Chapter 1405: The Night Marcus Heavenchild Died?!

Eira saw everything.

Her ancient eyes widened slightly as she hovered beside him, watching the powers woven throughout the island respond to Phei’s arrival with a depth of obedience even he did not seem fully aware of. The Void did not merely surround him, it recognized him. Void-Ice responded the same way, while Primordial Blood spread through both as naturally as blood through veins.

The phenomenon was so subtle and so vast at the same time that even Eira had difficulty deciding whether Phei was unconsciously creating a Domain or whether the island itself had simply begun treating his existence as something it belonged beneath.

The Undead Queen noticed almost none of it.

She floated nearby with the relaxed confidence of a World Transcendent who had already accepted that her Master occasionally did things reality preferred not to explain. To her senses, the night was colder, the darkness perhaps somewhat deeper and Phei annoyingly handsome beneath the moonlight.

That was all.

The Dragon Lady perceived considerably more, although not because her present cultivation matched Eira’s. She sat comfortably on Phei’s shoulders with the entitled posture of a thoroughly spoiled little sister, one of her draconic fore-legs loosely around his head while their Cosmic Dragon Bond carried subtle impressions of the phenomenon directly into her awareness.

Her silver-white eyes moved across the island beneath them, following currents she would never have perceived so clearly without him.

Cassiopeia, meanwhile, had significantly more immediate concerns.

She was flying!

Actually fucking flying.

Her feet hung over empty air several kilometers above Hell’s Paradise Island while the forest, rivers, lake and distant lights of Infinity Chaos looked offensively small beneath her. Cassiopeia’s entire body had gone rigid, her arms held slightly away from her sides as though moving too suddenly might remind gravity that it had forgotten its responsibilities.

There was nothing beneath her feet, nothing holding her waist and nothing visible around her, yet she remained suspended comfortably in the night sky.

She was freaking out inside while she maintained a calm composure.

Cassiopeia looked downward once more and immediately regretted the decision.

If whatever invisible force supporting her suddenly changed its mind, she would have enough time during the fall to reconsider several major life choices before introducing herself to the earth as a fine red paste.

"Master?" she said, her voice considerably calmer than she felt.

Phei glanced toward her and immediately recognized the expression, which made his smile widen. He had seen almost exactly the same thing on Melissa after making her fly for the first time. Sierra had reacted with considerably more composure, although even the Goddess’s eyes had betrayed a rare spark of surprise, while Maya had handled it best mostly because Maya appeared physically incapable of giving reality the satisfaction of seeing her panic... Maddie and others were a different story.

Cassiopeia looked one accidental sneeze away from filing a formal complaint against the sky.

"You’re fine," Phei assured her.

Cassiopeia slowly looked beneath herself again before returning her eyes to him. "That is very easy to say when gravity has apparently signed a non-aggression treaty with you."

Phei laughed while the darkness around Cassiopeia shifted gently, still invisible to her, carrying her as securely as solid ground despite the impossible height.

Eira glanced toward him after enjoying Cassiopeia’s discomfort for another moment. "Where exactly are we doing this, Master?"

Phei turned toward the Endless Forest.

The ancient woodland stretched beyond ordinary sight, an endless green-black wilderness broken by rivers, ravines, mountains and regions so old that even inhabitants of Hell’s Paradise Island avoided wandering too deeply inside them without reason.

Very few places could swallow something truly enormous without anyone beyond noticing.

The Endless Forest could.

"Go deeper than last time," Phei said. "Much deeper. Find somewhere far enough from the main establishment so that whatever happens won’t reach even those ancient monsters."

Eira understood immediately. "And you?"

Phei’s smile changed into something colder, something that made the Undead Queen’s completely black eyes brighten while Cassiopeia immediately became curious:

"I’ll go bring him."

Dragon Lady tilted her head from his shoulder as though wondering who exactly her older brother intended to steal tonight, while Eira studied Phei for another second before nodding. "We’ll be waiting."

She vanished with the Dragon Lady first, the little Dragon disappearing from Phei’s shoulders in a pale shimmer before the Undead Queen and Cassiopeia were pulled along with them.

Darkness folded through the sky, and a moment later all four had disappeared toward the deeper reaches of the Endless Forest, leaving Phei alone beneath the strange night.

The cold wind moved through his white hair as he looked toward the distant Heavenchild estate he could not have seen from here if not for his True Void Sense, while beneath him the enormous web of Void, Void-Ice and Primordial Blood continued spreading across Hell’s Paradise Island, suppressing the island’s energies beneath something even Eira had found difficult to fully understand.

Phei could feel it all!

Every dark thread, every frozen current and every whisper of Primordial Blood seemed connected to him now, an island-sized silence waiting for whatever he intended to do next.

His grin widened: "Time to become a complete mortal you bastard."

Phei disappeared.

Marcus Heavenchild never sensed him arrive.

Marcus had sat within a private section of the Heavenchild estate allowing the previous family’s growing crisis be devoured by the walls of his private bedroom when a faint disturbance touched the reality and the space beside him stirred with such unnatural softness so soft and seamless that even the protective formations wrapped around the room remained silent.

Marcus turned.

"What—?"

That was all he managed.

Phei had appeared directly within arm’s reach without any explosion of Void announcing him, without Sky Sovereign pressure descending across the estate and without a Dragon aura shattering formations or warning the hundreds of powerful beings occupying the surrounding halls.

He had simply existed where empty space had been a fraction of a second earlier.

Marcus’s eyes widened just as something black wrapped around him.

It was not shadow, not chains and but the Void itself folding over his body swallowing his voice, Essence formations that could’ve warned everyone if Marcus’s soul so much as registered any distress; the Void nulled them off the Essence and all energies and the first violent surge of power trying to erupt. Phei caught his shirt by the shoulder almost casually while Marcus’s confusion turned into recognition, and whatever horror might have followed never received time to reach his face.

Both vanished!

The room remained untouched.

Marcus Heavenchild had been standing there, protected by one of the most powerful families on the island’s formations and alleys, and then he simply no longer was.

Far beneath another section of the Heavenchild estate, inside a treasury chamber buried behind formations older than several countries, thousands of Soul Flames burned quietly within crystalline vessels.

Every important Heavenchild possessed one.

Some flames blazed violently, reflecting powerful living owners, while others burned smaller and steadier for descendants whose cultivation had never reached such heights. The purpose behind them was brutally simple: so long as the person lived, their Soul Flame continued burning.

Marcus Heavenchild’s flame had always been easy to identify sitting in the very middle besides another one that wasn’t burning at all.

Tonight, Marcus’s Soul Flame flickered once.

Then again.

The golden-white fire folded inward upon itself, shrinking with terrifying speed until the light inside the crystalline vessel vanished completely. No ember remained behind and to even a weak spark struggled at the bottom.

No trembling thread of spiritual fire suggested injury, unconsciousness or some temporary severing.

The body went completely dark.

Among the Legacy Families, a Soul Flame extinguishing so utterly could mean only a handful of things, and the simplest possibility was also the one capable of turning an entire Heavenchild estate upside down the moment someone entered the treasury and looked toward that shelf— it meant:

Marcus Heavenchild was dead!