Chapter 1600 — 1600: Feast of Souls

Lex watched the sky that had forsaken its usual deep, blood-colored hue for something far less sinister, yet somehow far more disquieting. A blinding, awful yellow that bled across the heavens like a wound leaking sulfur. It pulsed, not with life, but with hunger. Hunger - that was a theme that never changed in Abaddon, even if the very sky itself had already changed.

A soundless scream shattered the air. It did not echo, for it had no origin - only presence. Then, the sky cracked, unleashing even more light into Abaddon. The cracks were not accompanied by thunderous roars. Instead, a deep wailing, the kind that would grip the heart of any who heard it, rang out across the lands each time the crack spread.

It was as if the lands themselves were crying at the formation of the cracks, but that could not be. The abominable lands that these were, they would not cry at something horrendous, no. They would instead yelp with joy. The wail, then, must have belonged to the universe itself as something precious to it was being stolen from within.

From atop his tower, Lex could sense it. Universal Rejection was permeating to all of Abaddon through the cracks, as if these lands themselves were unwelcome in this universe. But whether they were welcome or not hardly mattered. These lands were here, and they were going nowhere.

Then the cracks shattered completely, revealing not a gaping hole, as one would expect. Instead, it was almost like a perfectly built door. From within it poured out souls.

Hundreds of trillions. Uncountable. Unknowable. Not drifting, but hurled - ripped from whatever nameless void or sanctum they once belonged to, and flung into the land below like water from a broken dam.

To Lex's eyes, the souls were plainly visible, and he felt a chill in his very core as he saw the flooding in. Each second he saw trillions of souls fall into Abaddon, all of them weakened, frightened or plain delirious. If there was any consolation - if it could be called that - it was that the souls were all mired in a deep black karma, indicating the immense sins that they had committed.

They were the kinds of souls one would expect to see go to hell - the kind that was spoken of on earth before the war, where sinful people went to get punished.

Yet the punishment these sinners received was not hellfire. It was, somehow, a thing far worse.

For with the arrival of the souls, they came.

Not with feet, nor wings, nor form. But presence. The land shifted as if the weight of invisible titans had awoken. Ancient and malevolent intelligences - forces that had no names, only hungers - began to stir. Spiritual energy warped, twisted, recoiled as they converged, each trying to grasp the falling essence of the souls, to devour it, to make it theirs.

The depth of their auras was such that Lex could not gauge them at all. Surely they were not of the Dao, for sensing that would be enough to cripple Lex entirely. Yet they had a power that even Celestial Immortals should find unfathomable.

Mountains cracked without being touched. Oceans raged beneath still skies. Shadows elongated, twisted, then tore themselves free of the things that had once cast them.

In any other place, Lex would have thought that the land was suffering. But he knew better. Abaddon was not suffering destruction. No, it was writhing with glee as the souls poured in and the carnage that followed took place.

The air grew impossibly still - dense with dread and power - as if the land itself held its breath. The souls continued to rain down, like a blight, and the forces fought, without sound or shape - clashing in unseen battles so potent that the laws of Abaddon themselves rippled, as though existence were straining to contain what had been unleashed.

Beneath it all, Lex stood - small, unmoving, simply watching. Simply… there. For all the power he felt he had when he unleashed his Domain days ago, he knew at that moment that he was entirely, pathetically weak to the true horrors of Abaddon.

As he silently watched, lost in thought and introspection, a soul brushed past his cheek like a breeze of forgotten sorrow. He had no idea how it got past the defenses of the castle, nor how it suddenly appeared beside him. All he knew was that whatever the world that soul had been from, it had died.

It was a strange and random thought. He should have been thinking of how to distance himself from that soul, or how to push it out of the castle. But in truth, there was no need. To the forces that were competing for the souls, the barriers of the castle were no obstacle.

As long as he did not actively move to take a soul, he would not be in their competition, and so they would ignore him.

Just as he expected, the mutilated soul soon disappeared, sucked away by some entity unknown.

Lex could not help but think about how the Chalice of the Abandoned was probably one of the forces that was sucking the souls out of the sky. How were they supposed to control that? How were they supposed to snatch back a single soul from such a thing?

He did not know. The only thing that Lex knew at that moment was that Abaddon really was a land abandoned by this universe.

Every single existence competing for souls was receiving an immense amount of Universal Rejection, but Abaddon itself was protecting them, harboring them.

It was as if Abaddon was a parasite to their universe, and at the same time a refuge for countless other parasites. If it were allowed to remain… if it were allowed to grow, then one day it might threaten the whole universe itself.

Lex suddenly got another new notification from his system, but at that moment, he was not in the mood to check it out. Instead, he simply silently watched the feast of souls taking place above him, etching it deep into his memories.