Divine Emperor of Death

Chapter 4473: In The Deathhowl Crypt

In the Deathhowl Crypt, there was a lone figure lying at rest at the center of an altar.

Its breathing was shallow, and it tried to wake up but couldn’t, its claws scraping against the stone below. It was unable to lift, trembling under the weight of its own frame. It appeared its body was spent since its aura, once sharp and eerie with death energy, now flickered like a candle at the end of its life.

The gaping mouth of this chamber allowed a cold breeze to settle inside. Surrounding this figure were a lot of bones scattered around, those who had failed to make it to the next line.

Rather than a place of improvement, it truly seemed to be a tomb as its name described.

It was a burial site, the final resting place for failed evolutions.

The figure at the center of the altar was none other than Nadia.

Years ago, she entered the Deathhowl Crypt, dragging her claws as she passed through the obstacles to get there.

The torches along the walls did not light with fire but with pale wisps of soul-light, flickering to life at her presence. She didn’t flinch at the eerie illumination, her own death aura had long rendered her numb to ghostly presence. The path descended, spiraling deeper and deeper into cold earth and silence.

By the time she reached the central chamber, her legs finally gave out. She collapsed onto the stone floor, the faint etched patterns beneath her only barely visible through her bleary eyes. Strange sigils lined the ground, twisted and circular like coiling serpents, ancient runes meant to suppress the curse and induce hibernation.

Her body twitched, then stilled. Her consciousness drifted, barely regaining her mind.

She felt extremely sleepy.

After a long time later, she felt weak, like she was no longer capable of waking up. It made her feel scared and aroused her instincts, trying to wake herself up as she scraped against the stone unconsciously, letting out low whimpers, but somewhere deep, she also knew not to disturb this process.

She needed to die. She wanted to die and evolve.

Her breath grew fainter, shallower, as though each exhale might be her last. Her chest barely rose, her heart beat sluggishly in a distant echo, and her senses, or at least what remained of it, were veiled in a haze of pale-blue darkness of death.

Time lost its shape in that crypt. The world faded into an indistinct blur of coldness, silence, and death. Bones scattered across the stone chamber served as quiet witnesses. They were shattered, curled, and fossilized in their final moments of failure, becoming a grim reminder or perhaps even a curse that dragged others with them.

And like them, Nadia finally stopped moving.

Her instincts whimpered quietly, scraping at the boundary between sleep and death, but she didn’t have the strength to resist anymore.

Quietly, her body reached its limit.

The rate of decrease in lifespan could no longer support the revitalization of the body, causing her to be near death from exhaustion. The last vestiges of her body still clung to life. However, even it reached its last breath sometime later.

There was no storm. No rage. Just a thin, final breath as her soul began to slip away from her husk.

A soft breeze stirred in the crypt as the invisible thread between body and soul frayed, then snapped. Her soul began to rise, almost weightless, adrift, free at last from its accursed vessel.

"Ah, she’s dead..."

"Another failure..."

"Will the heavens ever forgive us...?"

Numerous wisps of light hovered around the altar, not entering. Their voices were filled with sadness. They were also crying for Nadia after they had seen another descendant of their succumbing to the damned bloodline curse.

"It was impossible to begin with... from her blood, she seems to have gone through a lot of mutations already. It is harder to return to the source when she was already far away to begin with."

"She was just a little wolf that we should be protecting when she had made it this far..."

"Why!? Just how long must you keep treating us like this!?"

Another one of them roared at the skies, powerlessly and helplessly.

They were already dead. They were not even remnant souls but just a husk of what they were kept by the Deathhowl Crypt. They could not exist anywhere but here. They didn’t have an ounce of energy. All of their raving souls, an iota of it, were just connected to the crypt, and the moment a Nether Springs Death Wolf died, would they be able to manifest from its final burst of nether-death energy and speak out their thoughts.

But amidst their sorrow, they failed to notice the atmosphere had slightly undergone a change.

The invisible soul essence stopped right in its tracks above the lifeless corpse.

A warmth, deep and molten, surged upward from the dying body. Not from her blood. Not from her core.

It came from her Will that her body carried!

It did not come roaring or screaming.

It came refusing! A refusal to die!

A golden wisp of determination erupted from her dying core, wrapping her own soul in its blazing embrace. It dragged the soul downward, not with violence, but with sheer unbreakable pull, and forced it back into the body.

’I am not done...!’

Her body, which should have remained still, shuddered.

Her claws flexed.

The bones around her rattled faintly.

Nadia’s eyes shot wide open.

Runes on the fur flared to life, not in golden light but brilliant orange-red, bursting with energy like magma churning beneath the surface of her flesh.

Then came the pain.

It was unbearable, blinding, but sacred.

Her body convulsed. The bloodline curse in her blood screamed. It was as though it writhed, trying to lash out, to drag her back down. But it was too late.

Her soul had already returned, and there was little chance it would let her fall again.

Veins of light cracked through her body like lightning beneath her skin. Her bones groaned as they realigned, reshaped by surging dark crimson netherflames and death energy. Her dying flesh peeled, only to be replaced by fur darker than midnight, appearing like a vibrant violet-black that shimmered like polished obsidian.

She grew a long mane, surging outward in flowing waves of ember-crimson strands, rising with defiance. Glowing patterns lit her body, runes shaped by her new bloodline, not carved in but born from within.

A jagged horn burst from the middle of her forehead as it pushed out the purple-black horn, causing it to fall. The new jagged horn appeared to have formed from a crystallized blend of blood and death energy, even carrying mighty gold-crimson runes on it.

Her limp wings exploded outward from her back in a cascade of feathers, vast, powerful. It had now become black but with a golden tone and similar-colored runes.

The transformation wasn’t instant.

It came in pulses, her terrifying aura howling in waves.

When the light finally faded, the bones across the crypt had been blown to the edges. The dead souls weren’t angry. Their emotions flooded the crypt in a joyful manner.

The altar beneath her had cracked apart. And there, standing in the center of destruction, stood something new, her head raised to the moonlit gap above the seal.

A Grand Saint Magical Beast, reborn not through a miracle but through the denial of death itself.

"The Deathhowl Revenant Wolf..."

Nadia uttered, and so did the other dead souls, something they had failed to see in a long time.

Her violet-gold eyes opened, no longer dim but blazing with ancestral echoes and newfound hope. Her chest rose and fell with perfect stillness, like the breath of one who no longer shared a heartbeat with mortality.