Advent of the Three Calamities - Chapter 826: Rise of the Calamity [2]

Chapter 826: Rise of the Calamity [2]

The darkness was different than any darkness I was used to.

It was deep and suffocating.

Within the darkness, it almost felt as though no living thing could exist.

The city of ice that once dominated my vision was gone. Instead, the darkness was now all that was left. Velar, Evelyn… They were both gone. I felt a deep sense of dread as I looked around me.

Something vast shifted within the darkness. It was slow, but it was massive, like the stirring of a continent-sized thing that had been sleeping just beneath the fabric of the world. The air itself rippled, and with every pulse, I felt my thoughts blur, as if my mind wasn’t meant to perceive what stood before me.

Ba… Thump! Ba… Thump!

All I could hear was the sound of my own heartbeat as it reverberated loudly inside my mind.

I could hardly focus, feeling something try to invade my mind.

And then…

Crack—!

A sound, distant yet deafening, like the splitting of reality itself.

Lines of faint crimson light webbed across the void, stretching endlessly, twisting through shapes that refused to stay still. They flickered…

Symbols, limbs, or maybe eyes… but every time I tried to focus, they changed.

And then came the whisper.

It wasn’t sound, but something else. Something more ancient. Words that dug directly into my thoughts, bypassing my ears entirely.

—It begins again.

The voice didn’t belong to any one being.

It belonged to all things at once.

Thud!

Every syllable sent cracks spidering through my consciousness, forcing my knees to buckle as blood rushed to my ears. The weight pressing down on me was unbearable. Kike gravity itself had chosen to single me out.

Something… A silhouette flickered at the heart of the dark. At first, I thought it was Evelyn. Her outline wavered. She looked delicate, almost fragile, but that was until… it shifted.

Her head tilted in ways a neck shouldn’t bend. Her hair drifted upward, swallowed by the void, each strand stretching and fracturing into shapes that weren’t hair anymore. Limbs elongated, then retracted, twisting into unrecognizable forms that melted back into the black.

Her voice called out to me; it was faint, but there.

“Help… me…”

For a moment, I believed it was still her.

But then those same words repeated, not from her, but around me. The exact tone, the same voice, multiplied and echoed from every direction.

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

Hundreds of them. Thousands.

They whispered in each direction, consuming me as I looked around me, my heartbeat rising as I held onto my head, trying to make the sound stop.

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

“Help… me…”

Every whisper was loud, just slightly out of sync.

’Stop. Make it stop…!’

I started to turn mad, feeling my brain starting to overload as I clutched it with both hands.

But as if that wasn’t enough, I soon saw it.

A glimpse.

A glimpse of the Outer Being.

Through the black, it looked like something immense. But just one look was enough to make my mind go blank as it struggled to grasp what was ahead.

It was not a body, but a concept given form. Its eyes burned like dying stars, and its shape bled geometry and shadow, endlessly folding in and out of itself. Its very presence consumed everything, meaning, reason, and color, until only the void of its existence remained.

My vision blurred.

The world around me began to peel, layers of light and sound tearing apart as the thing… The Being… leaned closer.

Not physically. Closer in a way that the soul could feel.

—You looked.

The whisper struck me from every direction.

It was soft, and yet…

“Akhhhh!!”

It felt more like a scream to me.

A groan tore from my throat before I even realized it, and I clutched my head as the air around me shattered, splintering into a thousand different colors that rippled and bled into one another.

And then—

Cra! Crack—!

Reality started to split once more.

I felt the distortion in the air, and the pressure that took over the surroundings grew even more.

My breathing grew heavier, and the sense of dread that I felt grew.

’It’s coming… It’s coming…’

The darkness trembled. It wasn’t shaking because of impact or force, but because existence itself was ripping the darkness apart. The air screamed, a loud whistling sound tearing in the air as my bones trembled.

Every instinct in my body told me to run, to hide… To not look.

But there was nowhere to go.

The world before my eyes appeared to fade.

Crack—!

A thin line of red split across the horizonless void, glowing like a flesh wound cut into reality itself. From within it, something vast pressed outward, and the nothingness around it bled a thin red light.

Despite seeing it, I couldn’t actually see it. My mind refused to process it.

The edges of its being brushed against the limits of my understanding. Each second that I looked at it sent a jolt through my skull.

Streaks forced down my eyes.

It wasn’t tears.

—She opened the gate.

The whisper came again, closer… Like breath on the back of my neck.

My chest tightened.

The red light pulsed in rhythm with my heart, every beat faster, louder—

Ba… Thump! Ba… thump!

Something reached out. Not a hand, not a limb, but the idea of one. Its shape flickered between endless shapes and forms, tearing itself apart and re-forming every second.

Wherever it touched, the void rippled like liquid glass.

And within it… I saw faces.

Thousands of them.

Familiar and not.

Mouths open in screams, their features bending and melting into one another. I saw Evelyn’s among them, her eyes hollow, her lips mouthing the same words as before…

“Help… me…”

But most dreadful of all, I could see my own face within it.

Not as Julien, but as Emmet.

A terrifying headache pulsed inside my mind, nearly shattering the little sanity that I’d managed to retain.

But this was far from enough.

I suddenly understood everything.

The despair the gods felt, and the reason why one needed to master Emotive Magic.

These Beings…

They were the very embodiment of despair itself.

A lot of things suddenly became clear to me.

The reason why I’d received such a quest, and what I needed to do.

’The calamities are gates… or more like, the means that the Outer Beings can use to enter this world. Once they reach a certain level, they’ll be able to step into this world. While I am not sure why it has to be done this way, I now know that I need to find a way to stop Evelyn and the others from being corrupted by this power.’

Staring at the creature in front of me, my vision flickering with all sorts of images as blood continued to trickle down my face, I lowered my head and took a deep breath.

’Alright.’

I closed my eyes.

The surrounding darkness grew, and the voices whispering in my head grew.

But amidst the chaos, one single sound filtered through my mind.

Tik Tik—!

When I opened my eyes again, the world was different.

The cold bit down against me as I focused my attention on the two figures that stood opposite me.

“That power…”

Velar’s gaze flickered, and a heavy pressure radiated from him, filling the air as his eyes locked onto Evelyn.

Having already witnessed all of this, I knew I had to act.

I had no choice but to act.

“The curse is corrupting her.”

Thankfully, I knew exactly what I needed to say.

At the same time I spoke, I also tried to calm Velar’s emotions using Emotive Magic. I just needed him to be calm and rational enough to understand what I was trying to say.

But was this enough…?

Velar suddenly laughed.

“The curse is corrupting her?”

He turned his gaze back to Evelyn. Her hair whipped in the wind, and black veins spread across her body, pulsing faintly beneath her skin. With the way she looked and acted, it made sense for Velar to think the opposite.

“Yes, the curse is corrupting her. It’s affected her, as you can see.”

I pointed at Evelyn.

“You, of all people, should be aware of how she is. You’ve spent quite a bit of time with her. You must understand that this isn’t the real her. She’s being corrupted, and what we need to do right now is figure out a way to calm her down. If the curse takes complete control of her, it’ll be over for the two of us. No, not just the two of us. Every one of us.”

This wasn’t a lie.

Thinking back to what I’d just witnessed, I felt a deep sense of urgency.

My heart was still beating loudly as I looked at Velar.

“Corruption… curse…? Who…? Me?”

Having overheard everything, Evelyn’s voice drifted in the air as she looked at me. Seeing her look at me, I suddenly started to shudder as a string of notifications crossed my vision.

[+1]

[+1]

I knew that I didn’t have much time left.

Without waiting for Velar to reply, I directly rushed in Evelyn’s direction.

The goal at the moment was to knock her out before she became even more emotionally unstable.

“Help me out!”

I shouted Velar’s name as I sprinted toward Evelyn. Without thinking, I summoned my book, its pages flaring to life before my eyes. In seconds, I was in front of her. Her expression twisted in shock. Clearly, she hadn’t expected me to move, let alone strike so suddenly.

But having seen what I did, I knew that I had to knock her out.

Swoooosh—!

Without holding back anything, I fused the red and green orb in my mind, forcing my body to squirm and pop as I focused all of my attention on my hand as images continued to flash inside of my mind, raw emotions spilling and concentrating within my chest as threads appeared in all directions, surrounding Evelyn from all sides.

Gritting my teeth, the threads splintered, raining down on her from above as I forced my hand forward, trying to reach for her body.

But just when I thought I could do it…

BANG!

Lightning crackled from above, blocking my attack as Evelyn turned around to look at me, her eyes wide in shock.

“You… You…”

[+1]

[+1]

[+1]

[+1]

Seeing the string of notifications, my heart sank.

’Shit…’

This was really going to be tough.