Cassian took a deep breath.

The exhaustion from the immense energy he expended to maintain his form settled on his shoulders. [Sovereign form remaining time 1 minute 27 seconds]

Nerath, sealed by Chaos Flames, Holy Mana, and Void Rot, was not moving.

Victory seemed to have been won.

But then, in that eerie silence, a grating, choked sound was heard. It was a laugh.

Julian's body slowly, heavily lifted its head.

The sadness in his eyes was gone. Now there was only pure, bottomless, cold hatred and a cynicism as ancient as the universe itself.

"You... mortals..." Nerath hissed.

His voice no longer resembled Julian's at all; it was as if thousands of crushed souls were whispering at once, from a single throat.

"And your these small, pitiful illusions of victory..."

"Did you want this body, mortal?"

Fredrinn, as if sensing the terrible, sudden change in Nerath's mana, screamed in terror: "Cassian, BE CAREFUL!"

But it was too late. Julian's body, within seconds, began to be consumed from the inside out.

His skin dried, cracked, and flaked off like parchment. The light in his eyes vanished, his flesh peeled from his bones. In the end, only a pile of dust remained. The chains and daggers fell lifelessly to the ground.

Cassian's eyes widened at this sudden act. "Nivelle!" he screamed internally.

"I know!" Nivelle's voice replied, filled with panic.

Julian's body was not a prison as Cassian had thought, just a puppet. And now, the puppet had completed its task.

Laughter began to rise from the entire dimension, from the ruined castle, the barren land, even the sky.

The sound was coming from everywhere.

Cassian, even in his primal form, was momentarily at a loss. He was turning his head, trying to find Nerath.

His eyes stared into the void. "Where?" he breathed in panic. At that moment, the sky darkened.

Cassian instinctively snapped his head up. When his red eyes met that ominous black sun, the black sun suddenly blinked.

The entire barren land shook. The ruined buildings, the dead earth beneath, moved as if a colossal entity was breathing.

The black sun in the sky was no longer a light source; it had transformed into a single, massive eye, and it locked its gaze directly on Cassian.

"I AM HERE, MORTAL," Nerath's voice roared.

This sound came not from one place, but from every fiber of the dimension, from every piece of stone. "Did you think you could stop me by harming this shell?"

'Your mortal greed has brought your end. You tried to challenge me in my own domain...' "Here, you are my prey." "I will not kill you, mortal," the cosmic voice continued. "YOU WILL BECOME MY NEW VESSEL!"

The ground around Cassian exploded. Hundreds of massive hands made of pure darkness shot from the earth, trying to grab him, to pull him beneath the ground.

Cassian leaped back, repelling them with a wave of holy energy. A massive bulk of darkness surged from the sky onto Cassian. The sky went black.

Cassian formed a spear of holy mana and hurled it into the air.

A part of the dark wave shattered when it met the holy spears, but the rest surged down onto Cassian.

Two massive torrents of holy mana shot from Cassian's body toward the sky and pierced the darkness.

Cassian did not hold back in spending his mana.

"Fredrinn!" Cassian shouted, deflecting the dark energy raining from the sky. "OPEN THE PORTAL! TAKE SETHRAK AND GO!"

Fredrinn was frozen, his gaze locked on the empty space where Julian had just turned to ash. He was frozen inside his armor.

"But he... Julian..." Fredrinn mumbled.

"JULIAN IS GONE!" Cassian roared.

Another massive torrent of darkness, emanating from Nerath's giant eye, descended right where Cassian was.

Cassian tried to block the darkness using his light sword, but that immense, divine force brought him to his knees.

"Julian is no more!" As hard as these words were for Fredrinn to digest, he pulled himself together.

"What about you!" Fredrinn yelled, desperate. "You can't get out of this dimension without me!"

"SHUT UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS DIMENSION!" Cassian bellowed, being crushed under the darkness.

"If you die, I will never be able to leave this dimension anyway."

Fredrinn flinched at this bitter truth. He looked at the unconscious Sethrak in his arms. In agony, his heart breaking, he made his decision.

Forcing his last remaining mana, the last shred of his soul, he tried to reopen the purple gateway they had come through.

The portal appeared in the air, trembling, but it was unstable. Nerath's will was suffocating the entire dimension, closing off all escape routes. But Fredrinn, dedicated his all to that portal and finally managed to open it.

As soon as the portal opened, Fredrinn and Sethrak in his arms lunged forward, entered the portal, and fled that nightmarish dimension.

Cassian was being crushed under the dark mana. Sovereign Form's natural armor, his scaly skin, had begun to crack.

"Your friends have abandoned you, mortal!" Nerath's voice mocked.

"Ahaha! But don't worry, when I am done with you, I will find them, one by one, and send them to join you."

Cassian, with a final effort, swung his holy mana sword at the sky, momentarily stopping the crushing darkness upon him. But the darkness was endless. It did not stop and struck Cassian again.

Cassian's legs sank into the ground from the pressure. He was barely standing on his feet.

"You are exhausted," Nerath's voice said, with absolute satisfaction, coming from the sky.

"Your form is breaking. Your power is fading. And now... your soul will be mine." The dark beam suddenly intensified. Cassian's light sword shattered. The darkness struck Cassian full in the chest, sending him flying back into the ruins of a collapsed building.

∆ WARNING

[Sovereign Form: Remaining time 29 seconds]

Cassian rose from the rubble, coughing up blood.

His heart was pounding in his chest from excitement, pure adrenaline, and desperation.

He clenched his bloody claws into fists and fixed his eyes on that single, massive eye shining in the sky.

The eye was gathering an immense energy for a final, killing blow. Everything in the dimension; the rubble, the dust, even the light itself, was being drawn toward that black sun.

A pair of magnificent dragon wings sprouted from Cassian's back. His entire body glowed, one last time, with holy mana. He was like a single, small firefly in this dark, dead land.

But this glow grew brighter and brighter, expanding, turning into a supernova.

[Sovereign Form: Remaining time 21 seconds]

The dark hands reaching for him vaporized and disintegrated before this pure light radiating from his being, before they could even reach him.

Cassian's legs tensed. And the next moment, he flapped his wings, defying gravity, and launched himself toward that black sun, like a comet blazing through the dark dimension.

The Black Sun unleashed all the darkness it had gathered upon that small point of light, upon Cassian.

[Sovereign Form: Remaining time 16 seconds]

Cassian pierced through the absolute darkness rushing toward him. As he advanced through the darkness, the immense pressure bearing down on him made his consciousness want to fade, his spirit to surrender.

But Cassian did not stop. He tore through the darkness and pressed on.

As the darkness was rent and he drew closer to that sun, the pressure on him multiplied.

Cassian's eyes bled, his bones cracked. Blood flowed from his mouth and nose. His scaly, armor like skin tore apart.

But he did not stop. Roaring, with one final cry, he lunged at the black sun, tore through all that darkness.

[Sovereign Form: Remaining time 7 seconds]

That brightly shining comet and that black sun in the bottomless darkness met with tremendous force.

The moment the comet pierced the dark shell of the black sun and entered its very pupil, there was an instantaneous, deafening silence in the dimension. From the outside, it looked as if the comet had been swallowed by the darkness.

There was a brief moment of silence and absolute calm.

The only thing that broke this silence in the dimension was Nerath's final, agonizing, echoing cry: "WHYYYYYYY?!"

The next moment, a wave of yellow, holy mana shot out from within that black sun and pierced through it.

Then another... and another... Hundreds of beams of light shot out from within the dark sun, piercing it.

Darkness and light began to shrink, annihilating each other. Until they both merged into a small sphere.

Then that sphere exploded.

An immense wave of light, accompanying the explosion, spread throughout the entire dimension.

It was such an explosion that anyone looking at it with the naked eye, even from miles away, would be blinded.

In the face of the explosion's force, everything in the dimension; the barren land, that ruined city, the dark sky everything vanished into nothingness.

Light and darkness, destroying each other, shattered. The explosion pierced through everything. And in its wake... it brought a vast stillness and an absolute void

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