NOVEL NEXT Chapter 256: Shattered
The word fell into the battlefield like a blade driven into the heart of the world.
Fluffy froze mid-taunt.
Then his core awakened.
It wasn't fire. It wasn't light. It was something far older—darkness sanctified by damnation.
Deep within him, the ancient death core, older than language, older than dynasties, forged before time was measured, began to churn.
Time and necrotic energy did not spiral together in harmony; they collapsed inward, spiraling toward a singularity that reeked of eternity. The space over his chest rippled once, then fractured as an orb of shimmering silver and bottomless black pulsed into being, beating like a forbidden heart, each throb shaking the laws of nature.
Unholy seals responded.
One. Two. Three.
Each one cracked open with the sound of celestial bones snapping, like great bells tolling in a world that had forgotten what echoes were.
The Ninefold Abyss heard its name whispered through the void.
A gate materialized behind Fluffy, colossal, jagged, etched with the languages of extinct civilizations and the weeping of gods who never died clean.
It didn't open outward to unleash something. It opened downward, and Fluffy's soul was yanked, not torn, but willingly dragged, wreathed in coiling chains of inverted time and abyssal memory, into the First Hell.
And Vel'khara answered.
The Realm of Remnants opened its eye.
Wind screamed across dimensions. Light dimmed. Even Wu Jinhai's divine brilliance flickered, just for a heartbeat, enough to betray a whisper of uncertainty.
And Fluffy… was no longer Fluffy.
He howled.
Not a roar. Not a bellow. A soundless wail that existed where sound should not, the scream of history vomiting up a demon it tried and failed to forget.
His golden fur blackened, crystallizing into plates of storm-hardened armor, each vein etched with bolts of lightning drawn from the bones of fallen gods. His skeletal wings multiplied into three pairs, each formed of soulforged bone, every joint crowned in razors that shimmered with entropy.
His limbs thickened into bladed siege pillars wrapped in thundersteel, and his fangs extended into serrated scimitars, curved inward like the hooks of executioners.
Two horns split from his skull. Then another two. Then two more, six in total, each wreathed in flickering voidfire. And then his eyes opened.
Not two.
Six.
Each glowing with crimson voidlight. Each one watching the battlefield from a different branch of time. Past. Present. Near-future. Far-future. Dream-memory. Soul-sealed eternity.
The ground beneath him aged in an instant. Gold turned to dust. Stone cracked and peeled like rotting fruit. Corpses nearby withered into ash, their identities devoured by the sheer pressure of his presence. Space itself twisted, bent like a slave under his paw, as though the fabric of reality had no choice but to kneel.
Fluffy, the beast. Fluffy, the thunderstorm. Fluffy, the playful hound.
Gone.
What stood now was Vel'kharn, Avatar of the First Hell, Demonlord of Ruin, chained to Damien not by affection or leash, but by a pact older than light.
He didn't growl. He didn't speak. He simply moved.
And the battlefield wept.
Where once divine fire had ruled, radiant, unassailable, there now surged a force not born of elements, but of obliteration. Motion incarnate. Doom personified.
Vel'kharn charged.
His four legs struck the golden platform like the fists of a titan. Each impact shattered holy sigils, cracked divine patterns, and sent thunder rolling through the ruined sky.
The soulfire streaming from his wings scorched the air into silence, leaving only static and death.
Lightning coiled around him like serpents, lashing out at every flicker of remaining divine light, tearing gashes in Wu Jinhai's once untouchable glow.
Wu Jinhai, bathed in celestial fire, still hovered.
But now he trembled. Just once.
And Damien smiled.
Vel'kharn surged forward with thunder and violence, a demon-hound of annihilation. With every leap, a crater bloomed behind him, clouds cracked and fled his shadow, and the divine light that once bullied the skies recoiled under his pressure. This wasn't a battle. This was vengeance manifest.
Damien moved just behind him.
Not running.
Not flying.
Striding.
His feet met broken gold. His breath met divine smoke. His wounds screamed, but his heart pulsed with focus.
In his right hand, the spear of eternal storm buzzed with layered elemental harmony. Lightning spiraled down its shaft. Deathlight pulsed from its core. Space bent around its edge, and time whispered from its tip.
His left hand glowed with swirling spheres of fused element—rotating singularities of destruction, waiting for release.
They moved as one.
A beast of apocalypse. A man with a sovereign will.
Ahead, Wu Jinhai hovered, incandescent and sneering, still ablaze with divine brilliance, but there was fear now, hidden beneath the arrogance. A flicker. A tremor. Damien saw it.
Vel'kharn opened his jaws and howled.
The sound tore through the divine silence like a blade through soft flesh. It wasn't just sound, it was unmaking, an echo from the Ninefold Abyss that devoured holy resonance. The light in the sky dimmed. The platform bent.
Wu Jinhai blinked.
And Vel'kharn leapt.
Not upward. Not forward.
Through.
A cannon of abyssal steel, voidlight, and thunder erupted into the air, claws alight with soul-forged talons sharpened by the screams of dead kings. As he raked one claw across the space before him, the very light recoiled, folding inward like curtains being torn open. The path he carved twisted heaven's fabric, warping Wu Jinhai's holy glow into coils of distortion.
Wu Jinhai snarled and unleashed a wave of compressed divine fire, a hammer of light intended to stop any godless horror in its tracks.
It struck Vel'kharn mid-air.
And failed.
The light didn't scatter, it disappeared, sucked into the storm-etched plating of the Descended Beast. Then Vel'kharn spun, tail laced with voidlight, and batted the light construct aside like a toy, launching it into the distance, where it exploded in a silent nova.
And Damien was there.
His movements were not flashy—they were surgical. He advanced beneath Vel'kharn's shadow, aura blending into the storm. Wu Jinhai raised his arms in panic, conjuring a seven-layered divine barrier etched with celestial runes.
Vel'kharn's claws slammed into it.
One barrier shattered.
Then a second.