Read Novel Full Chapter 373: The Dead Had Made Their Choice
Chapter 373: Chapter 373: The Dead Had Made Their Choice
Chapter 373 – The Dead Had Made Their Choice
The Fractured Land of the Damned shook on all sides. The voice echoing throughout it paused, seemingly caught off guard by Isolde’s profile.
"True Soulblade?" the voice whispered, low and frail, yet it reached every corner of the Damned. "Soulblade of whom? Who could... oh."
Understanding dawned, and a cackle boomed out. It was short-lived, though, as soon after, the whole village began to break apart.
The undead collapsed to the ground, their bony bodies dissolving into a black-colored essence. And not just them. Everything around went through the same fate.
The entire Fractured Land was transforming into pure black essence: black as the darkest night, yet bright enough to illuminate the land, as though something unseen was devouring it all. Even the Budding Tree of the Underworld wasn’t spared.
All that essence whistled through the air, drawn towards Isolde, floating just above the ground, her body glowing with a bleak, doom-like light thanks to the fruit.
As the black essence reached her, some of it sank into her body, while the rest wrapped around her, forming a black cocoon.
The Forbidden Land shuddered harder still, as if being yanked from somewhere unseen, a dangerous transformation building.
From where the Budding Tree of the Underworld had once stood, something erupted from the ground.
It was made of the tree’s black and red roots, shaped into a human woman with six deer-like horns, red and rotted, carved with runes. The creature’s red, demonic eyes fixed on Isolde inside the cocoon, and it began walking towards her.
It moved in complete silence.
Each step shook the Forbidden Land. It raised a bony hand, and the crimson flies buzzing nearby burst apart, dead. It gathered their blood and sent it drifting towards Isolde.
"I was waiting for a human," the creature spoke, its voice like something dredged up from the depths of hell, throat burned to ash. "A human reincarnated into this world. That was what I was promised. But I’ll take you instead, daughter of the Mother of Assassins. I’ll take you, Soundless Slayer. I’ll take you, Miss Mercury. Oh, what a fitting name, especially for what you’re about to become."
Then it stood beside the cocooned Isolde and lifted a hand woven from tree-root and pulsing with blood veins.
The black cocoon parted, revealing Isolde’s bloodied face, eyes closed. She was still dead, though not entirely.
Her state hovered somewhere between life and death. Like ash. Like the undead.
"And that’s exactly the state you need to be in, Isolde Amaris, if you wish to become what you’re meant to be," the creature spoke, with a sudden, unexpected warmth, as though it had known Isolde her whole life. "You are Mercury, the one who guides souls from one life to another. From life to death. From the known to the unknown."
Its hand touched Isolde’s face, and the creature’s expression broke into a wide, monstrous grin, so wide one could see straight into its mouth.
And inside was a head. The head of a woman, her eyes stitched shut, her nose severed but still bleeding, her mouth stretched into a grin, revealing six rows of black teeth.
The creature leaned closer and began to melt into a substance of black and red, sinking into Isolde, flowing straight towards her heart.
Or rather, towards her core.
Because Isolde wasn’t merely human. She was a weapon. And the only way to strengthen a weapon was to break it down to its fundamentals, and forge it anew, from stronger, rarer material.
"Isolde Amaris, you have been chosen as the Traveler Between Realms."
The Forbidden Land cried out, trembling even more violently, everything within it consuming itself to fuel Isolde’s ascension.
"Let’s begin your transformation, my Chosen One."
The dead had made their choice.
...
At that exact moment, while Isolde was living through something she could never have predicted, her mother was going through her own version of the same.
Sophia felt deeply puzzled, or maybe shocked, more accurately. She looked around, trying to understand where she’d ended up.
She did know, actually. She was inside the Origin Pool of the Amaris Bloodline, finally reached after days of torturing Cole.
But the only thing in that place, filled with heavy, cold, silver water rising to her knees, was a single statue standing at its center.
It was massive. Sophia had to crane her neck upward just to take in the whole thing.
It was the statue of a woman, eyes closed. One eyelid bore a carved circle, the other an ’X.’
She wore tight, assassin-style clothing, her whole face and body marked with wounds, ghastly even frozen in stone.
A wolf lay at her feet — purple, though there shouldn’t have been any color at all; Sophia had no idea why she perceived it that way. But the wolf looked alive, its cold, beastly stare cutting straight through to her soul.
"What is this?" Sophia muttered, walking closer, her heart pounding against her chest. "I thought the Origin Pool was where the progenitor of the bloodline resided, along with other historical ancestors?"
Then why was there only one statue here? And why a woman? And most importantly...
"Why does she look like Isolde?"
That was the question that mattered most. Even with closed eyes, the woman bore a striking resemblance to her daughter. They looked so alike it chilled Sophia to her core.
A cold dread began to slither into her chest. But she didn’t let it stop her. She kept walking, closer and closer, until she finally stood before the statue.
Then she froze, her eyes catching on something.
A woman sat casually at the statue’s feet. A wolf was beside her. A purple wolf.
The woman lifted her head to look at Sophia, and it was the same face as the statue. Which was to say — the reason Sophia took a step back — the same face as Isolde.
"Oh," the woman whispered, her voice like two daggers scraping together, tilting her head. "You’re here."
"I... am here?" Sophia echoed, frowning. "Were you expecting me?"
"I was," the woman said, her eyes still closed, marked with the strange symbols. "You arrived faster than I expected. Everything’s moving faster than I expected, this time around."
"Who are you?" Sophia asked, not particularly fond of talking with someone she knew nothing about.
"Who am I?" The woman smiled, and the wolf beside her began to growl low and dangerous. "I’m known by many names, Sophia Amaris. Some call me the Returnee. Others, Wife of the Accursed. And those who’ve found fragments of my legacy call me the Mother of Assassins."
Sophia’s eyes widened.
"But for you," the woman continued, "I suspect it’ll mean more to say I’m the progenitor of the Amaris bloodline."
"What?"
"Shall we?" The wolf barked, and Sophia’s mind filled with a flood of colors and images. All impossible. All enough to make her heart drop.
Her knees buckled, and she sank into the cold water beneath her.
"Come, receive the Origin Pool of my blood," the woman continued, "and carry it until she’s ready."
"She?" Sophia croaked, gasping.
The Mother of Assassins smiled, mysterious.
"I’m sorry for taking your Soulblade during her birth. She needed it."
That was the last thing Sophia heard before everything went black, and she sank beneath the water.
The transfer of the Origin Pool had begun.
...
The day passed. Cassius snapped his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.
He frowned, wondering why something strange stirred in his chest. It wasn’t sadness, or joy. Not anger, not grief either.
It was an unfamiliar feeling, as if his heart itself couldn’t decide what to settle on.
Strange. Still, Cassius got up, walked over to the window, yawning as he went, and opened it.
Sunlight spilled through the opening, warming his face the way a mother might rouse a groggy child. A smile crossed his lips, and a single thought crossed his mind in the same breath:
"Today, the mission starts."
—End of Chapter 373—