Sign In To The Body Of Chaos At The Start

Once all of that was done, the two of them quickly begun their journey back to the Dragon Clan, talking all the way.

The air was still fragile after the Valley of Dreams collapsed into itself, leaving behind ripples of reality that struggled to align.

Damon and Astralene walked in silence, the ancient paths of the Veiled Hollow unfolding before them as though the world recognized their authority and parted.

But Damon knew better. He knew the Abyss would not forgive disruptions to their plans, and the Abyss never wasted time in completing their missions.

The warning came not as sound, but as silence, too perfect, too deliberate. The kind of silence where even breath felt like an intrusion.

Astralene stopped mid-step.

"They've found us," she said, voice sharp.

Damon didn't ask how, the Abyss always found their way to find their targets, and he had also already felt them.

The sour taste of twisted Aether on his tongue, the subtle pull of corruption threading through the air like poison.

A moment later, the horizon shifted.

Dozens of figures emerged,not from behind trees or over hills, but as if the very space between realities folded and gave them birth. Clad in ragged cloaks, their bodies were etched with Abyssal sigils that pulsed and writhed like living wounds.

But these weren't ordinary Abyssal cultists. Each one of them radiated a pressure that struck the soul directly.

Divine Steps Realm. Every Single One.

Damon's hand curled around BloodReaper's hilt.

Astralene's expression didn't change, but Damon noticed her fingers had subtly touched the spine of the Book of Destiny she carried at her side.

"Thirty-two," Damon muttered, eyes narrowing. "All Divine Steps. That's not a coincidence."

Astralene's tone remained clinical, but her words dripped with undercurrent, "No. They knew you'd reach the Wellspring. They were waiting for you to bring something back."

As if on cue, the lead Abyssal Worshipper stepped forward. He was older, but the Abyss had hollowed his features into a mask of hunger. His voice grated like broken glass.

"Give us the Seed, Chaosborne. You walk a path that isn't yours."

Damon's lips curled, "You know, I expected something more original from a man with a face like that."

The man's expression didn't waver, "It matters not. Your path ends here."

Damon's smile sharpened as he let BloodReaper slide from its scabbard. The blade didn't gleam, it absorbed light. Shadow coiled around his form, spirals of Space Runes orbiting his limbs as his power surged.

But this time… something was different. The shard of Wellspring Aether pulsed in his hand, then melted into his palm—becoming part of him.

Suddenly, Damon felt it.

The world's breath.

The very fabric of existence wasn't just around him, it was his to compose.

The first Worshippers charged, warping through space as their bodies blurred with Abyssal energy.

Damon didn't move.

He merely raised his hand, fingers tracing a slow circle in the air.

The Abyssal Worshippers froze mid-lunge as the space around them bent, folding into loops that trapped them in infinite micro-seconds. They were suspended in time-slices, moving but never progressing.

"What…?!" Astralene's eyes flickered in brief surprise.

"I'm testing something," Damon said calmly.

With a flick of his wrist, the loops tightened, compressing the trapped enemies into singular points of collapsed space. They imploded silently, erased from existence like candle flames snuffed by an unseen hand.

But the others adapted.

A barrage of Abyssal Runes flared across the field as several Worshippers invoked Void Chains, binding space itself. The chains lashed toward Damon, seeking to pin his movements and overwhelm his spatial control.

That's when Astralene acted.

With a graceful motion, she unfurled the Book of Destiny. Golden threads of script spilled from its pages, weaving into intricate formations mid-air. The moment the Void Chains came within reach, Astralene's runes rewrote them.

The chains twisted, turning back upon their casters, constricting them with their own attacks.

"You're not the only ones who can manipulate Fate," Astralene murmured.

Damon didn't even have time to admire her handiwork before a Divine Steps Realm Elder emerged from a warp fissure directly in front of him. The man's aura surged with Abyssal Poison, his hands forming layered spells that warped the ground beneath Damon's feet.

"Fall into Despair!" the Elder roared, slamming his palms down.

The earth beneath Damon melted into a mirror-like abyss, reflecting twisted visions of Damon's greatest failures.

But Damon was no longer the same man as before.He raised BloodReaper, but this time, instead of shadow, the blade radiated a soft Aetheric glow. The Seed had awakened a new layer to his bond with the weapon.

He slashed once, diagonally across the air.

The Abyssal illusions didn't shatter, but instead, they simply forgot they had existed. The Elder blinked, his connection to the spell severed before realization even reached his mind. Damon appeared before him in the next heartbeat, his fist colliding with the man's gut, imbued with spatial compression.

The Elder's body folded unnaturally as he was launched backwards, skidding across the ground before coming to an unmoving halt.

But the Worshippers weren't finished.

A trio of female Abyssal Cultists began chanting in unison, their voices threading into a haunting melody that disoriented even the air. Damon felt a tug at his consciousness, the Valley's dream-illusions trying to re-anchor themselves.

Astralene's eyes narrowed, "Enough."

She flipped the Book of Destiny to an ancient page, her finger tracing a single line of divine script.

The air shivered and suddenly, the cultists' chant faltered. Their eyes widened in shock as their mouths kept moving, but no sound emerged.

Astralene had rewritten their voices out of existence.

"You should've known better," she said, her voice layered with echoes of countless fates.

Damon grinned. "Remind me to never get on your bad side."

"Only if you survive this first," she replied wryly.

But the final wave was upon them.

The remaining fifteen Worshippers gathered into a formation, their combined Auras warping the environment. The sky itself began to tremble as they invoked a Cataclysmic Abyssal Array, a forbidden technique that turned reality inside-out for a targeted area.

Damon's pupils constricted.

Even with his newfound control over Space, clashing directly with that much layered Abyssal energy would be risky.

But Astralene had already seen this moment in the Book.

"Damon," she said, her tone calm but urgent, "Take the Seed fragment. Imprint it onto your Heart. Now."

He didn't hesitate.

Damon's free hand pressed against his chest, channeling the Seed's energy into his core. The world blurred. Suddenly, he could see threads, lines of Aether, interwoven with every Abyssal Rune, every chant, every step.

He wasn't just manipulating Space now. He was reconstructing cause and effect. He raised BloodReaper once more, this time whispering a new command.

"Fracture the False."

A ripple spread from the blade's edge, and where it touched the Abyssal Array, the spell's structure began unraveling backwards.

The Worshippers' expressions twisted in horror as their magic collapsed, their chants unspooling, their runes dissolving before their hands could finish the gestures. It was like Damon had undone the concept of their spell before they even cast it.

Astralene raised her hand, and with a flick of her wrist, she dictated the final line from the Book.

"Witness your destined failure."

The residual Aether coalesced into a single point, then exploded in a silent flash.

When the light faded, the battlefield was still.

The Abyssal Worshippers lay scattered, those still breathing too broken to rise, their connection to the Abyss severed by the Wellspring's resonance and Astralene's Fate manipulation.

Damon exhaled slowly, his aura retracting.

He turned toward Astralene, shaking his head slightly. "That's twice you've rewritten reality today. I'm starting to think the Book of Destiny might be more terrifying than the Abyss."

Astralene smiled faintly, though her expression remained tinged with exhaustion, "And yet, it's only a reflection. You wield the Seed now. Soon, you'll rewrite far more than I ever could."

Damon's gaze fell upon the scattered bodies.

"This was just the prelude. They're sending foot soldiers with Divine Steps power like they're disposable."

"They are disposable," Astralene said grimly. "Because the Abyss knows you've crossed a threshold. And now, it will throw endless versions of itself to stop you from planting that Seed."

He clenched his fist.

"Then I'll keep cutting them down."

As they resumed their path back to the Dragon Clan, the air remained tense, but Damon's mind was clearer.