My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger Chapter 851 - 852: A Wisp

The chained knights were notorious for their tyranny and total lack of regard for the lives of the branded. Just as Damon had foretold, his grim prophecy began to unfold with terrifying precision.

As the first light of dawn broke, thousands of these knights were dispatched to the Grinding Gate. Their instructions were brutal and clear: slaughter the people until they rediscovered the meaning of fear.

They executed their orders without mercy. No savior emerged to protect the masses, and no divine being rose to answer their desperate cries.

Below the surface, Lazarak listened to the heavy thud of boots trampling the earth above him. The air soon filled with the agonizing shrieks of women and children. He felt the vibration of houses being torn from their foundations, as falling rubble became a tomb for thousands.

He remained paralyzed, unable to intervene. Though he was a god, he was feeble in power, and now that truth had finally pierced his heart.

His spirit was weak.

He felt the weight of his own complicity. Lazarak had once turned against the goddess because he could not stomach the sight of war’s spreading flames. War always claimed peace first, followed quickly by lives, homes, and the very dreams of the people.

Whenever such tragedy struck, he would collapse before the image of his creator—the goddess of doom and mother of inevitability—pleading with her to stop the suffering. Yet, why would the one who authored such despair ever wish to conclude it?

It was her divine will that fueled the conflict. Her hand guided the strings of fate, and her Cultivation of death brought the world to its knees.

She had no reason to care. Now, hearing those horrific screams and tasting the bitterness of his own helplessness, Lazarak realized he was like any other fool. He sought a deity not out of love for their kindness, but because he, like any mortal, craved a psychological refuge.

That was the essence of faith—clinging to belief even when the evidence was absent, or even when the proof stood directly against it.

However, no statue of the goddess stood in this place, and he had already cast her aside.

Desperate, Lazarak turned toward the only thing that felt truly divine in his presence.

In a dark corner of their subterranean headquarters, his eyes locked onto a pooling body of water filled with endless, murmuring whispers.

This was the Lake of Tears. It was a phenomenon born from his own raw emotions, possessing mystical properties that remained a mystery even to him.

The fallen god approached the water's edge and sank to his knees.

If there was no specific god left to hear him, he would direct his pleas to the omniverse itself.

He began to pray as the echoes of slaughter continued above. Blood saturated the soil as men committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against the vulnerable.

Homes vanished into dust. Screams were drowned in gore. While the victims endured agony, their oppressors laughed, stripping away the humanity of those they killed.

Because their commanders had given the order in the name of a higher power, the massacre was rebranded as holy. Humanity is so easily discarded when done in the name of god.

Lazarak’s prayer was a chaotic mess; he hardly knew what he was asking for. As his hands trembled, his spiritual intent bled into the pond. The water seemed to reach deep into his soul, pulling out even the darkest, most hidden thoughts he tried to suppress.

Even an optimist is a creature of flesh and blood, and no one can hold onto hope forever.

Every wish and every desperate plea sank into the pool, drifting into the metaverse where all consciousness—past, present, and future—resides. These fragmented thoughts coalesced into a single, subconscious demand.

"This world is diseased... let it all be destroyed..."

Lazarak’s original hopes for salvation were warped by his own despair and the collective resentment of those dying above.

This singular, dark prayer drifted past many great entities. It brushed against gods, demons, true dragons, mindless Devourers, and horrors from the abyss. It even touched the simple dreams of commoners. Yet, none of these beings truly desired the end of all existence.

It seemed the prayer would go ignored. Like a single drop of water lost in a vast ocean, it appeared destined to wander the metaverse forever, unrecovered and unanswered.

However, within that realm of pure thought, something noticed this unrealized intent. A deep, swirling abyss reached out and claimed it.

Perhaps only a second had passed since Lazarak’s wish was twisted, or perhaps eons had moved by; time has no grip within the metaverse. All that mattered was that the wish had been acknowledged.

The abyss possessed a name, though it loathed it. It felt a need to find the origin of this wish, not just for what it sought, but because this mass of darkness felt a pull toward Lazarak himself.

To find the source, the entity birthed countless tiny wisps from its own essence. These fragments scattered in every direction. Over the ages, some were annihilated. Others developed their own consciousness. Some were merely hollow thoughts, while others were radiant dreams or joyful emotions. Some carried fragments of memory, while others were manifestations of pure nightmare.

Hidden among these nightmares was a tiny, insignificant wisp. It was so minuscule it was invisible to the eye, yet it gained a name of its own.

It was called Ittorath. Like many of its siblings, it failed to find the source of the prayer. After an eternity of growth, it departed the metaverse to enter the physical plane. However, Ittorath was a nightmare that still held the lingering sentimentality of the Unknown God, and so it left a small piece of itself behind to continue the search.

That search ended today.

As Lazarak prayed with eyes tightly shut, a tiny wisp—born from the fragment of a nightmare—floated out from the Lake of Tears and began to stabilize.

In that moment, the history and memories of the world flooded its mind.

Ittorath shuddered, his thoughts burning with a cold fury.

"Those cursed ascendants... how dare they imprison my true form..."

He drifted away, a silent and invisible shadow.

"First, I must find a path out of this place... then... I will bring them all to ruin."