After their barrage of attacks fizzled into pathetic sparks and harmless smoke, the entire group of degenerates froze mid-motion under the Night Empress's sorrowful gaze.

Even these battle-hardened perverts, who spent centuries bullying the weak and backstabbing anyone stronger, felt their rotten fingers twist.

Bullying the weak was their favorite hobby, sure, but they had clashed with true power before. Still, none of them had ever grasped the fundamental abyss between someone who had transcended and someone who merely borrowed strength from reality.

There was no comparison.

One was reality itself, perpetual and eternal.

The other was just a filthy little thief trying to pickpocket the universe.

The Night Empress, her dual-colored eyes brimming with ancient grief, didn't spare a single thought for their fear. Her gaze swept across the millions of risen dead, many of whom had once been her own people.

Flickers of old memories, faces she once protected, voices that once laughed under gentler skies, surged through her mind.

Blood tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

"You all…" Her voice was soft, yet it carried the strength of collapsing empires. "Why have you awakened even the dead? Can the fallen of my empire not sleep without further agony?"

Her sorrowful eyes finally locked onto Yue Qingshuang.

The Golden Masked Ghost stood frozen like a statue.

In the next breath, the Night Empress's figure expanded with graceful majesty. She grew until she towered like a living mountain, dwarfing the entire battlefield. Her dark kimono-like gown fluttered like midnight rivers, silver and gold patterns weeping starlight as her presence alone pressed down on them all.

She could have pinched them out of existence with two delicate fingers.

Her rage was not directed at the already-corrupted Wraiths, those lost souls had long been beyond salvation. But the newly risen undead… their souls were still intact, carefully preserved by her within their bodies, waiting for a hopeful day of true reincarnation.

Now, because of these fools' necromancy, the very act of raising them had begun corrupting those souls. Most were now doomed to the same fate as the Wraiths. Only the strongest Immortals with intact soul cores might still be salvaged.

"Hope of these warriors…" Her crimson lips trembled beneath the silver chain veil. "Your actions have sullied them. And so, the warriors' blades that once promised victory shall haunt you forever...!"

The moment her words fell, Yue Qingshuang's eyes widened in pure panic behind his golden mask.

"These souls are rebelling against me?!"

The undead horde surged with unnatural fury. Skeletal hands shot forward, grabbing Yue Qingshuang by the throat and forming a tightening chain of rotten fingers. More hands seized his legs, his arms, his waist, yanking and groping with vengeful strength.

"Get the hell off me! I raised you imbeciles!"

It wasn't just him. The same nightmare descended on every single one of the degenerates.

"Arghhh! These bony fucks are choking my dick- I mean my neck!" Vileblood Sovereign roared, black veins bulging as he tried to melt the hands with corrosive blood, only for the grip to tighten.

"Impossible… erasing… them…!" Silent Abyss Walker hissed, but his void arts slid uselessly off the cursed undead like oil on water.

Soulreaver Matron shrieked in genuine horror for once. "Not my precious soul puppets-! You wretched corpses, Mommy will... ack!"

Even Ssa'vethra thrashed violently, her powerful tail whipping wildly as dozens of hands latched onto her thick scaled thighs and waist. "You dare touch this empress's body?! I'll rip you apart and use your bones as... nghhh!"

The corrupted souls didn't shatter when struck. Instead, they grabbed tighter, strangling invisibly, as if an eternal curse had been woven into their very existence.

No matter how hard the villains fought, the pressure only grew, a perpetual, humiliating chokehold.

The Night Empress watched it all with calm, regal melancholy. She whispered gently, yet her words reshaped the battlefield itself.

"Verse III — 'The Mist That Carried Promises.'"

She could weave sacred "promises" into the fabric of reality, strengthening allies and mercilessly weakening those who opposed the grand tale of existence.

Legends spoke of her with reverence:

'Through veils of mist that carried sacred promises, she walked, weaving fate with gentle kisses.'

Even her silver chain veil shimmered as she continued, voice like the first light of dawn:

"Victory," she murmured. The remaining loyal undead suddenly moved with keener, sharper purpose.

"Hope," she sighed softly. Broken and despairing souls across the ravine flickered with renewed green light.

Yue Qingshuang's undead army had completely turned on its summoner.

The rest panicked in their own desperate glory.

"These bony bastards are trying to fuck me to death!" Ragehoof Darg bellowed, swinging his axe uselessly.

"Run, you brainless rags! Run!" Death Sickle God howled, green flames flickering in terror inside his skull.

Yue Qingshuang instantly blasted himself backward with everything he had left, tearing through the air in a desperate escape.

The rest of the ten Quasi-Transcendents followed in a chaotic, screaming retreat, tails between their legs, curses flying, dignity long abandoned.

But it was already too late.

The Night Empress's mountain-sized figure shimmered with ethereal grace as she raised her delicate hands toward the blood-red sky.

"Verse IV — 'The Empress Who Walked in Perpetual Morning.'"

A beautiful, merciless curse bloomed around her. Too much light for mortal hearts to bear. As long as existence itself endured, she carried the perfect aura of dawn.

Those who stood near her felt an overwhelming wave of nostalgia, heartbreakingly beautiful, yet mentally crushing when forced to contrast it with the eternal darkness of her ruined empire.

The aura acted like hypnotic chains, forcing every eye to meet hers.

"Verse V — 'The Unfinished Line.'"

Because the grand tale of existence, Eternal Dawn Saga was never permitted to reach its natural conclusion, she had transcended through its incomplete tale.

She could now forcibly write a new line into someone else's fate. The original story was one of hope and renewal… but the lines she wove often carried a twisted, ironic beauty.

"Empress, release me! I am from the Beast Alliance! I'll command all my forces to serve you eternally as compensation!" Ssa'vethra hissed desperately, her powerful scaled body still thrashing against the choking undead hands.

The Night Empress ignored her completely.

"You want peace?" she asked softly, one elegant brow lifting as her gaze settled on the Death Sickle God.

Her silver chain veil shimmered, and her voice carried an almost gentle curiosity.

The skull-faced pervert, enchanted by her eyes and choking under the earlier curse, found himself nodding like a lovestruck fool.

Green flames in his sockets flickered weakly.

The Night Empress gave a rare, faint smile, enchanting, melancholic, and utterly chilling to everyone who saw it.

"So be it…" she whispered. "The tale has ended… and the mighty warrior finally found peace."

"!!"

The invisible souls holding Death Sickle God suddenly receded. His rotten skeletal body rapidly grew flesh, skin, and handsome features, restoring the face and form he had once sacrificed for power centuries ago.

"I-It worked?!" he gasped, staring at his restored hands in stunned delight. "Hah! This lord handsome face is back, baby! Now I can finally fuck-!"

BOOM!

His newly restored body exploded into a shower of blood and bone fragments. The Night Empress let out a rare, soft chuckle, hypnotic and haunting, like the first birdsong after a massacre.

"The only peaceful end to your story… is death."

The battlefield fell into horrified silence for half a heartbeat.

Then the slaughter of twisted endings began.

One couldn't escape. The Empress Who Walked in Perpetual Morning stepped gracefully between them, carrying the new sunrise in her veins.

With every elegant step, nostalgia bloomed like poisonous flowers.

Ssa'vethra screamed as vibrant flowers suddenly sprouted across her obsidian-green scales, granting her a strange, tragic beauty she had long lacked.

Her powerful body became a living garden of roses and thorns, before the flowers turned toxic. Her limbs stiffened, her golden eyes rolled back, and she plummeted like a falling star into the twelve-thousand-meter-deep ravine, venomous blood trailing behind her.

"Fuuuuck-! Not like this, you veiled c-!" Her roar cut off as she vanished into the black waters below.

One by one, the rest received their ironic verses.

Vileblood Sovereign's corrupting veins bloomed into beautiful crimson lotuses. "Wait- this actually feels kinda hot-ARRRGH!" He melted from the inside out, screaming as his own corruption turned poetic and fatal.

Boneflame Tyrant's burning armor transformed into warm, comforting sunlight… which then incinerated him into peaceful ashes while he roared, "This daddy didn't sign up for fucking poetry death!"

Soulreaver Matron tried one last plea, "Mommy will be good, just let me-" before her soul-puppets turned into gentle lullabies that sang her own soul into eternal, humiliating rest.

Grudge Weaver's spider threads wove themselves into a beautiful maze of fate… then strangled him with loving, fatherly affection until his eyes popped.

Even Yue Qingshuang wasn't spared.

Golden chains of "hope" wrapped around his body as he tried to flee, forcing him to experience fleeting visions of the peace he had denied others.

"Damn it-! You sanctimonious glowing bitch! I'll remember this!" he screamed in frustration, golden mask cracking as he blasted backward with everything he had left.

The Night Empress continued her sorrowful walk, whispering the final lines of their fates.

Yet she sang the Unfinished Line, the verse that fate itself refused to let conclude.

For if the tale should ever reach its end… the dawn would die.

And so would she.

The Night Empress's mountain-sized figure shimmered with ethereal sorrow as she continued reciting the ancient verses she had once read in that sealed primordial cave.

Yet high above the collapsing Starry Death Valley, another observer had long since arrived, completely immune to her conceptual verses. He hovered silently in the shadows, arms crossed, watching the spectacle with mild surprise.

"So transcendence isn't limited to elements…" he muttered thoughtfully.