Chapter 31: The Descent

The storm fell upon the world in a heavy, oppressive weight. Lightning crackled and split the night with deafening booms, each bolt illuminating the churning underbellies of the clouds that roiled across the sky above Tsayad. Rain continued to pour in relentless sheets, hammering the scorched forest floor and turning the ash into rivers of grey sludge.

Down below, amidst the shattered trees and the mud-churned earth, Krovi’s eyes trembled as he processed what he had just heard from Sebastian. “I finally found out?” Krovi repeated, his voice cracking before it shattered into wild, uncontrolled laughter. “I finally found out?! Hahaha!”

He pressed a palm into the mud and pushed himself upright, his broken body trembling with the effort. Blood and rain mingled in the creases of his weathered face, streaking down through the rough grey of his beard. He sat there on the sodden earth, his gaze lifting to meet Sebastian’s, and he found the young prince staring down at him with an expression of quiet amusement, the golden spear of judgment held loosely in his grip, its radiance pooling across the rain-soaked ground like spilled sunlight.

Krovi shifted his gaze away. He tilted his head back and stared upward, staring into the churning sky as though the answers to all his questions were written across the face of the storm. The rain fell against his upturned face, streaking through the deep lines that time and hardship had carved into his skin.

“Right from the start,” Krovi began, his voice strangely calm now, as though the act of unraveling Sebastian’s scheme had settled something deep inside him. “You had planned this all. Every step. Every moment.” He paused, the muscles of his jaw working silently. “You already knew my strengths and my weaknesses. You knew that I cannot move my main body until I dispel my illusion formula.”

He glanced at Sebastian, his eyes carrying the weight of a man who had finally glimpsed the full shape of the cage built around him. A smile, weary and edged with something that might have been respect, crawled across his lips. “And you already knew where my main body was all along.”

Krovi shifted his gaze back toward the heavens, staring so intently at the clouds that he might have been searching for a giant formula inscribed across the sky. He opened his mouth and spoke, each word deliberate. “Because the [Illusion Dispelling] formula was already cast right from the start.” He paused, pursing his bloodied lips tightly for a moment before a slight curl lifted the corner of his mouth. “By the use of a voiceless chant.”

He turned his head, fixing Sebastian with a gaze that held a flicker of that mad light, though now it seemed tempered by something approaching clarity. “Am I right, Your Majesty?” he asked, his tone colored with grim amusement.

Sebastian stared at him for a long, measured moment. Then he raised his head slightly, his brow creasing as though giving the question genuine thought. A low hum escaped his throat.

“Hmm. More or less,” he replied.

“More or less,” Krovi echoed, tilting his head to one side. A short, humorless laugh escaped him. “More or less, you say?” He shook his head slowly, droplets of rain flying from the tangled grey strands of his hair. “You used your teammate’s lack of knowledge about my abilities to make me believe that was all you knew. And you still pretended you hadn’t noticed my presence here.”

His gaze drifted downward, settling on the muddy earth between his knees. The rain pooled in the impressions his body had left in the soil.

“Upon arriving at this part of the forest, you had already cast the [Illusion Dispelling] formula with a voiceless chant. All the while, you used fast chanting as a decoy, making me believe you were still in the process of casting it.” The curl on Krovi’s lips widened, stretching into a grin that revealed bloodstained teeth. His eyes locked onto Sebastian’s with a feverish intensity. “Since when could you use a voiceless chant?”

He paused, then corrected himself with a wave of his hand, the gesture loose and almost drunken. “Ah—no, that came out wrong.” He cleared his throat, the sound thick and wet with blood. “Since when did you enter the first step of ascension to become an Archmage?”

Krovi watched Sebastian’s face closely, searching for the flicker of surprise, the subtle tell that would betray a secret laid bare. But Sebastian’s expression remained unreadable, his features as composed as carved marble. It was as though he had already known that Krovi would piece it all together. A small curve lifted his lips.

“You already know the signs of ascension?” Sebastian asked.

Krovi gave a short nod. His gaze shifted back to the sky as the crackling boom of thunder rolled across the heavens. He knew the signs well, the first stirrings that marked a mage’s approach toward the level of an Archmage. The earliest sign was the ability to use a voiceless chant. At that stage, the mage began to feel the existence of mana as a living essence, though they were still far from knowing the deeper truth.

Seeing Krovi’s nod, Sebastian spoke. “The first signs began happening to me a few months ago. I don’t really know the exact month it started, but I do know it was a few months.”

“Hmm,” Krovi hummed in reply, his gaze still fixed on the sky. He knew, with full certainty, that he had lost the battle of hiding his true body. Sebastian already knew where his main form resided. His other illusion clones were already losing their battles against Zen and Fiona, their forms flickering and weakening with every passing moment. His carefully laid plan had been methodically turned against him.

A small, resigned smile played on his lips. He also knew that the true battle was far from over. Krovi placed his hand to his lips and whistled, a silent, piercing sound that carried no audible note but resonated with intent across the entire forest. His command had already been sent.

Sebastian immediately drove a kick into him, cutting the whistle short.

“Hahaha! It’s too late! The wyverns will be here any—” Krovi’s voice died in his throat. His eyes flew wide, the pupils constricting to pinpricks. He breathed out a single, disbelieving word. “Impossible.”

His eyes shook violently. “Impossible! Impossible! Impossible!” he shouted, his voice cracking with desperation as he realized that the connections his lordship had placed upon the wyverns had become unresponsive. The link felt strangely severed, disconnected in a way that should have been impossible, because his lordship was about to descend and was still in full control. So why? Why was the connection unresponsive?

“Sigh… it seems whatever you tried to do failed, huh?” Sebastian’s voice cut through the rain.

Krovi glanced at Sebastian, who had raised the golden spear, its blazing tip aimed toward the sky. A small curl lifted the corner of Sebastian’s face as he muttered, “I hope you find rest.”

He hurled the spear into the heavens.

Krovi’s eyes widened as he watched the spear streak upward like a thunderbolt forged from daylight itself. It carved a brilliant path through the storm, its golden radiance briefly outshining the lightning.

All across the forest, Krovi’s bodies, all of them, began to dissolve. The clones locked in combat with Fiona and Zen frayed at the edges, their forms unraveling like mist scattered by a sudden wind. The clone that sat before Sebastian in the mud began to fade as well, his outline growing translucent, the rain falling through him as though he were made of smoke.

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Sebastian watched the dissolving figure before him. He watched Krovi’s expression shift, the wide-eyed shock giving way to something slower, something heavier. Acceptance.

A laugh escaped the fading clone’s lips. It was a quiet sound, stripped of the madness that had colored his earlier outbursts.

“Ah,” Krovi said, his voice strangely calm. For a man like him, a man who had walked so long in the shadow of his own obsession, such calmness was perhaps the only fitting end. “What a life I’ve lived.”

He gave Sebastian one final glance. A wide smile cracked across his weathered face, and for a fleeting moment, he looked less like a maniac and more like a weary old man who had simply walked too far down a road he could not bring himself to leave.

“I hope you find rest too,” he said. “And maybe…” His voice began to fade, growing distant as his form thinned to nothing. “Maybe we might meet each other in the afterlife today.”

His wild laughter receded into the storm, trailing away on a final word that sent a chill skittering down Sebastian’s spine.

“Because you just helped me complete the summoning ritual.”

Sebastian’s eyes flew wide. A curse tore from his lips as he felt the air around him plunge, not simply cooling, but dropping into a cold so deep and so sudden that it felt as though the very warmth of the world was being siphoned away. The temperature plummeted to a degree that had no place in the natural order of things.

“Sebastian, something’s wrong?” Fiona’s voice called out to him, tight with worry, as both she and Zen rushed toward his position through the mud and rain.

Sebastian gaze shot upward.

High above, where the golden spear had come to a halt, its tip pressed against something invisible as though piercing a membrane stretched across the sky, a figure materialized. Krovi’s real body flickered into view, suspended against the churning clouds. His eyes had lost all signs of life, rolled back until only the whites showed, pale and vacant as polished bone. Dark blood seeped from the wound in his chest where the spear had found its mark, trailing down his torso in thick rivulets.