My heartbeat quickened.
"The original bloodlines...The curse had always been there."
I frowned.
"What?"
"It had been sleeping inside every survivor from our original universe. Theras hadn’t planned to defeat us with armies."
Her voice became almost a whisper.
"He defeated us with time."
She closed her eyes briefly.
"Saints suddenly fell back to Transcendents. Demi-Gods lost realms of cultivation they had spent millennia reaching. Some died on the spot as their souls began breaking apart."
The image alone was horrifying.
"The stalemate ended in a matter of months. The Eternals become stronger. We became weaker. And while we desperately searched for a way to remove the curse..."
The old woman’s expression darkened further.
"...the Eternals revealed another nightmare.The native races who died in battle no longer passed on naturally."
Her voice carried unmistakable disgust.
"They returned. As Phantoms. And later as Abominations."
She sighed heavily.
"Every battle strengthened the enemy. Every fallen ally eventually became another soldier marching against us."
The room fell silent once more.
"We weren’t defeated in a single war."
She looked out toward the city beyond the window.
"We were hunted."
"World after world."
"Settlement after settlement."
"Generation after generation."
Her gaze slowly returned to me.
"And eventually..."
A tired smile appeared on her face.
"...those of us who died opened our eyes in the Null Realm."
She gestured quietly toward the city outside.
"Everything you’ve seen since entering this settlement..."
Her voice softened.
"...is simply what remains of a war that began in another universe and has never truly ended."
The old woman poured herself another cup of tea before continuing.
"When our souls first arrived in the Null Realm, none of us knew what this place was. The prime territory in the Null Realm was vastly different back then. There were no seven regions. No hidden settlements. No Soul Sea surrounding countless territories."
She leaned back in her chair.
"The native souls had built their own civilizations over countless ages. They knew nothing about the Eternals, nothing about our original universe and certainly nothing about the war we had brought with us. They simply believed they had reached the afterlife."
Her fingers gently rested against the wooden table.
"For a brief period, we believed the same. Then the Eternals arrived."
I frowned.
"The living Eternals?"
She nodded.
"They entered the Null Realm while still alive. The interesting part wasn’t that they invaded. It was what happened the moment we entered the Null Realm."
I waited.
"The curse disappeared. The curse that had been weakening our bloodlines throughout the Prime Universe simply vanished. You have no idea what that meant."
The old woman laughed softly, though there wasn’t much joy behind it.
"Saints who had been reduced to barely standing suddenly recovered their strength. Demi-Gods who had spent years fighting against the curse felt their cultivation stabilize for the first time since the invasion began."
She slowly clenched her hand.
"It was like taking a full breath after centuries of drowning."
The warmth disappeared from her voice.
"The moment the first living Eternal stepped into the Null Realm, every survivor from the original universe understood the same thing."
She looked at me.
"This was our battlefield now. The war that followed was far more brutal than anything that had happened inside the Prime Universe. In the Prime Universe, death wasn’t always the end."
Her gaze lowered slightly.
"Here..."
She paused.
"...death meant erasure."
The room became noticeably quieter.
"A soul destroyed inside the Null Realm doesn’t reincarnate. It doesn’t arrive somewhere else. It simply ceases to exist. And despite knowing that...we still fought."
She smiled.
"What else could we do? We had already lost our homes. We weren’t planning on losing our afterlife as well."
The war exploded across the Prime Territory.
Native souls fought beside the refugees from the original universe while the Eternals pushed forward with everything they had. Mountains disappeared beneath the fighting, ancient civilizations collapsed overnight and entire landscapes were reshaped as Demi-Gods clashed without restraint.
The old woman slowly shook her head.
"This time there was no stalemate. We won. Or at least we were winning."
She looked toward the city.
"The Eternals had expected frightened refugees. What they found instead were people who had already lost everything. There is something terrifying about an army that no longer fears death."
The room remained quiet.
"We pushed them back."
She gestured toward the distant horizon.
"Settlement after settlement was reclaimed. Strongholds fell. Several Eternal commanders disappeared forever. Unfortunately victory didn’t last."
I already knew another disaster was coming.
"What broke us instead... was something none of us had anticipated."
She looked down at the tea resting on the table before slowly continuing.
"It began with the natives. At first it was only a handful of people, so insignificant that nobody paid much attention.
A strange mark would suddenly appear somewhere on their soul. Sometimes it manifested around the wrist, sometimes across the neck or forehead, sometimes somewhere completely different.
There was no pattern to it, no warning before it appeared and no explanation for what it actually meant.
We examined thousands of souls hoping to discover some common factor, but every attempt failed. The marked people came from different races, different settlements and different walks of life. The only thing they shared was that, sooner or later, they disappeared."
I frowned slightly.
"Disappeared?"
She nodded.
"The Eternals stopped attacking them. Imagine fighting a battle where one side suddenly ignores certain soldiers completely. At first we thought it was some kind of trick, but eventually we realized it was intentional.
Whenever an Eternal encountered someone carrying that mark, they simply walked past them as though they had become invisible. Shortly afterward those people would vanish from the battlefield altogether. "
A long sigh escaped her lips.
"Only much later did we understand what had happened. The Eternals had never intended to eradicate the native souls. They wanted them intact. While we continued losing people every day, the natives who should have been fighting beside us were gradually being removed from the war one settlement at a time.
Our numbers shrank while theirs barely changed, yet despite that we still believed we could endure because several Demi-Gods remained among us. As long as they stood, we thought the Prime Territory could still be defended."
"Then Theras came."