PtM Book 17 - Epilogue

The storm struck suddenly and without warning, from all directions at once, battering the Inkwell Plane with enough force to sunder continents and empty oceans. This was not a normal spatial storm, but a world breaker, the kind that struck no more than once a millennium.

It was the third such storm Daoist Blackwater had seen in the past few decades. And this time, he could see the Inkwell Plane falling apart at the seams, threatening to break.

Billions of creatures perished as portions of the planar membrane ruptured. Islands vanished and oceans evaporated. Concentrated primal chaos energy bubbled unfiltered into the realm, warping everything it touched, especially the living.

Dao Lord Blackwater saw it all as it happened from an alcove in the Scriptorium. Those who knew him knew that he was a cold-blooded person who would sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve his goals. Yet even he couldn’t help but feel for those suffering from the catastrophe.

His first instinct was to jump out and investigate, but he ruthlessly suppressed these thoughts. He was in the Scriptorium for a reason: It was the fifth safest location on the Inkwell Plane. As long as he stayed here, it would be impossible for anyone to find him.

The Scriptorium was a wonderful place. From inside, it was possible to scry on anyone in the realm without being discovered. If one were so inclined, it was possible to divine the future, which Dao Lord Blackwater did frequently.

Yet fate was growing increasingly murky of late. The future was becoming impossible to predict. Worse, it was the same with the fate of the entire realm. The Inkwell Plane did not have much time remaining.

“Scriptorium, you have records of every spatial storm that has ever struck the Inkwell Plane,” Dao Lord Blackwater said. “Excluding recent events, has the plane ever been so unlucky? Storms of this magnitude aren’t exactly rare.”

The spirit of the Scriptorium appeared before Dao Lord Blackwater in the shape of an ink sprite, with humanoid features but a familiar shell pattern on the left side of its face. “The last time something similar happened was over a hundred thousand years ago,” said the Scriptorium. “There were two such storms that struck around the same time, roughly one century apart. The plane was weaker at the time and couldn’t adequately defend itself from the second storm. It took three thousand years for the realm to recover.”

“And now there are three such storms, only ten years apart,” Dao Lord Blackwater said. “And the planar boundary still holds.”

“Perhaps these are echoes of a greater storm elsewhere in the void?” said the spirit of the Scriptorium.

“Or perhaps these storms aren’t strong at all,” said Dao Lord Blackwater. “And our ability to defend against them has fallen.”

The Scriptorium was not one to speculate. It watched as Dao Lord Blackwater summoned a map of the Inkwell Plane, using his own ink and blood as a medium. As the strongest cultivator on the entire plane, he’d fused his essence with every nook and cranny of it. He rarely made use of this ability, as it also made him vulnerable.

The map showed not only the Inkwell Plane but the adjacent void as well. It revealed cultivators and flying ships, including the resurgent Inkwell Clan and their enemies, the Paper Tiger Clan. There was insurrection in both the Crimson Lotus Empire and the Slovana Empire. Mendin was currently a war zone between two goddesses, which had now shed all pretenses and intensified their conflict.

Also, the land was broken. The central continent had shattered into four large landmasses that floated in void space around the Central Inkwell Sea.

“Things are getting too violent, too quickly,” Dao Lord Blackwater said. “It’s unnatural, even given the major disasters we’ve seen. There’s usually some chaos that accompanies a Heartforge Realm opening, but usually it happens after the survivors return to their respective powers.”

The powerhouses of the realm had also sensed the collusion. They left seclusion and shot to different points at the planar membrane to inspect the severity of the damage. The Golden Emperor of Slovana, Emperor Qin of the Crimson Lotus Empire, and both of Mendin’s popes flew north, where the damage was greatest.

Objectively, the damage wasn’t bad enough for Dao Lord Blackwater to get involved. But the strangeness of it bothered him, as did the feeling that he definitely shouldn’t leave the Scriptorium, as doing so would spell his end.

It was an unusual feeling for a cultivator of his level to foresee one’s death, since he knew for a fact that it would take at least three cultivators of Emperor Qin’s caliber, or two demons of the Pale King’s caliber to match his combat prowess.

In the end, he chose to investigate. No one else on the plane knew as much about planar collapse mechanics as he did. He had to know: Was this the end?

He took two steps. The first one brought him outside of the Scriptorium, exposing him to enemy detection. The second step took him hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, past the storms of the Inkwell Sea and into the bubble of relative calm at its center. He checked on the prison there and was relieved to find it intact.

Time was not on Dao Lord Blackwater’s side, so he did not linger. He took a third step, which took him to the Inky Sea Sect’s Western Branch, and their guardian treasure, the Gallery. Like the Scriptorium, which contained the Inkwell Ancestor’s stories and creative will, the Gallery housed her appreciation, and a hoard of treasures that could only be retrieved by the worthy.

The Gallery was well-guarded and undamaged by the spatial storm, so Dao Lord Blackwater continued his inspection. He took a brief look at the Northern Branch’s Bridge of Ascension and confirmed that it wouldn’t be opening for another decade.

That only left the Eastern Branch’s Ink World Sanctuary. The Eastern Branch was the only branch currently without a guardian. Its duty was to care for the rare monstrous creatures in the Ink World Sanctuary and maintain the ecological balance on the Inkwell Plane.

Having confirmed that nothing was amiss in these locations, Dao Lord Blackwater teleported to the Inkwell Plane’s planar membrane. He did not travel to the largest membrane fracture like the other powerhouses, but instead went to inspect a place that looked relatively undamaged but was falling apart at the seams.

The planar fabric here is unusually weak, Dao Lord Blackwater noted. Spatial cracks appear here with greater frequency than normal. But what’s most amazing is that the area looks relatively undamaged. It’s only when small pieces fall off that the anomaly can be noticed. Stranger still is that the damage to the planar membrane is immediately repaired upon collapse.

This was classic membrane regression, he concluded, and it occurred with relative frequency. He didn’t have to wait long before a strip of ocean a hundred meters wide and several kilometers long and deep broke away from the Inkwell Plane, where it entered the void and disintegrated.

All of this was normal. What was abnormal was how quickly it happened, and what happened after the planar fragment disintegrated. He double-checked and triple-checked before confirming that he wasn’t imagining things. “The energy isn’t drifting off into the void like it should. Instead, it’s being reabsorbed.”

Blackwater had borne witness to the slow and inevitable collapse of his home plane for several tens of thousands of years and was therefore very familiar with how the process should play out. Planes were like living beings, and it was inevitable that pieces of them were knocked off or broken away. The plane would then absorb more primal chaos energy to make up for the deficiency and produce a smaller but more stable piece of land to replace it.

This process of replacing matter was continuous, but it was contingent on energy loss. Without loss, matter would not be replaced. This meant that the Inkwell Plane was shrinking and would not be recovering.

It had to be connected. The wars. The spatial storms hitting harder than they should. The shrinking planar membrane. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and he’d seen a lot over the past hundred millennia.

He decided to spend the next decade deducing the reasons. By then, those kids should have arrived from the Heartforge Realm and stirred up a whole mess of trouble.

He was about to leave when, suddenly, he found his body stiffening and his qi freezing over. Thinking became difficult. Time seemed to freeze as the waters grew silent, and the edge of the plane suddenly stopped collapsing.

“Who is it?” Dao Lord Blackwater said. He detected no one, and saw only violet skies and an open ocean, but it was clear that whatever this was, it was beyond him. “Don’t tease this old man with theatrics. Show yourself.”

“Theatrics…” said a voice like crashing wave. “Yes, I suppose this qualifies as theatrics. Barely.”

A cloaked figure rose up from the ocean. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female—all he knew was that this person, this thing,was weak. Yet despite this weakness, it was suppressing his blood and preventing him from exerting any of his strength.

“So you’ve finally returned,” said Dao Lord Blackwater. There was only one person, one creature who could freeze his blood so. “Have you come to finish me off, then?”

“I do not wish to take your life, Blackwater,” they said. “Give me the key, and your life will be spared.” They took a step forward, and the frozen ocean waves flattened. Inky waters became smooth, like polished obsidian.

When they took a second step, Dao Lord Blackwater’s breath caught in his throat. His heart stopped and refused to beat. “We sealed you away,” said Dao Lord Blackwater through chattering teeth. “Your prison holds. How did you escape?” At the same time, he tried to think of a solution to his predicament. Survival was impossible, but he had to warn them.

His first instinct was to tell West Sea. After all, West Sea had the key, which was the one thing they had to make sure she didn’t get. But his frozen mind quickly put a stop to that terrible idea. Warning West Sea would only give away his position.

“No matter how much you struggle, no matter how much you resist, you cannot win,” the cloaked figure said. “I ask you for the third and final time, Blackwater: Give me the key!”

Her words were law. They could not be disobeyed. His body began to move without his permission. Think, think, you need to think, Dao Lord Blackwater told himself. You aren’t fully under her control. She asked you to retrieve the key, so reaching for your storage is allowed.

He placed his hand on his ring of holding, then mustered his will to take out a single item. A talisman. A golden barrier appeared around Dao Lord Blackwater, greatly relieving his bloodline suppression.

“Really? A Golden Fortress Talisman?” his opponent said. “It might be an immortal-grade talisman, but breaking through it will take me three seconds at best.”

Three seconds was all the time Dao Lord Blackwater needed. He gathered all the energy in his body, including his bloodline, his demon core, and his manifestations. He even burned his five law projections, as well as the hint of immortal will he’d managed to condense.

More strength than he could ever handle filled his body, and for a single second, he had the power to slay immortals and gods.

Yet he did not attack. He could not attack. His blood would not permit it.

So Dao Lord Blackwater settled for the next best thing. He spoke words that shattered his shield and broke through her spatial blockade. By using the plane as his medium, he warned all four branches of the Inky Sea Sect, the two emperors, the two popes, and the Pale King. He warned every powerhouse who might be listening.

“The seal is broken!” shouted Dao Lord Blackwater. “Our ancient enemy has returned! Run! Hide! Our doom is upon us!”

The price he paid to deliver this message was everything he had.

The cloaked figure sighed. “Why the struggle, Blackwater? This plane is mine. You can’t stop me. No one can.”

“We sealed you off once,” Dao Lord Blackwater said. “We can do it again.”

They shook their head. “I have another conduit into this world. My power is sealed, but my will can no longer be contained.”

“We shall see,” Dao Lord Blackwater said. “Powerful as you are, you are still a fragment. Besides, you should know by now who sealed you off in the first place.”

These words provoked the desired emotional fluctuation, but it was too little, too late. There was no saving him.

With not a bang, but a whimper, the strongest cultivator on the Inkwell Plane perished.

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End Book 17