Valen felt an unconscious chill flow down his spine as he looked around for the bodies, praying to the Primogenitor that all of this would be just a bad dream. His questing eyes shifted away from the girl and scanned the surroundings. He didn’t need to examine the hall for long before he began to see them…

All the while the girl sang and danced, he had been hearing a brief hum at the back of his head that he easily dismissed. He began orienting himself and drawing from his wealth of experience to resist external mental influence.

A sensation like fingernails raking down his spine made him cringe. Valen noticed the girl looking at him, motioning for him to come closer. Baring his teeth in anger, he refused to be entrapped by whatever foul spell she was casting.

Perhaps realizing her strategy wasn’t working on him, she made another bizarre gesture as if she wanted to fly. From the river of blood inside the hallway, bodies began to rise — children, women, and men. Slaves, Guardsmen, his children, and wives: thousands of people rose from the blood river. They opened their mouths and began to sing in unison.

Seeing the bodies of his wives, children, and countless others with open, bleeding eyes and long cuts on their necks and chests was overwhelming. Though their bodies were mysteriously free of blood except for their bleeding eyes, necks, and chests, it did nothing to silence their voices.

Their voices, like a choir emerging from the deepest part of a nightmare, rose in an endless crescendo. The slight hum he heard in the back of his head intensified, yet he could still hear every note being sung.

When the song entered his ears, it was an experience like none other — a chorus of thousands of voices blended in harmony. He found himself weeping, knowing he would never hear anything so beautiful in his life again. He felt a loss, realizing he was only hearing a fraction of that song meant to be sung by a choir of at least a billion on the vast stage of the universe.

Groaning, yelling, and shaking his head, Valen resisted the voices’ influence with all his might. Opening his eyes, he found himself beside the lifeless body of the girl, now confirmed as one of his many daughters. Her lively eyes looked dull, and the single eye on her forehead fixed a deep gaze on him, as if measuring prey.

All around him, the bodies of the dead and their voices were now silent, and the peace of death reigned.

She began to dance around his body in a slow and sensual manner, yet the movement was wrong — as if the body were a puppet manipulated by an uncaring hand. Her limbs flailed around, and her body contorted into twisted positions, making her bones crack with stomach-turning sounds. He saw his hand beginning to unfasten his armor; he wanted to fight against the pull, but the thousands of dead before him seemed to urge him on with invisible hands. As he struggled, he saw the heads of the bodies around him begin to explode.

Piece after piece of priceless armor began falling into the river of blood below. He fought against the pull, but he might not have been killing the crowd quickly enough. Then his forcefield deactivated.

Valen’s eyes shook with horror as the hovering blade began moving towards his throat.

“No… no… I won’t let you!” With a roar, Valen unleashed his Territory, momentarily clearing his mind. It was enough to summon his Incarnation, a broken blade, and he detonated it, engulfing everything in white.

Emerging from the rubble, the death of his Incarnation left him weak. As a second-circle Dominator, he would be able to regain his lost Incarnation in a few decades.

Whatever had happened here was now gone. The explosion had torn the Boreas family mansion into pieces and spread lightning and frost across a large part of the city, likely killing tens of thousands of people. Valen could see the flaming rubble from the mansion flying over and scattering across a large portion of the city.

The detonation of his Incarnation was like an erupting volcano of lightning and ice. He looked around in a daze, still trying to come to terms with the experience that had just happened, resembling a feverish dream.

He set his sights on the barracks, where he would surely find safety and begin to uncover what had happened. He flew towards it with as much haste as his battered body could endure, disregarding the pained screams he could hear coming from parts of the mansion and all over the city. Valen Boreas ran for his life and safety.

Though he had lost his Spatial Ring, filled with riches, in the conflagration, he did not care. His life was more important.

Yet, even now, he did not understand why he felt a burning loss inside his heart, as if he should have given in and become one with that song.

That thought shook him to his core. Even as he desired life, he yearned to be part of that song.

Valen Boreas was slowly descending into madness.

Inside the still-burning mansion lay the broken and burnt skull of a young girl. She was the one closest to the blast from Valen, and it’s amazing there was any part of her left behind. From the opened mouth of the broken skull, a flawless hand emerged. As if the skull contained an extra-large space within, another hand emerged from it. Slowly, the naked body of Dora escaped from the skull. In her hand was Valen’s Spatial Ring.

Among all the abilities of Angels, Dora chose to focus on their spell-weaving ability. However, the power she had wielded here was beyond her might. The power of the creator flowed through her eyes and her mouth. The massive spell that covered the entire mansion was the result of it. She was just a vessel for that will. She knelt on the rubble with her head facing the floor, her body trembling in adoration. A shadow of Eva appeared behind her and began cracking open the Spatial Ring, darkness emanating from her fingertips.