"Absolutely impossible?"

The orc Barsaka echoed the white-haired youth's words.

"Yes. Absolutely impossible."

The youth confirmed it without a hint of hesitation.

"It's because of what you know, isn't it? I suppose it's not yet time for me to learn. Once I do, I'll lose part of what I can do now."

Barsaka spoke casually, neither surprised nor particularly curious.

"Exactly. It's not time for you to learn what's going on just yet. And truth be told, it isn't a pleasant revelation. You lose a fragment of power, gain a secret you'd rather not know, and beyond that, there's little we can actually do."

The youth laughed softly and clapped his hands.

"Well, that's fine. When all the nodes are complete and our final purpose fulfilled, everyone will learn this truth—and perhaps reclaim what was lost."

Barsaka did not press further. The restraint of his curiosity was itself a function of the grand plan.

"Just so," the white-haired youth said. "The souls of all orcs within the Bloodfang Empire have now merged into the void through this node. The continent's attention will soon be drawn here. The allied invasion will follow swiftly; that part I leave to you. I'm going to investigate the anomaly."

Satisfied with Barsaka's composure, the youth shifted his consciousness toward the vast structures shimmering in the void, handing over most of their control to the orc while retaining only a sliver of his own power.

"Leave it to me," Barsaka replied. "The orcs' potential far exceeds what others see. Rational fury was meant to be our shared power. Yet for the sake of rank or ambition, there were some who sealed this gift within our blood, binding it with shamanic fetters."

He paused, voice low. "Those chains have been passed down from generation to generation. I once vowed to break them. Now, at last, the time has come."

Standing before the gates of the Bloodfang capital, Barsaka closed his eyes. His will stretched outward, linking to the towering spires that pierced the boundary between matter and void across the empire. Through them, he summoned the power of the void and cast it upon every sentient being within Bloodfang's borders.

From the moment the Ossuary crashed through the barrier separating the void and the material plane, every soul within the empire had been drawn into connection with the towers, fused into one vast whole.

As their architect, the white-haired youth possessed the authority to shape those souls, to use or transfer the power that flowed through the network. Now, that authority rested in Barsaka's hands.

"Right, have you confirmed who that anomaly is?" Barsaka asked.

The void seeped into the orcs, reshaping them. Their bloodlines awakened as their artificial shackles unraveled. The primal fury of their kind returned to its natural, unbound form.

"Yes. I already have a candidate," the youth replied. "The Archbishop of the Church of Nightfall, the one called Wang Yu. I'm almost certain it's him. He has no past to be found. Ever since my last meeting with Damian, I've been watching him, but I can't uncover a single trace of his life from before a few years ago.

"Every being leaves traces. Even we—though we hide our footprints and bury the truth—will eventually be uncovered. And yet I, an expert in such matters, investigated this man and found nothing."

"Nothing at all," the youth murmured, shaking his head with a faint, rueful smile. "As though he never existed. Frightening. Another creature of the Abyss, perhaps? Who can say?"

Though his tone carried humor, his eyes had deepened into unreadable shadow, his thoughts drifting through the void.

"If he's another of those abyssal beings, that'd be troublesome," Barsaka mused. "But he doesn't seem like one. He's more... akin to us, isn't he? You once mentioned his holy book of the night."

Barsaka paused to concentrate. Within the Bloodfang Empire, the joined souls of the people now pulsed with shared awareness. Some, having accepted the ideals of this so-called utopia, willingly merged with the collective. Others resisted, their own wills struggling against Barsaka's influence.

Their defiance demanded his attention; he spent significant effort quelling it even as he continued his conversation.

"Yes," the youth said, smiling faintly. "No creature of the Abyss would be like this. He's fascinating. What he wrote in that sacred text wasn't much, but in some sense, it aligns with our vision. Only... smaller. Weaker."

He chuckled softly. "Still, I'll admit that the Church of Nightfall thrives under him and the deity behind him. Can you imagine? Even members of the Lightless Order have found a place to belong. Remarkable inclusivity. So many races mingled together—oddly pure, in its own way.

"When I handed Damian that dagger to slay the goddess of the night, his eyes betrayed him. The struggle there was obvious. He doesn't truly wish to give up his current life."

As he spoke, the youth conjured a shimmering portal of light and void, tracing coordinates from his memory before linking it to a distant point in space.

"So," Barsaka said, his voice low and even, "you knew he was wavering, and you still gave him the dagger? You know there's no replacement for that blade."

The orc gathered the unified will of the souls who had embraced the utopia into the void, stirring a tide that resembled spiritual pollution but was something more deliberate. It swept through those still resisting, eroding their opposition and bending their thoughts toward the collective, a force no individual could withstand.

Under the crushing weight of sheer numbers, the defiant souls were gradually worn away. The whole did not collapse, yet their thoughts of resistance and their will to hold fast slowly dimmed until they became one and the same.

Having nearly completed what he had come to do, Barsaka posed a final question to the white-haired youth before his departure.

"It won't happen. It's been too brief a period of time. Perhaps in a hundred years, or a thousand, he might change his mind and abandon our original plan, but after just a fleeting shock and a few short years of peace? What right would they have to overturn beliefs and convictions prepared for so long?"

The white-haired youth spoke with quiet confidence. He did not believe Damian would waver. Why would he? For the sake of a little comfort? The human heart may be fickle, but not that fickle.

Then, he stepped through the door that shimmered before him and vanished.

"You still know far more about the human heart than I do," Barsaka murmured to himself.

He no longer wasted time thinking about the anomaly the white-haired youth had spoken of. Instead, he turned to the task of redistributing the souls that had nearly reached "complete accord," sending them back into their mortal vessels. Along with them returned this era's knowledge of magic, the void, alchemy, and all else.

Bodies that seemed to have long fallen asleep opened their eyes again. They rose, sensing their newly unfettered blood, and moved to take up their new posts. From this moment on, they shared a single purpose, a single, unanimously recognized ideal: their "utopia."

Meanwhile, the envoys dispatched by all other intelligent races to investigate the orcish realm would soon understand just how terrifying an army could be when their rage no longer clouded their reason, when, on some deeper level, their hearts beat as one.

Far away, in a tiny human kingdom so obscure that few even knew its name, a door opened. The white-haired youth stepped out onto lush, sunlit grass.

"What a pleasant place this is..."

His soft steps rustled the grass as he crossed a small valley of green. Trees thrived. A brook ran from the hills, winding through meadows and vegetable patches.

A few plump, woolly sheep grazing nearby startled at his sudden appearance, bleating in alarm as they bolted toward the pen beside a little wooden cottage at the end of the stone path.

Smiling faintly, he walked on. His gaze lingered briefly on the small flower garden before the cottage—on the two neatly tended gravestones within it—before he lifted a hand and knocked on the door.

The door opened slowly. Standing within was a man who looked to be in middle age, his face lined and weary.

"Hey, long time no see. You've come a long way, Ethan Harris. Don't tell me you've forgotten me already. I'll admit, you gave me quite the scare back then."

The man called Ethan Harris flinched ever so slightly at the sound of his full name. Then, without a word, he opened the door fully and gestured for the visitor to enter.

The white-haired youth stepped inside naturally. Behind him, the air itself seemed scarred, as though something had cleaved through space. If one looked closely, they would see countless faintly twisted lines, cut and rejoined, that left the space he traversed never quite the same. A few leaves drifting down from the fruit trees in the yard simply vanished into nothing.

"Say it. What do you need me to do? I owe you a favor."

Ethan didn't bother offering him tea. He fetched a wooden box from under the bed, opened it, took out its contents, and walked to the lone cabinet in the room.

"Let's not get to that just yet," the youth said. "You chose not to join us back then, and we never forced you to. But after all these years, can you now understand what it was we sought?" 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"I can," Ethan answered quietly. "I can finally understand. You all saw farther than I did."

His gaze fell upon a photograph atop the cabinet. The two figures in it now rested beneath the gravestones outside.

"You were obsessed with mastering the sword," the youth said softly. "It was natural you couldn't see it then. All that loss is what we've been striving to erase." He paused. "I've come to use that favor I'm owed. I need you to kill someone for me."

"...Who?"