Author's Note: I made a typo in one of the names and I might not get to all of them. It's supposed to be Reniatsus. Sorry about this. I might not find all the words to edit this...
Vastarael—still in her female form—finally slowed down because the mood of the battlefield changed.
Up until now, the Voidborn were endless. Waves upon waves of disposable bodies kept charging, screaming and dissolving into black vapor and ash under her fists, her legs and her Soul Energy. Hundreds of thousands of corpses littered the void. They were either torn apart, pulverized or outright erased. Her body was drenched in black blood.
Ahead of her, the Voidborn stopped charging mindlessly. They began to reposition. That was when she saw the Voidborn Mages. Their forms flickered between solid and conceptual, as if the Void itself couldn't quite decide what shape they deserved. Black robes made of condensed absence clung to them. They were inscribed with runes that hurt to look at.
They were chanting.
The sound wasn't loud but it pressed against her senses, crawling into her skull like a parasite trying to nest inside her. Each syllable tugged at the Sucking Void, pulling matter, anti-matter and broken soul fragments into a massive Teleportation Mystic Circle behind them.
The circle was wrong. It was etched directly into the Void by beings who had no business using spells so refined. The runes overlapped, devoured one another and rewrote themselves mid-cast. Guarding it were more Voidborn. They were fewer in number but far more deliberate.
Vastarael stopped walking and looked around. That was when she realized something that made her lips curl. She was already at the destination after an entire day of slaughter.
The Void itself shuddered as a massive shadow passed overhead. Vastarael turned just in time to see Asenane in her full Divine Transformation. She was a colossal dragon. Her body covered the Voidborn Giants like children's toys. White scales reflected what little light existed inside the void.
She unleashed a beam of frost so vast it swallowed all the five Voidborn Giants in an instant. Their massive forms vanished beneath kilometers of crystalline frost. Vastarael felt the chill crawl across her skin despite the distance.
"Damn," she muttered, almost fondly.
She couldn't even see Luke from here. The giant turtle was far beyond her visual range because the void was thicker. If it weren't for her own Soul Energy burning like a beacon and forcibly dispelling the Void around her, she wouldn't even be able to tell where anything was.
Her gaze returned to the mages. That was when the realization fully clicked into place.
Voidborn Mages had souls.
She tilted her head.
"So that's it. You're the only ones left."
The chanting faltered for half a second. That told her everything. Before she took a step forward, the Sucking Void shook.
At the same time, a sharp, urgent sensation pierced her mind. It was Phaenora's voice using the Sapphire Bond.
[Darling! The Sucking Void is—]
She couldn't finish. The connection dissipated.
Laughter was heard across the Void, layered with echoes that didn't belong to any throat. The remaining Voidborn dropped to their knees instantly, pressing their foreheads into the ground.
The Void parted and something stepped forward. At first, it looked like an old man. She already knew who is was.
The chief of Broomshaven.
He smiled kindly with his hands clasped behind his back, as if this were a pleasant reunion.
Vastarael didn't move. Her instincts were screaming.
"You, You're not human."
The old man chuckled.
"Oh, no. I haven't been that for a very long time."
His body began to change.
The disguise peeled away like wet parchment. His spine straightened. His bones elongating grotesquely. His flesh literally darkened into something more like polished obsidian than skin. His arms thickened and his frame kept expanding until he stood nearly four meters tall.
Four glowing crimson eyes opened up. The Voidborn prostrated themselves completely. The being spread his arms slightly, as if welcoming her.
"My real name is Diov, Reniatsus of the Sucking Void."
Vastarael's smile finally appeared. It was not kind.
"Figures. I was wondering when the actual problem would show up."
The void answered Diov instantly.
Like a curtain being pulled across reality, the Sucking Void thickened, condensed and asserted itself. Space lost its sense of direction. Up, down, near, far, those concepts were overwritten by a suffocating, omnipresent blackness that swallowed everything except consciousness.
Asenane froze mid-air and turned back to normal to avoid the void but it was too late.
Shimmer and Runner were yanked from Luke's shell like loose pieces on a board. Phaenora's sapphire constructs shattered into motes of light before being smothered. Reynolds and Miranda were ripped from the ground they stood on, dragged into the same floating prison.
They all hovered around Vastarael, encased.
The void wrapped around them like a cocoon. It swallowed their limbs and sealed their mouths. They couldn't see their energy either. Only their eyes remained uncovered.
Diov floated calmly at the center with his arms loosely folded behind his back,
"This has been fun but ultimately, it is fruitless."
He turned his gaze to Vastarael.
"I am the Reniatsus of this realm. The Sucking Void does not permit escape unless I allow it. Did you truly believe you could slaughter your way out without me noticing?"
Vastarael didn't show any worry. In fact, she had an epiphany in the heat of the moment.
"You know," she said, casual to the point of disrespect, "the answer's been staring you in the face this whole time."
"Oh?"
"You met us in Broomshaven as the chief. You slaughtered the villagers to open a gateway to the Hidden Citadel. But that part never sat right with me. Why kill them? Why did they have to die? Broomshaven is remote. To be literal, it's in the middle of nowhere in the Amaniya Kingdom. Tourists almost never pass through. And those villagers weren't desperate. They weren't miserable. They had lives. People like that don't just line up for suicide rituals. You can compel people, can't you?"
Diov laughed.
"Ah. There it is. It finally took you long enough to notice.."
Reynolds' and Miranda's eyes widened violently.
They felt the pressure inside their minds. There were commands that had never sounded like commands and decisions that had always felt like their own were actually not theirs. Diov gestured lazily toward them.
"How do you think they stayed trapped in here? They searched for millennia, wandering my realm, always just failing to leave and finding another reason to remain."
Reynolds' eyes burned with rage. Miranda's trembled. They tried to scream but the void sealed them tighter.
"I place simple imperatives. Stay. Search. Hope. Fail. Repeat. Elegant, really. But it doesn't work on you. Or your family."
His eyes flicked briefly to Asenane, Phaenora, Shimmer and Runner.
"So I needed a lure."
He spread his arms slightly.
"An Omniscient would eventually notice the Teleportation Mystic Circle. Curiosity is a law, after all. I merely… let it be found. I saw the prophecy millennia ago. I knew the moment I laid eyes on you in Broomshaven that my role was complete. The path had aligned. And now you're here."
Vastarael's mind raced with possibilities.
Spatial inversion. Authority fracture. Infinite void and realm. All of them ended the same way.
Everyone else dies first before he could even attack. Diov didn't need to move. His authority was the realm. Any attempt to close distance would result in immediate annihilation of everyone she loved.
She saw it clearly and so did they. However, the four of them were not worried. In fact, they send to understand something.