Chapter 380: The Shadow Born From Her Broken Soul

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"I can tell you’re not Espers. You’re not even true entities. You’re just... reflections. Condensed malice given form by the Noosphere... Is that right?" Riven asked.

They looked at one another. Desire, Slob, and Chatterer laughed in amusement, as if Riven’s conclusion had been some childish mistake. Nihil and the other mysterious figure only stared at him in silence. Neither of them reacted, yet their stillness unsettled him more than the others’ laughter.

"That is not what we are. You are wrong, Adversary," Nihil replied. "We are humanity itself, and we are her, just as much as you are both her and humanity."

"W-Wait...! Her?!" Riven asked, his remaining eye widening. The answer had only given him more questions, and the certainty in Nihil’s voice made his confusion worse.

Nihil approached Riven. With a single thought, he commanded the giant hands to release him. Before Riven could fall or attempt to escape, a bubble of pure emptiness formed around his body, trapping him within it. He pushed against its surface, but his hand met nothing he could break.

"We are the shadows cast by her. We are what remains, and we desire only one thing, Adversary. Completion."

"?!"

Riven was left speechless for a moment. His thoughts raced back to everything he had learned from the Heavenly Kings. They had spoken of powers that surpassed ordinary Espers, forces born directly from Genesis and capable of imposing their will upon reality. Could these five be Authorities born from Genesis herself?

But why now? Why were they appearing before him at this point in time? Nothing like this had ever happened in the future he came from. He had never heard of these five, nor had he encountered anything that resembled them.

Unless...

Unless something was terribly wrong with this timeline, and it had all begun because he had tried to fight back against fate. Every choice he made had pushed events farther away from the future he remembered.

Because he had grown stronger and changed what should have happened, the consequences continued spreading beyond his control. This was an endless butterfly effect, and now even beings that had never appeared before were beginning to notice him.

The five eyes of the central shadowy figure flared at once, their light cutting through the emptiness surrounding Riven. The laughter stopped, and every member of the group faced him again.

"We are the Hand of Inevitability. Every cruel thought, every selfish desire, and every act of betrayal across your world feeds us. The Gates were only the beginning. The System is a tool we have long since tamed. We are the hand that will eventually close around everything, and when it does, nothing born from humanity will escape our grasp."

"!!!"

Riven swallowed hard. The name, their strange forms, and their connection to Genesis began falling into place. He did not want to believe the conclusion forming in his mind, but there was only one power he knew that could stand behind something like this.

"You’re...! Servants of the End of All?!" he asked in disbelief, his voice rising despite his attempt to remain calm.

The five figures fell silent upon hearing that Title. Desire’s smile vanished, and even Slob stopped licking the blood from his wounded tongue. Nihil continued staring at Riven without answering. Then Chatterer broke the silence with another laugh.

"Hahahahaha! You believe it is as simple as that?! How much of a fool can you be?! And to think you came from the future..." Chatterer laughed, clutching his sides as though Riven had told him the greatest joke he had ever heard.

"He knows?!" Riven thought, panic surging through him while he kept a cold expression. He refused to let the smallest reaction betray him, even as he felt their eyes searching through him. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"Oh, come on! In the Noosphere, your thoughts and memories become nothing but volatile mass. We can see everything, all of it, Adversary!" Chatterer replied with another chuckle. He floated closer, his grin widening as he pointed at Riven’s head. "Huhuhuhu! Huhuhuhu! So interesting! You carry an entire future inside there!"

"It has become clear to us that you were sent from a future where we won, where the Blue Planet was consumed, and where she became whole again," Nihil said. Unlike Chatterer, he showed no amusement. "Yet all our efforts in that future have most likely been reversed by your arrival. The world has been pushed onto another path, and now even we cannot see where it will lead."

"..."

Riven no longer knew what to say. He remained silent while continuing to prepare himself to fight back and escape. The Sword of Memories was still expanding within his Astral Avatar, but learning that they could read his memories made every passing second more dangerous. He forced his thoughts away from his plan, hoping the constant movement of the Noosphere would conceal it.

"I wonder how that happened?" Desire asked, circling the bubble that held Riven. Her eyes then shifted toward the armored figure. "What do you think, Crow? Will you share even a piece of your thoughts with us? You... know Riven, hm?"

"..."

Crow, the most silent member of the group, said nothing. He only stared at Riven through the glowing eyes of his helmet. Riven stared back, unable to shake the strange feeling that someone familiar was hiding beneath that armor. Still, Crow offered no hint of recognition.

"Nothing? Really? Why are you silent all the time?!" Desire demanded, her teasing expression twisting into anger. She stepped towards Crow, but he did not even turn to face her. "It’s getting annoying... You’re our newest member. Say something!"

"Enough, Desire," Nihil said, and she stopped before taking another step. "Crow will speak when he desires. We are brothers and sisters, children of the Empress. We were not born from her flesh, but from her very soul. All other false imitations are merely our puppets, fragments made to serve a purpose they cannot understand." Nihil turned his five eyes back toward Riven. "And you, Riven, are perhaps the greatest of those false imitations."

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