A Journey Unwanted N Chapter 267 - 260: The first

Chapter 267: Chapter 260: The first

[???]

As an Ancestor, Britha had witnessed the passing of eras — entire epochs. She had fought through ti, standing against beings so formidable that their nas warped history: from Dragons to Gods. She had faced them all, battered and bloodied, and erged victorious or at the very least unbroken.

Many of those foes had been terrible in their might, but even in the chaos of those immortal battles, she had always, always persevered — not through reckless strength alone, but through a foundation built upon honor.

Honor above all else. Honor even when her body was shattered, when many fell screaming around her. Honor even when she led dood armies against The Keepers of Order themselves — a folly she undertook not for victory, but because the principle demanded it.

Her battles had been legendary and yet, here and now, in this barren, deadened world where even the air felt stale and cracked, where the ground bore no grass, no life— she could not help but deadpan with her solitary eye at the opponent fate had placed before her.

Aerinon.

That was his na.

He stood idly, he too, bore an eyepatch, and the eye that remained visible — a pit of endless black — lacked any glint of life, of concern, of ambition. It was the look of soone completely untouched by the gravity of the mont.

Ever at her side, Naga — her faithful companion — loosed a growl of frustration, teeth flashing.

She could not bla him.

Aegraxes had taken care to note certain participants as particularly dangerous — those who could not be allowed to go unchallenged. The Inheritor of the God of Darkness, Aerinon, was among those very few.

When Britha had sought out to intercept him, she had envisioned a battle of cataclysmic scale: a clash so devastating it would rip apart the ground they stood upon, a storm of violence so absolute that the scars of it would mar this already broken world for eternity.

Yet, what she had found instead...

...was this boy. This apathetic boy.

("Ah... this is problematic...") Aerinon mused inwardly, his expression betraying not even a flicker of the thought, both his hands tucked deep into his coat pockets as though he were rely enduring an inconvenience rather than preparing for a mortal duel. ("Why is it always like this? I strive for a simple, unremarkable existence, and yet troubleso individuals find

regardless. An Ancestor... and a Divine Beast, no less. How profoundly inconvenient, I suppose.")

His gaze, as hollow and dispassionate as sothing dying, drifted lazily across the horizon — a horizon littered with wreckage, the occasional plu of black smoke still rising weakly from distant battles. The world had fallen quiet, save for the low groan of wind scraping across the area.

Britha, her patience thinning, took a step forward. Her voice carried easily across the space between them.

"You seem... remarkably unenthusiastic, given that this is a battle ant to end in Death," she said.

Aerinon did not so much as blink.

"There is nothing to be enthusiastic about," he said blandly. "Battle is a tireso practice. Repetitive and predictable."

Britha’s eye narrowed, an action that would have made lesser warriors falter.

"Even so," she replied, "your abilities render my defensive magic near-aningless. You possess every opportunity for victory, and yet you squander it. Are all humans as foolish as you?"

The insult was barbed, but Aerinon rely shrugged, his disinterest imperable.

"Perhaps," he murmured. "Or perhaps wisdom lies in knowing which battles are worth one’s full strength." There was no pride in his voice.

Britha exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. "And yet," she said slowly, "you have not seen fit to force

to reveal the true depths of my strength either, have you? You hold back — just as I hold back."

A slight, almost imperceptible tilt of Aerinon’s head acknowledged her point.

"I suppose," he said, as if even agreeing was a chore.

Britha’s muscles tensed, "Then you cannot expect

to give you the honor of my full might," she growled. "It would be an insult to my very code — to take advantage of an opponent unwilling to truly fight."

Her hand moved to gesture, motioning toward Naga, who now stood alert at her side, a threatening snarl building in his throat.

"But make no mistake. I have summoned my partner — my soul’s other half. Naga and I are as one. If that does not speak of my seriousness, then perhaps you are content to spit on my honor."

Aerinon’s eye flickered with sothing —a kind of acknowledgnt.

"I suppose not," he said, his voice even softer now. "Even I understand... to insult such conviction would be needlessly cruel."

He shifted slightly, hands finally sliding free from his pockets.

"Very well," he began, and then, abruptly, he stopped mid-sentence, his gaze wrenching upwards toward the barren sky.

Sothing had caught his attention.

Britha imdiately followed his gaze, her single red eye narrowing to a slit. At her side, Naga let out a warning bark, his massive fra shifting into a protective stance.

The sky twisted upon itself as if so colossal force pressed against it from the other side, distorting the fabric of it like a pane of thin glass about to shatter.

Britha’s eye sharpened further, her every sense screaming caution.

The distortion thickened — dark veins spider-webbing through the atmosphere — and with a silent convulsion, the sky fractured. Breaking open to reveal sothing beyond — sothing so foreign it defied every law of nature, every instinct of survival.

Beyond the ruined sky lay a realm of pure darkness, vast and suffocating. It was not an absence of light but a tangible, living blackness, roiling like a sea. Within it, twisted structures could be seen — cyclopean towers built from so alien geotry that hurt the eye to comprehend, arcs and spirals bending in ways normal perception could barely process.

And from that open wound in the skies, there descended an enormous pillar of shadow, vast enough to drown cities, vast enough to swallow the horizon. It plunged downward in a slow fall — thick and viscous — the air groaning under the strain of its approach.

The ground beneath Britha’s boots cracked, long splinters spidering outward. The sky wept black tears as fragnts of the dark pillar began to break apart, splitting into hundreds — no, thousands — of smaller globs of writhing blackness.

Each glob moved fast, scattering across the dead landscape in every direction. So streaked far into the distance, while others fell closer, surrounding Britha, Aerinon, and Naga in a tightening circle.

The globs landed with wet thuds against the ground. And from each of them, sothing began to rise. The creatures that erged had no definitive shape — no recognizable heads, limbs, or torsos — only vague impressions of form. Yet around each amorphous entity, violet-glowing symbols began to pulse and shift — strange runes of an alien origin that moved and rearranged themselves like veins.

They glided, crawled and slithered — so towering over them, others scuttling low to the ground.

"Is this your doing?" Britha questioned, though her tone lacking true surprise.

Aerinon turned his head slightly, he shook his head once.

"No," he said simply. "These creatures... they are of the Abyss. Born from it. But they are not mine to command — nor would I choose to claim such a horror."

Even as he spoke, his singular onyx eye tracked the advancing monstrosities. Britha exhaled through her nose, a sound almost like a snort, though there was no amusent in it.

"I see..." she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Then this would be the first Calamity."

Aerinon’s brow furrowed — a subtle crease, but on one so perpetually emotionless, it was tantamount to a shout. He turned his full attention toward her now, his eye narrowing slightly.

"This early?" he questioned. "You do not seem... all that concerned."

He tilted his head, studying her like one might study a puzzle missing too many pieces.

"From what I understand," he began, "That demon known as Aegraxes is the architect behind this coming ruin. And yet you—" he gestured to her, "—and the rest of you Ancestors have stand by his side. Now you stand here, with the realm threatening to fall to ash and rot around us, and you wear that calm like a piece of clothing. Are you truly so hollow inside that you can watch an entire universe bleed out and feel nothing?"

For a heartbeat, there was only silence between them — heavy and suffocating. The monsters continued their slow advance, and yet neither moved.

"It is no longer my place," she said simply, almost gently. "This era," she continued, "is not mine to command. My duty... my right to act... ended long ago. Even if I wished to interfere, even if I clawed against the tide until my fingers bled, Aegraxes..." — she shook her head slowly, her wild yellow-blonde hair whipping around her— "he is much too far gone. Too entangled in his own madness. To oppose him now would be to wage war against inevitability itself."

Aerinon said nothing at first. He simply stared at her. Then, finally, a sound escaped him — a low, humorless breath that might have once been a laugh but now only resembled disgust.

"How irkso," he muttered bitterly. "To have lived so long... fought so hard... only to choose surrender in the final hour."

He raised an arm then, the air around his hand trembling slightly as a pale force began to gather. Slowly, he turned his eye skyward, staring into the wound torn open above them — the gaping hole that bled endless darkness into this forsaken world.

"...To tear apart an entire realm... To let it rot from within... all for what?" The words did not seem directed at Britha, nor at the creatures, it was a question hurled into the Abyss — and he fully expected no answer.

"I am no saint," Aerinon continued, "I will never claid to walk so virtuous, gilded path. But even I..." — his eye darkened — "Cannot fathom the stupidity. The profound idiocy, I suppose. To destroy a realm simply because you have lost your way to erase an entire history because you are too weak to endure your own failures."

Aerinon’s gaze flickered to the swirling mass of monstrosities converging on them.

"It is not righteousness, it is not vengeance, it is not even madness. It’s rely foolish"

The mont the last word left his mouth, the atmosphere seed to freeze solid. The air collapsed inward toward his hand. At the center of his palm, a small, pitch-black orb materialized. Tiny at first, no larger than a pebble — but it throbbed once, a deep and ominous pulse, and then lines, thin and sharp, erupted outward from it.

The black lines extended faster than thought, slicing through the area. Each filant was so fine it was almost invisible.

The first creature lunged at him — an oily mass of limbs and teeth — but before it even crossed half the distance, it was instantly bisected, its body splitting apart, violet light bleeding from the perfect cut.

Another shrieked, trying to veer away — but a thread caught it across the midsection, and it too unraveled like wet parchnt, falling into formless scraps that dissolved into nothingness before they even hit the ground.

One after another, the abyssal monsters were reduced to nothing more than severed things.

The black lines moved absurdly fast until the entire imdiate field around Aerinon and Britha was carved clean in a perfect, expanding radius. The ground trembled, rocks and dirt were flung skyward in chaotic fountains. The wind howled through the newly made chasms.

Naga snarled viciously at the encroaching darkness, muscles tensing — but Britha, with a single hand on the beast’s side, stayed the creature. Her lone eye remained locked on Aerinon, unreadable.

Because in that mont — watching him cut down the horrors of the Abyss as if they were less than insects — she realized sothing.

The last remnants of the creatures scread, high and broken, as the final filants of darkness lanced through them, leaving only tatters of black mist behind. The pitch-black orb in Aerinon’s hand slowly dissolved, its work done. Aerinon lowered his hand. He did not look victorious, nor did he even look satisfied.

"Don’t misunderstand, I do not fight to save this place. I do not fight for its people. I fight..." He paused, staring down at his hand, as if seeing sothing invisible staining his skin. "...Because even if this world is worthless..."

He clenched his fist slowly.

"...even I have sothing I want to protect."