NOVEL WEB Chapter 9: Chapter 9: The Paradox of Self-Devouring Madness
Ruin Xian stood in the ruins of the collapsing realm, his breathing calm but heavy. The shattered fragments of the twisted labyrinth disintegrated into fractals, spiraling into the void. The Devourer's Womb pulsed at his core, hungry, throbbing with its own heartbeat. The silence that followed the corrupted goddess's destruction was unsettling, as if the multiverse itself held its breath.
Then the world bent.
Without warning, the void snapped around him like a jaw. Time collapsed inward. The fractured laws of causality unraveled.
He blinked—and found himself in a dreamscape.
No. Not a dream.
A prison.
A mirror maze of realities that never were, couldn't be, and still screamed to exist.
"Welcome, Ruin," whispered a voice. "To the Orchard of Paradox."
It wasn't the voice of a god or a demon.
It was his own voice.
He turned.
There, in the orchard of endless twilight, stood another Ruin Xian.
Same face.
Same eyes.
Same ancient burden in his expression.
But his robes were white. Holy. Pristine.
"You must be... a version of me that submitted," Ruin muttered.
The Holy Ruin smiled softly. "I made peace with the system. I chose salvation."
"You were devoured," Ruin snapped. "Don't mistake survival for victory."
The orchard responded.
Every tree bled black honey.
Dozens of alternate Ruin Xians stepped from behind the trees. One missing an arm. One with blind eyes. One whose body was a hollow shell made of porcelain and madness.
All of them were him.
"These are your paths," said the Holy Ruin. "The consequences of every hesitation, every refusal."
"Then let them witness what I've become."
The Devourer's Womb awakened again.
The domain shifted.
No longer trapped, Ruin claimed the illusion.
The maze bent to his will.
The hollow Ruin screamed as his body cracked, the madness inside him boiling to the surface. Blind Ruin bowed, offering his own madness as fuel.
Ruin walked forward, and every step he took devoured a possible timeline.
"I do not walk the paths of fate," he said. "I consume them."
The orchard burned.
Paradoxes bled from the sky.
His mind should have cracked—but Reverse Insanity fed on the contradictions.
He saw the past. The future. Versions of his lovers dead. Alive. Betraying him. Worshipping him.
He laughed.
Not from joy.
Not from pain.
But from the purity of freedom.
Then came the final figure.
Another Ruin Xian.
Perfectly identical.
But with a third eye opened.
The True Madness Ruin.
"You cannot devour me," he said. "I am the end of your evolution."
They clashed.
Time stuttered.
Gravity became language.
Their bodies dissolved into symbols, crashing through timelines like waves.
But Ruin Xian refused to submit.
"I am not your future," he said, clawing at the third eye. "I am your erasure."
He shattered the eye.
And the illusion ended.
Ruin awoke kneeling on a platform of crystallized paradoxes.
Above him stretched the gateway to the next corrupted realm.
Parasitic Heaven of Broken Saints.
System Notification: [Reverse Insanity has evolved into Chrono-Madness Core. You now feed on erased timelines and rejected possibilities.]
His body ached.
His soul pulsed.
And behind him, fragments of alternate selves whispered:
"You are the only one who chose to burn."
He grinned.
And stepped forward.
Into Hell again.