"This sensation... it’s like something sticky is crawling over my skin.
Something inhuman..."
Frey turned his head toward Gehrman.
The latter looked calm.
Then Frey asked the only other being who might know the answer.
"Nameless... do you know what’s happening?"
Nameless shook his head.
"I’ve never witnessed anything like this before.
But if I had to describe it... it gives me the same feeling as the Death Soul used by the Demon King."
"Death Soul?"
Frey muttered, redirecting his focus toward the source of those dark winds.
Ada was dangerously close to that area—
but thankfully, the artifact Frey had left with her was protecting her.
Frey didn’t dare approach recklessly.
Amon, however, did the opposite.
He moved immediately, following the flow of the dark winds without hesitation.
The surprises did not end there.
That dreadful silence didn’t last long ..
It was shattered by a scream.
A scream that sent terror straight into Frey’s heart.
Out of nowhere, Abraham Starlight cried out in agony,
his body twisting violently as he clutched his chest with all his strength.
The dark winds coiled around him,
as if trying to do something to him.
"Father!"
Frey shouted, teleporting instantly and appearing beside Abraham.
Grabbing him, Frey frowned deeply as he watched his father struggle against that bizarre darkness.
"Gehrman!! What the hell is happening here?!"
Frey shouted angrily at the Engineer.
Gehrman stared at him for a moment ..
then shifted his gaze back toward the source of the dark winds.
"You’ll know the answer soon enough."
"...Huh?"
Frey turned his head as well ..
and noticed something truly unnatural.
The dark winds converged at a single point, swirling around it
until a dark vortex slowly began to form.
A vortex infused with a sticky, filthy aura.
Frey was confused ..
until he focused more closely on the location where the phenomenon was occurring.
"Wait... isn’t that spot—"
That place wasn’t special.
But Frey had killed someone there.
As that realization struck him, the vortex began to calm, little by little ..
while Abraham’s suffering intensified.
Then—
the explosion finally came.
A detonation that unleashed a horrifying pressure of aura,
instantly darkening the expressions of everyone present.
That echo of darkness spread far and wide .. across the universe itself.
Somewhere within it ..
a filthy creature was slowly walking forward,
having just caused a catastrophe.
The Sixth-Rank High Demon ..
Asmodeus, the Lord of Graves.
The skeletal demon paused for a moment when he sensed something wrong.
He extended his hand, realizing that his Death Soul had suddenly trembled ..
as if it were trying to escape him.
But the Sixth-Rank Demon quickly suppressed it,
then turned his head toward a certain direction, staring into the void through his terrifying eye sockets.
Elsewhere ..
far away, in Helmond, the Demon Realm ..
the Tower of the End still shone as it always did.
At its peak, the Great Demon King sat upon his throne.
Agaroth had sensed it as well.
A wide smile slowly spread across his face.
"I see... so Geppetto is dead."
The King’s deep voice echoed across the summit
as he gazed toward the crimson sky.
What had just occurred ..
was something no one fully understood
except the Demon King himself.
Not even Amon ..standing in the midst of the battlefield ..
had any idea what had truly happened.
In the distant past...
Agaroth confronted the six original soul’s Bearers .. and slaughtered them all, devouring their powers and claiming them for himself.
Yet among the six, there was one the Demon King could not kill.
For that being was the embodiment of death itself.
Though Agaroth defeated him,
he was unable to destroy him.
Left with no other choice,
the Demon King sealed him away.
To accomplish this, he sought the help of the enigmatic Maskith ..
a mad entity capable of manipulating the very laws of life and death.
That lunatic world-shaper succeeded.
By creating life through him,
Maskith sealed the original bearer of the Death Soul.
And thus, Geppetto was born ..
the Thirteenth-Rank High Demon.
From the very beginning, it was strange.
A frail creature like Geppetto possessing a powerful ability such as resurrection made no sense.
Because it was never his ability to begin with.
It belonged to someone else entirely.
That ancient monster possessed two world-boundary .. breaking abilities:
One that reversed death ..
the Death Soul.
And another that reversed life ..
the ability to reanimate corpses, the very power Geppetto wielded,
and the one Agaroth was unable to devour.
With these abilities,
the original bearer of the Death Soul was a true calamity.
He commanded endless armies,
and waged a devastating war against the Demon King in ages long forgotten.
In the end, however...
he lost.
And was imprisoned within the primitive form known as Geppetto.
Maskith advised the Demon King to imprison Geppetto permanently,
to erase him from sight and memory altogether.
But Agarroth chose otherwise.
He made him one of the High Demons,
exploiting his corpse-reanimation ability for his own purposes.
For many long years,
Geppetto survived ..
protected by demons such as Wesker.
But now... everything had changed.
Geppetto was dead.
Slain by Frey Starlight.
And with his death,
the door to his return was opened.
...
...
...
Back in the present ..
The dark winds finally subsided.
And his form was revealed.
His body was grotesque and mutated,
covered in dark gray skin.
A sinister aura wrapped around him, forming a black cloak that flowed behind his back,
while long black hair drifted wildly around him.
Slowly ..
he opened his eyes.
They were not eyes at all,
but hollow voids that emitted a deep blue glow .. as if opening a gate to another hell entirely.
The first bearer of the Death Soul.
Thanatos.
The man said to be death itself.
For a brief moment—just a second—
Thanatos stared in silence.
Then madness consumed him.
And he screamed.
A scream that sounded like a call for the end of the world.
"AGAROOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!!!!"
He roared the Demon King’s name,
his voice drenched in unrestrained fury and hatred.
Thanatos had fallen long ago.
His last memories were of his battle against Agaroth .. and the experiments inflicted upon him by Maskith.
In other words...
His rage had never faded.
His mind had never recovered.
His instincts demanded only one thing:
The immediate annihilation of the Demon King.
But Agarroth was nowhere nearby.
And so ..
Thanatos’ fangs turned toward the nearest demon present.
That demon was .. Amon.
Dark aura erupted violently from Thanatos
as he charged straight toward the Eleventh-Rank High Demon,
attacking him with merciless, uncontrollable rage.
The Wheel of Death had finally begun to turn.
And Gehrman’s plan had entered its execution phase.
Days remaining until The Shattering : 72 days.