Chapter 851: Chapter 852: A Wisp It was not without precedent for the chained knights to act with such tyranny and disregard for the lives of those who were branded, and so, as Damon had predicted, like some wicked prophet, his words came to pass. By the dawn and its glorious light, thousands of chained knights were deployed to the Grinding Gate with a simple order: kill until they remember how to fear. And they did. There were no heroes to save these people and no god to answer their prayers. Lazarak heard their boots as they trampled the ground above his head. Soon, he heard the screams of women and children, houses getting ripped out of their foundations, rubble burying thousands. Yet he could not do anything. He was a weak god in strength, and now he knew it in his heart as well. Weak in heart. He was complicit. Lazarak had defied the goddess because he hated having to watch the flames of war spread and destroy everything. Peace was always the first thing that war took, then it took lives, homes, dreams, and aspirations. When it did, he would always fall to his knees before a statue of his creator, the goddess of doom, the mother of inevitability, and beg her to end this misery. But why would the author of such despair bring an end to it? It was by her will that war spread. It was her hand that drove fate and her power that brought death. Why would she care... but now, hearing those screams, feeling this helplessness, like many fools he sought a god not because they were kind, but because he, like the mortals, wanted a psychological safety net. It was what faith was anyway... believing even without justifiable evidence, even in outright proof. But there was no statue of the goddess here, and even if there was, he had renounced her. So Lazarak turned to the one place that seemed divine. There, at the corner of this underground space where they had made their base of operations, Lazarak’s gaze fell on a pool of water and its countless whispers. The Lake of Tears. It was this lake that had been born from his emotions, and its wondrous powers were a mystery even he had not solved. And so this god walked up to the lake and fell to his knees. If there was no god to pray to, he would beg the omniverse itself. So he prayed as the screams echoed above him, as blood dyed the ground, as women were victimized by the cruel acts of man. Homes were gone, screams were soaked in blood, and while others suffered, others laughed as they dehumanized their victims. Simply because their leaders had ordered it and they were doing it in the name of god... so a massacre becomes holy, and we forget humanity in the name of god. Lazarak prayed, but he didn’t know what he was asking for. His hands shook, and the more they did, the more his intent traveled through the pond... it was evident even his dark thoughts he kept hidden were pulled out. After all, an optimist was still a person, and people couldn’t always hope for the best. All his wishes and all his prayers entered the pool and traveled to the metaverse, where all thought and minds existed—past, present, future. All those thoughts formed a single subconscious wish. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦 "This world is sick... destroy it all..." All of Lazarak’s hopeful prayers of salvation were twisted by his own helplessness and the screams of those who had died with hearts filled with resentment. This single prayer brushed many entities, from gods to demons, true dragons, mindless Devourers, abyssal horrors, even the dreams of the common man... yet no entity truly wished to bring an end to all things. This prayer would go unanswered by anyone... perhaps like the countless wishes and aspirations in the metaverse, it would continue to wander, unfound and unanswered. After all, if a drop of water is poured into the ocean, it becomes indistinguishable from the rest of the sea. Still, in this realm of the mind... something saw this unrealized and subconscious intent, and this deep swirling abyss picked it up. Perhaps it had only been a moment since Lazarak’s wish was twisted, or perhaps it had been countless eons, time losing meaning in the metaverse. What mattered was that Lazarak’s wish was found. The abyss... had a name, but it hated its name. Still, it had to find the source of this wish, because it had something it sought, but more than that, this subconscious mass of darkness wanted to find Lazarak. And so it created countless little wisps from its body to find the source. Each wisp went its own way. Some of them were destroyed. Some of them gained a will of their own over countless years. Some of them were just empty thoughts. Some of them were beautiful and hopeful dreams. Some were happy emotions. Some of them were fragments of its memories. And some were horrible nightmares. Among these nightmares was an insignificant wisp. It was so small that it could not even be seen by the naked eye. This wisp gained its own name. Its name was Ittorath. Like many wisps, it failed to find the source of the wish, and after countless years it grew and left the metaverse and entered the physical world... but Ittorath was a nightmare that carried some of the Unknown God’s sentimentality, so it left behind a wisp of itself to find the source of the wish. And today it did. As Lazarak prayed with his eyes closed, a small wisp born from the wisp of a nightmare slowly flew out of the Lake of Tears and faded. As it did, memories of the world entered its head. Ittorath trembled as he thought in rage. "Damn ascendants... how dare they seal away my true body..." He flew away unseen. "First I need a way out of here... after that... I’ll destroy them..."