While Ethan's happiness clone in the Dragon World was bracing for the arrival of the Apocalypse messenger, his main body suddenly felt a pain in his soul.
It felt as if a part of his very foundation was being sanded away by a cosmic grater.
"What's going on?" he gasped, his voice straining against the phantom agony.
He immediately activated his Law of Karma.
In his mind's eye, a vast web of glowing red and gold strings appeared, representing his connections to the multiverse.
He traced the source of the pain, following a faint, nearly forgotten line of fate.
It led him toward a world he had visited once in his early journey.
The Magus World.
There, he had left a soul fragment to grow individually.
It was a common practice for higher beings to foster incarnations to experience different paths of cultivation, but Ethan had mostly left this one to its own devices, only stepping in once to save the boy's family.
