The sky was blood-red, as if eternal flames were burning across the heavens.
The earth was charred black, like it had suffered the worst annihilation imaginable.
This was a world already dead.
Nothing more than a corpse.
The sky was shattered.
The ground was cracked.
No life stirred.
It belonged to no Pillar God.
It fit Li Wen’s description perfectly.
She walked alone through this lifeless world.
A quarter of an hour had long passed.
The illusory clock tower had vanished.
Yet Li Wen didn’t rush to begin.
She was pondering a single question: what had this world been through?
Could it have been Twilight’s End?
No—she had lived through the Twilight firsthand.
She had witnessed what a world truly looked like when destroyed by it—or what it was destined to become.
This wasn’t it.
The ruin wrought by the Twilight was not merely a broken sky and scorched land.
It wasn’t endless fire.
It wasn’t a storm of flame where heaven and earth met.
It wasn’t something any form of destruction could fully describe.
No matter how far she walked, all Li Wen could see was scorched earth and roaring flame.
Eventually, she gave up on moving forward and pulled out the Codex of the End from beneath her cloak.
The amber that encased the codex remained unchanged, even in this crimson apocalypse—it stayed as cold and serene as ever.
Taking a deep breath, Li Wen knelt on the blistering scorched ground and placed the Codex of the End before her.
She drew her bone-eating dagger and made a few experimental cuts against her Verdant Star Cloak, but it left no marks.
So she took off the cloak—and sliced her palm open with the dagger.
“I swear upon the name of Twilight!”
Beads of blood fell like rain, hissing into steam the moment they touched the earth.
“Eternity begins with dawn!”
She carved the second wound, this time on her shoulder.
Blood flowed slowly but without pause.
“The end concludes with dusk!”
The dagger rose again.
The third wound marked her ankle.
Blood now streamed from her body, dyeing her entirely crimson.
“Life must walk toward death!”
The fourth cut was to her abdomen.
Li Wen didn’t even blink as the blade drove in.
“All things must return to the end!”
The fifth wound—her back.
“No other Endbearer shall live eternally but me!”
The sixth—her forehead.
Her vision instantly blurred, the world becoming a vague haze.
“No other eternal one shall walk the path of the end but me!”
The seventh wound—her heart.
The bone-eating dagger pierced it without hesitation.
In the pain that surged through her whole being, Li Wen recited the final line:
“All destruction begins with me—and ends with me!”
Her life dropped to 1%.
It would not change again.
Her blood flowed slowly across the darkened earth, forming twisted lines.
The lines led toward the Codex of the End.
Now, the amber that encased it began to soak in blood, its translucent hues deepening into a pure, vivid red.
When the entire amber shell had turned crimson, it shattered with a sharp crack, like glass falling to stone.
The ancient book within—its black cover faded with time—rose slowly into the air.
It opened on its own, without being touched.
The blood on the ground lifted into the air, drawn into the pages.
Crimson script, cryptic and profound, began to write itself across the once-blank sheets.
When the final page was filled, the book closed once more.
The black cover now bore the image of a flourishing ancient tree.
Beneath it sat a girl, cloaked and resting against its trunk.
Her eyes gazed straight outward.
Li Wen willed it, and the Codex of the End opened to a page.
The abstract and arcane text now felt more familiar to her than her native tongue.
She knew—she had succeeded.
Halfway, at least.
The ritual Li Wen used came from the strategy group.
They called it The Seven Deaths and Seven Vows.
According to legend, there once lived a man in Ganan who achieved sainthood by dying seven times and making seven sacred vows.
Each wound Li Wen made mirrored one of those deaths: pierced through the palm, torn at the shoulder, bled from the ankle, impaled in the stomach, cleaved across the back, skull shattered by stone, and finally, the heart split open.
The group had modeled the ritual from that legend.
It could only be used to bind the Codex of the End.
The binding served two purposes: to use the codex—and to prevent it from being stolen.
That was why she had to perform the ritual in a world on the brink of death.
When the Codex of the End broke free from its seals, its power would inevitably leak.
The Pillar Gods might not care—but their lesser gods, apostles, forgotten eldritch beings, ancient deities, demigods, crowned ones, legendary mages, and all manner of otherworldly entities… there were simply too many eyes coveting the genealogical codex.
Li Wen couldn’t afford to take chances.
***
Item: Codex of the End
[Supreme Relic – Mephist (Li Wen)]
A genealogical codex of the Pillar of Twilight, chronicling the ascension path of the Twilight Witch.
It is said that possessing this book grants a chance to glimpse the seat of the Pillar Gods.
Reading it reveals the complete Twilight lineage.
Its true power might only reveal itself when Li Wen reached higher levels.
But even a preliminary binding allowed her to read the full genealogy of Twilight.
Ever since the Golden Age ended and the Pillar of Twilight collapsed, the world had lost all trace of the Twilight lineage.
Apart from the immortal beings in Amber City, no one else could follow that path again—not even the road once walked by the Twilight Witch: the Path of the End.
Li Wen held the codex reverently, flipping page by page, until she reached the section titled The End.
She skimmed it quickly at first, then read it again—word by word, with full attention.
In truth, the binding was complete.
The Codex of the End would automatically present its knowledge to her mind whenever she thought about it.
But Li Wen relished this moment of reading.
Even amid the flame and storm, under the howling of a broken sky and while her life teetered on the brink at 1%, it reminded her of a time long past—before World Tree: Origin, before the Great Crossing, before the Twilight itself.
A memory of early spring sunlight, her mother’s gentle voice reading stories, two young siblings curled up and immersed in the tale.
The warmth was irresistible.
“There are twelve stages in the full Path of the End… and to ascend each stage, I need the genealogical codex of another Pillar?”
Li Wen pulled herself out of the memory.
She closed the book and reread it mentally.
The knowledge it held was absolute.
No matter how it was read, truth did not change.
“Each step forward on the Path of the End requires another Pillar’s genealogical codex.”
The strategy group had spent decades preparing this plan—giving her the means to acquire the Codex of the End before she used Urd’s Thorn.
And now, she had to repeat that process eleven more times.
Li Wen fell into long, heavy silence.
Tftc!