Greed’s revelation hung in the cold, dead air of Northwatch like the smoke from a funeral pyre. The wind howled across the barren landscape, but Klaus didn’t hear it. His mind was a storm of connecting dots, each realization striking harder than the last.
He stared at the endless sea of black ash, but he wasn’t seeing the destruction. He was seeing the architecture of a trap three thousand years or more in the making.
"It was all part of Arkadius’s plan, wasn’t it?" Klaus asked aloud, his voice raw. He wasn’t speaking to Greed or Dudu; he was shouting at the universe itself, demanding an answer from the silent, frozen sky.
Dudu shifted uneasily, its massive claws digging into the scorched earth. Through the ister Bond, the dragon felt the surging anger and cold fear radiating from its master—a volatile mix that tasted like ozone and blood. It let out a low, questioning growl, its golden eyes fixed on Klaus.
{Probably,} Greed’s ntal voice cut in, devoid of its usual mocking lilt. {None of us Arkdieu knew the full scope of his plan. We were promised freedom and dominion. We didn’t know we were just batteries waiting to be recharged. Except, perhaps, for Gluttony and Lust. They were always... closer to him.}
Klaus’s hands clenched into fists. "So what he truly wants is for to hunt down the other Apostles. He wants to kill them, not to save the world, but to absorb his celestial essence—the essence he used to create the Arkdieu system in the first place."
The logic was terrifyingly perfect. Arkadius had shattered himself to create the system, embedding fragnts of his power into the Sins. By forcing Klaus—the vessel of his Ego—to reabsorb those fragnts, he wasn’t just gathering power. He was reassembling his original, Celestial self.
"And at the sa ti, I absorb each Arkdieu fragnt bound to them..." Klaus whispered, the final piece of the puzzle locking into place with a sickening click. "What if I am the one dying and being absorbed instead? What if every ti I take a fragnt, I’m just replacing a piece of Klaus Lionhart with a piece of Arkadius?"
{Aren’t you a bit too slow, runt?} Greed scoffed, though the edge of the insult was dull. {Do you really think that in the thousands of years this scam has been running, there wasn’t at least one Apostle who tried to kill another? They were plenty. Heck, even the only Apostle I ever had probably killed at least four.}
Klaus blinked. "Four?"
{Yes. The four Arkdieu who got their fragnts stolen were simply unable to link or find another Apostle until the Cycle ended,} Greed explained, as if discussing the weather. {They were dormant. Waiting for the reset.}
’Cycle?’ Klaus thought, the word feeling heavy and ominous.
{Hmm, yeah, the Cycle. It’s when the stars align and we Arkdieu are still @#$#@$$—}
Suddenly, a sound like a high-tension wire snapping echoed inside Klaus’s skull. It wasn’t a noise from the outside world; it was the sound of a concept being forcibly deleted from existence.
Klaus gasped, clapping his hands over his ears. Warm blood trickled down his fingers from his ears, and he tasted the tallic tang of a nosebleed. The pain was sharp, imdiate, and blinding.
"The Causality Law," Klaus wheezed, recognizing the brutal censorship of the universe itself.
{Indeed,} Greed’s voice returned, sounding slightly distant and weary. {That’s enough. There are still certain things that you cannot know, I guess. Better not ss with the Causality Law needlessly. It bites back.}
Greed’s presence faded into the background of Klaus’s consciousness, a clear signal that the conversation was over. The entity had said too much, and the universe had slapped it down.
Klaus stood alone in the ash, wiping the blood from his face. He felt battered, used, and incredibly small against the scale of the cosmic ga he was playing. But he also felt a cold, hard resolve hardening in his chest.
I am not just food for a dead god.
Third Circle Magic: High Heal.
The thought was instant. A luminous, complex grey magic circle materialized beneath his feet, casting a pale light on the black ash. A soothing, cool energy rushed up his legs, knitting the ruptured capillaries in his nose and ears, clearing the headache, and restoring his physical equilibrium.
He took a deep breath of the freezing, ash-scented air.
He gave one last, lingering glance at the ruins of Northwatch—the graveyard of his past life and the birthplace of his current nightmare. Then, he turned and hopped onto Dudu’s broad back.
"Let’s go," he commanded softly.
Dudu launched into the air, the powerful beat of its wings kicking up a cloud of black dust that swirled like smoke. They turned north, leaving the scar of the past behind.
-
They flew for another entire day.
The landscape slowly shifted. The endless sea of dark ash began to break apart, giving way to patches of stubborn grey rock, and then, finally, to the blinding, pristine white of the true North. It was like crossing into a new world, a realm where the corruption of Gluttony hadn’t reached. The air grew colder, biting through Klaus’s magical defenses, but the clean, sharp scent of snow was a welco relief after the suffocating sll of ash.
Mountains of blue ice rose like jagged teeth against the horizon. They were deep in the territory of the Glacier Kingdom now.
As they soared over a massive, frozen valley, Klaus’s enhanced Perception—boosted by the Ten Eyes Mantra and the passive stats of his Transcendent soul—caught a disturbance in the fabric of the world below.
"Stop," he signaled Dudu. The dragon slowed, hovering on a thermal current.
Klaus looked down.
In the center of the white valley, stark against the snow, was a tear in reality. It wasn’t a gate or a portal; it looked like a jagged wound in the air itself, bleeding a chaotic, vibrant blue light. The edges of the rift flickered and spasd, unstable and dangerous.
And from that tear, things were pouring out.
They were not human. They were twisted, chitinous monstrosities, vaguely insectoid but sized like warhorses, their bodies covered in plates of shifting, iridescent blue armor. They sward out of the rift in a chaotic, clicking tide, spreading across the snow like a spreading infection.
Klaus narrowed his eyes, his Void Thinker analyzing the scene instantly. This wasn’t a dungeon break.1 This was an invasion.
And the energy leaking from that rift felt disturbingly familiar. It wasn’t the mana of Runiya. It tasted like the raw, untad magic of a different continent entirely.
Arkadia.
RIft break... but Dungeon Break sounded good
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