Uriel landed on his sea of souls.
The impact was soft, almost ethereal, like falling onto a surface that was neither solid nor liquid, but something in between. He stood up, or at least he thought he did, because in that place, notions of up and down lost all meaning. Everything was always dark. A dense darkness, almost tangible, that enveloped every corner of that interior space like a blanket of black velvet.
He could feel his seven essence cores somewhere in the distance. They were like beacons in the mist, familiar presences that pulsed with the frequency of his own existence. Each contained a part of his power, his being, and all together formed the anchor that kept his domain united with the outside world.
Beside him, the darkness condensed and took shape. Shade appeared, his two white eyes shining in the gloom with unusual intensity. Even in that place, the Accursed retained that irritating stillness that so characterized his presence.
But there was no time for words.
A moment later, Uriel felt everything tremble. The ground beneath his feet, if it could be called ground, rippled like the surface of a lake agitated by a storm. The waves spread in all directions, reaching the limits of his sea of souls and beyond. The trembling grew, intensified, until it became a constant vibration that made every fiber of his being resonate.
Then came the pain.
Overwhelming. Excruciating. A pain that didn't come from his physical body, which in the outside world remained intact, but from something much deeper. His soul was being torn apart. He could feel the great tyrant extending its will through his sea of souls, searching every corner, every nook, every connection to corrupt and destroy him from within.
The invisible claws of the river god scratched at the very essence of Uriel, seeking to undo the tapestry of his existence thread by thread.
But Uriel smiled.
Amidst the pain, with his soul being torn apart by an ancient and tyrannical will, he smiled. Because there was something the great tyrant didn't know, something perhaps no enemy had discovered until now. He was immune to corruption. That immunity was neither a privilege nor a blessing. It was the price and the reward of his transcendence, of having crossed a threshold that few reached and from which no one returned the same.
The great tyrant could shatter his soul. It could tear it, split it, reduce it to fragments. But it could not corrupt it. It could not make what was Uriel cease to be, becoming an extension of its own abominable will.
And then he felt it.
Something vast. Something terrifying. Something that had always been asleep inside him, in an undisturbed, peaceful slumber, like an ancient beast patiently waiting for the moment to awaken.
It woke up.
Six titanic eyes of pure white appeared from one moment to the next, as if they had been there all along but the darkness had hidden them. They did not blink. They did not move. They were simply open, staring into the void, or rather staring at that which had dared to disturb the sleep of what dwelled in the depths of Uriel's sea of souls.
The light emanating from those six eyes was different from anything Uriel had ever seen. It was neither warm nor cold. It was neither divine nor demonic light. It was pure light, primordial light, light that existed before the very concept of light existed. Those white rays swept away the darkness like an unstoppable tide, pushing the shadows to the edges of the sea of souls, revealing what had always been hidden.
Uriel and Shade could finally see part of that interior space they inhabited.
What they saw left them breathless.
His sea of souls was not a dark void.
It was not that black, desolate wasteland Uriel had imagined all that time. It was... beautiful. Above them, below them, on every side, stretched a sea of stars. Millions, billions of points of light shone in the now-dispelled gloom, each twinkling with its own frequency, its own life. But they were not randomly scattered. They were interconnected. Golden threads, thin as spiderwebs but resistant as titanium chains, united each star with its neighbors, forming a complex, intricate, beautiful network.
It was a tapestry. A cosmic tapestry woven with threads of golden light on a canvas of infinite stars. Each star was a soul, each golden thread a connection, a memory, a bond uniting that life with others.
Among that sea of stars, Uriel could distinguish his soul cores. Seven. Each was dazzling and beautiful in its own way. They were black as the deepest night, but shone ethereally, with a light that came not from any external source but from their own essence. Each core was massive as a star, a colossus among colossi, surrounded by a perpetual dance of small fragments of black shooting stars that spun around them like moons around a planet.
They were the fragments of souls he had absorbed. The enemies he had defeated, the domains he had conquered, the wills he had subjugated. All of them, reduced to dark star dust, dancing eternally around his cores.
Uriel looked away from the spectacle, no matter how tempting it was to continue contemplating that beauty. There was a more immediate threat.
He watched as the great tyrant's tentacles emerged from the depths of his sea of souls, colossal limbs of dark flesh extending like hungry serpents toward his cores. They sought to shatter them, break them, smash the anchor that held his existence together. If those tentacles reached his cores, everything would end. His domain, his army, his life.
But the entity that had awakened rose.
Uriel could not describe what he saw. His mind, powerful as it was after his transcendence, could not fully process that form. It was large. It was ancient. It was terrifying. And yet, it did not seem to possess a defined intelligence. There was no calculation in its movements, no strategy in its presence. It was rather a defense mechanism, an immune system of his own soul, designed to protect him from threats his consciousness could not face.
Only one look was needed.
The six white eyes fixed on the great tyrant. There was no threat. No warning. Just a look, a recognition of the presence of something strange in that sacred space.
The great tyrant stood still.
Its tentacles, which moments before had been extending furiously toward Uriel's cores, froze in the air. The river god, that five-kilometer-long abomination that had ruled the waters for centuries, that tyrannical will that had been on the verge of annihilating Uriel's domain, could not move. Its countless blue eyes, once bright with ancient intelligence, were now fixed on that entity with an expression Uriel never would have imagined seeing in such a being.
Fear.
The great tyrant felt fear.
The divine entity created a tentacle. It was not a tentacle like the tyrant's, twisted and full of suckers. It was something different. Colossal, several kilometers long, made of that white light that had dispelled the darkness of his sea of souls. It moved with disconcerting ease, as if physics, logic, reality itself were mere suggestions it could ignore at will.
The tentacle of white light pierced the great tyrant.
There was no resistance. No clash of wills or battle of essences. The river god's flesh, that flesh which had resisted the attacks of the Winter Beast and the soul flames of Gunlaug, was pierced as if it were wet paper. The tentacle lifted the tyrant, raising it above the sea of stars as if it were an insect pierced by a pin.
Five kilometers of abomination hung from the tentacle like a grotesque ornament.
The great tyrant, that being which had ruled the river with an iron will, which had been about to destroy everything Uriel had built, seemed barely a small creature compared to the entity holding it. The difference in scale was so overwhelming it was almost comical. Like comparing a grain of sand to a mountain.
The entity opened its enormous jaws.
It was a mouth that should not exist. It had no defined form, no clear limits. It was more a concept of a mouth than an actual mouth, an abyss that opened to receive what rightfully belonged to it.
It dropped the great tyrant.
The abomination fell for what seemed an eternity, its tentacles twisting uselessly in the air, its blue eyes wide open in an expression of pure horror. It fell toward the entity's mouth, toward that white abyss that promised not death, but something worse.
The mouth closed.
The sound was dull, a blow that resonated in every corner of Uriel's sea of souls, that made the stars vibrate and the golden threads tremble. A sound Uriel felt in the depths of his being, like an echo that would repeat forever in the darkest corners of his memory.
Silence.
The great tyrant had disappeared.
The spell's voice resonated in Uriel's mind, clear as a bell in the night.
You have killed a Great Tyrant.
You have obtained an Echo.
But Uriel didn't care. The spell's words, the system notifications, the rewards for victory, all of that was unimportant in that moment. Because the divine entity was looking at him.
The six enormous white eyes had turned toward him. There was no intelligence in that gaze, no recognition, no hostility, no curiosity. There was emptiness. An absolute, primordial emptiness, like looking into the abyss and discovering that the abyss has always been looking back at you, only you had never been conscious enough to notice.
And then, fury.
It was not fury as mortals understand it. There was no anger, no resentment, no desire for revenge. It was pure fury, essential fury, the fury of a mechanism that has been activated without need, of a defense system that has had to wake from its eternal sleep to face a threat that should never have come this far.
The entity opened that infinite mouth and let out a roar.
The sound did not travel through air because there was no air in that place. It traveled through essence itself, through the golden threads of the tapestry, through the connections that united the stars. It was a roar that tore apart the reality of the sea of souls, that shattered the stability of the interior space.
Uriel was expelled.
He felt his consciousness ripped from that place, how the stars, the golden threads, the soul cores, everything vanished in a whirlwind of light and shadow. It was violent, unexpected, like being spat out by an enraged god.
---
In the outside world, Uriel shot out of the river.
His sea dragon body, that titanic construct he had maintained with such effort, disintegrated like a house of cards. The scales, the fangs, the horns, all dissolved into shadows that retreated into his interior. He regained his usual dark form, that humanoid silhouette that so characterized him.
But he was trembling.
He trembled uncontrollably, a tremor that ran through every centimeter of his being, that made his hands, his legs, his chest vibrate. It wasn't cold. It wasn't fear in the common sense of the term. It was terror. Primordial terror, the terror of a conscious being who has contemplated something that should not exist, something that defies all understanding, all categories, all known hierarchies of power.
Uriel had no doubt.
Inside his soul, inside that sea of stars he had discovered, there was something. Something that was undoubtedly more than a simple deity. Something that not even the gods would understand. Something that had been there from the beginning, from before his birth, from before the world had form.
And that something had looked at him.
Shade, who had been expelled along with Uriel, materialized at his side. His white eyes observed his companion's state, the magnitude of the tremor shaking him, the emptiness in his gaze. Without saying a word, the Accursed extended his will toward Uriel's domain.
It was not a usurpation. It was support. Shade took the reins of the domain, organizing the troops, giving orders, stabilizing what Uriel's temporary absence had destabilized. The remnants of the tyrant's army, orphaned of their lord, were massacred or subjugated with methodical efficiency. Uriel's domain began to expand over the waters of the river, absorbing the territory that once belonged to the fallen god.
Meanwhile, Shade observed the massive corpse of the great tyrant.
It floated in the lifeless water, its colossal body of five kilometers stretching along the river like a submerged mountain range. Its countless eyes, once bright with that bluish glow that pierced the darkness like lighthouses, were now gray. Dimmed. Empty.
As if its very soul had been consumed.
Shade understood then what Uriel had seen. And for the first time in a long time, his white eyes stopped shining with mockery and shone with something different.
Something very much like fear.