Absolute Cheater-Chapter 294: Last key

As Asher handed the sixth Sovereign Key to Valeris, the world beyond the Ashen Conflux stirred with unease. The death of Zar-Kethel, the Keeper of the Gluttoned Seal, sent ripples through the arcane and spiritual realms, unsettling those attuned to such disturbances.

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Back in the realms beyond shadow—where the void hummed in disharmony, and stars died with songs unheard—the Devourer Cult watched.

Not through eyes.

But through mouths.

Countless, watching mouths—carved into obsidian altars, stitched into robes, etched into flesh—turned silently toward the Ashen Conflux. There, where the Maw of Chains had fallen and now where Zar-Kethel had been unmade, the threads of prophecy frayed.

A high priestess knelt beneath the gullet-shaped altar, her skin tight over a hundred hungry eyes. "The sixth mouth has been sealed."

A writhing figure above her—half-rotted, crowned with tongues—let out a long, rasping moan. "The Gluttoned Seal… devoured from within."

"They will reach the end," whispered another, cloaked in veils of stitched-together scalps. "We must act."

"Release the Dissonant Prophet," came a final voice, old and sexless, from behind an iron mask of teeth. "And let the Pale Choir weep."

A low keening began across the cult's deepest sanctum as ritual bells rang through blood-stained halls.

Elsewhere…

On a massive barge drifting through the Mirrorfold—an ever-shifting plane of memory and glass—a haunting hymn echoed across its decks. Black-robed figures stood motionless, their faces painted with bone-white pigment, their mouths sewn shut.

The Pale Choir's Barge had begun to move.

High above, at the prow shaped like a weeping angel, the Choirmistress turned her head westward—toward where the final Sovereign Key would awaken.

"It's time," she intoned, words somehow spoken despite her sealed lips. "They will not reach the seventh Key untested."

And far away, in the ruined heart of the Mimir Kingdom, ancient watchers stirred.

Knights wrapped in runes of forgotten time emerged from vaults buried beneath screaming stone. Living relics—the last of the Oracle Guard—received visions burned into the flame of their minds.

"The Bearers of the Keys advance," murmured their captain. "As was written. As must be answered."

Now…

Asher and Valeris stepped through the remnants of the Conflux and into twilight.

Before them, endless dunes stretched beneath a sky the color of dying embers. The land was silent, but not still—glass sand shifted in unseen patterns, moved by memories and echoes. Ancient pylons rose in crooked intervals, marked with Sovereign glyphs and warnings too old to interpret fully.

Valeris narrowed her eyes.

"This is the Dying Refrain."

Asher looked around. "Not much of a welcome."

"Because nothing here is alive enough to greet us. And those who remain... aren't what they were."

She tapped the Sovereign Key now pulsing in her hand. The sixth joined the others already sealed into the Codex.

"One more," she murmured.

And far ahead—barely visible through the haze—a spire jutted from the center of a sunken city of bones. It wasn't tall, but it sang.

A sound only those who had lost everything could hear.

The last Sovereign Key waited there.

But they were no longer alone.

Above the dunes, shadows moved—low and predatory. Mouths that walked. Eyes that remembered. The first wave of the Devourer Cult had arrived.

And beyond them, unseen but approaching fast, the Pale Choir's Barge whispered across the mirrored winds.

The dunes screamed before the cultists did.

Asher felt it first—not through sight, but soul. A twisting in the air. A sourceless pressure that pressed behind his teeth and beneath his nails. Blood curdled. Reality rippled.

And then the sand cracked open.

Figures erupted from the earth, howling.

Dozens—maybe hundreds—of Devourer Cultists, shaped like nightmares. Some bore no faces, only skin stitched tight over hollows. Others were crowned with gnashing teeth or arms made of rib-bone scythes. Every one of them bore the Mark of the Maw—that spiraling sigil of hunger etched across their chests, their tongues, even their shadows.

Valeris drew a breath, already moving. "They followed us."

"No," Asher growled. "They were waiting."

The First Vein surged.

Sanguine Supreme: Crimson Initiate.

In a flash, his bloodline ignited. His cloak of blood-light flared. Asher blurred forward, carving through the first wave. Each swing of Soul Passage was a stroke of violet-white law and raw soul power—severing limbs, unraveling curses.

But the Cult did not die easy.

Each slain cultist fed the others. Their blood was devoured midair by their kin, who swelled in response—mutating, growing extra limbs, layers of chitin, new tongues.

"Adaptive," Asher spat. "Of course they are."

Valeris raised her hand.

"Command: Divide."

A pulse of golden light split the battlefield in half—severing a dozen cultists clean down their spines. The light hardened into a blade of command essence, pinning others in place. She didn't waste breath—just moved, a queen among corpses, dancing through blood and ash with divine authority.

But the sands began to quake again.

The ground sank.

And from beneath rose a towering monstrosity—one of the Devourer Disciples, marked with five mouths across its torso and a ribcage that constantly opened and reformed. Its name was hissed by cultists as they prostrated: "Vorethek, Mouth of Renewal."

It vomited bodies—regenerating cultists from its rib-maw and reanimating the fallen in twisted forms.

Valeris was about to strike—

But Asher spoke first.

"Sanguine Supreme: Second Vein—Bloodlit Dominion."

His voice thundered through the bones of the earth.

Blood exploded outward. Every drop he had spilled didn't vanish—it rose. Sigils ignited the sand. Cursed ichor obeyed him, not them. The fallen cultists' remains twisted midair and turned, no longer soldiers, but anchors—fetters for Asher's will.

Vorethek stepped forward—and the earth itself turned on him.

From beneath the beast, a cage of blood-forged spikes erupted—runed by Asher's dominion. The chains it carried snapped at the spears, but found no purchase. They could devour, but they could not unmake law.

Then Asher struck.

He leapt from a rising wave of blood and drove Soul Passage into Vorethek's primary mouth—cutting not flesh, but rebirth. The core was ruptured. The regeneration staggered. And in that moment, Valeris finished it.

"Command: No More."

Reality itself obeyed.

The mouth sealed shut. Forever.

Vorethek died not with a scream—but with a whimpering sob from a dozen devoured souls.

The battlefield was broken. Cult remnants scattered. Some began whispering prayers to their Hollow God. Others fed themselves to their own tongues.

But it was not over.

In the sky… bells rang.

Soft. Beautiful. Wrong.

The ash clouds parted as a barge of alabaster glass descended from the mirrored heavens. Its hull wept blood. Choirs of the mute stood atop its deck, mouths sewn shut, humming through their throats.

At its prow stood a figure in a white veil and golden armor, her arms spread like a conductor's.

The Choirmistress of the Pale Choir.

She did not speak.

She sang.

The air cracked like crystal. Valeris winced. Asher nearly dropped to one knee—the hymn scraped across his soul like razors made of regret.

"This is new," he growled.

"No," Valeris whispered. "This is old. Too old. She sings in the first language—the one we forgot when we learned to speak."

Around them, the landscape answered. Memory turned fluid. Time wavered.

The Dying Refrain had become alive.

And the final Key was still far ahead.

The sky wept silver.

Ash froze in the air, hanging motionless as the Choirmistress of the Pale Choir raised her hand. The hymn changed—low, thrumming, agonizingly slow. The kind of melody that made the heart beat out of sync. That made thoughts fracture mid-formation.

Asher gritted his teeth.

His body didn't move wrong. The world did.

Valeris staggered beside him, blood trickling from her ears. "She's…rearranging the tempo of cause and effect. We move, and the universe decides later whether we actually did."

Asher's eyes flared with molten ruby. "Then let's make it decide fast."

He slammed his palm to the earth.

Bloodlit Dominion surged anew. But this time, the sigils twisted—not spreading out, but layering, stacking command on command, like stone upon stone. They didn't just command the battlefield anymore.

They began to rewrite its time.

A counter-song of blood and sovereign defiance roared into being.

Chains of crystallized ichor lashed upward into the air, dragging down sound itself—muting the hymn's edge. The floating ash turned red, then moved backward, caught in a temporal feedback storm.

The Choirmistress paused mid-verse.

Asher took the chance.

He blurred upward, Soul Passage now split into twin blades of violet fire. His cloak of blood billowed behind him, wings of red sigils flaring out. Every movement left echoes—temporal phantoms of where he would strike.

The Choirmistress did not block.

She sang one word.

"Undo."

Reality stuttered. Asher's strike missed—not because he erred, but because the past was edited. He had never swung.

He skidded away midair, fury blazing. "She can sing reality edits into effect?!"

Valeris shouted from below, her hands glowing with command essence.

"She's using Choral Chronomancy—a lost art. We need to break her focus. The Choir behind her amplifies her range!"

Asher's eyes sharpened. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

Then he smiled.

"I'll cut the damn chorus."

He twisted midair, his blood dominion bursting out again. This time, the blood didn't seek the ground—it soared, spears and tendrils of command-rich essence piercing toward the mute singers.