Read Novel Full Chapter 1852: The Umbra Sanctum: Part-4
Chapter 1852: The Umbra Sanctum: Part-4
No.25’s POV
My lips parted,
“I shall give life where death has taken it… I shall preserve life where death shall come.”
“I shall become the shelter of the weak, the sanctuary of the forsaken, the light that remains when every other light has faded.”
“I shall bear what they cannot bear… I shall suffer what they cannot suffer… I shall bleed so that they may remain unbroken.”
“I shall give them warmth… while I embrace the cold.”
“I shall give them tomorrow… while I surrender my own.”
The people inside the Sanctum could hear me.
“Where death comes… I shall stand.”
They could hear my painful breathing.
“Where darkness spreads… I shall burn.”
They could hear the weakness hidden within my voice.
“Where fate closes its hand… I shall tear its fingers apart.”
They could hear their God struggling to remain standing.
And they understood.
Their bodies trembled.
One person lowered their head.
Then another.
Soon, thousands of heads bowed simultaneously.
Shame filled their hearts.
Not shame because they had betrayed me.
Not shame because they had failed their duty.
But shame because they believed they could do nothing.
The GOD who had saved them…
The GOD who had protected them…
The GOD who had stood between their lives and death…
Was dying outside.
And all they could do was watch from behind the door.
They couldn’t even wipe the blood from my face.
All they had left…
Was prayer.
Tears filled the Sanctum.
Their mourning echoed through the enormous halls.
Then they joined their hands.
From the oldest among them… to the youngest.
From warriors who had once fought beside me…
To children who had never held a weapon in their lives.
Even newborns were held tightly against their parents’ chests as their mothers and fathers whispered prayers over them.
They prayed for me.
For their God.
For their protector.
For the man who had given them a reason to believe tomorrow would come.
“Please…”
“Let our Lord survive.”
“Let him live.”
“Let him return to us.”
“Let him be born again.”
“Let him become our God again.”
Their voices continued.
Thousands became tens of thousands.
Tens of thousands became millions.
The prayers merged into one enormous tide of human voices.
Their words filled the Sanctum.
I could hear them all.
Their voices made my heart ache.
Yet at the same time…
They made me happy.
What none of them knew was that their prayers were beginning to change them.
A faint golden radiance appeared beneath the skin of the people inside the Sanctum.
At first, it was barely noticeable.
Then it grew brighter.
A tiny golden particle emerged from the chest of one person.
Then another.
Then another.
Soon, thousands of golden particles were drifting upward from the bodies of my people.
Millions followed.
They floated through the Sanctum like countless fireflies rising toward the heavens.
Every prayer released another fragment.
Every tear seemed to carry another.
Every heartbeat contributed something invisible.
The golden particles gathered above the Sanctum.
I continued my hymn.
My voice became weaker.
My breathing became slower.
Then—
Every symbol ignited.
The blood that surrounded the Sanctum suddenly began glowing.
The crimson circle beneath my feet brightened until it resembled a gigantic ring of molten light.
Then the ground trembled.
Cracks spread outward.
The enormous circle began cutting through the very foundation of reality.
The circular boundary passed beneath the Sanctum, severing its connection with the land.
The enormous structure trembled.
And slowly…
The entire Sanctum began separating from the world beneath it.
The people inside felt it immediately.
Their bodies trembled. Their tears flowed even more freely.
But they continued praying.
They knew what I was doing… I was sending them away.
Far away from whatever was coming.
I smiled.
Just a little longer.
I only needed to make sure they were safe.
Flick~
Something moved at the edge of my vision.
My dull eyes slowly shifted upward.
I looked toward the heavens above the Sanctum.
And froze.
Right before my eyes…
Something was manifesting.
A feather.
No. A feather was too insignificant a word for what I was seeing.
A humongous, pure golden feather had appeared above the Sanctum.
It hung silently within the heavens, enormous enough to cast its radiance across the entire structure below.
I stared at it.
I had never seen anything like it.
Its Quill shone with a deep golden brilliance, while every individual barb extended from it with impossible perfection.
And the barbules…
They were delicate.
Almost impossibly delicate.
Each one moved independently despite there being no wind.
They flowed.
They danced.
They curled and unfolded through the air with an elegance that made the entire world around them seem crude.
The golden tip emitted a light so pure that the surrounding darkness simply disappeared wherever its radiance touched.
Nothing could hide beneath it.
Yet there was something strangely familiar about it.
I couldn’t explain why.
Every barb.
Every barbule.
Every tiny strand of light seemed connected to something buried deep within my chest.
The feather slowly tilted.
Its countless delicate strands moved toward me.
And then…
I felt it.
A connection.
Something invisible passed between us.
It touched my soul without touching my body.
I could feel something within that feather.
Love.
Pure and overwhelming.
Fear.
A trembling fear of losing something precious.
Loneliness.
Hope.
And then…
Something that made my heart stop.
My children.
My eyes widened.
“…”
Drip… Drip…
A tear rolled down my cheek.
Then another.
I didn’t blink.
I couldn’t.
I simply stared at the feather as the realisation slowly settled inside me.
Their love had become a force.
Their prayers had become a presence.
Their desperate wish to protect the one who had spent his life protecting them…
Had manifested.
Drip… Drip.
Tears continued falling from my unblinking eyes.
Then—
[Authority: Life]
My entire body froze.
The Emotionless Mechanical voice appeared inside my mind without warning.
[Granted]
SSsnnnnn!!
The letters surrounding the Sanctum suddenly erupted with light…
The world became white.
A colossal radiance erupted from the Sanctum, swallowing everything, including the golden feather.
For one brief moment, there was nothing except white.
Then—
Blink!
Sanctum vanished along with that weird feather.
I slowly looked down at my own body.
A faint golden light was glowing beneath my skin.
I placed my trembling hand against my chest.
“I hope you’re safe in there…”
My voice was barely more than a whisper.
Thud!
And finally, my body gave out.
My knees struck the ground, and the spear in my hand slipped from my fingers, falling beside me as the glow surrounding my body slowly faded away.
My vision began to darken.
The edges of the world blurred first, then the darkness slowly crept inward, swallowing everything I could see.
This was the end.
This was… where my story ended.
Blood pooled beneath me, spreading slowly across the ground.
“Cough…”
I coughed violently as blood forced its way through my blocked throat, spilling from my mouth and dripping onto the earth.
What an unsightly sight…
If they had seen me like this, it would have torn their hearts apart.
Thank goodness I had managed to keep myself together until they were safe.
Otherwise…
It wouldn’t have been easy for them.
My upper body swayed gently as I struggled to remain conscious.
My eyes drifted toward the spear lying beside me.
“Iskha’vel…”
My voice barely came out.
“I… I am sorry.”
Thud!
My upper body finally fell forward.
Yet instead of closing my eyes, I simply lay there, staring blankly at the spear.
She had been with me from the moment Mother Clara left.
For everyone else, I was their hope.
Their Archpriest.
Their God.
The person they believed would always stand between them and despair.
But for me…
She was my only hope.
She was the one who had held me together when I had nothing left.
We fought together.
We laughed together.
We cried together.
Through every battle, every loss, every moment when I thought I could no longer continue…
She remained beside me.
And now…
I was dying.
Leaving her alone.
I slowly raised my trembling hand toward the spear.
My fingers barely had enough strength to move, but somehow, I reached her.
I gently touched the cold shaft.
“Thank… you…”
Snn.
The spear vibrated faintly beneath my fingers.
Just once.
As if answering…
Welcome.
A gentle smile appeared on my face.
My eyelids slowly began to close.
Weakly.
Almost peacefully.
I looked at my hand.
My bloody hand….
A hand that had taken countless lives in order to protect others.
A hand that had given hope to countless people, yet had never been given hope itself.
A hand that had touched so many lives…
Yet had never truly felt what it meant to be touched in return.
A hand that had been blessed…
But had never been blessed by anyone.
I stared at it for a long moment.
And… a hand that would be forgotten like… I am nothing. Soon… not a single soul would remember me.
I will be forgotten… Erased… Worse than death.
Hah…Haha…Hehe…
If there was something I learned from my past… it was that the world was forgetting me. A Death… never, ever do I wish for others.
My story… ends here… forgotten… with no one left to tell my tale.
I am happy… Yet….
The white ribbon fluttered around my wrist…
Then a weak smile appeared on my lips.
“I… am… for…ever… for…sa…ken…”
My voice disappeared with the final word.
Just then…
Something soft caught my head.
It wasn’t the hard ground.
It felt warm… Almost like a cushion.
Something gently lifted my dying body from the earth.
I didn’t have the strength to resist.
“!@@# !@#$## @##T!”
A strange voice reached me.
The language was unfamiliar.
I had never heard anything like it before.
And yet…
There was something strangely familiar about that language. As if I knew but… I don’t remember.
I wondered who was speaking.
What were they saying?
Why were they here?
Then, from somewhere within my fading vision, it forced my head to turn.
Two enormous, deep-orange eyes stared directly into mine.
They were impossibly close.
Bright and Curious.
“Are you alive?”
No… The language hadn’t changed.
It was more like…
I could suddenly understand it.
What was happening?
Where was I?
What… was going on?
Snifff…
Something… sniffed near my underarm.
My fading consciousness barely registered the strange sensation.
Then I felt something soft brush against my cheek.
It was warm.
Ticklish.
Yellow-orange fur.
My vision continued to darken.
Just before everything disappeared, I managed to see the creature holding me.
A large mane.
Golden-orange fur.
Those enormous eyes.
A lion?
“Hey, are you Alrig—”
The words stopped.
The world stopped.
And so did I.
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Third Person’s POV
In a vast white void, three figures stood in complete silence.
There was nothing around them.
Only endless white stretching into infinity.
One figure stood farther away.
No.28.
The other two, No.25 and No.27, stood closer together.
For several moments, neither of them spoke.
Then No.25 slowly walked toward No.28.
He stopped beside him and looked in the same direction No.28 was staring.
There was nothing there.
Yet somehow, both of them continued looking.
“When it all ends… we are the ones left alone…”
No.25 smiled faintly as he placed an arm around No.28’s shoulder.
“It’s alright…”
His voice carried an almost strange gentleness.
“We can do it again, right?”
He said it with a smile, as if the words meant nothing.
As if starting over was something ordinary.
As if dying was merely another step in a journey they had already walked countless times.
Those words…
Suddenly struck No.28’s chest.
For a moment, he looked down at the endless white beneath his feet.
Then he finally asked,
“Why can’t we just die…?”
Silence.
No.25’s smile was frozen.
No.27 smirked.
Neither of them answered immediately.
Then…
Both No.25 and No.27 turned toward him.
Their voices came together.
“We are… Forsaken.”