Chapter 80: A Stolen Heart
Evan’s mind was still reeling, cycles, the end of the world, divinity. What in the hell was happening here?
But it didn’t seem like his questions were going to find any answers, because in the next moment the reality before him shifted again. This time it was no longer the vast, strange hall.
Now—
He was outside.
Or rather, suspended high in the sky above an unfamiliar land.
The sky was overcast, the air heavy and cold, though he couldn’t actually feel the temperature, not truly.
Below him, a wide expanse of green stretched out in every direction, vast and yet strangely familiar.
’This place... is this BranLeaf?’ he wondered, taking in the geography and noticing several similarities.
He recognized the forest in front of him, the same one the Earth Dragon had emerged from at the start of this year’s beast tide.
He turned, expecting to see the great Stump and the city built upon it. Instead he found something different.
Majestic, yes, but it wasn’t the city. It wasn’t the Stump. It was something else entirely, something he had only ever heard spoken of in legend. Legends that had circulated with particular frequency here in BranLeaf.
What stood before him was a massive, irregular surface of dark brown, its bark covered in a strange layer of yellow-green light.
But it wasn’t a wall.
It was a trunk. The trunk of a tree. Enormous.
He tilted his head back and saw it reaching almost to the clouds, the crown of a tree, colossal, lush, and vast, its thick branches spreading wide in every direction.
Evan understood immediately what he was looking at.
The Tree of Life. The very one that was said to have been the Stump originally.
The tree was massive and flourishing, radiating an intense and strangely pleasant glow, the same sensation the woman’s energy had given him. It was coated in that yellow-green luminescence, deep and steady, while the aura it emanated was ancient in a way that felt older than anything he had ever encountered.
Evan didn’t understand what was happening, but before he could try, reality made the decision for him.
A deep rumble rang out from the sky, followed by a tremor so powerful it shook both the ground and the air around it.
An explosion. Massive. It pulled Evan’s attention immediately, and the moment he turned to look, his expression hardened.
The direction was south, the same direction as Lirath, toward the borders, though this explosion seemed to originate far beyond them, deep within the Fallen Lands.
It was so enormous, so powerful, that he could see it clearly even from where he was. And what he saw made his blood run cold.
A pillar of pale, intense blue light, thick and blinding, connecting sky to earth, making both tremble at once. The surrounding clouds spiraled unnaturally around it, as though the storm itself had been born from that very place.
Evan didn’t know what was happening there, but his perception, somehow still active even in this other reality, picked up on something in that direction.
Five auras.
One black and deep, carrying the same sensation as void energy.
One darker still, and deeper, one he knew very well. The aura of death.
One dark violet, unfamiliar to him, yet one that sent a chill crawling across his entire body.
One dark blue, at the center of that enormous pillar of light, steadily shrinking as it slowly faded from existence.
And finally one yellow-green, powerful, nearly the equal of the death aura, yet its polar opposite.
The five auras struck him deeply. Yet what unsettled him most was the feeling that the being at the center of the 5th aura... was looking at him.
No—
Watching him.
He was almost certain it was the woman from the hall.
She was looking toward him. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her gaze settle on him, and stay there.
’What the hell is happening here?’ his mind repeated, growing more fractured by the second, while a dull ache began to build inside his head, though he stopped noticing it almost immediately, not because it went away, but because something else pulled his attention entirely.
A voice. Behind him.
"I see, so that’s what you were trying to do."
Evan spun around, and the tree was gone.
It was no longer standing tall and alive. It was on the ground, fallen, in ruins, in flames. A clean, precise cut had separated it at the base, bringing the entire thing down in a single stroke.
He didn’t have time to focus on any of that.
Because standing before him was the same woman from before, the same one whose aura he had sensed from so far away.
She was suspended in the air, looking directly at him, straight into his eyes, as if she could actually see him. Or perhaps she truly could.
Evan, confused by everything, found her gaze settle on him, and for some reason, he felt himself grow calm.
He looked at her properly then. She was not the same as before. The radiance was gone. The elegance remained, but it was altered now. Her beautiful face was marked by a dark, violet-tinged stain that seemed to have shriveled that portion of her skin. Her eyes, once emerald green, had lost their intensity, one of them now a mix of green and violet.
Her aura was no longer warm, no longer the pleasant surge of vitality it had been. Now it was dim, like a flame that could gutter out at any moment, laced with something else, faint, barely perceptible, but present. And it was one Evan recognized immediately.
He understood what was happening before he even formed the thought.
"Void corruption," he murmured instinctively.
Her condition was similar to Luna’s, no, it was worse. Much worse.
If Luna had been in this same state, she would likely have already been lost, already fully transformed into a Hollow. Yet this woman still seemed to be holding on, even as the void energy corroding her was far stronger than anything he had ever sensed before, the most powerful he had ever felt up close.
The woman, hearing his words, seemed to smile.
"My... keep looking at me like that, and I may just end up falling for you," she said, her voice weak but still carrying a warmth of playfulness that her condition hadn’t managed to extinguish.
Evan, hearing that, was momentarily thrown off. He opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off, as though she had just remembered something, a thoughtful look crossing her face for a brief moment before her expression shifted entirely, a captivating smile appearing on her lips.
"Although... perhaps it would be more accurate to say I already have."
She let that sit for just a moment.
"After all — you’ve already stolen my heart."
