Chapter 322: The Feeling Called Death

The city had become completely silent.

Zeri slowly lifted his head toward the sky, and what he saw made the fear inside him deepen. There was no moon, no stars and not even the faint glow of the distant horizon. Darkness had swallowed the entire sky, stretching from one end of Yuno City to the other until it seemed as though the city had been separated from the rest of the world.

The only light remaining came from the street lamps below. Their weak artificial glow illuminated fragments of ruined roads and collapsed buildings, but even those lights seemed insignificant beneath the endless darkness above. There was no wind moving through the streets, no distant gunfire from the Agency, no explosions from the invasion and no cries from civilians or soldiers. For the first time since the attack had begun, the entire city had fallen into absolute silence.

Zeri stood in the middle of it with his body completely rigid.

Several meters away, Yuuta lay unconscious upon the shattered road.

What Zeri hadn’t understood in that brief instant was that Yuuta himself had never become the presence behind him.

The black aura surrounding his body should have disappeared when he lost consciousness.

It didn’t.

Instead, the darkness slowly peeled away from him.

It rose like smoke at first, gathering beside Yuuta before gradually stretching upward. A head formed within the darkness, followed by shoulders, arms and the shape of a tall humanoid body.

Yuuta remained motionless beneath it.

Then two crimson eyes slowly opened within the shadow.

For a brief moment, the figure stood beside Yuuta’s unconscious body. Then its form flickered.

The next instant, it was standing behind Zeri.

Zeri stopped breathing.

He could feel the shadow figure behind him.

Soft footsteps finally broke the silence as the figure began walking, but Zeri didn’t dare turn around. Every instinct inside him warned that looking directly at whatever had appeared behind him might be a mistake. His golden eyes remained fixed ahead while each quiet footstep passed closer, then continued beyond him.

Only after the presence moved away did Zeri realize that the figure wasn’t approaching him.

It was walking toward Elena.

The shadow figure stopped beside the crater and looked down at the little girl lying motionless among the shattered pieces of pavement. Her clothes were covered in dust, her small body bruised and injured from everything Zeri had done to her, yet she had still refused to stop fighting until she could no longer stand.

The figure slowly knelt beside her.

For the first time, the terrifying presence surrounding it seemed to soften.

"You’re still brave, little one."

Its voice was so gentle that Zeri almost wondered whether this was truly the same being whose mere presence had reduced him to trembling silence.

The shadow figure raised one hand above Elena.

A faint energy gathered around its fingers before flowing gently over her body. There was no violent burst of power and no complicated ritual. The spell took effect almost immediately, surrounding Elena with a strange warmth as her tense little body finally relaxed.

Her breathing became peaceful.

The pain that had remained on her face slowly disappeared, and the corners of her lips curved into a small smile. Whatever dream the spell had placed her within, it was somewhere far removed from this ruined city, somewhere Zeri and the horrors of this night could no longer reach her.

For now, Elena would sleep.

She would dream peacefully rather than being tormented by what had happened around her.

The shadow figure watched her for several seconds before slowly raising its own hand in front of its face. It turned its palm slightly, almost studying the fact that it possessed a physical presence within this world again.

"Fascinating..."

The figure opened and closed its fingers.

"If I had arrived only a few minutes later, Yuuta would have completely broken his seal."

Its voice remained calm, but something colder entered its tone.

"And everything I prepared would have been ruined. The Eternal Covenant would have loosened before the proper time."

The figure lowered its hand and glanced toward Yuuta’s unconscious body. Unlike Zeri, there was no disappointment in the way it looked at him. If anything, there seemed to be a faint trace of genuine surprise.

"Still... I never imagined Yuuta would fight like this."

For several moments, the shadow figure simply observed him.

"He amazed even me tonight."

Its gaze shifted slightly toward Zeri, who still stood with his back to the figure, too terrified to move.

"But he still has much to learn. Much more."

The shadow figure rose from beside Elena.

"If he wants to walk that path... if he truly wants to reach a future where he can save everyone and everything he refuses to lose... then this isn’t enough."

Zeri barely understood what the figure was talking about. Eternal Covenant, Yuuta’s seal, some path he was supposed to walk none of it meant anything to him.

He didn’t care anymore.

He only wanted to escape.

Zeri cautiously moved one foot.

The shadow figure smiled.

It raised a hand.

Zeri vanished from where he stood.

His golden eyes widened as an invisible force violently ripped him backward. He couldn’t resist it, couldn’t slow himself down and couldn’t even move his tentacles before his entire body flew through the air toward the shadow figure.

A hand closed around his throat.

Zeri’s feet left the ground.

His eyes finally met the figure’s face.

For the rest of his existence, if he somehow survived this moment, Zeri knew he would never forget what he saw.

The eyes hidden within that darkness were the most horrifying things he had ever witnessed. There was something inside them that made everything Zeri had experienced until now feel insignificant. General Amalkar, the Demon King, Yuuta’s terrifying black aura none of those memories prepared him for the instinctive horror that seized his body when those eyes looked directly into his.

Then the shadow figure smiled.

That smile was worse.

Zeri’s mouth opened, but no scream came out. His throat refused to produce a sound while the figure held him effortlessly in the air, examining him with the same casual interest someone might give an insect trapped between their fingers.

"You would have ruined everything if I hadn’t intervened, pest."

Zeri’s golden eyes trembled.

The shadow figure’s fingers tightened slightly around his neck.

"Not only did you interfere with My Great plans..."

Its smile slowly disappeared.

"You hurt my own flesh and blood."

Something changed.

A deathly aura erupted from the shadow figure.

It didn’t explode outward like ordinary power. It spread silently, and everything it touched simply began to die.

The pavement beneath the figure darkened and cracked as whatever tiny traces of life existed between the stones shriveled away. Weeds growing through the ruined road turned black within seconds before collapsing into dust. Nearby trees lost their remaining leaves as their trunks dried, split and began rotting where they stood.

Even the surrounding buildings seemed unable to escape it.

Metal corroded at an unnatural speed. Concrete darkened and crumbled. Wooden structures rotted as though decades were passing over them in seconds, while the few remaining streetlights flickered violently as the darkness consumed more of the area around them.

It wasn’t destruction in the ordinary sense.

Everything around the shadow figure simply seemed to be reaching the end of its existence.

Zeri hung helplessly from its hand, unable to scream as that deathly presence surrounded him. His regeneration instinctively activated before he had even been wounded, his body desperately preparing itself against something it couldn’t understand.

For the first time, however, regeneration brought him no comfort.

Because as Zeri stared into those horrifying eyes, he felt something far worse than the fear of being killed.

He felt as though life itself had ceased to exist around this being.

For decades, Zeri had never truly understood fear.

He knew what it looked like. He had seen it countless times in the eyes of others, watched people tremble when they realized they were going to die and listened to them beg even when they knew there would be no mercy.

Zeri had always found those reactions amusing.

Death had never meant the same thing to him. His body regenerated no matter how badly it was destroyed, so why should he fear something that could never truly claim him?

But tonight, something inside Zeri had finally broken.

First came the strange sensation from the Aesthor Stone. Then Yuuta’s presence repeatedly warned his instincts to run. And now, hanging helplessly within the shadow figure’s hand, Zeri could no longer deny what his body had been trying to tell him.

This was death.

Not pain.

Not danger.

Death.

For the first time, Zeri understood the terror he had seen in countless eyes before.

"So... this is what they felt..."

The words barely escaped his throat.

Then he noticed his hand.

His fingertips were disappearing.

Zeri barely managed to whisper the words.

Then he noticed his hand.

His fingertips were disappearing.

Zeri’s golden eyes widened as pieces of his flesh turned grey, crumbled apart and drifted away like dust. The deterioration quickly spread across his fingers toward his palm, while the same thing began happening along his feet, legs and parts of his face.

His regeneration reacted immediately.

New flesh appeared almost as quickly as the old flesh died, creating a horrifying cycle where Zeri’s body continuously regenerated only to decay again. His immortality was still functioning, but it was struggling just to keep him alive within the shadow figure’s presence.

The figure noticed.

"Oh, my..."

Its horrifying eyes moved across Zeri’s deteriorating body while a faint smile returned to its face.

"You have an interesting ability."

Those words terrified Zeri more than praise ever could. The figure didn’t sound impressed by something powerful. It sounded curious, as though it had discovered an unusual insect that might be worth examining before crushing it.

The shadow figure slowly raised its free hand and placed it against Zeri’s head.

Zeri immediately understood what was about to happen.

He tried to struggle, but his body betrayed him. His tentacles refused to attack. His claws wouldn’t rise. Even his legs hung uselessly beneath him as terror completely overwhelmed whatever fighting instinct remained.

For the first time since coming to Yuno City, Zeri regretted everything.

He regretted following Yuuta.

He regretted attacking Raven.

He regretted touching Elena.

More than anything, he regretted remaining here after his instincts had repeatedly warned him to run.

I should’ve left.

The shadow figure’s fingers slowly spread across his skull.

I should’ve fucking left when I had the chance.

Zeri knew those fingers could crush his head. Worse, some instinct told him that whatever this creature intended to do would not end with another simple regeneration.

"Elder..."

His voice barely escaped his throat.

The shadow figure tilted its head slightly.

"Elder... help me..."

Zeri didn’t even know whether anyone could hear him. He desperately thought of General Malakar, the Demon King, the Elite Demons anyone powerful enough to come here and pull him away from this monster.

Please.

His golden eyes filled with tears.

Anyone.

The shadow figure’s fingers began to close around his skull.

Then something flashed through the darkness.

There was no warning.

No clash.

The shadow figure’s hand was suddenly severed at the wrist.

Zeri’s eyes widened as the dark hand that had been resting against his head separated cleanly from the figure’s arm. For the first time since this nightmare began, the grip around him loosened enough for gravity to take over.

Zeri dropped onto the road.

He landed awkwardly but immediately scrambled backward. There was no dignity left in his movements anymore. He used both hands and both feet to drag himself away like a terrified animal, his golden eyes fixed on the severed hand lying on the pavement.

The shadow figure hadn’t even moved.

It didn’t scream.

It didn’t stumble backward or show the slightest sign of pain. Its arm remained raised exactly where it had been moments earlier, darkness drifting from the place where its hand had been severed.

Zeri didn’t care.

Someone had hurt it.

Someone had actually come.

A tremendous demonic presence suddenly erupted across the silent city.

The pressure was so violent that the already damaged road cracked beneath it. Dust and rubble were blown away as demonic energy surged between Zeri and the shadow figure, finally breaking the absolute stillness that had covered the battlefield.

A new figure stood there.

Zeri’s trembling eyes slowly widened.

He recognized that presence.

He recognized that back.

Hope appeared on his face for the first time.

"Elder..."

Standing between Zeri and the shadow figure was General Malakar.

His demonic aura continued rising around him as he faced the unknown entity without retreating, while Zeri remained on the ground behind him, staring at the General as though salvation itself had finally arrived.

General Malakar. had come to rescue him.

To Be Continued...