Zenith Online: Rebirth of the Strongest Player
chapter-555

Aside from Adeia, who could feel nothing other than what the Flame allowed her imprisoned consciousness to feel, everyone stood on the Ravaged Plains, stricken with petrifying fear.

The frightening aura of that impossibly large spectral hand inundated the entire area. The Inheritors found it hard to breathe… and the two remaining Archmasters — Rhaenys and Draegerys — felt unfathomable dread take hold.

Whatever was being summoned, an Archmaster was a pittance before its unquestionable might.

Such ghastly power… it flooded the entire area, somehow contorting the Natural Inheritor's sanctuary.

Composed strictly of malleable energy designed to enhance all that stepped foot within its scope, that flexibility seemed worthless before its infernal and infallible adversary. The Natural Inheritor could feel her grip over her sanctuary slipping, forcibly weakened, decayed, and withered by dark, decrepit energies she failed to gasp.

"What? …W-what is happening?"

The Sacred Inheritor was the first to lose her wits, looking around as the changes seared her mind with sinister, malignant, and virulent emotions. She had tried to close off her empathic abilities, yet it wouldn't listen to her demands.

No, not that it couldn't listen.

She had successfully severed her connection to everything around her. The power radiated from the spectral hand was too invasive. She had zero say in how its presence affected her. Though she was a celestial empath of sorts, the others fared similarly, immobilized with dread until it began destroying their mind.

The destruction began with their understanding, which trickled down in a frightful cascade, attacking what little confidence the Inheritors had mustered in themselves.

Daedric staggered backward. His distraught, trembling eyes shifted from the impossibly large hand that gripped the doorframe, somehow distorting the fabric of darkness as it tightened its grip... to Altair, who should know a thing or two about darkness, shadows, and… sundered reality.

"Aye, shadow boy… what in the hell is happening here? I don't understand! Something is burning through my Innate Ability! Which is retarded because it's a fire itself. How do you burn fire?!"

Altair looked at Daedric, but not exactly.

Without eyes, it was difficult to say where precisely his attention was placed. Still, he pointed his face in Daedric's direction, offering nothing but a wan smile.

"I don't know. I couldn't begin to tell you what's happened. The darkness is… submitting. Cowering before a might it can't contest against. At least, not that darkness."

At times, the darkness seemed like a curtain made of fine silk… but mostly, it looked like glasses fracturing beneath mounds of pressure.

That pressure became an immolating heat, crimson, and black like it had come from the bleeding heart of the abyssal depths. The hand devoured — destroyed everything.

The scenery before them was easily understood, for it was stark and dire even compared to their earlier grim circumstances. Destruction was acting without constraints to impede its influence.

Such was the understanding that everyone grasped.

Kieran stared at everything in wordless consternation. More than shock or disbelief, he felt angered and vengeful.

Unlike everyone else, Kieran knew very well what was coming. The Flame told him precisely what was appearing from the Place of Bane… from beneath the void itself… from within the Abyss.

The Hollow Body of Ruin.

While the Flame would not tell him who or what this Hollow Body of Ruin was, it did reveal that it was his birthright. It was the reason he was given the name Valdu.

What was the Flame's Valor? Was it the wars it continually talked about inside the Pit of the Culling, Temple of War and Flame, or across the Lands of Ruin?

No, the Flame's aspiration had never rested in this plane.

Did the Flame care for courage or heroism? Not at all. From how the Flame denigrated the Endless of War and what its followers stood for, drawing them here to have them sacrificed in the end, it was evident the Flame despised their tenets.

What was the Flame's Valor then?

Kieran saw it as the Flame's courage to stick to its belief and allow nothing to detract from its primary objective. In all of its endeavors, its one goal had been to consummate its marriage and undo its divorce. All the Flame knew was ruin.

And now, Ruin… at least the Shell of it was appearing before his eyes.

Kieran squinted, barely turning his head back to the Inheritors but mainly looking at the Flame in its hollow eye sockets.

Shell…

The Flame had called him a Shell and emphasized its desire for him to remain that way. In Kieran's opinion, a Shell sounded very much like a Vain, who had lost all that made them… them.

To most, becoming a Vain would seem like everything had been lost, becoming the wielder of nothing. According to Agatha, that was the process of growing Vain.

Losing that which could occupy and develop Sense.

The Vain were no one and nothing, without an identity to claim. But Kieran remembered something incredibly odd about the Flame. Many would view becoming Vain as the most unbearable punishment there was.

That's why there were many records of Masters, Archmasters, and likely even beyond that ending their lives once their "identity" had been plundered and eviscerated.

But with the Flame, positives were negatives, and negatives were its positives. It existed contrary to all else, drawing power from the negatives as it did with Significance, converting it into its seemingly unknown inverse.

Grasping a fragment of the way the Flame thought made Kieran shudder.

If this were all true, it truly found beauty in tragedy and derived pleasure from pain. In that same vein, a Vain would be invaluable to the Flame.

"Why do you tarry, my child? Are you not excited to accept your fate? You… who have been born and destined for this all along? You were a child of misfortune, but trash, too, can be treasure. Ah, and I treasure you. Isn't this… amazing?"

'No… it's not amazing.'

Kieran grimaced, feeling the restriction around his body dissipate. He could move freely, yet he remained still, watching as a second impossibly large spectral hand grabbed the opposite side of the door frame.

A reality-sundering groan shook the Wailing Sierra and Ravaged Plains all the same, the calamitous tremor spreading far into the distance. The entire Ruined Bastion seemed to shudder violently, beginning to split in half as the Hollow Body of Ruin wrenched its hands.

Within the dark, Kieran saw eyes far worse than a Fiend.

That gaze alone could destroy, and it shook his soul, rattling his Realm. Most importantly, when the gaze met his Aspect occupying part of the Realm, a catastrophic explosion akin to a nuclear bomb erupted in Kieran's mind.

He gripped his head, blood pouring from his eyes, nose, and mouth in an endless stream. The Hollow Body of Ruin wanted him… and he could sense it from its terrifying Will… it would stop at nothing to have his Realm.

The Inheritors noticed the strange development with Kieran. Altair attempted to walk through the Night, but something had grown terribly wrong with the area.

A rift into the traversable dark would not open!

Meanwhile, the Sacred Inheritor cradled her head and shrieked in unendurable agony.

The world droned around Kieran, but he could make out faint, distorted screams in the background. Everything had gone to shit. And the Ruined Bastion continued splitting apart, creating a massive rift through reality.

That, too, was influenced by the spectral hands.

It wouldn't be long before the entity ripped the portal apart and stepped into the Boundary.