Chapter 317: Chapter 316: Be Erased.
Atlas gazed at the Ureil—though tonight, the title she carried pressed heavier than the wings at her back. She was no longer just Ureil, the winged being he had battled and hated. Tonight, she stood before him as something far greater, far more terrible: Fate Herself.
Her expression was changed, warped into something unfamiliar, yet more commanding than fury alone. The first time he had seen her in chains, her face was carved from rage and humiliation. The second time, when she came at him with unbridled force, her eyes burned with vengeance, and her wings thundered like stormclouds breaking against the earth.
But now... now was different.
Very different.
Even her wings moved differently, feathers whispering against the infinite white void, not with the sharpness of a predator but the slow tremor of inevitability.
"So," Atlas asked, his voice carrying more bravado than he felt, "mind telling me why Fate herself has blessed me with a visit?"
The name dripped off his tongue with defiance, but his heart hammered in his chest. He tried to stand straight, though the whiteness around them pressed close, suffocating in its endlessness.
Ureil—Fate—paced forward, her hands clasped neatly behind her back, like a sovereign inspecting her subject. "I think," she said at last, her voice even and unhurried, "you know better than me why I have to come here."
Atlas swallowed, the dryness in his throat scraping like sand.
The prophet had warned him. Meddling, he’d said. Meddling with powers far beyond his comprehension. And here he was, standing face to face with that warning given flesh. He was meddling with Fate itself.
He reached inward instinctively, searching for that voice—that guiding whisper, that steadying presence. But within him, all was silence. Silence so vast it pressed against his ribs like a second prison.
"Oh," Fate tilted her head, lips curving with amusement, "he’s not going to answer you. He can’t reach here.."
Atlas stiffened. "...Where are we?"
Her gaze wandered outward, as though the horizon itself were her creation. "A void between space. A sanctuary of sorts. A place where Dracula, Ignaya, Atlas, and I once fashioned a crossroads of eternity. But Ignaya—Death—claims it most often. She prefers to speak to souls who wander into her embrace."
She said it like a casual truth, like someone remarking on the weather, but the weight of her words pressed hard.
Atlas? The name echoed in his mind, like a stone dropped into a still lake. No... the prophet’s voice. He said he was also named atlas. The first bearer of the name.
He turned in slow circles, drinking in the endless whiteness, a canvas stretched to infinity. No up, no down, no horizon—just the oppressive brilliance of nothing. It was beautiful, in the way a blade glinting at one’s throat was beautiful.
"So," he muttered, shoving the silence between them into words, "what now? You want to kill me? Pass me to Ignaya, death?"
Fate smiled. The curve of it was delicate, but sharp enough to bleed. She stepped closer, her presence warping the whiteness as though reality leaned toward her.
"Oh no. Even Ignaya, the patient shadow, told you—we made a pact with Atlas. Your guide. We would not touch him, nor his soul, nor his reincarnations. So don’t worry..."
Atlas let out a slow breath, relief loosening his chest, but the air of this place was thin, as if it had never belonged to lungs. Something in him still clenched, waiting for the fall that always follows relief.
"...But," she said.
His stomach sank. There it is, he thought grimly.
"But?" he asked aloud.
Her gaze locked onto him with unsettling intensity. "But you. You are something I... no, something we, no—something this world has never seen. The guide, perhaps, has not realized it, but you..." She took another step closer, her shadowless form eclipsing the white. "You are not of this world. Are you?"
Atlas’s mouth went dry. "...What do you mean?" His words were measured, but his mind recoiled.
"The moment Atlas died on the bed..." she whispered, circling him now, her wings brushing air that had no wind, "and your soul entered his vessel... from that moment, the strings of Fate unraveled. The threads I alone can see, the threads I alone can control—they vanished. Even now..." her gaze flicked down his body, dissecting him with eyes of inevitability, "...there are no strings on you."
She stepped back, her voice carrying both awe and disturbance. "That is why I did not erase you."
The word hooked into him. "Erase? I thought you said you were not permitted to kill me."
"Not kill," she corrected, tone still calm but colder. "Erase. Two different things."
Her eyes drifted toward the horizonless void, her wings trembling with a strange nostalgia, as if recalling the memory of time itself.
Atlas’s breath caught. He remembered—the Guide’s warning. She will not kill you. She will erase you. At the time, he hadn’t known what it meant. Even now, the meaning slipped like smoke between his fingers. Not death. Not life. Something worse. Something gone.
"So," Fate said, voice suddenly sharp again, "tell me, Otherworlder. Why have you come here, to our world?"
Atlas said nothing. His silence was not courage, not clarity. It was the silence of a man who did not yet know what answer might destroy him.
"..."
The pause stretched until it trembled. Then, softer—softer than he had ever heard her speak—she said, "I can send you back, you know."
Atlas’s eyes flickered.
"You must have had family. Friends. Loved ones." Her voice lilted like a memory. "Do you not want to return to them?"
He lowered his gaze. His heart twisted. Family? Friends? Yes. He remembered them. Their laughter, their coldness, their faces half-faded yet painfully vivid. And yet—
He said nothing.
She studied him, as if peeling apart his soul layer by layer. Her steps carried her close again, unbearably close. Her hand reached up, fingers cool as moonlight, tilting his chin until his eyes met hers.
Her eyes were not just eyes. They were storms and scrolls, voids and verdicts, a thousand lives and deaths collapsing into the depths of her gaze.
"...What say you?" she whispered. "Do you not want to return?"
Atlas’s lips parted. His throat burned with all the things he could say. But in the end, his voice came out low, steady, carved in gold.
"...Never."
His golden eyes gleamed like suns in miniature, unwavering. Why would he return? Here, he had a sister. Here, he had loved ones. Here, he had a future unborn, a child who waited in the quiet corridors of destiny. Why would he trade that for ghosts of another life?
Fate’s expression darkened, shadows spilling into her still face.
"...Very well," she breathed, a touch of regret laced with steel. "I tried. I tried to be kind." Her hand fell away, wings flaring in silent thunder.
"So," she whispered, her voice now a blade, "kindly....be erased..."