Dreams Are the Opposite

After dawn passed, darkness still blanketed heaven and earth. When the sun rose, it could not pierce the heavy clouds shrouding the land.

Thunder roared and lightning flashed over the Tanba Inner Circle.

Countless streaks of light darted through the black clouds, illuminating the bizarre shadows writhing in another world beyond them...

But this was no rare thunderstorm reported by the news. Human Hell was taking shape.

Over the long years, countless suffering souls had been driven bit by bit into despair, ushering in the eruption of Abyssal Sediment. In the end, they fell into the hell they had created themselves.

Living in the human world was simply too painful.

They had no choice.

The only place they could go was somewhere like that... fleeing toward hell.

Through the Dragon Calling Flute's observation mirrors, every fluctuation in the readings was intuitive and clearly visible. Behind the countless changes, the framework of a creation from the abyss emerged, baring its fangs.

"Truth Everlasting?"

Russell's projection murmured softly. "So it really was Woodman's handiwork?"

"One of Golden Dawn's creators?"

Isaac asked, "I heard he died during Heavenly Kingdom Fall."

"Yes," Russell said. "I killed him myself."

"..."

In the silence, Isaac stared at the projection in astonishment. Yet Russell's projection remained calm and expressionless. Only a beastlike chill surfaced in his shadowed eyes.

"Unfortunately, it is already too late," Russell said. "If I had been more decisive back then, there would not have been endless trouble afterward."

The man named William Robert Woodman had died long ago.

He had died at Russell's hands seventy years ago, during Heavenly Kingdom Fall.

Yet his work still spread throughout the world—his final masterpiece, and also his inheritor: a memetic phenomenon that spread across the Present Realm like poison, gathering humanity's primal darkness into the Essence