Chapter 336: Fate
Aren was stunned when he heard that. He looked at her with disbelief in his eyes. He grabbed the edge of the table and leaned forward.
"So you are the reason I could fight back? Was that the whole plan?"
"No, that was not even the main plan. If that was it, then that would mean you have failed now. But the plan goes deeper and gets more intricate.
I ensured that your soul that was separated would be capable of a certain something, and that was the ability to awaken its own ability due to the influence of your mother.
This ability would somehow manage to merge into your shadow and create its own thing, and that way you would be able to fight against Shadow." She said that and rose to her feet. She left the tea on the table and took a few steps. She stood right beside Aren.
"Inside you now is a power unlike anything you could imagine, and a fragment of your soul that holds that power. The real ability that you were meant to awaken, the power of fate." As soon as she said that, Aren felt a powerful tug in his chest, and then a heat that emanated from it. His heart raced heavily, slamming against his chest hard.
He clutched his chest as his breathing grew heavy. He gritted his teeth and struggled to keep his mind in the right state.
"What is going on?" he asked as he struggled.
"Donโt fight it. Thatโs the power of fate, your true ability. It is the only way that you can come back to life and face Shadow." She spoke with a calm voice. She held him and helped him through the pain until it finally stopped.
[You have activated the Ability Fate]
[Fate Skill: Undying Soul, Rewind every death and learn from the past, change your fate from what it should have been. Soul energy cost: Massive]
Aren looked at the screen that had just shown up. His eyes widened as he looked at it. She smiled when she saw that look.
"It seems you have seen what you truly are now. Now there is no time. Shadow plans to end it all. You have to head back and take your body.
Every truth and detail will be waiting for you at the end of it all. For now, you need to go, use fate and defeat that monster." After she said that, she placed her hand on his chest, and everything went dark.
His eyes snapped open a few seconds later, and he was lying down in the mind space where he had died. He drew a deep breath.
"My consciousness is still alive?" he muttered and rose to his feet quickly. In that moment, he sensed what was happening outside. He could see what Shadow was doing and how he was pulling all the shadows into the body.
"Tch, like hell Iโd let you get away with that," Aren said in anger. He cracked his neck and began walking. There was a lot that had been revealed to him today and a lot that had happened. He did not know how to handle and process all of it, but one thing that he knew was that he was not going to allow Shadow to continue.
He walked forward with no hesitation, his gaze locked on the figure that was in control of the body.
"Hey, Shadow," Aren called out.
Shadow heard that voice and turned. He was stunned to see Aren, but he did not let it show.
"How are you still alive? You are a persistent bug, you know?" he said in anger. "What do you think will happen now? I am in control. This whole body has fallen under my command, and it cannot be stopped, especially by the likes of you."
"We will see about that," Aren replied.
He stretched out his hands, and shadow formed. It clung to his body and shaped itself into armor around him until his shadow armor was fully formed in all its glory and beauty, going as far as to cover his head in shadow. Two glowing red eyes formed from it.
"Haha, do you really think that this will somehow make it easier for you to take me down? You failed already. Let it go."
As he was speaking, Aren charged, moving faster than he had ever moved before.
โThe life of my world is on the line. My family, my friends, all of it. They are all there, watching. I am the only one that can stop this, so Iโll give it my all, and Iโll bring an end to it all.โ
He thought in his mind while he planted his foot into the ground and hurled shadow tendrils at Shadow.
Shadow barely glanced at the incoming tendrils, as though he could not be bothered with whatever Aren had to throw.
He raised one hand, almost lazily, and a wall of pure darkness erupted from the ground. The tendrils crashed into it and dissolved like smoke against iron. The wall didnโt even crack.
"Pathetic."
Then the wall exploded outward.
What came from it was nothing like the shadow he had wielded before. This was something older, heavier, wrong in the way it moved, like darkness that had never known light and never would. A massive coiling mass of shadow, thick as a building column, launched forward with a speed that left no room for reaction.
It wrapped around Aren mid-step.
The grip was absolute.
It lifted him, and then it slammed him into the ground with a force that shook the mindscape itself. The impact was total. Not painful. Just final. The kind of force that didnโt leave room for survival as a possibility.
Aren died.
In the void that followed, silence stretched in every direction.
Then he saw it, a single silver thread hanging in the darkness, pulled taut.
And then it snapped in two and vanished.
His eyes opened..
