At the bottom of the rift, the mycelium was still growing, dark energy was still surging, and the light of creation was still flashing. The three forces were tangled together like three venomous snakes fighting.
Neither could gain the upper hand, nor would either ever do so, because they were never meant to coexist.
Wu Heng stopped, his boots crunching faintly against the gray-white frozen ground.
Less than two hundred meters ahead, the sky had completely changed color.
The gray-yellow canopy had been torn apart by three streaks of light. Black chaos spilled like ink, yellow-green decay flowed like pus, and silver-white creation struck like lightning.
The three colors twisted together, tearing and devouring one another, churning the sky into a muddy mess.
All the auras were in chaos.
The stench of Mother of Pestilence's decay, Amara's sense of chaos, and the purifying light of the Creation Fragment had all mixed together.
It was impossible to tell one from another, like a heap of paints kneaded into a mess.
A dull rumble came from deep within the rift, as though something were rolling beneath the earth. The ground trembled—not continuously, but in pulses, like a heartbeat.
Wu Heng withdrew his gaze and stepped forward.
Space folded beneath his feet, like folding a sheet of paper in half until the beginning and end overlapped.
That step landed on frozen ground; his next had already brought him onto a pile of rubble at the bottom of the rift.
The wind fell silent. So did the rustling of the mycelium. Everything around him seemed as though someone had pressed pause.
The scene at the bottom of the rift was worse and more chaotic than he had imagined from above.
Amara stood in the center of the rift.
Her body had completely mutated. She