CHAPTER 111: VAEL’KOR NYTH AZHUR
Kael's body landed on the hard ground, but he didn't even seem to have registered that he was transported into a strange space.
Instead, his fingers tore at his bulging throat, leaving streaks of blood on his neck.
- HMMMMPH!
Just when Kael felt he couldn't hold on anymore and was about to dig his fingers into his throat to rip the core out, the object suddenly dissolved into a strange essence that was sucked into his body.
[The third requirement to awaken your talent has been met.]
- CRACK!
Kael's scream abruptly ceased and his eyes snapped open, his body pulled into the air by a mysterious force.
Only then did he barely take note of where he was.
He was on a strange platform that stretched endlessly into the distance, and yet, from the end of this platform, four massive pillars rose into the skies... no, rose into the endless void.
That is right!
He was no longer in his world.
He was in outside space!
Yet there was no sight of any planet or heavenly bodies.
One of the four pillars appeared to be half-crumbled, and for some strange reason, Kael felt a deep, suffocating sadness well up within him at the sight.
Yet, before the emotion could persist for long, the three unique hissing sounds he had heard before, came again.
Kael's body suddenly arched, his mouth snapping open in a silent scream as his stomach bulged greatly, something squirming within and struggling to burst out.
At the same time, his two dark-as-night eyes bulged outward, as if about to pop out from their sockets.
Kael had thought he now had a high tolerance for pain considering all he had gone through these past few weeks.
Yet only now did he realize he was mistaken.
Greatly mistaken.
The pain he was under made every previous injury feel insignificant. It almost felt as though his very existence was being torn apart.
Despite no sound coming out, Kael's scream seemed to reach a crescendo.
It was then it happened.
- RIP!
His stomach ripped open as a long snake covered in black-as-night scales tore out of his body.
It snaked through the air at such speed that it seemed to pierce directly through space. In what felt like a bare moment, the snake arrived beside one of the unimaginably high pillars, its body coiling around its foundation.
Only then did its tail end completely pull out of Kael's body.
As it slithered upward, its frame exploded in size until it reached the point it could effortlessly wrap around a world.
Yet, compared to the grand pillar, it still appeared so small.
Luckily, its body continued to grow as it continued spiraling endlessly upward.
- POP!
- POP!
Kael's two eyes burst open with sickening pops, two different snakes erupting out from his skull.
One was covered in a mix of black and white scales, the other in a blend of grey and white.
Just like the first snake, they both moved in different directions toward the other two intact pillars.
It wasn't until they reached them that their bodies completely tore out of Kael.
Yet, he remained suspended in the air, his eyes reduced to two gaping holes, and his stomach non-existent, his insides spilled across the surrounding void.
Just like that, the three snakes moved up their pillars for what felt like an eternity.
It wasn't until they reached the highest peak that their now cosmic-sized heads dipped down to stare at Kael.
And as if their gaze was the trigger...
The memories suddenly flooded in.
---
A red planet stood in the void, its size more than ten times that of the blue planet, and its color almost mirrored that of blood.
Within the world, the cries of its occupants rose to pierce the skies, their pleas drifting into the silent void.
All their lives, they had only known torment.
Pain.
Hunger.
And humiliation.
It had already been hundreds of thousands of years since their world's conquest event.
Unfortunately, they had failed.
The result?
They became slaves.
Now?
They were still slaves!
Generation after generation, era after era, age after age, their women had been humiliated, picked to be plundered even before coming of age, and they could only watch with their heads lowered and their hearts filled with grief.
Millennium after millennium, their sons were enslaved into labor, their sweat forming oceans, and their sobs rising to form the cries that echoed through the heavens.
Their hearts wept.
Their minds craved redemption.
Their bodies wanted rest.
Yet, even the gods denied them such grace.
Until...
...he appeared.
All the inhabitants looked up to see the hooded face of a being covering the skies.
A hand rose within the void, grasping the massive red world in its grip like a child holding a toy.
Then came the voice in an olden language, the words rippling through the void in an ancient tongue.
"[Eat, my child. Let us free this world from its suffering.]"
In the void, from the back of the man who held a world in his hand, surrounded by a dark cloak whose ends billowed behind him like a trailing comet, the head of a cosmic serpent suddenly emerged.
Covered in grey scales, its maw slowly parted, revealing an endless abyss.
With a single plunge, it swallowed the world whole.
Just as darkness covered the planet, and death was about to pull it into its embrace, the voices of hundreds of billions of its inhabitants drowned out the fear-filled and panicked cries of their captors.
Their voices intertwined as one, tears flowing down their faces as they chanted.
"Vael'kor Nyth Azhur... The Final Silence...The Quiet Aeon ... The Devourer!"
"Vael'kor Nyth Azhur... The Final Silence...The Quiet Aeon ... The Devourer!"
"Vael'kor Nyth Azhur... The Final Silence...The Quiet Aeon ...The Devourer!"