Mugu did not stop.

He flew for days, driving the wyvern across the ocean without rest, urging it far beyond its limits. Its wings beat slower with each passing hour, its breaths growing ragged and uneven. By the time Soltheon’s coastline came into view, the creature was barely holding itself aloft.

A day of flying later.

It fell from the sky.

The wyvern crashed into the forest below, its body tearing through branches before slamming into the earth. It gave one final, hoarse roar that trembled through the trees, then went still.

Mugu was thrown from its back. He struck a tree and slid down the trunk before landing hard on the ground. The impact did not kill him. He simply lay there, staring up at the sky through the broken canopy.

His chest felt hollow. As if something vital had been scooped out of him and left empty.

For years he had been driven by rage, by hatred, by resentment that burned so fiercely it had carried him across continents.

Now there was nowhere for that resentment to go.

There was no enemy to fight. No monster to kill.

Was he meant to hate Abellona? Was he meant to slaughter her children?

A broken laugh escaped him.

"Haha... haha... hah..."

Tears slid down the sides of his face into the dirt.

"What was all that for? What is... what was it for? What is the meaning of everything I have done?"

There was no one here to answer him.

Damon watched in silence. Even he did not know what a man was supposed to do after losing the very reason he had lived.

Mugu lifted his head and slammed it against the ground.

"What even is the purpose of being born..." he muttered.

Something foul stirred in his heart. A seed born from despair and resentment took root in the emptiness inside him. And with the birth of that seed, something answered.

A voice echoed behind him.

It was distant and cold, yet strangely soft. Beautiful and hideous at the same time. It sounded close to his ear and impossibly far away.

"We are not asked to be born. We are forced to exist. Today was a horrible day. Tomorrow will be worse. In the end, it will all come to pass. All things fade. Memories perish with time, the greatest destroyer."

Mugu slowly turned.

His eyes fell on the wyvern’s corpse.

Its body was twisted from the fall. Its neck bent at an unnatural angle. Blood had dried along its scales. It was undeniably dead.

Yet its jaw hung open.

And from its mouth, the voice was speaking.

"Wha... what is this..." Mugu whispered.

The voice did not react. It simply repeated itself with the same calm tone.

"We are not asked to be born. We are forced to exist..."

Mugu felt it then.

Something inside that corpse. Something vast. Something so far beyond him that his mind struggled to grasp it. It pressed against him, urging him to repeat the words.

He did not want to.

He was terrified.

But what did he have left to lose?

So he spoke.

"We are not asked to be born," he whispered.

His childhood flashed before his eyes. A common boy. A life he never chose. No real parents. Only Abellona.

"We are forced to exist."

He had never chosen any of it. He had simply been there, pushed along by fate.

"Today was a horrible day."

A noble had taken Abellona from him. He had spent ten years of his life trying to get her back.

"Tomorrow will be worse."

Ten years later, he had returned stronger, only to learn she never needed saving.

"In the end, it will all come to pass. All things fade. Memories perish with time, the greatest destroyer."

His pain. His love. His hatred. Abellona. Lysithara. Everything he had ever cared for.

All of it would vanish one day.

If destruction was the final destination of all things, then what did anything truly mean?

Mugu began to laugh and cry at the same time, his body shaking.

What madness was this?

Was this entity telling him that nothing mattered?

Or was it telling him the only truth that had ever existed?.

A flat rock lay a short distance away.

Mugu walked to it slowly, knelt, and traced the words into its surface with his fingers, carving them in with threads of magic. The stone hissed faintly as the letters burned themselves into place.

He leaned back against the rock and looked toward the wyvern.

Its head still hung at that impossible angle, held to the body by a thin strip of torn flesh. Blood had dried in dark streaks along its scales.

With a strangely calm expression, Mugu asked, "Who are you?"

He wondered if this was something like the evils of the Duhu Mountains.

The voice answered in the same gentle tone.

"I am Unknown. The Unknown God."

"Unknown..." Mugu murmured, eyes still on the corpse. "What do you want with me?"

"I was called here by you. The resentment in your heart brought me."

The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. From the trees. From the air. From inside his own head.

Mugu closed his eyes. He no longer cared.

"You are a god. What would a god want with me? I am only a defeated soul."

"Then why does your soul cry out so loudly?" the Unknown replied. "You and I are kindred spirits."

Mugu opened his eyes again, a faint darkness settling in them.

"How so? You are a god. I am a mortal."

The wyvern’s corpse moved.

Its limbs twitched and dragged across the soil like torn paper. Dried flesh split. Blood began to seep and drip to the ground again as the body shifted unnaturally.

"I am the god of the wronged. Of the downtrodden. No matter how I struggle, I can never eradicate evil. For as long as there is good, there will be evil. For as long as there is darkness, light will shine."

The Unknown God fell silent for a moment.

"I call you to aid me in bringing salvation to this omniverse. There are many who suffer as you have suffered."

Mugu lifted his head slightly.

"How do you intend to do that?"

The voice remained calm. Steady.

"By bringing an end to all things. I shall return everything to the state before even the concept of nothingness was born. There will be no suffering. No pain. No anguish. Only eternal silence. We will not be asked to be born, because there will be no birth."

Damon inhaled sharply at those words.

So this was the Unknown God’s true goal. The end of everything.

He glanced at Mugu.

He was not actually going to accept this, was he?

Mugu slowly raised his hand.

"I agree."

He pressed his palm against his chest.

"I just want this pain to stop. And if I was never born... I would never have to feel it."

"I declare you, Mugu, Prophet of the Unknown God."

The wyvern’s corpse burst apart.

Flesh tore outward. Blood sprayed in every direction and splashed across the earth. The liquid did not scatter randomly. It crawled across the ground as if guided by an unseen hand, joining into lines and curves that formed a vast sigil beneath Mugu’s feet.

Damon recognized it at once. The symbol of the Unknown God.

The circle flared and rose like a red mist, wrapping around Mugu’s body. Power pressed inward from all sides. His back arched. His eyes slid shut as the energy forced its way into him.

Damon watched from the side.

Then he noticed something that made his breath hitch.

The wyvern’s skeleton still had eyes.

They sat wet and intact in the hollow skull, turning slowly in their sockets. They were not looking at Mugu.

They were looking at him.

At him and Ashcroft.

Even though this was only a memory. A dreamlike echo of the past. The Unknown God was staring directly at them through the corpse.

Mugu’s body began to convulse inside the circle. Muscles tightened and jerked as if he were being pulled apart from within.

A long silence followed.

Damon finally spoke.

"So this is why you want the Pillar of Conflict. Not just that. All the pillars. This is your grand plan. To destroy everything."

His voice came out sharp, edged with anger. He did not care that he was speaking to a god.

The wyvern’s eyes never left him.

Then the voice answered.

"You are here because I wished you to be. You see this because I wished you to see it. I will obtain the pillars. All thirteen of them. And when I do, there will be an omniverse of silence."

Damon was about to respond when the words caught in his mind.

Thirteen.

The moment the number registered, his fate manipulation resistance mastery trembled. Something inside him resisted. Something prevented a memory from surfacing.

He narrowed his eyes.

"So there are thirteen pillars. I guess you wanted us to know that too."

Ashcroft, who had been silent until now, gave a low scoff.

"I have a feeling this was planned from the start. Mugu’s fall was part of your design. What I cannot figure out is how."

Damon glanced at him.

Was Ashcroft saying the Unknown God had arranged for Mugu to become a demon? That this had all been nudged into place? If so, which parts had been manipulated?

The voice spoke again, calm and certain.

"You will understand by the end. You will see the futility of opposing me. Know this. You will never win against me, no matter how deep the poison in your hearts."