Chapter 1434: The Hollow’s Reckoning

Moment ago... Danton and the Lord’s avatar had left Marcus’s private quarters with their suspicions unresolved.

The upheaval across Hell’s Paradise Island had brought them to him: Heaven and Earth Essence convulsing, Mana shifting, and World Essence pouring into Paradise in such abundance that even those who ordinarily could not perceive it had felt the island change.

An Angel Progenitor awakening beneath their roof would have explained a great deal.

Marcus had denied it, sitting beneath the warm lamplight with a book across his lap and enough irritation upon his face to make their questions seem unwelcome.

Neither visitor believed him.

They had searched and studied his condition and found him apparently wholly and disappointingly mortal, with nothing to suggest that his Angelic Bloodline has awakened much less torn from him minutes earlier.

Heaven-Stealer had left its theft concealed, and even his Soul Flame had been restored and altered before anyone thought to examine it.

Marcus kept his eyes upon the open page as their presences receded through the estate.

Beyond the closed doors, layers of stone and formations gradually swallowed the pressure of the Lord’s avatar. The lamps continued burning over polished furniture, their mellow light falling across an immaculate room in which Marcus had managed to endure the entire visit without turning a page.

The book slipped from his fingers and struck the carpet.

Marcus folded over his knees, palms braced against his thighs as a shudder travelled down his spine and his soul. His shoulders jerked with it— he tried to draw air into his lungs and could only manage shallow, uneven breaths, each one catching before he had taken enough.

He could still see the horror when Phei took him from his bedroom. Generations of Heavenchilds had fortified that estate. Detection arrays overlapped spatial barriers; movement t skills and even teleportation restrictions lay beneath defensive formations, some buried so deeply in the foundations that most descendants knew nothing of them. Concealment and teleportation should have met resistance long before an intruder approached Marcus’s quarters.

Even someone powerful enough to force entry should have alerted something on the way.

Yet Phei had reached him without disturbing a single formation. Marcus had been surrounded by his family’s protections when the Young Dragon appeared, and before he could understand how, Phei seized him and carried him into the sky.

His stomach tightened at the memory of being released. The estate had vanished beneath him, wind tearing past his ears while the ground waited far below. Then a kick sent him hurtling sideways, and a black-and-white portal swallowed his falling body. The Endless Forest rushed up to meet him, followed by Phei’s face and the words Marcus could still hear with miserable clarity:

"You killed my Selene!"

Marcus pressed his trembling hands harder against his thighs— he’d been putting on a facade with the Lord and Danton— worth them gone, he could not hold on anymore. Phei had beaten his mortal body with enough restraint to keep him alive throughout it, leaving him to choke on blood while broken teeth scattered beyond his sight.

His bones had yielded so easily that even through the pain he understood how much strength the Dragon was withholding.

He had believed his Soul Realm would offer him a chance. There, he could draw upon the ancient foundation of his Soul, upon World Essence and the remnants of an existence far greater than this mortal body.

YET—

Phei had overwhelmed all of it. The golden giant fashioned from Marcus’s own World Essence tore through his manifested body until the spear failed and his wings were ripped away.

Everything he summoned only gave Phei something else to destroy.

Now Marcus sat staring at his hands, unable to find a mark upon them. His fingers moved when he asked them to. Beneath his palm, his heart beat steadily, and the body Phei had broken had been restored so completely that Danton and the Lord had looked upon him without seeing what had happened.

His bloodline was gone, however, and Marcus kept reaching for it.

The instinct survived, yet every attempt left him sick with the same empty failure.

Marcus closed his eyes but the memories of the three ogres were waiting in the dark sanctuary of his mind. Marcus’s shoulders drew inward as he remembered the first hook fastening into his Soul, catching deep enough that the pull seemed to drag memories and ancient instincts apart with it.

They tore his manifested wings apart as they abused him until he could not longer make a sound, crushed his spiritual form and healed enough of him to continue. Whenever his awareness began to collapse, they brought him back before unconsciousness could spare him the next assault.

Just how can anyone be so cruel the way Phei had been? he’d wondered.

Weeks had crawled past inside Soul Realm while minutes passed outside. At first, Marcus had counted the intervals between each breaking whiled being abused and healing. Eventually he lost the numbers, and with them any sense of how much longer Phei intended to leave him there.

Marcus opened his eyes when tears reached his jaw. One fell upon his shirt while he stared down in disbelief; then another followed, and his hands clenched in the fabric over his knees.

"Fuck..." The word broke in his throat, and he hated the sound of it almost as much as he hated the Dragon who had reduced him to this— it reminded him of his broken wails that had lasted for weeks.

Beneath his anger, he could feel the slave Mark.

He could neither reach it nor tear it out, although the thought of trying made his fingers curl until they hurt. Phei had bound into the same Soul the ogres had spent weeks tormenting and abusing than humanly or imaginary possible.

’And all of this for Selene? Some girl whose death should never matteR enough to bring this upon ME! Just because some nobody girl I—’

Agony of intense white and soul-engulfing pain burst through his Soul before the thought could finish. Marcus screamed and fell sideways from the couch, his hands clawed at the carpet as his body convulsed. The pain spread from somewhere he could not touch, seizing his soul, mind until he felt his head would explode, his spine and locking his muscles until his back arched and his heels dragged against the floor.

Even his cry could not leave this room, all concealed by Eira.

Tears blurred the carpet beneath his face, and the scream broke into ragged pulls of air as the Slave Mark punished him through every part of his restored body. When the agony finally receded, he remained curled beside the couch, shaking too hard to rise.

Phei had claimed even that much of him—

Marcus could sit alone in his own room and still be punished for the contempt he had never spoken.

Space suddenly folded before him; his body locked again. He stopped breathing, certain Phei had returned, until a familiar figure stepped through the distortion.

The Hollow Woman looked down at him.

Relief loosened his chest enough for him to drag himself upright against the couch, though confusion followed as he watched her face:

"What are you—" His question faltered when her lips moved into the slightest smile.

Her eyes remained vacant and creepily hollow, her expression otherwise carrying the terrible stillness he knew. Too much had been taken from her for ordinary emotion to pass easily across that face, yet Marcus could see the faint curve of her mouth.

She was looking straight at him, and somehow he felt her gaze upon his very Soul.

{Finally. A place worthy of your rotten Soul, you scum of a Progenitor.}

Marcus recoiled against the couch—

Her lips had not shaped to form a word but her voice filled his consciousness with perfect clarity.

He stared at the woman they had grown accustomed to treating as an emptied thing, wondering how long she had been able to speak— how much she had understood while they discussed their affairs in her presence.

Her almost-smile deepened as she watched him struggle with it: {Oh, forgive me for calling you that! You are no longer the proud Angel Progenitor now, are you?! Your old Soul is still the scum Progenitor you’re but try calling upon that lovely Bloodline of yours, Marcus— I am curious to see what answers!}

His jaw tightened. Danton and the Lord had failed to discover absence of his Bloodline after coming here to search for a hidden change, and yet she had recognized it while he was still lying on the floor.

’Useless bastards!’

{I would have laughed if I still could,} she continued. {I suppose all those ’lovely’ things you three did to me in desperation to get answers about the Pages finally proved useful to you now. Otherwise, I would’ve made certain you heard every bit of my joy in my voice for this beautiful predicament you’re in— so much for a mighty progenitor! To think you’re even a Progenitor for an entire race is such a disgrace!}

"You—" Marcus tried to stand, forcing strength into legs that still trembled from the Mark’s punishment.

{Do not look at Mother like that now, now. It is so disrespectful, Helel. Especially now that you are little more than a mortal carrying a glorified Soul!}

She approached him without haste and lifted a single finger. Marcus’s eyes flew wide as he rose from the floor, his feet hanging above the carpet before he had managed to straighten his knees. He forced strength through his body, searching for whatever held him, but could find nothing against which to struggle.

Her second finger rose, and his right knee bent; another slight movement folded the left beneath him.

Marcus knelt in the air before her. Heat flooded his face as he strained against her unseen power, furious at the ease with which she arranged him.

{That’s how you act below your elders. Now look at me, Marcus.}