CHAPTER 128: INVITATION FROM THE DEPTH

Kivas’ gaze sharpened on the divine holographic screens, her halo pulsing faintly in the serene glow of Yoiglah’s sanctuary.

Amid the chaos unfolding in Salissic Vein—the psychic quake’s screeching aftermath, the phantom waves crashing illusions over the bastion—she spotted something anomalous.

In one of the peripheral feeds, a blur of red flickered, like a smear of crimson ink bleeding through the digital veil.

It wasn’t part of the abyssal distortions or the glitchy colors warping the horizon; it was subtler, almost intentional, a streak that darted across the edge of the frame before vanishing.

She blinked, leaning forward slightly, her silver-yellow hair cascading over her shoulders as she scanned the other screens.

Samael lounged against the pillar, arms crossed with her usual detached smirk; Oizys tilted her head curiously, black feathers rustling; Karen fidgeted with her lab coat, gray eyes wide behind her decorative glasses; Azulus scribbled notes in her ledger, mouse ears twitching.

None of them reacted.

The blur was hers alone to see, a private anomaly in the shared spectacle.

"Well that is certainly something—"

Before she could voice it, the world around her began to shift.

Colors started to fade, not dramatically like the quake’s glitches, but insidiously, leaching away from the edges of her vision.

The vibrant prismatic arcs refract from Yoiglah’s crystalline shell dulled to grays, then to muted shadows.

The stone plaza beneath her feet lost its warm earth tones, bleeding into monochrome.

Kivas’ breath caught as she turned to her companions—Samael appearing to be staring at the screen like normal, Oizys with her finger still on her cheek—but their forms wavered, translucent, like ghosts dissolving into mist. Even Yoiglah was the same.

One by one, they vanished from her consciousness, not physically disappearing but fading from her awareness, as if her mind had selectively erased them.

The sanctuary, once alive with their presence, now felt vast and empty, a hollow echo chamber where only her thoughts reverberated.

"What is this?" Kivas murmured, her voice steady despite the rising unease.

She was no stranger to metaphysical assaults—Fathomi’s absurdity had tested her multiple times—but this felt different, intimate, like a veil drawn over her senses.

Instinctively, she delved inward, analyzing her Well of the Soul. Her attributes flashed in her mind’s eye.

She probed for spiritual interference—curses, psychic hooks, or entropy leaks from any anomalous source as she was taught by Samael.

Nothing. Her Hemo Psyche and Mana Psyche pulsed normally, protected by her Unbreakable Psyche skill. No external threats registered, no anomalies in her soul or even spiritual periphery.

Frustration flickered, but she pushed it down, summoning her divine power instead.

As the sovereign of Vaingall, a half-deity forged by fate’s whim, she could brute-force miracles.

She willed a cascade of divinity, a purifying wave to undo any negative effects—rewinding distortions, cleansing veils, restoring reality’s fabric.

Golden light flared from her halo, enveloping the sanctuary in a radiant burst.

In Fathomi’s divinity had their own set of rules and they possessed an entirely different effect in this world than spell or skills.

One of such traits was to bruteforce something into existence, and thus a miracle that could be brought forth using divine essence or faith.

Yet, nothing changed.

The colors remained faded, her companions absent from her perception, the sanctuary a desaturated shell.

Kivas’ heart quickened, a rare twinge of vulnerability piercing her adaptable resolve.

She had survived eons in empty space, experienced the universe’s end, built Vaingall from fragments, and even death itself—yet this isolation gnawed at her, echoing her deepest fear unseen.

"To think that there is something that can prevent the absolute from materializing," Kivas chuckled at the lack of effect that her divine power was doing. "Maybe I feel a little bit too complacent at my progress, thinking that my current capability is enough to prevent things like this from ever happening...

"I should have known that there is nothing such as enough in this god-forsaken world."

Her attention snapped back to the holographic screens.

They began to stutter, pixels fracturing like cracked glass, the feeds from Salissic Vein warping into static bursts.

Faint whispers emanated from them—not the quake’s screech, but something rhythmic, insidious. Chants, perhaps, or curses woven in ancient tongues, syllables slithering like serpents through the air.

"I guess some of my hypotheses are being brought to light," Kivas whispered, stepping closer, her white dress ethereally caressed by the metaphysical wind.

The whispers grew, overlapping in a cacophony that tugged at her mind, urging surrender, promising oblivion.

She then took a step back as she felt that her curiosity had been sated—halo flaring defensively, as the screens shook violently.

Their edges blurred, merging like liquid metal, coalescing into a single, colossal holographic gate.

It towered over her, a portal ripping open to the beyond—a sea reef of golden sands dotted with abyssal plants, swaying in unseen currents.

No water spilled forth, yet the air hummed with oceanic pressure, salt-scented and heavy.

From the sands emerged a figure, rising like a myth from forgotten depths.

It was centaur-like, the upper half a humanoid feminine form, graceful yet imposing, with a bosom draped in translucent fabric that ebbed and flowed like a jellyfish’s bell, iridescent and illusory.

The lower body was horse-like, powerful limbs ending in hooves that sank into the sand without disturbance.

A veil shrouded her face, concealing features but hinting at ethereal beauty, while horse ears swayed atop her head, alert and twitching. Her long hair, gold in coloration, cascaded like molten sunlight, swaying in hypnotic waves.

The entity moved with fluid grace, emerging fully into the portal’s frame, her presence a paradox—discomforting in the anomaly it wrought, yet oddly comforting to Kivas, like a forgotten ally in isolation’s void.

Or maybe that was nothing but a sweet song attempting to lull Kivas to death.

Then, just as thought that the picture would just stayed like that etherally, the entity wailed.

A maddening cry erupted, shattering the air with resonant force.

The ground cracked beneath Kivas, reality fracturing in spiderweb patterns as the wail’s vibrations tore at existence’s seams.

"Heh, to think that I would be personally experiencing the illusion of the abyss..."

The sanctuary quaked, its ancient stones rattling like bones in a storm, as the centaur-like entity unleashed a wail that tore through reality itself—a maddening, discordant shriek that fractured the air into jagged shards of sound and sent fissures spiderwebbing across the hallowed ground.

The holographic gate, a shimmering veil between worlds, buckled under the sonic assault, its edges warping and collapsing inward.

With a catastrophic surge, the entity charged, a horrifying force of ethereal might, her horse-like lower body pounding through the portal with ghostly fluidity, as if unbound by mass or gravity.

The barrier restraining the abyssal realm shattered like brittle glass, and a torrent of darkened, translucent liquid gushed forth—a cold, viscous flood that surged into Vaingall’s sacred sanctuary, swirling around Kivas’ feet with an unnatural chill that prickled her divine senses, rising swiftly to her shins in a tide of liquid shadow.

As the entity closed the distance, her form loomed larger, her translucent, jellyfish-like fabric rippling in hypnotic waves, catching the dim light of the faded world.

From the mist coiling around her, a monstrous weapon materialized, coalescing with a pulse of abyssal energy into a solid, grotesque form.

With a fluid, predatory motion, the centaur swung the behemoth weapon, the axe blade slicing through the air with a scream of displaced reality, flaring as it arced toward Kivas.

The weight of the attack pressed against her senses, a metaphysical force that threatened to crush her divine essence.

Kivas’ instincts flared, her Fate Weaver capability surging to life.

She tampered with the threads of probability, weaving a certainty that the blow would miss, bending chance to her will.

Simultaneously, she invoked a divine miracle, her halo blazing as golden light enveloped her, blinking her ten meters to the side in a flash of celestial radiance.

The weapon cleaved empty air.

The centaur halted instantly, her veiled face tilting, horse ears flicking with eerie motion—no recoil, no momentum, as if she were a specter unbound by physics, floating weightlessly in the flooded sanctuary.

Then it dawned on Kivas on what was the entity’s use in an attempt to murder her.

She gripped it with both hands—a colossal firearm-axe hybrid, its frame rivaling a mini van in size, nearly matching the centaur’s towering stature.

Forged from twisted abyssal coral, its surface gleamed with iridescent hues, veins of inner light throbbing like a living heartbeat. Three massive barrels, each wide enough to engulf a man. Beneath them, a crescent axe blade, jagged and menacing, shimmered with runes that pulsed like hellfire embers.

The abyssal water climbed higher, lapping coldly at Kivas’ knees, its inky translucence shimmering with faint, ghostly shapes—shadows of forgotten forms writhing beneath the surface.

Kivas snickered, her voice steady despite the creeping unease, her brave facade a shield against the anomaly’s disorienting presence. "What does an abyssal entity want from me, to craft an illusion this elaborate?" she asked, her words echoing in the monochrome void of the sanctuary, her halo casting a defiant glow.

The centaur’s veiled face tilted further, her gold hair swaying like liquid sunlight, horse ears twitching as if savoring the question.

A smile curved beneath the veil, unseen but palpable, radiating a chilling amusement.

Her voice erupted, a chorus of a thousand sinners—tormented, layered, resonant with ancient malice—cutting through the air like a blade.

"Amusement," she intoned, the word dripping with malevolent delight, as if Kivas were a toy in a cosmic game.

Before Kivas could retort, the entity surged, swinging the massive weapon in a deadly arc.

The axe blade cleaved the air, hellfire flickering along its edge.

Kivas tapped into her Fate Weaver capability, tampering with probabilities—shifting the hit’s likelihood to near-zero as she attempted to avoid this and then counter attack.

But this time, mid-swing, hellfire rounds burst from the triple barrel—blazing projectiles of infernal energy tearing through the air.

Kivas dodged the swing, but the rounds caught her off-guard, slamming into her side with violent wrath.

Half her body exploded in a spray of divine essence, flesh and bone vaporizing in an instant of searing pain.

She didn’t scream nor flinch. Pain was fleeting for her at this point.

Blinking skyward with another miracle, Kivas hovered in the air, her regenerating white dress mending as she willed her physical vessel to regrow.

Golden light knit her form back together, reverting the damage as if it never occurred.

"Maybe I ought to introduce myself in a much more befitting way," Kivas grinned as she began tapping into her collected faith. "Infidel, suffer your own disobedience."

In her hands, she conjured a massive divine arrow, its shaft thick as a tree trunk, the triangle-shaped arrowhead gleaming with celestial fire.

The centaur didn’t hesitate, pivoting her position with ethereal fluidity. She unleashed a shooting spree, hellfire rounds erupting in rapid volleys, streaking toward Kivas like comets of doom.

Kivas then grabbed the arrow’s middle, spinning her body alongside the entire massive bolt vertically in mid-air—the massive weapon whirling like a deadly chainsaw descending.

The rotation built momentum, the arrow’s edge deflecting rounds in bursts of sparks and divine sparks, each clash sending shockwaves rippling through the flooded sanctuary.

Kivas’ spin accelerated, her halo blazing like a second sun, until the arrow’s tip met the centaur’s weapon in a cataclysmic clash.

An even bigger shockwave erupted, blasting water outward in a tidal surge, the air compressing into visible ripples that shattered the ground and split the bodily liquid.

In that frozen moment, Kivas blinked out again, vanishing from the melee.

The massive arrow, now freed, boosted forward like a rocket, divine flames flaring from its base in a propulsive roar.

It hurtled toward the centaur, the triangle arrowhead piercing the air with a whistle of judgment.

The entity raised her coral firearm-axe defensively, but the arrow struck true, exploding directly in front of her veiled face.

Divine light engulfed everything—a blinding supernova of golden radiance that swallowed the centaur and the flooded sanctuary.