.

Morgana smiled faintly through her agony, then let her gaze fall once more...

It seemed that Fai was doing something... a faint movement, a trembling resonance, a cry that could not be heard but was felt deep within the marrow of the world. She was a gentle Planet’s Soul, innocent in her essence, undeserving of the calamity that had befallen her, undeserving of the grotesque mutation that had twisted her very being after the death of every living creature upon her surface.

It looked as though she was whispering something—perhaps bidding her a final farewell, perhaps trying desperately to shield her, to resist the inevitability of the strike that would end it all. Maybe she was pleading with the heavens themselves to intervene. Yet it no longer mattered.

For her ears had gone deaf to the world.

Her body and soul together were already loosening their grip on existence. Every sound became a distant echo, as though muffled by thick fog. Every color bled into a pale, fading grey, like ink dissolving into water. Even the sensation of the ground beneath her seemed to vanish, as if she were already halfway between the realm of the living and the void.

Her life unrolled before her eyes—not in order, not as a clear tale, but as fragments of light and shadow, flashing and breaking apart like shards of glass.

All those words, those whispers she had heard since childhood—about her origins, about how she had grown among the specters—every single one of them had been true. Yet words, no matter how cruel, had never been enough to describe everything. No tongue could ever express the full depth of the nightmare that had happened inside that narrow, suffocating treasury.

The specters of her own family... they had not played with her, nor tried to understand her, nor embraced her as their child or sister. They had hunted her. Tried to feed on her. Again. And again. And again.

The endless fleeing through cramped shadows. The nights and days blurred together by her ceaseless crying until her voice broke. The shock and agony of seeing her mother, her father, her siblings, reduced to half-formed specters—bodies incomplete, eyes hollow, mouths twisted into ravenous hunger, staring at her as nothing but meat. The repeated spiritual assaults—blows delivered by those who once loved her—struck her without mercy. Each wound carved scars into her soul, warping and deforming her spiritual domain, day after day, as she fought to survive in that tiny coffin of despair.

Every unique horror piled upon the last, brick upon brick, until they built her. They built something dreadful. They built a creature unlike any other.

A monster.

And yet, a monster that now seemed destined to die here, on this day.

A faint, almost serene smile softened Morgana’s lips...

For all her existence, she had lived trying to give peace to the specters, to grant them comfort, to soothe their endless torment. She had dedicated herself so that no child would ever again feel what she had felt, so that no soul would be forced to look upon the face of their father, their mother, their son, and see only a hungry beast.

She knew the day would come. Always, she knew. The day when her actions would draw the blades of the powerful, when she would pay the final price. That day had marched toward her like an army, unstoppable, and now it had arrived. Perhaps, she thought, death itself was not as terrible as it seemed. Perhaps... this was the very thing she had been reaching for since the beginning.

But now—now as death truly wrapped its cold arms around her—she could not meet it with the same indifference she had once imagined. She could not raise her head with unshaken courage.

Death carried its own majesty, its own dreadful holiness. Even those who walk its edge every day eventually taste its steel. Even the fiercest warriors, even those who defy gods, feel their hearts tremble when the last step comes, when the abyss yawns beneath their feet and asks for their leap.

Her soul quivered on that precipice.

Whoooosh—

Suddenly a new voice cut through the silence, sharp yet strangely warm.

"Hey. Lift your head. You’re under my protection now."