Chapter 1817: Cleansing The Taint Rowan knew that the words from this thing were just a final desperate attempt to taunt him. His victory could never be meaningful to a being like this, but Rowan did not care; he had learned to face nightmares and evils of all kinds. He stepped forward, and the Third Prince shrieked, "Rowaannn..." the name was a curse, spat out with a spray of black-tinged spittle. "You... cut out... our heart..." A violent shudder wracked his frame. The skin of his back stretched taut, and with a sound like tearing canvas, it split open. From the wound, thick, black tentacles erupted, slick with slime. The tentacles were covered in barbed suckers that pulsed with a vile life, and with the way they were moving, it was as if they weren’t part of him; instead, they were using him. The Third Prince was just a collapsing puppet for something unspeakable inside. "You think... this is a victory? Claiming the Origin of that pathetic clown?" he gurgled, pushing to his feet. His legs trembled, bones audibly grinding with sickening cracks. "You’ve just... killed the only thing... keeping the infection... contained!" Suddenly, the Third Prince lunged towards Rowan, aided by his tentacles that pushed against the ground. One of the tentacles, thick as a man’s thigh, lashed out faster than thought, but it didn’t aim for Rowan’s body; it headed towards the space around him, seeking to corrupt the very air he breathed. Where the tentacle passed, the polished floor blackened and cracked with a rot that could devour millennia in a second. Rowan didn’t retreat from this attack. He moved inside the lash, his form a blur, and as the tentacle whipped past his head, he grabbed it. The moment his hand made contact, the slime on its surface sizzled, and the tentacle screamed—a high-pitched, psychic shriek that felt like needles in the brain. Rowan’s grip was like a vice, and he poured destruction into the tentacle. The slick, powerful limb withered in his grasp, turning desiccated and brittle in an instant. With a brutal wrench, he tore it from the Third Prince’s back. Black, tarry blood, smelling of ozone and decay, geysered from the stump, and the Third Prince howled in rage and pain. The puppet of evil didn’t stagger back but continued surging forward, his broken, bloody hands reaching for Rowan’s face. Rowan smoothly dodged the grab and drove a fist into the Third Prince’s chest. The impact was sickening. He was here with his main body, and his strength was something that no one in Reality could equal. Ribs splintered inward. The thing inside the shell of the Third Prince shrieked in fury. Another tentacle, this one tipped with a barbed, bony stinger, shot from the Third Prince’s shoulder, aiming for Rowan’s eye. Rowan caught the stinger an inch from his cornea. The barb dug into his palm, and a wave of psychic poison, images of despair, madness, and utter hopelessness, flooded into him. Rowan smiled and crushed the stinger in his fist. The poison evaporated, unable to taint a will that had stared into the Great Abyss and decided to end it. The Third Prince was falling apart. Chunks of his flesh sloughed off, hitting the floor with wet slaps and dissolving into puddles of black goo. The thing within was revealed in glimpses: a central, pulsating mass of eyes and teeth, and a core of absolute hatred that was consuming its host to fuel its attack. "YOU CAN’T KILL ME!" the Third Prince shrieked, his jaw detaching on one side, hanging by a strip of tendon. "I AM THE CANCER IN THE BONES OF LIMBO!" He vomited a stream of black acid. Rowan crossed his arms, and a shield of compressed creation solidified before him. The acid hit it and splashed, eating into the floor, but unable to pierce the barrier. It was then that Rowan brought out the hammer he had placed by the side. The hammer settled into his hand—a brutal, unforgiving thing. It was the tool of a final, brutal conclusion, and after consuming the death screams of three Primordials, it was becoming a potent weapon for unmaking like none other. Rowan did not know which Reality this hammer was harvested from, but he knew he was doing their Will justice. The Third Prince, a leaking, twitching horror of tentacles and rotting flesh, charged for the last time. Rowan met him with the hammer. He didn’t swing for the body, but aimed for the core. The hammer descended in an enchanting arc that left holes in Reality and struck the pulsating mass of eyes and teeth within the Third Prince’s chest. There was no explosion of light or sound, just a silent, gravitational implosion. The Third Prince’s form was sucked inward, the screaming mouths, the lashing tentacles, the rotting flesh—all of it was violently compressed into a single, infinitesimal point of absolute negation. The black, hateful eyes widened in a final moment of shock, then were snuffed out forever. The point of nothingness hung in the air for a heartbeat, and then, with a sound like a universe sighing in relief, it winked out. There had been no grand speeches; he had simply eradicated a cancer that had gnawed at his bones from the moment of his birth. Rowan looked around, black blood and other, less identifiable fluids spattered across his chest. The chamber was a wreck, scarred by rot and violence. Rowan swung the hammer to remove any stains left on it, and as he did, a wave of creation power exploded from that gesture, repairing every single damage inside the chamber, leaving everything in pristine condition. His senses swept throughout the Palace of Time, and he began to draw it into his body, and as he was doing this, his perception went towards the table, where the Singularity lay. Soul, Chaos, Demon, and now Time had been dealt with, leaving Memory, Light, and Life. Rowan knew that the battle would be brutal, but he knew he had only reached this point with careful planning and preparation. He was sure of his success, but the only thing he feared was the one unexpected outcome he had not anticipated.