Read Novel Full Chapter 284: Souls are born from light
Chapter 284: Souls are born from light
What was that just now? I felt like I’d seen a lot... way too much.
And what is this?... why am I staring at thousands of souls inside this black expanse, with my own among them?
How is this possible?
But more importantly, my soul was broken, crumbling into faint sparks that went out after a few moments, and weighed down by thousands of threads tying it to the distant stars.
The pain was heavy, but also distant... I only felt faint echoes of it.
Time didn’t seem to exist here, every moment felt like it stretched on forever and ended before it began.
The moment I came back to my senses the blackness around me rippled and the void was replaced by darkness... like a sea of sticky, frightening liquid that wanted to drown everything within it.
I remembered how I’d been stabbed in the heart with a dagger covered in ancient letters... how long ago was that?
Shit, if I had a heart it’d be pounding like drums, if I had a mouth I’d be cursing out loud right now... but I had none of that, so I didn’t do anything, but the darkness did.
It rippled without a sound, and drew closer to the distant stars, swallowing them and putting out their light forever, or were they still here?
Yeah, they were still here, I felt each one of them, like they were all mine.
But as if it were alive on its own, the darkness stopped after a moment, surrounding me and every soul here... and from the darkness came a voice that broke the eternal silence of this place.
"Hmm... what are you?" It didn’t sound like a human voice, not the kind made by a throat and vocal cords, it just existed... but it was beautiful in its own way.
I wanted to swallow, but that wasn’t possible.
"Why do you have so many souls, aren’t you human?... this is strange, is that broken soul the one moving your body? Why do you tie it to all those other souls, aren’t you afraid it’ll shatter completely before you do what you want to do?" Its voice was soft, calm and empty of emotion.
If I hadn’t felt countless eyes staring at me from behind the darkness, maybe I would’ve been at ease.
"You’re so fragile, you’ve already reached the point of no return, no matter what you do your soul won’t heal... but it’s fine, I’m here." The great darkness rippled.
Its words disgusted me, stirring up an old hatred from somewhere, but the darkness didn’t care.
"I’ll mend your soul, I’ll lift all these burdens off you and remake you... you’ll be one of my descendants, human, you don’t have to pay the price of the distant past, just accept my blood in your veins and my power within your fragile flesh."
"My new child." The darkness was happy, but I wasn’t.
From somewhere beyond these walls, I felt something cold flowing into my broken body... it was its blood, disgusting and rotten.
I gritted my teeth, but I didn’t have teeth...
Why am I afraid?... isn’t this place tied to me... don’t all those threads and stars lead to my soul, even if it’s about to go out?
The darkness paused for a moment.
Its soft voice was replaced by a whisper... a whisper that made every light tremble. "Your blood feels familiar... it’s been a very long time since I tasted it."
Then for the first time the darkness seemed confused. "How do you still exist... we killed all of you."
The silence stretched for a moment, before it rippled again like a sea in a storm... laughter tore through the stillness. "Honestly, why not?... you’re small, weak, a complete disappointment compared to them... you know, I’ll keep you forever, under me you’ll see the universe through new eyes instead of those eyes of yours... what was your name again?"
It waited a moment, hoping for an answer, but when it found nothing but silence it let out a pained sound. "Doesn’t matter."
The feeling of violation came back to my body, then I saw the sea of darkness flood the void... it devoured the stars around me and hid their light somewhere.
My crumbling soul was close, its faint light filling my sight.
"How dare you... all of you!" I screamed inside, but as if it had heard me, the darkness stopped one last time.
"Huh, you can talk?"
The darkness laughed with delight. "How could we not dare? How could I resist drowning you in my eternal darkness, how could I resist the call of power, of being everywhere through countless beings."
It moved toward me from every side, and with it the stars and threads vanished... I couldn’t hear my own voice, but it could. "Really?... aren’t you making too much of yourself, you miserable Ashen?"
For a moment the darkness froze at my insolent reminder, then it grew angry. "Worthless insect..."
But I didn’t care what it was saying, I just stared at the sparks of light flying from my soul, then I remembered.
I remembered that beautiful voice, warm, filling me with a feeling of safety and longing.
"Souls are born from light, then they carry potential... but Caius, we... we are the light."
I ignored the wicked whisper, then reached my will out to my broken soul as I mocked the darkness. "You know, your darkness isn’t pitch black... after all, you’re Ashen."
The single whisper turned into countless voices from every direction, so many that I trembled under their weight.
That lasted only a moment, before I focused on my lone soul, because while the rest had disappeared into the darkness, it was still there.
It was right, my soul couldn’t be fixed, its fate was to end... so I sped that fate up.
With the last of my will, I touched my soul and then tore it apart... the pain was unbearable, but it was also distant, cut off from me.
The cracks spread across the star faster, and in a moment, it broke apart into burning sparks... sparks of flame that ran along the thousands of threads and split off in every direction, tracing paths across the void and then sinking into the darkness.
I couldn’t see it because the darkness had drowned me, but I felt everything.
Every spark of my soul raced along the threads, touching the other stars at the same time... thousands of them in a single moment.
One moment everything was dark, and the next it changed.
Every soul here burned... all of them burned as one in an endless expanse of white brilliance.
The darkness grew faint, then small, then a single point in the middle of the expanse of flame, and its last whispers reached me... it wasn’t afraid, just disappointed? "Hmm... so this is it, that’s fine, let’s meet again, little Astroweild."
Then it disappeared completely, and all that was left was a white brilliance in the middle of the void, reshaping everything, and shattering the walls of black.
But I couldn’t see the rest, because I blinked... blinked with my dying body.
...
A few moments had passed since the stranger drove the dagger into Caius’s heart, the dark aura surging in every direction, crashing against the walls of the invisible barrier on the sandy beach.
A few meters from his broken body the two men trembled under the weight of the ominous aura, waiting for the result they wanted so they could escape from here.
When the ancient letters wrote themselves across Caius’s skin, the two of them let out their tense breaths, while the supervisor whispered to the other, "How long does it take again?"
The stranger answered through his teeth, barely visible now that the light had faded. "A few seconds."
Then something happened.
The dark aura dimmed and slowly faded, and there on the sand they caught Caius moving again... he blinked.
’Huh?’ Caius blinked as he came back to his senses, the two black abysses in his eyes burned away and were replaced by two embers of pure gold, the letters on his skin erased as if they’d never been there.
As if a great dam had broken inside him, an ocean of energy spread through his body... the result of thousands of souls melting together at once.
It was dense, vast and endless.
By the time he came to, his limbs had already regenerated, and he felt a burning ocean flooding every inch of him and remaking him again and again.
Every cell in him, small and large, rebuilt itself, over and over, over and over, feeding on the burning souls.
The regeneration was never a gift of the experiments, it was just something extra that came from his body adapting to injuries, why?... because he’s an Astroweild.
Under the weight of the great smelting his ability melted into his soul, his body achieved Fusion, and the limits of his sense shattered, spreading in every direction, flooding the ocean, the sky and the rainforest for kilometers.
All of this happened in a few seconds, the two men didn’t even understand what was happening.
’This is going to kill me!’ But for Caius it was clear, way too clear.
His body, which had only just achieved Fusion, wasn’t strong enough to contain all that power, and even after it had remade him into his pure state, the ocean of flame didn’t seem anywhere near running out.
Slowly, it was going to devour Caius himself and turn him to ash.
’Fuck, I need to get rid of this!’ With that urgent thought, he raised his newly regenerated hand toward the two men.
The supervisor grabbed the stranger’s shoulder on instinct, trying to pull them both into the shadows, but it was too late.
Caius did what he’s good at... he pushed everything out through his arm.
A single arm couldn’t withstand that torrent of energy for even a moment, so it turned to dust, and through it the ocean of light in his depths spilled out into the physical world.
For miles the ocean water evaporated, the sand of the beach melted into a sea of magma, the air burned, and part of the vast forest turned to ash in an instant.