Chapter 1179. I Rehearsed Grief a Dozen Times Before It Ever Mattered

Chapter 1179: 1179. I Rehearsed Grief a Dozen Times Before It Ever Mattered

Elliot Von Starlight was fighting like a man walking through a dream or a nightmare. His blade moved with automatic precision, but his soul was fractured, scattered across the distance between the physical world and the void where his friend had been swallowed.

He pulled his sword arm back three separate times in mid-swing, the motion stuttering like a broken machine. His eyes kept drifting, drawn like moths to a flame, toward that empty, mocking patch of corridor where Apollo had vanished.

The lapse was nearly fatal. Twice, the cold bite of a demon’s blade had whistled toward his carotid artery, the steel mere millimeters from opening his throat before a flash of silver intervened.

Clang!

Evelyn appeared between them, her blade intercepting the demon’s axe with such force that sparks showered Elliot’s face. She didn’t scold him, and she didn’t shout.

There was no room for reprimand in the middle of a slaughter. She simply positioned herself in the gap his distraction left behind, a living shield between him and death.

But even her legendary focus was fraying; every few seconds, her gaze would betray her, darting involuntarily toward that hollow stretch of stone.

"He’ll be fine," Elliot gritted out, the words tasting like copper and desperation. "He has to be fine..."

"He’s Apollo... the Apostle of Life..."

To emphasize the words, he pivoted on his heel and drove his sword into an advancing orc’s shield with the full weight of his fury.

CRACK SHATTER.

The reinforced wood exploded into splinters, but the force didn’t stop there; the shockwave traveled up the arm of the demon, snapping the radius and ulna with a wet, grinding pop that echoed through the immediate chaos.

The orc screamed as its shattered limb hung uselessly by tendons, but Elliot was already moving past, his mind already gone again.

Evelyn said nothing.

How could she?

She had spent the last hour witnessing two beings tear apart the fabric of reality. Reassurance felt like a currency she had spent entirely during those first few minutes of the clash; she had none left to give.

A few hundred meters back, Valentina held her section of the retreat corridor with a disciplined economy that bordered on the supernatural. But her tactical mind was hemorrhaging focus.

Her eyes kept snapping to that empty void. Twice she had already begun the mental calculations to redirect reinforcements toward the epicenter of the disappearance, only to halt herself with a bitter snarl.

There were no reinforcements to send. You couldn’t fortify a hole in existence.

’Stay sharp, Valentina,’ she commanded herself, her knuckles white around her weapon. ’Whatever crawls out of that gap, whether it’s Apollo returning or a catastrophe that ends us all, it’s going to need a solid line to hit.’

’If we break now, we die before the real threat even arrives.’

Meanwhile, Morwenna fought with a cold, mechanical discipline that refused to waver, yet her inner world was collapsing.

Her thoughts kept circling back to a memory she had buried deep: a quiet morning in her own bedroom, the sunlight filtering through the curtains, and a promise made about protecting her family’s honor.

She had walked into this corridor believing she understood the man she had bound herself to. She thought she knew his strength. She thought she knew his limits.

But watching that empty stretch of stone, where two titans had punched through the world itself, she felt a cold shiver of realization. Her understanding hadn’t just been flawed; it had been dangerously, catastrophically incomplete.

She wasn’t bound to a man; she was bound to something that defied the very concept of mortal boundaries.

And cutting through the blood-soaked front ranks with flawless, practiced competence, Rex Rexilion fought. He shouted commands, he parried blows, and he slaughtered anything that dared approach his position, but beneath the roar of battle, beneath the spray of arterial blood, and beneath the screams of the dying, Rex was worrying.

His every strike was laced with the frantic energy of a man who knew that the world was about to change forever.

Rex Rexilion moved through the slaughter like a demon wearing the skin of a hero. He was a whirlwind of steel and controlled fury, his blade carving through demon flesh with wet, tearing sounds shhhhk tchk as he severed limbs and opened throats.

But his performance was layered. To the soldiers of Aethelgard, he was the picture of desperate bravery.

He shouted encouragements that rang hollow with emotion, his voice cracking as he bellowed Apollo’s name toward that empty, mocking void.

"Apollo!" he roared, the sound laced with a raw, genuine-sounding terror that made nearby privates flinch. "Apollo, answer me!"

The soldiers around him saw it as the noble breakdown of a commander barely holding his sanity together. They saw a man fighting for his life while drowning in grief. Nobody questioned the cracks in his voice.

Nobody could. The performance required zero cognitive effort from Rex; he had rehearsed this exact routine of ’the grieving hero’ dozens of times over the past year.

He could weep for a lost friend while simultaneously calculating the optimal angle to sever a demon’s jugular without breaking his stride.

But inside the domain, there was no performance. There was only the grotesque reality of two broken gods.

Apollo Brightsoul stood over the wreckage, his chest heaving, his magical aura flickering like a dying star. His eyes were fixed on the mangled heap that was Rex Rexilion.

He couldn’t make sense of it. The physics of the fight had ended minutes ago, yet the sound that was wet and rhythmic rasping continued.

"Why are you still laughing?" Apollo demanded.

His voice broke, splintering between white-hot fury and a cold, creeping horror that made his skin crawl. "I just shattered your ribs!"

"I felt them snap under my fist! You should be screaming in agony."

"You should be begging for death!"

A wet, gurgling sound rose from the crimson pool beneath Rex.

"I am in agony, Apollo." Rex’s voice was wrecked, each syllable dragged through a throat clogged with blood and bile.

But beneath the carnage, the terrifying calm remained unshaken. "The pain... it’s exquisite."

"I feel every splintered bone grinding against my lungs..."

"I feel the blood filling my chest..."

"But fear?" A wet chuckle escaped his lips. "Fear is something I stopped genuinely carrying a long time ago."

Apollo snapped. The last thread of his restraint burned away in a flash of celestial rage.

He dropped to his knees in the gore, his fingers clawing into the ruined front of Rex’s coat. With a guttural roar of effort, he hauled the broken body upward, dragging Rex up until their faces were inches apart.

Splat.

A thick glob of blood fell from Rex’s chin, landing directly onto Apollo’s white knuckled fist.

Apollo’s eyes were bloodshot, his pupils dilated with a rage that had transcended grief.

"You destroyed everything," Apollo hissed, his voice dropping to a lethal, vibrating register. "You burned my world to ash."

"You slaughtered the people I loved like they were nothing but livestock."

"You stole the hearts of everyone who dared to hope..."

"You laid your filthy hands on my own mother..." He shook Rex violently, the sound of grinding bone echoing in the small space. "...and you think you can sit here, broken and dying in my grip, and laugh like this is some twisted fucking joke?"

Rex didn’t flinch. Even as his body screamed in protest, even as his internal organs shifted with the motion, his eyes remained bright with a sickening, lucid intelligence.

The grin spread wider, splitting the blood-slicked skin of his cheeks, revealing teeth stained crimson.

"Because it is a joke, Apollo," Rex whispered, his breath smelling of copper and death. "All of this—this war, this pain, this pathetic struggle for meaning—it’s all just a performance."

"The finest one I have ever had the privilege to watch." His eyes locked onto Apollo’s with predatory intensity. "And you, Apollo... you have been its absolute star."