I fixed my eyes on the Hollow Room for a while before I looked away and focused on the second room.

The second room I had never consciously felt at all, even though I knew that it had always been inside me, and now that I could see it, my breath caught.

It was small and bright, and at the center of it sat the first Lightning Shard, resembling a lightning bolt frozen in crystal.

According to the system, there were nine shards of lightning, and I had acquired one after surviving the Tribulation to Adept, and up till this moment, I had not discovered what this shard of lightning could do.

With a more powerful soul, I may be able to decipher more of its mysteries in the future; for now, as I observed it, I could hear and feel the lightning shard humming, as it sat in its own bright chamber like a coal in a hearth.

If I had more time, I would love to simply observe this shard, because I could feel a connection with it, but it was extremely distant, as if I were on the ground, looking at a lightning bolt crossing the sky.

Forcing my eyes away from the lightning shard, I focused on the third room that had appeared, and I drifted towards it slowly. I felt fear the closer I got to the room, and I could not control this fear; it was almost as if every cell in my body was fearful of what I would find in this room.

As I moved closer to the room, it began to expand in my vision until it suddenly transformed into a massive forest.

I do not know how else to tell you. Inside my own soul, there were trees, tall, dark, and I knew that trees did not grow to this size unless they were very old.

The color of their leaves was the color of silver and darkness, and the ground between them was soft with something that was not quite moss and not quite shadow, and through the trees ran the sound of water.

I stood for a moment observing the gigantic alien trees with wonder, and then I followed the sound of water, and the ground seemed to shrink below my feet until I found myself before a waterfall, somewhere ahead, pouring pale and silver down a black rock face into a pool that did not ripple. And above all of it, hung in a sky that was not a sky, was a half-moon, casting its shadows the wrong way, against a sun that did not exist in that place.

This entire place was beautiful, as the combination of the light, the trees, and the waterfall created a scene that was peculiarly harmonious. I could see myself reading beside this pool for hours.

I walked into the forest of my own soul, and the deeper I went, the more I felt a familiar rhythm, and I closed my eyes to feel this rhythm, and I quickly discovered what it was... breathing. Something was breathing deep inside the forest.

If it was the fox, then it was not the small thing the Avatar had broken in the basin. This breathing had to come from something vast.

Something truly enormous was breathing slow and even, in and out, a sound so large I felt it in the ground of that impossible place more than I heard it. I now understood that this forest, the waterfall, and the half-moon were the room, but the breathing was the true shape of the Moon Fox.

The Heaven Beast was so much larger than what we had fought, and what the Avatar had bound was only the part small enough to fit through the door.

The rest of it was in here. I was reminded of the Demon Slayer Title that had connected me with a vast place, and this felt the same; it seemed as if I had just connected with a vast presence.

Strangely, the fear that had filled me began to vanish as I began to understand what was happening, and...

...the forest threw me out.

I was flung back through the door of my own soul so hard I felt it in my teeth, back through the room of lightning and the void and up, up, out...

∞

...and my eyes came open onto the end of the world.

For a moment, I could not make sense of the scale of it. I had seen the eruption a hundred times, but not at this level...

"Four of the seven seals have been broken while you were under," the Hollow Avatar spoke, "the end of your world is close."

I froze in place, then I slowly started to look around me. For thousands of meters around me, there was devastation left behind from my fight, and no demon walked across it, as power still lingered in the air like a fog.

Another time, seeing the scale of devastation I had made would have filled me with a grim satisfaction and maybe a bit of fear, but that was nothing when I looked at what was happening around me.

This was the first time I had lived for this long and seen the eruption reach this degree.

Nine massive tentacles that reached into the heavens surrounded me, and before, these tentacles had a feeling as if they were a mirage, but that was slowly changing, as they were becoming more solid.

Surrounded by each tentacle were a flood of demons, with such varied descriptions that it would take me a while to even describe them all, and all of them shone with impossible power that set my teeth on edge.

The Pale Matron was digging herself from her prison, and I was beginning to feel it in the earth; it was as if she was a dream that was slowly becoming real, and the world was now paying the price of her becoming.

I knelt in the crater, naked, and I looked at the nine tentacles of a waking god, and I could not, for a moment, make my mind hold the size of it in my head.

Then a weight settled on my right shoulder. It was light, almost nothing to the new strength I could feel growing in my body, and then a white tail brushed across my cheek, soft as a thought, and I turned my head.

A fox sat on my shoulder.