Chapter 443:Death?

Chapter 443: 443:Death?

Across the battlefield, several people felt his presence vanish.

Draco stopped his fight. The High Elven King looked toward the sky. Zelpher froze upon the palace wall. The white fox inside the Dark Elven palace raised its head and screamed.

Lilith didn’t breathe, she couldn’t even if she wanted to.

Fire pulled his hand free and Atheline fell.

"No."

Lilith caught him. Blood covered her hands as she tried to cover the wound.

"Atheline."

No answer.

"Atheline."

His core cracked, she felt it.

"No."

Another crack came, then another. His elemental core evebtually shattered. All of his elements disappeared, one after another, the elemental presences she’d always associated with him vanished.

Lilith held him tighter.

"No."

Fire watched, his eyes filled with amusement.

"Mortality."

Lilith’s Darkness began spreading. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

"You..." Her voice shook as she spoke.

Fire smiled.

"Always ends."

As though to respond to the claim, something ancient awakened everywhere around the world. For one impossible moment, the war disappeared from his awareness.

Atheline stood before nothing without a body, core or elements.

He couldn’t feel Wind.

That frightened him more than death. Wind had been with him for so long that its absence felt like losing a limb.

Then he heard something, not a voice, a record something he was very familiar with but now, he could recognise what it was.

The World Will had never spoken to people as a person.

It wasn’t a god or a hidden intelligence handing out quests but the world’s mechanism for recognizing itself.

When something fundamentally changed the structure of existence, the world recorded it. Once, those records had been clearer.

Then the Cataclysm broke more than continents but also the World Record fragmented with everything else. Only the greatest changes could still awaken it.

Nirvana.

The birth of fundamental Authority and true divinity. The death of something the world itself recognized as part of its Laws.

Atheline had possessed a System but no one else had, although it was rarely present in his life.

This time, it had fully come to light and the world was simply about to acknowledge something it had never recorded before.

His broken core floated before him, made of six fragments. Atheline reached toward Wind but it dissolved. He tried Water. It dissolved too.

"No."

The remaining elements also vanished just like the first two.

Atheline stared in complete shock and worry.

His elements were disappearing.

Suddenly he understood as though a comprehension had overcome him. They weren’t disappearing, the distinctions were.

Wind was movement, but movement existed in Water. Water was adaptation but adaptation also existed in Life. Fire was transformation but transformation also existed everywhere.

He’d spent months asking how contradictory Laws could coexist but he had been asking the wrong question.

They had never truly been separate, they were expressions. Different faces of something deeper... Parts of existence.

Atheline’s six broken elemental fragments collapsed toward one another and the Supreme Sovereign briefly appeared.

His final inheritance opened.

Atheline looked at him.

"You knew."

The ancient figure shook his head.

"No."

He did a double take.

"I hoped." The Supreme Sovereign looked toward the collapsing Laws. "But this Authority is yours."

The fragments touched and Atheline into a screamed.

Outside, his body rose from Lilith’s arms. She stared in both relief but also confusion.

Fire’s expression changed.

Wind disappeared from the world around Atheline, then returned completely different. The other elements followed.

They no longer revolved around him as separate Authorities. Something new existed beneath them, something from which each could emerge.

The ancient World Record fully awakened and words appeared before Atheline. Furthermore, because what was happening affected the fundamental Laws of the world itself, they didn’t appear to him alone.

Across every continent, before kings and soldiers, humans and elves, demons and dragons, beastkin and dwarves, wounded and dying alike, ancient golden characters appeared.

[Divine Ascension Achieved.]

The world seemed to have stopped. Fire stared in complete disbelief.

A second message appeared.

[Mortal limitations have been removed.]

Atheline’s destroyed core became light, not six colors,but as one.

The final message appeared.

[A new Divine Authority has been born.]

[Authority: Origin.]

Atheline opened his eyes.

The hole through his chest closed as his feet touched the ground.

Lilith stared at him, her eyes wide with shock this time. He looked down at himself, then at her.

"Lilith."

Her expression changed immediately.

"You remember me."

He smiled.

"Unfortunately."

She punched him square on his jaw. Atheline actually stumbled from it.

"Ow, I thought you loved me."

"You died."

"Temporarily."

"You died!"

Fire attacked them before they could finish their reunion. Atheline turned and raised one hand. The strike stopped against his palm.

The sanctuary exploded from the pressure . Atheline’s eyes widened and Fire’s did too.

Fire smiled.

"Finally."

Atheline was thrown backward. His new divine body crossed the sanctuary and smashed through an ancient root. He stared from the rubble in confusion.

Fire laughed.

"You thought ascension made us equal?"

Atheline slowly stood, that answered one concern; he was a god, a new one at that

Fire had existed at the edge of divinity for thousands of years. Origin gave Atheline possibility but it did not give him experience which the other one had.

Fire attacked again.

This time Atheline saw it,barely.

He blocked.

Space collapsed around them. They disappeared and reappeared above the sanctuary.

Atheline formed Wind, no, Origin became movement as he accelerated. Fire followed leaving a trsin of heat that tore through space. Their collision split the clouds across half the continent.

Atheline created Ice, Origin expressing stillness. Fire’s left arm froze but he easily shattered it.

Atheline used Lightning. Fire crossed his arms before it hit him. The divine blast drove him backward several kilometers.

He laughed, his voice echoing in the sky. Then corruption erupted from his body.

Atheline was overwhelmed from the sheer pressure. He crashed through the sky as he was pushed downwards.

Fire appeared above him and scoffed.

"Young."

He strike him strike on his stomach.

Atheline fell.

"Incomplete."

Another on his side.

Atheline blocked too slowly.

"Inexperienced." Fire grabbed his head. "I have spent thousands of years becoming this."

Atheline smiled through blood.

"Congratulations."

Origin erupted and Fire’s arm disappeared. For the first time, his expression changed.

Atheline kicked him through a mountain.

"I’ve had a very stressful year."

Fire emerged furious and the battle fully spread as they exchanged blows across sea, sky and mountains.

Atheline learned while fighting, that was his advantage. Origin wasn’t simply six elements fused together, it was the authority from which their expressions could be recreated, but also interactions between them.

He created storms,magma, mist, crystal, pressure, heat, cold, movement and stillness. The ancient remnants he’d gathered resonated with Origin rather than remaining separate foreign Authorities.

Yet Fire was stronger.

Every mistake cost Atheline blood. Every hesitation destroyed kilometers of land.

Atheline began understanding something terrifying. He could lose, even after everything and more so, even after becoming divine, he could still lose.

Then Fire remembered Lilith.

He looked toward the sanctuary.

Atheline saw it.

"No."

Fire disappeared.

Atheline followed but he was too late.

Lilith was already fighting against him. Darkness covered the sanctuary. Fire entered it and his flames dimmed.

Lilith appeared behind him, her dagger cutting his back. Fire turned but she had already vanished.

She appeared again,made another cut and vanished, then another. Darkness wasn’t overpowering him, it denied him certainty; distance disappeared, sound disappeared and direction disappeared.

Fire roared, his fury taking over. Flames erupted and the domain cracked.

Lilith coughed blood, that was enough for Fire to find her. His hand closed around her throat.

Thankfully, Atheline arrived. He hit Fire hard enough to send him through the sanctuary.

Lilith fell, while coughing continuously.

Atheline caught her.

"You all right?"

"Fine."

"You’re bleeding."

"So are you."

"I’m a god now."

"Apparently gods bleed."

"Disappointing."

Fire rose, his attention remaining fixed on Lilith.

"Give me Darkness."

She wiped blood from her mouth.

"No."

"It belongs among the Authorities I gathered."

"It belongs to me."

"You inherited it."

Lilith’s Darkness spread.

"And then I made it mine."