NOVEL NEXT Chapter 257: Descend into Madness
Then a third, fourth, fifth, each break punctuated by a deafening pulse of hell-touched energy. By the sixth, Wu Jinhai screamed, eyes wide with disbelief. The final layer barely held, flickering, vibrating under the weight of the beast above it.
And in that fraction of hesitation—
Damien struck.
His spear blinked not through distance, but through time, phasing into a moment just before Wu Jinhai tried to shift, reappearing behind him with devastating precision. Damien's thrust came from the nape, death energy trailing like the tail of a comet, sharpened by space, bound in the certainty of entropy.
Wu Jinhai twisted, divine aura condensing just enough to deflect the blow.
Barely.
Even so, Damien's spear grazed his shoulder, tearing through robes woven by saints, slicing flesh that had never been touched.
Blood spilled.
It glowed.
It hissed.
"You bastard!" Wu Jinhai roared. "You dare stain my divine body?! I'll drown your soul in sanctified flame!"
Damien answered with silence.
He stomped downward.
Compressed space exploded around Wu Jinhai, dragging his form violently toward the ground. His flight buckled, equilibrium failing.
And Vel'kharn returned.
The beast descended like a meteor, his tail arcing high, then falling with the weight of a mountain. It slammed into Wu Jinhai's chest, driving him into the platform. A shockwave erupted, shattering the surface, splintering the surrounding battlefield into molten cracks.
Wu Jinhai bounced, light stuttering from his body.
Damien didn't pause.
He advanced, his spear a blur, strike after strike after strike. Each one a weaponized equation. Each one bending death, lightning, time, and space around its tip. Air hissed and split. Sound warped. Time fractured.
But Wu Jinhai, though bleeding, though burning, did not fall.
He rose.
Eyes wild.
Face twisted.
Divine light stuttered, flaring with rage, trying to reassert itself in the face of something it was never meant to contend with.
"You insects," Wu Jinhai snarled, his voice cracking from fury and disbelief. "You think this changes anything?! You are nothing. I am divinity! I am the heir of the heavens!"
Damien stepped forward, slow but steady, each breath drawn through clenched teeth as blood soaked through the rents in his robes and dripped from his fingertips.
His body ached beneath the strain of battle, but that pain was distant, muted beneath a deeper disturbance, a tremor from within, the consequence of calling upon the power of Vel'khara.
It began subtly at first.
A cold numbness creeping into his thoughts, like mist rolling in over the edges of memory.
He tried to recall a name, just one, an old geezer from the Powerful Mages Coffee Club, but the syllables slipped through his mental grasp, elusive and blurred. The face came easily, scarred and defiant, eyes shining in the gloom of the coffee club, but the name, the simple identity behind that face, hovered just out of reach.
He tried again, reaching for another memory, another connection forged in blood and shared struggle… and that, too, was missing.
Not erased.
Just distant.
Like someone had drawn a curtain between him and the truth of who he was, not to remove it entirely, but to test whether he would tear the curtain down, or learn to live without what lay beyond it.
This was the cost.
The First Circle had answered his call, had gifted him power, the kind of power that shaped death into something sentient, that pulled his beast from mortal loyalty into abyssal sovereignty, that turned a battlefield into a crucible of memory-devouring fire.
But power of that depth did not arrive freely. It left cracks behind. Cracks not in the body, but in the self.
Damien gritted his teeth, focusing on the here and now, even as the whispers, cold and patient, began circling his consciousness. They were not loud. Not yet. They murmured with the gentle persistence of something that had waited centuries and could wait a little longer still.
"Descend once more."
"More awaits below."
"Your name is nothing… Your legacy begins at the Ninth."
His breath shook.
The world seemed farther away. Not blurred, just distanced. His memory, usually so sharp, so ruthlessly anchored in present threats, felt slightly adrift.
He could feel Vel'kharn nearby, its presence no longer Fluffy's. The beast now radiated a static tension that pulsed with unnatural rhythm, like something half-restrained, its will not yet rebellious but certainly no longer docile.
The pact still held.
But only barely.
Damien felt it. He had to pull much tighter on the metaphysical leash that bound Fluffy/Vel'kharn to him, and how much more resistance throbbed beneath the surface.
He forced his focus back to Wu Jinhai, who now glared at him with incandescent hatred, golden light billowing from his every wound.
"You dare mock me still?" Wu Jinhai seethed, his voice trembling from the fury of his humbling. "I will rip the lineage from your bones and feed your soul to the Eternal Blaze!"
Damien didn't answer immediately.
Not because he lacked a retort.
But because he was weighing the question no one else could ask: Could he afford to go deeper?
The loss of memory he had experienced was still temporary, for now, the damage remained fluid, reversible, like footprints in damp ash.
But should he call upon Vel'khara again too soon, or worse, reach for the next Circle, those footprints would harden, the forgettings would become deletions, and the cracks in his selfhood would deepen into fractures that might never heal.
His grip on his spear tightened.
He couldn't afford to hesitate.
But he also couldn't afford to lose who he was.
Damien took one more step forward, blood trailing behind him in a lazy spiral, eyes never leaving Wu Jinhai's burning form. His mind was quiet now, not silent, but poised, balanced on a blade's edge between power and cost.
"Not willing to give up yet?" he said, spear gleaming with power. "If the first circle of hell isn't enough, then maybe the second circle would do it."
Damien raised his hand once more.
"Descend into Madness."