Chapter 248: Chapter 241: A crueler one
[Present]
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The mories resurfaced like festering wounds, ripping open the scars, drowning him in a tornt he could never escape. No matter how long the centuries dragged on, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that he had surpassed grief, that he had turned it into strength, it always ca back to this. Calliope. Aviva. His wife. His daughter. The ones who had given his existence aning. The ones who had turned the bleak, hollow void he once called life into sothing warm, whole.
Now they were nothing more than ashes in his mind, fleeting whispers of a life stolen from him, faces burned into his mory on that cruel, rciless day—the day she took them. Octavia. That Goddess. That wretched deity.
And now, fate had the audacity to mock him.
Aelfric’s teeth clenched together so hard it was a wonder they didn’t shatter under the force. His fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms. Before him stood a vision so similar, so painfully identical.
The sa ghostly white hair, the sa blazing red eyes, the sa inhumanly beautiful, perfect face, so pristine. Yet, despite the unmistakable resemblance, there were differences—subtle distortions in the mirage. But none of that mattered. None of that could erase the truth.
This thing before him bore her likeness.
And worst of all, it was grinning.
A smirk carved its way across those delicate, rosy lips, neither cold nor indifferent like Octavia’s, but sothing far worse. Amused. He could see it, the amusent, the sheer, unfiltered enjoynt, the revelry in his suffering, the sick delight at the sight of his agony.
Mikoto Yukio was mocking him.
"You know..." The boy’s voice carried an infuriatingly casual tone, the words spilling from his delicate lips as if this were all just a mild inconvenience to him. His slight fra, wrapped in that black armor, barely seed to hold itself together after his earlier wound, yet there was no hesitation, no sign of weakness. He refused to show even an inch of vulnerability. "I can hazard a guess. That bitch Octavia probably either killed them or took ’em away from you, is that right?"
A snort, a mocking, dismissive little snort. His lips curled further, his grin widening ever so slightly, pink against his pale skin, like a doll smirking at its own private joke.
Aelfric’s rage boiled over, his breath ragged. "You know nothing...!" he snarled.
Mikoto tilted his head, exhaling slowly. His small, gauntleted hand rested on his hip, his stance relaxed, as if Aelfric’s suffering were nothing more than an inconvenience.
"Is that right?" The boy’s voice was still mocking. "Well, that’s not good enough. Not even close." He sighed, his weight shifting slightly, his expression twisting into sothing akin to disappointnt. "I expected a much better reason. Co on, at least act like a villain and not so tragic, misguided hero!"
A chuckle.
"Honestly, you dumbass," Mikoto continued. "The whole point of revenge is to go after the one responsible, you know? I an, going after her spawns? Seriously?" His voice dipped with scorn. "Are you that much of a coward?"
Aelfric’s body tensed, his fingers twitching at his sides. The tendrils around him rippled, shuddering in response to his rising anger.
"I want to make your Goddess suffer, boy." The words slithered from his tongue, venomous. His rage twisted his features into sothing ugly. "I know how much she loves her few spawns." The words ca out like a spit of acid. "When Octavia ca to the realms, she brought along with her seven souls. Souls of her siblings. Before Death could claim them, she sent them through the cycle of reincarnation."
Mikoto blinked once, then twice, his expression unreadable. Then, after a mont, he tilted his head, letting out a slow sigh.
He was not surprised, it was as if he knew.
"Right. Including
and Lucinda, that would be seven spawns of Octavia..." His voice was thoughtful—before it twisted back into that ever-present mockery. "How foolish."
A smirk.
A shake of his head.
"Doesn’t make it any less pathetic."
Aelfric’s rage boiled further.
"You’re telling ," Mikoto continued, "that after all that effort, after all that painstaking, grand revenge plotting, the only spawn of hers you managed to do anything to was Alyssia?" He gave an exaggerated sigh. "All that hard work... for what?"
"You believe you can save her soul?" Aelric scoffed.
"Why not?" Mikoto’s smiled on. "You saw what I could do with magic. Barring Octavia, nobody cos close to
in terms of magic. There are different planes of reality, right? The soul residing in the ninth one."
Aelfric’s breath stilled.
"What? How—?"
"I did a bit of studying," Mikoto said lightly. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand, as if this knowledge was nothing. "When I used Arcane Ascendance, my form was too much for this plane to handle, so it was in the process of being forcibly pushed to the twelfth plane. I passed by the others in that mont, including the ninth one." He gave a lazy shrug. "Get what I’m saying? It’d be a simple thing to create a physical body for Alyssia and connect it to the ninth plane before I push her soul there. Hell, even if you destroy her soul, I can still recover her. You already lost."
Aelfric’s body jerked, his tendrils, writhing, reacting to his seething hatred.
"Such hubris..." he growled, the words barely escaping through clenched teeth. "I will kill you long before you accomplish such a thing!"
The tendrils lashed.
Mikoto didn’t flinch.
"Soone’s getting angry, huh?" His voice was still so sickly-sweet. "For soone supposedly so old, you sure get riled up easy." His eyes narrowed. "That’s no fun."
Aelfric’s rage only grew further—Mikoto was everything he loathed, everything that mocked him, everything that ripped at the wounds he had carried for so long, the boy’s expression never faltering, never wavering, never losing that infuriating amusent as if Aelfric’s very existence, his suffering, his rage, was sothing to be laughed at and yet, beneath the surface, beneath that smirk, beneath that feigned air of superiority, there was sothing else—sothing far more dangerous than arrogance, sothing that made Aelfric’s body twitch, sothing that made his breath hitch for just the slightest fraction of a mont.
Mikoto believed what he said, he truly believed in his ability to rip a soul from the clutches of the ninth plane, to defy even Death itself, to undo what had already been done, he believed it with such absolute conviction that it suffocated the air itself and for the briefest, most infinitesimal mont, Aelfric felt sothing he had not felt in a long, long ti—doubt.
But then he clenched his fists, his teeth grinding together, his fury rekindling with a vengeance, obliterating the intrusive thought, suffocating the whisper of uncertainty, replacing it with sothing far more familiar, sothing that burned through his veins like a searing brand.
Rage.
"You think you’re invincible, don’t you?" Aelfric’s voice was slow. "You think your power makes you untouchable. You think your arrogance, your belief in yourself makes you sothing greater, sothing that stands above even Death." He exhaled. "You are a child, blind, naive, and yet you wear that damnable expression, that mocking grin, as if you hold dominion over things far beyond your reach."
Aelfric felt his lips curl further, the air around him shuddering as sothing began to shift, sothing vast, a presence that made the world seem small—the ground trembled.
It was subtle at first, the faintest of vibrations rippling beneath their feet and then it grew, intensified.
Mikoto’s eyes flickered, just for a mont, just long enough for him to notice it—the shift in the air, the unnatural pull of sothing forming, sothing materializing, and then he saw it—bones.
Monstrous bones, their surfaces white, their shapes, contorting, assembling themselves, rising behind Aelfric.
Mikoto pieced together fragnts of knowledge, recalling words from Lyra’s explanations—Aelfric could wield a portion of the Bringer of Death’s power and if that was the case, then—
The Dragon of the End.
Of course.
Mikoto eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he watched—the bones continued to form, twisting together in synchronization, snapping into place with a sound that was sickeningly organic, the size of the structure quickly becoming impossible to ignore, the ribcage alone stretching high into the sky, a spine that coiled, wings forming in uneven segnts, their fras impossibly large, the skull manifested, the mont it did, it snapped into place at the towering peak of the forming mass.
And then ca the flesh.
Dark tendrils of muscle and ligant slithered into existence, wrapping around the bone structure in a slow process, veins forming beneath the surface.
Then the scales.
Darkness solidified, hardening into black, layer upon layer.
And yet, despite its sheer, monstrous presence, despite the suffocating weight of its existence, Mikoto imdiately noted one thing—
It was lifeless.
Its hollow sockets remained empty. Its form, its movent, its presence lacked the one thing that made creatures of this world whole.
A soul.
Aelfric stood beneath the towering behemoth, his breath now steady, his gaze never leaving Mikoto, not even for a second, his expression sowhere between hatred and sothing else.
"You understand now, don’t you?" Aelfric’s voice was quiet.
Mikoto tilting his head just slightly.
"So this is your trump card?" His voice was still calm. "A corpse of a dragon that doesn’t even have the least bit of life?"
Aelfric’s lips curled.
"This is Death’s will."
Mikoto’s smirk widened.
"Death’s will, huh? Then why does it feel so empty?"
Aelfric smirked, his anger quelling, slowly he raised his hand, his fingers outstretched, his palm open as if cradling sothing.
His smirk widened, "I’m not done yet."
The air seed to shudder, then a glow.
It was faint at first, a flicker of sothing not yet fully ford, but then it grew. The space above Aelfric’s palm rippled, and then the ember of light exploded into a deep, searing red.
Mikoto’s eyes widened just a fraction, not in fear but in realization.
His gaze locked onto it, onto the swirling, pulsating mass of energy, onto the form that was beginning to take shape, to solidify.
A soul. A deep, rich, burning red, hovering above Aelfric’s palm like a beating heart. And then, before he could react, before he could form the words, before he could stop it—
The soul moved.
It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t gradual. It wasn’t sothing that lingered, that hesitated, that waited for the mont to be right.
It raced.
Straight into the dragon.
The mont it connected, the mont the swirling red mass of existence collided with the lifeless, soulless husk of the beast—
Everything changed.
It moved.
Not the slow, cumberso shifting of an empty husk, not the awkward, chanical motion of sothing being puppeteered—
No.
This was different.
This was alive, the black scales that had once coated its massive form shimred as if shedding sothing old.
A new color erged.
A searing, blinding white, so pure it almost hurt to look at, so bright it cast a glow against the darkened sky, so impossibly pristine that it seed like an affront to the nature of what it had once been.
The eyes.
The once-empty sockets, the hollow voids that had stared out into nothingness, they burned a deep red.
Mikoto clicked his tongue, his teeth gritting just slightly in annoyance, he already knew. Even before Aelfric spoke, even before the words left his lips.
He already knew.
But that didn’t make it any less irritating.
"That dragon wasn’t much as it was," Aelfric’s spoke, his gaze locked onto Mikoto with sothing close to triumph. "But now it is on par with the Greater Dragons. And you know exactly why, right?"
The words were not spoken in arrogance, they were not spoken in boast. And Mikoto knew he wasn’t lying.
His fingers twitched at his sides—
Irritation.
Mikoto had anticipated a lot, had prepared for worse, had already accounted for the fact that Aelfric had access to sothing beyond conventional logic, beyond reason, but this—
"Tch."
He hated being right, the dragon roared, it was a shockwave of raw force had shattered the atmosphere.
Mikoto’s smirk had long since faded.
("That’s Alyssia’s soul, that thing can use magic now.") Things were not looking good, that dragon was the ultimate paradox.
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