Pill bottles blinked into existence one after another, each cradling a single collected drop of blood — golden, violet-veined, precious beyond measure. The old man lit a portion of what remained, letting the flame climb until it condensed into a single, massive droplet, pure gold shot through with violet, radiant enough to hurt to look at directly. For one heartbeat, it released a pressure so absolute the air itself seemed to bow beneath it.
Then it was simply gone.
The old man's hands clawed at empty space, panic rising fast. He searched — desperately, frantically, tearing through the residue of the ritual — but the prime-tier bloodline, the entire *point* of tonight, had vanished without a trace.
What he didn't know — what none of them knew — was that Luna had already tucked it away into her system inventory the instant it formed, silent and unseen. She wasn't about to let monsters like these get their hands on something that precious. Not while she still had a choice in the matter.
"Young Master," the old man reported, voice tight with barely-contained fury, "the heart blood — it's disappeared."
"*What?*" The young master's composure cracked for the first time all night.
"Forget it." A new voice slid into the room, low and unhurried, belonging to a shadow that simply *arrived*, without door or footstep. "We don't need those families sniffing around after us."
"Greetings, Ancestor Abyssal Lord," the young master said, bowing his head with practiced deference.
*(Big sis... who is that? Why are you shaking?)* Luna's voice trembled through their shared silence.
*("Luna. We need to run. Now. And we need to warn Mira the moment we do.")*
*(Why? What's wrong?)*
*("He's strong. Terrifyingly strong. Close to reaching prime rank himself.")*
*(WHAT? That's not — no one above Prime can even enter the Forbidden Zone. How is he still breathing?!)*
The shadow's voice cut clean through their whispered panic, casual and mocking. "Hey there, little rats. Wondering how I slipped past the restrictions, are we?"
Loita and Luna froze, speechless, every plan crumbling at once.
"Luna — full concealment. *Now.*" Loita's command came out sharp with fear disguised as authority.
"So they took the heart blood," the old man muttered through clenched teeth, glaring at nothing.
"Princess." Durken's voice rose, desperate, almost pleading. "If you surrender now, we'll only seal Master's soul inside Soul Bane — that's all. Your life is worth more than his soul ever will be."
Silence answered him. No reply came.
"No need to shout yourself hoarse," the shadow said, amused. "They're not escaping this confinement. She'll be kept — for breeding. More blood, more souls, straight from the fay bloodline itself."
"Abyssal Master," the young master asked, brow furrowing, "wasn't that race already extinct?"
"It was. But we found their semen on the black market, preserved. No other race carries pure fay blood — not one. That's exactly why she matters. Dead or alive."
Loita and Luna both went rigid with horror.
*("Luna — tear a hole through this concealment. Use everything you have. We're out of time, and Mira's about to walk right into this.")*
"Ancestor," one of the subordinates ventured nervously, "why can't we just move his soul directly?"
"You think weak little ants like you can lay hands on an *eternal soul*?" the Ancestor's voice dripped contempt. "Are you begging to die?"
He wove a spell between his fingers and scattered something fine and glittering across the exposed soul hovering above Novaah's ruined chest.
*("Luna — get ready. The moment he finishes sealing that bastard's soul, his own rank drops. We pull out then.")*
*(Can we actually make it?)*
*("His power will fall temporarily. We'll have half an hour, maybe less. It has to be enough.")*
*(...Okay.)*
*I hope nothing goes wrong,* Luna thought, and immediately hated how much she meant it.
"There," the Ancestor said, satisfied, lowering his hands. "You may take his soul now. I need to recover my strength." He folded himself into a meditative pose, eyes sliding shut.
*("Luna — no more waiting.")*
She began burning through everything she had — power, reserves, anything not nailed down — feeding it all into one desperate push.
---
Outside the ruined mansion, a sphere of red light flickered into being above the collapsing space.
"What in the world is happening here?" a voice murmured, reaching out to brush the sphere's surface. A pulse of weak, dying origin energy answered the touch.
"...Devourer Space Confinement Technique." Recognition hardened the voice instantly.
"Who could've done this? Those backstabbing Abyssal rats again?"
"This isn't good. Not good at all."
"Purple Big Mouth Parrot — didn't see *this* one coming, did you?"
"No wonder that family never lifted a finger to stop it. What are they even planning? He still carries their bloodline, after all."
"I'd wager they'll do nothing at all. Honestly, they're probably *pleased.*"
"They'd never accept the son of a fallen house into their precious clan bloodline. Poor mistress. Her whole family destroyed, and now the last hope for the Chaos line is about to die without an heir to carry it forward."
"What a fate."
"Wait — didn't the big mouth parrot mention a necklace, once?"
"Oh — he gave that to Loita."
"Does she even know what it does?"
"...Whatever. Doesn't matter now."
A hand rose, and a massive water dragon coiled into being, driving itself against the red sphere with relentless force. The blue-haired woman behind it was burning through everything she had, aware — with cold, terrible certainty — that every second of hesitation would cost more than she could afford to pay.
The shadow inside scoffed. "How does an *ant* think it can break through my confinement?"
Luna and Loita were both drilling at the same weak point from opposite sides now, Luna's pace far outstripping her sister's in urgency.
*("Faster, Luna! We don't have time left! I'll pin his aura down myself!")*
Seconds bled away. Hairline cracks spread across the sphere's surface — then, all at once, it shattered.
"*What?!*" The shadow's composure slipped for the first time. "This ant has more strength than I expected — but her origin's nearly burned to nothing."
His attention swung toward the blue-haired woman still hammering against the barrier from outside, and with barely an effort, he forced her down onto her knees.
"Blue Princess. It's been a long time."
She lifted her head toward the voice, defiant even now. "So — 'that' family sent one of their own branch members to kill their own blood?"
"Mistaken, Princess. He's from the fallen house, not ours. No surname of ours runs in his veins, no bloodline either — we made certain of that when he was still a child, cut it out of him clean. As for his mother's whore blood, she'll be refined into a doll for pleasure soon enough. We'll find her. And you. And every last one of your sisters, too."
"*You—*" Fury blazed in her eyes, but her body wouldn't obey her, weakened past the point of fighting back.
"The Young Master wants fresh dolls."
Something in her broke at that, just slightly — the light draining from her eyes even as she fought to hold onto consciousness, helplessness closing around her like a fist.
"That's more like it," the shadow said with cruel satisfaction. "You can serve him peacefully now. Ha ha ha."
*/"Little Mira. Hold on. Pull yourself together — I'll find a way to reach you. The confinement's broken, but the space itself has gone chaotic."/*
"Oh — and has that whore been *cured* yet?" The shadow's laughter rang out, ugly and delighted. "Ha ha ha. The family head really is something else, isn't he. Eternal Aphrodite, living up to every syllable of that name. Shame she never noticed me first — I'd have treated her *properly.* Makes you wonder why she'd do this to herself. I can't wait to see her face when she learns he's dead. Ha ha ha ha."
---
Loita poured every remaining scrap of strength into the soul fragments, hurling them into the green vortex she'd spent every second since carving open. The shadow felt it the instant it happened and lunged to claw the fragments back — managing to snatch only a piece before the rest slipped through. Loita had prepared as carefully as she could, but even her best effort hadn't been enough to save the soul whole.
Luna, meanwhile, wrenched every ounce of power she had left into pushing Mira toward the Eternal Garden — but the attack caught her before she could finish vanishing.
A blinding flash of blue light tore through the unstable space, swallowing everything in its glow before winking out entirely.
"Prepare yourselves," a weak, unbroken voice echoed through the void as it faded. "I will return this tenfold. Every last drop."
"Wait — how—" The shadow's disbelief cracked into fury. "*Attack her! NOW!*"
He lunged for Mira, dragging at the last threads of soul that hadn't yet escaped, and the others surged in behind him — but they were already too late. She was gone, leaving nothing behind but scattered traces of blood staining the broken air.
"*Damn it!* How did they slip through unstable space like that?!"
"Young Master, we should report this back."
"Give me his origin," the shadow snapped, ignoring the suggestion entirely. "And don't bother contacting 'them' the way we agreed, or they'll wipe your entire race off the map."
"...But you promised—"
"Don't worry about it. If I don't produce his origin — and the record proving it — others will come hunting *you* for daring to prey on a descendant of the Guardian."
A pause. Cold, deliberate.
"And we really can't have that happening, can we?"
"...Fine. I'll be waiting. Usual spot."
The Void Realm around them began to crumble, piece by piece, dissolving into the surrounding starry chaos. Durken stood in the wreckage, watching the realm he'd betrayed his master inside of collapse into nothing, right before it swallowed him too.
"Do you even remember the contents of *that* cultivation technique?" the shadow asked him, almost idle.
"...Only the introduction," Durken admitted.
"How *stupid* are you?" The shadow's voice sharpened with real disbelief. "That technique was above prime eternal grade."
"*What?*" Durken's face drained of color. "Is that true, Ancestor? He left it — ungraded — and used it as a *footrest?*"
"We need to find that system. Immediately." The shadow's tone hardened with focus. "Don't worry, though. As long as that blue-haired woman stays with them, we'll find her — I marked her origin the moment it cracked open."
"Ancestor, we should move fast. That rich bastard's family might swoop in and claim everything before we do."
"I'm well aware. Don't worry — we'll settle it once we're back in our own realm."
---
In a vast, gleaming hall bathed in too much light, a young man knelt with his head bowed.
"Speak."
"Family Master. We captured him — but some soul fragments escaped our grasp."
"Were those rats involved?"
"Yes. The Blue Princess was there. She burned through her own origin to get away."
"And no one saw *this* coming?" The voice above him went cold with contained fury. "Damn it all. So that was their true purpose from the very beginning."
"...You may leave," the voice added after a long, heavy pause. "Hand everything over to them. Still useful. Have them keep a low profile from here on."
"The Council Board will be watching closely now."
Silence swallowed the hall.
"...No wonder," someone finally murmured.
"What is it, Big Brother?"
"Remember — those two rats burned half their origin just to escape."
"The red origin crumbled before she could even finish disappearing. We have to find her. No matter the cost."
"How did she manage to slip away at all?"
"Don't concern yourself with that. She's already marked."
"...So that's why you let them go."
"How else did you expect me to corner them properly?"
"Big Brother, as sharp as ever. Still — this is going to be difficult from here."
"Look at the fate strings."
A long silence stretched through the hall before someone finally broke it again.
"...So *that* was their reason all along."
"Did you catch anything else?"
"What do you mean?"
"That bastard's origin. It was fake."
"...So the whore really was telling the truth after all."
"I'm not certain of that yet — but I did sense the breath of a *supreme origin* underneath it."
"Then we have to move fast."
"I don't think we'll need to work very hard at all."
"Why not?"
"Nurturing and reforming a soul requires soul flowers, or an eternal spring. And it's not just him who'll need it — those twins, and the two rats, all poisoned by the same soul-decaying petal."
"Their semi-eternal souls will start decaying within ten months."
"So they'll go looking for the spring."
"No." A pause, deliberate. "They'll come to *us* for it."
"Where?"
"Fairy Garden," one voice said.
"That whore's private garden," another added, with something close to a sneer.
"But that garden belongs to the Imperial Court now."
"No — they're only *guarding* it. Waiting for its true owner to return."
"Wait. Didn't the fay and eternal realms both hold springs of their own?"
"The Council Board destroyed both realms in a fit of rage, remember."
"I felt traces of them not long ago... but they've vanished completely now."
"Same here."
Someone burst through the hall's doors without ceremony, breathless, shouting.
"Master — the Chaos family realms have crumbled! Collapsed completely! The realm cores and every stored resource — gone, all of it!"
"The Chaos family's rank is dropping fast. There's only one member left."
"Who?"
"Luna Chaos. She's two years old."
"...Are you certain?"
"Master, her soul has existed for exactly two years now. Confirmed."
"Was she born, or synthesized?" A pause. "And what of her origin? Her cultivation?"
"She has neither. She's mortal."
"Cultivating an origin from nothing is nearly impossible even for a primordial being. If she truly is a prime being's child — mortal or not — she's fortunate beyond reason simply to exist."
"Should we spread word to the primordial beings? Have them hunt her down for the eternal soul alone?"
"Master — a better question. Why were the Seven Flowers only semi-prime? Their origins were fully developed. Why only semi-eternal souls, then?"
"You wouldn't know this, but they were mortal families once, sworn to serve beneath the Chaos family. No cores of their own. They couldn't have become immortal beings at all, let alone ascended anywhere near semi-prime rank."
"...How, then?"
"That's the secret we're all desperate to uncover. But that whore keeps her lips sealed tight. All we know for certain is this — they swore an oath to her after she saved their families from the Abyssal and the Devourer, losing her entire bloodline in the process. Became the last orphaned heir of her house, all on her own."
---
*"Mira... Mira... Mira... come to the Red Cliff. There's no time left. Mae and Lona are poisoned. We have five months. Maybe less."*
Luna's voice message went out into the void — and the moment it finished, she collapsed.
Nearby, in the wreckage of everything that had happened, two more women lay unconscious, their clothes torn and soaked through with blood, breathing shallow, alive only barely, waiting for a rescue that hadn't come yet.