TopAppnovel Chapter 330: Domain I
Chapter 330: Domain I
Lyandra reached out and took Luna’s hand, feeling the trembling her daughter was trying to hide.
’My baby girl... She’s been drowning in everyone’s emotions all night and hasn’t complained once.’
"He makes impulsive decisions when protecting what he considers his own. You read the reports from the portal incident. He’s self-destructive when people he cares about are threatened."
Her grip tightened slightly.
"Men are prideful creatures who feel like everything is their responsibility to fix. They take burdens on themselves that should be shared."
She looked into Luna’s silver eyes, seeing the exhaustion her daughter was barely concealing.
"Remember everything I taught you in the past year?"
Luna’s expression shifted, something cold and determined passing through her normally warm gaze despite the emotional overload threatening to break her.
"Don’t worry, Mother... I remember everything."
Her voice came out steady and strong, showing none of the internal struggle.
Lyandra patted her head one final time.
"Before I leave, I’ll pass you my old weapon and teach you the weapon art. You’ll need it to keep up with Damy when things get complicated."
She stood up, her black hair falling around her shoulders.
"Get some rest tonight... Tomorrow will be harder than you think."
Luna watched her mother leave, and the moment she was alone, her carefully maintained composure cracked.
Her hands shook violently, tears finally spilling over as the accumulated weight of everyone’s emotions crashed down on her without anyone watching.
The tragic story of Damian’s origins.
The massacre that had wiped out an entire Imperial family.
The terrible choices Alaric had made.
Damian’s buried confusion and pain.
Her parents leaving for war.
And her own fear and grief and overwhelming responsibility.
She took shuddering breaths, fighting to center herself.
After several minutes, the trembling stopped.
The tears dried.
And her silver eyes hardened with determination.
She looked down at her hands, thinking about the training her mother had put her through in secret.
The combat techniques Damian didn’t know she’d mastered.
The skills she’d developed away from everyone’s eyes.
The weapon she’d been learning to wield.
A determined smile crossed her face, so different from her usual warm expression.
"Don’t worry, Damian..."
The whisper was so quiet no one could have heard it.
"I’ll keep you safe... Even from yourself."
****
[Valcor Estate - Training Room]
More than two weeks had passed since Alaric and Lyandra left for the frontlines.
The house felt emptier without them, the silence heavier in ways that had nothing to do with sound.
Damian sat cross-legged in the center of the training room, his breathing steady and controlled. The meditation exercises had become routine, something his body did without conscious thought.
His crimson hair had grown longer over the past weeks, falling past his shoulders now. He’d tied it back with a simple thread rather than cutting it, the weight of it against his neck a reminder that time kept moving whether he was ready or not.
He wore a simple black shirt and trousers.
His eyes remained closed, his hands resting loosely on his knees.
The mental debuffs were gone.
All of them.
Will and Perception had stabilized, returned to baseline, the fragmented thoughts and degraded stats finally recovering to what they’d been before the portal.
He was back to peak condition.
But something had changed.
Luna had noticed it first, the way he moved through the house like a ghost, present but not really there. The way he answered questions with perfect calm, his voice never rising and never showing emotion beyond surface-level acknowledgment.
He was too calm.
The kind of calm that came before breaking or after breaking, she couldn’t tell which.
She’d tried asking once, her silver eyes searching his face for cracks in the facade.
He’d smiled at her, pat her head, and changed the subject.
She hadn’t asked again.
Damian’s breathing continued, in and out, the rhythm hypnotic in its consistency.
His crimson eyes opened slowly, staring at nothing.
Then his voice emerged, barely above a whisper.
"...It’s time."
His finger snapped.
Snap
****
[Domain of Despair]
The world inverted.
Pitch-black ground stretched endlessly beneath his feet, solid yet somehow wrong, like walking on the surface of an abyss that hadn’t decided whether to remain floor or become void.
Above him, the crimson sky pulsed like a massive heart, each throb sending ripples of red light across the darkness, the rhythm matching his own heartbeat in synchronization that felt invasive.
And everywhere, suspended in the air like grotesque decorations, hung the corpses.
Dozens of them... Hundreds.
Bodies floating in invisible currents, slowly rotating, their dead eyes staring at nothing.
Damian stood perfectly still in the center of his Domain, his eyes tracking the bodies that surrounded him on all sides.
The gang members from Tranquil City, their faces frozen in the expressions they’d worn when Alessio had killed them.
The Nobles he’d executed in the portal, their entitled shock preserved forever.
The students who’d died because of choices he’d made, because he’d been too slow or too weak or too late.
Brian’s family, slaughtered in their own house, still staring.
Zavier’s parents, their faces twisted with pain.
All of them here, preserved in this space that fed on negative emotions.
His arms spread wide, palms open.
And black fog erupted from his body.
Not the controlled manifestation he’d used in combat before, not the measured release he’d practiced for weeks.
This was everything.
Every piece of despair he’d been holding back, every fragment of guilt he’d compartmentalized, every whisper of self-hatred he’d suppressed just to function.
It poured out like a dam breaking, thick and viscous, spreading across the ground in waves that seemed almost alive.
The Domain hungered.
It drank the fog greedily, expanding and intensifying, the pressure multiplying until the air itself felt heavy enough to crush.
More corpses appeared, filling every available space until the sky was black with bodies.
Damian’s eyes remained closed, his face serene despite the tears flowing down his cheeks.
The liquid ran in steady streams, dropping to the black ground below, but his expression never changed.
It remained peaceful and empty.
Like someone watching their own execution with detached acceptance.
Then the whispers began.
"Worthless..."
"Monster..."
"You ate them..."
"You became what you killed..."
The familiar accusations, the voices that had haunted him for weeks, months, a lifetime that spanned two existences.
And among them, rising above the others, one voice that made everything else fade.
"Alessio..."
Damian’s eyes opened.
She floated directly in front of him, suspended at eye level, her body exactly as he remembered from that night.
Nerra.