Chapter 51: Bring the Sinners to Light
She whispered the two words. A perfect, coin-sized void tore open against the sky, its rim faintly bright where light bent inward.
Above, Ursula’s supernova flared — a fierce, spinning bead of fire and color. The void surged toward it, and for a moment the supernova simply absorbed it. Then, all at once, it began to shrink. The flare stretched thin, colors unraveling into threads that slid across the rim and poured inward. No explosion followed, only the slow, clean swallowing of light from within.
When the last stray ember vanished, the flare was gone entirely. The dark void remained, larger now, and began dragging everything within five feet toward its center, venting a thick, burning haze that grew hotter the closer anything drew to the middle.
Ursula found herself caught in the pull, straining against a force she couldn’t resist. Her legs, trapped closest to it, had already begun burning away like they were rotting from the inside out.
Without hesitation, she tore both legs off at the knee and hauled herself clear with her wings, fleeing hard toward the west.
Lydia moved to chase her, but the moment she leapt, her mana buckled beneath her — drained far more than she’d expected from a single use.
She landed back where she’d started and let out a disappointed sigh, glancing once more at the void hanging in the sky before closing her fist. The void shrank into a pinprick and winked out entirely.
---
Niel had already been on his way there, a bag of meat in hand for Draken — he’d remembered the dragon needed to stay hidden and still had to eat.
He’d reached the forest’s edge when a massive explosion rolled out from the mountainside. Without wasting a second, he broke into a run toward it.
He could’ve used Teleportation, but he’d made a rule for himself — keep it in reserve whenever heading to the mountain, since using it early against a stronger opponent would strip away any chance of escape later. So he pushed his legs instead, faster.
He’d crossed half the forest when his body locked up entirely. Not from any ability — pure fear. His hands shook, his legs trembled, and his heart hammered like it meant to tear through his chest.
What is this? What’s happening to me?
[Claire: Your heightened senses are picking up something dangerous. I’d advise against going further.]
Whatever it was, it forced a hard truth on him — he wasn’t anywhere near that level yet. His gaze drifted skyward and caught it: Ursula’s supernova.
His eyes went wide with disbelief at the sheer scale of it. His own meteor didn’t come close. If that thing landed, it would erase the mountain, all four surrounding villages, the entire forest, and likely part of the town beyond it.
Still frozen, every instinct screaming at him to flee, he turned to run — and then felt something shift. The supernova had started shrinking. The fear draining from his chest along with it.
He broke into a sprint toward the attack, pushing himself to his limit, and by the time he arrived he caught the last glimpse of a massive black void hanging in the sky. He stared at it in awe as it collapsed inward and vanished completely.
Before he could process it, a voice spoke from a few feet away. "Faceless."
He turned to find Draken slumped against a tree, bruised and bleeding. He rushed over, crouching beside him. "What happened here?"
Draken pointed toward where Lydia stood, gaze fixed westward, still watching that direction with something like interest. But then Niel noticed the rest of it — the scorched earth, the crater, the sheer scale of destruction stretching in every direction, evidence of something enormous happening well before that final blast.
Niel rose and stretched a hand toward Draken, activating Divine Healing. Every wound and bruise vanished instantly.
Draken’s eyes widened, catching the same healing signature he’d felt from Lydia — though gratitude won out over suspicion in the moment.
"Thanks for healing me," Draken said, pushing himself upright. That was when Lydia finally noticed them.
"Faceless, you’re late," she said, walking over, then spotted the bag of food at his side. "You brought food. How thoughtful."
Niel ignored the remark, pointing toward the crater instead. "What happened here?"
Lydia glanced where he pointed and smiled. "Oh, that. Just a bit of a warm-up. Nothing major."
Niel studied her, thrown by how casually she treated the devastation spread out around them — until he remembered he’d caused something similar himself, back in Velroth, and again at the demon castle.
He drew a breath and asked more directly. "Who were you fighting?"
Lydia considered it a moment. "A dragon girl, or something like it. Called herself... hmm."
Before she could finish, Draken cut in. "Ursula. My siblings."
"Siblings? There were two of them? I thought you said you were the last of your kind," Niel said.
"So did I," Draken murmured, staring at the ground as though his thoughts had drifted somewhere else. "She’s a hybrid — a fusion of two dragon species. Both my siblings, the ones I believed dead. Turns out they were merged into a single being. But she isn’t either of them anymore. She’s something new. More powerful. Crueler."
Niel studied him a moment longer, then turned to Lydia. "Walk me through exactly what happened."
"Sure," Lydia said.
She told it from the point where she’d interrupted Draken’s execution, through the full battle, up to Ursula’s retreat.
Niel listened, stunned. Cael’s warning about the words "Hollow Black" suddenly made a lot more sense.
Ursula’s attack alone had frozen him solid with terror, close enough to make him consider running — and Lydia’s Hollow Black had swallowed it whole. That was what unsettled him most. She wasn’t just strong. The title "the Strongest" had taken on real weight in his mind.
He turned back to Draken and asked why Ursula would want him dead if they were both dragons — wondering, briefly, if dragons carried some rivalry similar to demons — but the thought dissolved fast, given everything Draken had said about how deeply his kind valued one another.
Draken laid out everything Ursula had told them.
The silence that followed stretched longer than any of them expected. A new realization had settled over the group — the Church hadn’t just wanted the dragon dead to bury an old secret. Something bigger was still unresolved. If burying the secret were the whole goal, Ursula herself shouldn’t exist — she was a far greater anomaly than Draken ever was.
Their first theory had been incomplete, and now they had to figure out exactly what they’d missed.
They stood there far longer than necessary before Draken finally turned and led the way back to the mountain hideout. The others followed in silence.
---
Soon they were all back inside, each settled into a throne within the grand hall. The silence held longer than expected before Lydia finally broke it.
"Alright, I’ve let the silence sit long enough. Someone say something. What’s the plan now?"
Niel’s gaze lingered on her, then drifted to Draken, who was already watching him. Only then did it click — the question had been aimed squarely at him, as though he were the one expected to lead.
He settled deeper into the throne. He had no clear plan, not without understanding what the Church actually wanted. If Draken’s death hadn’t been about burying a secret, what was the real endgame?
He circled back to what Draken had said about Ursula’s plan to breed a new dragon race. That only deepened the confusion rather than resolving it.
If the Church wanted more dragons, what did that mean for the steadily growing human population? Were they preparing for a war? Something else entirely?
His mind ran through the possibilities before landing on something concrete — the Church was part of the White Order, and Demon Lord Cronos sat within that same circle. That meant humans and demons were working toward something together, something larger than either side alone.
Given how demons generally operated, it didn’t take him long to reach a conclusion. The demons and the King of Warstone were both after total, singular dominance.
He could easily imagine it — Cronos wanting to stand as the sole demon lord, the King of Warstone wanting to rule unchallenged. One head over each world, no rivals left standing.
It was the only theory that held together, and the White Order seemed to be laying the groundwork for exactly that. Just a theory for now, but the closest thing he had to an answer — which meant he needed a countermove.
It didn’t take long for a smile to settle over his face. The cleanest way to disrupt a plan like that was to introduce a third variable. An anomaly neither side had accounted for.
If there was going to be one human world and one demon world under single rule, then there needed to be a third world too — one built to stand against both.
Niel looked to Lydia, then to Draken, and let the smile settle fully.
"I think it’s time for a proper introduction. Let’s bring the Sinners into the light."