Chapter 2238: She is here. "W-Wait!!" Vexarion called out but... He soon realized the... beast, or whatever it was, couldn’t listen to him. Even if it could, it wouldn’t react to him because it... could not. It was not intelligent enough to. He... He wouldn’t get anything out of it. So he... He left again and continued searching for another world, another clue, anything that could bring him back. At first, he had high hopes. Even if the worlds he went to were dead, even if the entities he encountered did not have the ability to think, the failure only made him more determined. He told himself these worlds were too young. He told himself he simply needed to travel farther. He told himself that his allies... or at least someone, something he knows, must be somewhere beyond this strange region. He imagined it clearly. He imagined reaching a familiar star cluster, or... or seeing a familiar world, even a ruined world, even lingering aura traces. He imagined a city. He imagined a cultivator sensing him and reacting. He imagined an ally responding through the call artifact. He imagined kneeling before Lady Seraphielle’s throne the moment he returned, telling her everything. Not just about the Anomaly. But about the truth. That the real danger— The crazy Chaos Heir, and the monster who held her hand. He imagined saving himself. He imagined redeeming his humiliation. He imagined being... important again. And that fantasy kept him moving. Just like that, ’days’ passed. Actually, Vexarion had stopped counting properly at some point because of how... strange the flow of time in this place was. It didn’t stop, neither did it move back. It moved like time should but... It simply... didn’t feel like the time flow he was familiar with. He began noticing it in small ways. His fatigue came too slowly sometimes, as if his body refused to acknowledge exhaustion. Then, other times, it came too quickly, like his strength vanished between one heartbeat and the next. He thought maybe it was because of lack of rest. Yes, he was an Eternal who normally did not need sleep but... what his body and mind went through was anything but normal. He could sense how lack of sleep would chip away at his senses and affect how he perceived things around him. And since he had been tirelessly flying for ’days’ with no signs of the enemy catching up to him, he knew he had gotten quite far and had lost them. A short nap was possible. Or at least that was how he tried to convince his mind, but the moment he closed his eyes and tried to sleep— He saw that same grin, his ears rang as that echoing, frightening laughter rang in his head, that agonizing pain that healed a long time ago but still lingered. Sure, his mind might be trying to forget it all, but his body? It was broken far beyond what he realized. Sleep was not an option. Not for now, not for... the next few millennia. The only thing he could do was to rest in the air, still hovering, eyes half-open, senses stretched wide. He landed on dead stars and sat in silence, forcing his mind to calm. He tried to meditate, but it didn’t work, because the moment his thoughts slowed, the memories rose. All he could do was... move. And as he moved, hope changed shape. It became less like a bright flame like it was at the beginning and more like a... thin thread. A thread that he was holding with all his might, but in his mind, he knew it could snap any moment. He continued his journey, and in his journey, he found more worlds. Some had forests, some had deserts, some were made of stone with no water, some had storms that never ended. Some even had life but... It was simple, wordless, and mindless. A life that was of no use to him. Vexarion tried everything. He carved symbols of Light into mountains, hoping someone would recognize them and come. He raised pillars of golden energy into the sky as beacons, leaving them behind as markers. But when he returned hours later, those pillars had already faded, like the laws of this region refused to let such things remain. He tried to track his path by stars, but the stars shifted too subtly, like they weren’t fixed properly yet. He tried to force the call artifacts again and again; sometimes they flickered, sometimes they warmed, once, he even heard a faint static sound, so quiet he thought it might be his imagination, and every time it happened, it flared his hope. He poured his energy into the artifact until the veins on his neck glowed but... It died again. Vexarion stared at it for a long time. His fingers tightened. Then, suddenly— Bam Crack He threw it. The artifact flew and shattered against a rock, its pieces scattering into the dust, and Vexarion... He watched as those pieces drifted in the space; his breathing became uneven as he realized he had momentarily lost control over himself. He tried to think about it. Was it anger? Frustration? Hopelessness maybe? And as his thought began to wander, his mind flashed back to Sharnoth clapping, cheering for him like he was a child. ’Good job! You are doing so well!’ His stomach twisted. He pressed a hand to his chest and forced himself to breathe slowly. Then— "AAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!" He screamed out loud, emptying his mind once again, letting go of all his thoughts. "Control," He whispered to himself. "Control yourself, you need to escape. You are the first that has the chance to. This wasn’t meant to be easy; you wouldn’t be the first if it was." He began convincing himself, trying to make himself believe that what he was doing had meaning, that it would all end eventually and that he... He would return to his world. He looked up at the sky. It was quiet. Too quiet. There were no messengers, no divine projections, no signs of the Supreme World of Light watching over creation. It felt like he had been cut out of the Universe and thrown into a young corner no one cared about. And that thought— That thought was dangerous. Because it led to another thought. What if no one can find me? He shook his head hard, as if he wanted to throw that thought out of his mind physically. "No." He muttered. "They will. They... must." But even as he said it, his hope thinned again. He started speaking less. He started flying without looking around much. He started ignoring beauty. There were places that were breathtaking—rings of floating stones around a dying star, auroras that moved like living curtains, oceans that glowed softly at night. He did not care. He only cared about one thing. A sign. A single sign that he was close. A familiar aura. A familiar constellation. A voice. Someone. Anyone. At some point, he began hearing things that weren’t there. A whisper in the wind. A sound behind him. A laugh far away. Each time, his body flinched like it had been struck. Each time, he spun around, halo flaring, light bursting out in hopes of finding something but... Nothing. There was only... the familiar empty space. Space that he had now begun to hate because it made him remember... her world. That... grey land. The nowhere. Again, to shove that thought out of his head, he pushed harder, forcefully increasing his speed until it felt like his wings were giving out. He understood it: if he slowed down, his mind would sink. So he ran forward like a man running from a shadow that lived inside his skull. And then— One day, after continuing this hopeless... torturous journey for he did not know how long, something changed. For the first time in a long, long while, Vexarion heard something that wasn’t just the sound of stars colliding, mindless beasts roaring, water falling on the ground, or the winds moving. He heard... A voice. A coherent voice. A voice that did not travel through air. A voice that did not need permission. A voice that didn’t care about distance or strange laws. "Children of the Universe..." And the moment Vexarion heard it, he froze. His entire body went still, like the cosmos itself had grabbed him by the spine. He knew that voice. Even if he had been deaf, even if he had lost his mind, he would have known it. Seraphielle Light. The Infinity of Light. His Goddess. His Absolute. His... salvation. Vexarion’s eyes shined so brightly that the dark around him seemed to retreat. His chest rose sharply, like he had been drowning and finally found air. He looked up at the sky, searching for the source. And for the first time in what felt like forever— He smiled. A real smile. Not a broken one. Not a desperate one. A smile filled with... belief. "She... she is speaking. She is here." He whispered, voice trembling. Finally... it worked. Finally... Light reached him. The sky opened. A Veil stretched across the void. Seraphielle’s vast, holy, and absolute face filled it. Vexarion smiled, his eyes shining so brightly, resembling a child who saw his parent after weeks of darkness. But then— Then his blood turned cold. Because behind the Veil... behind the Light... Stood the demon that had haunted every second of his "escape." "My toy is finally here~"