In the veil of time, Ezmelral leaned closer, her voice a hushed tremor. Her gaze fixed on the bodies suspended from the Heartmash's ceiling, dangling like grotesque marionettes. Their skin was a patchwork of fading life—mortal tones slowly, sickeningly, being overtaken by the blotchy gray of the PraLumunix.
A chill seized her. "These are from the northern regions... the people of Gomorrath."
Raiking's nod was solemn confirmation, his crimson eyes reflecting the grotesque tableau.
"What's happening to them?" she whispered, horror and fascination warring within her.
"An illusion holds them," he replied, his voice a low, steady weight in the oppressive silence.
She drifted closer to one of the figures, studying the serene expression frozen on its face—a mask of bliss so at odds with the nightmare around it. "But they look so... peaceful."
"For now," Raiking said, a note of sorrow threading through his tone. "They are trapped, reliving a fiction."
"A fiction?" she echoed, her eyes tracing the fine, pulsing threads embedded in their flesh, connecting them to the hive above. Understanding began to dawn—a sick, cold realization.
"The PraLumunix Commander controls this chamber," Raiking continued. "Those threads are rooted in their Essence Cores, binding both body and mind. They're not merely captives—they're extensions of its will."
"What are they seeing?"
"Another life. One it crafted for them. They live inside those illusions until their true memories dissolve—until the line between self and lie vanishes completely."
Ezmelral's gaze fell to the faint black vapor swirling around their Essence Cores, where a dark energy filled an invisible meter. Her voice came cold, hollow. "They're being forced to commit atrocities."
"Mhm," Raiking affirmed, each syllable heavy as stone. "They experience what it is to become the worst the cosmos has to offer. Tyrants, murderers, defilers. The Commander breaks them by making them live their own damnation until nothing of their original self remains."
Raiking's hand settled on her shoulder—a familiar warmth—and in an instant, the veil folded. They materialized inside the structure the Overlord had conjured, its tranquil hall a mockery of serenity. Lanterns swayed gently, their glow washing over lacquered floors that pulsed faintly with the rhythm of the hive beneath.
Ezmelral's eyes locked on her lookalike, poised before an eerie figure illuminated by flickering light. The creature's stitched skin gleamed wetly; its stillness felt predatory. A tremor ran through her as she whispered, "Is that... an Overlord?"
"Yes," Raiking said.
"Why does it... look like that?"
He raised his palm. Shadowy mist coiled above it, solidifying into a circular window of memory. Within it, a woman's life unfolded—a tapestry woven from ambition and blood.
She had been a killer before the fall, her hands stained crimson long before Deatheny's invasion. When death came, the Orb of Creation resurrected her among the ruins—but she did not seek redemption. She seized the chaos, rising as the most ruthless warlord in the northern wastes. Her Seed of Corruption swelled into a black sun fed by slaughter until it consumed her completely, forging a new Overlord.
Ezmelral's stomach twisted as the vision showed her trophies: the chipped blades of warriors she'd slain, the flayed skin of her victims. The woman melted down those blades, reforging them into a single monstrous limb. Then, in a grotesque parody of renewal, she severed her own arm to fuse it in place. With stolen skin, she patched her decaying body—a desperate attempt to appear whole. Every stitch was a confession.
The vision dissolved like smoke in a crosswind, leaving only the present—the Overlord poised to strike, its stitched form radiating quiet, predatory intent.
Ezmelral exhaled slowly, the memory of its past still heavy in her mind. "So an Overlord's form," she murmured, "is a manifestation of what they once were?"
Raiking's answer was low and sure. "Yes. Each reflects its own sins—its obsessions, regrets, and the depth of its corruption."
Ezmelral's pulse quickened. Her thoughts turned to the escaped Overlord on her home world. What shape would its history take? What kind of horror had birthed it? She focused on the fight below, treating every motion as both lesson and warning.
Her lookalike, sensing the moment, began to lower her power—descending from the peak of the Cosmic Realm to the Universal, then to the Deity level—matching the Overlord exactly. For her, mastery was not dominance but discipline.
A blur split the stillness. The Overlord lunged first, its motion a perfect marriage of speed and violence. Ezmelral's lookalike propelled herself to meet it.
Their clash erupted at the center of the hall. Flesh struck steel, the shockwave rattling the lacquered floor as Essence flared outward in rippling bursts. Two wills collided—unyielding, equal, absolute.
The Overlord's blade-arm sparked under strain. Then its upper limb spiraled with liquid, water coiling down its length like a serpent of mirrors.
Ezmelral's lookalike reacted instantly—easing her palm off the Overlord's steel hand, then slamming it back with a forceful crack, using the recoil to drive herself backward, boots carving furrows in the wood. The Overlord extended its arm; the liquid uncoiled, snapping forward like a living whip.
Her sword became a blur of light—one, two, three strikes. The serpent burst into glittering fragments, droplets suspended like a constellation of shattered glass.
The Overlord tapped the air. The droplets froze mid-fall, hardened, and sharpened into icy spikes. With a clenched fist, it hurled them forward—a blizzard compressed into a single heartbeat.
Ezmelral's lookalike flipped backward in a rapid chain of somersaults, each landing a whisper away from death as shards impaled the floor in her wake.
From the veil of time, Ezmelral's voice caught. "It's using both Water and Ice Essence…"
Below, her lookalike landed in a crouch, the cold air brushing past her cheek. Without hesitation, she pivoted right as new shards streaked toward her, slicing them mid-run as she sprinted sideways. Reaching the wall, she ran up its surface for several steps, then turned left, sprinting along the vertical plane—her left arm sweeping in graceful, lethal arcs, blade flashing as she cut through each incoming shard. Splinters of frost and light trailed her every motion.
At the final arc of her run, she bent her knees, Essence coiling beneath her like compressed thunder. With a single, measured breath, she launched herself from the wall—descending like a streak of silver fury straight toward the Overlord, her sword raised high, the very air screaming with her fall.