My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 1098: Chapter 1099: The One Who Left It All Behind

The world of Aetherus had nine continents. Among those nine was Soltheon, the war continent.

As for why it was called the war continent, the origin of the names of each continent was so old that no one truly knew. Some said the gods named them. Others claimed the Goddess of Doom herself had given them their titles. While some believed each continent had been named through unanimous recognition of its nature.

Iorvas, the Verdant Continent, was named so because of its endless green forests and thriving vegetation.

Lothria, the Wild Continent, was a land of untamed jungles and feral growth, a place where nature itself seemed to reject order.

The continent that floated in the sky was Vuldren, the Sky Continent. Its name required no explanation.

Where magic thrived above all else was Aerona, the Magic Continent.

One by one, Matia recalled them, naming the continents and their defining traits in her mind. Then her gaze drifted back to Soltheon etched into the murals.

The war continent.

Its name itself felt like war.

Matia had always thought it was meant to glorify conflict, just as Centros had once been called the Doom Continent.

Now it was known as the Demon Continent.

Each name, in its own way, reflected its nature. Centros, in particular, was the most dangerous of all continents due to its twisted geography and unstable ley structure. It had been renamed by Ashcroft, the Demon Lord of Domination, after he conquered it.

Matia turned her gaze back to her father, still half-dead among the frozen ruins.

"What do you know about this place?" she asked, carefully watching his reaction.

Faldren took a slow, ragged breath. His voice strained under the weight of his injuries.

"The murals record a history known only to our bloodline... a truth lost to time. Even we no longer fully understand it."

He coughed violently, pressing a hand against his torn side.

"It was passed to us as a promise... from the Lunar Moth race."

Matia’s eyes narrowed slightly. The lunar moth were extinct save for...

He continued, struggling to remain conscious.

"Their seer foresaw the end... and declared that the presence of a woman here would be the first sign."

Suddenly, Faldren let out a broken, bitter laugh.

"Hahaha... hahah..."

Then his voice shifted, reciting the prophecy once more.

"When the Nameless End doth bear witness, then shall it be known... the vessel of the gods walks among us.

And he shall cometh. He shall cometh bearing destruction.

From this world he shall take, and in his wake shall spread a darkness vast enough to leave behind naught but ruin and shadow.

Then shall our god fall, and in our terror we shall cry out unto the Creator.

Yet the answer shall not be salvation, for we shall meet the very Doom we ourselves invoked.

For as our god falls, so too shall his world perish.

And we shall fade into silence... an empty remnant adrift within the endless cosmos... where once our existence was heard as a voice."

His voice faded at the end.

It was not a warning anymore.

Only the last echo of a legacy already ending.

Matia stared at him in silence.

To him, the prophecy no longer mattered.

The end had already arrived.

For him.

For his house.

Perhaps even for the world.

She walked toward him, her sword dragging faintly across the snow, carving a thin line behind her.

Faldren’s eyes were hollow now.

A man staring directly at his own extinction.

Matia stopped in front of him and placed the blade against his head.

"I am not particularly fond of riddles or poems," she said quietly. "Frankly speaking, I had a bad experience with them."

She tilted his chin upward with the edge of her blade, forcing him to look at her.

"You are done. From this moment onward, you are no longer the ruler of this domain."

A pause later, she continued.

"However, I will not let you off."

Her eyes darkened slightly.

"Because I want you to bear witness."

Faldren’s lips trembled.

Matia’s voice remained calm.

"I do not care who or what is coming. The sun will shine on us again. I know it will."

Then she moved.

Her sword came down in a single brutal motion.

A deep slash tore across his face, blood spraying across the frozen ground and staining the ruins beneath them.

Matia smiled as she walked forward into the falling snow, shadows drifting down with it like fragments of darkness caught in winter’s embrace.

Then she laughed.

Her eyes remained fixed on the snow.

Matia did not laugh in this place.

She never had.

Her laughter here had always been false, forced sounds worn like masks she never believed in.

So she did not bother pretending now.

And still tears slipped down her face, tracing pale lines across her cheeks before freezing upon her chin and turning into tiny snowflakes that scattered into the wind.

She had cried here many, many times.

Her existence itself was beautifully tragic.

She hated her brother.

But loved him.

She envied him.

But longed for his affection.

She resented his weakness.

But treasured his kindness.

More than anything, Matia now understood.

She had become one with the snowflakes.

Free.

And that freedom had not been handed to her through the mercy of some man.

It had not been gifted through pity.

It had been won.

Seized by her own strength because she herself had become strong enough to take it.

Matia did not hate men.

It was a man who had once given her wings.

And it was another man to whom she had willingly given those wings away.

Losing those wings had somehow given her flight.

And now...

Now she had felled the man who had spent his entire life trying to break them.

"I miss him..."

Her voice was quiet now.

Soft enough to disappear into the winter winds.

"My brother."

She was not speaking to herself.

Nor to the drifting snow.

Her words were meant for the man lying broken against the edge of a jagged pillar, blood soaking the white earth beneath him, a fresh scar carved deep across his face.

Faldren slowly lifted his head.

His breathing was weak.

Labored.

"Why..." he rasped.

His bloodshot eyes locked onto her distant figure.

"Why didn’t you kill me?"

Matia did not turn fully toward him.

Her expression did not shift.

The emotions she had once held toward her father had burned away long ago.

What remained now was cold indifference.

"A man once said to me..."

Her voice was calm and quiet.

Almost thoughtful.

"With a broken smile..."

She paused slightly.

"We wish to be good... but we fail to forgive."

She turned her head slightly, remembering the face attached to those words.

Damon.

It had been years ago.

A distant memory now.

Yet strangely clear.

"He never did learn how to forgive."

For the first time her voice softened.

A small trace of concern slipping through.

"I worry about him."

Faldren narrowed his eyes, feeling strangely insulted.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Matia finally turned toward him.

The wind moved through her black hair as snow drifted around her bloodstained armor.

Then she spoke.

Slowly.

"I forgive you, father."

Faldren’s eyes flickered violently.

After everything he had done.

After years of cruelty.

After every scar.

Every beating.

Every humiliation.

He could not understand it.

"Why..."

His voice trembled weakly.

"Why?"

Matia shook her head once.

No hatred.

No anger.

No resentment.

No fear.

Only quiet certainty.

"Because..."

She looked toward the endless falling snow.

"I deserve peace."

The moment those words left her lips, something shifted.

Not merely within her. But within the world itself.

The frozen winds trembled.

The falling snow seemed to pause for the briefest of moments.

It was as though some unseen law governing reality itself had fractured.

As though Matia had severed something ancient.

Violent, invisible and inevitable.

Something that had ruled over her existence for far too long.

If chains had once bound her...

Then now...

Matia had finally become liberated.