The Death-Chosen Daughter Chapter 14
In the deepest parts of the mud zone, a nauseating stench of decay and miasma lingered year-round.
Nyssa lay like a puddle of rotting mud on the moldy straw, barely clinging to life. Her exquisite face, which had once captivated countless Light Elves, had ulcerated so badly that the white bone underneath was almost visible.
The wound where Caelum’s longsword had pierced her shoulder, lacking any magic to heal it, had become entirely infected, oozing pus and crawling with dense swarms of maggots
Yet, cursed by the tragic longevity of the High Elves, she simply could not die.
“Water… give me a sip of water…”
Nyssa let out a feeble moan, but apart from the rats scurrying in the mud, no one paid her any attention.
The parents who had once held her in the palm of their hands now fought like beasts in a nearby mud pit over half a piece of moldy bread.
Suddenly, Nyssa’s withered fingers spasmed violently.
The royal soul-ring that belonged to Elowen had eerily fused into a bloody mess with her finger bone due to the forced soul- binding earlier.
“Heh… Hahahaha…” An ugly laugh tore from Nyssa’s throat, mixed with the yellowish-green pus she spat from her mouth.
She knew that although the soul-binding ceremony was interrupted that day, in the instant she wore the ring and the vows were spoken, the ancient pact had established an incredibly faint connection.
“Caelum…”
A venomous light erupted in Nyssa’s cloudy eyes. Using every last ounce of her strength, she frantically poured her filthy, death- tainted soul energy back through the pact of the ring.
“Come and see me… Even if I’m going to hell, you’re coming with me!”
Meanwhile, far away in the ruins of the upper royal court, Caelum knelt in the former Hall of Wishes like a hollow shell drained
of its soul.
Suddenly, his heart seized in a violent spasm.
Immediately after, he watched in horror as the back of his hands and his neck began to surface with the same gray, necrotic aura as Nyssa’s, even faintly showing corpse spots!
The backlash of the soul-bond had taken effect.
As the pact’s initiator, even an incomplete bond forced him to bear half of Nyssa’s rotting curse.
The power of the contract transformed into invisible chains, dragging mercilessly at his soul.
When Caelum, dragged by this power, stumbled into the mud zone, this was the nightmare he found.
Hearing footsteps, Nyssa laboriously turned her head. When she saw the corpse spots spreading on Caelum’s face, she laughed maniacally like a triumphant viper.
“Look at you now, noble prince…” Nyssa mocked him, coughing up blood clots as she laughed. “I knew you would come. We are soul-bound, after all.”
Nyssa giggled, drool leaking from the corners of her mouth.
“For every inch 1 rot, you rot too.”
“You can’t kill me! If you kill me, the backlash of the pact will make you suffer a fate worse than death! Come here, hold me! Hold me in your arms like you used to!”
Caelum stood numbly, rooted to the spot.
He looked at the hideous, venomous, foul-smelling monster before him. The tragic irony was that a memory surfaced in his mind, one of moonlight from the year he turned fifteen.
Elowen back then, wearing a thin starlight dress, had been beautiful, aloof, and proud.
When she looked into his eyes, her gaze was so pure, so clean, without a single trace of impurity.
Yet for this nauseating pile of rotting flesh, he had discarded that purest love and personally condemned the girl whose eyes once held only him to an abyss of no return.
“You make me sick.” Caelum’s voice lacked any fluctuation.
“So what?!” Nyssa shrieked wildly. “You can never get rid of me in this life!”
“Yes.”
Caelum suddenly smiled-a bleak, tragic smile filled with utter self-loathing.
“My soul is too sullied. How could I ever face her, bound to a thing like you?”
Caelum raised his right hand, the one where bone was still exposed from the netherfire, and plunged it violently into his own chest, seizing the elven core that still faintly beat within!
“What are you doing?! You maniac! Stop!” Nyssa screamed in terror, feeling the apocalyptic self-destruction radiating from the other end of the pact.
He slowly closed his eyes.
The last thing Nyssa saw was Caelum’s fingers closing brutally, crushing the elven core to dust within his chest.
The agony of a crushed core instantly obliterated all of Caelum’s senses. The magic veins throughout his entire body ruptured inch by inch, and horrifying amounts of blood bled from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
Along with the complete destruction of the elven core, the filthy pact connecting him to Nyssa was violently and unilaterally severed by this brutal act of self-destruction!
“No!”
The backlash of the broken pact stole Nyssa’s final breath. With a shrill scream, her eyes bulged out, and she completely lost all life, turning into a truly rotting, foul-smelling corpse.
And the black netherfire on her ring finger, which had burned for days, was finally extinguished with the collapse of the pact
and the death of its host.
Caelum was on the verge of collapse. His power was shattered, his noble immortality stripped away, and his lifespan reduced to less than that of the lowest commoner.
But he grit his teeth so hard they nearly shattered, refusing to let himself pass out completely.
Supporting himself on the muddy ground with blood-soaked hands, he dragged his half-crippled body, inch by inch, toward Nyssa’s corpse.
He grabbed Nyssa’s bony finger wearing the ring, forcefully snapped the bone, pulled out a broken dagger, and brutally scraped off the royal ring that had fused into the bone, rot, and blood.
Using his blood-soaked robes, he wiped the ring bit by bit, extremely carefully, until it once again revealed its clean starlight
patterns
“Giving it back. Ihave to it back to you
Covered in blood, his legs useless from pain and exhaustion, Caelum clutched the clean ring in his palm.
He dragged himself toward the abyssal gates, down the corridor of thorny, withered vines, leaving a horrifying trail of blood.
