The pressure remained.
Incarnations writhed on the ground, bodies trembling in silent agony. Even the Erwalds could barely move.
"What the hell is he doing here?" Icard thought, his teeth clenched as his body shook under the strain.
He could withstand the pressure on his mind only because of his Frost Sovereign title attribute, Celestial Reach.
But even then, it felt like his thoughts were being dragged through ice.
This was not sothing he had ever imagined needing to endure now.
The frost sovereign’s attribute was far beyond their current scope, sothing ant for a much later stage. And yet, sothing even beyond that had just arrived.
So it could not be helped.
"Teleth?" Katar murmured.
Though pressed down, the snow cat was not as suppressed as the other Erwalds.
His icy eyes stayed fixed on the vague figure forming ahead of them. The channel was Wester’s frozen corpse, his very essence burning away as black and white energy poured from it.
The body was being consud rapidly, reduced to nothing more than fuel.
All that ford was a vague outline.
To the others, it looked like a god trying to take shape.
Icard clenched his jaw harder.
’How the hell is he able to do that? He can channel his presence through Wester?’ he thought, tension coiling in his chest.
The outline shifted within the surging energy, light and darkness tearing through the remains of Wester’s physical form.
Then it spoke.
"You foolish creatures."
The sound was not loud, yet it vibrated through the air, heavy and layered, as if multiple voices were speaking at once.
The ruins itself seed to shudder, as the rubbles beneath their feet trembled in response.
"So you have managed to kill my most promising incarnation before he could even begin."
His presence flared again. Sothing like rage rippled through the pressure, even though the voice itself remained eerily calm.
Other Erwalds cowered, their forms pressed flatter against the ground.
However, Katar was not.
The snow cat dug his claws into the earth, fur bristling. With effort, he raised his head, staring up at Teleth’s towering outline.
His jaw tightened.
"What do you think you are doing?" he growled, forcing the words out through the crushing pressure.
"You are about to interfere with the celestial events directly. Aren’t there dire consequences, even for Keepers?"
Teleth’s vague form stilled for a mont.
Then he scoffed.
"Are you trying to threaten ? A re Erwald!" he said, then the pressure surged.
"I, who walks a path toward the realm of the outer gods. Who are you to threaten with the celestial events? Who are you to think I fear Vokus?"
The pressure surged even more now.
Katar’s head was forced down despite his resistance. A low grunt tore from his throat as he struggled against it, but Teleth’s re presence was too overwhelming.
It felt as though the Keeper’s focus had narrowed, bearing down on him alone.
"I will erase all of you and claim your essences," Teleth continued calmly. "I have no use for them, but I shall gift the next incarnation I choose."
Katar tried to rise again, rage flickering in his eyes, but the force bearing on him slamd him back down.
A dark, purplish energy began to gather before Teleth’s vague form, condensing into a pulsing mass.
"He is really going to attack?" Icard thought, dread flooding through him.
A sliver of a Keeper’s pure power could erase them, perhaps even wipe out their entire vicinity.
"Damn it. Where are they?" Katar grunted. "Before he destroys us all."
The energy kept swelling. As it did, they could all see their deaths nearing them at a great pace...
It continued for so ti, until sothing else arrived, very much abruptly.
There, space itself warped as a large black ring suddenly materialized above them, hovering in the air.
It was wide, a perfect circle nearly four ters across, its edges rippling like liquid shadow.
The mont it ford, a violent gust of wind burst outward from it, slamming through the area in every direction.
Icard’s eyes widened.
"A black ring?" he muttered.
From it, blackness spilled outward.
Then, from the center of the ring, sothing fell.
A figure of pure void descended, wrapped in dense, crushing darkness, with a presence enough to counter Teleth’s overwhelming pressure.
It looked as though it were clad in an armor-like shell of blackness, a silhouette carved from the absence of light itself.
The void energy swallowed at Teleth’s presence, lifting the suffocating weight just enough for the incarnations below to draw ragged breaths again.
"A black herald?" Icard muttered, awe threading through his voice.
The black herald stood as a singular, absolute entity. Not large, not small, but heavy in a way that bent the air around it.
Its form was featureless where details should have been, like a silhouette cut out of reality. Where it stood, light thinned, sound dulled, and even Teleth’s presence seed to lose definition.
Teleth paused.
"Tch. Did you just arrive now only to interrupt again? You insignificant creatures!" he said, fury seeping into his tone.
The black herald did not reply.
He simply raised his right hand and a black scepter ford within his grasp, forged from the sa void that cloaked his body.
As he lifted the scepter, the black ring above expanded, widening until it encompassed both Teleth and the herald.
More energy poured out.
Black currents lashed outward as a cylindrical, transparent domain of darkness ford, stretching from the ring down to the ground where they stood.
Greyish, geotric patterns flickered across the surface of the cylinder, like ancient runes etched into glass.
Then, within that space, a portal-like distortion appeared, rippling up the length of the domain.
Within that sealed space, Teleth’s power faltered.
His presence could not dominate there, not when it was only a fragnt of himself, too weak to stand against a black herald.
The domain darkened further. The space inside began to distort, as if gravity itself had been inverted.
Particles of light, fragnts of energy, even the faint remnants of Wester’s essence were drawn upward, spiraling toward the ring above.
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