Chapter 528: A woman who sacrificed everything
The silence that followed the impact proved more deafening than the explosion itself, so charged was it with fatal consequences. Ariana’s hand had just sliced through the air in a gesture of surgical precision, plunging deep into Klein’s chest, piercing flesh and tissue with disconcerting ease. The tearing sound of muscle fibers mingled with the sharp, distinct crack of a rib giving way under the pressure of her fingers, and this macabre cacophony echoed at length against the vaulted walls of the hall. Klein stepped back once, then a second time, his boots sliding on the cold stone floor now stained by the first trickles of his own blood, which formed winding rivulets between the pavement joints. A violent spasm, involuntary and uncontrollable, shook his mutilated torso as he brought a trembling hand to his gaping wound, his fingers instantly tinted a bright, warm red, this organic viscosity offering him tangible and irrefutable proof of the gravity of his condition. He swayed dangerously, his center of gravity compromised by nervous shock and the sudden loss of a critical volume of blood, before coughing up a mouthful of scarlet liquid that splattered onto the floor.
However, the essence, that intimate and complex fusion between his soul and the skills he had stolen or acquired over his countless reincarnations, fought desperately to stabilize his vital structure threatened by hemorrhage. Thanks to the unique synthesis of the legacies of Konstantin and Sulyvhan, his mind remained astonishingly lucid despite the physical agony ravaging his body, a sharp and diffuse pain that radiated from his sternum to the extremities of his numb limbs.
Isabella, who watched this scene in horror, her wide eyes reflecting disbelief at the unheard-of violence of the attack, did not let a single second pass before reacting. Her pupils blazed with burning rage as she tightened her grip on her lance, her knuckles whitening with effort, her muscles taut as bowstrings. She let out a guttural, primal, piercing cry and threw herself at Ariana, propelled by a concentrated impulse of mana that raised a light dust around her feet. The tip of her weapon sliced through the air with a sharp whistle, tracing a straight and inexorable trajectory, aimed directly at the heart of this woman she now hated with every fiber of her being. Isabella put into it all her strength, all her accumulated rancor, all the anger of having seen her ally, her soul-brother, reduced to such a state of vulnerability.
Yet Ariana didn’t even seem fazed by this frontal assault. She made an almost languid hip movement, a graceful twist that made her turn slightly, as if dancing amidst the chaos. With a simple gesture of her left hand, her fingers tracing symbols in the air, she murmured an incantation so faint as to be imperceptible, reduced to a barely articulated breath. A barrier of compressed air, dense and roaring, instantly materialized before her. Isabella’s spear struck this wall of wind with a shrill metallic clang, a detonation that rattled eardrums and reverberated in multiple echoes throughout the vast chamber. The force of the impact was such that shockwaves propagated in concentric circles across the stone floor, raising a fine gray dust, but the shield didn’t even crack, remaining perfectly intact in its ephemeral solidity. Ariana blocked the attack with an ease that bordered on insulting.
"You’re one of those whores..." she said in a suave voice but imbued with unparalleled contempt, her iridescent irises shining with a malicious gleam that danced in the darkness of the room. She fixed Isabella with a cold stare, utterly disregarding the threat posed by this formidable warrior, mentally reducing her to the status of a mere nuisance. With a sharp, resonant snap of her fingers, she made a flaming point appear at the center of her shield, a small spark that grew into an incandescent fireball. The energy condensed into a blinding flash, a glowing beam, before exploding forward with unheard-of violence. The shock struck Isabella square in the solar plexus, lifting her off the ground in a sudden motion and hurling her backward, her disarticulated body crashing violently against a stone pillar several meters away with a dull, sickening thud. She slid down the column to collapse on the floor, inert, her limbs forming an ungainly angle on the cold pavement.
Ariana immediately lost interest in the woman lying on the ground, her fleeting attention already absorbed by more pressing concerns, and redirected all her concentration onto Klein, who was still fighting with stubborn courage to remain standing, his shaky legs threatening to give way at any second. Her features, usually so controlled, so impassive, contorted under the weight of a morbid obsession that stirred contradictory emotions within her, a toxic mixture of love and hate, of desire and frustration. She was torn between two equal impulses, two destructive forces that were ripping her apart from within.
"If I cannot have you for myself when I sacrificed myself entirely for you, when I lost everything, abandoned everything in your name, then no one should have you..." declared Ariana as she advanced toward him, the light rustle of her black silk dress being the only perceptible sound in this room now plunged into an oppressive silence. "There is strictly no point in you staying alive..." Her words were imbued with a poisonous love, a corrosive and painful substance, that of a woman who had given the entirety of her being, her soul, her dignity, her freedom, for a man who, ultimately, was escaping her irrevocably. As she continued to pour out her bile in an uninterrupted stream of biting words, Klein remained totally silent, as if petrified by an inner force that no one could understand. His gaze, ordinarily so piercing, so sharp, seemed to have lost itself in layers of time inaccessible to mortals, as if he were contemplating a spectacle that only he could see, a vision perhaps, a distant memory, or an alternative reality unfolding in parallel with this scene of violence. This silence, more than anything else, seemed to destabilize Ariana far more than any retort or provocation he could have offered her.
Suddenly, a rift opened in his mind. Memories of the past, those that Aeshma had separated from his soul during his sacrifice on Island Mist, resurfaced, clashing with his current consciousness. The pain of betrayal, the capture of his soul by the Thirteenth Constellation, and that forgotten promise of vengeance... Everything was reconnecting.
"Aeshma..." he finally murmured, his voice a raspy breath.
Ariana abruptly turned her head toward Klein, or rather toward the one she now recognized beneath the features of Lucifer. The shock was so violent that she nearly dropped her dagger. Hearing that name, her true name, spoken by that mouth, shattered her dominant facade.
She opened her mouth to speak, to scream, but no sound came out. A raw emotion, a sadness, rose from her fragmented essence. Tears began to flow from her eyes, large iridescent drops tracing shiny furrows down her porcelain cheeks. She was unable to stop herself, her body shaken by silent sobs.
"Lucifer... you recognize me..." she finally said, her voice now nothing but a broken melody.
She took a hesitant step toward him, her hands outstretched as if to beg for forgiveness or seek an embrace. But the instant she was about to touch him, Ariana’s body, or rather Aeshma’s fleshy envelope, contracted violently. Her limbs stiffened in an unnatural position, and a stifled cry of pain died in her throat.
Suddenly, an overwhelming presence descended upon the hall. The atmosphere around Ariana changed radically, growing denser to the point that the air became almost unbreathable. The femme fatale’s aura shifted from melancholic sadness to an abyssal and glacial power.
"I have been waiting for a while to take possession of your body via the system..." suddenly said the voice coming from Ariana’s mouth.
The sound no longer had anything feminine or human about it; it was much deeper, resonating with an authority that seemed to originate from the depths of the Abyss. The woman’s iridescent eyes went dark, giving way to an absolute void, two wells of unfathomable darkness.
"But I have reached a conclusion..." continued the entity now possessing her. "The only way to possess you is to break you mentally."
The fact that Klein was the fusion of several legendary essences Konstantin, Sulyvhan, and Diavolo had endowed him with an unprecedented mental fortress. Possessing him through brute force had become nearly impossible, even for an entity capable of manipulating the system.
The entity observed Klein with cruel curiosity. It knew it had to destroy every bond, every memory, every fragment of the man he believed himself to be in order to make way for the total Usurper.
Suddenly, it or rather the creature now inhabiting this flesh snapped its fingers.
The gesture was simple, but the consequences were apocalyptic. A black flame, edged with purplish reflections, erupted from the floor. It was the signature flame of the Antichrist, a corrupted energy capable of consuming not only matter but also mana and aura. The inferno engulfed the space in a fraction of a second, a sea of demonic fire that licked the walls of the bastion.
The heat became unbearable. The stones of the floor began to melt, transforming into dark lava. The screams of the last Spectrum guards in the vicinity were smothered by the roar of the blaze. Everything in this room was burning, bodies and spirits alike, beneath the impassive gaze of the entity that awaited Klein to become nothing more than a field of ruins.