Soul Stealer was dead.
It was not a heroic end, nor was it a tragic one.
It was simply an extermination.
How could a single parasite, no matter how insidious, survive being submerged in an ocean of Supreme horrors?
The silver imposter had been violently, systematically dismantled.
Its liquid-glass limbs were torn away by shadow-fiends, its stolen eyes crushed beneath the heavy treads of Corrupted beasts, and its core punctured a thousand times over by the relentless blades of the silent dead.
Standing upon the calm, black water of his soul sea, the Mad Prince watched the final fragments of silver mercury dissolve into nothingness.
The dark water rippled as the millions of summoned shades began their slow, silent descent back into the lightless depths.
They did not celebrate.
They merely sank, returning to the suffocating gloom where they belonged.
Among them was the shade of a pale young man with onyx eyes.
Sunny.
The Mad Prince’s obsidian eyes tracked the hollow, uncorrupted version of himself as he waded into the black water.
A cruel, utterly patronizing smile stretched across the Mad Prince’s cracked lips.
He pointed a pale finger at the retreating shade, and a loud, mocking laugh tore from his throat.
It was the laugh of a callous bully watching a beaten child limp away.
“Look at him!” the Mad Prince cackled, the sound echoing harshly across the empty expanse of the soul sea.
“Look at the great Sunless! The righteous, stubborn fool who thought he could defy fate! Look at how obediently he returns to his cage!”
The shade did not react.
It merely sank beneath the surface, its dead eyes staring blankly upward until the black water swallowed it whole.
Still chuckling, the Mad Prince closed his eyes and severed the connection.
*CRACK.*
The Mirror Realm shattered.
The Mad Prince opened his eyes, the smell of ancient dust and stagnant air instantly filling his lungs.
He was back on the physical plane, standing on the desolate, stone-littered outskirts of the City of Twilight.
At his feet, the small shard of silvered glass that had served as Soul stealer’s gateway turned dull, crumbling into fine grey ash.
He took a slow, deep breath, his mind snapping back to razor-sharp calculations.
The board was almost entirely clear.
Undying Slaughter was dead.
Devouring Beast was dead.
Torment was bound in his shadow.
Soul Stealer was eradicated.
Of the Six Plagues, only one remained: the Dread Lord.
And as for the uncorrupted remnants of the cohort?
They were pathetic, fragile things compared to the Transcendent authority he wielded.
Killing them would require no grand schemes.
It would be a simple, trivial matter of execution.
The Mad Prince stepped forward, passing beneath the towering, black-stone arches of the city gates.
What laid before him was a masterpiece of macabre stillness.
The City of Twilight was locked in an absolute, suffocating stasis.
Because of the Crown of Twilight resting invisibly upon his brow, the Mad Prince was untethered from the temporal freeze.
He was the only moving variable in a world carved from solid glass.
He walked leisurely down the grand, sunken avenues, moving through the heart of a frozen apocalypse.
Thousands of silver-armored soldiers of the Night Temple and horrific abominations of the Great River were locked in a desperate, chaotic melee.
The Mad Prince casually sidestepped a frozen geyser of dark blood hovering in mid-air.
He ducked beneath the outstretched, unmoving claw of a Great Beast, and casually dragged his pale fingers along the edge of a Transcendent spear that was permanently suspended an inch away from a soldier’s throat.
It was completely silent.
Not a breath of wind, not a clash of steel.
Just the heavy, crushing weight of stopped time.
He approached the central plaza, the heart of King Daeron’s ancient domain.
Here, the architecture swelled into a grand, terrifying palace of obsidian stone.
And dominating the courtyard before the shattered palace doors was the Dread Lord.
The corrupted Kai was a horror to behold—a colossal, obsidian-scaled dragon whose massive wings cast a shadow over the entire plaza.
The beast was frozen in a posture of total devastation.
One of its massive, taloned legs was planted firmly into the courtyard, crushing a dozen armored soldiers and abominations alike beneath its terrifying weight.
Its long, spiked neck was reared back, its jaws unhinged in a silent, world-ending roar that had been waiting centuries to be unleashed.
The Mad Prince paused, looking up at the frozen dragon.
“Soon,” he whispered, his dead rasp carrying through the silent courtyard.
He walked past the colossal beast, slipping through the shattered, towering doors of the palace and entering the grand sanctum of Twilight.
The throne room was cavernous, its high ceilings lost in perpetual gloom.
Unlike the courtyard, the battle had not fully breached this sacred space.
There were no hordes of abominations here, only a scattered few elite guards frozen near the entrance.
At the far end of the hall, resting atop a raised dais of polished black stone, was the Throne of Twilight.
And standing faithfully beside it, bow in hand, was Nightingale.
The Mad Prince stopped at the base of the dais, his eyes locking onto the uncorrupted Kai.
Kai looked exactly as he had on the very first day they had breached the city.
His armor was gleaming, his golden eyes sharp and full of righteous determination, his devastatingly beautiful face set in an expression of desperate focus. Read the latest chapters at novelping . com.
His bowstring was pulled taut, the arrow nocked and aimed at the empty doorway, waiting for an enemy that, to his perception, had just broken through the gates.
He was completely, tragically ignorant.
Because Kai had been caught in the time stop the moment he entered the city, his consciousness had never experienced the looping centuries.
To Kai, no time had passed.
He had no concept of the endless cycles, the agonizing deaths, the descent into madness.
He did not know that Nephis had been erased.
He did not know that Effie had been torn in half and devoured.
He did not know that the monster standing before him was his best friend.
The Mad Prince stared at the frozen archer, feeling a cold, hollow sensation pulse in his chest.
*’How peaceful it must be,’* he thought, his internal monologue dripping with dark irony.
*’To be locked in ignorance.
To think that the Nightmare is just beginning, when in truth, you are already the last ghost haunting an empty graveyard.’*
There was no need for a grand duel here.
There was no need for the Sin of Solace to cross blades with Nightingale’s bow.
Kai was a sitting duck, a fragile porcelain doll waiting to be shattered by the mere resumption of reality.
The Mad Prince did not summon his blade.
He simply began to walk.
He bypassed Kai entirely, stepping up the two grand, obsidian stairs that led to the Throne of Twilight.
The ancient seat of King Daeron was cold, imposing, and saturated with the heavy, divine authority of the fallen sovereign.
The Mad Prince turned around, the tails of his dark coat sweeping over the polished stone.
He looked down at the vast, frozen throne room, and at the unmoving back of his former companion.
He lowered himself into the seat.
The moment the Mad Prince’s weight settled upon the Throne of Twilight, the invisible Crown upon his brow flared with blinding, terrifying authority.
The circuit was complete.
The master of the realm had taken his seat, and the stasis command was instantly overridden.
A violent, shockwave of pure temporal energy erupted from the throne.
*BOOM!*
Author’s Note-
Greetings to everyone reading this.
I wanted to ask you all something: how many chapters would you like this fanfic to have?
I can end the story within around 35 chapters, or I can continue it for longer.
Honestly, that decision depends on the support I receive.
If you enjoy the story and want to see more of it, I’ll be happy to continue writing.
But if there isn’t much interest, I’ll probably bring the story to an end and move on to my next project.
My next novel will be an original story, with a darker focus on psychological horror, and other unsettling themes.