chapter 69:The Point of No Return

_"When you open doors that must remain shut, you are never the same… and neither is the world."_

Amid the wreckage left behind by the Battle of the Unified Realms, Xiao stood at the edge of a cosmic chasm—one torn open by the fusion of his blood with the Inverted Yggdrasil Stone.

His eyes flickered with a strange red glow: a fusion of awareness and chaos.

His body trembled—not from fear, but from containing a force far beyond human limits.

He had just fused three forbidden energies:

- The Blood of the Origin

- The Scar of Time

- The Third Curse—released when he broke Ester's seal with his own hands.

"You're shattering the balance, Xiao…" came Heim's voice, pale and staggering, leaning on his sword planted in the earth.

"Every step you take brings us closer to an irreversible end."

But Xiao didn't look at him. His gaze was fixed on a widening rift in the sky—where pulses of pure black light were falling, carrying a melody that couldn't be heard, only felt deep in the bone.

"Heim… the collapse has already begun," he said with the calm of someone who had lost everything… or someone who had finally seen the truth.

Ester, freshly freed from the prison of the Time Mirror, crawled toward Xiao, her tears mixing with the dust on her face.

"Stop… you're fading. This isn't your power… you're burning from within."

But Xiao, with a faint smile, touched his chest.

"If I don't fade, then everyone will. This power isn't mine… it's the price no one else paid."

Then the ground trembled.

From the heart of the sky emerged a massive entity—faceless, with six wings forged from charred bone, and a voice that spoke without a mouth:

*"The embodiment of the curse has been summoned."*

This was the moment… the beginning of *The Great End.*