I woke with a sharp breath. The infirmary ceiling stared back at , cracked and dim, like it had been watching the whole ti. Sweat clung to my skin, cold and sour, and for a second, I swore I could still feel that heartbeat echoing under mine.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
The thought that sothing was living inside my soul made my stomach twist. The idea alone made my skin crawl.
I pressed a hand to my chest anyway. One heartbeat. Just one.
Good.
I needed a distraction. Sothing to ground . So I pulled up my status window.
And there it was.
Nyxian Dirge – The Song of Death:
Rank: ???
A forbidden art whispered into existence at the beginning of ti. Ten verses, three truths. Life. Death. Existence. To master it is to master the cycle of creation and its inevitable unraveling.
First Forms
The first chords of the Dirge. Mortal hands can wield them, but every strike strains the soul.
First form - Breath of Renewal – A stance that channels life force into stamina; every movent revitalizes the user, reducing exhaustion and allowing battles of attrition.
Second form - Pulse trance – Infuses the blade with the rhythm of life, amplifying reaction speed and enhancing physical strength in sync with the heartbeat.
Third form - Vital Bloom – Each swing releases a surge of restorative energy, nding shallow wounds of the user or allies touched by the aura of the strike. The more fluid the motion, the stronger the healing.
Fourth form - Hollow Thrust – The first taste of death. A piercing thrust that leaves a conceptual void within the target, severing their connection to mana, stamina, or even breath for a brief but crippling instant.
Second Forms
Fifth form - Ashen Dirge – A strike that withers whatever it touches, flesh, steel, even magic and mana, reducing them to ash
Sixth form - Sepulcher Wail – The stance manifests the sound of death itself. Every swing releases a wave of soul-crushing resonance, forcing enemies’ bodies to believe they are already corpses. Bones fracture, hearts stutter, and weaker wills are extinguished instantly.
Seventh form - Elysian Overgrowth – A paradoxical stance of overwhelming vitality. Strikes unleash rampant life force that overruns enemies’ bodies, forcefully growing flesh, bone, or even tumors inside them until they burst apart. Against allies, it blooms into radiant healing that can regrow lost limbs and destroy curses.
Final Forms
The last verses. Not ant for mortals. Not ant for gods. These stances sing of endings too vast to comprehend. To touch them is to risk the annihilation of all that is, was and will be.
Eighth Form - Ananke Sever – The blade cuts inevitability itself. Strikes undo "what must happen", erasing prophecies, inevitabilities, or absolute laws. No shield, spell, or destiny can claim certainty against this cut.
Ninth form - Cosmic Requiem – A stance that drags all nearby existence into the blade’s arc. Stars dim, ti bends, cause and effect collapse into a single point. When released, the cut does not travel forward, it erupts everywhere at once.
Final form - The Void Psalm – The final note of the Dirge. One stroke, and whatever is touched is erased not just from space, not just from ti, but from the concept of being. Entire civilizations, worlds, or even universes could vanish, their mory scoured from the multiverse.
System Note: [Only the First Four Forms are unlocked. Attempting higher stances risks catastrophic backlash, soul erosion, identity collapse, or annihilation.]
---
My hands trembled. Not from fatigue. Not from the sweat still slick on my palms.
"This is so unbelievably overpowered." My voice was so quiet, you could barely hear it.
This... this wasn’t a sword art. It was a funeral hymn for reality. A dirge so heavy it felt like my soul should shatter just reading it.
And soone, my so-called mother, had given it to .
Why? Why ?
Even if she truly thought she was my mother, this was beyond charity, beyond kindness. It was like handing a starving child the seed of a black hole.
"...What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" I whispered, voice breaking between awe and dread.
Bastard was silent. For once, even his smug existence seed uncertain. The hush stretched between us heavy, uncertain.
Then his voice finally ca, low and almost hesitant.
{Sebastian... how in the abyss did you get sothing like that?}
I stared at the glowing script in front of , my chest tightening. Part of wanted to explain, to dump everything on him right there. But there was still one more thing I needed to see.
"...I’ll tell you," I muttered under my breath, forcing my tone steady. "But not yet. Not until I check sothing else."
{Sothing else?} Bastard’s curiosity flickered in my head.
I nodded faintly, though he couldn’t see it. "Yeah. The egg."
My focus shifted, pulling open the final notification I had ignored until now, the gift she had pressed into my chest along with the sword art. My heart pounded as the description unfolded before my eyes.
[Soul Egg: ???]
A dormant vessel of potential, bound to your soul. By supplying it with mana daily, the egg will incubate until it hatches.
Upon hatching, it will form into your Soul Beast, a creature that reflects the depths of your essence, and simultaneously your Soul Weapon, a living armant bound only to you.
Note: Growth and form are entirely dependent on the user’s soul and the mana supplied. The result may vary from useless to catastrophic.
---
I stared at the glowing text, brow twitching. A beast and a weapon in one, tied directly to my soul? That was... sothing.
But compared to Nyxian Dirge? Compared to a sword art that could tear apart life, death, and existence itself?
This felt almost ta.
Not worthless, no, I’d be a complete idiot to dismiss it. A soul-bound weapon was nothing short of legendary. But it didn’t shake the way the sword art did. The egg felt like potential. Like a gamble. Sothing I’d nurture and wait on.
The sword art, though... that was different. That was a guillotine hanging above the world.
And sohow, the goddess had handed both.
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