novelraw Chapter 74: Executioner’s Fatigue
Chapter 74: Executioner’s Fatigue
The Spire of the Final Breath loomed over the Necropolis like a jagged needle of obsidian, stitching the bruised violet sky to the bone-white earth. At its base, the air had become a pressurized medium of ending, a conceptual weight that threatened to collapse the lungs of any living thing that dared to draw breath.
Ren Hanshin stood before the Ferryman of Souls, his silhouette a terrifying fusion of porcelain skin and crimson silk. The starlight hair that flowed from his head drifted in a wind that didn’t exist, and his eyes were like twin pits of white-hot starlight, and were fixed on the hooded figure before him.
[Synchronization: 60.2%]
[Condition: Divine Ego Dominance]
[Mana Reserve: 148 / 150]
The Severance of Destiny hummed in Ren’s right hand. The scythe was an extension of his physical body. The crimson glass of the blade thumped in sync with the Weaver’s own heartbeat, radiating a heat that turned the surrounding ash into red vapor.
"The Queen was a statue, Executioner," the Ferryman spoke. His voice was a rattling sound, like dry coins being shaken in a wooden bowl. "She was the memory of a burial. I am the act itself. To pass me, you do not need to fight. You simply need to cease."
The Ferryman raised his jagged oar-scythe. The wood of the handle was made from the coffins of kings, and the blade was forged from the collective sorrow of those who died at sea. He didn’t lunge. He simply pushed his wooden skiff forward, the boat sliding across the ash as if it were a calm lake.
Ren didn’t wait. He moved. "Shinen-ryu Style: Kokū-Zandō!"
Ren swung the scythe in a wide, horizontal arc. The curve of the blade pulled the space toward the edge. A massive rift of crimson starlight tore through the grey silence, aimed at the Ferryman’s throat.
The Ferryman raised his oar. He punted the jagged blade of the oar, caught Ren’s crimson rift and redirected it. The strike, which should have unraveled a mountain, was slapped aside into a nearby bone-tower. The building turned into a torrent of red silk and vanished.
Ren landed ten yards away, his boots carving deep grooves into the fossilized earth. He felt a sharp, sudden pain in his chest.
[Warning!! Severe resonance of attack detected]
Ren’s left hand, still bound to his chest by starlight threads, twitched violently. Beneath the silk, the dirt was screaming. He felt a flash of a memory, the taste of a stale rice ball Haru had shared with him in a cold basement in Shinjuku. The memory was so vivid, so humanly warm, that it felt like a poison in his celestial veins.
"The weight... is shifting," Ren rasped, his voice flickering between the divine harmonic and a ragged human growl.
[The Weaver’s presence tightening around you, her starlight veil turning a dark, bruised violet.]
[Weaver]: Ignore the dirt! The Ferryman is testing the knots! He is looking for the frailty of your heart. We do not have a heart. We only have to strike again and again! I like to kill and destroy. Do it for me, Ren!
Ren gripped the scythe with both hands, the silk handle burning his palms. He ignored the twitching of his bound arm and lunged again. He became a blur of red light, the Severance of Destiny carving a chaotic, beautiful into the air. "Shinen-ryu Style: Mugen-Jigoku!"
He spun the scythe like a propeller, creating a vortex of gravity. But he didn’t aim it at the ground. He aimed it at the Ferryman’s skiff. He wanted to pin God’s avatar to the earth, to strip away the flow that made him so elusive.
The Ferryman let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Gravity is for those who belong to the earth, Executioner. I have been drifting for a thousand years. I have no weight for you to catch."
The Ferryman stepped off his skiff. He didn’t fall. He walked on the air, his tattered robes flowing as if he were underwater. He spun his oar-scythe in a counter-rotation to Ren’s vortex. The two forces met in a shower of grey sparks and red silk.
CLANG!!
The sound was precise. It shattered the windows of every tower within a mile. Ren and the Ferryman were locked, blade to blade. The crimson glass of the Severance of Destiny pressed against the rusted iron of the Ferryman’s oar.
Ren looked into the hood of the Ferryman. He didn’t see a face. He saw a mirror. In the reflection of the Ferryman’s void, Ren didn’t see the porcelain God. He saw Porter. He saw a man with dirty fingernails, tired eyes, and a tattered blue jacket. He saw a man who was exhausted, not divine fatigue, but human exhaustion. The kind of tiredness that comes from carrying bags for a world that doesn’t care.
"You are tired, Ren Hanshin," the Ferryman whispered, the words echoing in the fluid of Ren’s brain. "The Goddess has woven you into a masterpiece, but the threads are tired of being pulled. Why not lay the bag down? The Necropolis is a comfortable bed."
"I... am not... tired," Ren gritted his teeth, his eyes flaring with a desperate, white light.
[Synchronization: 60.2% -> 60.5%]
Ren pushed. He concentrated the Weaver’s obsession into the blade. The red silk threads erupted from the scythe, trying to lace through the Ferryman’s robes. "Third Form - The Sovereign’s Guillotine."
Ren hooked the curved blade of the scythe behind the Ferryman’s neck and pulled. He wanted to reap. He used the Shinen-ryu principle of the unstoppable flow, turning his entire body into a centrifugal force of divine destruction.
The Ferryman’s hood was torn away. Beneath the cloth, there was not a skull, but a swirling mass of grey ash and silver coins. The coins were the tolls—the souls of the many who had died since the first Sovereign took the throne.
"You want to carry the toll, Executioner?" the Ferryman roared, his voice losing its calm. "Then FEEL THE DEBT!"
The silver coins erupted from the Ferryman’s body in a tidal wave. They hit his mind. Each coin was a life. A farmer in ancient gaul. A child in a forgotten war. A scientist in a world that burned.
Ren was flooded with the final thoughts of many people. The weight was staggering. It was more than the Salt-Load he felt from his fellow porters in the past.
Ren fell to his knees, the Severance of Destiny clattering onto the ash. He clutched his head with his right hand, his porcelain skin cracking under the pressure of the grief. The white starlight of his eyes was being drowned by a grey, muddy fog. A normal system notification turned into a red color suddenly.
[Synchronization: 60.5% -> 59.8%]
[DANGEROUS FLUCTUATION DETECTED!!]
"Niisan!" Haru’s voice cut through the screams of the coins. She was standing at the edge of the battle, her sapphire core erupting in a brilliant, piercing blue. She wasn’t fighting the Ferryman. She was fighting for Ren.
"Don’t listen to the dead, Ren!" she screamed, her voice cracking with the effort of breathing the Void-Breath. "The dead are finished! We are the ones who are still alive! You’re the one who carries the bags for a living!"
Ren looked up. Through the grey fog of the coins, he saw her. She looked so small. So fragile. She was bleeding from her nose, her body unable to handle the necrotic atmosphere of the Spire.
She was dying so he could breathe. The realization hit Ren harder than any divine strike. The fatigue he felt wasn’t because of the battle. It was because he was trying to be a God while his heart was still in the mud.
"The mud..." Ren whispered.
He looked at his left arm, still bound to his chest. He looked at the silk threads that held it. "I am... a porter."
Ren didn’t reach for the scythe with his right hand. He reached for his own chest with his teeth. He bit through the starlight threads that bound his left arm.
SNAP!!
His human arm fell free. It was pale, covered in scars, and shaking with a tremor. It looked pathetic compared to the porcelain perfection of his right arm, but it was his.
Ren grabbed the Severance of Destiny with both hands. The left hand also gripped tightly the silk-wrapped handle. The reaction was an explosion.
[System Alert: IRREGULAR BRAID DETECTED]
[Synchronization: 60.5% -> 60.8% -> 61.2%]
[New State: RESONANCE BETWEEN WEAVER’S HAND & PORTER’S HEART]
The crimson starlight of the scythe turned into a deep, earthy amber. The iron of his human intent and the silk of the divine power finally stopped fighting and began to merge. Ren stood up. He wasn’t a porcelain God anymore. He was something else. A warrior draped in the shadows of the dead and the light of the stars.
"The toll is too high, Ferryman," Ren said. His voice was no longer a harmonic. It was his own voice, deepened by the weight of the heavens. "I’m not paying for it. I’m canceling the debt."
Ren swung the scythe. "Shinen-ryu Style: Kokū-Zandō - Refined Slash."
He swung at the coins. The sharp edge of the scythe didn’t cut the silver. It processed it. Every coin the blade touched was instantly unraveled, the soul within being released from the Ferryman’s debt and returned to the cycle of the Earth.
The tidal wave of grief was turned into a blizzard of white starlight. The Ferryman let out a sound of soul-shattering horror. "You... Are you freeing them? You are destroying the Master’s wealth?"
"I’m a porter, remember?" Ren said, appearing in front of the Ferryman in a flash of light. "And I don’t like it when someone holds onto a package that isn’t theirs."
Ren drove the blade of the scythe through the center of the Ferryman’s chest. He didn’t use a divine skill. He used the Flow. He twisted the blade, and the Ferryman’s entire conceptual existence began to spiral into the scythe. The grey ash, the silver coins, the wooden oar, all of it was ground into mana and fed into Ren’s circuits.
[Consumption of Legendary Avatar: THE FERRYMAN OF SOULS]
[Synchronization: 61.2% -> 62.0%]
The Ferryman dissolved into a final, quiet sigh. The wooden skiff turned into dust. Ren stood at the entrance of the Spire. He felt the fatigue leave him, replaced by a cold, heavy purpose. He looked at his left hand. It was no longer shaking. It was shimmering with the same amber-red light as the rest of his body.
The Porter and the Executioner were finally walking in the same direction. The Weaver’s presence was quiet now. She was leaning her head against his back, her arms loosely wrapped around his waist. She wasn’t commanding anymore. She was... following.
Ren turned back to Haru. She had collapsed in the ash, her sapphire core shining with a faint, tired blue. Tanaka and Kaito were rushing toward her, their faces masks of relief and terror.
"Take her back to the ship," Ren said. His voice was soft, human, but it carried the weight of a Sovereign. "The Spire is opening. The God of Death is no longer waiting. He is hiding."
"Ren... come with us," Tanaka pleaded.
Ren looked up at the Spire. The black obsidian was cracking, revealing a staircase of frozen salt that led into the violet clouds.
"I have one more delivery to make," Ren said. He gripped the Severance of Destiny, the blade humming with the power of the Ferryman’s souls. He stepped into the Spire.
The war of souls was reaching its climax. The Executioner was no longer a slave to the loom. He was the one who was going to cut the Master’s throat.
[Synchronization: 62.0%]
The first step onto the salt-stairs made the Necropolis tremble. The God of Death was at the top. And Ren Hanshin was finally awake.