134 A Reckoning In the Making (2/2)

”Explain yourselves, now. Keep it short and simple, you got it? I have neither the patience nor the time for cryptic bullshit, so speak 'English,' am I clear?”

In short, it was fate's reckoning. The fallout of the actions taken back during the Twilight War.

Irreparable damage had been inflicted upon the land in the North that Reed had not discovered. What he thought had been nothing more than a skin wound — an eternal scar — on the surface of the continent had turned out to be something much worse.

Reed had mistakenly cleaned only the surface layer of the wound. Had he properly purged the infectious miasma at the time, the current situation would have never developed the way it had now. He had made a fatal error.

It was the whole damn continent. It'd been rotting underneath the surface for the last two years, unbeknownst to anyone until now.

Deep within the bowels of the scar in the North, the festering wound had grown so bad underneath that it had almost penetrated the heart of the continent where Will of the World existed.

As the name implied, it was the Will of the World. The living essence of the continent that served as the power source for the Heavenly Barrier and safeguard for the world.

There was an ongoing fight on beneath the surface that the Chosen of Mulia had been fighting for the last two years. They'd tried everything to purge or at the very least, hold back the miasma from reaching the Will of the World.

At first, they'd achieved some success but with their limited resources and manpower, it eventually became an unsalvageable situation. Fighting Infested was on the battlefield was one thing, but preventing a poisonous Infection on a continental scale? That was an entirely different beast that they'd never handled before.

Not on this scale, at least. They'd purged the surface of the North once to destroy the effects of the miasma, but that only required a superficial cleansing. This was a far more complex and difficult infection.

If left untreated, it'd gnaw away at the foundations of the world until it collapsed in on itself. Even now, the effects of infection had begun to show across the world.

The symptoms had begun to manifest in mundane ways, but they would soon intensify and grow in magnitude.

It'd start off as innocently as, say, slightly hotter days. Perhaps, weeks of rainy weather coming in and out of season. Anomalous phenomena.

The false stars above would begin to twinkle ominously as if to herald the beginning of the end. A mysterious sense of hopelessness and despair would pervade across the mortal world as a foreboding feeling of dread would continue to grow with each passing day until...

They completely lost hope. They gave up without even really knowing why.

Mulia's skies would turn a deep shade of crimson and natural life would begin to wither away until the lands became barren wastelands.

The Twilight Sun would fiercely struggle until the very end. Until the last mote of Hope disappeared and everything sunk into the deep black of Despair.

...And then, on the eve of the world's final day, the beautiful sun would fall below the horizon and never rise again.

This was the coming calamity that would befall the world. Why he had been so adamant on pressing Reed to finally move, to pick up his responsibilities once again.

But every time he had tried to reason with Reed and explain to him the coming disaster, he had been ignored. He had even been sealed in the depths of Reed's heart as a means of keeping him away.

It reached a boiling point for him. He could not idly sit by and wait as the world rotted into mush, all the while Reed continued to enjoy his escapist fantasy.

”You only have yourself to blame for this. I'm sure as hell not to blame. How many times have I tried to reach out to you, only for you to reinforce that bloody seal, huh?!”

Reed grit his teeth and said, ”As if you care about the people on this continent, you damn hypocrite. Don't even think about coming at me using that angle! You... have no right!”

The fading phantom smirked and said, ”That right, big hero? Well, let's see how you'll save the day this time without my help...”

His final, grating words stabbed into Reed's chest before he disappeared along with the storm. He was going to enjoy himself, no matter what happened now...

It was personal.