I tumbled through the air, my domain flickering around me like a dying star. The compression had nearly killed me; my ribs were cracked, my left arm hung useless, and I could feel blood rising from a dozen wounds.
But I was alive, as my domain had held. I forced myself to stabilize and slowed my descent. The wind howled around me, thick with the residue of Sovereign power, and I could feel the weight of the battle above pressing down on the world like a fist.
Another layer of clouds appeared below me that was thick with the power of magic, almost as if a barrier had been laid below, and I pulled my domain tighter around me. I fell through this layer of chaos, and immediately I could feel the suppressive power of the Sovereigns ease up.
I did not have the time to celebrate this change as I fell into another sort of chaos, and this one was even more bloody, and I could literally smell it and taste it in the air, as if I was falling through a sea of blood.
I had just fallen into a battlefield, and from what I was observing around me, this was a battlefield of Arcanists.
There were hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, but this fight stretched to the horizon, and it was almost too much for me to take in at once.
I could see figures wreathed in fire, ice, shadow, and light, clashing across the burning landscape. Spells that would have leveled cities in any other context detonated in the distance, and I could feel the shockwaves even from this height.
There were also massive mechanical and magical constructs floating through the battlefield, dealing massive swaths of damage through the sky. I stopped and looked at all this chaos, hearing the screams and tasting the blood in the air, and this time I could feel this war so much more intimately.
Above me, what was happening was too big, but what I could see here was horrific because this I could understand.
Unknowingly, I began to frown, because I could sense something inside this battlefield that was both familiar and wrong, and before long, I began to see shapes that were not human, drifting through the chaos like wolves in a sea of mad sheep... Demons.
These demons were not the mindless Khaaz or the cunning Narghul Sorcerers; these were something else. They moved like liquid shadows, their forms shifting and reforming as they struck at the Arcanists or grabbed a wounded mage and devoured them alive.
They were larger than the ones I had fought in the pyramid, and they wielded power that made the air around them scream.
From the words of the Jade Oracle, the Caelith I entered was originally one pyramid that was scattered all over the world into ten pyramids. According to her, the pyramid shattered, and its prisoner was also scattered into parts all over the world.
However, what was worthy of note was that Caelith Mourne Pyramid was not the only Caelith that fell to the world; two others also fell to the earth and were also split.
It meant that apart from the Pale Matron, there were two other transcendental demons imprisoned inside them, and that may mean that there may be other stranger variants of demons that I had never seen before, and these here were unknown to me.
A feeling of desolation filled my heart, and I forcefully pushed it down, and I looked at the figures clashing in the distance, at the demons that moved through the chaos like predators in a wounded herd, and I wondered if this was all the result of one man’s action or if there was something else happening here beyond even the Sovereign of the Stars.
For a moment, a feeling of anger bloomed inside my chest, and I knew that if I equipped the Demon Slayer’s Title, I would join this battle and entrench myself in the madness of war.
I gritted my teeth, tasting the iron on my tongue, and I allowed myself to fall. I think my presence was already drawing attention, especially when I fell from a layer of the heavens where Sovereigns were battling.
Some of them tried to stop me, but there was no longer any force crushing the essence in the air, and I took several Stormsteps before I blasted lightning from my feet, pushing me down even faster.
Bolts of power flashed past me, and a demon’s claw nearly grazed the side of my head, but I went past the slaughter, the wind screaming past me, and I could see the ground approaching faster than I would have liked.
I could see battles happening below, and in the distance, a city was burning, and the cries of a lot of people were echoing in the sky, like a hymn straight from the bottom of the abyss.
I forced my domain to expand, to slow my fall, and I aimed for a patch of ground that was not on fire, a few miles from the city.
The impact was not graceful, as I hit the earth hard, my domain flaring as I absorbed the shock, and I rolled to a stop in a crater of my own making, as a shockwave of lightning erupted from the crash.
I lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky, at the distant flashes of powerful magic, and the burning clouds that churned like a wounded beast. On the ground, the screams were louder and much more cruel. I did not want to hear the sound of a world dying, and I believe I was catching a glimpse of this.
Then I pushed myself up from the crater, slowly walking towards the edge. My body was broken, but it was healing. The Celestial Marrow in my bones was already knitting them, the cuts on my flesh were sealing, and the bruises were fading. Mortal Shell, Endurance, and my vitality as an Arcanist were doing their work. It would not be long before I was back to a hundred percent.
I looked around, not recognizing where I had landed. "Where am I?"
Closing my eyes, I tried to track back the way I fell. The eruption from the Sovereign had prevented me from finding any landmark that I could head towards.
The city being butchered was not far from me, and if I wanted answers, I would find them there.