Chapter 9: Shattered Heart

“Don’t blame me,” Abyss sighed, wind through graves. He looked at Ghoulia sprawled like fallen brush and reached out his right hand like a shadowed branch.

Out of nowhere, Ghoulia sprang up like a sprung trap; the ink-black long claw in her hand flashed like a night-sickle and severed Edward’s outstretched right hand.

Abyss frowned; at the same breath his left hand gathered a mountain’s weight and slammed down toward her face like a falling sky.

Face lit with madness, after lopping off Abyss’s right hand, Ghoulia swung the giant claw straight for his head like a meteoric chop.

“Tenfold Netherworld!” Ghoulia laughed like a cracked bell; along with the words, pale blue blood fountained from her mouth like frostfire spray.

Abyss’s palm pressed down on her crown and smashed her skull like a clay pot.

The Netherworld claw halted a few millimeters before his face, a blade frozen in winter air.

On that claw, countless spirits howled like a storm-tossed flock. Killing intent and resentment, a swarm of ash-wasps, bore the Netherworld’s authority and gnawed at Abyss’s body like acid mist.

Edward kicked her away in one clean strike and stood where he was, lungs pumping like bellows over a forge.

This fight had cut across his expectations like a knife through paper.

He’d expected a steamroll. Yet at the last moment, the Netherworld snapped its chains and seized its own authority, a cocoon splitting.

If not for his edge in experience, he’d be dead today—or at least leave his hide on the field like a tiger shedding fur on thorns.

Abyss fell silent, then reached and caught the evolved remnant of her primal energy as it flew free, a firefly cupped in his palm.

He stood quiet for a long beat, then bottled that energy in a pocket space, lightning corked in a jar.

He glanced around and smiled. “Enjoy the show? Why not come say hi?” The stage waited for its hidden watcher.

“Your Majesty just swatted a top-tier. If I step out without permission, I’ll be the next smear,” Eli drifted down from the starry sky like a falling snowflake and bowed to the man, a touch disheveled like a reed after wind.

“Then… which number are you?” Abyss smiled, abacus beads clicking.

“Let’s not over-guess,” Eli clasped his hands, a river meeting its banks, and smiled. “Think of it this way. I fused everyone into me just to survive. So no, I’m not cheating you.”

“Interesting. I combed that ruin a thousand times. It was indeed an island my father used for experiments, but those carvings weren’t his,” Edward chuckled, a hound sure of the scent. “Tell me—how did you fake the breath of us, the original gods?”

“Oh? Why say that?” Eli tilted his head like a sparrow on a branch, puzzled.

“Heh. Anything Zero leaves gets the universe’s protection. The island was protected. The murals weren’t. Looked like a clumsy god smudged them with brute force,” Edward said, sure of himself, like a lacquered seal on paper.

Eli gave him a strange look, a mirror catching a crooked grin. Calling himself a clumsy god—now that was something.

“Couldn’t it be that Zero just wasn’t good at it yet?” Eli smiled, a soft sapling bending.

“Then the island makes no sense. Can’t believe you need to ask something that basic. I’m starting to doubt you’re the real deal,” Edward said, hands on hips like a teacher scolding under a lamp.

“No need to worry, Your Majesty. I’m just a recorder, chronicling this universe. You’ve fully defeated the Netherworld; how could I not show up?” Eli said, a scribe unrolling a scroll.

“…Truly?” Edward tilted his head, a wolf pricking its ear.

“Of course. I’m in no faction,” Eli clasped his hands again, a lone boat in fog.

“In that case, make sure the annals praise me to the heavens,” Edward smiled, his tone sliding toward court-official polite, a seal stamping a decree.

“Naturally,” Eli nodded, a reed in wind.

“Observer, I have a thought,” Edward smiled. “I need to see if you’re fit to guard those vital records and histories,” a gatekeeper weighing a key.

Eli gave him a bitter smile, winter sun through thin cloud.

Anxious heat prickled his skin like ants. There were no “records” at all—only what he kept in his head. Now what? What if the guy demanded to see them?

“Relax. I just want to test your survivability. Back then, you were hot stuff. Now—let me see if you’ve slipped,” Edward grinned, a hunter testing a bowstring.

“Don’t tease me, Your Majesty. You’ve got the universe’s authority now. How could I fight you?” Eli chuckled and shook his head, a candle before the sun.

Worry first, jokes later. Besides… you don’t brawl with your future father-in-law for no reason, do you? He tiptoed on thin ice.

“Heh. Your Majesty, don’t you have bigger things to handle?” Eli saw the itch in those hands, sparks in tinder, and hurried to speak.

“…You’re right. Then, Ten, I’ll be back soon to stir up trouble with you,” Edward laughed, tossing a nickname like a pebble across water.

“Ten… Ten?” Eli arched a brow, helpless as a fish on a hook.

“Aren’t you the sum of One through Nine? Let me name you Ten,” Edward laughed and turned away, his back a banner falling.

“One through Nine add up to forty-five, you idiot,” Eli muttered, abacus beads clicking.

Here, in the torn space, only Eli remained—and the headless corpse of the Netherworld, wind moving over a hushed field.

Eli smiled. “Lord Netherworld, he’s gone far. Why not come out? You swallowed one of my avatars in secret; I haven’t settled that tab.” A fox called into a thicket.

The Netherworld’s body melted into black mist like ink in water, then reformed into his shape, though he looked spent, a lantern running low.

“True enough—by now those two count as your avatars. But I consumed them very slowly, slower than their own recovery. How did you know? Back then you hadn’t become… Ten,” the Netherworld asked, an owl blinking at dusk.

He’d claimed before he’d favor no side; that even hand was one reason the Netherworld dared show himself, scales laid flat.

“Heh. Not convenient to say,” Eli shrugged, a folded fan kept shut.

“If so, I’ll take my leave. You won’t avenge those petty things for me, will you?” The Netherworld looked at him coolly, ice over a river.

“Rest easy, Lord Netherworld. You used my power to come back. In the future, when someone uses you as feed and swallows you, I hope you keep your reason,” Eli said with a cold smile, a lamp foretelling moths.

“Spare me your worry,” the Netherworld’s face shifted like shadow over snow; he turned and left, a shape slipping behind a curtain.

“Soon, Abyss will drain the excess power here. The Netherworld… will be a jester in the dark, watching history crawl—until he finds Birand,” Eli shook his head, a candle guttering in a cave.

He already knew the broad bones of what would be, a map sketched in charcoal.

The Netherworld wouldn’t recover. Eli’s soul wasn’t native to this world; his aid couldn’t restore that might. It would slowly drain him instead—leaving a fattened chance for Birand later, a foreign graft rejected by an old tree.

“Alright. Next,” he turned, eyes on Abyss flying toward the blast-core, and tapped the ground. He set off in pursuit, grass bending under a footstep.

...

Edward stared in silence at the Netherworld’s primordial energy, now washed like a river-stone.

He held the Netherworld’s power in one hand and the blast-core in the other, dawn and night cupped in his palms.

He hesitated. Then he drew the Netherworld’s power into himself, slow as incense smoke, and fused the shard of original divinity into the core like a seed grafted into heartwood.

Only after that did he fly toward Yulia’s location, an arrow loosed toward a pale moon.

(Note: Edlyn harvested from the site of the first fission; its divinity was the highest.)

At that moment, Yulia was busy fine-tuning the rise of species, a careful gardener pruning a living lattice.

Her heart stumbled like a startled deer; Edward’s arrival caught her off guard.

Under his coaxing and soft lies, Yulia obediently drew in the energy, bitter medicine swallowed under a calm moon.

From afar, Eli watched in silence, a lone crane on a cliff.

“The archaic era is ending,” he murmured, shaking his head, and returned to the continent on the first star, last leaf falling to root.

This land would soon evolve into the Celestial Realm. When Yulia’s power crossed the threshold and far surpassed Abyss, that’s when tragedy would break like a flood over a low dam.

He didn’t dare keep watching; dread coiled like a snake in his chest.

He feared this would be his and Edlyn’s ending too, a blade hanging by a single hair.

But history wouldn’t bend for one man, a river refusing a single stone.

When Yulia reached her thousandth year, a ring in an ancient trunk, the whole universe shuddered violently, a drumskin struck.

A flash split the night-swaddled cosmos, a sword of light cleaving silk.

In an instant, a sheet of brilliance lit half the universe, dawn poured from a broken jar.

The realm once under Abyss’s rule bucked and roiled like an ocean in storm.

The universe now looked like a yin-yang sigil made real—two halves, two colors.

As if a giant knife had cleaved it in two, a butcher’s blade through a melon.

Black and white never met. At their seam, a thin veil of gray energy formed, a mist-line keeping the two forces apart.

Eli sat in the Heart of the Universe and rode out the cataclysm, a pearl in its oyster.

He didn’t know how many ancient species Yulia’s move would cost the cosmos, petals falling from an old tree.

Only when the universe stopped swaying did Eli step out of the Heart, a sailor after storm.

Outside, the white light had vanished; the cosmos returned to black, an inkstone after rain.

But Eli knew: before her feelings winked out, Yulia condensed the white world and cut it from the cosmos, forming the later Celestial Realm, a pearl snipped from its strand.

He came to where Abyss stood, a canyon of shadow.

The man was like a maddened beast, hair wild, staring at the last streak of white like a wolf baying at a dying moon.

“Yulia!” he roared, grief cracking the universe like thunder on stone.

Moments later, the woman returned. This time, she was all chill, moonlight over frost.

“Abyss. You ruled by force. That stunts the universe,” she said, voice cool as winter water. “So submit to me. I’ll govern it well for you.”

Her divine might kept pressing down on Edward like a glacier settling on a valley.