THE VILLAIN'S POV

Chapter 615: War of Schism (3)

For the first time ever, Audrey’s face twisted with boundless fury and a strange, venomous hatred. She abandoned her plan on the spot and attacked the Demon King with everything she had.

The Pure Vessel hovered between life and death, unable to witness it all. Yet it seemed Audrey already knew the Demon King. Likewise, Agaroth seemed pleased to see her ..

like a long-lost friend. Audrey became someone else the instant she recognized him, and when their battle began, she assumed a strange form, a blood-red aura flooding her body ..driving her to an entirely different tier of power.

At that level she managed to hold Agaroth at bay while she pushed the Pure Vessel away from the field. The strength Audrey used at the end far surpassed what she had shown against Crimson in the past. She fought with desperate intent to kill Agaroth; he, despite heavy damage after fighting the Pure Vessel and then her in succession, never fell, never yielded—he fought her to the very end.

As they fought, they said much to each other ..an odd conversation but the Pure Vessel heard only fragments. For some reason, Agaroth called Audrey by another name, and she, in turn, seemed to hate the Demon King with all her being. All of this burst forth after she saw that power—the beast that devours everything.

In the end, even Audrey, in that strange form, could not win.

”Your current body can’t withstand this power. You know it well ..yet you used it against me. Do you hate me that much?” Each clash carried Agaroth’s words like an echo as he gained the advantage, bit by bit.

”What made you think you could kill me? Even the one who gave you that power failed to do it!”

Their battle surpassed, in sheer intensity, the one between Agaroth and the Pure Vessel. Taking advantage of Audrey’s check on the Demon King, the Lightbearers fell back, retrieved the Pure Vessel’s body, and slunk away in defeat ..leaving the Legendary Vessel behind.

They left her to face Agaroth. That was the last time the world ever saw Audrey; she vanished completely after that battle.

An unspoken rule was born of that war: the Demon King cannot be defeated one-on-one. Audrey proved no exception. In the end, despite the grievous wounds she dealt him, she lost ..decisively.

When the war was done, only two remained on the battlefield: she and the Demon King.

Cradling her broken body, Agaroth’s torn face twisted into a hideous smile—he himself was shredded almost beyond recognition. He looked...happy. Audrey’s face, by contrast, was ruined where his blade had cut her.

”You...shouldn’t exist in this world,” she rasped.

”I know,” he answered, smiling, ”but I survived ..as you can see. And I’m truly glad to see you... my dear sister.”

He plucked something from Audrey—her locket, the one that once carried everything her heart loved.

”My Family .. My Everything.”

Agaroth laughed loudly and crushed it after glancing at the photo inside.

”This stirs up so many memories .. memories I thought had sunk deep into the bottomless chasm inside me.”

Still smiling, he drew Audrey’s body into an embrace .. and slowly, she began to sink into him, as if he were absorbing her very existence.

”I’m truly happy to see you again—happier than you can imagine. Since you and I are both still here, that means he survived as well... doesn’t it?” Agaroth exulted.

”Come to me, and let’s look for him together... let’s rewrite history!”

His laughter rolled across the field as Audrey vanished within the monster.

With her body in ruins, she closed her eyes, wondering how her path had led to such an end. She had returned to save the Pure Vessel ..she could not abandon him ..only to find herself face to face with the one being she hated most.

Who would have thought that Demon King was the same accursed monster...

In those final moments, as darkness swallowed her and she realized she had handed the Demon King a clue to the person dearest to her, she knew she had made a terrible mistake. All she could do was apologize as the beast that devours everything consumed her.

”I’m sorry... truly sorry... Frey.”

Those were the last words to leave the Legendary Vessel’s lips before Agaroth devoured her completely ...writing the final line of the Sundering War, won by the Demon King and his hosts, and heralding the dawn of the Age of Darkness.

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Elsewhere, the Pure Vessel had suffered ruinous harm. Agaroth’s cursed blade hadn’t only split his body ..it had cleaved his very soul. The half of the Light Soul Audrey returned to him kept him alive, but in the end the Pure Vessel .. and his great power ..were split in two.

One half the Lightbearers managed to recover. The other half was lost entirely, diffusing into a pure, wandering aura.

The half that survived became someone else ..similar to the Pure Vessel, yet not the same person. He retained all of Pure’s memories, but his temperament was wholly different. In time he became known as the Second Lord of Light, taking the name of his old friend—Orsted.

As for the other half ..it vanished for a long, long time, taking half the Light Soul with it.

Orsted searched for his other half for years, sending envoys to every world and race. Earth was no exception. He planted the World Tree there and appointed Kazis Valerion as his messenger to seek the missing half.

In the end, that half reappeared in a completely new form, on a distant, cosmically insignificant planet. Unlike Orsted ..who emerged at once as what he is now .. the other half was reborn from the start. When Orsted finally found him, he was only an infant .. human-like ..on a world called Earth.

Years after that birth, Orsted came to Earth himself. He shattered the rift Kazis Valerion had set and slipped inside to find his other half. But the child was fragile, weak. So Orsted chose to leave him hidden there, far from prying eyes—so he would not meet the fate of the other Vessels—and let him grow quietly.

All Orsted left him was the name he chose:

”Snow.”

The very name he had once chosen for himself.

And so came the final tragedy of the Pure Vessel, who vanished completely—leaving only shards of his soul to wander and bear his legacy. Both he and Audrey disappeared from the world in ways neither had foreseen.

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As these memories finished unfurling before him, Snow returned to himself—standing within the golden World Tree, face-to-face with Orsted, his other half. Their eyes met. A single tear slipped from Snow’s right eye. His face tightened under the weight of it all; he could not grasp what he had seen.

The Pure Vessel’s soul had become two .. and each half had become a separate living being. Orsted had become the Second Lord of Light. Snow was the Lord Vessel, the vessel bearing the final shards of the Light Soul.

Orsted spoke first.

”Kill the human within you, and let the world see you as you truly are. You are Snow my other half and the Lord Vessel destined to wield the greatest power among us.”

Thus the curtain fell on a tale from a bygone age ..eras layered with secrets still veiled .. stories waiting to be revealed someday.

Whether Snow or Frey, both were already drifting on the currents of fate, unaware of what the future had prepared for them.