“It was sunset a moment ago… how did it suddenly turn dark?” Two streets away from the speech square, William pulled back the curtain in puzzlement and stared into the silent sky.

  It was a pure, absolute black—without the faintest glimmer of starlight.

  “And the troops that just ran past, boss… the Pontiff’s speech really did go wrong.”

  He looked again at Javon, something probing—and hateful—burning in his eyes.

  “The Cult of Desire’s God of Suffering should already have shown Himself… you want revenge?” Javon studied this descendant of Shaya with a faintly amused gaze.

  On the square, it wasn’t only the Cult of Desire. The gathering had drawn in The Epicurean Society, the Lotus-Eater society, The Blood of Decay, and other wicked organizations besides.

  Among them, The Blood of Decay was William’s true mortal enemy—the one that had hunted his family down until only he remained.

  “I do.”

  William clenched his jaw, thinking of Isabet.

  To be honest, it hadn’t even been love in the beginning. It was hatred that watered it; time only let it root deeper, until it became something carved into bone.

  “But I know… right now I can do nothing. My Sephiroth level is still too low.” William drew a breath. “Boss… use me as you please. Tell me what I should do.”

  If you were weak, then you had to accept the fate of being a chess piece.

  “I’d like to comfort you,” Javon said, “but I have to tell you—there isn’t anything.” He stepped to the window and looked into the distance.

  Beyond the speech square, other parts of Wynchester were breaking into riots as well.

  In one patch of sky, a gigantic phantom of a blood-red chalice had appeared, overflowing at the rim with a liquid like spilling blood.

  That was the Blood Chalice Archbishop among the Lotus-Eaters, tangled in battle with the Kingdom’s sixth-Sephiroth transcendent.

  At that level, even nonhuman existences were only foot soldiers—and someone like William was an ant. If he was brushed by the force of LAW, he could die without even understanding how.

  William’s face went white.

  “Separation is a law. Our master-and-servant bond ends today.” Javon shook his head with a small laugh. “Your final task is—leave. Leave Wynchester, and live your own life.”

  With the knowledge Javon had drilled into him these past weeks, William only needed a little effort to become someone above the crowd—whether in the hidden world or the mundane one.

  “Understood. If I stay, I’ll only drag you down?” William nodded and started for the door.

  As he pulled it open, he heard Javon’s last words behind him:

  “My name is—Javon Yuggs. I’m from The Unseen Order. Keep it secret, if you don’t want trouble.”

  I’ll remember.

  William repeated it silently, and left without looking back.

  After William was gone, Javon vaulted out the window as well, shifting his position at speed. As he moved, he looked up into the sky and saw that abyssal darkness.

  Velthyr—Night-Mother.

  If the Dreamworld’s Essence is a tide, then the mortal world is only a creek—so shallow that even a World-Sanctioned Immortal*, a whale of that scale, would strand here, let alone a Velthyr.*

  That’s why they can rarely descend directly into the mortal world. And even if they force their way down, they won’t last long before the world rejects them…

  Which is why they try other methods to deepen their influence—birthing Divine Children, or the Mortis Lord’s Dead River plan, or Night-Mother propping up the God of Suffering.

  In Night-Mother’s design, raising a present-world World-Sanctioned Immortal is the key step. That kind of force can purge anything on the mortal plane. More than that—an Immortal is the perfect vessel for a god’s descent.

  And pushing it this urgently… is it because of me?

  Outside the speech square, in a blind spot beyond the Royal Guard cordon, Javon entered a safehouse in a high-rise. He pushed the door shut softly and looked out over the square drowned in historical mist.

  His expression hardened.

  From The Flesh-Eater’s Pack, he took out seven pieces of Essence-laden remnants, one after another.

  A black eye. A fang. A cocoon, and other things besides.

  These were his materials for ascending to The Omniforge.

  Umbral remnant—taken in Diat, the Fallen City, from hunting a Black Umbral Beast.

  Chrysalis remnant—acquired through Havier, in trade with a member of the Araki Wilderness cult.

  Veil remnant—left behind after the death of the Magician Lucivar.

  Sanguis remnant—won by slaying a nonhuman existence of The Blood of Decay.

  Tower remnant—left by a nonhuman of the Professor school beneath the mural in The Light of Salvation headquarters.

  And the final two, Mortis and Secret, came from crushing two Beyond Mortality-grade arcane artifacts.

  Seven nonhuman remnants—wealth so immense that even a major society like the Lotus-Eaters would treat it as a foundation-level hoard.

  This requirement is absurd. With seven nonhuman remnants, the Omniforge should at least be seven times stronger than an ordinary nonhuman, shouldn’t it?

  Javon mocked himself with the thought, then used the window to study the square’s gray fog more precisely.

  To ascend to The Omniforge, he still needed timing.

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  “The location element of the Historical Reversal rite—and high-level advancement itself—both must be completed in the Ethereal Realm.”

  He stroked the Greenforest Ring on his finger and summoned Oclair, the Malevolent Spirit, letting Spirit of Null Observance possess it.

  Then he manipulated Oclair—the Malevolent Spirit—to cast Malevolent Spirit Possession on his own body.

  In ordinary circumstances this would have been pointless. It made travel and combat clumsier, and it created an additional fatal weakness.

  “But if I want my physical body to enter the Ethereal Realm at a low tier, this is the only way.”

  Javon opened his eyes. They were dead and gray-white.

  He waited.

  On the speech square.

  Death, chaos, blood, panic—these became the only language.

  At the core, on The Marshal’s Rostrum, once the black night descended, the rite’s progress accelerated at once.

  Countless figures from history emerged—people who had once paused on this very ground, leaving afterimages in the river of time.

  Countless clamorous voices from history flared into existence for a single instant, colliding and drowning each other, forming noise and delirious nonsense.

  Then the phantoms in the historical mist congealed.

  They froze on a single scene—

  —a tall figure wearing the Iron Crown, gripping The Spear of the Sun King, thrusting that spear into a white sun!

  “Ah!”

  Blinding light exploded. No one knew how many people clapped hands over their eyes. It was only a historical image—yet their eyes were already burned by it.

  And on the rostrum, the God of Suffering’s body compressed again and again, until it seemed to merge with the historical silhouette of the Sun King—then vanished.

  After opening the fourth Sephiroth, transcendent practitioners could choose to enter the Dreamworld with their bodies.

  The God of Suffering had clearly gone to a hidden sanctum somewhere in the Ethereal Realm.

  He was about to ascend there—to push open the Gate of Immortality!!

  The Ethereal Realm.

  The corresponding region of Alice Town.

  The sky was a dull gray, and a purple moon hung overhead.

  No—

  It was not a moon.

  It was an enormous flesh-and-blood embryo.

  Inside the embryo, one could faintly see an infant curled up, thumb in mouth.

  It might be dead—or it might still be alive—held in some strange state, radiating corruption and terror.

  Son of the Breaking Dawn!

  This place carried the Son’s resentment, fixing the region in place forever and driving it deeper into decay.

  But now the black forests on the ground—and the monsters that lived among them, woodland faeries, wailing infants, and the like—had all vanished without a trace…

  Over the barren land, black tides swallowed everything.

  Then the tide solidified, piece by piece, into bricks that seemed to compress years and corruption into their density.

  Brick upon brick rose, piling into a vast Mayan-style step pyramid—an outright wonder.

  The stepped pyramid was entirely black, and between its seams ran a slow flow of red, like blood filling mortar.

  It was so colossal it seemed nearly a hundred meters tall—yet the moment any transcendent tried to define its height with their gaze, they discovered that the very standard of scale and measurement had slipped out of their grasp.

  This was a pyramid whose height could not be fixed.

  All that remained was the sense of overwhelming grandeur—epic, miraculous, beyond mortal vocabulary.

  Around it, whispering voices murmured:

  “New Calendar 1017, March 29—mortals used faith and Essence as bricks, forging a miracle pyramid, becoming the cornerstone for pushing open the Gate of Immortality!”

  As the whispers continued, thick historical mist swelled around the pyramid.

  A figure holding a golden spear stepped out of the fog.

  The God of Suffering.

  He had resumed the old steward’s appearance, but his aura was utterly different—his eyes burning with feverish heat.

  Today, at this very moment, he would step onto the seventh Sephiroth—open the Gate of Immortality for good, gain undying existence, and sever the chains of mortal lifespan.

  The gray sky was suddenly drowned by blackness.

  Night-Mother had cast Her gaze.

  Within the purple flesh-embryo, Son of the Breaking Dawn shuddered. Its eyelids fluttered violently, as if it might open its eyes at any moment.

  A true Velthyr’s child—a god-born abomination… it necessarily carried the trait of immortality.

  It was more than sufficient as the condition for a sixth-Sephiroth transcendent’s advancement.

  And now—at the correct time, in the correct place, under the correct witnesses—the Historical Reversal rite had fully ignited.

  The power that once belonged to the Sun King had fallen upon the God of Suffering.

  Even if it lasted only for a single strike, it was enough to make a Velthyr bleed.

  A force that could slay a Velthyr’s child!

  The God of Suffering lifted his gaze to the heavens, fixed on the purple embryo, and curved his mouth into an eerie arc.

  Then the region shook.

  As though an enraged presence were descending, strands of pure white light tried to tear the black night apart.

  Velthyr—the Breaking Dawn!

  Among the great existences enthroned in the Ethereal Realm, once Night-Mother prepared to strike, The Breaking Dawn had already sensed it.

  Now He was descending.

  Every lifeform in the Ethereal Realm trembled and bowed to the pure white sun falling from on high.

  They felt it—the authority and might of the Forged Light source.

  And yet, at that instant—

  A hiss.

  A colossal serpent appeared, its body so vast that if it coiled, it could seem to wrap around the world itself. It blocked the white sun’s path.

  It opened its jaws, revealing pale, savage fangs.

  It was the Ossuary Lord—child of The Flesh-Mother Tree, Velthyr of February!

  Even among Velthyr, there were differences—but never an absolute gap.

  Two Velthyr together would certainly stop The Breaking Dawn, standing alone.

  Below the black pyramid, the God of Suffering trembled—whether from ecstasy or fear, no one could say.

  His great work was at hand. Through it, he would push open the Gate of Immortality.

  He tightened his grip on The Spear of the Sun King. The spearpoint anchored the target. Under the reinforcement of Historical Reversal, he seemed to become the ancient Sun King himself.

  He hurled the spear with all his strength.

  The mortal world—Wynchester, the speech square.

  Though the God of Suffering had departed, the historical mist had not dispersed.

  More than that… a phantom of some place in the Ethereal Realm shimmered within it, as if the two regions had been grafted together.

  On the balcony of the metal fortress, whether Arthur VI or Duke Argai… all of them looked at that black night and the thin threads of white light, and felt suffocation.

  Before gods that had endured since antiquity, what was mortal power?

  Then they saw the spear fly.

  A golden streak like a meteor, and their cries of alarm rose—

  Only to freeze on their faces, as if they had become statues.

  Because the golden meteor curved.

  It did not strike the purple “moon.”

  It struck—

  Velthyr—

  Night-Mother.

  “Has it begun?” Javon stared at the black pyramid and the golden meteor, murmuring to himself.

  He had been to this region of the Ethereal Realm before. With a link established, following divination’s guidance to find it again was not difficult.

  Of course, because a Malevolent Spirit was not The Shadowless, even after entering this region he could only return to the mortal location he came from—near the speech square.

  If he wanted to exploit the Ethereal Realm to teleport to another area in the mortal world, without the transcendent ability of The Shadowless, he would have to risk being cast into an unknowable place.

  And Javon had come here because he knew the outcome would twist.

  He raised his head to the sky, watching Son of the Breaking Dawn abruptly stop moving. In his mind he pictured the child’s face—blank, stunned—and a faint smile pulled at his lips as thoughts snapped into place.

  This trip to the Bureau’s headquarters… the greatest gain was still the Spear of the Sun King.

  On that spear, it isn’t only Night-Mother’s authority—The Breaking Dawn’s is there as well.

  The closer you stand to gods, the less devout you become.

  The God of Suffering has ambition, and willpower… was it all just to gain immortality and become Night-Mother’s vessel?

  He planted a piece in Baron Jacques’s house to gather the Sun King’s information—not only to complete the rite’s components, but also for that detail that seemed insignificant—the Sun King once changed Paths in his later years.

  If Forged Light can turn into Sanguis, then Sanguis can turn into Forged Light as well.

  The Sun King betrayed The Breaking Dawn, turning from* Forged Light to Sanguis. Then the God of Suffering can betray* Night-Mother*, turning from* Sanguis to Forged Light.

  And in this, The Breaking Dawn will help him for the sake of revenge—so even if Night-Mother realizes something is wrong at the last second, she cannot strip the God of Suffering of his authority over the Spear of the Sun King, because there is still The Breaking Dawn’s permission!

  And beyond that—his original Path was Sanguis and Umbral. Combine that with his fondness for burning sacrifices for amusement… he seemed to submit to Night-Mother, yet the existence he truly worships in secret is—

  In the Ethereal Realm, where the white sun and the great serpent clashed—

  A black corona rose in silence.