A surge of air wrapped around the Elf King's bow-drawing hand.
The surging power held no color, only the whirling currents erupting into increasingly piercing sounds. Those nearby had already retreated over ten meters away. Vines rose under the hands of the Archdruids—unlike any treewalkers Tashan had ever seen. The vines they conjured were solid as steel, thick as city walls, resembling the plants that entwined Sleeping Beauty's castle in fairy tales, seemingly grown over centuries in an instant.
Within the confined cage of fully anchored vines, the heavy ebony bow was drawn inch by inch, its string swelling full as a harvest moon.
The Elf King no longer appeared as otherworldly as before.
His jaw clenched, his brow knotted. The hand holding the bow remained utterly still, yet the veins on his knuckles stood starkly white. The ruler of the forest elves no longer bore his usual ethereal beauty. He resembled a weapon drawn from its sheath, its edge bared. In this moment, he was neither elf nor king, but the legendary archer—a pure warrior.
The tips of his silver hair were whipped by a sharp wind, the strands caught in the current quickly shredded. Next, his battle armor suffered. The runes embroidered on his cuffs lit up one by one, then flickered out, merging into a blur of dim threads. Both sleeves shattered simultaneously, revealing the white arms beneath. The skin, appearing soft and fragile, held out against the gale a few minutes longer than the sleeves had, before countless tiny blood streaks began spreading like cracks.
The next scene was too gruesome to behold.
Blood exploded in the increasingly violent currents. The blood of the Silen Elves was red too. Even those standing within the vine wall erected by the Archdruid, even those watching beside the Elf King, could not make out the shape of the ebony bow. The turbulent currents coalesced into a vortex, countless miniature whirlwinds swirling around the Elf King, as if startled, as if loading. The space around them grew increasingly unstable, light warping within it. Gazing at that patch of ground was like staring through frosted glass.
Finally, even the Elf King's form blurred. Within that mirage-like, unstable scene, only the arrowhead grew brighter and brighter.
"Release!" the Elf King roared.
The arrow left the bowstring.
The ebony bow shattered in that instant. The legendary artifact, crafted by a dwarf master and serving the Elf King for centuries, was utterly destroyed. This magic arrow, forged over time with immense expenditure, used a specially crafted shaft as its vessel. The force that shattered the bow provided its final propulsion. Enveloped in overwhelming power, the arrow blazed with an unstoppable radiance.
Its brilliance surpassed even its pre-launch glow. Mid-air, it became too dazzling for mortal eyes to behold—like attempting to stare directly at a meteor falling backward, or perhaps a star itself.
A star plummeting from the earth toward the heavens exploded somewhere in the sky.
Its arrival was spectacular, its departure silent. The radiance abruptly extinguished, ending abruptly, as if swallowed by a gaping maw in the sky.
Moments later, the spot where the meteor vanished began to warp.
No giant mouth existed in the sky, but this arrow could tear one open. Rather than being swallowed, the arrow's force had surged into the unseen. The azure sky began to warp, the distortion turning into collapse, spreading through fissures. A blinding light suddenly radiated outward from the point where the arrow vanished.
The scene bore some resemblance to the Day of the Crimson Rain, though even the enhanced energy of the Bloodline Detector could not compare to this single arrow.
Like a bullet shattering a glass dome, everything froze under the immense impact.
The Elf King, bow in hand, stood tall, fragments of his ebony bow still drifting through the air; The surrounding Archdruids formed a circle, their reinforced vine walls displaying the legendary hardness of their craft while retaining the flexibility of the vines themselves. They shattered yet twisted, absorbing the shockwaves radiating outward. The Wood Elves tilted their heads back, squinting, some shielding their eyes from the glare. Half of Erian's creatures looked up and witnessed...
The shattering of the blue sky.
As if a creature had cracked its own eggshell—the fissure vast, yet the hole small. The spatial rift twisted momentarily, then began to contract as if alive, striving to return to the instant before its rupture. But the arrow held the opening fast. A circular portal remained fixed in the air. Tashan drew a sharp breath. Through the celestial passage, she glimpsed "Infinity."
This was the path to the Astral Plane.
The Astral Plane within the illusion had been softened beyond measure, yet merely recreating this tiny counterfeit caused the mirror world to shatter.
Was it unable to bear the strain, or had its energy been exhausted? The forest, vivid moments before, instantly became as thin as a painting. The figures within the painting shattered, every superficial form disintegrating into the very essence that composed the illusory world.
Causality threads.
The Heart of Nature recorded the scene before the Forest Spirit and the Archdruid departed. Back then, the ancient oak witnessed the magic arrow piercing the sky, though the young Oak Guardian did not comprehend what it had seen. Using this knowledge and memory as a fulcrum, diverse information reconstructed this illusion. When that arrow shattered the azure sky, fragments of space scattered across every corner of Erian, spreading the "connection" far and wide as causality intertwined. Tashan's vision expanded along the invisible threads, sweeping across Erian in the instant the world fractured.
Countless beings gazed skyward—some bewildered, fingers pointing upward; others seemingly forewarned, fists clenched and brows furrowed, holding their breath in anticipation. What had truly transpired back then? As this thought formed, Tasha saw it.
What would the world look like if it were stricken with illness?
To the east of Erian, patches of land lay utterly barren, somewhat resembling areas ravaged by magic cannons—yet far more repulsive. If the cannons' fury were a branding iron searing skin, this sight was disease-induced gangrene. Rust-colored fluid seeped from the soil, nearly forming rivers. Where these regions bordered other areas, the edge of the blue sky glowed an unnatural white—not from dust or smog, but like a corpse left to rot too long. Above these polluted zones, the sky itself had undergone a complete pathological transformation.
Who could have imagined the Prime Material Plane witnessing a purple sky?
Not a beautiful sunset, but a festering frostbite. Torrential rain, lashed by lightning, came and went abruptly, while massive hailstones pelted down in waves, as if the nauseating purplish-brown canopy itself was about to collapse. Here, the land oozed pus, rivers festered with sores, and the living, not yet dead, grew violent and aggressive. Red-eyed deer tore at the corpses of their own kind. Emaciated bears gnawed on monstrous fish bristling with razor-sharp teeth. The bears' bodies were covered in bald patches; where fur was absent, smooth, crimson flesh was exposed.
/The Eastern Continent erupted with every conceivable calamity. Some claimed it was a demon's curse; others swore it was the inevitable consequence of forsaking the gods. Rumors spread: the sky cracked open, hail and lightning fell as freely as rain; they say the eastern seas boil like molten lava, the crimson on the surface indistinguishable from magma or the blood of merfolk; they say withering spreads across the land, death slithers like serpents everywhere.../Mavis had recounted the rumors her grandparents and mother had heard. The truth was as grim as the tales, though she knew it was far worse.
Tasha recognized the familiar signs of catastrophe at a glance.
In another place, natives were born from purplish-black soil, learning to slaughter one another before their eyes even opened. This carnage spanned their entire lives—from sky to earth, from ice caves to lava fields, all became battlefields. There, earth dragons churned ceaselessly, rivers of blood hung upside down, and stars crashed to the ground; there, three suns hung high in the sky, the purple canopy breathtakingly magnificent.
The eastern continent of Erian did not meet its apocalypse; it merely grew to resemble the Abyss.
Within the web woven by threads of causality, Tasha heard voices of every kind.
"If the rotten flesh isn't cut away, the entire body will be corrupted. By then, it will be too late," said an unnamed mage. "Sacrifice is necessary."
"Who but the Children of Nature could accomplish this?" roared an unnamed hero. "Do you think I don't wish to help? How could I sit idly by, watching my wife—the mother of my children—depart on this journey?! What if something goes wrong? You yourself said..."
"I'm not optimistic," the red dragon said. "They're far too confident. Do they think they're dragons?"
"Don't worry, my love. I'm a warrior who survived the War of Heaven and Earth," Mavis's grandfather said. "I'll find out what happened. Then I'll return and tell you all a splendid tale."
"We fought alongside humans for centuries, sacrificing nearly half our kin and losing a quarter of our lands, all to drive the Abyssal creatures from the surface. They would destroy every beautiful thing on earth, shatter living bodies, and devour the souls of the dead," Oak Elder declared.
"That's a good idea. Quite clever," Victor remarked.
Tasha's vision and hearing suddenly contracted.
As if struck by a spotlight in pitch darkness, everything around her blurred into indistinct chaos. All she could make out was the Great Demon of the Crooked Horn seated in a wide, luxurious chair, looking remarkably like a video game's final boss. His arms crossed, feet propped up, he stared at something before him.
"I never thought the division plan was viable. Heaven isn't static, and the creatures of the Material Plane aren't fools," Victor shrugged. "Corruption? That's far more feasible."
The unseen visitor emitted a sound.
"Why would I object?" Victor raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Indeed, my relationship with your Lord Rashidja has never been smooth, but we both acknowledge each other as rare intellects in the Abyss, don't we? Even if our focus and perspectives on certain matters differ, dealing with a sharp mind is still... What? Assimilated by the Material Plane? Me? Little Rast, you have a sense of humor. I think I understand why Rashidja kept you around—what a delightful diversion."
The conversation seemed to conclude, and the visitor departed. Victor remained frozen in that pose, the smile slowly fading from his face.
"'Pollution' and 'division' are one and the same," he murmured to himself. "What a pity. A Material Plane as dull as the Abyss. How utterly tedious."
But there was no third option—Tasha read this thought in his mind.
Contaminating the Material Plane, carving it up—both equally tedious, yet one must be chosen. It had to be so, because...
Time flowed again, and Victor's memory, caught within the threads of causality, shattered like a bubble at that very moment.