For a day and a night, the Mad Prince did not exist.
He was nothing more than a lightless smudge clinging to the jagged crevices of the basalt ridge, perfectly melded with the shadows of the primeval forest.
He did not breathe.
He did not blink.
His consciousness simply hovered in the dark, a cold, calculating observer watching the pathetic remnants of life cling to the island.
The River People had fortified themselves within the crumbling stone ruins at the highest point of the ridge.
They were a miserable, starved lot.
Their eyes were hollow, their faces drawn tight over bone, shivering in the unnatural, biting cold that preceded the coming fog.
But they were not entirely defenseless.
Perched atop the shattered battlements, radiating the fierce, unyielding light of living Transcendents, were two familiar figures.
Jet and Effie.
The Mad Prince’s obsidian eyes narrowed within the darkness.
These were not the Plagues.
These were the uncorrupted versions—the desperate, foolish iterations of his former cohort who were still trying to fight the Nightmare, still trying to protect the weak, still clinging to the naive belief that they could survive the Tomb of Ariel.
He watched them for hours.
He observed their patrols, their strained whispers, the heavy, exhausting toll the Great River was taking on their mortal bodies.
And as he watched, his Transcendent perception noticed something…
wrong.
Effie, the vibrant, boisterous powerhouse of the cohort, was moving with a sluggish, defensive hesitation that completely contradicted her Aspect.
She was usually a tempest of violence, a spear-wielding tyrant in human skin.
But now?
She was panting heavily after a simple patrol.
She favored her back.
She kept one hand resting protectively over her abdomen.
The Mad Prince shifted his gaze, peering through the gloom, analyzing the shape of her armor.
The plates had been adjusted, expanded to accommodate a drastic change in her physique.
Her stomach was swollen, protruding with the unmistakable, heavy curve of a woman far along in her term.
She was pregnant.
In the absolute silence of the shadow, a low, wet vibration began in the Mad Prince’s chest.
It was a dark, rattling chuckle that scratched against the inside of his corrupted mind.
*’Look at her,’* he thought, his lips curling into a sick, terrifying smile.
*’The stupid she-wolf.
A creature defined by pure physical dominance, reduced to a lumbering, heavy vessel.’*
His manic amusement bubbled up, cold and merciless.
It was so utterly absurd that it bordered on high comedy.
*’She brought a child here?
Into the Tomb of Ariel?
Into a Great Nightmare?’* The Mad Prince’s smile widened, revealing his sharp, blackened teeth.
*’She walked into the gaping maw of the Defilement carrying a fragile, nascent soul in her belly.
Did she think the Great River was a nursery?
Does she think the Spell cares for her maternal delusions?’*
He felt a deep, perverse thrill at the sight of her vulnerability.
The uncorrupted Effie was fighting a war she had already lost, carrying a child that was destined only to be digested by the horrors of time.
It was a beautiful, macabre tragedy, and he had the perfect, front-row seat to watch it unfold.
His silent laughter was interrupted by the rising suns.
Morning broke, bathing the misty island in a radiant, golden glare.
And with the light, came the apocalypse.
The earth trembled violently. This story is hosted at g.com.
The trees below the ridge snapped with deafening cracks, thrown into the air like dry twigs.
Devouring Beast had arrived.
The colossal, corrupted tyrant burst from the tree line, a mountain of grotesque, hyper-dense muscle and gnashing jaws.
The monster did not roar—it merely salivated, its sunken, maddened eyes locking onto the cluster of human life hiding behind the stone walls.
It was starved.
It was desperate.
And it was going to eat every single beating heart on the ridge.
Instantly, the uncorrupted duo sprang into action.
Jet became a blur of blue frost, her sword reaping the air as she launched herself at the tyrant’s legs.
Effie, despite her heavy, burdened frame, unleashed a battle cry that shook the stones, throwing her spear with the force of a falling meteor.
The battle was cataclysmic.
Stone shattered, the ground cratered, and shockwaves of pure kinetic force ripped the mist apart.
But the Mad Prince, watching from the safety of the shadows, shook his head slowly.
Effie was lacking.
Her strikes lacked their usual devastating momentum.
Her footwork was hindered by the heavy weight of the life growing inside her.
She was fighting defensively, terrified of taking a direct blow to her stomach, which against a Corrupted tyrant was a fatal error.
Within minutes, Devouring Beast casually backhanded the ridge.
The sheer physical displacement of air hit Effie like a solid wall, sending her crashing backward through a stone archway.
She hit the ground hard, her armor cracking, blood spraying from her lips as she desperately curled around her swollen belly.
The Mad Prince sneered.
‘Pathetic.’
But then, the temperature in the forest plummeted.
The Mad Prince froze.
His casual amusement vanished in a microsecond, replaced by a sudden, rigid spike of absolute tension.
He felt it.
A suffocating, necrotic aura bleeding into the world from behind him.
It was a killing intent so pure, so refined, that it made his shadow essence physically recoil.
Undying Slaughter was coming.
Even hidden perfectly within his domain of shadows, a cold bead of sweat trickled down the Mad Prince’s pale neck.
He was a transcendent Titan.
He feared practically nothing in this accursed river.
Not even the Plagues commanded his respect.
Soul Stealer?
If Mordret tried to invade his mind, the insidious prince would simply drown, torn apart and devoured by the millions of terrifying shades lurking in the black ocean of his soul sea.
But Jet…
Corrupted Jet was different.
She was the only entity on this island that terrified him.
Because Undying Slaughter did not care about physical armor.
She did not care about shadow domains or titan-class durability.
Her strikes bypassed reality itself, cutting directly into the soul.
If she swung her scythe into this patch of darkness, she wouldn’t hit his physical body—she would carve a chunk out of his soul cores.
He pressed himself deeper into the stone, suppressing his presence to an absolute zero, watching the forest floor.
A wave of grey, heavy mist began to roll up the ridge.
It was not a directed attack.
It was merely the ambient harvest of Undying Slaughter’s approach.
The necrotic aura was so potent that the grass withered instantly, turning to black ash.
The air itself seemed to die, freezing the moisture into static, dead frost.
The Mad Prince watched the wave of death sweep directly toward the ruined fortress, right toward where the uncorrupted duo was fighting for their lives.
Effie was still on the ground, gasping for breath, trying to force her battered body to stand. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
She planted her spear into the rubble, using it as a crutch, her face pale and contorted in agony.
She never even saw the mist coming.
The wave of grey frost washed over the ruined archway, passing straight through Effie’s physical body like a cold breeze.
There was no explosive impact.
There was no scream of agony.
One second, Effie was struggling to rise, her heart hammering in her chest, the nascent life inside her fighting to survive.
The next second, she simply stopped.
Her soul was instantly, cleanly extinguished.
The light vanished from her eyes, leaving them as dull as cloudy glass.
The uncorrupted powerhouse of the cohort slumped forward, entirely devoid of life, her body hitting the cold stone with a heavy, hollow thud.
Mother and child, snuffed out in a single, indifferent breath of the Defilement.
A few yards away, Jet—the uncorrupted Jet—froze.
She had felt the necrotic pulse.
She turned her head, her icy blue eyes widening in absolute horror as she saw Effie’s lifeless body lying in the frost, the grey mist now continuing its slow march toward the cowering River People.
It was a momentary lapse in concentration.
A single, fatal second of distraction.
But against a ravenous Corrupted tyrant , one second was an eternity.
Before Jet could even scream her friend’s name, the sky darkened above her.
The Devouring Beast capitalized on the hesitation with terrifying speed.
The colossal titan lunged forward, its massive, grotesque hands descending upon the uncorrupted Master like falling meteors.
Jet tried to phase into her spirit form, but it was too late.
The tyrant’s left hand closed with crushing force around Jet’s upper torso, pinning her arms against her ribs.
Simultaneously, the right hand clamped down brutally around her legs and hips.
The beast lifted Jet into the air, holding her suspended against the backdrop of the golden suns.
Then, the Devouring Beast threw its head back and unleashed a roar.
The sound was so loud, so saturated with unadulterated madness and hunger, that it sent a violent, chilling sensation ripping down the Mad Prince’s spine.
The sheer acoustic force shattered the remaining stone walls of the fortress.
And then, with a sharp, sickening jerk of its massive arms, the titan pulled.
*CRACK-SQUELCH.*
The Mad Prince’s eyes widened, reflecting the visceral horror unfolding above.
Devouring Beast ripped Jet’s body completely in two.
A torrential shower of crimson blood, shattered armor, and ruined viscera rained down upon the frost-covered stone.
The colossal monster didn’t pause to savor the kill.
Driven by its endless gluttony, it immediately shoved both halves of the ruined, bloody corpse into its gaping, cavernous maw.
*Crunch.
SNAP.
Squish.*
The sound of ascendant bones being pulverized echoed across the silent ridge.
The beast chewed rapidly, dark blood leaking from the corners of its massive mouth and dripping down its chin in thick, heavy ropes.
In the shadows, the Mad Prince watched the horrific spectacle.
He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t feel a shred of sorrow for the ghosts of his past.
Instead, a slow, radiant smile spread across his pale face.
His obsidian eyes danced with genuine, unadulterated joy.
It was a beautiful, chaotic symphony of absolute despair.
The missing piece of his memory no longer mattered in this single, perfect moment.
“Magnificent,” he whispered, his voice trembling with sadistic delight as the sound of snapping bones filled the air.
“Simply… magnificent.”