Chap 153: Scream
Sade, the enigmatic sorcerer with silver-grey hair, had not joined the others in battling the bothersome Sentinels. Like the rest of the Harbinger, he sensed the same dark energy pulsing from that place. A darkness he knew originated from the vessel. But where was she? She certainly wasn’t invisible.
He recalled their last encounter. Her eyes full of malice as she had tried to scar his face… or end him altogether.
In the brief moment he allowed himself between deactivating the Sealed Bond, curiosity got the better of him. Through the shimmering strands of his hair, his glowing violet eyes flickered with silent intent. With a murmured incantation, he summoned the Absolute Vision but the vessel remained hidden. Not even that chant could pierce her veil.
Unimpressed as ever with those meddling Sentinels, he turned his focus back to the task at hand. Time to feign interest in that cursed rock again. That particular Sealed Bond was one of the more obstinate ones, draining and time-consuming to unravel.
Hovering at a safe distance within his protective sphere of violet energy, Sade watched the fragment warily. He knew a reset was imminent. That Sealed Bond was tricky—unpredictable, even volatile. His barrier wasn’t just for shielding. It was also a contingency.
The memory of his second clash with the Sentinels resurfaced. The raw force of the fragment’s defense had seared through him. Painful, yes—but informative. Each Sealed Bond he encountered was a masterwork, a testament to the genius behind the Alpha Seal. Power not of that world. Power that dwarfed the very planet beneath his feet.
Saeda lay unconscious.
In her mind, a memory surged forward—vivid, chaotic—a flashback from the moment inside the collapsed tunnel. It revealed what she hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Kie.
After reuniting with Tee in the aftermath of the explosion, something had happened.
The vision had struck her like a bolt—violent, disorienting. That’s why she had nearly collapsed while trying to pull Tee down from her unnatural levitation. Not weakness. Not fear. The vision had simply overwhelmed her.
A girl with long white hair stood on the edge of something vast and broken. The sky was bleeding red. Creatures—monstrous, winged—swarmed overhead like shadows. Below, the ruins unmistakably resembled Geovalon, but twisted in chaos, engulfed in pure destruction.
What kind of vision was that?
Strange. Terrifying. And disturbingly real.
Lilith hung upside down from a beam, having narrowly dodged the flurry of sword strikes from the fast-moving mortal. Below her, the other female mortal lay still on the beam, steam rising from her body.
She wasn’t about to waste energy chasing the agile one, but the motionless one... that was an opportunity.
Meanwhile, Miko stood frozen, eyes locked on Saeda’s unmoving form as creeping vines curled in from all directions. Panic surged in her chest, sharp and sudden, as she spotted a dark plume of smoke—twisting through the air—racing straight toward her friend.
Riven saw its opening. The still mortal on the beam—unguarded, vulnerable. It darted forward, eager to possess.
What it didn’t realize was that, in the dim light, her faintly glowing blue eyes had tracked its approach. She saw it.
Miko’s mind sparked with a memory. The same smoke, the same red-glowing eyes. The last time it entered her, she’d awakened only to be told she had taken her own life.
But there was no time to process the thought. It flickered across her mind in a heartbeat before the unspeakable happened. She didn’t even have time to scream Saeda’s name.
Saeda struck first. A surge of energy blasted Riven mid-air, sending the shadowy entity recoiling in pain.
Lilith watched it happen—eyes narrowed, face emotionless. She observed with cold detachment, yet the moment reinforced a critical truth. Those Sentinels were capable of disrupting even high-tier plans. That couldn’t be ignored.
Riven’s scream of agony tore through the Harbinger’s shared telepathic link, a raw, guttural sound that made the connection tremble. Sade felt it immediately—his four-winged companion’s presence fading, the bond unraveling by the second.
No.
Frustrated, Sade relayed a new plan to the remaining members through the link. The Sentinels had become more than a nuisance. It was time to end them all. But the vessel remained the priority.
He advised Lilith, the leader, with measured urgency.
“It would be wise to deliver the Dark Lord’s message while the vessel’s dark energy is still strong. With this new strategy, we’ll isolate the vessel from her interfering allies—buying the Dark Lord the time he needs. We will retreat through my vortex. But we have little time. There can be no delays.”
Sade's voice carried weight—strategic, commanding, without need for detail. Though separated by distance, the two remaining Harbingers accepted the plan without hesitation. With that, Sade abandoned the task of deactivating the Sealed Bond and prepared to move.
Meanwhile, the ever-stubborn Legion lingered, still toying with Zod—encased in that ridiculous energy orb, like some kind of roach in a glass cage.
As for Lilith, she slipped away leaving behind the other Sentinel mortals. They still believed she was there, preparing to strike.
But Lilith was already en route to the vessel.
Sade had abandoned his efforts to deactivate the Sealed Bond. Chaos was inevitable now and he was ready for it. His form shifted, dissolving into a cloud of black smoke that drifted silently through the fractured space.
Kie’s senses alerted him to glance back. His eyes widened at what he saw.
“Speak of the devil…”
His jaw clenched.
Lilith didn’t bother hiding that time. Her form flickered between substance and smog, the crimson glow of her eyes burning through the shifting dark that made up her body. She descended toward Tee like a shadow ready to feed.
Saeda’s earlier warning echoed in Kie’s head. They’re targeting the weakest. Tee. And she was right there.
No hesitation.
In the tight space of his fist, a crystalized Ultramana sword formed in his hand, its edges humming with blue mana. He hurled it like a disc of light so fast it warped the air.
Lilith whipped her head toward him.
With a single swipe of her clawed hand the flames erupted—an infernal wave that roared down the hall like a living beast.
Kie cursed, diving under it as the heat singed his back. The beams lit up like torches, showering sparks.
He willed another blade back into his grip—made of crystalized Ultramana.
No time to think.
No time to marvel at what he created.
Only the fight.
“Stay away from her!”
Lilith lunged.
Her body exploded into smoke and black fire, then solidified mid-strike—metal claws tearing down in a hooked arc meant to split his skull. Kie caught the blow on his crystal blade, the clash sending a shockwave that cracked the beam beneath them.
She shrieked.
A sound so sharp it rattled his inner ear and nearly made his knees buckle.
Then she was behind him.
Then above him.
Then flying past him like a blur of smoke.
He swung wildly, every instinct screaming to keep those claws from his face. Sparks flew each time she shifted—one moment a shadow, the next a humanoid figure with black hair whipping like smoke, then back to a nightmare of talons and serrated limbs.
Their fight carried them upward through the broken interior beams as if gravity lost interest in controlling them.
Metal met crystal.
Fire met Ultramana.
Their silhouettes flared and vanished between the rafters in rapid bursts—two streaks of light and darkness clashing in vertical leaps.
As if remembering her motive, Lilith’s face shifted back to Tee’s location. That action prompted Kie to do the same. He wondered about the other members of the Harbingers, and specifically the bird. Tee was still which meant the bird could possess her. Crap!
Sade’s eyes—keen and calculating—locked onto the scorched, twitching form of Riven, still steaming atop the beam.
It was time.
Cloaked in shadows, Sade made sure the two Sentinels didn’t spot him as he slipped in and seized Riven.
Neither Saeda nor Miko noticed.
The plan was in motion. And if it failed, so be it—Plan B awaited. The reset was coming either way.
Sade’s mind was made up. No plea would change it.
But with the last flicker of strength, Riven reached out telepathically—its voice ragged, desperate. "Send me across the Veil… The dark energy there... it might restore me. One of us is already there. They can help."
Sade gave no reply.
With a cold flick of his hand, a red-glowing vortex tore open from Riven's center. Riven's four-eyed form was swallowed by it, vanishing in a blink. The link between them snapped—its consciousness extinguished from the network like a candle in a storm.
It was done.
Sade vanished just as swiftly, smoke curling away into the void. Unlike the portals Riven once conjured, that vortex didn’t close. It pulsed, then began to expand—incinerating everything in its path, an uncontrollable force now set loose.
Sade remembered Riven's desperate plea, but he couldn't grant it. What was asked would demand an immense surge of power—opening a rift, especially from within the current realm, a living manifestation of the Alpha Seal itself, was no small feat.
And even if he did manage to preserve what remained of Reve—just a shred of its former self housed in that bird-like body—what would be the point? What would Riven become next? A roach? A crawling echo of a once-formidable being?
Every breath kept for that purpose would be wasted—spent not in service of their mission, but simply to sustain a pitiful, broken form.
He knew better.
Sade had long admitted, even to himself, that altering the biology of other beings was difficult for him to reverse. Especially when the damage was already done. And worse, the vessel’s attack, infused with raw Ultramana energy, had left its mark on him. Though he appeared unchanged on the outside, something within had shifted. He was not the same.
He couldn’t save Riven. But he could give him an end worthy of what he once was.
Sade drifted farther from the expanding vortex, its unstable energy hissing and burning across space. As he watched, something stirred in his mind. A memory, unbidden. How Riven had first ended up in that fragile Riven form.
One of the early Sealed Bonds had struck him down, back when they were still new to the task. It was only thanks to a comrade across the Veil that his essence was salvaged—reborn in the body of a Riven, the four-eyed bird species scattered across that distant realm.
Goodbye, old friend.
With that, Sade shifted once more into his smoke-born form and vanished into the shadows. He wasn’t leaving that place. Not without the vessel.
The thought of Tee returned to his mind like a dagger warning. Kie launched himself up the support beams, each step sending blue rings of mana exploding under his feet. Lilith, however, skittered up the structure like a spider—sideways, upside-down, claws biting into the surface.
When he reached the beam with Tee, Lilith was already there—
In human form.
Sword drawn.
“You’re in my way.”
Her voice dripped with quiet cruelty. She had a message to deliver and they were already wasting time.
Their blades collided in a whirlwind of sparks.
She vanished.
Kie sensed the danger a heartbeat too late. Lilith rematerialized behind him as a smoke-creature and slashed a claw across his shoulder. Blood sprayed. He hissed and twisted away, sending a shockwave kick down the beam.
It split in half.
Lilith fell with it—but only for a moment.
She erupted from the falling debris in full monster form, black flames spiraling around her, soaring upward with a shriek that tore through bones.
Kie met her in midair, blades clashing again, momentum sending both spinning through a rain of metal shards.
Lilith grabbed his face—claws digging into his cheek.
Kie’s eyes flared bright blue.
He gripped her arm, igniting his mana.
A blast of searing Ultramana fire detonated between them.
Lilith screamed—her entire right side exploding in flame. Her smoke-body flickered violently, destabilizing as the fire scorched her into partial transparency, burnt patches cracking across her skin when she forced herself into solid form again.
For the first time—
She sounded hurt.
For the first time—
She took a step back.
“You—little—viper—” she snarled, clutching the burned side of her head as her hair turned to ash in that spot.
Kie didn’t wait.
He lunged straight for Tee.
Her body lay untouched on the cracked beam surface, her hand slightly curled as if reaching for him in her sleep.
His heart sank when a red vortex began expanding from behind her. Behold, the sorcerer with grey hair in his long back dress emerged. His palm stretched forth, and Kie saw his life flash before his eyes with purple light.
Sade sent a powerful pounce of lighting at the mortal, sending him crashing through beams. Lilith in human form, with one side of her steaming, her hair blocking her face out completely. The sight shocked Sade. But he did not comment.
Sade lifted Tee with his telekinesis and with Lilith, they left through the vortex.
The sound of howling wind and moving beams filled the space.
Kie stayed lodged inside a large crack after his crash landing. His body trembled.
His chest tightened until he couldn’t breathe.
His hand was still outstretched—frozen—unable to unclench, unable to accept the emptiness.
He finally exhaled a broken breath. The blood spewed from his chest where he got hit. Pain all over his body. He didn’t need a mirror to know he was out of the game. But what happened to Tee?
“Tee… I… I’m sorry…”
Kie lowered his head and screamed into the hollow silence—
Raw.
Helpless.
Raging.
And alone.