Recaps

Abraham and the Pale Holy See defended the imperial city against endless hordes of corpses led by a proof of Jonah’s existence. After the attackers overwhelmed the outer defenses, Abraham transformed and led more than fifty giant batlike monsters into battle, rallying the defenders, but the corpses were only cannon fodder for the Northern Continent’s army.

• Abraham spotted a rotting soldier outside the imperial city, identified it as proof that Jonah existed, and rang the alarm.
• The corpse hordes charged the city, broke through the artillery line, and began climbing the walls as the defenders panicked.
• Abraham crushed a believer who questioned the Pale God, transformed into a giant monster, and called on the believers to defend the city.
• Abraham led more than fifty giant batlike monsters into the corpse hordes, while witches and vajra warriors fought from the walls.
• The defenders rallied and began pushing back the corpses, but the chapter revealed that the horde was only cannon fodder for the Northern Continent’s army.

Northern forces bombarded the Pale Holy See, nearly destroying the imperial capital and killing or crippling its defenders. When fifteen nuclear bombs detonated over the pale tower, Norton absorbed their light and explosive force, then declared himself the Pale God and threatened destruction across the Southern Continent.

• Northern artillery and aircraft devastated the imperial capital, suppressing Abraham, Elizabeth, and the other Prince-level vampires.
• Fanatics fired antiaircraft guns at the aircraft, but the bombardment reduced the capital to ruins and left most survivors near death.
• Abraham watched Norton remain seated on his silver throne as the pale tower endured the assault, then recognized that the final formation carried an unfamiliar weapon.
• Fifteen nuclear bombs detonated above the tower, and Norton rose, opened his monstrous mouth, and drew in their flames, shock waves, and light until the explosions vanished.
• Norton flew above the tower, identified himself as the Pale God, and unleashed a pressure across the Southern Continent while promising destruction to those who tried to kill a god.

The chapter contrasted popular myths about Norton’s omnipotence with researchers’ belief that he was merely indestructible, before revealing his overwhelming power during the war. After swallowing the force and light of fifteen nuclear bombs, Norton proclaimed the end of the epoch, killed nearly two hundred million people with his Pressure, and drew his own spine out as a weapon while steel creations approached.

• Researchers concluded that Norton was an indestructible vampire whose powers came from his foreign soul and life level, not broad destructive attacks.
• Abraham watched Norton swallow the effects of fifteen detonated nuclear bombs, including their shock waves and light.
• Norton proclaimed himself the Pale God and sole deity of the Garden of Eden, and his Pressure killed nearly two hundred million unprotected people across the Southern Continent.
• Norton tore open his neck and pulled his own spine out to wield as a pale longsword.
• Endless steel creations appeared on the distant edge of the city as the war continued.

Norton, the Pale God, fought off the human assault and unleashed a laser that devastated the battlefield and killed Priest Mark. He continued attacking the survivors as the sky darkened, while Abraham wondered whether Jonah could challenge him.

• Priest Mark ordered the Eternal Life Society to begin its grand blood sacrifice as Norton appeared above the encircled imperial city.
• Human soldiers fired nets, guns, corpses, and War Machines at Norton, but he broke through the crush and burned the machines with a stream of fire.
• Norton transformed the fire into a laser and swept it across the battlefield, destroying the Northern Continent’s forces and killing Priest Mark.
• Abraham survived after lying down, while Norton declared that he would destroy the Garden of Eden and resumed his assault with his bone sword.
• Abraham watched Norton rampage across the ruins as the sky grew darker and heat distortions rose from the battlefield.

As Norton’s Pale God devastated the Gothic Empire’s capital, Emperor Jacob II questioned the ideals he shared with his former teacher, Duoxia. Duoxia revealed that Abraham had helped him become a Blood Progenitor, then carried Jacob away, leaving the empire’s struggle behind.

• Jacob II watched the Pale God destroy the imperial capital and lamented the loss of the Northern Continent’s seventy years of effort.
• Duoxia argued that the Pale God’s rule had restrained human greed and oppression more effectively than the Gothic Empire’s claims of freedom.
• Duoxia revealed that Abraham’s blood and the Pale God’s holy water had transformed him into a Blood Progenitor True Ancestor.
• Duoxia told Jacob he would not stop the coming tide, but wanted him to see whether the struggle brought humanity freedom or merely empowered jackals.
• Duoxia seized Jacob and flew toward the horizon, escaping before the war began.

As the sun dimmed, Norton descended into madness and unleashed power capable of destroying life, planets, and reality itself. The Eternal Life Society began its final preparations for a sacrifice across the Southern Continent while the dying sun drew the Garden of Eden’s phantoms toward it.

• Abraham and Elizabeth watched Norton rage in the sky, and Abraham wondered whether merging Norton’s soul with the Garden of Eden’s could still save it.
• Norton roared above Biyang, fired a crimson laser, and drove surviving humans to mutate or die as he swept the beam across the Garden of Eden.
• The chapter revealed that Norton’s existence level stood above reality, allowing him to destroy planets and even the universe.
• The Eternal Life Society began its final preparations, poisoning wounded soldiers and dropping a pitch-black object by parachute over occupied Southern Continent cities.
• The sun turned gray and dimmed as transparent phantoms across the Garden of Eden evaporated toward it, and Norton sensed its decline.

Norton, as the Pale God, destroyed cities across the Southern Continent and declared that humanity would be punished for betraying him. The star went dark, plunging all of Garden of Eden into darkness as the world fell silent and strange figures appeared.

• Norton fired a ball of light that reduced a city of nearly ten million people to powder.
• Norton proclaimed that he would annihilate the humans of the Garden of Eden and fired more balls of light at cities across the Southern Continent.
• More than a dozen major cities were destroyed, breaking the remaining resistance after decades of Northern Continent and Eternal Life Society preparations.
• The star orbiting Garden of Eden went dark, plunging the entire world into darkness.
• Black figures appeared in ruined cities as animals, insects, plants, and the wind fell completely still.

Norton confronted the silent Garden of Eden and called on Jonah, the Primordial God of Death, while pretending he wanted to devour souls and become a god. Hidden in the rubble, Abraham decided he had uncovered Norton's true fear and believed mental illness would finally defeat him.

• Abraham and Elizabeth hid beneath rubble and watched Norton, while Abraham grew alarmed by Norton's words about consuming souls.
• Norton noticed the Garden of Eden had fallen unnaturally silent and saw that the star overhead had gone dark.
• Norton raised his bone sword and claimed his unique soul could not be erased, taunting Jonah and declaring that the Garden of Eden's souls would help him ascend.
• Abraham interpreted Norton's boasts as a deception meant to keep Jonah away because absorbing souls would contaminate Norton's unique soul.
• Abraham recalled Norton's long history of feigning fear and concluded that mental illness, rather than Abraham himself, would defeat His Holiness.

A pitch-black star released countless black souls and revealed the Primordial God of Death, who declared that he would eliminate the disorder in the Garden of Eden. Norton recognized the colossal figure as Jonah, and the god leaped from the star toward the Garden of Eden as Norton asked to settle things peacefully.

• Black souls poured from the star toward the Garden of Eden, bound by chains held in an enormous shadow hand.
• The Primordial God of Death declared that the Garden of Eden's disordered state violated God's will and that he would eliminate its source.
• A colossal, flame-wreathed monster pulled itself out of the star and fixed its gaze on Norton, parting the clouds around him.
• Norton saw the monster and realized it was Jonah, then asked whether they could settle things peacefully.
• Jonah leaped from the star and merged into the black tide as it surged toward the Garden of Eden.

As Jonah descended and the Eternal Life Society hailed him, Norton recognized the threat and fled at unimaginable speed. Abraham realized Norton had been holding back all along, but saw that he had run in the wrong direction.

• Jonah’s arrival stirred the Southern Continent, as the Eternal Life Society prayed to him and other citizens cheered for Norton's destruction.
• Norton saw Jonah’s figure above the black star and cursed in shock.
• Norton vanished in a burst of speed, leaving a white line across the sky and a shock wave that knocked Abraham, Elizabeth, and the surviving Vampire Princes down.
• Abraham realized Norton’s earlier displays of speed and fury had been deliberate restraint, and feared that the conflict might have been part of a deception.
• Abraham shouted that Norton had fled in the wrong direction.

Norton charged Jonah’s tide of souls, while Abraham concluded that the attack was part of a cunning plan to conceal Norton’s weakness. Jonah stopped Norton and pinned him in a crater, leaving the Pale God screaming in pain.

• Norton raced through space toward Jonah’s approaching tide of souls instead of fleeing, and Abraham mistook his charge for a carefully planned strategy.
• Norton declared that he would ascend to the fifth stage by consuming Jonah’s soul, then plunged through the swarming souls, which could not harm him.
• Jonah condemned Norton for disrupting the Garden of Eden’s order and struck him with an enormous supernatural palm.
• Jonah’s blow created a vast crater in a Southern Continent city, where a five-meter-tall, black-flamed monster pinned Norton by the neck.
• Norton begged for mercy as Jonah’s flames seared his soul with unbearable pain.

Norton discovered that his invulnerable flesh concealed a frail soul, leaving him helpless against Jonah’s soul-targeting attacks. As Jonah burned him and the Garden of Eden filled with wandering souls, the deity panicked at a light appearing in the black star and blamed Norton for disrupting the Garden’s survival.

• Norton reasoned that his advancement had strengthened his flesh but left his soul weak, making him vulnerable to Jonah’s attacks.
• Jonah lifted Norton from the crater and burned him with black flames while Norton insisted that his unique soul could not be destroyed.
• Jonah realized Norton’s soul was not created by God and called him an unclean heretic who had disrupted the Garden of Eden’s order.
• The sea of souls entered the Garden of Eden, frightening its inhabitants as Jonah’s flames continued to torment Norton.
• Jonah noticed a tiny point of light appear in the black star and cried that the Garden of Eden must not be revealed, blaming Norton for ruining its chance of survival.

Jonah tried to restrain Norton, but Norton moved the Garden of Eden and caused devastation across the world. Abraham revealed that souls from the Garden of Eden could contaminate Norton’s unique soul, and Jonah began pouring them into him, leaving Abraham to realize that his betrayal might have been unnecessary.

• Jonah pinned Norton down and tried to bind him with chains made from the souls in the sky.
• Norton resisted by using his Pressure to move the Garden of Eden, causing earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis, and mass deaths.
• Jonah begged Norton to stop and promised not to seal him.
• Abraham arrived and explained that Garden of Eden souls could contaminate Norton’s unique soul, just as Norton had used that method against Kuba.
• Norton shot Abraham from the sky, and Jonah understood Abraham’s explanation and had the souls pour into Norton.
• As Norton screamed in terror, Abraham realized he could have simply died instead of betraying Norton.

Abraham lay helpless in the ruins as Jonah forced countless souls into Norton, and he realized Norton had feigned madness for over a century to manipulate him and bring about the rebellion. Abraham was left overwhelmed by the possibility that every step, including his betrayal, had been part of Norton's plan.

• Jonah held Norton aloft as countless wailing souls poured into his body, while Abraham remained pinned in the ruins.
• Abraham reconsidered Norton's past schemes and concluded that Norton had pretended to be mentally ill to conceal his plan to advance.
• Abraham realized Norton's pressure and apparent failures had pushed him toward rebellion and helped Jonah's plan succeed.
• Abraham suspected Norton had deliberately allowed the rebellion, concealed his knowledge and strength, and driven the crisis to force Abraham and Jonah into his trap.
• Abraham cried out and beat his chest as he regretted sympathizing with Norton and saw himself as a fool.

Jonah poured souls into Norton, discovering that the Pale God’s dependence on absorbed souls gave him a way to gain control. As Jonah burned and berated Norton, Norton’s perception and power changed, and the chapter ended with him rejecting his repeated apologies and insisting he had not been wrong.

• Jonah sensed a growing connection to Norton as he flooded the Pale God with souls, realizing that enough souls could let him control Norton.
• Norton asked Jonah what he had meant about God, but Jonah seized his neck and condemned him for throwing the Garden of Eden into chaos.
• Norton absorbed more souls and began seeing them, sensing locations more clearly, and rising without relying on his wings.
• Jonah’s divine power spread through the Garden of Eden, and souls flowed into the earth to rapidly heal the Southern Continent’s fractured tectonic plate.
• As Jonah burned him, Norton’s pleas weakened before he abruptly declared, “I wasn’t wrong!”

Norton revealed that he had spent a century manipulating Abraham and others into helping him gain the ability to perceive and control souls. After Jonah’s infusion gave him that ability, Norton began devouring the souls filling the sky, leaving Jonah powerless as Abraham hailed his success.

• Norton recalled his century-long search for a way to strengthen his soul and explained that he had arranged for someone who could see and control souls to provide him with a feast.
• Norton revealed that he had deliberately pressured and manipulated Abraham, Duoxia, and others into conspiring against him, even knowing about Abraham’s diary.
• Jonah realized Norton had deceived him and stopped the souls he had been funneling into Norton.
• Norton used the souls he had absorbed to draw in the souls across the sky with a powerful vortex, claiming Jonah’s infusion had let him touch souls.
• As Jonah and the souls cried out, Abraham praised Norton’s scheme and called him Your Holiness.

Norton devoured countless souls and Jonah, gaining a higher-dimensional vision that showed him the universe’s entire history and his own emotionless existence after its end. As Jonah carried him into space, Norton desperately tried to undo his evolution, while Abraham’s head wondered where His Eminence had gone.

• Abraham praised Norton for his supposed plan, but Jonah blasted away Abraham’s body, leaving only his regenerating head.
• Jonah condemned Norton for devouring the Garden of Eden’s souls and warned that his actions would destroy reality.
• Jonah carried Norton toward the golden star, merging into Norton and accelerating their ascent into space.
• Norton’s perceptions expanded across time, showing him the universe’s history and his future as an emotionless presence throughout its final emptiness.
• Norton screamed and tried to vomit out the souls, but his Fourth Stage divine body exploded as Jonah continued merging into him.
• Abraham stared into space and wondered where His Eminence was.

After Norton exploded, Abraham and Elizabeth performed their devotion to him while the surviving Blood Clan searched the sky for their creator. The Pale God’s fate remained uncertain as the searchers struggled to fly at high altitudes.

• Norton's explosion devastated the Garden of Eden, and countless souls streamed toward the sun and vanished.
• Abraham lamented Norton's apparent death while privately concluding that Norton was probably still alive because Abraham had survived.
• Elizabeth appeared and professed her eternal devotion to Norton, leaving Abraham convinced that she might be an even more skilled schemer than he was.
• Abraham flew upward to search for Norton, followed by Coal Ball and the surviving Prince-level bats.
• More than a dozen bats fell back to earth when the altitude became too difficult, then took flight again to continue searching for the Pale God Norton.

Two weeks after the Godfall War, Maria resumed the throne while Abraham struggled to restore the devastated Southern Continent and consolidated power for himself. As he reviewed the census, Abraham ordered silverware confiscated and told Alexander to keep searching for the Pale God.

• Maria formally ascended the throne, renamed the era the Maria era, and began her second reign as Queen.
• Abraham allowed rebellious cities to remain autonomous regions because the Southern Continent lacked the strength to conquer them.
• Alexander brought Abraham the census report, but Abraham told him that confiscating silverware was the greater priority.
• Abraham ordered Alexander to report any sign of the Pale God, then privately mocked Alexander for crawling out on his knees.

The chapter recounted the scale and consequences of the Godfall War, comparing it with the earlier Cataclysm Wars and describing how Norton and humanity caused billions of deaths. It ended by explaining why later histories called the century of Maria and Norton the Dark Epoch.

• The chapter described how the War of Holiness overthrew the Holy Lord Empire and caused catastrophic population losses across the Southern Continent.
• Norton, the Pale God, revived and prolonged the War of Cataclysm, which killed more than two hundred million people.
• Preparations and battles in the Godfall War devastated the Northern Continent, the East Continent, and the Southern Continent, with humanity responsible for at least a billion deaths.
• Norton destroyed cities with powerful balls of light and killed nearly a billion people across the Southern Continent.
• Norton pushed the Southern Continent's tectonic plate, causing disasters that killed around three billion people; Jonah stabilized the crust by merging hundreds of millions of souls into it.
• Later histories named the century of Maria and Norton the Dark Epoch.

Abraham feared being held responsible for the Southern Continent’s devastation, so he seized power and blamed the fallen Norton for the catastrophe. As Pontiff, he began restoring order by ordering a military crackdown on postwar criminals.

• After reviewing the census figures and destruction, Abraham feared the Southern Continent and other powers would punish him for Norton’s actions.
• Abraham decided to distance himself from Norton and proclaimed that Norton had ruled as a brutal tyrant, while he had been powerless to oppose him.
• In the first year of the Maria era, Abraham became pontiff, took the title Grand Patriarch, and was later known as the Uncrowned King.
• Abraham issued the Edict of His Crimes, attributing the Southern Continent’s losses to Norton and publicly declaring his break with him.
• Seeing gangs and bandits terrorize the postwar Southern Continent, Abraham ordered an army to suppress them and decreed that anyone committing crimes amid the chaos would be shot on sight without trial.

Abraham imposed brutal order on the Southern Continent while the Northern Continent collapsed into revolution, purges, and warlord rule. A mysterious hooded figure inspired a movement that founded the Northern Continent Human Federation, which adopted a system once associated with Norton’s policies.

• Abraham crushed crime and protests across the Southern Continent, then began reconstruction by concentrating the population in new cities and assigning people to production work.
• After Jacob and Jonah disappeared and the Eternal Life Society lost its War Machines, the Northern Continent erupted into violence and the August Revolution, which was defeated by the third year of Maria.
• The Northern Continent’s purges killed many skilled workers, and the Eternal Life Society fractured into rival warlords who fought over territory and imposed severe taxes.
• In the tenth year of Maria, a hooded speaker spread a revised system based on Norton's former policies and attracted followers among the Northern Continent’s oppressed people.
• In the winter of the fifteenth year of Maria, young people under the hooded figure’s leadership proclaimed the Northern Continent Human Federation and established putting humans first as its principle.

Abraham, exhausted by ruling the Southern Continent, learned that Clausius’s theory of increasing entropy might explain Jonah’s prediction that the Garden of Eden would perish. He rejected the theory because Norton’s soul came from outside the universe, then frightened Alexander with a veiled threat.

• Abraham woke from a nightmare about Jonah’s warning and reflected on his loneliness since His Holiness disappeared.
• Alexander reported that the Pale Holy See in Sak City refused to submit, and Abraham ordered Sak City destroyed and the protest leaders dealt with.
• Alexander introduced Clausius’s research on entropy and explained how the universe might ultimately suffer heat death.
• Abraham argued that the universe could not be an isolated system because His Holiness’s soul came from another world, and his anger made Alexander drop a glass.
• Abraham ominously asked whether Alexander thought he had only one pair of trousers, and Alexander wet himself in terror.

Abraham’s harsh rule isolated him from the Southern Continent’s people and led him to launch a purge that replaced one corrupt system with another. After Abraham was assassinated and Elizabeth disappeared, Alexander became Pope and gradually eased the vampires’ oppression.

• Abraham’s severe demands drove officials to conceal problems, leaving him isolated and suspicious of even Elizabeth and those close to him.
• In the winter of the thirty-third year of Maria’s reign, Abraham launched a nationwide purge and gave the masses power to expose and judge their former superiors.
• Over the next two years, the purge devolved into jealousy, robbery, and new forms of corruption, leaving Abraham disillusioned and alone.
• Abraham withdrew to a villa on an island in Lake Pal, and in the forty-third year of Maria’s reign an assassin killed him with a siege ballista as he opened his door.
• Elizabeth mysteriously disappeared, the purge was halted, and Alexander became Pope, later easing vampires’ working conditions and allowing them to live more like ordinary people.

After humanity reclaimed the Southern Continent, it flourished and turned its ambitions toward space, while Norton watched the universe as an eternal god. Because his soul came from outside the Garden of Eden, God could not assimilate it and began stripping it away; ten thousand years passed as the discarded matter was gathered.

• Humanity inherited the Southern Continent after the extinction of those with extraordinary might, and the Garden of Eden became entirely human.
• As technology advanced, astronomy and spaceflight grew popular, inspiring literature, films, fashion, and the nursery rhyme "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
• Norton's consciousness became part of the universe, allowing him to watch all of time and space without emotion or desire.
• God could not absorb Norton's foreign soul particles and began gathering them together as discarded matter.
• Ten thousand years passed while the matter was gradually stripped away and collected.