[A/N: Now, before anyone jumps me for the long delay, just know I've been working my ass off, ever since my eyes got healed, to write this long ass chapter. Its around 8k, and my biggest ch yet, so enjoy✌️.
Edit: its also festival week in my country, so that also took a lot of my time 🤷♂️
Edit 2: well, the chapter is now 10k words long. I think you can see why the delays are happening.]
***
Everything happened in an instant.
The Ascended, who had been standing two meters away, moved at lightning speed, grabbing both Eldrin and Ashoka by the back of the collar and yanking them behind the mountain of rubble they were standing on, before jumping down himself.
At the same time, far away, the buildings nearest to the flash of scarlet light simply dissolved, evaporating. Those further away exploded into dust and were erased from existence by an obliterating shockwave. Those behind them were flattened and melted, turning to ash from the immolating heat.
A wave of incinerating fire, taller than even the palace, spread outward faster than the speed of sound, consuming everything in its path — buildings, trees, cobblestones, even air itself… and all the shadowy human figures roaming the crumbling streets.
Behind it, a furious sphere of light rose and deformed, slowly turning into a mushroom cloud of incandescent scarlet flame. The pillar of fire supporting it dwarfed everything, reaching toward the sky.
…Finally, the invisible shockwave reached the palace, shattering its remaining walls and crumbling the mound of ruins they were attempting to take cover behind. The scorching heatwave washed over them, setting one of Ashoka's sleeves ablaze, only for it to be extinguished almost immediately.
The deafening roar of the explosion came next, shaking the world.
Ashoka plummeted from the crumbling mound and hit the cold stones. Bouncing off the hard surface, he rolled and then instinctively covered his head with his hands. In the next moment, a rain of stone debris fell down, pummeling him like a hailstorm.
A second later, he was cursing and rolling sideways on the floor, trying desperately to dodge a large piece of rubble tumbling down from above.
There was a thundering crash as the last of the debris that had made up the mound fell off the cliff. Finally, when everything seemed to have calmed down, he stood up and carefully looked around. Three meters to his left was Eldrin, who unlike him, had the luxury of being personally protected by the Ascended. The boy was also looking around with a dazed expression, his lips moving in some incoherent, distant mumbling.
At last, Ashoka turned his gaze forward, where the mound had once been. Now there was nothing, allowing him to see the city and fully take in the devastation caused by that explosion.
The city was gone. Where streets and rooftops had burned moments ago, there was only a flat plain of molten slag and drifting embers. Even the fires had been swallowed. Far ahead, the mushroom cloud still climbed, and beneath it, the Tyrant stood unmoving and untouched, a sea of incandescent gold around it.
Ashoka watched, paralyzed by the inconceivable horror of that sight and what it meant. For a while, all thoughts disappeared from his head…
Then, suddenly, his eyes widened, as a terrible realisation dawned upon him. That was because for some reason, throughout the entire chain of events, the gears in his head hadn't stopped turning, and at that exact instant, something finally clicked.
Ripping his eyes from the ghastly sight, he hurriedly turned his gaze towards Eldrin and the Ascended, before yelling at the top of his lungs.
"I figured it out. I know what it is!"
Both of them turned to him, and he gave them a strained grin.
"It's the Devil! The Corrupted Devil that Alariv was chasing."
This was the sudden bout of realisation he had come across. Ultimately, the answer to the mystery lay with Alariv, after all, he was the one person whose fate Ashoka could've possibly changed the most, while also being someone who was part of the expedition.
In this Nightmare, the current timeline had been that, weakened by the poison given to him by Ashoka, Alariv went on to battle the Corrupted Devil and ultimately fell. Ashoka had believed that this was what had originally happened as well, even without the poison, but now, his thoughts differed.
That was because, after witnessing the fiery wave of destruction left behind by the Tyrant—or rather its corpse—Ashoka realised something contradictory. If the abomination that he'd seen in the vision had truly been the Corrupted Tyrant, how could there be blood if the people had died from being burned? In the first place, any liquid, even blood, would simply boil away because of the scorching heat produced by the Corrupted Tyrant.
But then, why had he seen in the vision streets flowing with dark blood?
Then, it finally hit him.
The answer was the defiled ichor of the Sin-Eater, the Corrupted Devil whose name he'd acquired from the Brass pillar.
There was no way that anything mundane could survive the searing heat, but what about something extraordinary? Surely, the ichor of an ancient deity would fit the category. And, if it could do that, perhaps it could also endure the heat to seep into the Corrupted Tyrant's corpse to reanimate it.
There were many reasons why he hadn't thought of the Devil before, and one of the stupider reasons was that he hadn't connected the term "ichor" with "blood".
In the original timeline, Alariv must've chased down and fought with the corrupted devil over the course of multiple weeks, slowly tiring both himself and the Devil put.
In the process, Alariv learned a lot about how to combat the Devil, but at the same time, the Devil must have done the same. Ashoka had realised by now that this particular devil unnaturally smart, so the likelihood of that were incredibly high.
Eventually, though, Alariv fell somewhere around the second or third week mark, freeing the Devil, but he also made it wary of other human warriors. As a result, hesitant to directly charge into Casamir, the Devil instead chose to scour the surrounding land, and in the process, came across the corpse of the Corrupted Tyrant slain by Gaius and his cohort.
By then, it had long been scavanged for parts and materials by a team of awakeneds from Casamir. So, when the finally decided to reanimate the corpse using its own body, the Devil couldn't use it to dig its way into Casamir, since the Tyrants terrifying claws were no longer with it.
That forced it to use it as a mix of a turtle shell and a seige ram, basically smashing uts way through the mountain ranage and the border wall. Because of how unexpected the attack was, and the fact that more than a third of all Ascended had died along with Alariv, while other were too far away, Casamir could barely put any resistance before being too overwhelmed.
In the end, the Devil/Tyrant reached the capital in no more than a few minutes, bringing ruin to it all as well, before leaving the shell.
Eventually though, the Devil died due to unknown circumstances, mostly involving the Crown, the two remaining princes, or a combination of the two. In the end, no one was the victor.
Well, that was what was supposed to happen. But because of Ashoka's action, Alariv was weakend by the poision and lost to the Devil before the intended time. Like previously, the Devil grew wary of Casamir's Awakened and went on to scour the surrounding region, eventually coming across the corpse of the Corrupted Tyrant.
Only this time, without Alariv stalling it, the Devil arrived before the scavenging team, and got the relatively intact corpse, which gave it the option to dig its way into Casamir, finally leading up to the current dire situation.
Reminded of Alariv all of a sudden, Ashoka felt a pang in his heart, but he quickly pushed those feelings somewhere deep. This wasn't the time to drown in grief or shame. No, this was the time to act, this was an opportunity for him, perhaps the only one left for him.
By now, it was obvious to him that there was no guaranteed way to escape the Devil wearing the Tyrant's corpse. They had only barely survived the last explosion by chance, and there was no way to tell when another might arrive.
So, Ashoka had quickly realised that the only way for him to survive was to complete this Nightmare, and for that he had to take the Crown. One of the ways he'd thought of to achieve that was by destroying the Brass pillar, only to realise that his meager strength could never hope to destroy the power artifact. But Ashoka was nothing but thoughtful. If his own might wasn't enough, why not just borrow someone else's? And that someone else was none other than the Corrupted Devil itself.
He already knew from the Brass pillar that the Devil was directly targeting Eldrin, after all, it was no coincidence that it had emerged so close to the palace. Perhaps the only reason it hadn't broken out from right below them was because Ashoka had been using his innate ability to bring out the aura of the Nation of Disorder, disrupting its senses in some way.
With all this information, Ashoka planned to use Eldrin as bait—b6 his consent, of course—to lure out the Devil, before using the chaos of its rampage to damage or completely destroy the Brass pillar. Such an act would crumble the complicated web of Domains established by it, allowing Ashoka to seize the Crown and accomplish the goal of the Nightmare and conclude it.
Noticing the bewildered expression on Eldrin and the Ascended's faces, Ashoka hurriedly explained.
"The Corrupted Devil, it's a flowing blood-like abomination which seemed to have parasitized the Tyrant's corpse to reanimate it."
The Ascended scowled for a second, deep in contemplation, but eventually nodded.
"That would explain why the new expedition team hasn't been able to find it, because it headed towards where the Tyrant had been slain. The direction was completely opposite of where we'd been searching for it..."
Unlike the Ascended, Eldrin seemed to just become even more confused.
"Wait, what? Ashoka, how do you even know all this?!"
Ashoka gave him a fake smile. "I only received the name from the Brass pillar just now, the rest I deduced myself. It's called the Defiled Ichor of the Sin-eater and—"
The rest of the words never left his tongue, because in that instant, Ashoka froze.
Because just then, he felt a vast and harrowing gaze land upon him, piercing his very being.
Like a puppet with its joints rusted, Ashoka slowly turned his head in the direction from where the gaze came, and what he saw chilled him to the bone.
Far away, the Tyrant stood motionlessly amidst the melting ruin of the capital, its form finally visible after the explosion blew away its fiery mantle and the veil of dark smoke covering it. The Tyrant had not moved from its place, but at some point in time, its appalling head turned towards them, staring at them with two eyes like molten gold.
No... not them, him.
...only him.
Those eyes. Those terrible, golden eyes like the radiance of the sun, were fixed upon him, filled his world, his universe, until he felt drawn to them, drowning in them like in the ocean, falling until he felt the distance between them vanish and felt the heat prickle his skin like nails as he stood before it, seeing every ghastly detail and every crevice in its skin like ghostly obsidian. He was standing at its feet, a speck beneath a mountain, and its shadow lay over him like the shadow of a god.
A crack came, sharp as a snapped bone. A fragment of obsidian broke away and tumbled down. From the wound should have poured bright and angry magma. But what crept out was dark and slow, and it glistened like wet velvet under that dying sky. More cracks followed, spreading across the Tyrant's body, and from each of them blood welled up and ran in rivers down its ruined form, pooling in every hollow and falling in crimson cascades. It wept from the sockets of its eyes too, as if the ancient horror mourned the very thing it had come to be.
But Ashoka couldn't see any of it. All he saw was those eyes of a sea of gold, until deep within it, something stirred.
And when it finally did, something scorching settled deep within him, nestling in his heart. Then, it rose and engulfed it whole, consuming his heart, consuming his soul, and then consuming his body.
A blood-curdling scream echoed across the trembling walls of the collapsed palace, and in the next second, scarlet fire bloomed around him like the petals of some monstrous flower, and swallowed Ashoka whole.
***
Pain... like the claws of a raven, tore away at his skin like fish hooks. It came from everywhere, all at once, like the winds of a hurricane, cutting through him like a thousand blades. The pain was blinding, but much more blinding was the ghost of those harrowing eyes seared into the back of his mind.
Scarlet smeared his vision like blood and he fell to his knees, fingers clawing at the floor. He tried to gasp, but only searing flames found their way inside, burning away his lungs and then his vocal cords. The pain came a second late, disjointed and lagging just like every other sensation did, coming half-processed by his mangled mind.
"ASHOKA!"
He heard someone call out to him, a small, hoarse voice, somewhere very far away. It was Eldrin.
Then a heavy weight slammed into him from the side, and the Ascended's armored body rolled him across the shattered floor, smothering him with a cloak, and with bare hands. Ashoka thought he heard the man hiss through his teeth as the fire bit into him instead.
"It won't go out!" the Ascended roared. His voice cracked on the last word.
The pain didn't arrive all at once. Vastly different from one another, some more hideous than the others.
And so he bathed in it, screaming. Like liquid gold covering his body, melting into his flesh and forcing him to endure agony his mind couldn't even comprehend. But soon, he realized he wasn't bathing in gold. It was his own skin splitting, and fat rendering into acrid, sizzling yellow liquid that ran down his ribs in sticky streams.
Claws of the fire raked deeper, burrowing in his body like disgusting maggots, parting fibers of his muscles and splitting flesh from bone. One by one, his tendons stretched like rubber, fraying, and then with a twisted sound only he could hear, they snapped with elastic pops.
The cruel, howling flames tore through the new openings as he thrashed around, guttural screams of torment escaping his melted lips.
Pain. All he felt was pain.
Endless, wretched pain... Lashing at him like odious serpents, biting deep into his flesh, their fangs sinking in and drinking fresh blood.
His mind blacked out for some seconds.
He was dying.
He wanted to die.
But he wanted to live.
It was so bad.
It was so horrible.
But just move forward.
Just live for a second more.
And endure...
Just a bit.
But soon enough, his screams turned a prolonged husky exhale as his throat became a hollow cavern of ash and smoke. The agony in his soul bottomed out into a dull, merciful numbness as the fire burned through the pain receptors entirely.
What remained entirely sharp, entirely real, was the image of those harrowing eyes still burned into his mind. They stared out from the darkness of his closing vision, more suffocating than the smoke.
***
"ASHOKA!"
Eldrin's voice cracked on the name. He had never heard a sound like the one coming out of the fire, and he never wanted to hear it again.
The Ascended was on his knees beside it, smothering the flames with his bare hands.
Tears welled up his eyes as his looked at Ashoka's thrashing figure.
'Do something. You're the king. Do something!'
He pressed his hands against his chest to stop it shaking, but it didn't work.
His eyes slid away from the burning shape on the floor, because he couldn't look at it any longer, and landed on the horizon.
And finally at the Tyrant.
It stood in the molten ruin of his capital, perfectly still, its head turned toward the palace. It wasn't looking at the city. It was looking at the one place where the fire was.
Eldrin's face paled and his breath caught.
But also, he realised what had happened just now.
Instantly, a desperate yet determined expression appeared on his face, and he quickly turned his gaze away to look at the Ascended.
...and that was why he missed it, the moment a soft tremor spread through the air, as the body of Corrupted Tyrant crumbled apart into massive chunks of black rocks, letting an overwhelming amount of viscous crimson blood, that had no right being inside the small vessel, escape. This sea of blood quickly began to move as if it had a life of its own, overruning the streets of the ruined capital like a living tide and heading towards the palace.
"Leave him!" Unaware of the things transpiring behind him, Eldrin shouted at the Ascended from a few meters away.
The Ascended looked up, confusion written all over his face. Eldrin jogged up to him, and stood between Ashoka and the city.
Seeing the hesitation, he continued;
"I'll deal with the fire. Go clear the servant's door behind the Brass pillar. We need to get out of here fast!"
The Ascended silently looked at him, before eventually nodding and dashing into the direction of the Brass pillar.
Now, there was only the two of them.
Eldrin sucked in a deep breathe, and then extending both arms in the direction of the Brass pillar. Then, he clenched his fists, and as soon as he did, he felt a spark of warmth travel up his hands and into his body.
Soon enough, a name also appeared in his mind.
'Earl of the fallen.'
He did not know what these words meant as a whole. Fortunately, he knew exactly what powers they signified, after all, they'd been his when he'd first became king.
In the numerous Laws written on the surface of the Brass pillar, one of the clause allowed the King to recieve these powers upto a certain level, regardless of their favourability status, in a desperate emergency situation.
Of course, to avoid exploitation, designating an incident as an emergency was upto the Brass Pillar alone. Additionally, the powers were only supported by the king's own rank, and since Eldrin was only dormant, his powers weren't as strong.
Still, what he had was enough.
Sucking in a deep breath, Eldrin stepped a little back and raised a trembling right hand towards Ashoka— who by now had stopped screaming.
Then, he swiped diagonally, as if clawing at the air in front.
Exploit!
The crimson flames engulfing Ashoka's body flickered for just a second, and then broke apart into a storm of embers, which quickly rose and disappeared in the air, extinguished.
Instantly, the smell of cooked meat and foul sulfer assaulted his nose, making his face crunch up. Still, this was a success.
Next, he extended his hand once again, and clenched.
Distortion and Magnify!
This time, he used two abilities at the same time, distortion to distort the severity of the burn injury, forcing the pink and blistering skin to recover somewhat, and Magnify to magnify Ashoka's constitution to make sure he doesn't die from his injury.
The two abilities quickly took effect, and just a dozen seconds later, the steam and smoke covering Ashoka's curled up body dispersed.
Finally, Eldrin could see him, and what he saw wasn't good at all... in fact, he could barely keep himself from vomiting.
The fire had destroyed almost all the clothes, leaving Ashoka bare and naked on top. The remaining clothings were charred black, torn and ragged like sea weed that stuck to his skin as if fused in. What was visible underneath them was just a horrid map of Black, red and white-pink skin. There was no blood to be seen, since all the vessel opening had basically been cauterised by the flames.
As for the face, it was somehow both good and worse at the same time. Good, because all the burns on the face had already been turned into scar tissue by his ability, worse, because the face was almost unrecognizable now.
Eldrin wouldn't have guessed the person lying in front of him was Ashoka if he hadn't seen him being consumed by flames himself. Most of the facial features had been melted away in a horrible, smooth mess, including the eyesbrows and most of his hair.
The scars weren't really an issue, since they could easily be healed by most healer, and Casamir didn't lack the caravans going in and out.
The real problem was Ashoka himself.
His eyes... They were open. But there wasn't any look of recognition in them. They looked lost and distant, as if stuck staring somewhere far away.
Eldrin felt his vision blur, but he quickly wiped the tears away. Gritting his teeth, his raised his hand once more, and used his ability, this time to help Ashoka regain himself.
***
Eternity.
That was what it felt like, to be stuck in the endless, colourless void, without any thought or sensation. He remembered being engulfed in flames once—the most harrowing experience a person could experience—yet the memory of it felt nothing more than a moment in comparison to the enternity he was stuck in.
And then a voice broke through that silence, words stretching as long as the enternity itself, and pulled him from the darkness. In almost an instant, the memory of that never ending silence also became nothing more than a moment as he was cast down to reality.
The first thing he realised when he finally came to his senses was that he was shivering, teeth chattering violently like a man naked in winter. An unnatural coldness, mixed with numbness, radiated from his core, making his muscles feel tight and rigid. His eyelids felt like lead, and when he finally opened them, his vision came smeared all across like pastel. Ash showered from the smoke-dark sky like snow, and he faintly smelled the sickening stench of rotten, cooker meat.
'I am... Alive...'
For the first time in who knew how long, Ashoka realised that he could finally breathe, and sucked in the sweetest breath of air in his entire life. A stinging pain radiated in his throat but he could barely pay attention to it.
A blur moved in his vision.
Ashoka slowly tried to sit up, feeling his skin stretch and groan with the movement.
He looked down, and saw the horrid state his body was in, yet for some reason, he didn't feel the dreadful realisation of what had happened to him arrive fully. It was as though his mind was lost in thick fog, clouding his thoughts and making it hard
Well, there was also blinding headache assaulting his senses at the moment, so that might be the reason too.
"—an yo... ...ear me...?"
"Huh?" It seemed the blur in front of him was speaking something. Ashoka strained his eyes, and his vision slowly cleared up. With astonishment, he realised that the person infront of him was none other than Eldrin! His face and cheeks were covered in steaks of dark soot marks, as if he had just been crying a few minutes ago.
Right now, he was waving his hands infront of Ashoka's face, worriness written all over his face. "I said, can you understand what I'm saying? Please answer, because we really need to get out of here."
Ashoka blinked, and then, as if someone had just taken earplugs out of his ears, the sounds finally became incredibly clear. He nodded slowly, before looking around and then back at himself once again.
Eventually, he asked;
"What happened?" His voice came hoarse and gratting, like sandpaper, and he felt a burning sensation in his throat. it seemed his vocal cords were damaged.
Seeing Ashoka speak, a relieved expression flashed past Eldrin face, and he gave him a brittle smile, spreading his arms.
"I saved you, thats what happened!"
Ashoka looked at intently, a deep, intense emotion stirring in his eyes.
"...thank you."
Eldrin's smile suddenly turned triumphent, and he lifted his chin proudly.
He was about to say something, but just then, Ashoka's eyes unconsciously drifted past him, and the numbness cracked just a little.
Beyond Eldrin's shoulder, the sky stretched with pale, colourless light, the dark smoke thinning along the horizon. The horizon itself, like a stripe of white, remained wholly empty.
'Empty?'
And then, it was as though a bucket of cold water had been poured over him, and his eyes widened in horror.
The same thought resounded in his head.
'Empty!? Why was it empty?? Where had the Corrupted Tyrant gone to?!"
In an instant, the fog covering his mind vanished, as did the coldness gripping his bones. What came to fill that void instead, was the familiar, agigitating sound of blood pounding against his ears.
His breathing quickening, and his mind began to race. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to graze more clues from the landscape in front of him.
Soon enough, he noticed the huge pile of obsidian like boulders scattered across the area the Tyrant had previously stood.
Looking at them, his mind quickly connected the dots.
'...did the Devil abandon the shell and escape?'
With more context, his eyes scanned the capital once more, and quickly found what he was looking for.
A harrowing river of dark, crimson blood was flowing through the countless streets of the crumbling city, almost like a living flood.
Actually, the tide was very much infact alive, animated by four nodes of vile corruption.
Rivers of blood... the final piece of the vision had finally arrived.
Looking at the scene unfolding before his very eyes, Ashoka felt a familiar sense of imminent doom clawing at his heart.
"Run." He whispered to Eldrin, who had just noticed the frightened expression on his face.
But even before he had formed those words, he already knew how futile such an attempt was. Not even an attack, but a single glance would be enough to turn him into a puddle of blood and flesh. Just where could he possibly run to? Where could he possibly hide?
Tricks and schemes were meaningless in the face of such absolute, overwhelming power.
His heart told him to run, yet his mind told him it was useless.
And so, naturally, he listened to his heart.
Seeing that Eldrin was still confused, or hadn't understood what he'd said, Ashoka rose to his knees and grabbed his shoulders with urgency, a sense of desperation and fear seeping into his voice as he screamed into Eldrin ears:
"WE NEED TO GET—!"
But before he could finish the sentence, a blinding pain suddenly erupted in his throat. Something warm and metallic welled up in his mouth and Ashoka's already wide eyes bulged. A moment later, he collapsed on his palms and vomited a mouthful of blood.
'Damn it... Not again!' His body heaved up and down, breathing unsteady as he looked at the pool of blood beneath him, his lips and chin already painted red.
For a second, he'd thought the Devil had done something to him again, but he quickly realised what had really happened.
'My vocal cords!'
His damn vocal cords had been damaged by the fire, and now, he couldn't speak!
Somewhere beside him, Eldrin was in a panic, trying to talk to him, but Ashoka could barely pay attention to him, too occupied with the extreme pain.
Still, for just a few more seconds, he was unable to move and follow his heart. And in those short seconds, his mind once again began to race.
He thought of his previous plan of using the Corrupted Tyrant to complete the Nightmare by destroying the Brass pillar, but quickly discarded it. The Corrupted Tyrant was long dead, its corpse already destroyed. Meanwhile, the Devil couldn't be used in the same way, because even though they were of the same rank, the difference between their destructive capabilities was vast, mostly because of their nature. It wasn't even a matter of the class.
A dozen more ideas flew past his mind, but all of them were also discarded. They all relied on either outdated knowledge or were born out of bizzare logic.
It wasn't even that they were risky gamble. No, instead, they were all just unrealistic and basically wishful thinking, and Ashoka was only cursed by fate, not blessed by it.
Eventually, though, Ashoka realised that the only way to survive was to complete the Nightmare.
'Complete the Nightmare...?'
But the only way to complete the Nightmare was by destroying the Brass pillar, and he didn't had the strength the achieve that.
Still, no matter what he did, his mind kept returning to it.
What else could he possibly do? This was a dead end.
It was then, somewhere in the wreckage of his waist, beneath the charred cloth fused to his skin, he felt something cold and flat pressed against his hip.
It was the silver stiletto that he'd previously decided to carry with him.
An image of Eldrin, and the Crown over his head flashed passed his vision like a devil's sinister whisper.
Ashoka's mind froze for a moment, and his fingers twitched.
Then, he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as deep anger and resentment rose in his heart.
'No!' he screamed in his mind. 'No, fuck you!'
He didn't even knew who he was cursing at the moment. Was it fate? Was it the Spell? Or, was it the long dead Gaius?
Or maybe it was just himself. He hated himself of even thinking of such a thing.
And so, he kept searching for an answer, a way for him to achieve his goals. A thousand thoughts came and went, again and again, over and over, even as the once unnoticeable pain became more and more blinding.
but no matter what he did, no matter how much he strained his mind, there was no answer, no path for him to follow.
More than half of them had become impossible the moment he lost his ability to communicate with anyone properly. The others were also ruled out for various reasons.
In the end, he was left with nothing.
And yet he kept going.
At some point, the headache had became so intense that he could barely form one sentence every second.
But he kept going, refusing to give up.
And so, the choice was made for him instead.
It had already been more than a few minutes since Ashoka had gone still, staring at the ground without saying anything. The prospect of running was long forgotten amidst his inner turmoil. In front of him, Eldrin had also gone silent, looking down on Ashoka with concern.
It was then that Ashoka smelled it, familiar yet sickening.
It was the scent of blood, just far more intense than anything he'd smelled before.
Ashoka froze for a split second, and then looked up.
He saw Eldrin's face first, his brows twisted into a concerned frown. Then, the face blurred, and the view behind him came into focus.
And what he saw shook him to his very core.
Because far away, where the edge of the great hall had transformed into a steep cliff, a wide of column of rippling dark crimson blood rose high into the air like a serpent's head.
The moment Ashoka saw it, he felt his blood boil, as if it did not belong to him anymore, and he knew what that meant.
His time had ended.
The moment to run was up.
Now, there was only choice that he could actually make.
Somewhere behind him, Ashoka heard the Ascended scream something with urgency, perhaps trying to warn them of the danger.
Eldrin raised his head towards the Ascended far away, and at the same time, Ashoka looked up at Eldrin.
Once again, he felt the sensation of something cold and slender press against his waist.
The only question left now, was whether he was willing to follow up on the promise he'd made with himself on that fateful night with Gaius, whether he was willing to die for his morals.
And so, confronted with that terrible question, something within him finally broke.
Ashoka's mind went blank.
***
"RUN!"
If the sudden stillness from Ashoka and the blood dripping down his chin wasnt enough of an indicitation, Eldrin knew the moment he heard the Ascended's terrified wail that something had gone terribly wrong.
Suddenly he had the urge to look back, where the Corrupted Tyrant—or the Devil, as Ashoka had tried to tell them— was, but quickly strangled that thought. Gaius had long since ingrained into him how doing such a thing was never a wise decision. Infact, that was also likely what Ashoka had accidentally done: gazing back at it and, as a result, being engulfed by flames. Eldrin shuddered to imagine the same happening to him.
And so, instead of looking back, he looked up the slope, to where the broken throne lay, and also where the Ascended was at the moment, sliding his sword out of its sheath, sprinting towards him.
He suddenly remembered what the Ascended had screamed. Hadn't Ashoka said something similar?
Reminded of Ashoka all of a sudden, Eldrin looked down and froze.
At some point, Ashoka had raised his head, looking straight at him with a lost expression.
Only, he did not seem to be looking at him—or anything at all—gaining the same distant gaze as a few minutes ago when Eldrin had just extinguished the flames on him.
Eldrin suddenly felt a chill creep up his spine, but quickly gritted him teeth and grabbed Ashoka's shoulders tightly, ready to wake him out of whatever trance he was in, but just before that, he noticed something.
He looked down, and saw something long and slender, shining with a metallic light grasped firmly in Ashoka's hand
'What's that?'
In the next second, before he could come to any conclusion, Ashoka's hand flashed, and a blade glinted with the silver light of the dying sky.
***
Many times in his life, Ashoka had heard that time slows down in a terrible moment of a person's life, stretched infinitely by some unknown power, as if to let them experience every harrowing detail. But that was not what happened to him.
Sometimes there is no climax. A thing happens, and it is over.
...And so, the only thing he remembered was the chill of the blood splattering across his disfigured face... as he felt the blade of that silver stiletto dig into Eldrin's eye socket, exiting from the back of his skull in a gyser of blood.
His body twitched and tensed for a split second, before going completely still.
The spell whispered into Ashoka's ears, mocking him, reminding him of his countless failures.
[You have slain a dormant human, King Eldrin.]
There was coldness, and silence.
And then there was the warm scent of blood and rust of the Devil, and the furious cry of the Ascended as he now shot towards him like a canon ball, sword drawn to cut him into a thousand pieces.
The coldness in his heart grew into a hollowness he couldn't escape from.
And so, he did what he had to, and raised a trembling hand, extending it towards the Obsidian Crown over hovering over Eldrin's slowly falling corpse.
Everything after that seemed to happen in an instant.
The Devil moved, its humongous form rolling over the rubble and broken pillars like a tsunami.
The Crown that had been fixed upon Eldrin's head for the last two years suddenly rose up into the air, turning illusory and distant as if nothing in the whole world could ever hope to reach it. Since Eldrin had died, the mantle of the King was to be passed upon someone else, before rightfully punishing the traitor that was Ashoka.
At the same time, Ashoka activated his innate ability and reached for his sefirah, his gaze remaining fixed on the Crown till the next moment.
And then, he was somewhere else. Something whispered into his ear, real and imaginary, alluring and maniacal.
He heard a sound, somewhere far away. It was the sound of a legion of measured footsteps, the heartbeat of countless gavels, the terrifying wail of humans, and the rattling of shackles and chains.
Deep and mysterious shadows drowned the world in impenetrable darkness, twisting and distorting reality like a mirage. Simultaneously, a vast and magnificent shadow rose behind Ashoka, towering above him. This time, the Will of the Nation of Disorder had taken a much more tangible form, and although Ashoka couldn't see it, the pitch black silhouette looked exactly like him, with the only difference being that there was a Crown over the Shadow's head. In the next instant, the shadowy figure shrank and merged with his body.
Ashoka felt his soul overflow with incalculable majesty and authority. His hand covered the final stretch of the distance, grabbing what could not be touched in an iron fist.
There was a silence that seemed to stretch for eternity.
...and a moment later, the elegant band of obsidian turned real, and broke into countless sparks of light, which were then absorbed into his soul.
There was no announcement by the spell, as what he'd received didn't seem to be a memory. Instead, it was more like a supreme absorbing an object into their soul, even though Ashoka wasn't a Supreme.
Far away, the Brass pillar that had stood proud and majestic for decades suddenly lost its luster, becoming pale and dull as cracks appeared on its once pristine surface.
When Ashoka felt the stream of sparks disappear into him, a shudder passed through his soul.
And as it did, he felt the world turn slightly less real, as the Nightmare started coming to an end.
He... He did it...
He succeeded. The Crown was his now!
But he was also going to die soon.
In front of him, almost a hundred meters ahead, the Corrupted Devil was rushing towards him like a river of dark crimson blood. And behind him, the Ascended seemed to have discarded all willingness to live as he accelerated to cover the last ten meters between them, his sword glinting with his murderous wrath.
It was ironic, wasn't it? Just a few minutes ago, the Ascended had said to focus on what could be saved instead of grieving. Now, the same man was charging towards his death.
Realising the imminent danger he was in, Ashoka did the first thing that came to his mind. He reached inside his soul and willed the Crown, the Uniqueness of the Black Emperor, back into existence once again.
Nine meters.
Defying all common sense, the Crown seemed to appear on his head in an instant, as if it had always been there. At the same time as he felt the weight of the Crown over his head, he heard a sound akin to glass shattering, as if an ancient seal placed upon the Crown had been broken.
Eight meters.
Seven meters.
Ashoka had not thought of what to do next, but in that desperate moment, it was as if the Crown had heard his direst wish, and acted on its own.
Six meters.
A cold gust of wind blew across the court, and all the shadows seemed to stir. Then, ash suddenly rose up in the wind from where there had been none before, leaving behind marks as if the ground had been worn down by the element.
Five meters.
The Ascended neared the five meter limit and raised his sword.
Four meters.
Finally, he crossed the three meter threshold...
There was a brilliant flash of light.
And then, the Ascended disappeared into a cloud of ash, silently scattering into the wind.
The spell whispered into Ashoka's ears.
[You have slain an Ascended human, name unknown.]
Ashoka looked at the flakes of ash with horror.
'Wh-what the hell?!'
What had just happened?!
Sadly, he did not have the luxury to come to any conclusion, as in the next second, a strong gust of wind carrying the scent of rust blew what remained of his hair. There was the sound of a large amount of water splacing around, and he turned around just to see the Devil's enormous form come to a screeching halt a mere five meters away from him, the blood tide spreading in all directions as if it had hit a wall.
It seemed the Corrupted Devil was intelligent enough to realise the imminent danger Ashoka presented, and managed to stop its momentum just outside the sphere of Entropy formed by the Uniqueness.
Immediately afterwards, all the small pools of blood that had scattered into the surroundings suddenly moved, rushing to coalesce into a single gigantic orb of rippling crimson velvet liquid almost twenty meters tall, half as high as the ceiling had once stood. For a moment, it looked like an eye, with the epicenter of where all the ripples met appearing like the iris.
Ashoka felt a gaze land upon him, and his body began to shake uncontrollably.
He was going to die, and this time, no one would be there to save him.
His shoulders slumped.
And then something vast rose from deep within his soul to meet that terrifying gaze, and an irresistible aura of majesty washed over the world, breaking apart the Devil's wll of Will like paper.
The shadows in the ruined court danced erratically, becoming abysmally deep and sinister.
The Devil reeled back in pain, as the ripple on its surface intensified manifold. It did not have any vocal cords, but Ashoka felt the air around him tremble violently. Countless indescribable, ghostly faces appeared on its surface, looking like paintings of ink, silently screaming in endless agony.
Although the power the Crown had seemed immense just now, and the Devil seemed to be terribly injured, in reality, this wasn't even a fraction of the Uniqueness's true might. It had not been more than five seconds since the Brass pillar had been destroyed, and the seal on the Crown broken, and currently, it was like an ancient beast who had slumbered for eternity, finally waking up and stretching its limbs to feel the outside world.
The Devil did not stay broken for long.
The orb shuddered, then burst. Blood surged outward in every direction, an ocean of crimson rolling over the shattered floor until the whole court was drowned in it. The ghostly faces rode its surface, screaming without sound.
Most of it concentrated around Ashoka, curling into a whirlpool just outside the sphere of entropy, slow at first, then faster. The eye of the whirlpool tightened inch by inch, and every now and then, a section of it would turn into ash when it got too close.
Ashoka stood at the center, the Crown heavy on his head, his hands shaking as the red wall circled him.
He understood what was going on. The Devil was attempting to find a gap or opening in the barrier to reach him. Sadly, Ashoka doubted it'd be able to find a way in with the tools it might have.
Still, he felt an inconceivable fear grip his heart as he looked at the wall of blood around him. Even a single drop of it would be the end of him.
Ashoka gritted his teeth, as he felt his blood boil with tension.
'Just when is this damn Nightmare going to end?!'
Finally, the harrowing tide of blood seemed to have realised the futility of its efforts and it shrank back, opening more and more space between them.
It seemed to have given up... or at least that's what he'd thought at first...
As it retreated further, something else was revealed on the ground.
It was a shadow—his shadow, motionless, cast upon the floor by the distant horizon. And as his gaze landed upon it, his intuition rang wildly, telling him something was terribly wrong with it, as if it was filled with indescribable malice.
Then, slowly, the head of his shadow rose from the ground, turning tangible.
Then, the torso rose with the head.
This was the Defiled ichor's devil class ability. Ashoka now understood what those shadowy silhouettes of humans roaming the city were.
His shadow had stretched for 5 meters, and by now, almost half of it— all of what was outside the barrier—had become tangible.
For a second, Ashoka had hoped that it wouldn't get past the barrier, but his hopes were quickly shattered as the shadow only flickered and distorted for a second, before it continued unbothered, claiming more and more of itself.
...a moment later, the gaunt silhouette of his shadow, hunched and five meters tall, was standing before him.
Slowly, it raised its thin, deformed arms.
Ashoka flinched, and covered his head with his arms out of instinct.
Though he doubted it would give him another moment to live.
***
Light.
The fatal blow that he'd expected never came. Instead, what met him when he finally opened his eyes was pure, blinding light. It was almost as if he'd suddenly been cast into an endless ocean of whiteness.
But as bright and pristine as the light was, it felt unreal and distant, as if not belonging to this world.
Slowly, his eyes got used to the illusory radiance, and he saw the visage of his own malevolent shadow standing within a rain of falling ash that shone like stars of the cosmos.
Still pale as a ghost, Ashoka lifted his head to see where the light came from, and what he saw truly blinded him.
Right above his head, where the obsidian Crown was resting, seven radiant embers burned with such intensity that the light of each ember was brilliant enough to illuminate an entire realm on their own. All around them, incalculable ethereal strings were being weaved into a pattern so vast and intricate that it almost seemed boundless, with new threads formed and connected to one of the embers almost every second.
Ashoka immediately understood what that was. It was a spell weave of Divine memory of the seventh-tier, being formed right in front of his eyes. It seemed the Nightmare spell was properly doing its job, working to turn the Uniqueness into a memory.
...yet for some reason, the light of those seven Divine soul shards seemed to somehow break through the boundary separating them from reality, illuminating the real world in front of him.
Just then, the brightness of the Divine soul shards turned even more real, and a second later, it was as if a sun had risen in the middle of Casamir, drowning the entire capital in an inescapable white radiance. Ashoka's shadow quickly melted away in that radiance, as did every other tangible shadow still roaming the ruins.
Only Ashoka himself, and the sea of swirling crimson tide remained intact in that ocean of brilliant whiteness.
Still, he was instantly blinded by the light, even though he had his eyes closed and head covered. The Devil was unaffected, since it didn't have any eyes in the first place, and in that moment where Ashoka couldn't sense it, the Devil moved once again.
Slowly, the light around him began to dim, and shapes appeared around him.
Still disoriented, he tried to look around.
And that was when he heard it—a voice, like a hiss of the world, creeping into his ears like a thousand dying whispers, echoing within his eardrums insistently.
"Child...
ᴄʜɪʟᴅ...
ᶜʰⁱˡᵈ···``
Startled, Ashoka hurriedly lifted his head up, his eyes once again adjusting to let him to see his surroundings.
The Devil had changed forms again, and instead of a whirlpool of blood, now, a gigantic scale-less serpent coiled around the invisible barrier, and its head—which in reality was just a featureless sphere—was raised into the air, looking down upon him.
With horror, Ashoka realised that it was the Devil that had spoken just now.
And his horror only intensified as the head of its serpentine body slowly opened, blossoming like a beautiful rose.
"...Of Flame...
...ᴏꜰ ꜰʟᴀᴍᴇ...
···ᵒᶠ ᶠˡᵃᵐᵉ···``
Ashoka knew he shouldn't have looked. However, a strange compulsion suddenly overtook him.
He fell into a daze, and not quite realising what he was doing, his gaze drifted to the heart of the beautiful rose.
What he saw, drifting there...
Was a brilliant drop of golden liquid floating in the heart of the flower. It was suffused with a beautiful light that didn't seem blinding, but was somehow able to illuminate the entire expanse of the ruined hall.
And just beside the drop of ichor, drifted a blood-tinted skull adorned with several hollow black eye sockets in its front, as though the creature it had belonged to had possessed multiple pairs of eyes.
Despite the bright light illuminating the place and the considerable distance between them, the skull seemed to swallow the surrounding light, plunging everything nearby into shadow.
Ashoka froze, and desperately tried to close his eyes.
...but it was already too late. Because the moment he beheld the ichor and the blood-tinted skull, a harrowing secret clawed its way up his eyes and into his mind, shattering it into a million pieces.
A chaotic torrent of scenes poured into his mind, too great for him to fathom. In each of them, he was someone vast and boundless, yet the same person, but Ashoka could discern only a few terrifying images.
In one of the images, he stood upon a pedestal of worship, above an ocean of kneeling believers, their chanting rolling over him like a tide. Ten thousand hands reached up, trembling and desperate, each reaching to drink the hallowed light of his gaze.
In another image, he fled through the roots of an impossible forest, its trees as ancient as history, blurring past him like history itself. Behind him loomed a Tree so colossal that it bore the heavens upon its crown, its branches scraping the cold bones of the firmament. Upon its branches hung fruits of unspeakable beauty, and he knew, as he knew his own name, that he would return one day to steal one of them.
He was a magnificent being woven out of endless shadows that rose, and rose, and rose through a sky of searing white. The sun hung before him, more brilliant and blinding than the white abyss itself, a pitiless and radiant eye, and his vast hand stretched toward it with longing, as if to pluck the sun from its cradle and crush it like an ember between his fingers.
Twelve pairs of wings unfurled from his back, black as the death of sky, and they eclipsed the horizon of the Shadow Realm. At the heart of that eternal night, the gates of the Void lay open, and beyond them swam shapes vast and indescribable, undulating in a darkness that had never known light.
And from that darkness, a voice called out.
The figure in the vision stood unmoved.
But in the real world, Ashoka's body convulsed as though struck by lightning.
Because the moment he heard that distant voice, something cold and vile seeped into his soul. A seed of corruption—an ocean of overflowing, appalling darkness deciding to make nest in him, slowly consuming his soul.
His muscles seized up and his eyes rolled back in their sockets, but before he fully fell back, one final image flashed past him.
In it, he was God unmade, mighty and powerless, bound and nailed against wood and trapped at the heart of an ocean made of his own divine blood. All around him, only darkness and mist looked back at him like hungry hounds.
And then, the visions shattered, and Ashoka collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
The moment that happened, the surface of the Devil's fluid body churned and trembled, as if from glee. Its little insidious trick had worked, and the tiny human was now defenseless.
In the next second, its serpentine form moved, and the numerous coils circling the human tightened. The appendage imitating the serpent's head also lunged towards the collapsed human in the middle. Since the human was now unconscious, the invisible sphere of annihilation should've disappeared as well. This was the perfect, and perhaps the only opportunity to consume him.
Sadly, that wasn't the case at all.
The moment the Devil made its move, a ripple passed through the world, and the shadows around the collasped court distorted unnaturally.
Before it could react or pull back, a wave of twisted space travelled outward from the Crown.
And passed right through the Devil.
There was a flash of light.
...and a moment later, there was only ash left where the Devil had been.
Silence consumed the great hall once again.
In that silence, all the dancing shadowing slowly calmed down, while at the same time, unseen from anyone, the shadow that had previously merged with Ashoka moved within his body and soul.
By now, short, thick fur had started growing all over Ashoka's scarred body— signs of losing control.
That wasn't the only thing actually, countless thin tendrils of appalling darkness were slowly spreading through his soul like roots of a tree, consuming him.
And so, the first thing that the shadow did was grab many of the countless tendrils before gathering them in one place. Eventually, all the corruption was clustered on the left side of his chest, opposite of where the heart was, and where the soul core would eventually be. Then, a small portion of the shadow transformed into dark mist, which quickly surrounded the core of corruption before solidifying into a semi-transparent sphere, making sure it wouldn't expand anymore.
At the same time, another part of the shadow was collecting all the broken shards of Ashoka's mangled mind, connecting them into a whole as the cracks quickly disappeared. Still, it made sure not to gather the memories that were received from gazing at the drop of ichor, since they were also a possible source of corruption.
But somehow, in the process, it failed to detect the final scene that Ashoka had seen, letting it settle into his repaired mind unnoticed.
Finally, when all that could be done was done, the shadow disappeared as the duration of the innate ability ended.
A few seconds later, Ashoka finally opened his eyes and slowly sat up. He looked around, only to see a wide ring of ash surrounding him. Finally, he looked down, only to realise with wonderment that his body was almost completely healed!
His brows twisted into a frown.
'What the hell happened here?'
In the next moment, as if to answer his question, the spell whispered into his ears, sounding impatient.
[You have slain a Corrupted Devil, Defiled ichor of the Sin-eater.]
[You have received a memory...]
Ashoka's eyes widened and his jaw fell. But the voice of the spell continued one last time.
[You have received an attribute.]
[You have received a memory, Crown of ash.]
The Crown over his head broke off into countless sparks of light, which then quickly disappeared into his soul.
Slowly, a wide smile appeared on his face as he looked at his surroundings with new found realisation.
He was alive.
A small, disbelieving laugh escaped his lips.
He had survived.
The Corrupted Devil was dead, the Nightmare had ended, and he was going to return!
And then he froze.
Because just then, his eyes landed on a body lying in a pool of blood, not more than three meters away from him.
His voice died down, and a dazed expression settled on his face.
The memories of what had happened, and what he'd done appeared in his mind.
It was as if knife had stabbed into his heart, and the pain washed over him as if real.
There was silence once again in the great hall.
Ashoka sat motionless for a long moment, and then began dragging himself across the broken floor toward Eldrin.
He crawled the last meter, his knees soaking in the read of the warm, spreading pool.
Eldrin lay on his back where he had fallen, one arm flung out. The Crown was gone from his head, and without it he looked smaller than Ashoka remembered.
Ashoka slid an arm beneath him shoulders and lifted him, pulling Eldrin into his lap, and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
A single, glassy eye stared back at him, an expression of concern was still stuck on his face. Ashoka reached out a hand and grabbed the blade of the stiletto judding out of the other eye socket. The sharp silver bit into his flesh, but the pain felt dull and meaningless, as though all this was just a paradoxical dream he was stuck in within the Nightmare.
He pulled the stiletto out of the eye, and the torn flesh sank back into the cavity. More blood began to flow out the opening in the back, quickly widening the pool of blood on the ground.
He let go of the stiletto, letting it fall down with a splash, as he once again looked at Eldrin on his lap.
Nothing had changed about him, still as lifeless as before.
"I'm sorry..."
He finally whispered, tears beginning to gather in his vision, blurring it.
Yet the red of blood smeared world still, clear and vibrant like a rose.
He raised his hand in a feeble attempt to cover the mangled eye, but to no avail. The image of it lingered.
"I'm sorry," he whispered again, cradling the head in his arms as the words cracked apart amidst unending sobs. "I-I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."
He failed.
He became a murderer.
All that big talk those days ago, just for it to amount to goddamn nothing.
He could come up with a thousand excuses for why he'd done it.
But why should he?
A man had right to a life none other than his own.
So what gave him the right? What gave him the right to someone else's?!
Even if the soul was fake, the moment wasn't, the pain wasn't. The Image of the blood would still stain his memories in red.
He had killed.
This was his crime, his sin. Not just Eldrin or Alariv, but everyone who had died today and till. All of it had been because of his ignorance, his oversight, and his arrogance.
'I really am a selfish bastard, aren't I?'
More and more blood dripped down, painting his hands red with blood.
...had he really been too greedy? Had he really not paid a big enough price for his ambition?
[You have received an attribute.]
[You have received an Aspect Legacy, Teachings of Vidur.]
He hated himself.
He wanted to die.
But clearly, that wasn't true. After all, everything had happened because he'd been unwilling to die, and to let solace take him to oblivion.
Maybe that was his flaw.
But none of it mattered anymore.
Because, a moment later, he felt a ripple spread through the world. His surroundings suddenly felt less substantial, as if reality itself was slowly dissipating.
This dreadful Nightmare was finally coming to end...
Slowly, the tragedy of his making turned into a dream, and the blood on his palms became but a memory.
The monument of his sin disappeared into oblivion.
...and from that oblivion, the voice of the spell whispered into his ears.
[Wake up, Ashoka! Your nightmare is over.]
[Prepare for appraisal…]
[End of Volume one: Kingdom built upon cards. ]
[True Volume one title: Demon of Greed.]