"Listen…" Eros began. "I am in a foul mood. Do not make it worse than it already is. Offer me your husk." A faint aura of persuasion seeped from her words.
"I was right… she wants my body." Victoria's thoughts sharpened. "It's only natural. One does whatever it takes to achieve their goal—even if it means staining their hands. My purpose brought me here… I will not surrender it."
"Do not forget yourself, mortal," Eros said, arms folded. "Your existence is insignificant on the cosmic scale. Whether you live or die changes nothing. Unlike beings such as myself—primordial forces that shape existence itself."
"I don't agree." Victoria's voice did not waver. "If a life is insignificant, then why allow it to exist at all? No matter how small, a life holds meaning. And mine… lies in vengeance." Her gaze hardened.
"I've grown familiar with that feeling—the way it burns, the way it consumes. I can smell it on you. You seek vengeance as well… don't you?"
Eros' expression darkened.
"That's what I thought," Victoria continued. "But aren't you love? Is this your justice?"
"No… this is my judgment." Eros' voice carried quiet authority before she tilted her head slightly.
"Tell me, little mortal… do you believe your grief surpasses mine?"
"Yes. Without a doubt." Victoria did not flinch.
"Then let us end this pointless exchange. Such courtesies are reserved for your kind alone." Her gaze sharpened. "We shall see whose grief runs deeper. Grit your teeth… for one of my countless attributes is cruelty."
The fallen goddess spread her four arms, and a surge of sinister mana bled into the void, swallowing the space around her.
Victoria staggered back instinctively, her body slick with sweat. Her instincts screamed—her spirit had already sensed what her body had yet to comprehend. And it was right.
From the dark tide of Eros' mana, figures began to emerge—reapers, their forms twisted and hollow, coiling into a spiralling prison around the fallen princess.
Then they struck.
With sweeping arcs of their scythes, they tore into her very soul, rending fragments from her being in every direction.
Agony consumed her. Her screams shattered the void.
No matter how she struggled—no matter how she pleaded—the reapers showed no mercy. Each one claimed a fragment of her soul, sealing it within their hollow cores, again and again.
Piece by piece… she was undone. Her consciousness began to fade, her body left drifting in the air—weightless, lifeless… like a withered leaf.
As for Eros, she watched with measured patience, awaiting the moment her servants would deliver the husk that would mark the beginning of her judgment upon the mortals she so deeply despised.
"There was a time when love was my very essence," she said calmly. "The only principle to which I answered—a force that bound the cosmos into one. Your heart was broken by a single individual and look at you… consumed by rage. What do you think I became, after I was exploited and abandoned by those I cherished—those to whom I devoted my entire existence?"
Her gaze turned cold as she continued, "Retribution is not meant for mortals; it's a domain reserved to the gods. Sink into the abyss—I will take it from here."
She began to walk away, yet her steps faltered almost immediately as a thunderous voice, unified and unnatural, rose behind her.
"You will take it from here… you say?"
Startled, Eros turned sharply, only to behold countless hands formed of mana, their surfaces etched with shifting, kaleidoscopic inscriptions, stretching forth to seize the reapers and drag them back, devouring them along with the fragments of Victoria's soul they had claimed and returning everything to her in a single, overwhelming surge.
Victoria's body convulsed as cracks spread across her form, her limbs twitching uncontrollably while her eyes blazed with a blinding white, dark tears streaming down her cheeks as though something vast and unnatural had taken root within her.
She no longer appeared human, but rather like a vessel overtaken—possessed by a force beyond comprehension.
Vires Animorum—so it was named by the Fanthome clan, a sacred inheritance passed down through generations, believed to be destined for the one they had long awaited, the "Chosen One," an existence fated to rise from their bloodline and reclaim the freedom they had lost.
But some prophecies take longer than expected, and even when faith endures, burning stubbornly within its believers, it does little to ease the truth that, with each passing day, frustration swells beneath the weight of impending oppression.
In time, power was not the only inheritance passed down, for resentment took root as well—not toward the oppressors alone, but toward those who allowed such suffering to persist without intervention: the gods.
Long before the VanDead brought ruin upon their kind, the Fanthome clan, along with other mana-born lineages, had already begun to curse the day of their birth, branding magic not as a blessing, but as a malediction—an affliction imposed upon them by divine hands.
Now, merged with Victoria's burning rage, the collective will of the Fanthome clan rose as one, their voices echoing in unison for all mana-born who had endured the same fate.
"What do you know of the burden mortals carry beneath the sun—you, who were born into perfection?" they demanded.
"What… are you?" Eros replied in turn, her voice faltering, stilled by confusion.
"We are mortals," they answered, their voices unwavering. "Born broken, condemned to spend our fleeting lives piecing together the fragments of our shattered existence. We struggle even to earn our daily bread. We falter. We err—and are punished for every transgression."
Their tone sharpened.
"But you… an immaculate being shaped in the highest spheres of creation—your decadence is your own. Born not of suffering, but of negligence. Do not cast your failures upon those you deem insignificant."
Each word struck the fallen goddess, clinging to her skin like a viscous residue, foul and inescapable, yet it was the final truth that cut the deepest, igniting a fury that reached the very core of her being.
Once more, Eros invoked her power, and with a violent gravitational pull, she dragged Victoria to her side and seized her by the neck, yet the fallen princess offered no resistance, her body limp and unresponsive, as though it had already been abandoned.
"What do you even know?!" Eros screamed, her voice trembling with rage. "Are you saying I was wrong to love your kind? Answer me!"
No answer came, and instead, with an unsettling gentleness, Victoria's hands were lifted and placed against Eros' temples, and in that instant, a torrent of memories surged into the fallen goddess' mind, overwhelming her senses without restraint.
The weight of centuries unfolded at once—persecution, enslavement, desecration of flesh, and endless cycles of suffering and erasure—each moment forced upon her as though she herself endured it, as though every cry, every wound, every fragment of despair had been carved into her very soul.
Her body convulsed beneath the strain as she screamed, tears spilling without end, her voice breaking into desperate pleas for release, yet the visions pressed on without mercy, lingering just long enough to shatter her composure before finally receding.
When silence returned, it brought no relief—only a hollow stillness—and Eros collapsed to her knees, her strength already diminished from the essence she had expended in her battle against Leir and Victoria, yet it was her mind that bore the greater toll, now strained to its very limits beneath the unbearable weight of what she had been forced to endure.
"You are the stain upon the very fabric of the cosmos. How can your kind be allowed to exist? The Creator must have regretted your making," the fallen goddess murmured.
"Take it from here, Queen, and restore the balance," the voice of the Fanthome clan echoed through Victoria's mind, before gradually receding and relinquishing full control of her body.
"Thank you," she whispered, offering her gratitude as their presence faded from her mind.
"Let's go, Eros. We have much to accomplish," Victoria said softly, extending a hand toward her, intent on helping her rise.
Eros' gaze lingered upon the offered hand for a moment—
then she struck it aside, rejecting the gesture without a word.
In the next instant, darkness surged forth from her, vast and consuming, swallowing the plane whole as it spread without limit, devouring light, space, and form alike, until the world itself seemed to fold inward.
When the veil receded, they were no longer where they had stood.
They had been cast into another dimension.
There, unlike the ethereal plain they had left behind, no light reached them, and only the eerie shimmer of blood upon the surface of a vast, dark lake, along with the distant wails of trapped souls, illuminated the endless expanse upon which Victoria stood.
Before her, Eros hovered above the waters, suspended in midair and bound by chains, each link reinforced by countless intricate mudras, while the surrounding walls bore inscriptions etched in kaleidoscopic remnants of every known species.
Despite their injuries, neither Victoria nor Eros showed any sign of faltering.
"It all comes down to that man, doesn't it?" Eros said, frustration threading through her voice.
"I do not care what you think," Victoria replied calmly, her tone unwavering. "Only my role matters. Everything else is irrelevant."
"You will not survive this," Eros said with quiet certainty, a cold smile forming on her lips.
For the fallen goddess understood one immutable truth: divinities, born outside the domain of love, could never truly comprehend it—they could only imitate it or reject it. Mortals, however, could never fully abandon love. It was woven into their very existence, a force that might be buried or concealed, but never erased.
It was upon this conviction that Eros' confidence rested. She believed that, in time, Victoria's heart would inevitably soften—that the princess would form bonds, find companions, perhaps even allow Utopia to soothe her wounds and replace her suffering with fleeting warmth. And within that single, fragile opening lay the breach she intended to exploit. Victoria would become her vessel, her body claimed for the goddess' own purpose.
"I have waited decades. A year or two more changes nothing," she thought, a faint smirk forming. "I will make your body mine. For now… enjoy this fleeting illusion of freedom while it lasts."
It had been a meticulously crafted plan, yet the fallen princess shattered it in an instant. At this point, Eros and Victoria's existence had begun to merge, their soul boundaries blurred into a single unstable connection, and within such a state, neither could truly conceal anything from the other.
"One last thing…" Victoria spoke softly, her voice trembling yet composed, as her blood rose from her wounds and gathered in the air, forming a delicate bouquet of crimson roses within her left hand.
Eros' eyes widened in confusion at the sight, but Victoria raised her arm with quiet deliberation and sent the bouquet drifting through the air in a graceful arc, where it scattered and adhered to Eros' skin, etching itself into her flesh like intricate new sigils layered over those she already bore.
"I am glad we are on the same page. I will take the lead. I offer you this—my ability to love. Do with it as you will. I have no further use for it."
Without another word, she turned and walked slowly into the encroaching darkness.
Eros, realizing the true weight of what had been discarded before her, abandoned all manipulative schemes and was forced to confront reality directly.
"Come back here! Obey me, mortal! I am your goddess! You owe me reverence and submission! I welcomed you into my domain! Return! I despise you—every one of you mortals! I curse you—do you hear me?! I curse you! You who dare reduce a goddess to something so insignificant! Only darkness shall be your fate—do you understand?! Only darkness!! Not even Hades shall claim you!"
The surrounding shadows writhed violently, surging forward to consume Victoria as she advanced, yet just before they could fully engulf her, she spoke one final time, her voice steady and unyielding, her gaze cold as steel, sealing the moment entirely.
"If this is the price I must pay… then so be it."
And with those words, the fallen princess vanished into the encroaching darkness, leaving the fallen goddess behind—sealed within her own despair.