The Bloodline System Chapter 1669: Evading Deities
Previously on The Bloodline System...
"...This is impossible," he whispered. "Unless—"
He trailed off as a subtle, nearly undetectable vibration rippled outward. It felt like a lingering memory of essence murmuring through the emptiness.
Nocturnis narrowed his gaze.
The universe was once again concealing its truths.
And if necessary, he would rip it asunder to find them.
---
Hours later, once Angy’s anxiety had become stifling, the skiff flickered back into the pocket-dimensional star.
E.E emerged unsteadily, hauling an unconscious Falco.
Aildris followed behind them, his face drained of color and his body trembling.
Endric rushed toward the group. "What happened!?"
E.E’s voice cracked, still saturated with lingering horror, as he replied.
"A deity. A fucking Arbiter Deity nearly crushed us underfoot."
Angy felt her heart sink.
"Falco—! Is he—?"
Aildris gave a small shake of his head. "Alive. But he nearly destroyed himself to keep us hidden. He utilized an immense ability to mask our presence."
Endric’s eyes widened in disbelief. "That... that shouldn’t even be possible."
"He made it possible," E.E murmured.
They helped Falco inside. Angy followed in silence, her hand once again shaking as she touched her stomach.
...
...
As time ticked by, Falco regained his strength, and the group set out once more to collect more of the Outworldly essences.
As Angy had previously detailed, Gustav’s death didn't result in a simple disappearance.
An Outworldly was incapable of that.
Instead, his very existence shattered—not into base flesh or spirit, but into fragments of essence, with each piece holding a core truth of his being.
Time.
Creation.
Authority.
Balance.
Existence itself.
Like dying stars, they were flung across the cosmos.
And the wounded, chaotic universe had consumed them.
They stumbled upon another fragment by sheer luck.
While E.E was scanning the dead-space adjacent to a collapsed galaxy, his equipment began to blare.
"Guys," he muttered, his eyes wide with shock.
"That’s... not normal."
The nebula positioned ahead of them lacked any glow.
It was in a state of decay.
Color was being sucked out of it in slow motion, the entire structure collapsing inward as if time itself had begun to rot.
Falco’s brow furrowed.
"That space is aging. In reverse."
Despite the danger, they moved inward.
The moment the threshold was crossed, every alarm went silent.
There were no readings.
There was no sound.
Even their mental processes felt weighed down.
Alero tightened his jaw.
"This place rejects our presence."
Floating at the center was a crystalline shard, fractured and weeping white light.
Their hearts skipped a beat.
The sensation it gave off was warm and familiar.
As they drew closer, the nebula let out a scream.
A temporal predator manifested—a grotesque entity formed from fractured time—striking at anything that dared disturb the fragment.
Falco led the charge with shadows erupting around him, tearing gaps in reality just to impede the creature.
E.E unleashed the ship’s weapon systems.
Alero narrowly escaped death when time warped around his arm, attempting to wipe it from the annals of history.
The battle demanded every ounce of their strength.
When Aildris finally reached the shard and locked it within a containment sigil, the nebula suffered a total collapse—turning to dust in a matter of seconds.
The return journey was spent in total silence.
...
...
The pursuit of the next essence proved even more harrowing.
It was lodged within the remains of a fallen deity, drifting through the void like a monument to hubris.
The corpse was gargantuan... far exceeding the size of planets, split open and hemorrhaging tainted divinity.
Elevora gulped.
"If the deities catch wind of this—"
"Which is why we must act with speed," Aildris answered softly.
As soon as they touched down, they were set upon by divine wraiths.
These were not servants.
They were remnants.
Lingering authority that refused to fade away.
Falco engaged three simultaneously, his dark blood steaming in the vacuum of space.
Ria’s protective shields were shattered twice over.
E.E cried out as his nervous system buckled under the sheer pressure of the environment.
They discovered it at the very center of the god’s chest.
A fragment that beat rhythmically, like a living heart.
The subsequent essence they pursued had no guardians.
That only made the atmosphere more unsettling.
They reached coordinates that... simply did not exist.
There was no star.
No planet.
No space.
Only an absence.
A void that denied the laws of reality.
E.E stared blankly at the vessel's readouts.
"This shouldn't be possible."
The moment they entered the non-space, gravity and direction ceased to be. Their very identities began to blur.
Alero let out a scream as his physical form tried to divide into several versions of himself.
Falco secured everyone using shadow chains, a roar escaping his gritted teeth.
At the epicenter floated a conceptual shard. Another essence...
Claiming it nearly caused Aildris to vanish.
He felt his being unraveling, held together only by a sudden warmth in his chest.
The nature of that warmth remained a mystery to him.
But it preserved his life.
...
...
The trek back to the site of Gustav’s passing felt heavier than any of them could endure, yet no one spoke during the final leg of the trip.
Following another week spent dodging deities, gathering the final pieces of Gustav’s scattered essence, and surviving brushes with death that left them shaken, the group finally neared the coordinates Angy had provided.
They began to decelerate long before their arrival. Even from a distance of millions of kilometers, the sector of space ahead appeared wrong.
Deeply wrong.
E.E gazed through the starship’s viewing port. "Is that it...?"
"Yes," Sersi replied with a grim expression.
"Space isn't supposed to look like that," one of the surviving aliens whispered, their voice shaking.
It certainly wasn't.
This region of the universe appeared as though an eraser had been taken to the stars, smudging them into ink-like streaks and draining all vibrancy until only a monochrome world remained.
The nebulae had transformed into swirling clouds of chalk. Planets looked like frozen pencil drawings. Even the vacuum possessed a texture... like parchment.
It was a corruption born from the collision of powers that should never have met.
The cataclysmic battle between Gustav and the deities.
Falco took a sharp breath. "We have to be cautious. Entering this zone might shred us if we maintain too much speed."
"We will move slowly," Endric stated. "I’ll bolster the ship’s integrity as we cross the threshold."
They pressed onward.
As the ship’s bow entered the monochrome territory, the hull let out a groan, as if under the weight of something ancient.
Angy felt a tightening in her chest. Her bloodline responded instantly... silver fractal patterns, visible only to her, began to dance across her vision.
Her unborn child stirred... sending a soft warmth through her abdomen.
She gripped the armrest of her seat, trying to remain inconspicuous.
Not now... please, not now...
Her nausea was growing worse with each passing day. The burden of the secret was draining her. However, she needed to endure a little longer. For Gustav. For the sake of the universe.
Slowly, they navigated the twisted reaches of the distorted space.