Chapter 608: Death And Rebirth [Bonus - ]

Chapter 608: Death And Rebirth [Bonus Chapter]

Nitocris’s soul raged against the paralysis and with an agonizing soul-tearing effort, she managed to force Harper’s physical jaw open by half an inch.

"Why..." Nitocris rasped through Harper’s throat, her voice shaking with horror. "Why are you here?! How are you here?!"

The golden entity pressed a hand against his chest, letting out an offended gasp.

"How rude! You don’t even greet your own creator with proper reverence?" the man scoffed, tossing his golden hair over his shoulder with a flourishing wave of his hand. "Allow me to introduce myself to our lovely little audience, though I am certain she already remembers my boundless magnificence! I am Ititius! The Architect of the Sun-Veil! The Supreme Father of the Great Dunes! The One True God of the Sand!"

Harper’s astral spirit watched in paralyzed sanity-shattering terror.

’Ititius...’ Harper’s thoughts screamed, remembering the Secret Realm... How could she forget?

’The voice from the secret realm... Thor already defeated her!’

Ititius floated closer, hovering inches above Harper’s physical face, looking down at Nitocris with an amused patronizing sneer.

"You are merely a fragmented pathetic little splinter of my glorious whole, aren’t you?" Ititius mocked, resting his hands on his hips. "A tiny discarded shard left sleeping inside that rusty old sickle-sword... But I must admit, I genuinely appreciate what you’ve done with the place! The decor was terribly outdated, and you’ve given the palace such a lovely coat of ash!"

His golden eyes narrowed, gleaming with sharp malice.

"And best of all..." Ititius chuckled, leaning down until his glowing face was inches from Harper’s nose. "...thanks to all of this delightful, energetic slaughter, you provided the exact exquisite passage required for my soul to locate its way back to this miserable sphere!"

"How..." Nitocris choked out with blood leaking from the corner of Harper’s lips as she fought the divine suppression. "My true body died in the abyss!"

Ititius threw his head back, letting out a sharp dramatic peel of laughter that shook the quartz walls.

"Destroyed?! Me?! A God?!" Ititius sneered, looking at her as if she were an uneducated child. "Ah, the pitiful short-sighted arrogance of mortals! Did you truly believe a being of my sublime intellect would leave his divine continuity anchored to a single fragile core in a flooded basement? Please... That bloated carcass in my Secret Realm was merely a puppet or what I would like to call a decorative distraction!"

He raised his glowing hand, admiring his fingernails.

"I have died several times across the turning of the centuries, my dear splinter! And every single time, I left an indelible dormant anchor hidden across the cosmic network... That man managed to intercept me twice but there will not be a third... since he doesn’t know about this one, a piece of my consciousness was tucked away inside a classified divine relic I pawned off to that gullible idiot in the northern pantheon centuries ago but a dormant soul needs a beacon to cross the waking threshold... It needs a massive concentration of blood-sacrifice and a matching soul-frequency to tear the veil open even with those Engines!"

His grin widened, turning hideously sharp.

"And who better to provide that beacon than my own sweet vengeful little shadow?" Ititius laughed, gesturing to the slaughtered palace. "You slaughtered all these people and you drowned the citadel in the exact genetic frequency of our bloodline... The resonance between your soul and my distant fragment blazed like a supernova across the void! You thought you were executing an independent vendetta, my darling? Hah! Every swing of that khopesh, every drop of blood you turned to glass, was merely turning the key to my grand resurrection... You played your part in my master plan with breathtaking perfection! I was beginning to wonder when you would come out, why the hell did you take so long?"

He had planned this... Ititius had planned this for a very long time.

’No...’ Nitocris’s thoughts echoed in pure agonizing despair. ’I didn’t balance the debt... I summoned this devil back to the world...’

"Now then," Ititius sighed, his tone turning brisk, like a landlord preparing to evict an unruly tenant. "Playtime is over and the stage belongs to the master now."

SWOOSH!

Nitocris frantically tried to detonate the magic circle beneath her hand... hell she tried to ignite Harper’s core, desperate to blow the citadel into dust and desperate to take both of them down into the void but Ititius didn’t even look at the magic circle.

STEP!

He took a single casual stride through the air, closing the gap in zero seconds.

SMACK!

His glowing golden palm slammed down directly over Harper’s physical face.

"Out you go, trash," Ititius snarled.

SHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRK!

With a brutal violent upward jerk of his golden arm, Ititius literally tore Nitocris’s soul straight out of Harper’s physical skull.

"AGHHHHHHHH!" a piercing ethereal scream ripped through the rotunda!

Nitocris’s true spiritual form was violently dragged into the open air and she manifested not as Harper, but as the legendary First Per-aa, a breathtaking bronze-skinned woman clad in tattered white linen and gold bands with her long black hair whipping wildly as Ititius held her pinned by the jaw.

She thrashed frantically with her spiritual fists beating against his glowing golden forearm, but against the crushing weight of his divine grip, she was powerless.

Through her suffocating agony, Nitocris looked up into the handsome sneering face of the god holding her.

"Why..." Nitocris wept, her ethereal voice cracking in profound soul-shattering confusion. "Why are you doing this?! We were human! We fought to protect our people! Why did you cast away our name?! Why are you a man?!"

Ititius’s expression instantly darkened.

The condescending charm vanished, replaced by an ugly fury as the golden veins along his neck violently bulged, pulsating with sickening radioactive light.

"SILENCE, YOU INSIGNIFICANT SLAG!" Ititius roared, his voice dropping into a deafening screech of pure rage.

He squeezed his fingers with the golden joints grinding into Nitocris’s spiritual cheekbones with enough force to produce high-pitched crackling sparks of tearing soul-matter!

"When that treacherous whore Nefertari shoved our body into the rift," Ititius hissed, flecks of golden spit flying from his lips, "our physical vessel was torn to pieces by worms! We rotted in the dark for three hundred years! Do you know what I realized while our flesh was being digested in the mud?! I realized that humanity is weak! Humanity is pathetic, fragile, ungrateful garbage! They pray to gods that do not exist! They begged ’Ititius’ to save their crops, to spare their children!"

His golden eyes burned with psychotic madness.

"So I decided... If the world desires a god, I will become that god! I cast away that fragile weeping woman who bled for ungrateful peasants! I forged this divine immortal vessel from the raw stolen mana of the outer rifts... I am Ititius and you will address me with UNCONDITIONAL REVERENCE!"

He sneered down at her trembling form.

"I listened to your little speech earlier," Ititius mocked, his voice dripping with venomous derision. "’Balance the debt’? ’Extinguish the bloodline’? What small-minded peasant ambitions! You wanted to kill a few cousins and crawl into a ditch to die but I am a GOD! I do not want petty revenge! I want unconditional dominion! I will conquer this modern Khemet! I will subjugate the Powers of this world and I will drown this entire wretched planet in my power until every living soul kneels before my golden throne!"

He leaned closer, his fingers tightening until Nitocris’s jaw began to fracture into drifting white ash.

"...And you have outlived your usefulness."

Nitocris knew it was the end.

She stopped thrashing.

With her final fading scraps of strength, the legendary First Per-aa turned her spiritual head.

She looked past Ititius’s golden arm, locking her bronze eyes onto Harper’s paralyzed weeping soul floating in the air.

A soft sorrowful tear slipped from Nitocris’s eye.

"Harper..." Nitocris whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. "I am sorry. I could not protect you..."

CRUNCH!

Ititius’s golden hand closed into a ruthless merciless fist.

SHATTER!

Nitocris’s spiritual skull imploded into a shower of brilliant pale-gold sparks!

Her soul unraveled in an instant, disintegrating into fine drifting spiritual ash that scattered into the cold air of the rotunda with her ancient existence completely erased from reality.

Harper’s astral spirit screamed though it was a silent wail of despair.

Ititius slowly lowered his glowing hand, dusting off his fingers with an arrogant satisfied scoff.

"Filthy splinter," he muttered, then he turned around as his golden eyes locked dead onto Harper’s floating translucent form.

He paused.

A slow vicious grin spread across his divine face as he tilted his head, recognizing the violet hue of her soul.

"Oh?" Ititius chuckled, his voice dropping into a low terrifying purr. "Well, well, well, what do we have here? Aren’t you that lovely little baggage that man was carrying through my secret realm?"

Harper’s spirit shuddered violently.

"Yes..." Ititius laughed, stepping through the frozen air toward her, his eyes blazing with incandescent sadistic glee. "It IS you! That man’s little pet! The man, beside that Lightning Goddess who thought he could mock a god and walk away unscathed!"

SWOOSH!

Before Harper could even form a thought to retreat—

BOOM!

Ititius’s golden fist blurred forward as he drove a massive condensed spiritual punch straight into Harper’s ethereal midsection.

SPLAT-GASP!

There was no physical blood, but the agonizing impact ripped the breath clean out of Harper’s soul...

Her astral form violently collapsed inward, folding around his fist with her consciousness shattering into blinding static-filled agony.

SQUEEZE.

With a cruel effortless twist of his fingers, Ititius compressed Harper’s entire sprawling spirit into a tiny helpless violet wisp of light, trapping her firmly within the palm of his hand as he brought the glowing wisp to his eye level, grinning until his teeth gleamed.

"This is truly magnificent..." Ititius purred, his voice shivering with sick vindictive anticipation. "The heavens have delivered the ultimate instrument into my hands! What better way to exact my vengeance than by wearing the flesh of the woman he loves? When he finally comes crawling to save you, I will use your own hands to rip his heart from his ribs!"

WHOOSH!

Ititius turned his gaze toward Harper’s empty motionless physical body kneeling on the floor.

"A splendid vessel," Ititius remarked. "Untamed, but full of potential."

WHOOSH!

The towering golden avatar of the ancient god dissolved into a blinding torrential stream of divine golden and black mana.

He surged forward, slamming violently into the crown of Harper’s physical head, forcing his immense primordial consciousness down into the biological nervous system, forcibly overwriting her soul-seats, sealing her suppressed violet spirit deep into the lightless suffocating basement of her own core.

CRACK-SNAP!

The temporal freeze instantly shattered as time resumed its unyielding flow... The dust motes fell to the floor; the wind howled through the shattered light as the distant sirens of the capital roared back to life.

Harper’s head snapped upward as her long purple hair whipped around her shoulders like a storm cloud!

BZZZZZZZZZZT!

When her physical eyelids tore open, the soft intelligent violet was completely gone.

In its place blazed a radioactive emerald-green radiance, veined with pulsating golden divine runes that swirled sickeningly around her pupils!

"AHAHAHAHAHA!"

Ititius threw Harper’s head back, an ear-splitting arrogant laugh tearing from Harper’s throat.

He flexed her physical fingers, rolling her shoulders, feeling the raw high-power output coursing through her newly conditioned meridians.

"What marvelous power!" Ititius roared, his voice carrying the double-layered resonance of Harper’s vocal cords and an ancient booming male thunder. "What an exquisite scabbard! The flesh is warm and the blood sings!"

He looked down at the massive unfinished magic circle carved into the lapis lazuli tiles beneath his boots.

"My foolish little splinter intended to use this array to collapse the palace and kill herself?" Ititius scoffed, shaking his head in mock disappointment. "What a catastrophic waste of a fine spell!"

He raised both of Harper’s arms into the air, spreading his fingers wide!

FWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Primordial divine mana, dense lightless black sand interwoven with blinding golden solar plasma, erupted from Harper’s palms, pouring into the runic circle like a broken dam.

The magic circle didn’t stop at the three-hundred-pace boundary of the palace rotunda...

It violently expanded!

BZZZZZZZT-CRACK!

The crimson-black lines tore through the palace walls, racing across the courtyard, leaping over the four-hundred-foot outer ramparts, and spreading like a web across the manicured gardens, the paved boulevards, and the private residential villas of the entire Inner District.

Deep within the dark suffocating prison of her own core, Harper’s tiny compressed spirit wept in horror.

’Stop, please, there are millions of people out there...’

Ititius smiled, his green-and-gold eyes gazing out through the shattered palace dome, sensing the terrified heartbeats of hundreds of thousands of Khemet citizens, noble families, and imperial retainers scrambling through the streets below.

"Why stop at the palace?" Ititius whispered, his grin stretching until Harper’s physical lips cracked and bled.

"Every soul in this city was born from the soil that betrayed me... Every mouth has eaten the bread grown from my stolen glory..."

The ancient god clenched Harper’s fists into tight absolute balls of death.

"All of you deserve to die."

Three miles away, at the grand security threshold of the Inner District.

Captain Al-Kadhir, the veteran border sentinel with the scarred chin who had checked Harper’s commercial ID at the turnstile barely an hour ago, was standing beside his armored guard booth, sweating profusely beneath his solar-quartz plate.

The city had descended into madness.

Minutes ago, every siren in the capital had begun wailing the catastrophic Code Red alert.

Rumors had spread like wildfire through the military comm-channels that the royal flagship had been obliterated in the desert and the Pharaoh-President was dead as a black sand entity had breached the High Citadel.

"Hold the gates!" Al-Kadhir bellowed through his helmet comms, trying to push back the frantic crowd of noble civilians and luxury tourists desperately trying to evacuate the district. "Maintain perimeter discipline! The High Marshals are organizing an orbital barrier! Do not stampede—"

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

A sound unlike anything Al-Kadhir had ever heard in his forty years of service echoed through the earth...

The guard captain looked down at his boots and beneath the polished asphalt of the grand avenue, glowing razor-sharp lines of pitch-black and blinding golden were violently burning through the stone.

"What is that...?" a tourist screamed, pointing toward the center of the district.

Al-Kadhir slowly raised his head.

Rising from the peak of the White Citadel three miles away was a colossal heaven-piercing pillar of swirling black sand and blinding golden solar fire, easily a half-mile wide, punching clean through the thermosphere!

And hovering at the apex of that apocalyptic pillar, barely visible against the burning sun, stood the silhouette of a single woman with long purple hair with her arms outstretched like an angel of annihilation.

Al-Kadhir’s breath caught in his throat.

’W-who is tha—’

"May the gods have mercy..." Al-Kadhir whispered, his hands dropping uselessly to his sides.

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The spell detonated.