Chapter 81: Collapse

The sight of Yue causes Kyrie to feel chills. She carries the same features as the girl he met on the train that offered him a way to Ian's world.

A young teenage girl with flowy long black hair and clear brown eyes stands in front of the four gods and bows. Her manners are different than the ones that Kyrie is used to. Unlike the blatant laziness and carelessness she showed during the time they spent together, this Yue shows an orderly and serious demeanor, maybe a bit clumsy in her bearing like a beginner.

"Yue greets young misses and god Erebus."

Phanes pats on Yue's head. Being short and younger, Yue gets treated by Phanes as a younger sister, not a servant. Phanes has always hated not being taken seriously due to her age.

Phanes glances back at the awkwardly standing mortals who seem to be out of place. In history, there is not a single occurrence recorded where gods appear together in the mortal world. 

"Sister," Phanes calls out both Karta and Vita at the same time. She takes their arms and drags them to introduce her mortal friends.

"This is Kyrie, Ian, and Maya… She used to be Udarr's relic. These are humans that come from the future," Phanes explains, like it is the most common thing to see mortals from the future and an ancient relic like an everyday occurrence.

Kyrie sweats as he looks closely at the goddesses. Their aura intimidates those whose power rank below. Their bodies freeze as soon as they get into the heaviness of their exerted energy, and their heads naturally want to hang low like the back of their heads are heavily weighted in their presence.

[Like… what should I do… Kneel, not kneel. Curtsy?]

Kyrie ends up bowing as Erebus did. Following suit, Ian and Maya do the same. 

"This is Vita, she is my second elder sister," Phanes tilts her head towards Vita, "and this is Karta, she is my eldest sister," she tilts to the other side towards Karta.

Then, she turns to look at Yue, "That is Yue. She is our family attendant."

Vita and Kyrie's eyes meet. Her eyes slowly walk towards Kyrie's left wrist, where the patterns for the space magic runes are imprinted around. Kyrie slowly hides his wrist behind him despite Vita already discovering it. However, Vita does not say anything and diverts her stare away. A cold glint shines past her eyes.

"Vita," Karta calls, making Vita change her expression as she turns towards her elder sister. 

"Yes, elder sister."

"I will leave the seal to you."

Karta looks at Erebus, expecting him to show the way. Erebus turns to guide Vita towards the pit. 

Vita smiles slightly, turning to Erebus for a conversation like usual. However, she meets his expressionless face, making her swallow back her words and keep quiet. She ponders the reason for the change of attitude. Her eyes wander around as she dips into her thoughts, yet she cannot come up with anything where she could have screwed up. 

Kyrie's eyes follow the two gods moving towards the pit.

No wonder Erebus was astounded when Kyrie revealed that the person who blessed him turned out to be Vita. There is only one Vita, so if Erebus personally knows her, it would only be odd if Erebus is not astonished, especially when Phanes and Vita are sisters.

"Phanes," Karta interrupts the silence. 

Phanes looks at Karta, picking up emotions of distress and unease from the goddess. Since she is closest to Karta, she understands her sister at a deeper level that no other gods could compare. Her cold exterior tends to cover well the emotions, but most of the time, if Phanes looks more carefully at her sister, she can see the little details that help her pick up Karta's feelings. 

However, Phanes rarely sees her sister distressed.

Suddenly, the earth jolts, making everyone try to regain their footing. The souls' cries intensify, drawing everyone's attention despite their previous cries becoming background noise once their ears get accustomed to the sound. Their wails ring stronger and angrier like a protest, yet they are just wails without a single recognizable word. 

The spirits are upset that Vita repaired the seal, confining them once again inside the pit, leaving them without a way out. They start to bang their bodies into the pit walls. They are fed up being trapped inside a place of helplessness. 

Every second progressing, more and more souls continue to bang on the walls. Even though they are hurting themselves, they cannot handle the pain of being jailed after they saw the chance of freedom. 

The earth shakes violently. Cracks start to form on the cave ceiling, and debris drops, fragmenting once hitting the ground. The souls in the pit tints in black. They start to blend into one as they turn. Phanes crutches down and slams her hands onto the floor. She channels light magic into the ground, pulsating it towards the pit. Then, the pit envelops in light, relieving the souls' pain. 

However, she knows it's just a temporary measure.

"We need to leave this place!" She screams.

Worried, she turns to look for Erebus and Vita. When she sees that they are running towards them, she lets out a breath of relief. 

They rush to the outside through the opening that Phanes created into the forest. The gods can easily get away, but the mortals might suffer the blast from the cave collapsing. So, Erebus channels his essence into the ground. A part of his shadow separates from Erebus, lifts off the ground, and dives back into the ground like swimming in water. The shadow rushes underneath the mortals and the relic, picking them up and carrying them quickly away from the hill on the verge of collapse.

Then, the hill collapses, burying the cave chambers underneath the rubble. The collapse lifts clouds of dust that rush towards the forest like racing horses.

The shadow abruptly stops, tilting its body to slide the mortals down, and lifts itself like a shield. A deafening blast rushes to them, carrying everything on its path through the blast, consuming them inside the clouds of dust. The trees that stand so proudly through the decades get uprooted and tumbled down. 

Then, the blast calms—no creature daring to emit a sound aside from the beats of their hearts. Ian holds Kyrie and Maya inside his arms tightly, trying to protect them from the things that the shadow could not. They all close their eyes and crouch down when the blast hits the shadow, and when the roars of the blast calm, they slowly open up their eyes. 

Maya, who was in between Kyrie and Ian, shakes like a leaf. They look around at the forest that turned into a wasteland in a single blast. The shadow that has to shield them returns to the ground.

Kyrie looks around for the gods and finds them not that far away. The shadow that has wrapped around the gods disintegrates and returns behind Erebus. 

Despite the disaster having calmed, Kyrie's instincts scream that something else is coming. The earth quakes for the third time. Underneath the bottom of his feet, he feels the pressure moving up.

The top of the crumbled hill bursts part, sending flying debris, falling like a rain of sand and stone. Like an eastern dragon finally evolving from its giant serpent form, it sheds its last layer of skin, bursting out towards the sky as it reveals its final form. The souls have merged into one, shaping itself into an elongated form of a dragon. The form peers where the mortals and immortals stand, ready to devour them whole.