THE VILLAIN'S POV

Chapter 929: The Beginning of the End (2)

Only one being fit that description.

The Pale Devastation.

No one else.

As for the star-filled sky...

Frey could not determine what it truly represented.

He had his suspicions.

But he refused to acknowledge them.

Worst of all...

The monster had looked directly at him.

Drawing a slow breath, Frey entered the second prophecy.

This time...

He found himself seated within the ancient library of the Writers.

An old, weathered book rested open before him.

Holding a fountain pen in his right hand, Frey calmly wrote across the blank pages.

’Those were peaceful moments...’

’Moments I had missed more than I realized.’

’How long has it been since I last held a real pen?’

’Those simple days when Father taught my siblings and me how to write...’

’Before Mother later replaced those lessons with her own cold and uncompromising instruction.’

The prophecy drew Frey back into memories long buried.

For the first time in ages...

He experienced a sense of peace he had almost forgotten.

The quiet atmosphere of the library...

The simple act of writing...

Both filled him with a profound serenity.

But it did not last.

Without warning...

The fog spread through the library.

It began tearing apart the pages.

Scattering the words.

Frey hurriedly tried to stop it.

It was useless.

The mist devoured page after page.

The words dissolved mercilessly before his eyes.

’The words I had spent years writing...’

’Vanished in mere seconds.’

’I tightened my grip around my pen and continued writing in desperation...’

’Allowing black ink to flow freely...’

’Mixing with the cursed fog.’

More and more ink continued to pour from the pen.

Far too much of it.

The black ink devoured the fog, but instead of restoring the corrupted pages, Frey’s desperate attempt produced entirely new ones—pages turned completely black beneath the sheer amount of darkness he had used.

The ink succeeded in stopping the mist.

The book became entirely dark as a result, yet the flow did not end there. It continued leaking outward until it stained everything around the book... and eventually reached Frey himself.

Black ink covered his hand first.

Then his arm.

It climbed across his body at a terrifying speed, spreading over his face before swallowing the rest of him completely.

The ink was cold.

It carried a strange sensation that made Frey feel as though he were falling into an abyss without a bottom.

The pen released so much ink that the entire library drowned in darkness.

Before long, Frey lost his breath within it as well.

Then he awakened.

And the second prophecy came to an end.

It was no simpler than the first.

If anything, it was far more complicated.

Yet the fog remained present, clinging to him like a curse that refused to fade.

Then came the third prophecy.

It was the most chaotic of them all.

And by far the most confusing.

Across a vast canvas, Frey saw the fog approaching once again from the distance.

He saw the dark, star-filled sky.

He saw black ink flowing between them as though the world itself were bleeding.

He saw the silhouettes of countless creatures of every shape and kind—some flying, some walking, and others crawling across the ground.

Above that sea of ink floated the pen from the second prophecy.

The same pen Frey had held before.

The one from which all that black ink had poured.

This time, however...

The pen did not endure.

It seemed as though the entire world had gathered around it, surrounding it from every direction.

Cracks began spreading across its surface.

As the pressure increased and the conflict intensified, the pen finally shattered like a piece of glass.

Its fragments scattered everywhere.

In every direction.

Every creature immediately charged after them in madness, blinded by the brilliance radiating from each shard.

And from that moment onward...

The world entered an entirely new and obscure age, one whose consequences no one could foresee.

The fourth prophecy began immediately afterward.

This time, Frey could understand what he was seeing.

It was a brutal war.

A conflict on a scale unlike anything he had ever witnessed before.

Its magnitude was so overwhelming that it seemed as though every living creature in existence had taken part.

What made the war unique was that every faction involved possessed one of the fragments of the shattered pen.

They clung to those pieces as though each one were the greatest weapon in existence.

They fought one another.

Destroyed one another.

Seas of blood formed across the world.

Mountains of corpses rose toward the heavens.

A new land was born, built entirely from bone.

At the end of the war, only three men remained.

One was dark and shrouded in fire.

One was pale and surrounded by mist and death.

The last carried traces of both, together with a tremendous power that merged black and white into one.

Whoever emerged victorious among them...

Would become the final King of Ruin.

By this point in the prophecy, Frey could no longer control his breathing.

Every time he reached this scene, his mind felt as though it were being torn apart.

As though his consciousness were breaking into millions of pieces.

Yet he gritted his teeth and endured until the end.

Only then did the fifth and final prophecy reveal itself.

This time...

Everything appeared to be over.

The battle had ended.

A final victor had emerged.

He resembled a man who had crawled out of hell itself.

He dragged himself forward after defeating the others.

His body was disfigured.

His features were impossible to distinguish.

His wounds were severe, and not a trace of light remained within his eyes.

The man walked alone after claiming victory.

Yet after moving only a few steps away from the opponents he had defeated...

He collapsed.

He struggled.

Tried to rise again and again.

He appeared to be suffering terribly, refusing to surrender no matter how many times his body failed him.

It seemed as though he had endured unimaginable torment to reach that point.

But his strength had betrayed him.

His efforts had betrayed him.

His energy finally ran dry.

And his luck came to an end.

Only minutes after achieving his great victory...

He fell as well.

His body joined the mountain of corpses.

And the epic ended without a victor.

Later, a few miserable, disfigured souls began crawling out from beneath the dead.

The survivors emerged.

They were weak.

Broken.