NovelChina Chapter 198: The Crimson Night [26]
Chapter 198: The Crimson Night [26]
The War for The North [85]
Chapter 198: The Crimson Night [26]
It was as if time had stopped. The wind had ceased blowing, and all sounds on earth had suddenly fallen silent.
The moment Vorloth raised his head, the world was witnessing a terror never before seen.
The sky was bleeding.
The cloudless, starry night was suddenly painted a dark, abhorrent crimson. It was as if the veins of the universe had been slit, and its blood had coated the atmosphere.
Yet the true horror was not in the color of the sky, but in the moon itself. The silvery full moon slowly darkened and then took on a bright red, sickly hue. The craters on its surface shifted, the light bent, and the moon transformed, quite literally, into a colossal, bloodshot eye. This gigantic cosmic eye, visible from every corner of the world, from every continent and every ocean, glared directly down at the earth with a judging gaze.
Right at that moment, the fabric of the sky rippled as if it were the surface of an invisible cosmic ocean. The membrane of the crimson sky tore, and a colossal female silhouette appeared, gliding upside down toward the earth, as if breaking through a mirror like water surface and diving deep. The woman’s body was pure white, smooth, and translucent. Her facial features were blurred, almost like a shared but forgotten memory of all goddesses. From beyond space and time, she floated downward with an incomprehensible slowness and an ethereal grace.
At the center of the crater Vorloth had created, the last remnant of Cassian’s shattered soul hung suspended in the air as a pitch black sphere made of pure darkness. As the translucent, giant woman approached the earth, she gently reached out with her pure white, flawless hands. Those giant hands took the dark sphere between her palms as if holding fragile glass.
Then the woman wrapped her entire body around that black sphere. Taking a fetal position as she drifted in the void of space, she coiled her translucent and radiant body around that absolute darkness. This was a mother’s embrace, the darkest secret of the universe being enveloped by the purest light.
The moment the woman merged with the black sphere, the world shook.
From the center of the black sphere erupted a blinding light that tore through the darkness of the night and the crimson of the sky. From this light extended eight pure white wings, each one massive enough to cast a shadow over a mountain, shining brilliantly. These eight radiant wings opened with tremendous magnificence above the dark void, covering the sky like a dome.
When the light slowly subsided, a new silhouette stood above a rippling, ethereal water surface. His incredibly long, pure white hair floated in the air, defying gravity.
He wore a flowing, ancient white garment embroidered with golden runes. His presence possessed both the sharp and noble features of a man and the flawless, statuesque beauty of a god.
His face slowly lifted into the air. His closed eyelids parted heavily. Those eyes were pure white, but right in the center of the whiteness, a faint redness resembling a drop of blood shone.
There was no arrogance in those eyes. No hatred. Fear, anger, pain, or love... There was no trace of any of them. There was only an absolute nothingness, the purest, most unresponsive state of existence.
He was no longer just Cassian. He was a being who had surpassed boundaries, who had passed beyond life and death.
### Charles’s Point of View
As usual, he had spent his day with Toven’s crazy experiments and intense training.
His body was exhausted from fatigue, but his mind was full of thoughts.
Even though it was long past midnight, he was tossing and turning in his bed.
Unable to endure the suffocating feeling inside him any longer, Charles sat up in his bed and walked toward the balcony door with heavy steps. He wanted to get some fresh air, to silence his mind if only a little.
The moment he opened the door and stepped onto the balcony, his breath caught in his throat.
The sky... The sky looked as if it had caught fire. A dark, sickly crimson had swallowed the clouds and stars. But the thing that truly terrified him was that colossal, blood red moon staring at him right from the middle of the sky.
Charles’s hands began to tremble. The moon seemed to be looking not just at the world, but directly into his soul. In that single gaze, it threw all his secrets, all his fears, and how helpless and small a being he was, right into his face.
His knees gave way. He barely held onto the balcony railings. His mouth was left involuntarily wide open, his pupils trembling with fear. As someone who had believed in his own strength and superiority throughout his life, the only thing he felt in the face of this terror in the sky was absolute helplessness.
### Luin’s Point of View
At the summit of the world, on the highest peak of a snowy mountain piercing the clouds, the wind was blowing with a howl. Luin was just sitting on a rock right at the edge of the abyss. He did not even care about the biting cold.
Luin slowly opened his eyes with the red light descending upon his eyelids. The sight he encountered was a painting that resembled the end of the world. The snowy peaks were painted red by the crimson light reflecting from the sky. The giant, bright red moon had opened up in the sky like the eye of a god.
People were probably screaming right now, looking for holes to hide in, thinking the apocalypse had broken out. However, there was neither fear nor surprise on Luin’s face.
His expression was calm. He just watched that magnificent, terrifying, and equally tremendous scenery without blinking. He could feel who was behind this change, whose familiar soul the crimson light was a reflection of.
### Iris’s Point of View
The sound her sword made as it tore through the air was breaking the silence in the courtyard. It was long past midnight, but Iris was not stopping. She was breathless, her red hair was stuck to her forehead from sweat, and her clothes were completely soaked. This was the only way to clear her mind, to silence the relentless anxiety in her heart.
On her shoulder, the strange, tiny bird that had pure flames instead of feathers shifted restlessly. The bird suddenly turned its head toward the sky and let out a shrill sound.
Iris paused in the middle of a move where she swung her sword. She raised her head upward, in the direction the bird was looking.
The crimson light reflected in her green eyes.
The colossal, crimson moon and the reddening sky... The sword in Iris’s hand slipped through her fingers. The heavy steel sword hit the stone floor, making a shrill, ringing sound, but Iris did not even hear it. It was as if all the strength in her body had been drained. Her eyes were locked onto the crimson moon.
A teardrop welling up in the corners of her eyes rolled down her cheek and dripped from her chin onto the ground.
A trembling, barely audible whisper spilled from her lips:
"Cass?..."
### Mary’s Point of View
In the wide and silent bedroom of the duchy, Mary was tossing and turning in her bed.
The whites brought on by the years had mixed into her golden blonde hair. Her body was under luxurious silk covers, but her soul could not find peace and fall asleep. A mother’s heart was connected to her child with invisible bonds, and tonight those bonds were stretching violently, trembling in a painful manner.
The usual silvery moonlight seeping into the room through the window suddenly changed its color. The inside of the room was illuminated by a bright, blood red light leaking through the thick curtains.
Mary leaped out of bed. Without even feeling the need to put anything on, she walked toward the wide window with trembling steps. Her breath was taken away by the scenery beyond the glass. The sky was bleeding like a wound, and that colossal red eye was looking down upon the entire world.
She pressed her hands against the cold glass of the window. Her eyes filled with tears, and she began to tremble violently. Her lips were quivering, the large, indescribable void in her heart was aching. She brought her lips closer to the fog on the glass and whispered silently:
"Cassian..."
### Elanor’s Point of View
The inside of the church was illuminated only by a few faint candlelights. Elanor had been kneeling alone in front of the altar, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes closed, praying for hours. For the forgiveness of sins, for the banishment of darkness, for god’s mercy...
Yet she noticed that ominous light, which seeped in through the windows and painted the depictions of the saints red, even behind her closed eyelids. When she opened her eyes, she saw that the interior of the church had taken on the color of blood.
She stood up in a panic, ran toward the heavy oak doors of the church, and burst outside.
The moment she looked at the sky, her heart felt as if it would stop. What she saw was not divine; that crimson moon, the crimson sky, was a herald that the gates of hell had opened, that the apocalypse had arrived. This was a devil. An ancient demon coming to swallow the world!
Her knees gave way, and she dropped to her knees on the cold and hard stone courtyard. Her entire body was trembling like a leaf. She crossed her arms over her chest, squeezed her eyes shut, and bowed her head.
"Almighty God," she began to beg with sobs, "Protect us... Spare us from this demon, from this bloody eye, from this darkness! Have mercy..." Her voice was cracking from fear, and her prayers were fading away under the silent and unresponsive eye in the sky.
### The Fall of Vorloth
As Vorloth looked at the eight winged divine being in the sky, he was experiencing a feeling he could not comprehend for the first time in his existence.
This was not fear.
In the air, a pure white, flawless sphere appeared right above Cassian in his divine form.
The sphere, at first, was the size of an apple. However, within seconds, it began to grow at an inconceivable speed. It reached a size that would swallow a building, a mountain, transforming into a massive, pure white sun that covered a large portion of the sky. From everywhere in the world, it shone like a second sun under that red sky.
And then, at a speed a thousand times faster than it had grown, it began to collapse inward, to shrink. Its massive mass condensed, compressed, shrunk, and finally reduced down to the size of a single dust particle, completely impossible to even see with the eye.
Time completely stopped for a moment.
And that dust particle exploded.
No sound came out. Not a noise, nor a shockwave. Only a pure, flawless, pure white wave of light... The light spread from Cassian’s center, swallowing the entire North, the mountains, the rivers, the ruins, the clouds, and the atmosphere.
This whiteness, spreading over an area thousands of kilometers in diameter, became the only color in the world for that moment. Even people on the other side of the world could see this absolute whiteness rising on the horizon.
The light passed right through everything. It did not even stir the leaf of a tree. It did not even shift the position of a ruined stone. It was completely harmless to existence, to matter, to nature.
But not to Vorloth.
When the light wave completely faded and vanished seconds later, the world returned to its normal colors.
When looking at the place where Vorloth had stood, nothing was left behind. Not blood, not bone, not ash, nor any trace of mana.
That terrifying entity who broke the rules of the universe had been erased. It was as if someone named Vorloth had never existed in this universe.
Cassian, floating in the sky, lowered his gaze to that emptiness where Vorloth had been. In that tiny red dot within his pure white eyes, there was no sign of victory.
His magnificent white wings closed gently, and Cassian glided downward toward the floor of the crater, as light as a feather. No sound came out when his bare feet touched the soil.
With slow, heavy steps, he walked to that spot where Vorloth had just stood, which now consisted only of empty soil. He stopped. He dropped to one knee as the hems of his ancient white clothes touched the ground.
He slowly raised his right hand and placed it on the bare earth, right at that spot where Vorloth had been erased from existence.
This was not anger felt toward an enemy. This was a farewell, a silent tribute paid to that absolute obstacle that had pushed the boundaries of his existence, forced him beyond death over and over, and ultimately compelled him into this divine awakening. It was the final farewell of two monsters, two anomalies pushed out of the universe, to each other.
Cassian withdrew his hand and slowly stood up. He turned his eyes to the horizon.
And with that gaze, the ground began to shake.
On the empty, ruined terrain in front of Cassian, black, shiny stones coming together from the air and the earth began to rise.
A colossal, gothic, and magnificent castle rose, being built step by step. Its walls reached into the sky, its heavy iron doors creaked open.
Cassian began to walk toward that dark castle.
With the first step he took, those magnificent, massive eight white wings on his back trembled. The wings separated into feathers made of light, blending into the air and vanishing.
On his second step, the ancient, divine white garment covered in golden runes upon him turned to ash and dispersed. It was replaced by those dark, battle worn, tattered black clothes he had been wearing right before his death.
As he entered through the open doors of the castle into the colossal, dim throne room illuminated by torches, his divine, ethereal, and tall adult body began to shrink, his statuesque facial features began to soften. His bones and muscles were reshaping. Step by step, he was shedding his divinity, much like a snake shedding its skin.
As he approached the high, black throne at the end of the hall, his height had shortened, the divine maturity on his face was gone, and the silhouette of an exhausted boy around the age of fourteen to fifteen had returned in its place.
He took the final step and arrived in front of the throne. He turned around and sat on that cold, black throne.
When he slowly opened his eyes, the pure white, soulless eyes of a god were gone; they were replaced by deep and searing blood red eyes bearing the traces of countless battles, pain, and exhaustion within them.
He heavily placed his arms on the stone armrests on either side of the throne. His shoulders slumped.
He took a deep, very deep breath and slowly emptied his lungs.
There was no longer any war. There was no blood. There was no Vorloth. There was only a boy who wanted to rest, who was tired of everything and everyone.
His red eyes slowly closed. His breathing slowed down, settling into a steady rhythm.
On the throne of his silent and dark castle, where no one could disturb him, where everything had ended, Cassian fell into a long, seemingly endless deep sleep.