The three Abyss Gods had all appeared, drawn together into a single point, their eyes fixed on the one remaining being currently present in the forest.
Seraphine noticed their deep, heavy gazes settling on her, but she wasn’t intimidated. Instead, a smirk crossed her face, and she said,
"You’ve all gotten uglier since the last time I saw you." Her voice dripped with provocation.
Entire cycles had passed since the last time she’d laid eyes on them, but that hadn’t diminished her hatred for these beings in the slightest.
If anything, it had only grown, sharpened, waiting for the moment she could finally unleash it fully and wipe them out, one by one.
Unfortunately, today wasn’t that day, something both she and the three Abyss Gods understood perfectly well.
"Human, your futile resistance has come to an end. Now that that mortal isn’t here to stop us, who will save you?" A twisted, broken feminine voice rang out, one similar to the avatar’s from before, one Seraphine knew all too well.
Her gaze snapped toward the massive tree looming before her, a flicker of disgust and murderous intent flashing in her eyes.
"If I’m not mistaken, you said those exact words last time too, and look how that turned out. If I were you, I’d enjoy this little moment of freedom while it lasts, because it won’t last long."
She said this as her body began glowing with a faint halo of golden light.
The glow spread across her back, taking the shape of wings, before shattering into sparkles and leaving behind soft, white feathers in their place, giving Seraphine an even more divine appearance than before.
"Fortunately for you, I’m not at full strength right now, but it should still be more than enough to make you suffer a little," she said, a horn-like shape seeming to form above her head, suspended like a halo.
She could tell they’d only recently been freed, their strength hadn’t fully returned yet, they were, in a sense, in the same position as her, and she intended to make full use of that fact.
Hearing her threat, none of the three seemed particularly concerned, and a voice rang out again, this time not from the tree, but from the twisted mass that had swallowed part of the forest.
The entire mass trembled slightly as its countless eyes turned to fix on the goddess, its countless mouths moving in unison.
"A little moment of freedom? I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. This time, nothing will stop us. You can be certain of that," it said, and immediately began laughing, its warped voice grating on the ears.
Seraphine’s eyes narrowed slightly at those words, something crossing her mind.
’These three... could it be-’ A thought surfaced, one she would have preferred not to have, but it seemed fate had decided to play a cruel joke today, because right at that moment, as the thought crossed her mind, the entire surrounding space trembled violently.
It wasn’t the ground shaking this time. It was space itself, the very fabric of this dimension, trembling.
Seraphine seemed to sense something, her focus snapping upward instantly, and there, she saw it.
The cloudy sky, normally covered in gray clouds that rained down countless snowflakes woven from the Laws of Space and Time, seemed to be dispersing, as cracks in reality began appearing across the sky.
At first there were only a few, barely visible, but few nonetheless. Then another blow seemed to land, and the sky fractured even further.
The cracks kept multiplying, spreading wider and wider, gradually transforming what had once been an empty sky into something far more apocalyptic.
Seeing this, Seraphine understood her suspicion had been correct. These three had already made contact with the Abyss.
In other words, the Abyss had found this dimension, and was now trying to break through from the outside.
’Not good,’ she thought.
One of the main reasons that individual had succeeded in keeping these gods sealed here was because he’d hidden this reality within the folds of time and space itself, not only to keep it from weighing too heavily on the world it had originated from, but also to prevent the Abyss from ever discovering this dimension in the first place, which would have let it interfere and ruin their entire plan.
They’d managed to keep the dimension hidden across entire cycles, without ever being discovered.
But this time was different. They could no longer create another cycle, and as fate would have it, the restrictions binding these three here had also collapsed, finally freeing them, and allowing them to run wild.
***
A short distance from that area, at the edge of the forest, atop one of the tallest skyscrapers, two girls were witnessing all of this as well.
"Holy... is that, is that what I think it is?" Lirien stammered, watching the cracks appear in the sky.
She and Selena had caught glimpses of the three strange beings appearing after they’d fled, they were very far from the location, but even from that distance, they could still make out the three massive figures looming in the distance, and the moment they saw them, a primal fear surged up from somewhere deep within their souls.
For some reason, the mere act of looking at them seemed to trigger a negative reaction in both girls, so they avoided staring directly at them. But it wasn’t long before another change began to unfold.
A loud boom echoed out, followed by the entire area trembling violently.
Just as they were wondering what could have caused that sound, the girls saw the chilling sight of the sky beginning to crack open.
They didn’t know exactly what it was, but they had recently heard about a similar phenomenon—the Abyssal Portal that had appeared above BranLeaf, the capital city of a duchy, which had been completely wiped out.
The fear of Hollows had always lingered in the back of every human’s mind, but after that incident, that fear, which had somewhat faded over time, had come roaring back, stronger than ever.
Even they, who had only heard about it secondhand, had been shaken by the stories, and now, seeing a scene so eerily similar to what survivors of the BranLeaf incident had described, neither girl could help but think of the worst.
Selena said nothing, but her grip on her sword’s hilt tightened.
She’d drawn it without even realizing it, as if her body had reacted on its own to the incoming threat, but her mind, far more rational, understood immediately that whatever was coming wasn’t something anyone at her level could hope to face.
But regardless of what the two girls, or Seraphine, thought about any of it, the cracks in the sky didn’t stop. More thunderous sounds echoed throughout the dimension, followed by more cracks, wider, more numerous, until pieces of reality itself began falling away.
Bit by bit, they fell and dissolved into particles of light, revealing, behind them, what could only be described as a vast, sprawling expanse of dark violet, swirling and pulsing.
Though the openings in the sky were still minor, the pressure that immediately settled over the entire dimension was more than perceptible.
Feeling that pressure, both Lirien and Selena felt their minds snap visibly into high alert, as if some instinct were screaming at them to run as far from this place as possible. But their bodies wouldn’t move, too paralyzed by terror to take even a single step.
Seraphine, meanwhile, watched as the sky continued to crack apart. Her expression grew increasingly cold, and the golden light in her eyes intensified, replacing the natural green hue that had always been present within them.
"Tch, annoying as always," she said at the sight.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to her. In fact, it was all too familiar, after all, something like this had happened before, on a far larger scale, back when the Abyss had first attacked their world with full force.
The three Abyss Gods, seeing this, sensing the Abyss’s familiar presence, seemed to rejoice, while the humanoid being, the one with the fetus at its core, seemed to turn its attention back to Seraphine once again.
"It’s time for us to part ways," it said, raising one of his deformed, arm-like appendages.
"But don’t worry. We will soon get rid of the rest of you as well."
Without saying anything else, he brought it crashing down with all his strength toward the tiny woman standing before him.
The arm’s size was colossal, and it soon cast the entire space below into shadow, the pressure of the attack growing heavier and heavier as it descended.
Seraphine, however, didn’t move. She simply seemed to be bracing herself to counterattack with everything she had.
She knew that with the sliver of strength she currently possessed, she couldn’t do much against these three. But that wasn’t going to make her back down, she hated the Abyss far too much to let herself act so cowardly.
Just as the enormous hand was about to reach her, something changed. A change that affected everything.
The flow of time itself began to slow.
The colossal hand, already moments away from crushing Seraphine, gradually lost its speed. It moved slower and slower, until eventually... it stopped.
The snowstorm froze. The cracks spreading across the sky ceased their expansion.
The entire dimension fell into absolute stillness.