The breeze drifting through the half-meter fissure carried neither the putrid damp of the abyss nor the sulfurous stench of the forge.
It smelled of wild pine, freshly fallen snow, and the crisp, clean metallic tang of high mountain air.
It was the breath of the living world, filtering down into the bowels of the earth after three thousand years of confinement.
The frozen draft brushed against my bare skin with an icy caress, raising goosebumps over every inch of my body and drawing an involuntary shiver from my lips.
Yet none of the three of us took a single step toward the light.
Our eyes remained locked onto the black-iron pedestal that had risen from the exact center of the cavern.
The pure crystal hourglass hummed with a low, dull resonance as drops of silver mana fell with agonizing mathematical precision one drop every ten seconds, tolling the steady countdown of our final damnation.
At the pedestal’s base, the sacred runes of the Order of Althea burned with a lurid scarlet light, staining the stone floor a terrifying crimson.
A system prompt chimed in our minds:
[For the gateway to open fully... one of the three souls must remain chained to the core of the abyss forever.]
A leaden silence swallowed the whisper of the wind outside.
To my left, Carmilla went rigid.
The Vampire Progenitor whose aristocratic arrogance and bloodlust had ruled my worst nightmares during the earliest loops stared at the inscription with wide eyes.
The pale hand resting on my shoulder tightened, long nails digging deep into my flesh until a thin line of silver blood welled up. She didn't even notice.
"What the hell is this...?" she muttered.
To my right, Ignis drew a long, heavy breath.
The scorching air venting from her nostrils hissed through her fangs with a hollow ring.
Her armored shoulders, broad as a bastion of steel, dipped only a fraction of an inch under the crushing weight of a truth no claw could ever shatter.
"A tithe of flesh..." Carmilla’s voice fell to a funeral whisper, stripped entirely of its usual mocking lilt.
"The priests of Althea never change. The same disgusting doctrine of forced sacrifice.
They didn't design this gate to seal away two monsters; they designed it to ensure that if we ever found a way to break the locks, we’d tear each other to pieces on the very last step."
Those wretched bastards.
"Then they picked the wrong prey," Ignis growled, her fury vibrating through the bedrock beneath our feet.
The dragon woman took a heavy step toward the pedestal, planting her towering frame between the portal and the two of us.
Her black horns sparked with a dull golden luster, and her scaled tail whipped against the stone floor with a sharp crack.
She turned back toward me, lowering her gaze to lock her magma-like slits with my golden Kitsune eyes.
"Take the silk-wrapped corpse and get out of here, vixen," Ignis said.
Her tone carried no military bark; it was a cold, final verdict delivered by a beast that had already dug its own grave.
"I'm staying."
My blood ran cold.
"What kind of idiocy is that?" My voice rose sharper than I intended, laced with furious disbelief.
"It’s no idiocy, you insolent runt." Ignis’s mouth twitched into a bitter half-smile, revealing rows of razor-sharp fangs.
"I've spent three thousand years sleeping on a useless pile of gold.
My brood is dead. My kings were turned to ash at the Zenith Spires.
You already shattered the guilt that chained me to this pit, Elina.
You gave me back my fire... and that’s enough. I don't need to see the sun to know it’s up there."
The Calamity raised a massive, scaled hand and brushed the tip of one of my fox ears with clumsy, heartbreaking tenderness.
"Climb to the surface. Burn the cathedral of those white-robed pigs to the ground.
Make the traitor in shining armor choke on his own blood while you rip that ring from his finger... and when the entire city is burning, look south and tell the wind that the last ember of the dragons still lives at the bottom of the world."
A burning lump formed in my throat.
The very creature who had caved in my chest with a single swipe back in Loop #5 was now ready to bury herself alive in eternal darkness just so I could walk through that door.
I couldn't believe it.
Before I could answer, a ribbon of liquid shadow lashed out between us.
Carmilla materialized directly in front of Ignis.
The vampire hadn't unsheathed her claws or called upon her shadow swarm; she merely stood before the armored behemoth, chin held high, wearing an expression of utter disdain that failed to hide the tremor in her pale lips.
"Hold your tongue, you vain lizard," Carmilla spat with venomous chill.
"Do you plan to stroll off as some legendary martyr? Do you honestly think I’ll let you claim the glory of saving her while I crawl to the surface like some useless ingrate?"
"Get out of my way, walking corpse," Ignis snarled, lowering her shoulders as the cords of muscle across her arms coiled tight.
"The moment I lay my claws on that pedestal, the gate opens for both of you. I don't need your permission to choose my own resting place."
"I told you to shut up!" Carmilla's scream tore through the cavern, freezing Ignis in her tracks.
For the first time, two thick tears of crimson blood welled from her marble eyelids, trailing down her cheeks without being wiped away.
"I belong to the dark! I was haunting catacombs before your clan ever learned to forge iron! If anyone has to rot in this godforsaken hole... it will be me!"
The Progenitor spun toward me with a desperation I had never seen in her before, cupping my face between both of her ice-cold hands.
Her crimson eyes drank in my features, as if desperate to etch them into her immortal memory before the world faded to black.
"You pulled me from the snow, Elina..." she whispered, her fangs grazing the corner of my lips in a kiss made bitter and salt-sweet by the blood of her tears. Enjoying the story? Read on at NovelPing.
"You broke the silver that burned through my soul. You gave me a reason to want to wake after three centuries of agony.
Take the beast. Her strength will shield you from the armies above.
But promise me... swear on the fire of your tails that you will never let another creature kiss this neck the way I did."
"Promise me..."
Their gazes clashed above my head. Millennia of rivalry, territorial hatred, and venomous jealousy had warped under the weight of my presence and their own bare vulnerabilities into a manic contest a desperate race to see who could destroy herself first just to buy my freedom.
It was breathtaking.
In my past life, not even Elena would have done something like this for me.
They were genuinely willing to die for me. Two empire-toppling calamities were bowing their heads, eager to gift me the sky while chaining themselves inside an eternal tomb.
[WARNING]
[Remaining Mana Droplets: 18... 17... 16...]
The crystal hourglass hummed with mounting speed.
The instant that last silver droplet touched the basin, the emergency lockdown mechanism would trigger, collapsing the gate and sealing the abyss forever with the three of us trapped inside.
We were out of time.
A hollow chill dropped into the pit of my stomach, chased instantly by a surge of volcanic fury that ignited the mana in my three silver tails with a deafening crackle.
I stepped forward.
No honeyed words.
No playful, seductive fox act.
Lifting both porcelain hands, I brought my left down in a vicious, resounding crack across Carmilla’s pale cheek, while the back of my right slammed hard into the scaled plating of Ignis’s jaw.
The blows didn't injure them physically, but the sheer shock of it sent both stumbling back half a pace, paralyzed by the sheer audacity.
"SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU DAMN IDIOTS!"
The roar that tore from my throat belonged neither to Alan, the docile adventurer, nor to the flirtatious Kitsune.
It was the voice of a commander who had marched through hell eight times over and refused to lose a single piece on the final board.
"Do you think I died seven times for this?! You think I had my neck broken, my body burned to ash, and my heart impaled just to sit here and watch you play the martyred saints?!"
Behind me, my three silver tails flared wide, kicking up a gale of spiritual fire that lit the cavern in dazzling flashes of white, violet, and gold.
My golden eyes burned with cold, imperious madness.
"I didn't trudge through the snow of your past, Carmilla, just to leave you rotting in another crypt," I said, leveling a razor-sharp claw at the vampire.
"And I didn't endure the heat of your ancestors, Ignis, only for you to pretend your cowardice can be washed clean by dying in a ditch."
"Elina... the runes don't lie," Carmilla murmured, touching her reddened cheek in dazed disbelief.
"The pedestal demands a chained soul. If no one remains, the gate will shut."
"It demands a soul bound to the core of the abyss," I corrected, closing the distance to the black-iron pedestal with slow, steady strides.
"A sovereign presence that commands the authority of the deep, the blood of the night, and the fire of the Calamity.
A creature forged in this mire that can serve as a perpetual anchor to fool Althea’s runes."
Ignis narrowed her golden eyes, taking a cautious step forward with a heavy scowl.
"Neither of us can split ourselves in two, vixen. If you touch that pedestal, your core will fuse straight into the stone."
"Neither of you can," I replied, a crooked, dangerous smirk spreading across my lips, utterly stripped of human sanity. "You’ve forgotten what I truly am."
I halted before the pedestal.
Only nine droplets of mana remained suspended in the air.
In the eastern legends of the surface world, Kitsunes were never mere spirits of sleek fur and nimble claws.
Each tail sprouting from their flesh was far more than a reserve of magic; it was a vessel of life itself a portion of their very soul condensed into physical form.
A three-tailed fox possessed three lives, three ontological anchors tethered to reality.
And my third tail was no ordinary tail.
It had been born back in Chapter 9, the exact moment I assimilated Carmilla’s Progenitor Blood and Ignis’s Draconic Fire to shatter the first shackle.
That third tail was quite literally a living microcosm of the three of us: it held my spiritual fox mana, the vampire’s frost-blood, and the dragon’s volcanic flame.
It was a complete artificial soul. A sovereign core tailored to pay the exact tithe demanded by the gods.
Yet the price was monstrous.
Severing a Kitsune’s tail wasn't an ordinary amputation of flesh; it meant tearing a third of your soul straight from the base of the spine.
It was an agony no mortal creature was designed to endure without spiraling into instant madness or permanent spiritual death.
"Elina... what are you looking at?" Carmilla’s voice cracked with sudden panic as she caught my gaze drifting toward my own back.
"Get away from that stone!" Ignis bellowed, lunging forward with claws outstretched.
I gave them no chance to stop me.
Channeling every drop of spiritual fire remaining in my mana pathways, I focused it into the razor edge of my right hand until it condensed into an incandescent blade of pure white light.
With a violent pivot of my hips, I reached behind my lower back, seized the fleshy base of my third tail,the one blazing in violet and gold flame and brought the energy blade down in a ruthless, cleaving slash.
SHRRRREK!
The sound was the wet, sickening tear of tendons, magical nerves, and spiritual marrow splitting in two.
The shriek torn from my core was neither human nor beast.
It was a harrowing scream that shook the entire cavern, raining stone shards and dust from the ceiling above.
A fountain of silver blood, laced with specks of golden fire and crimson frost, erupted in a violent torrent from the base of my spine, splattering across the flagstones and bathing the iron pedestal.
The pain was a black hole ripping open at the center of my chest.
I felt a third of my consciousness violently torn away, stealing my breath, blinding my vision, and racking my body with agonizing spasms that threatened to extinguish my Kitsune heart in a single stroke.
"ELINA!" Carmilla’s shriek broke, choked with a terror she had never shown before any foe.
"WHAT DID YOU DO, YOU CRAZY FOOL?!" Ignis’s roar thundered with frantic desperation as her arms reached out to catch me.
Before their hands could touch me, before the creeping dark could drown my blood-clouded eyes, I tapped into the final millisecond of consciousness I had left.
Grasping the severed third tail that still writhed in my left hand like a serpent of living fire—pulsing with our three combined essences—I slammed it down with brutal force into the basin of the black-iron pedestal.
The contact was instantaneous.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The crystal hourglass shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
The bloodied tail dissolved into a tangled mass of magical roots of violet and gold light that dug into the iron's fissures, spiderwebbing like incandescent veins toward the core of the mountain.
The pedestal acknowledged the tribute immediately: a sovereign presence, steeped in the blood of the Progenitor, the fire of the Calamity, and the immortal soul of a reborn Kitsune, anchored forever to the bowels of the earth.
And then, the archaic voice of the Abyss Seal echoed through the cavern one final time, cutting through the silence with the sound of titanic chains snapping to pieces:
[The tithe has been paid in the queen's own flesh. The abyss claims its grave... AND THE THRESHOLD OF THE SUN IS FREED!]
CRRAAAAAAAAACK!
The massive starstone wheel, fifteen meters wide, fractured into three colossal segments that ground back into the cavern walls with a seismic roar.
The gate of the Abyss Seal, locked and guarded through three millennia of darkness, swung fully open.
A tide of pure, blinding white light flooded the subterranean cavern.
The wind of the surface world surged in like an untamed deluge, sweeping away the stench of sulfur, the rotting miasma, and three thousand years of confinement beneath a swirl of clean snow that blanketed the stones in silver.
My knees gave out completely.
I pitched forward toward the fresh snow gathering in the darkness, the gaping wound at the base of my spine soaking the pristine white floor in silver blood.
My two remaining tails lay limp at my sides, quivering with extreme exhaustion. My vision narrowed by the second, shrinking into a dark tunnel framed by white flashes.
Yet I never hit the snow.
Two pairs of arms scooped me into the air with a devotion so fierce, so painful and desperate, that the cold touch of death recoiled before them.
Carmilla dropped to her knees beside me, pressing me against her chest as her pale, bloodstained hands fought frantically to seal the wound on my back with coagulated shadow magic.
The Vampire Progenitor wept openly, thick tears of blood splashing against my pale cheeks as her trembling lips kissed my forehead, my eyelids, and my neck in a frantic daze.
"You reckless monster... my beautiful, cruel, cursed queen..." Carmilla sobbed, her voice a fractured whisper of sheer adoration.
"You carved out your own soul for us... you tore away your flesh just so you wouldn't leave us behind..."
At my other side, Ignis wrapped both of us in her colossal arms, crushing us against her armored torso with enough force to make my ribs creak.
The dragon woman's jaw was clenched so tight that blood welled from her gums, her golden slits burning with an oath that spanned far beyond life and death.
"You are mine," Ignis growled against my ear, her draconic heat searing across the bloody stump at my spine with a burning caress that cauterized the wound and checked the bleeding.
"You are the sovereign of this brood, Elina. No one in heaven or on earth will ever touch you again as long as I draw breath. The entire world will pay for every drop of blood you left on that stone."
[FINAL ARC 1 UPDATE!]
Abyss Seal: COMPLETELY DESTROYED (3/3 Shackles Broken).
Elina's Physical Status: Permanent loss of the 3rd Tail (Temporary regression to Rank E+ / 2 Tails). Spiritual core stabilized via Dual Devotion.
Carmilla (Vampire Progenitor): ETERNAL DEVOTION (65.0%) (Status: Transcendental Submission / Unbreakable Blood Bond).
Ignis (Dragon Calamity): ETERNAL DEVOTION (62.0%) (Status: Absolute Queen's Claim / Unleashed Vengeful Fury).
LOOP STATUS: Loop #8 Victorious (Abyss Arc Survival Confirmed).
I summoned the last ounce of strength left in my mangled body and raised my head toward the outside world.
We stood atop the peak of Weeping Crag.
The blizzard howled across the jagged precipices where, eight loops ago, Lucas had driven his holy sword straight through me.
Overhead, the sky arched into an endless vault of black night, dusted with thousands of glittering stars and crowned by a full silver moon that bathed the snow-covered valleys in spectral brilliance.
And far below, dozens of leagues away along the southern horizon, gleamed the golden lights of the Holy City of Althea.
Hundreds of white spires, impregnable battlements, and the radiant dome of the Grand Cathedral where my murderers were basking in their false glory.
Those bastards are going to pay for this.
Carmilla rose slowly, cradling me in her arms with the tender reverence reserved for a wounded goddess.
Beside us, Ignis drew herself up to her full, towering height, unfurling colossal wings of flame that set the entire mountain range ablaze like the dawn of a bloody aurora.
I turned my eyes toward the city of saints. Across my bloodstained lips spread a slow, icy smile, completely devoid of human mercy.
Alan had died at the bottom of that pit. But Elina had marched out of hell with two calamities on her leash.
"Let's go," I whispered into the night. "The hunt has only just begun."