Tower of Paradise

Those fragments even reached our position. Four pieces fell in front of me, just one or two meters away. I observed them with apparent indifference, maintaining calm in the midst of the chaos enveloping us. It was then that KathyIn, in a display of reflexes, raised her hand and pulverized the fragment that was inexorably heading towards her chest with her closed fist. The crimson piece disintegrated in her hand like sand. Thanks to her ice ability, which allowed her to harden her extremities, she did not suffer even a scratch.

Dozens of small red fragments were scattered on the floor while the survivors contemplated the dense fog that had suddenly appeared, completely covering the place where the crystal had previously stood.

— What luck! —some exclaimed, eagerly collecting the blue souls from the bloody corpses. Their greed blinded them to the authentic danger about to manifest.

— What the hell...? —Raymond's hoarse voice vibrated with an unmistakable tremor.

— It has started. It has finally appeared. This is the part where many are going to die —I warned in a grave voice, while the fog gradually dissipated, revealing what it had hidden in its womb.

— What is happening?! —someone shouted in desperation.

— That is... —another left the sentence unfinished, unable to articulate coherent words before the horror they were witnessing.

I perceived the voices of the last two people who, like us, had opted for prudence and remained at the opposite end where the blue fire line had formed. Their expressions of absolute terror reflected what we all experienced internally.

— Oh my God... —a female voice whispered, broken by panic.

— Wow... —was all another could pronounce, their voice drowned by a primordial and instinctive fear.

The Ascendants surrounding the creature, while maintaining a prudent distance, let out intermingled screams of astonishment and disbelief. The first image that assaulted my mind when I contemplated it was that I was facing the incarnation of death itself, before the avatar of the end of all existence.

It stood almost three meters tall. Its fleshless skull constituted a mask taken from the darkest nightmares, with a dislocated jaw revealing rows of bone-sharp teeth. Two twisted horns, similar to the branches of a dead and corrupted tree, rose from its skull to then bend downward, forming two sinister arcs joined to its bony structure. Its eyes, orbs of an unnatural golden glow, seemed to pierce the soul, betraying a terrifying and incomprehensible madness for mortal minds.

Its torso was a cage of skeletal ribs that joined a spine composed of dozens of bony vertebrae, painted a sickly white that violently contrasted with the purple flesh in a state of putrefaction that adhered to them like a second corrupt skin. Its arms were covered by an armor of bony plates that seemed to have melded with its own flesh, extending like grotesque ramifications across the entire limb, twisted in forms that defied known anatomy.

From its back sprouted a pair of membranous wings, black as the deepest night, while two white horns adorned the birth of those extremities that unfolded like hungry soul-seeking claws. The veins traversing that structure glowed with a faint purple light, as if filled with hellish fire, with the essence of eternal condemnation.

Its mere presence was oppressive, suffocating all hope and feeding the most primary fear. I felt my heart racing in my chest, while despair settled in my mind, paralyzing it. I could not control the tremor that took over my body, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like what I truly was: a defenseless child before the manifestation of absolute horror.

The information appeared before my eyes, confirming my worst fears:

[True Name: Incarnation of Terror.]

[Existence Level: 8 (Special)]

[State: Weakened. Has less than 1% of its true power.]

Impossible...!

None of this should have happened!

None of this made the slightest sense!

My mind plunged into chaos. I could not understand what had gone wrong. That undead monster did not belong in this place, in this test. In its place, a Death Knight should have appeared, which, while also seemingly invincible even if we attacked coordinately, did not reach this level of cosmic threat. It was too premature to face such an ontological aberration.

I found myself unable to conceive any strategy, even with the enemy clearly manifesting before me. Due to its weakened state, the monster could not communicate verbally, but that only increased the fear it inspired. I felt as if an invisible serpent was wrapping around me and slowly strangling me, cutting off my breath and clouding my thought. My intuition, always accurate, told me that the power difference between us and that entity was comparable to the one that exists between the entire planet and an insignificant speck of dust.

«How are we supposed to fight something like this...?» I could not help but let despair flood my mind.

Had a primordial god descended to the mortal earth? My teeth involuntarily chattered. To hide this telltale sound, I pressed my jaws tightly, in a desperate attempt to maintain composure.

And then... An absolute, sepulchral silence took hold of all of us. Only the sounds of increasingly accelerated breathing could be perceived, and nothing more. Time seemed to stop while we contemplated, paralyzed, the creature that rose before us like a herald of the end.

— Damn it...! —Raymond was the first to break that oppressive silence, as if trying to shake off the fear consuming him through the verbalization of his anguish.

— That thing... It's a monster...! —KathyIn's expression did not differ from my own while covering her mouth with both hands, unable to assimilate the vision offered to her eyes.

— ...That monster... came out of the crystal? —He spoke with a trembling voice, the man accompanying a woman. The individual appeared to be almost thirty years old, wore a worn cap, and sported a thick beard. He was at the opposite end of my position. Like everyone else, his face reflected an indescribable horror.

The man with curly hair moved with a speed that surpassed the rest's reaction capacity. I deduced that he had activated some special ability that supernaturally increased his agility, but... It proved completely useless.

I closed my eyes for a second —perhaps less— and when I opened them again, the body of that dark-skinned man with curly hair was already divided into two perfect halves. His intestines, organs, and blood spilled onto the sanctuary floor like a macabre offering. The undead stepped on the corpse with absolute indifference while the blue soul escaped from the destroyed body. No one knew how or when he had moved. He simply... disappeared and reappeared, like a shadow playing with light.