Chapter 963 - 962

He hadn’t fought against the maternal grace of the Abyss. There was nothing to resist, because the true Abyss had never, in all of existence, exuded that suffocating level of sentimental warmth. The very premise of the attack was wrong, a fundamental misunderstanding of the abyss, and a glaring testament to just how far this false construct fell from Mahu’s shadow.

Björn had simply played along. He had let his knees buckle, allowed his posture to slacken, and let the false aura wash over him, all to test the absolute limits of what this mimic could produce. It was an experiment to gauge his own reactions, a mental dress rehearsal for the day Mahu herself might wield that conceptual blade against him again.

When Mahu summoned the presence of the Abyss, it was terrifying precisely because it was real.

She understood the true nature of his origin. When Mahu invoked that place, there was a faint, distant echo of maternal warmth, yes, but it was never an overwhelming, theatrical embrace meant to force a child to its knees. The Abyss was not a mother waiting by the window with open arms. It didn’t call him home, it didn’t reach out to retrieve a lost child. The Abyss simply was. It was a vast, indifferent depth, always open, always patient, utterly unconcerned with whether he ever returned, yet eternally present.

Mahu captured that terrifying, passive infinity perfectly. She didn’t dress the void in mortal sentimentality. She didn’t paint a desperate picture of a long-lost home. She simply opened the door and let the weight of the absolute speak for itself.

This avatar, however, had taken the concept of Motherhood divinity and bastardized it, smothering the Abyss in romanticized mortal expectations. It was a dramatic performance designed by a creature that only knew how mortals wished to be comforted.

And that cloying, artificial gentleness was the absolute proof that the thing dangling in his grip was nothing more than a hollow imitation

He hoisted the Avatar completely off the ground by her neck, her divine stance broken as she dangled above him.

Suddenly, the air behind his right shoulder ripped open with a sickening, wet tear. Crimson aura flared into blinding, white-hot fire as a monstrous, third arm, forged entirely from burning, condensed divine flame erupted from his back.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the flaming claw drove straight through her chest.

The third hand plunged deep, crushing through her core, incinerating the spatial constructs, ice, and conceptual frameworks from the inside out. White-hot fire exploded out of her back, turning her internal divinity to ash in a single, catastrophic instant.

Björn leaned in close, pulling her shattered form toward his face until his glowing crimson eyes were the only thing reflected in her dimming vision.

"Like I said..." he whispered softly into her ear, his breath carrying the acrid stench of burning divinity, "...you are not her."

He opened his clawed grip, letting her limp, burning vessel drop into the dust at his feet.

The moment the Avatar’s burning vessel collapsed into the dirt, the brief flash of satisfaction in Björn’s chest vanished, replaced by an instantaneous standstill.

He froze.

From somewhere far beyond the physical boundaries of the merged realms, a gaze descended upon him. It wasn’t an attack, nor was it a pressure meant to crush him, it was simply an eye opening, casting its unblinking focus directly onto him and the smoldering remains at his feet.

In an instant, his divinity went haywire. His muscles, skin, and bones began to undulate uncontrollably, shifting, expanding, and hardening in erratic patterns, a primal, physical reaction of a body automatically changing to prepare for an existential threat. His heart hammered against his ribs like a war drum.

His fists clenched so hard the air around him popped, the air around his hands igniting from the pure pressure. Fear, sharp and cold, shot through his veins. But beneath that fear, buried under the instinctual horror of being perceived by a true predator was a roaring, intoxicating tide of anticipation.

How far was he, truly, from the Origin Gods? How would the current him, with his righ mind, refined by the faith energy of slaughter from this war and his divinity fare against Mahu if she stood before him in the flesh?

Every fiber of his war-god physiology screamed to leap upward, to tear through the sky and drag the source of that gaze into a slaughter.

Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the weight lifted. The gaze retreated into the vast infinity, severing the link as if he were nothing more than a passing curiosity on the edge of her vision.

Far away, in the deep silence of her own domain, Mahu lay sideways on a sprawling throne of woven light and ice.

A faint, sharp crease marred her brow, a rare expression of undisguised annoyance.

She shouldn’t have cared. The avatar was merely a construct, a vessel birthed from mortal expectations to manage the noise of the ongoing war while she was left alone out of it. It was disposable, a marionette acting out a script forged by the silver kingdom’s collective worship.

Yet, as the sensory feedback of the encounter faded from her mind, the irritation lingered.

It wasn’t that the avatar had lost, it was how it had lost. She had watched every second of the battle through the construct’s eyes. She had watched it attempt to fight the God of War with clumsy conceptual tricks, watched it misinterpret her own divine grace, and, worst of all, watched it play straight into Björn’s hands, letting him dissect its flaws with arrogant ease.

To see her likeness, her presence, and her divinity paraded around as a sentimental, dramatic puppet and to watch Björn treat it like a cheap parlor trick was an insult to the absolute nature of her existence.

Mahu closed her eyes, resting her cheek against her palm, the quiet air of her realm rippling around her like an uneasy tide.

She had half a mind to take over the construct, to override the shattered shell, align her true presence with the realm, and remind Björn of his exact place in the cosmic hierarchy.

Yet, doing so would undermine everything she and her siblings were meticulously cultivating for this world.

An agreement existed among them, a strictly hands-off approach regarding the mortal realm. To step in directly now and tilt the scales of this ongoing war in her favor would break that fragile consensus. Coming so soon after her siblings "divine interventions" with the Paragons, her direct interference would be perceived as a declaration of intent. It would artificially elevate the status of the Silver Kingdom to heights they had never earned through their own grit.

They had started this war, but they had never understood how to finish it. A brief taste of borrowed authority and divine protection had blinded them, causing them to lose sight of any long-term vision.

To engage Björn’s bloodthirsty, battle-hardened followers in an all out frontal war was a catastrophic lapse in judgment, a foolish endeavor born of arrogance. A mother might shield her children from a falling storm, but she would not fight their battles when they willingly walked into the fire.

There was another reason she chose to overlook the avatar’s defeat, Ikenga owed Björn a favor.

It was a debt forged under absolute coercion, a choice thrust upon Björn with no alternative but the God of War had honor where it mattered. He had held up his end of the bargain, guarding the secrets of the Towers and keeping them hidden from his own people. That single act of restraint changed the entire board of Nana.

Because of that silence, the people of Björn were now officially folded under the broad banner of Nana. In the coming future, when the true storm arrived, they would march under the exact same flag as many other Kingdom in Nana.

A faint, sharp smile touched Mahu’s lips at the thought.

Knowing Ikenga’s calculated mind, the Kingdom of Björn as it currently existed would have been erased, reduced to a footnote in history if they hadn’t signed the contract for the Tower. Ikenga was never one to leave a wild card on the field. He would never allow a faction capable of turning the tide of war, especially one as violent and unpredictable as Björn’s to roam free beyond his influence, acting outside the grander design.

The contract had sealed their fate. Now, every faction, every god, and every tide-changing factor on the whole of Nana was locked into the same track, bound by invisible threads, and destined to march toward a single goal.

Back in the mortal world, the sudden collapse of the Avatar echoed through the souls of the Silver Kingdom like a string snapping on an instrument.

It was an instantaneous, staggering sense of loss. No matter their rank or standing, whether battle hardened Paragons, everyday mortals, or innocent children, a collective shockwave tore through their chests.