CHAPTER 126
Domain Against Domain
I felt the spiders forcing their way deeper through the fissure the acid had carved. Their teeth scraped and ground against the inner ice, a high, grating screech echoing inside my skull. Every second narrowed the distance between them and what they were trying to reach.
The acid was not merely preventing my ice from sealing the fissure; it was helping them burrow deeper.
Anything I tried to shape near the breach lost cohesion the moment it formed, the structure unraveling as if my will could no longer bind it together.
This was no ordinary acid. It had been brought forth through Korrax’s influence upon the world itself. He had shaped reality to produce it, a substance acting like a fire that could not be extinguished, corroding its way toward life with deliberate persistence.
Meanwhile, the spiders forced themselves further in, their bodies wedging into the breach and holding it open, allowing the acid to flow and preventing any chance of sealing the wound.
And still, the mountain remained distant. Miles separated us, and time was no longer in my favor.
The black sea wasn’t deep anymore this far from the mountain. Much of it was converging into that single point, gathering to unleash his godly form into this mortal realm.
“Damn you,” I hissed, and forced my attention inward, into the cramped interior of the octopus vessel.
Around me, Hazeveil stirred, sensing my need. “It’s time to abandon this ship. Are you ready?” I asked my loyal companion.
In reply, the cloak tightened around me, drinking in the surrounding shadows. Shadows should have no weight, yet under Hazeveil, they gathered and thickened. Though the vessel was translucent, little light reached the inner chamber where I stood and as the shadows deepened, even that faint light dimmed further.
A moment later, the octopus vessel imploded into countless fragments, large chunks of ice hurled outward in every direction, shattering whatever they struck.
However, that was not all. Each fragment carried with it a faint breath of mine, and wherever they passed, portions of the black sea froze in place. The wind carried that breath outward, touching anything that dared approach.
Around me, the sea recoiled momentarily, but then surged back over the frozen remains of its siblings.
Those few precious seconds were enough. With Hazeveil fused with me, we were hidden from the gaze of the very concept of space, and as such, space bent beneath my feet.
Korrax’s gaze remained on me despite my cloak. Still, he lost me for a heartbeat between shadow steps, and that was enough. I followed with another step, then another, each one dragging me closer to the forming mountain.
Once at the base, I couldn’t help but wonder how I would make such a mountain crumble. Up close, it was a strange, disgusting amalgamation of flesh and torn beings, pressed one upon the other, climbing over each other as each tried to reach the top.
We were surrounded by miasma so rotten and deep that I doubted the land would be able to harbor life for thousands of years after this battle ended.
This was a deity that shaped the land by its mere passage, one that didn’t bother to restrain the power of its domain or the aura it brought forth.
Similarly, my mist would end life wherever I passed, and worse, I would bring madness to whoever dared lay eyes upon my visage. But at least I restrained such powers. Korrax didn’t, and it made me fear what I might find in the land where Gods walked, making me doubt whether wards still stood out there.
Korrax cared not for my musings. All he wanted was the auric core within my chest, and the mountain answered that desire by changing. At first, it formed a head, then six powerful legs, followed by eighteen eyes opening one after another.
The land quaked under the weight of it, and its heartbeat rolled outward for miles, like a drum of ending. Yet it was not fully formed, and I had fled the monsters it brought forth to stall me.
It was time to make it feel true pain.
I drew my mist and pushed my faraway domain into the miasma. Resistance met me at once, like two invisible wills colliding. His presence was far more apparent than mine, yet the fact that my mist could push back at all proved I could counter his power. Still, if I empowered it too harshly, the humans within would freeze.
Leaving them outside the mist would be no better, because that meant allowing the miasma to take hold of the ground beneath them. Still, I had to take risks. I had to control the mist tightly, making it a breeze in one place and a tempest in another.
It was extremely risky and difficult. But as if answering my call, a snowstorm was forming above us. It had begun earlier, yet I only truly noticed it now.
It wasn’t mine, and there was no one behind it, no will I could sense, as if it had formed on its own, but how could this be?
The cold it brought was no mundane cold, at least not for what this realm should behold.
I had heard of cataclysmic events, extinction events even, that had taken place in the past. The fog by itself was one of them, if not the last. But there had been others, though not as bad as the fog.
This storm was just like it. To happen now, forming so fast and at this precise moment, that couldn’t be a coincidence.
And it was not.
The prophecy…
Reality, it seemed, had answered my call.
Perhaps there would one day be such a snowstorm in one part of the world. Maybe it was already bound to happen in a land so sickened by mana and the clash of Gods.
The events that made it happen here and now were unknown to me, but it mattered little. That was something I could use.
At the mountain’s base, I listened. Not with ears, but with will. I reached for the storm, for the strange currents that moved through the sky, and drew them toward my mist and the miasma, trying to lace them together, empowering my advance toward this cursed land.
All the while, I began shaping a new octopus vessel around myself, since the old one was gone.
I didn’t try to fight back against the black sea.
It was pointless in my human form, and the spiders were immune to corruption and even the madness my visage brought upon others. So instead, I let myself sink as I focused on the snowstorm and my new vessel while the sea tried to tear me apart.
Pain came to me, but I was used to pain, far more than most. That wasn’t enough to break my focus.
The real battlefield was invisible to most. An invisible struggle of wills took place in the sky and at the boundary between my mist and the miasma.
The chainrunners likely thought I was dead once the octopus imploded, or perhaps once the black sea swallowed me.
There in the sea of spiders, my direct vision could see nothing but darkness. Not a shred of light reached me.
Not that it mattered to them. From that distance, all they could see was the fog taking the shape of buildings and the mountain forming. Even Cairen and Gustav, sharp as they were, would not be able to make me out at this distance.
Yet, I could sense their joy when the first tentacle emerged from the depths of the sea, and then a second, a third. All eight rose, climbing upward and breaking through as my new vessel emerged.
The foggy octopus shape tearing at the forming mountain only hardened the chainrunners inside the ring. Whatever hesitation they had left burned away as they fought.
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My flesh bore countless marks, even cracks, left by the spiders, but thankfully, my body hadn’t shattered before a new vessel could fully form.
This time, I decided to use my power upon creation with more purpose, imbuing the entire vessel with life, not only the extension of the tentacles. Meanwhile, I could focus on the invisible struggle of wills as I tried to bring forth my domain and set a claim upon the land.
Snow began to form, and the wind whispered close. My mist met the miasma at its edge, breached it, then surged inward, driven by those hard gusts, and there two auras permeated the same land.
By then, my octopus form had driven into Korrax’s structure, tearing upward through his body from within, while the tiny spiders that composed the black sea died by the millions under the advancing mist.
I watched from afar and from within at once: from the sky where the snow thickened, from the sea surface where my mist advanced, and from the ring where chainrunners fought.
The sea retreated as Korrax focused on remaking himself. The main battle was miles away, yet the ring still fought, and many chainrunners were already dead.
They were dying in ways those living would never forget if they lived long enough to remember. Through it all, Gustav’s voice cut through: “Change target. Fire at that big ass spider.”
“We can’t,” Cairen said. “Keep the fire on our perimeter. It’s the only thing holding them back.”
They were spent, fear showing in posture and pace, exhaustion in every swing. They had been stabbing into endless spiders for too long. I could not tell how much longer the ring would hold, and Korrax could end it on a whim.
But I doubted he would.
I had to keep my attention on the struggle of wills to bring forth my domain. If he killed the chainrunners, restraint would vanish, and I would pierce the miasma with brute force without caring who suffered for it.
Korrax might be stronger than me in direct combat, with destructive powers that went far beyond what I was capable of, even more with the capability of multiplying his own existence to the point that even an auric core limit meant little to him.
If his godly form anchored fully in this land, it would likely crush me. But his aura yielded to mine. That weakness was my advantage, and I had to use it.
The mist killed more spiders than a thousand octopus vessels could hope to. With those unnatural winds driving it forward, Korrax would never dare to end the chainrunners completely and rid me of all restraints.
“Don’t make me regret handing you command. Look there,” Gustav said, jabbing a finger toward the sky. “We need to fire there. What’s worse, these things here or that monstrosity? If we don’t help shift that battle, we’re dead either way.”
The edge in Gustav’s voice had softened, but the point stood. I needed the cannons.
“We don’t even know that’s Omen,” Cairen shot back. “It could be just another horror waiting its turn. Let them tear each other apart. Why risk ourselves?”
“Of course it’s Omen. Who else would it be? You saw the way the ice grew around him. This is the same. Don’t pretend you don’t see it.” Gustav barked, finally showing some of the rage he had tried to suppress.
They doubted what they saw, but they couldn’t deny that I was the one who formed the first octopus vessel. They recognized my hand in creation, my affinity for ice. And they had seen it before, the day I returned to District 98 after so many long years in the fog.
“Right… Three cannons support Omen. The rest hold the line here. Mind the distance.” Cairen began shouting orders. “That’s what… eight? Perhaps…”
Before he could finish determining the distance, a thunderous sound was heard.
A cannon fired. The shot hit the forming Korrax in the center mass, and the shockwave rolled outward hard enough that even I felt it inside my moving fortress of ice.
Korrax, on the other hand, screamed. All spiders, in fact, did.
I had no way to measure the loss from that one shot, but the effect exceeded what a cannon should have achieved by a wide margin.
Entire sections of Korrax’s growing form began to crumble before my eyes, sloughing away in broken masses, and only then did a thought I hadn’t allowed myself rise fully: maybe killing him before he finished taking shape was actually possible.
“What?” Gustav blurted.
“How… how did that even…” Cairen muttered, shaken by the shot that struck true without his distance call and hit with force far beyond what should have been possible.
Firing the cannons was precise work; distance mattered greatly, and most couldn’t see well into the fog, much less determine range. For such a task, those with enhanced vision needed to guide them. In this run, those were Gustav and Cairen.
A mundane human crew striking a target that far into the fog without guidance was improbable but not impossible. What defied reason was the shockwave that reached them from such a distance.
Around him, heads snapped toward the three wagons carrying cannons, but all of them stared upward with stunned expressions, waiting for Cairen to tell them how far the target truly was.
It was only then that they noticed the movement behind them, far off, but closing fast. A colossal titan, his silhouette cutting through the fog like a moving wall.
Haldrin.
He wasn’t as fast as the riders, but he had followed the whole time and was finally catching up to us.
Smoke still clung to one of the two cannons on his back. The barrels were dense ice cylinders, glasslike in clarity, and their shape carried the semblance of Lucious’s and my design, even if what they had become now felt like something else.
But that was another part of it—something even I failed to understand despite studying it closely. The cannons and many aspects of Haldrin himself had changed as he deepened his connection to his claim upon perfection.
To the point that parts of that artillery were now unfamiliar even to me, its creator.
And as such, I devised ammunition capable of delivering this power. Onyx shells, fully shaped to bring forth the purest destruction and something more… crimson ones.
Crimson cores—the same cores that had belonged to demigods—converted into a single-use object: one shot, one detonation.
Something that could have birthed a Frostkin, used in such a way, might have been considered sacrilegious by many of the Frostkin, but I thought it necessary.
There weren’t many such shells, and in fact, we hadn’t even tested them yet, not wanting to waste such precious ammunition. They were made to fight Gods, after all.
As I watched the destruction it brought upon Korrax’s growing form, I couldn’t help but feel amazed by it. Still, at the same time, I was aware that this wasn’t one of the crimson shells, and the second cannon on his back hadn’t fired yet, as if waiting for something.
That meant it had merely been an onyx shell, a warning to me, since I found myself within his target.
The next shell would be the one meant to kill a God.
So I drove myself through the current and forced the octopus vessel to lunge out in a single violent shift. Then gravity caught me. I fell toward the black sea and dove headfirst without hesitating.
A heartbeat later, the sky tore open.
The detonation hit so hard it shook the snowstorm overhead, and then it intensified, because this was no fire detonation like the human-made shells.
Each of those shells carried a blessing of mine, my cold breath, and many thousands of ice shards. No, not merely shards: living shards that would burrow into anything they hit and spread like a poison, the same way my spears did.
It was the epitome of indiscriminate force, built to tear apart anything near it, with no distinction between ally and foe.
That thought snapped me back to the ring of chainrunners. They were distant, but I couldn’t be sure they were distant enough. They likely weren’t.
I had already strained my mana reserves by pulling ice from nothing to form massive vessels and fortifications, but what I was about to do was necessary regardless of the mana cost.
So I raised walls around the ring and made them grow without pause. Ice erupted upward, elongated, then folded closed overhead into a sealed cocoon. It covered them entirely, no gaps, leaving no opening even for air to slip in.
They wouldn’t survive long in there, but it didn’t matter. If I failed against Korrax, that would be their doom as well, whether they died in the cocoon or by Korrax.
I had thought of doing this from the start of the fight, but I knew it would only push Korrax into breaking the walls he pretended he couldn’t.
But now it didn’t matter anymore.
When I surfaced, Korrax was shedding chunks of himself, coming apart under the damage and trying to rid himself of the many ice shards that were burrowing and spreading through him.
But the best part was that the miasma was no more. The snowstorm and the mist had completely fused. This unnatural, cataclysmic event was empowering it far more than I could, and together, a claim to the land was settled.
With it, the mist was stripped of any and all restraint.
There was no miasma anymore, but in turn, the land was reshaping itself.
What was once called District 6 was no more. Within the eye of the storm, powerful winds were tearing apart even the mighty structures of Araksiun that had stood for thousands of years.
Beyond the eye, snow cyclones prowled the horizon, ravaging what remained. Even the beasts that had tried to keep their distance were now inside the mist’s reach.
I didn’t know how many districts besides 6 would be destroyed. They were already ruins, yet it still made me wonder how it could be fair for Gods to walk a land where ordinary humans existed.
Maybe humans weren’t truly meant for this era, acting like cockroaches that wouldn’t accept the end of their time, and that notion, though true, only brought sorrow to my heart.
I cursed the power of the gods, despite being one, and my inability to do anything about it.
No… that wasn’t true.
There was something I could do. I couldn’t give up so easily.
I looked up, and there it was again, almost invisible—the Great Ward.
The same ward that had once protected this city from the invasion of the gods. Now it was a broken tool, one that needed a craftsman’s hands to make it whole.
All I could do was pour my hope into fixing it. Just as I had taken Lucious’s knowledge and improved upon it, surely I could do the same with a creation forged by the old geniuses who built this city. Somewhere in that creation, the future might still exist.
It was the only way.