The sky wasn't blue anymore. It was a searing, rhythmic gold, pulsing with the heartbeat of the divine.
He collapsed, his knees hitting the white marble with a bone-deep crack. His vision was swimming, blurred by the blood dripping from his brow. He looked down at his hands—the hands that had unraveled the secrets of the abyss—and saw the skin blackening, curling back like burnt parchment.
'No. No, no, no. I'm not done. I can't... I can't go into the dark.'
The panic was a cold, oily slick in his gut. It was worse than the wounds. He had spent centuries mocking death, but now that it was reaching for him, he felt like a terrified child. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, trapped bird. He didn't want to be a legend; he just wanted to breathe.
Above him, thirteen figures drifted down from the fractured sky. They didn't have faces—only masks of polished silver that caught his reflection. He saw himself in their masks: a broken, bleeding man crawling in the dirt.
"You gods... treat us like shit!"
Mingso's voice was a ragged, wet snarl. He forced himself up onto a trembling elbow, his muscles screaming. He looked at the circle of silver masks, his eyes wide and bloodshot with a desperate, shaking fury.
"Is this your glory? It took thirteen of you? Thirteen 'gods' for one man? You're terrified of us! You're terrified of what I know!"
The god in the center didn't speak. It didn't even tilt its head. It simply raised a hand, and the world stopped.
The air turned into liquid stone. Mingso felt his ribs cave inward under a sudden, impossible gravity. Heavy, translucent chains erupted from the floor, lashing around his throat and limbs. They didn't just bind his body; they hooked into his very soul.
He tried to scream, but the pressure turned it into a pathetic, muffled gargle. He was being dragged down, not into death, but into the foundation of the world itself.
'I'll find a way... I'll save them... please... let me stay...'
His vision tunneled into a pinprick of light before the earth swallowed him whole.
A sharp, cold sting slapped his face.
Mingso's mind jolted awake, his soul still screaming from the pressure of the stone. He tried to bolt upright, to throw a shadow-curse at the silver masks, but he couldn't move. His body felt heavy, soft, and terrifyingly small.
'Where is the seal? Why is it so bright? Where are the Thirteen?'
The panic returned instantly, sharper than the physical pain. He tried to reach for his mana—the dark, roaring well of power that had been his anchor for centuries—but there was nothing. Just a hollow, empty ache where his core should be.
'No... no! They stripped it. Those bastards stripped my soul!'
He opened his eyes, but the world was a watery mess of beige and yellow. Massive, distorted shapes moved above him like titans. He tried to scramble back, to find a wall to lean his broken spine against, but he couldn't even roll over. He was trapped in a bundle of warm, suffocating cloth.
"Oh, look at him! Aris, he's finally awake," a voice boomed.
It was a woman's voice, but it sounded like a tectonic plate shifting. The vibration rattled his brain. This was Elara. Her hair was a thick, messy braid of deep auburn that fell over her shoulder as she leaned in, her skin smelling of grain and milk. To Mingso, she was just a giant. A jailer.
'Stop! Get away from me! Is this the new torture? A dream? A sick divine joke?'
Mingso tried to shout—to demand to know how many years he'd been sealed—but the only sound that left his throat was a thin, high-pitched wail.
Another shadow loomed over him. This was Aris. He had a short, rugged beard the color of charcoal and eyes that looked like tired flint. He reached down, his massive, calloused hand swallowing Mingso's entire torso as he moved the blanket.
"He has your eyes, Elara," Aris whispered, his voice a low rumble that made Mingso's tiny ribcage vibrate. "A little fighter, isn't he?"
'Don't touch me!' Mingso's mind screamed. He flailed, his tiny arms hitting the air uselessly.
He felt himself being lifted. The sensation of his feet leaving the ground made his stomach drop in a wave of vertigo. He was tucked against Elara's chest. He could hear the thumping of her heart—steady and calm—and it felt deafening.
He squinted, his blurred vision fighting to focus on a rectangular patch of light across the room. A window.
Outside, the obsidian towers he had spent a lifetime building were gone. The grand spires of the Dark Magus had been erased from the horizon. In their place stood a sprawling city of white stone and blue glass. And in the dead center, a cathedral of gold rose so high it seemed to pierce the heavens.
At the very top, the crest of the Thirteen—a sunburst of jagged gold—glowed with a faint, pulsing light.
Mingso's breath hitched. The image of the silver masks flashed in his mind. The feeling of the gravity chains crushing his lungs returned so vividly he felt like he was being buried alive all over again. The sight of that symbol was too much. His vision began to fray at the edges, his heart racing until it felt like it would burst through his fragile chest.
'They're still here. They're still—'
The terror was a physical blow. His eyes rolled back, his small body went limp in Elara's arms, and the world went black before he could even finish the thought.