Chapter 637

Chapter 637: Collision

There was a shadow—a shadow outside Atlantis—that had always floated in this vast dark space woven from Atlantis’s dreams and memories.

Now, for the first time, Duncan saw it.

“In Rahm’s name!” Rune’s eyes went wide as he stared at the huge structure that finally appeared above the dark space in the glow of the pale green flames. He cried out: “What is that thing?!”

Duncan did not answer. He only walked to the window, his expression growing unusually grave as he fixed his divine gaze on that dark structure. It seemed to be pressing down on Atlantis from above, yet frozen in a single moment in time. After a while, his eyes changed slightly, as if he had suddenly understood something.

“The Great Annihilation… So that is how it was…”

…

corruption and distortion were spreading through the forest, across the land, and over the whole world.

Some invisible thing was soaking into this ancestral homeland of the elves. Wherever it spread, the earth writhed and heaved like swollen flesh. Fangs and eyeballs opened in the shadows. Trees grew wild and rampant, then dissolved and rose like flames. Everything seemed to lose its old order and change into something else, in a wild, nightmarish frenzy.

Sharp, terrible shrieks and howls swept through the forest without a pause, rushing past the huge crown of Atlantis, echoing across heaven and earth as if to tear at the soul.

Shirley stared in shock at the ground below. She watched a land that had been lush and full of life only a moment ago turn, in the blink of an eye, into an absurd hell that even a nightmare could not describe. She stared at the deep, gaping maws in the forest and the pulsing flesh and shadows, and she instinctively grabbed the raised edge of the “paper boat”.

“This thing really is not going to fall, right?”

She looked again at the “little boat” folded from paper beneath her feet and asked the Miss Witch at her side in a very uneasy tone.

Not long ago, when the whole forest suddenly broke out in terrifying “corruption” and all paths of retreat were cut off, Lucretia had taken out a sheet of paper right in front of her, folded it into a small boat, and pulled her aboard. Shirley could not understand at all how this strange “witchcraft” worked. She only knew that the boat now floated above that horrifying land, and the feel of paper under her feet made her afraid to even breathe too hard.

Even Dog, beside her, had carefully tucked in his paws and curled up into a ball, as if terrified of accidentally scratching the bottom of the paper boat.

“I have never fallen off it,” Lucretia said. She had already taken out more white paper and was folding more strange shapes with practiced hands without even looking up. “If you are really that worried, just close your eyes and pretend you are lying on the sofa at home.”

“How am I supposed to do that?!” Shirley cried without thinking. Then the little boat rocked suddenly in the wind and she let out another yelp. After that, she noticed what Lucretia’s hands were doing. “What are you folding now?!”

“soldiers. The ‘Winged Flying Troopers’ Ginny Hadeway described in City in the Clouds,” Lucretia said casually. “We need to know what is happening in other places. And if we really run into enemies, we will need some fighting power to protect this boat.”

As she spoke, she tossed the finished paper figures into the air beside the boat. Several finely folded paper people spread their wings in midair, their size quickly growing to match that of real humans. They bowed toward Lucretia, then flew off into the distance.

Shirley stared at this scene with her mouth hanging open. Just as she was about to say something, a voice suddenly seemed to slip straight into her head, cutting off her conversation with Lucretia: “…First, there was the ‘corruption’. At the edge of the world, things started to become strange and terrible…”

Shirley and Lucretia looked at each other at the same time. They had both heard the voice. It sounded young, like a little girl’s voice.

It was the voice of Atlantis.

The howling wind kicked up more dust. The sandstorm in the desert had somehow faded away, leaving only chaotic dust and grit swirling in the air, blurring their sight and twisting the distant view.

“When the weather first began to change, some scholars already gave their warnings. They called on people to prepare—but what should they prepare for?”

The voice of the giant sounded through the storm, deep and steady, like stone standing firm in the wind.

Vanna stood in the endless sand and looked toward the distant “tower”.

She had followed the giant back to this place called the “archive”, back to this great pit that symbolized the End of civilization. She did not know why the giant had brought her here, but she could feel that some world-shaking change was happening. With this “archive” at its center, something terrible was tearing open the Veil.

A ripping sound suddenly came. The roar was so huge it seemed it could shatter mountains.

Vanna looked up in shock at the giant red crack in the sky, at the crimson light that marked the End. In the rolling blood-red glow she saw shifting shadows, rising and falling in waves. The thing that had destroyed this world finally showed a hint of its true form before her eyes.

Fire appeared in the forest. It had no clear source. It was as if, in a single instant, countless trees had all turned into blazing Sacred beacon Torches. A tide of destruction rushed out in a heartbeat and began to burn the World Tree that blanketed the land.

Shirley watched in terror as the flames spread through her field of vision. Everything—the warped land, the once-lush forest, the shadows in the air, the tentacles and flesh that had been crawling through heaven and earth—all of it was swallowed by fire in an instant.

She heard a tremendous noise, the screaming of countless living beings in the flames. Then she heard a terrible thunder that did not come from the sky, but from the branches of Atlantis itself breaking amid flame and distortion, crashing down on the earth like a range of falling mountains.

The paper boat rocked wildly in the roaring heat. As the whole world burned, Shirley instinctively curled up on the little boat. Curled there, she looked up at the sky. She saw the branches and leaves at the edge of Atlantis breaking off and falling, wrapped in roaring fire, past the boat on all sides. As the crown of the tree collapsed with a deafening crash, she finally saw the sky’s true shape.

Her vision was filled with suffocating, horrifying shadows. For a moment, she felt as if her heart had stopped.

She heard Atlantis speaking in the depths of her heart—or perhaps it was the entire world, telling her of the ruin and death that had come in ages beyond count.

“…Then the sky fell. Something invisible struck our world, slowly struck our world… We could not see it, could not understand it, could not even think about it… And you? You who were born After the Darkness, you who grew out of it—can you see it?”

Vanna’s eyes went wide. She watched the blood-red crack in the sky slowly spread. The whole sky tore open like a broken eggshell, then sank inward toward its center in a way that made her shiver. After that, a sea of fire pressed slowly down from the shattered heavens.

“As their ‘god’, I felt ‘its’ approach before they did. I felt something invisible drawing near our world. I felt the end of history. A crack appeared on the Chronicle Pillar in my hands. After that, nothing was recorded. The flames… went out at the edge of my sight.”

A low, oppressive howling and a strange creaking noise came from both sky and earth, as if the world itself was letting out its last groan. At last Vanna understood what she was seeing. At last she understood the “answer” the giant had never been able to grasp.

A tall figure stepped into view at the edge of her vision, coming to the rim of the great pit.

Vanna saw the giant standing there, head raised, staring up at the sky.

“From fire and stone it began. With fire and stone it will end. Traveler, I can feel it. ‘It’ has come again… You see it, do you not? You see it more clearly than I do… because you come from a different time-stream than mine. You come from After the Darkness. You have eyes born after that time. You can understand it…”

On the Origami Skiff, in the sight of Shirley and Lucretia, the inverted land hanging over them sank lower and lower. At last they could clearly see many of its features.

For a moment, Shirley felt as if she saw ranges of mountains and rich rivers on that upside-down continent. She saw great stone cities standing among the hills and plains, saw huge canals and long roads linking countless points of light. Under those lights lay wide, fertile fields.

But in the next instant, she saw that land fall into desolation. After a strange “boiling” illusion, it became a world of deserts and rocky wastelands.

Another world was pressing down.

The falling land from the sky struck the crown of Atlantis first.

In silence, the final collapse of all things began to spread from that single point of contact, reaching out to swallow the whole world.

In the ever more chaotic storm of sand, before Vanna’s eyes, the huge tower that symbolized “The Last Man in the World” began to change.

It started to sway and crack. The upper layer, which had looked like blackened stone, split open. The pieces fell away, revealing a kind of pale gray “skin” beneath.

The tower began to shrink, as if time itself were flowing backward. Bit by bit, it drew in on itself, turning back into the shape of a “man”.

An upside-down, burning forest now filled the whole sky. Another continent had pressed down onto this world. In those blazing woods, Vanna finally saw some of the landscapes her companions had once described to her, from their own actions in the dreams of the Nameless One.

The “tower” finally collapsed.

At the moment when the whole world remembered its final Doomsday, he remembered his first shape.

He became a man.

A Senkin, with skin like stone and lines like metal running over his body.

He kept shrinking. Soon, he would be so small that Vanna would no longer be able to see him clearly at this distance.

He seemed to be crying out in terror. In that last minute before the Great Annihilation, this “man” who had been frozen in time for ages at last took a step along the time-stream.

“Traveler,” the giant’s voice came. The old deity in his tattered robe leaned down toward Vanna. He drove the huge Gatekeeper’s cane firmly into the ground. Then he reached into his robes with his other hand and placed something before Vanna. “Take it.”

Vanna stared in shock at what the giant had given her.

It was a blazing, radiant thing, quietly burning in the river of time.

The Sun.

She looked up, but before she could ask her question, the giant gently shook his head. “You can take it now, Traveler. I remember now. I remember everything… Our Sun is free. Take it. It should not lie trapped in this dream any longer.”

Vanna reached out her hand, a little dazed. The bright little sphere dropped into her palm.

It gave off a warm heat.

The giant smiled, slowly straightened up, and turned away.

“What are you going to do?” Vanna asked in confusion behind him.

“Make sure he is not afraid.”

“Wait—”

“It is all right, Traveler. Every journey must end. One day, we all have to say goodbye… because Tarrigan is dead. He died a very, very long time ago.

“And I will give you that Gatekeeper’s cane as well, as a keepsake.”

The giant never looked back. He only waved his hand, then stepped toward the deep pit.

With every step, his body grew larger.

But with every step, his figure became more and more faint.

The ruin called the “archive” also faded with the giant’s footsteps.

The God of Recorded History finally vanished into the storm. The last man ever written into history vanished as well, in the slow and unstoppable collision of two worlds.

In that endless waste of sand and wind, Vanna slowly lifted her head.

The burning Atlantis hung high over this world.

It was now the final second of the Great Annihilation.

The world of the Senkin ended in its final impact with Atlantis.