Chapter 47

Isaac stood over Yocha's defeated form, his silhouette looming against the surreal devastation of the Labyrinth. The air, still charged with their violent clash, pulsed faintly with fading energy—like the last tremors of a dying heartbeat. Once a place teeming with life, Arymh now lay hollow and silent, overshadowed by Isaac's presence.

"I could end you here and now," he said, each word dropping like a shard of ice. He sounded nothing like the Isaac of old; gone was the warmth and gentleness. "But I won't. You'll live to witness the ruin of the realm you tried so hard to control."

Yocha, once so imposing, now lay motionless, her celestial ornaments dulled and half-buried in dust. She looked like a vessel emptied of purpose, her deep blue eyes mirroring the fractured sky overhead—filled with dread at her oncoming irrelevance. The mercy Isaac showed was anything but kind. He left her paralysed in the remnants of a reality she had shaped, unable to conjure even a trace of her former might. For the Goddess of Fate, who once held the threads of existence in her grasp, this was a fate more harrowing than death.

Recognition dawned in Yocha's gaze—an awful comprehension that her dominion was truly lost. All around, Arymh lay in wreckage, murals and architecture scorched and broken. The laughter and vibrancy it once boasted had surrendered to an oppressive hush. The sight of Yocha, fallen amid this wasteland, made her downfall all the more wrenching.

Each of her laboured breaths seemed to carry the burden of endless years, pinning her to the cold stone like a fragment of ancient debris. Whatever controlled composure she still clung to unravelled, leaving her a haunted echo of the deity she had been. She was as powerless as those she had deemed pawns in her cosmic schemes.

Isaac turned away, his own heart a battleground of sympathy and determination. Though he had emerged victorious, he bore no triumph in his stance—only the weight of terrible consequences. Beyond the shattered city walls, where the Unreal Realm and the mortal world converged in rippling distortions, the true cost of this conflict loomed, barely understood.

Amid the desolate ruins and swirling colours, Isaac stood alone, as if the eye of some grand storm. Everything else lay in pieces, a testament to the extreme lengths his ascension had taken him. The corridors of the Labyrinth, once a kaleidoscope of wonder, lay crushed and dismembered, echoing the fractured state of his own spirit.

His green eyes glowed with an unnatural sheen, hinting at the power coursing through his veins. Gone was the gentle empathy that used to light his gaze—in its place rose a calm, relentless force, as though he had transcended earthly bounds. Here, in the ultimate nexus of fury and sorrow, Isaac had found a new purpose that surpassed mortal limits.

"Yocha," he murmured, glancing at the goddess sprawled nearby. Although she could not hear him above the roar of her shattered authority, his voice carried a quiet finality. "You wanted to master this realm, to shape it to your will."

He turned slightly, as though drawn to a distant presence where Hidayat stood—unkempt, small, and bearing silent witness to a world coming undone. "This realm will be remade," Isaac declared, his tone far colder than the compassion he once championed. The Labyrinth itself seemed to heed his words, its chaotic essence trembling in anticipation. "Not to restore humanity's dominion, but for Hidayat. In a new space, free of preordained destinies."

Silence returned, apart from the faint crackling of collapsing reality. Isaac's vow hung in the air, sinking into the ruins of a world newly aware of its own mortality. The quiet cry of a city's remains served as a bleak lullaby for the dawn of a future no one could quite grasp.

As Isaac ventured towards whatever lay beyond, the broken ground trembled under his footfall, as though waiting on the cusp of a new creation, unshackled by fate. The Unreal Realm continued its flickering dance, acknowledging the sheer force of Isaac's will—one that could obliterate or rebuild. All around, the ruins bore testament to darkness and desolation, but also to metamorphosis, forging a path for a resolve strong enough to outlive the end of their shared reality.

Isaac halted near Yocha's prone figure, where the last remnants of her aura clung to her like cobwebs. In the Labyrinth's wavering light, his shadow stretched across the wreckage, warped into something ominous and far-removed from the gentle boy he had once been. Those dark shapes flickered with an air of cruel amusement, as though the realm itself revelled in the aftershock of chaos.

"Look at you," Isaac said softly, the chill in his words cutting through the dusty air. "A deity undone by her arrogance." His fingers tightened into fists, and the aura of suppressed power around him thrummed like a heartbeat.

Yocha could only watch, her once-proud eyes glazed with despair. The celestial ornaments she had prized so highly lay scattered in the rubble, their faint glimmer lost among the ash. She tried to speak, but her voice emerged only as a faint rasp, drowned by the heavy quiet surrounding them.

Isaac's expression remained unreadable, as if any warmth he once possessed had been leeched away. In him, a new force pulsed, something neither mortal nor divine—something infinitely more frightening. He was, in a sense, the new overlord of all that remained.

"Your era is finished," Isaac said, voice steady but laced with an edge of cruelty. "Yet your torment has just begun." His words echoed with grim symmetry, reminiscent of the manipulations she had once forced on Hidayat. Isaac, who had once stood for peace, had taken up cruelty with the confidence of a master craftsman.

The Unreal Realm answered in kind—its shifting hues pulsed in time with Isaac's darkening intent. Shadows stretched, conjuring shapes that teased at corners of the mind, as if tempting Isaac further towards the tyranny he professed to resist.

He turned away, eyes flicking to Arymhi's remnants—a city once bursting with colour and life, now reduced to smears and dust. Where discipline, celebration, and art once mingled, only silence remained, the hush of a civilisation stripped of its soul.

Casting one final glance at Yocha, Isaac marched off. His silhouette cut a stark figure against a broken horizon, steps echoing with a new, unwavering authority. He did not look back at her, nor waver at the piercing cries of the Labyrinth's creatures who recognised, in their own way, that he was now the uncontested master here.

As the last glow of the Unreal Realm flickered against the ruins, Isaac moved alone into the future—a future bent to his will, forged for Hidayat and forever stained by the darkness that had taken root in his heart.

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