Chapter 53: Divided Destinies(2)

The cold, dark waters of the subterranean trench parted as Seraphina broke the surface. Gasping for air, she hauled herself onto the damp, cavernous stone floor.

Her crimson hair clung heavily to her face and shoulders, dripping with brackish water, while her tight combat suit hugged her shivering form, its dark fabric reacting to her mana to seal tightly against her skin.

She looked around, her emerald eyes adjusting to the dim, eerie glow radiating from massive, natural mana-stones protruding from the cave walls. Ahead of her, the crystalline formations converged to form a hidden pathway leading deeper into the abyss. Pressing a hand to her chest, she focused her elemental affinity, weaving a chilling wave of ice energy across her body that instantly evaporated the moisture, leaving her combat suit bone-dry and immaculate.

Stepping forward into the cavernous depths, the path stretched on endlessly, maintaining an uncanny, repetitive layout that felt like an isolated trap. Suddenly, a strange disturbance rippled through the air. Though the physical path remained unchanged, her instincts screamed that she was no longer alone.

Focusing her vision, tricolor mystic symbols flashed across her eyes, piercing through the veil of reality. Floating silently before her was a spectral entity—a sorrow-born wraith entirely composed of condensed grief and dark spiritual energy. Looking past it, the shadows of the cave were crawling with dozens more: the weeping spirits of children, women, and fallen souls, all bound by eternal anguish.

A cold, calculating smile touched her lips. To ordinary cultivators, a nest of extreme sorrow-spirits was a lethal hazard, but to a high-tier ice and soul-affinity mage versed in ancient secrets, it was a goldmine.

Moving deeper into the cavern, she tracked the epicenter of the spirits to a massive, hidden subterranean battlefield. Scattered across the ground were the frozen, uncorrupted corpses of ancient Sea-Humans—warriors with distinct aquatic scales lining their limbs and pale, death-white skin.

Channeling her spiritual mana into a refined technique of Mana Telekinesis, Seraphina hovered above the carnage, forcing a single, glowing drop of blood to extract from each fallen warrior. With a flick of her wrist, she wove a crimson blood-formation, casting delicate threads of light that connected every single blood droplet to the surrounding sorrow-spirits.

With a soft hum, the weeping wraiths were violently dragged into the crimson droplets, instantly dyeing the blood a pitch-black hue. Murmuring an incantation for her forbidden art—dubbed the Soul-Consuming Abyssal Blood-Purge—she fused the corrupted droplets into a single, dense black pearl of condensed spiritual essence and swallowed it whole.

BOOM!

The moment the dark pearl entered her core, a cataclysmic wave of raw energy erupted from her body, violently shaking the entire cave system. Her aura flared with intense blue brilliance, and within her spiritual sea, a translucent Fourth Mana Ring abruptly manifested, spinning wildly.

As the ring rotated, ancient, celestial text materialized around it—heavenly runes auto-imprinting a signature fourth-rank combat skill directly into her soul. With a deafening shockwave, the ring solidified into absolute reality, sending a freezing frost blast that instantly encased the entire black-stone cavern in thick glacial ice.

Seraphina’s eyes snapped open. Her crimson hair had completely transformed into a vibrant, icy blue, and her irises deepened into a piercing, dark emerald green. Rising to her feet, she strode past the frozen chambers until she reached a massive ancient stone door carved with intricate reliefs of sea monsters and forgotten abyssal leviathans.

***

Meanwhile, miles away in the blistering, sun-scorched expanse of the desert zone, Lumian dragged his feet across the endless dunes.

Parched and exhausted, he knelt and used his magic to condense a few droplets of water, drinking them greedily before collapsing onto a flat sandstone slab.

Sweat drenched his black hair, sticking it to his forehead as he rubbed his face in utter despair. The psychological toll of the desert was breaking him—every direction looked identical, and aside from the monstrous void worms he had narrowly avoided earlier, there was no sign of life.

"Lumian... are you alright?"

A familiar voice cut through the dry wind. Lumian snapped his head up. Standing right before him was a woman with striking red hair and deep green eyes—his mother, Rose.

His eyes lit up with desperate hope. "Mom?! Mom, did you come to save me?!"

He lunged forward to embrace her, sensing a massive wave of powerful mana radiating from her form. But right before his arms could wrap around her, a sharp, terrifying flash of dark crimson light flickered in Rose’s eyes.

Crack!

The spiritual communication ring on Lumian’s finger suddenly shattered into pieces, spilling out his spirit stones, weapon scrolls, and the protective token given to him by the principal. With a casual wave of mana, Rose snatched the principal’s token out of the air. Black flames erupted in her palm, reducing the token to fine ash in seconds.

Lumian froze, horror seizing his chest. "Mom... what are you doing?!"

Rose did not answer. Instead, she retrieved a glowing red orb from her spatial ring and, using telekinetic control, forced it directly into Lumian’s forehead.

Agony unlike anything he had ever felt tore through his mind. A flood of foreign memories violently forced their way into his consciousness—memories of a past life.

He remembered being born in a similar world, winning his mother’s heart, tearing his sister and Arthur away from a manor, marrying his mother in that past life, awakening a second-class power, and ultimately rising to become a powerful rank-6 Water Mage infused with ancient sea-serpent bloodline.

The memories faded as quickly as they came, leaving his head throbbing. But these were not his actual memories—they were artificial illusions meticulously crafted by Ethan, designed to force Lumian to realize the cruel, fabricated nature of his past before meeting his end.

As the illusion cleared, Lumian looked up at the woman standing before him—the woman who had been his wife in that cruel, recycled past life. "Rose..." he choked out.

Before he could speak further, a searing, burning pain erupted beneath his boots. Looking down, he gasped in horror as jagged, pitch-black blades burst from the desert sand, slicing through his legs and pinning him to the earth.

He thrashed desperately, blood pooling around the black metal. "Rose... why are you doing this?! Did someone hypnotize you?! Listen to me, I’m going to become a rank-6 mage in the future! I have secrets—secrets you’d want to know!"

Rose stood silently, her expression completely devoid of warmth. Another black blade shot up from the ground, driving straight through his stomach.

Lumian screamed out in agony, tears streaming down his face as he stared at the face of his most beloved. "Why... why are you doing this...?"

With one final, merciless motion, a final black blade surged upward, piercing straight through his skull and silencing his breath forever.

As soon as Rose saw his corpse, she noticed that Lumian had been crying before his death. She couldn’t understand why.

Did he really care about me that much?

But it didn’t matter anymore. Lumian was far too weak, and this had been Ethan’s order.

Rose also had no idea what was inside that object.

Lumian had claimed that he could see the future, but she didn’t know whether there was any truth to his words.

If Ethan were here, he would probably be extremely pleased to see this.

At that moment, Lumian wore the exact expression Ethan had wanted to see on his face before his death.

A heart broken by someone you love is one of the deepest kinds of pain.

[If you’re enjoying the novel, don’t forget to leave a Power Stone and vote!

Your support means a lot and motivates me to keep writing. Thank you for reading!]