A/N: The next episode of the Webtoon out now! Read it here!
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Vilari's soul fluctuated from failing to immediately regulate her emotions, briefly losing its radiance. The dense despair surrounding her was infused with a confusing swirl of fear, confusion, and ultimately resignation as she came to terms with what was happening.
"You were hiding inside me, after all," Vilari said as she faced her possessed body.
"Yes, but who am I?"
"Still playing these little games, Jalach?" Vilari muttered.
Vilari had no desire to have a conversation with her old captor, but she had no choice. She needed to buy time to stabilize her dislodged soul. If she wasn't careful, her spirit would start blending with the lingering impetus of the decrepit temple, and she'd lose parts of herself. Thankfully, the arrogant spirit appeared content watching Vilari fashion a spiritual body that perfectly mimicked her corporeal form.
With the end of the self and the beginning of the other clearly delineated, Vilari felt herself stabilize. Still, her prospects weren't great. She was not a natural spectral being. Her spiritual root was still within her body, and maintaining her current state came with a constant drain on her psyche. She couldn't even draw on the environment's energy to sustain herself without the assistance of her body.
She needed to reclaim her body within a few hours or she'd be in big trouble. At best, she'd retain slivers of her sanity as a discarnate soul. Considering her dangerous location, she was more likely to be reduced to a mindless wraith controlled by its impulses. Vilari would rather let her soul disperse than end up like that, or worse, be captured by Jalach again.
"Hiding from the truth will not make it go away," the evil spirit laughed. Her voice had gained a twisted magnetism that struck at Vilari's mind like hot pokers. "We both know the answer, don't we? After all, we're—"
"Don't," Vilari squeezed out as she felt something being dragged to the surface.
"I'm you. The real you," the entity said, her voice sweet like honey. "Remember!"
The urging became the key that opened a hidden door in Vilari's mind. Countless memories came pouring out. Vilari saw herself crumbling in the darkness of the [Epiclesis Bell], laughing and crying in prolonged bouts of hysteria. She saw herself debasing herself in brief bouts of mania. She remembered twitching on the ground, babbling like a fool, all while Jalach laughed and goaded her.
Finally, Vilari saw her sense of self wither away until she was a blank, insensate slate. It was at that time a shadowy hand placed a seal on her soul to tuck away what remained. In the space that had opened up, another soul soon sprouted. A soul that grew in darkness and fed on sin, twisted from the moment of conception.
'What should I call you, little one?'Jalach mused.'A small bird raised in another's nest... I think I shall call you...'
"...Whydah," Vilari whispered as her spiritual form almost collapsed. "This is impossible. I resisted him!"
Whydah laughed. "You spent years by master's side inside his domain. Did you think that you could just shake off the experience? That a puny Hegemon less than two decades old could reject his wisdom? You even tried to warn yourself in your dreams, but you were too weak to face the truth."
"I—" Vilari faltered, knowing she was right.
That coachman in her dreams, the entity who'd guided her all the way here. The entity that had scared her to such a profound degree that she had not once dared to turn around and face it. All along, it was her alter ego. If she'd been courageous enough to face her fears just once, could she have avoided this situation?
Whydah grinned, clearly pleased by Vilari's inner turmoil, as her nails dug into her cheeks. Bloody gashes opened up before joining her lips, turning her mouth into an oversized maw. "Ah, that's better. And don't be too hard on yourself. You lasted a few weeks, which can be called a respectable effort in the end."
"I don't understand..."
"Isn't it obvious?" Whydah countered.
She waved her hand, prompting a slight shudder in the mountain. Streams of evil poured from the ground and began moving debris out of the way. Meanwhile, the pavilion's lingering despair was pushed back by pulses of Mental Energy. Vilari first thought Whydah was simply excavating the treasure but soon realized there was more to it.
The mound was being arranged in a way that created a series of groves and repeating patterns. It was a huge array made from the Beseechment Pavilion's corpse.
"The Heavens refuse to accept master, and I am his true progeny. I couldn't just pretend to be you when we were dragged from our home by that mongrel you call father. The Heavens would strike me down."
"So, we lost the battle to win the war. We allowed your slumbering psyche to return to the surface and scrambled its memories. You became a shield and a puppet," Whydah said, her gaze growing more sinister. "Now that you're here, it's time to repay master for the additional year of life he so graciously awarded you."
Three shackles made from madness and refined Mental Energy poured out of Whydah's eyes, lunging for Vilari's incorporeal form. Vilari conjured a wall that creaked under the pressure. It shattered the next second when the large, unfeeling eye of the Ignis Clan opened above Whydah. The mental constructs Vilari had conjured couldn't withstand its pressure at all, and the shackles latched onto her throat and wrists.
The threat of imminent death finally helped Vilari settle her messy mental state. Her evil twin wanted to make it seem as though she was just an empty husk, while Whydah had taken over as their body's true owner. And the situation undeniably looked bad. There were no signs of rejection from her body. On the contrary, she'd taken charge of her bloodline talent without missing a beat. Furthermore, it was almost embarrassing how easily Whydah had managed to dislodge Vilari from her Soul Aperture.
However, something wasn't right. Not only was Whydah trying too hard to disrupt her mental state, but there were gaps in Whydah's story if you looked at it more closely. She wanted to make it seem as though the only reason she hadn't come out until now was out of fear of Heaven's retribution. Perhaps that was true at the beginning, when the Heavens had locked down half a sector in its furious attempt to expunge Jalach's blight on the Grand Tapestry. But after that?
Vilari wasn't convinced. She could tell that Whydah's soul differed from her master's. While twisted and evil, it was a genuine product of this Era. She shouldn't face any more suppression than heretical cultivators. And Vilari had seen how even the evilest among the Kan'Tanu Cult had flourished in the open. Clues could also be seen from the Beseechment Pavilion's lingering despair. It was certainly agitated when Whydah stirred up evil energies from the mountain, but it didn't directly attack like when facing Jalach's spirituality.
Whydah hadn't taken over her body until now because she couldn't.
She depended on the specific conditions only available in this temple. Furthermore, Whydah wasn't as powerful as she wanted to let on. Vilari was well aware just how thorough the Heavenly cleansing had been. Not much could have survived that purge, and a year was very little time to recover. Even if she'd been siphoning some of Vilari's gains all this time, her foundations had to be shallow.
Knowing that didn't seem to help. While weak, Vilari was even weaker in her current state. With only her soul, she couldn't use any skills. She could only fashion simplified versions out of Dao and Mental Energy. Vilari kept trying to find openings in her soul only to encounter impenetrable barriers. Every single attack designed to create an opening was effortlessly rebuffed, as if Whydah could read her every move. Sometimes she didn't even bother. The vertical pupil had the power to destroy most mental attacks. She had no choice but to take a risk.
Vilari gritted her teeth and drew from the depths of her soul. Thousands of mental threads wove into a pitch-black scar reeking of death before an eye formed around it. A tremendous pressure emanated from the almost perfect copy of Whydah's bloodline talent, wrought fully from Vilari's soul.
It didn't even last a second before it shattered.
"It's futile. Accept it. I'm you, only better," Whydah laughed as she dragged the struggling Vilari closer to the array's central eye. "I've seen everything you have. I've experienced everything you have. The only difference is that I never rejected master's wisdom. I studied by his side for years. I've mastered the true methods of the Beseechment Pavilion already."
Just when Vilari was out of ideas, she felt a weak ripple through the shackles trapping her. She wasted no time in pursuing the feeling. On the other end, she found seven agitated homunculi who clearly hated their new master. A small nudge on Vilari's end, and [Seven Downfalls] switched from unity to chaos.
"Stop!" Whydah shrieked, but the seven idols ignored her orders.
They detached from one another, no longer forming a mutually restraining cycle. Whydah's face twitched as her soul was assaulted by a storm of unstable emotions. It was at that moment Vilari finally found an opening. Vilari risked the contamination and enlisted a swathe of lingering despair to her cause. It was fashioned into a soul-punishing spike, which rushed straight for Whydah's glabella.
Fear finally appeared in the struggling madwoman's eyes, and she screamed at the top of her lungs. "MASTER!"
Vilari's soul-piercing nail shattered, and her incorporeal form briefly lost its shape as an eerie bell toll reverberated through the temple. Worse, Vilari's connection with [Seven Downfalls] was ruthlessly severed. The last thing she felt was the idols obediently huddling up, no longer troubling Whydah's mind.
Vast amounts of despair churned as the ground shook. The tremors only grew worse until one of the still-standing buildings at the summit's edge collapsed. A deep groan echoed out, like the mountain was splitting in two. Then, from the rubble, a familiar jade bell rose into the air. Vilari's heart fell upon feeling the waves of evil emanating from it.
While not quite as overwhelming as the damaged bell that had ravaged the Intersector War battlefields, its emanations clearly transcended the C-grade. And on its surface were five bands depicting acts of madness. A crooked smile appeared on Vilari's face as she found herself reaching for her non-existent heart. Had it all been a game to him? Watching his chess pieces fight it out to his great enjoyment.
Exerting what little control she had left, Vilari's gaze turned to the grand array. She'd barely defeated Whydah by a fluke, but taking on her master was simply not possible. She had no method of cutting open the bell like Zac did. Even if it was possible, Vilari wasn't sure it would matter. This pocket within a memory domain was very possibly hidden from Heaven's gaze. At the very least, she couldn't sense the Heavenly Dao in this place like she usually could.
That didn't mean she would go out without a fight. Even if Vilari was fated to die, it was her duty to ensure Jalach didn't get what he wanted. Someone that insane and vindictive wouldn't be above targeting innocents of the Atwood Empire. But if he failed to seize the bell, he would be too busy surviving to worry about anything else.
There had to be a reason why the hidden sliver of Jalach hadn't taken the [Pasho'Har Bell] all these years. Vilari was all but certain it involved her soul, or possibly the Anima Court sigil hidden inside it. Perhaps Jalach or Whydah would trigger a backlash if they directly approached it with their tainted souls. Either way, if Vilari blew herself up along with the grand array, she might be able to stop Jalach's plot.
A slight vibration from Whydah's pocket provided a new path forward before Vilari could go ahead with her final act of defiance. A pulse of enervation ruptured the joyful despair. Vilari drew a gasping breath, as much as one could in a spectral form, as she regained control over her expressions. She turned around, just in time to see a hexagonal scale fly out of her body's pocket.
It was naturally the parting gift left to her by the ancient turtle. The shell had gone from inert to exuding a profound sense of lassitude that matched the turtle's desolate back during their parting. It affected everything it touched, from the pavilion's despair to Jalach's madness. Even Vilari felt her mental state turn into a nihilistic quagmire.
"Impossible! I threw it away!" Whydah shrieked while futilely grasping at the B-grade shell. It naturally failed, and Whydah was thrown dozens of meters away.
"You lived in my garden for months. Did you truly think you could hide from me?" the turtle's gruff voice emerged from the shell before it turned toward the [Epiclesis Bell]. "So much time has passed, yet you're still clinging to false hopes. It's time for this chapter to come to an end."
"You old thing, still causing trouble!" a chorus of voices wheezed from within the bell.
"Few things bring me joy these days. Imagining you waiting patiently here for untold years only to have your dreams taken away? That might be the exception," the turtle sneered.
The [Epiclesis Bell] shook as massive waves of twisted impetus poured out, yet it was all swallowed by an even greater wave of weariness. The turtle, whose heart was already dead, was utterly immune to Jalach's corruption, and his presence became the antidote to the plague. Jalach's presence was forced back into the bell, and the bell had nowhere to run.
The jade bell shook as the turtle's mental energy seeped into the carvings, and a resounding explosion echoed through the mountain. Whydah was knocked to the ground, gushing from her seven orifices. Vilari wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to reclaim her body, but she had her hands full just keeping pieces of her soul from splitting off under the enormous pressure of the two titans clashing.
It took Vilari a moment to realize that the bell hadn't exploded as she thought. It looked more like it had shed its skin. A thin film reeking of malice sloughed off its surface, exposing a pristine layer of jade beneath. The discarded pieces didn't even reach the ground before the turtle's aura purified the spiritual and ground the physical to dust.
The [Epiclesis Bell] looked like it had been recast. A new set of engravings, both foreign and familiar, adorned its surface. Vilari's mind blanked out as a torrent of information poured into her. These were the original patterns left by the Beseechment Pavilion, before Jalach had gotten his dirty hands on them. And the bell was imparting its teachings.
Deep cracks rapidly spread across the bell's surface, prompting the transmission to grow more frantic. Did the ancient treasure know it was about to perish and want to transmit its teachings before it was too late? Or perhaps it could sense its heritage in the shape of Vilari's soul and chose to assist?
A moment stretched into eternity until a second, much louder explosion forced Vilari's soul to the ground. The hidden [Epiclesis Bell] was no more, reduced to nothingness at an even greater pace than the outer shell. A dark swirl with a hundred languishing faces was exposed from within. The world rumbled as a familiar pressure descended, yet five ripples suddenly appeared in the remaining buildings.
"Did you think I wouldn't have made preparations waiting all these years?" the chorus of madness laughed as the Heavens lost track of its target.
"Did you think we didn't know?" the shell countered as a projection of the turtle emerged.
"You extracted your three souls?!" Jalach exclaimed, his voices growing pitched. "You can't survive outside!"
Vilari could tell Jalach's words weren't an empty ploy meant to destabilize and confuse. Indeed, the residents of antiquity couldn't step out from the past. At least not until all the prerequisites were met. The old turtle had managed to smuggle himself out somehow, but now his soul was rapidly disintegrating.
"Why would I want to? Even if the Empire returns, she will not," the turtle sighed as his souls began to glow. "And you are partly to blame."
A pulse of utter annihilation swept through the peak, erasing every last trace of Jalach. The turtle had done what Vilari contemplated without hesitation, departing without a trace. Laughter spread across the peak before Vilari could celebrate Jalach's death. A twisting shadow appeared at the summit's edge.
While less than a percent of Jalach's body had survived, it still posed a significant threat to Vilari. And with Whydah slowly getting back to her feet, things didn't look optimistic.
"A clever rabbit keeps three burrows," the twisting shadow laughed as he turned to Vilari. "My other half should have taught you always to keep a backup plan."
The evil magic imbued in the laughter tried to strip away her defenses and drown her in madness once more. Vilari groaned, trying to gather her thoughts and mount a concerted response. It was difficult. Almost taking out Whydah had been more taxing than she'd let on, and accepting the inheritance had further strained her discarnate soul.
It was at that moment a steely voice cut through the laughter as Killing Intent flooded the temple.
"She won't need one."