The Extra's Rise - Chapter 1098
1098: The Runt and the Sovereign 1098: The Runt and the Sovereign We landed on the wreckage of a Demon dreadnought that was bobbing in the swells of the ocean.
It was a jagged island of black steel, slick with oil and seawater.
I laid her down on the plating.
Tenebria didn’t fight me.
She couldn’t.
Without the Gift of Gluttony, the massive reserves of energy she had stored-the stolen power of dragons, demons, and gods-had nowhere to sit.
Her body, once a vessel of infinite capacity, had shrunk back to its original factory settings.
She wasn’t dying of poison.
She was dying of atrophy.
Her body, which had been reinforced by magic for ten thousand years, was suddenly just…
flesh.
It couldn’t support the weight of her own history.
Her bones felt heavy.
Her lungs felt too small to pull in the air she needed.
She curled into a fetal position, shivering violently.
“I’m empty,” she whispered, her voice stripped of all the Overlord’s resonance.
It was thin.
Scratchy.
“Arthur…
I’m empty.” I knelt beside her.
“You’re back to the start,” I said quietly.
Tenebria squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking out.
“It’s cold,” she whimpered, her teeth chattering.
“Without the Gifts…
the world is so cold.” She clawed blindly at my sleeve, her grip weak and desperate.
“Give it back,” she begged.
“Just one.
Give me the Orange light.
I need to feel something.
I need the weight.
If I’m heavy, I’m real.” I looked at her hand.
It was trembling, the fingernails cracked and bloody from where she had tried to hold onto her power.
“I can’t,” I said.
“I destroyed it.
It’s gone.” Tenebria let out a sound that was half-sob, half-scream.
She tried to push herself up, to attack me, to rip the power out of my chest, but her arms gave out.
She collapsed back onto the cold steel.
She stared up at the grey sky.
“I hate this,” she whispered.
“I hate being small.” She looked at me, her eyes filled with a lifetime of trauma.
“Do you know what it’s like?” she asked, her voice trembling with rage.
“To be born as nothing?
To watch everyone else walk around with suns in their chests while you have a black hole?” She grabbed her own throat, scratching at the skin.
“They called me a mistake.
A runt.
They said I had no potential.” She laughed, a wet, gurgling sound.
“So I took theirs.
I took their potential.
I took their futures.
I forced the universe to acknowledge that I exist!” She looked at me, her gaze piercing.
“I wasn’t evil, Arthur.
I was ambitious.
I conquered the galaxy because it was the only way to matter.” I looked down at her.
I didn’t see a monster.
I didn’t see the tyrant who had butchered the Dragon Realm.
I saw a survivor.
A creature who had been dealt a losing hand and had flipped the table.
“I know,” I said softly.
“You survived.” I reached out and brushed a strand of matted hair from her forehead.
Her skin was fever-hot, her body struggling to regulate its own temperature without supernatural aid.
“You survived the slums.
You survived the Warlords.
You survived the Gods.” I paused, my voice heavy with the tragedy of it.
“But you never lived.” Tenebria froze.
She looked at me, confusion warring with the pain in her eyes.
“You spent ten thousand years running from insignificance,” I told her.
“You built a fortress of stolen powers.
You surrounded yourself with armies.
You sat on a throne that ruled the stars.” I looked around at the wreckage of the fleet she had brought to destroy my home.
“But you were still just that scared little girl in the alley, terrified that if you stopped taking, you would disappear.” I leaned in closer.
“You never cooked, Tenebria.
You never built anything of your own.
You never loved anything.
You just consumed.
And because of that…
you were always empty.” Tenebria stared at me.
Her mouth opened to argue, to scream that I was wrong, that she was the Apex, the Sovereign of Sins.
But the words died in her throat.
Because she knew it was true.
Even with seven Gifts, even with the power of a God, she had never felt safe.
She had never felt full.
The hunger for more-more power, more territory, more acknowledgment-had driven her endlessly.
She slumped back against the deck plating.
The fight went out of her.
Her heart was failing.
Not from magic, but from exhaustion.
Her natural lifespan, stretched thin by eons of supernatural abuse, was finally catching up to her.
“I don’t want to disappear,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the ocean.
She looked at me.
The rage was gone.
The arrogance was gone.
There was only fear.
The primal fear of a child in the dark.
“I don’t want to be forgotten.” My heart broke.
Not for the Overlord, but for the Runt.
I stood up.
My right hand buzzed with Mana.
My left hand buzzed with Miasma.
I brought them together.
The Intangible Sword manifested one last time.
It hovered in my grip-a blade of True Grey, of non-existence.
It didn’t hum.
It didn’t shine.
It was a hole in the world.
Tenebria looked at the sword.
She didn’t flinch.
She didn’t beg for mercy.
She looked…
relieved.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, looking at the void-blade.
“No,” I promised.
“It defines the end of hurting.” She nodded weakly.
She closed her eyes.
She stopped trying to hold onto the ghost of her power.
She surrendered.
“Then do it,” she whispered.
“Make me full.” I raised the sword.
I didn’t do it with anger.
I didn’t do it with triumph.
I did it with the solemn duty of a Sovereign laying a peer to rest.
“Rest, Tenebria,” I said.
I swung.
The blade descended.
It didn’t cut the air.
It didn’t cut her flesh.
It passed through her body like a shadow.
It severed the Will that held her to this painful existence.
It cut the ambition.
It cut the fear.
It cut the connection between the Runt and the expectations she could never meet.
Tenebria sighed.
It was a long, slow exhale.
The tension left her face.
The lines of pain on her forehead smoothed out.
For the first time in her life, she looked peaceful.
Her body didn’t bleed.
It began to dissolve.
Starting from her feet, she turned into grey ash.
Not the heavy, toxic ash of the Abyss, but a light, clean dust that caught the wind.
I watched as the wind took her.
She drifted apart, scattering over the ocean, returning to the nothingness she had fought so hard to escape.
Within seconds, the deck was empty.
The Demon Overlord was gone.
I stood alone on the wreckage, holding a sword made of nothing, watching the grey dust disappear into the horizon.