Chapter 491: The Warden

The fourth seal is where the world ends.

I have seen it. The Pale Matron took flesh, and everything I could see to the horizon was shattered. The damned thing even threw the Caelith into space... and now it was about to begin.

I felt the world shudder, and I slowed my beating heart. Vrakth’s remains were still drifting down through the red haze as I turned towards the source of that shudder.

Nine miles east, the tentacle that had risen from the earth was no longer the only one. Three more had joined it, each a mile thick, each climbing into the red sky like the fingers of a hand.

The Pale Matron was waking. Not fully, and enough that her presence was beginning to press against reality, and with her waking came the fourth wave.

The fissures in space, already multiplying, began to tear wider. I felt it through my Space Resonance, and all of it was background noise.

I stretched my hand towards the massive pyramid in the distance and activated my connection with it.

"Caelith Mourne," I said. "I am your Warden."

∞

It woke, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as the whole of its attention turned towards me. Thirty kilometres of celestial stone recognising a man.

The red light pouring from the base of the pyramid, the light I knew to be the blood of the innocent used to poison the Jade Oracle to death, vanished, and for about two seconds Caelith Mourne was dark. Then the entire structure lit again, and it glowed a furious blue that shone into the sky and coloured the horizon with the blue of lightning.

An observer would have seen a figure made of blue fire point at the pyramid, and the pyramid take his colour.

[ Warden authority: recognised. ]

[ Caelith Fragment (243^235) — linked. ]

[ WARNING: containment protocols transferred to bearer. ]

I felt the weight of the Caelith settle into my body, and it was as if I had become the pyramid and the pyramid had become me. Every cell in my body was one of its rooms, and when I breathed, a shockwave erupted from the Caelith that flattened the ground for miles and crushed hundreds of thousands of demons to dust, maybe millions.

[ Stored Essence: 921,004 → 954,775 ]

There was so much information streaming through my soul at that moment, almost too much to understand. There was an itching at my shoulder blades, like something wanting to come out of my back. And above all of it was the sound of the Jade Oracle screaming.

It took me a moment to understand what was happening, and then I was floored by her sacrifice. By this point she was supposed to be dead. The last portion of her soul had been poisoned by the Conclave, and even in death she was holding on with everything she had.

The seals were supposed to collapse at once. She was still holding them, even if it only bought the world minutes.

Around me, the tentacles of the Pale Matron had gone from four to nine, and space was shuddering, and more fissures were opening as she slowly turned from virtual to real. Soon the world would be shattered.

Through the chaos, my mind pushed past her cries, and I encircled her soul with my own.

"It is all right," I whispered. "I am the Warden. This burden is mine."

The link between us deepened, and I almost flinched at the Jade Oracle’s cry.

"WHAT ARE YOU..."

"I am the Warden of..." I said.

"GET OUT..."

I sighed, and then I firmly pressed down on the remnant of her soul. "No."

I opened my soul to her instead, and let her see my status as Warden and my connection to the Caelith. There was silence, and then a chuckle of disbelief, before the last of her slipped away.

"Leave this broken sky..." she whispered, and then she was gone.

∞

With her presence gone, the rot she had been keeping underneath rushed up at me in a wave, and I was surrounded by blood and flesh and a million yellow eyes that were closed.

I knew that if those eyes opened, I would wish I was dead.

My soul had been pushed into the grasp of the Pale Matron. I was nowhere near strong enough to challenge her like this, and I was the Warden of the Caelith, and that meant I had access to the seals binding this transcendental demon in place.

Reaching for the remnants of the seal, I poured my Anima into it.

These seals were fed by Celestial Essence, and with every Earth Gate I opened, my Anima had been slowly transforming into that of a Celestial. There was still a gap between the two, and my one advantage was that I had a great deal of it.

There were three seals left, and I channelled as much Anima as I could into them, and the wall of flesh began to retreat.

The seals were like a vast abyss. No matter how much Anima I poured in, there never seemed to be an end to it.

In the real world, the massive pale tentacles of the Pale Matron froze in place. They were no longer becoming flesh. They hung there, caught halfway.

I checked the state of my soul. I had effectively wiped out ninety percent of my Anima regeneration by holding those seals.

The breath I had been holding slowly escaped my chest, and I opened my eyes and looked at those vast tentacles frozen in the sky.

The first part of my plan had worked.

I needed to hunt and kill demons for my Earth Gates, and the presence of the Pale Matron had always shattered that plan. So I had to wake her far enough that she could tear space open and bring the deeper demons into reality, and then stop her from waking any further.

That it worked on the first attempt surprised me deeply. All the pieces had been there, and I had not known whether they would hold. I had expected to need several attempts to get the hang of it.

The fissures were still open, and demons were pouring out of them in great numbers, and I...

BOOM.

I held my head and screamed as a will like a mountain pressed against my mind. The entire Caelith shuddered as something old and very cold leaned against the seal.

I might have gone insane in that moment, if I had not been feeling it through the seal rather than against my mind directly.

"Tsss... Who art thou that stayest me from mine awakening?"

I grunted and held back a scream as I felt the seals begin to crack. I pushed more Anima into them, and all around me the fissures multiplied across space, and the glowing demons came through in greater numbers, and cries of rage and hunger came out of the tears as massive bat-like Thulls tore their way into the world.

Dozens of them. I felt their attention settle on me.

I opened my eyes. I was bleeding from them, and I grinned at the demons through a pain like my skull being split with a dull axe, and I gestured them closer.

"Mummy’s not here... just me, against all of you."