Chapter 1669: Evading Deities "...This is impossible," he muttered. "Unless—" He paused as a faint, barely perceptible ripple spread forth. Like a memory of essence whispering through the void. Nocturnis narrowed his eyes. The universe was hiding secrets again. And he would tear it apart if he had to. --- Hours later, after Angy’s worry became unbearable, the skiff shimmered back into the pocket-dimensional star. E.E stumbled out carrying an unconscious Falco. Aildris followed, pale and shaking. Endric ran toward them. "What happened!?" E.E voice cracked with leftover terror as he answered. "A deity. A fucking Arbiter Deity almost stepped on us." Angy’s heart plummeted. "Falco—! Is he—?" Aildris shook his head. "Alive. But he nearly killed himself hiding us. He used a powerful ability to conceal all of us." Endric’s eyes widened. "That... that shouldn’t even be possible." "He made it possible," E.E whispered. They carried Falco inside. Angy followed silently, her hand trembling over her stomach once more. ... ... As time passed, Falco recovered and they once more ventured out to acquire more of the Outworldly essences. As Angy already explained, when Gustav died, he didn’t simply vanish. An Outworldly couldn’t. His existence shattered instead — not into flesh, not into soul, but into essence fragments, each one carrying a fundamental truth of his being. Time. Creation. Authority. Balance. Existence itself. They scattered across the universe like dying stars. And the universe, wounded and unstable, swallowed them. They found another fragment by accident. E.E had been scanning dead-space near a collapsed galaxy when his sensors screamed. "Guys," he muttered with wide eyes. "That’s... not normal." The nebula ahead wasn’t glowing. It was decaying. Color drained from it in slow motion, collapsing inward as if time itself was rotting. Falco frowned. "That space is aging. Backwards." They entered anyway. The moment they crossed the threshold, alarms died. No readings. No sound. Even their thoughts felt sluggish. Alero clenched his jaw. "This place doesn’t want us here." At the center floated a crystal shard, cracked and bleeding white light. Their hearts skipped. It felt warm and familiar. The moment they got stepped closer, the nebula screamed. A temporal predator emerged, turning into a malformed being born from broken time, attacking anything that tried to disturb the fragment. Falco went first with shadows flaring, ripping chunks out of reality just to slow it down. E.E fired off weapons from the ship. Alero nearly died when time folded around his arm and tried to erase it from history. It took everything they had. When Aildris finally reached the shard and sealed it in a containment sigil, the nebula collapsed completely — aging into dust in seconds. No one spoke on the way back. ... ... The next essence was worse. It lay embedded in the corpse of a fallen deity, drifting through voidspace like a monument to arrogance. The body was massive... way larger than planets, cracked open and leaking corrupted divinity. Elevora swallowed. "If the deities sense this—" "That’s why we have to be swift," Aildris replied quietly. The moment they landed, divine wraiths attacked. Not servants. Remnants. Leftover authority refusing to die. Falco fought three at once with his dark blood steaming in vacuum. Ria’s shields shattered twice. E.E screamed as his nervous system overloaded just trying to withstand the pressure. At the core of the god’s chest, they found it. A beating fragment, pulsing like a heart. The next essence they went after wasn’t guarded. That made it worse. They arrived at coordinates that... didn’t exist. No star. No planet. No space. Just absence. A void that rejected reality. E.E stared at the ship readings. "This shouldn’t be possible." The moment they crossed into the non-space, gravity vanished. Direction vanished. Identity blurred. Alero screamed as his body tried to split into multiple versions of himself. Falco anchored everyone with shadow chains, roaring through clenched teeth. At the center was a floating conceptual shard. Another essence... Taking it nearly erased Aildris. He felt himself unravel, only held together by something warm inside his chest. He didn’t know what it was yet. But it saved him. ... ... The journey back to the place of Gustav’s death felt heavier than any of them could bear, but no one said a word during the final stretch. After another week of evading deities, collecting the last of Gustav’s scattered essences, and surviving close encounters that left their nerves frayed, the group finally approached the coordinates Angy had marked. They began slowing down long before they arrived. Even from millions of kilometers away, the region of space ahead looked wrong. Dead wrong. E.E stared through the starship’s transparent view panel. "Is that...?" "Yes," Sersi answered grimly. "Space shouldn’t look like that," one of the surviving alien whispered with a trembling tone. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎 It shouldn’t. This part of the universe looked like someone had taken an eraser to the cosmos, smearing stars into streaks of ink and draining all color until only black and white remained. The nebulae had become swirling chalk clouds. Planets were frozen like pencil sketches. Even the vacuum seemed textured... like paper. A corruption from the clash of powers that were never meant to meet. The battle of Gustav versus the deities. Falco inhaled sharply. "We need to be careful. Entering this region might tear us apart if we move too fast." "We will proceed slowly," Endric said. "I’ll reinforce the ship as we pass the boundary." They pushed forward. The moment the bow of the ship crossed into the monochrome zone, the hull groaned like something ancient was pressing against it. Angy felt her chest tighten. Her bloodline reacted immediately... lights danced in the edge of her vision, displaying patterns of silver fractals only she could see. Her unborn child moved... causing a faint warmth inside her belly. She gripped the edge of her seat discreetly. Not now... please not now... Her nausea was worsening by the day. The secrecy was exhausting. But she had to hold on a little longer. For Gustav. For the universe. Gradually, they navigated through the distorted space.