Published at 28th of December 2025 8:00 am

Chapter 1953 CapAtulo 1953: Breaking The Cradle (4)

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Chapter 1953: Breaking The Cradle (4)

Eos watched a mother walking with her daughter along the shore, not far from where the tree and the boy were transforming.

She was laughing with her daughter when she felt the first tendril brush her cheek. It was soft, like a kiss from a dream, and she smiled when she thought of her husband, but she was about to touch her cheek to wipe out what should be morning dew when she discovered that she could no longer move.

Her eyes moved around in confusion and panic until she caught a waving tendril that resembled a snake made out of wood and flesh.

The panic in her eyes turned to horror and pain as the tendril pierced through her left eye, and she felt it begin to slither all through her body. Luckily for her, she went mad before the pain could shatter her soul.

Her daughter, still holding her hand, was curious why her mother was no longer moving. She was five years old, and she peered upward to look at her mother’s face for answers. Eyes filled with wonder, the child watched, curious, as her mother’s face drained of color, of expression, of memory.

That wonder turned to fear when her mother’s body folded inward like paper, bones crunching softly, skin collapsing into the tendril’s embrace.

Even though she was filled with fear and began to cry, the child refused to let go of her mother’s shrinking hand, and so the tendril took her too.

However, unlike the mother that was devoured, the child was not killed; instead, like the boy before, she was changed.

Eos watched the girl rise, taller, thinner, her skin now translucent white, with her veins pulsing with stolen vitality so intense that her eyes were like suns.

She opened her mouth, and a thousand smaller mouths opened along her arms, and then she began to slowly walk through the nearest city, behind her, an ocean of tendrils followed.

The transformation spread slowly at first. One tree. One child. One mother. One city.

Then faster.

The glass oceans began to boil, not with heat but with hunger. Waves rose up as walls of white liquid that resembled the digestive juices of a large organism.

This wave crashed over islands and dragged entire civilizations beneath the surface. Those who drowned did not die. They floated back up changed.

Their bodies elongated, limbs multiplied, mouths blooming where eyes had been. They walked on the surface of the water now, arms trailing like jellyfish tendrils, calling to the untouched with voices that sounded almost like their old loved ones.

“Join us. It’s beautiful. There’s so much more in the silence of my embrace than you shall see in all your lives.”

The corruption continued to spread, and Eos saw that among the first that were transformed, like the boy and the girl, their bodies were rapidly losing any fleshy aspect, and before long, they transformed into red crystals and were frozen in place.

After a while, these crystals shattered into storms of shards. Each shard became a seed, and each seed was flung into the air where they crossed the boundaries of space and time and landed on other worlds, moons, stars, and every heavenly body they could find.

From there the corruption spread across solar systems, gakxies, then universes, and it did not take long before the entirety of the Reality fell, and what was worse was that the Reality being affected could not even tell what was happening, because their minds had been frozen when the voice of Enoch entered theor hearts and they could only watch helplessly as their bodies and powers were twisted into serving this Will until finally their consciouness was consumed as well.

From these corrupted Realities, shards of corruption were flung out like missiles to those Realities that did not hear Enoch’s voice.

However, even after these shards were flung out, the outward appearance of the transformed Realities did not change; it seemed as if Enoch was lying low until all the Realities inside the Cradle had been totally transformed.

Eos watched one of the first shards flung by the corrupted Realities impact one of the Realities that were free from this corruption.

This Reality had few humans, but was a heaven for Beasts and other unique creatures. He saw the shard fall into an island where massive creatures that resembled whales dwelled, and it was eaten by one of their young, and the transformation began immediately.

The corrupted child, now a towering thing of white limbs and flowering mouths, shot out tendrils with so much force it pierced through its entire world in an instant, converting everything into its new self, and with a mighty leap, it rode through across the void between worlds and landed softly on another filled with the same whale-like beings.

However, the whales here sensed the wrongness of the thing that had just entered their world, and they sang their warning song to it, and Eos felt sadness when he heard the deep, mournful, and ancient rhythm.

The child-thing opened its arms and sang back, making a mockery of their cry, but the sound of its voice was Enoch’s, and the whales listened.

They should not have listened.

One by one, their warning song faltered. Their great bodies convulsed. Barnacle-like growths of white erupted along their flanks as their eyes clouded. Their fins split into forests of arms. Their mouths, once full of gentle baleen, widened into caverns lined with teeth made of stolen voices.

They sang to each other for a while before the corrupted whales dove into the skies and began to cross space while trailing tendrils that snatched worlds and stars from the void.

Worlds crumbled in their grip, and their inhabitants were dragged, screaming, into new forms. In some powerful worlds where there were immortals, some resisted. A school of warriors on winged mounts charged the first corrupted whale, lances of pure starlight erupting from their arms.

The lances struck true, piercing the whale’s hide, but the wounds closed by folding inward, while generating an intense suction force that pulled the warriors inside the closing wounds.

They emerged changed, their bodies fused to the whale’s flesh, arms sprouting from its sides, mouths singing the lullaby in perfect, terrible harmony.

Reality after Reality began to fall, but even though Enoch’s corruption was relatively quiet, it could not hide its traces for long. It had only gained such great momentum so quickly because every Reality inside the Cradle believed that danger came from outside and not inside, and so they were not quick to respond to these changes happening.

Their disbelief caused many Realities to fall, as they tried to communicate with their fallen neighbour to inquire what was happening. When it became clear that whatever was happening was beyond their understanding, these Realities, protected by the Beasts with no means of defending themselves, began to flee while calling out for their guardian.

Many would not make it.

The corruption was no longer spreading; now it was accelerating.

One third of the Cradle’s realities had fallen within what might have been days if days still existed here.

The Beast of Inevitability woke fully when it turned its perception inward to the place it was supposed to keep safe, and a mournful howl rippled from its mouth.

Its serpent tail uncoiled, fangs bared, venom dripping with a potent aura of destruction, and with a might heave, the Beast began t swim through the Cradle, herding the uncorrupted realities behind it.

The turtle’s vast legs paddled, pushing them toward safety while its serpent tail lashed, erasing corrupted shards that were being flung from the corrupted Realities. When the Beast noticed the number of Realities already possessed by this corruption, another mournful howl arose from it.

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