Chapter 1060. A Hollow Man Walking Toward a Future He No Longer Believed In

Chapter 1060: 1060. A Hollow Man Walking Toward a Future He No Longer Believed In

Rex extended his right hand, palm upward. The gesture was almost tender, a mockery of comfort offered to a dying man.

His fingers didn’t twitch; they remained perfectly still, suspended in the charged, blood-soaked air of the crater.

Theo stared at that hand. His vision was a fractured mosaic of crimson tears and golden sparks.

His mind was a screaming void, a cacophony of agony that refused to subside. ’Why is he doing this?’

’Why isn’t it over?’ Theo thought, his consciousness flickering like a candle in a hurricane. ’I can’t feel my legs.’

’I can’t feel my ribs.’

’I can’t even feel my own god anymore.’

’Kaeleth... where are you? Why is it so cold?’

The silence between them was heavier than the gravity Rex had been wielding. It was the silence of a predator waiting for its prey to finally accept its fate.

With a wet, shuddering gasp that sounded like tearing parchment, Theo reached out. His fingers, slick with his own warm blood and blackened by magical burns, trembled violently as they moved through the air.

When his palm finally met Rex’s, the contact was obscene—the touch of a broken animal against the cold silk of a god.

Then, the extraction began.

It wasn’t the thunderous roar of a spell or the explosive force of a physical blow. There was no flash of light, no dramatic shockwave that would shake the foundations of Aethelgard.

Instead, it was something far more terrifying: a surgical, intimate violation.

Rex’s Soul Manipulation began its work. It was a quiet process, possessing the unnerving, professional stillness of an undertaker removing a cherished trinket from a corpse.

The magic threaded itself into Theo’s very essence, finding the precise geometric coordinates where the Temporal Designation, the divine authority granted by Kaeleth, was woven into his spiritual architecture.

Theo’s breath hitched. His pupils dilated until his eyes were nothing but black pits of terror.

’It’s not pain,’ Theo realized with a horrifying clarity. ’It’s... emptiness.’

It felt as though a fundamental part of his identity was being unmade. Imagine a limb being severed, but without the nerves screaming, just the sudden, impossible awareness of a missing space where something vital used to be.

The ’negative volume’ of his divinity left a hollow cavity in his soul, a spiritual wound that could never be closed by flesh knitting magic. The authority that had made him a prince, a warrior, a chosen one, was being peeled away like skin from muscle.

’I am nothing,’ Theo’s inner voice whimpered, fading into the static of his trauma. ’I am a hollow shell.’

’There is nothing left inside me but the dark.’

Rex’s expression remained impassive as he felt the designation slip into his grasp. He could sense the exact dimensional address of the authority; he had just stolen the specific coordinates in the multiverse where Kaeleth’s domain resided, now exposed and vulnerable through the stolen key.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

[Temporal Designation Navigation Component Integrated.]

[Dimensional Manipulation + Temporal Navigation: Kaeleth’s Domain Location Confirmed.]

The data flooded Rex’s consciousness with flawless clarity. The map of the divine was laid bare before him.

The fortress of the god was no longer an unreachable sanctuary; it was now a target with a confirmed address.

Rex’s fingers curled around the stolen essence, securing it. The transaction was complete.

The prince was no longer a prince; he was merely a broken body waiting to be discarded.

Rex released Theo’s hand.

The courtyard was no longer a place of beauty; it was a slaughterhouse floor, slick with the arterial spray that painted the ancient stones crimson.

Theo stood swaying in the center of the carnage, his body a roadmap of trauma: blackened flesh, exposed bone fragments peeking through torn muscle, and the raw, weeping wounds where Rex’s magic had repeatedly flayed him open only to stitch him back together for more pain.

But the physical agony was now secondary to the spiritual void. Theo stared at his hands.

They were shaking so violently they looked blurred, stained dark with blood that refused to dry. He felt lighter, but it was the lightness of a gutted fish, of something hollowed out and left to rot.

"Is it... gone?" Theo whispered.

His voice was a broken rasp, stripped raw from hours of screaming. He wasn’t asking about the pain.

He was asking about the emptiness.

Rex stood before him, untouched by the chaos he had orchestrated. His eyes held the cold satisfaction of a craftsman who had just finished a delicate extraction.

"Yes," Rex said, the word landing with the finality of a guillotine blade. "The designation is mine..."

"The connection is severed. You are utterly, magnificently alone."

Theo looked at his hands for a moment longer. A single tear tracked through the grime and blood on his cheek, leaving a pale streak.

"Good," he said.

The word was hollow, devoid of hope, carrying only the acceptance of a man who had seen the bottom of hell and decided to make a home there.

Rex’s gaze sharpened, studying the wreckage of the boy before him.

"Go inside," Rex commanded, his voice dropping to a tone of warning. "Retreat to the household."

"Lock the doors. The next portion of this... the next phase of what comes next... is not something you want to be adjacent to."

Theo lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken into bruised sockets, but they burned with a terrible, lucid understanding.

He looked at Rex with an expression that defied simple categorization; it was the look of a traitor who had betrayed himself, the complicated grief of someone who had just handed the keys to his own executioner.

"You are going to kill him," Theo said.

It wasn’t a question; it was a diagnosis of the inevitable.

"Yes," Rex replied without hesitation.

"Kaeleth," Theo breathed, the name of his god tasting like ash in his mouth.

"Yes."

A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the courtyard. The only sounds were the distant crackle of magical residue and Theo’s own wet, labored breathing.

Inside his mind, Theo was drowning in a sea of regret.

’I thought I was the hero of this story,’ he thought bitterly. ’I thought I was the chosen vessel. ’

’But I was just the bait. I was the delivery system for my own god’s downfall.’

"He gave me a second chance," Theo said aloud, his voice cracking. "That’s what he told me."

"When the light came back, when he mended my bones and gave me the power to stand against you again... he told me it was mercy."

"A second chance to make things right."

Rex took a step forward, his shadow swallowing Theo’s broken form. "He didn’t give you mercy, Theo."

"He gave you a weapon. He pointed it at me, knowing exactly how you would react."

"The ’second chance’ was nothing more than a psychological framing, a lie wrapped in golden light to make you willing to be the arrow in his quiver."

Theo closed his eyes. The image of Kaeleth’s radiant face flashed in his mind, now twisted by the realization of its true intent.

"I know," Theo whispered. "I knew it."

"Somewhere, deep beneath the terror and the pain, I knew."

"I just couldn’t find the ’somewhere’ until you tore it out of me."

Rex stared at him for a long beat, seeing nothing left to break. The boy was already shattered beyond repair.

"Go inside," Rex repeated, the command brooks no argument. "Before I decide you’re still worth the effort of breaking further."

Theo didn’t fight. He didn’t weep.

He simply turned, each step a monumental struggle against gravity and agony, and limped toward the safety of the house, a hollow man walking toward a future he no longer believed in.