Glenn's eyes suddenly opened, and he jumped to his feet, his hands flaring up with Mana as he looked at his surroundings. He was still in the church, but it wasn't destroyed nor covered in blood and guts. He was also entirely alone. The red jewel that broke previously was also gone, but the statue holding it was still there, its position slightly different. Its arms were locked behind its back while its head was raised at the ceiling as if lost in thoughts.

"The fuck is going on...?" The young man mumbled, his right hand going for his waist, only to see his precious axe, Half-Moon, was gone. He quickly looked around, but the weapon was nowhere to be seen. Glenn suddenly froze, noticing something strange. He slowly looked at his left arm, discovering with confusion that the purple that had invaded it was completely gone. His skin was back to normal, slightly tanned, but still of a normal, rosy color. With that, he also realized that all of his wounds from the previous fights were gone, alongside the pain in his ribs.

"Do not bother trying to search for that fiend, nor that piece of trash imbued with the Dead's traces," A disgusted voice suddenly echoed in the church, strangely horrendous. It was a feminine one, and while Glenn had heard many of those otherworldly voices by now thanks to all the strange encounters he had, this one was particularly...rattling. The statue suddenly moved, her head looking down at Glenn domineeringly.

"Hmm...Is that her scent? Why would she...?" The statue slowly turned around, her long wooden legs rumbling as it moved through the air, the pressure pushing the young man back. The Mana swirling around his hands as he tried to prepare a spell was suddenly snuffed out like the light from a candle.

'This is...The Mother?' Glenn thought in awe, his teeth clenched and his eyes wide open. He didn't dare to say a single word and only stared at the statue with fear. As strong as he recently became, nothing he could do would matter in front of such an absolute being. And even if he could infer that there were some rules gods had to respect thanks to Onnea, nothing could guarantee that the Mother would respect said rules.

'There's no way to know what I should expect,' He gritted his teeth, his fists tightly clenched. His weakness was seriously annoying him in those situations. What could he do but kneel in front of such absolute existence? The statue suddenly looked back, the wood making its neck creaking, before leaning toward Glenn while rubbing its chin.

"But there is something else... How did this worm manage to break Humanity's Shackles? This should be reserved for some special ones..." The statue's face suddenly lit up with a burning smile, her previously expressionless face transforming into a feminine, wicked one.

"Why would this little ant be considered special, when his blood is ordinary and his soul so weak?" The statue said, standing back up and leaning her head back, seemingly lost in reflection. Glenn threw a glance at the exit of the church, wondering if he should try to run away. The statue sighed and flicked her fingers. The young man's body suddenly became stiff and he fell to his knees, his lungs and heart stopped. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he found himself unable to breathe, unable to say a word, unable to live.

The strange feeling suddenly disappeared, and Glenn fell face first, gasping for air madly. Never had he felt so...dead.

"Fool. Don't even think about fleeing, you are in my Domain now," The statue sneered, before sitting on the socle that previously served as an altar to the red jewel. She crossed her legs, her eyes staring at Glenn and peering into his soul. The young man gritted his teeth under the unbearable pressure, and pushed himself from the ground, refusing to accept his fate.

"What...The hell...do you want with me...you moronic...psychopathic god...!?" He spat, struggling to talk. The feeling of dying was still creeping into his heart deeply, and he couldn't help but have his knee wobbling when he thought back to how it felt.

'I just refuse to simply accept whatever that thing wants from me!' He thought with a hatred-fueled determination. The statue didn't answer, only moving her right arm to support her chin.

"What is truly strange, is that...somehow, you do not seem to be connected to the strings of this world's Fate. Are you..." The grin she continually wore suddenly changed shape, becoming expressionless again.

"...From "outside"?" She said with a soft voice, almost whispering the last word.

Glenn frowned, before gulping loudly. From the nonsense he heard, he could only infer that something was wrong with him, probably because he was transported into this world in some strange, weird, and uncontrolled manner.

The statue suddenly stood up and returned to the position Glenn first found it to be in, her arms locked behind her back and her face turned toward the ceiling.

"Even so...I'm sure you're no Fallen. No way that feeble soul of yours could have gone through...Truly, a Paradox." She chuckled, hiding half of her wooden face with her hand, "...A Paradox Lost in Limbo. How ironic..." The statue trailed off, smiling slightly. Glenn couldn't help but feel confused, as he couldn't feel the madness and insanity that could so strongly be felt in the rituals of the village preaching this deity. Was he wrong about his judgment...? The statue sighed, before smacking her hands together loudly.

"In any case, you've ruined the birth of My Child...I'll have to start all over again...Again. For that..." The statue, no, the Mother's rictus suddenly became enormous, the wood cracking and tearing at her expression as it revealed a horrible mouth beneath wooden lips filled with an endless sea of black blood. The vision brought Glenn to his knees, an excruciating headache hitting him like a baseball bat. He saw what looked like corpses floating in black blood, covered in yellow pus and rotting flesh, serving as nests for tiny worms that wriggled happily as they devoured their meal.

Glenn felt his head being forced up, his eyes wide open as he was forced to watch the vision of horror contained in the Mother's mouth. He felt himself being aspired to it, unable to resist his fate.

"...For that, I shall punish you..." The Mother's voice bellowed in his ears with a devilish burst of laughter, cries of pain mixed with howls of adoration exploding in his mind like a swirling tsunami of thoughts and visions. He could only think one thing as he sank into the madness, the blood swallowing and pulling him into the depths of hell. He sank endlessly into the void, his thoughts muddied and his senses numbed.

'I...No!' He thought desperately, clinging for any semblance of reality. As he reached out, the movement of his hand going out seemed to take hours, days even, while his thoughts kept on slowing down madly, almost to a stop. Minutes transformed into months, years into seconds, as time changed and caught him in a violent vortex of surreal senses.

He couldn't tell if he was standing still or if he was hurtling through the ages, his mind growing older by the second, death seemingly so far and yet so close. Glenn's thoughts stopped as he fell through the darkness, losing any touch of time.

----------------------------------------

The young man's surroundings suddenly warped, breaking the vicious illusion, and he found himself standing on an armored corpse, its eyes bulging and a sword viciously separating its head. No blood was flowing from the wound, the body dried from the crimson liquid. Glenn fumbled backward, disconcerted by the change of scenery, before slowly raising his eyes. He gazed in awe at the Blood Moon hanging in the sky and its white counterpart hiding behind it. He was in the place he first woke up in, the bloody battlefield he came to know under the name of Retni's Plains.

Corpses were lying as far as the eye could see, white, humanoid creatures roaming around while devouring whatever caught their fancy. The caws of black crows dominated the place, echoing in this empty hell. Glenn stepped back, before understanding that it was yet another illusion. He slowly breathed in, trying to calm his mind.

'Alright, it's not the first time I found myself in these kinds of traps. It can't possibly last forever, right?' The young man thought without much hope, looking around to try and recognize the place he was in. Glenn froze as he recognized a body lying down, half-sitting against a stone, a white creature eating his entrails while a spear was piercing his heart. Glenn held his hand out but stopped when the white creature plunged her hand into the corpse's belly and ripped out a juicy liver. The young man paled as he saw himself getting butchered by this disgusting creature, and reflexively tried to channel his Mana to get rid of the creature. Sadly, nothing happened. He clenched his teeth and tried to jump at the creature and stop it, but he went straight through it as if he wasn't made of solid matter.

"...Why are you alive?" A voice echoed next to Glenn, who turned away from the horrible spectacle in distraught.

'I can't...I can't just watch myself getting eaten!' His back shivered as his eyes trembled and his fear deepened. Yet again, he managed to restructure his thoughts, by repeating endlessly a few words in his mind:

'It's not real. It's not real. It's just a fucking shenanigan from the Mother!' He thought the last idea with rage, his fists clenching and the veins on his forehead pulsing violently.

"Your fate was to die that day. And yet...There you are, maybe not well, but still very much alive," The voice commented, as the scene warped and changed to him discovering a gigantic white crystal floating above a pond mystically. Wait...This person...It wasn't him! He was never that buff, nor did he ever wear such a long cape. That would be much too impractical! Glenn watched attentively as the figure breathed in deeply before smashing the crystal apart and picking up a part glimmering with purple, ancient light.

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"The power of that fiend should have gone to the Fallen Heir...And yet, here you are, surviving while holding a fragment of #######...Hmm?" The voice suddenly interrupted itself when it began talking nonsensical words. It seemed surprised, strangely. Glenn was sure it was the Mother's voice, even if he couldn't find out whether it was a male or a female voice, so what could surprise the Mother? He knew She was talking about Diamanes, but what's that "fragment of #####"? Whatever #### meant, it seemed like there was something wrong about it. He had memorized the pronunciation anyway, so he'll just have to ask the entity living in his left arm once he escapes from this predicament.

If he ever escaped from it.

The scene twisted once again, changing to much too familiar darkness and dampness, in front of a thick, rusted steel door, closed off with multiple locks and securities, while enchantments seemed to have been etched into the metal itself. Glenn winced but forced himself to think back about those times. Never had he seen such a secure door, nor was his cell ever like that. The steel door suddenly shook, denting inward as a powerful force exerted its might from behind it. The young man stepped back in distrust, but the enchantments lit up with a magical hue, and the steel door went back to normal. There were no screams of pain, no roar, just the sound of chains rattling endlessly and the sound of flesh hitting metal.

"The Blood of my Brother should have been successfully imbued in the Son of the End's body while opening a Way for Him, but here you are, bearing his Blessing and rid of his Curse. Fate seems to protect you like a Mother would her child. Interesting, isn't it...?" The voice commented, Glenn only trying to do his best not to panic and lose his mind. Somehow, the atmosphere of the prison was much heavier, much stronger than how it was back then. Did something change in the prison with that "Son of the End"? Or...Perhaps he was spared from this dread thanks to Diamanes' influence.

He'll never know. 'Like a hell of a lot of other things, it seems...When is this trip down memory lane going to stop?' Glenn thought as he felt his consciousness slowly slip away. It was as if previously he was wide awake in a nightmare, but now he was slowly starting to lose control of how things were going. His movements were sluggish, as was his mind. The scenery warped once again, showing a corpse lying down in a ruined street, rain falling on it, and forming a puddle of blood and water under it.

"Your escape from the Gu's Nest changed the fate of the Seedlings, letting them openly fight My Brother's followers," The voice remarked, and Glenn bent forward, falling back in shock when he recognized the corpse's face. It was Giselle, the Black Heir's leader. Her throat was slit and her face contorted in a deep expression of pain, her eyes blank and the white mark on her forehead faded as if it was slowly getting erased by the rain.

'I...Did that?'

"Isn't it funny how one person can change the Fate of an entire population? Truly, the only one who managed to do that was ######... Ah, of course..." The voice chuckled darkly, and the scenery warped once again. It changed to the Auberge, where drinks and food were pouring down everyone's throats without stopping. Glenn looked at the surroundings in awe, remembering the calamity that destroyed the place previously, the creature created by merging the Boss with all of his employees, spared that kid, Liam. He walked around, noticing a figure draped in desert clothes drinking itself to death. His eyes widened and he approached him, to see that it was Sahro, heavy dark bags under his eyes who looked half-dead, empty of the charm and energy the Black Heir always had. He seemed much deadlier, but also...emptier. Glenn stepped back, before heading for the kitchen. He froze at the entry when a small body flew through the room, smashing against a wall.

"You fucking, worthless mongrel! You're not even worth the copper I give to your parents!" The Boss's voice was twisted as if it had been heavily modified. A thick, purple smoke was floating inside the kitchen as most employees had thick rolled leaves of Moon Grass smoldering at their lips. Everyone seemed to ignore the conundrum, some even laughing at the spectacle. The small figure crashed on the ground, his bones twisted and his head bleeding heavily. The Boss grumbled once he saw that Liam didn't stand up, before kicking him in the chest, eliciting no reaction from the kid. He was about to kick once again when he stopped and leaned forward with a curious, disgusting smile. He lifted the malnourished body and held it near his heart, listening attentively. He then exploded in a peal of evil laughter and threw Liam back to his corner.

"The rat is finally dead! Haha, time to get a new toy, boys! Who will come with me to fetch some slave in the Sewers?" Every employee roared in happiness, and a few even proposed themselves to accompany the Boss down to the Sewers. Glenn watched with a cold expression, his arms crossed and his eyes stuck on Liam's unmoving body. Even if he knew it wasn't real, he couldn't help but feel rage boil in his heart and his veins.

"Why the hell would you show me that, huh, Mother?" He spat out hatefully, his fists clenched so hard his palm bled out a little. The voice of the Mother echoed in the Auberge as she chuckled loudly.

"Please, stop calling me that. I'm no Mother, I'm just a Guide. Whatever my believers make of me is nothing I'm responsible for."

Glenn looked at the ceiling with his eyebrows creased. What? What did she mean by that? He couldn't continue his reflection as the Mother, no, the Guide continued.

"This small place, which was one of the many steps into my Brother's plan, fell under your influence. The Ember who should have been snuffed out instead left to the best forest for him to burn. I wonder what kind of changes would that bring..." The Guide laughed silently, before changing the scenery once again.

There seemed to be a lot that this strange God, uh, Goddess, no...Deity wished to show him. But with that, Glenn couldn't help but feel as if something was wrong.

Wasn't there supposed to be a "punition" somewhere? This was just free information!

'Keep on spilling the beans, Guide-whatever!'

The scenery warped once again, but this time, it didn't seem like a bad outcome. Glenn was standing in the middle of the Cleaner's Workshop which was filled to the brim with people busying themselves here and there.

'This looks...normal, I suppose? The atmosphere seems pretty good...' He thought curiously, as this time seemed a little different compared to the ones before. Each time, he was shown the things that would have gone bad if he didn't exist to mess everything up. Now, was the Guide showing him what could have went...better, if he wasn't there? His blood chilled, and he slowly tried to understand what had changed this time around.

"The only place that remained unchanged in front of your arrival so far, the Cleaner's Workshop," The Guide plainly stated, making Glenn smile in relief. That smile quickly disappeared when the Deity continued.

"In surface only, of course. In this reality, the upper executives would have never gotten a hold of a Seed of Darkness, and things would have been quite different now. Short-term profit often causes terrible issues in the long term," The Deity sighed, before warping the scenery once again. Glenn was still thinking over what They said, realizing that his giving away such a dangerous item might not have been the most awesome idea he had in this world.

Well, it wasn't like he had many great ideas to begin with.

They arrived in the streets of the Northern Town, bustling with activity from the people living there. The young man only wondered for a second what they were doing here when he saw the Heart's Bakery storefront, a long line of people standing at its entry to buy some delicious bread and pastries. Glenn slowly passed his hand over his face then ran it through his hair, silently mulling over the sight. As warm as it was appearing, he knew it was entirely fake. Because he had seen the corpse of the bakery's owner swing at the end of a rope with his own eyes.

"You changed a lot of lives, positively, and negatively. In your pursuit of answers, a lot of innocents were crushed under your feet like ants you couldn't help but step on, for lack of noticing them," The Deity said harshly, unbothered by the young man's storming emotions.

If he had done things differently, they wouldn't have... The scene changed once again, and Glenn found himself walking on nothing in the sky, a wide forest lying far under his feet. He gasped and instinctively fell backward, touching yet another invisible ground. The wind whistled in his ear as his clothes fluttered, but he still wasn't falling.

'This is disturbing,' He thought with difficulty as he pushed himself off "nothing", hesitantly standing on the invisible barrier. He looked down curiously, trying to recognize the place, but he couldn't tell at all. A figure suddenly seemed to transcend time and space as it appeared out of nowhere, phasing into reality like a mirage. Glenn watched with awe as the figure became clearer, frowning when he couldn't tell any of the features of the seemingly humanoid person standing in front of him. There was no...face or anything recognizable whatsoever. There only was a vague sentiment that made one think that this was a human, and yet, he couldn't tell at all...

"You then fell into a pit of madness after meeting a descendant of Nosferatu, at which point your Time and Fate become unreadable," The featureless person, or, the Guide as Glenn guessed, crossed its arms behind his back and looked down at the forest while lost in thoughts.

"Do you know why you were shown such scenes, child?" The Guide suddenly asked, startling Glenn. The young man hesitated, before shaking his head.

'I'd rather assume my lack of knowledge instead of displaying my stupidity,' He quietly thought, wondering about the same question as the one the Guide asked. The featureless person raised their head at the sky, before sighing loudly. A second passed, and the forest was suddenly swallowed under a dark tide of black liquid as thick as blood and as black as Death. The young man gulped when he recognized the power of the Heart of Darkness that he fought in the not-so-Blessed Grove.

'So that was THIS forest. Okay. Huh, I guess I did well this time as well,' Glenn thought in horror as the tide devoured everything on its path, slowly but surely forming a gigantic maelstrom of evil. Everything died and disappeared under the influence of the horrible tidal wave.

"Fate isn't something easily swayed," The Guide began, as the scenery changed once again, bringing them back to Palancar's church, only there were no statues, no blood, no corpses. It was only an empty wooden building with destroyed walls letting warm light enter. The Guide sat on a piece of rubble, before crossing his hands together.

"Fate...Even when manipulating Time, Fate can't be changed. I know, since I've tried so many times to change it..." The Guide's voice trembled slightly, and they lowered their head sadly. They unclenched their hands, a red string tied in between the two of them. They pulled on the string as hard as they could, but it didn't budge at all.

"...Even now, Fate can't be broken. And yet..." The Guide slowly raised Their featureless face to stare with non-existent eyes at Glenn, making him shiver uncontrollably. There was something...chilling in such sight.

"...And yet, all of those things changed. You even destroyed my Counterpart's plan!" They exclaimed, slamming Their hands on Their thighs. Glenn's eyebrows creased as he tried to make sense of it all. The Guide jumped on their feet, and approached Glenn, patting his shoulder warmly.

"If it's you...Maybe you can change what can never be changed. Under the guidance of so many, how could you possibly fail?" The Guide gently said, walking past Glenn and heading for the church's exit. They stopped, and turned back, a gigantic eye that seemed to be filled with infinite wisdom opening in the center of the previously featureless face. Glenn gasped and felt his mind burn out, an unimaginable pain encroaching on him.

'This eye...!'

He fell back into darkness, under the Guide's watchful gaze, who, strangely, seemed a little amused.

"...May you change this world, Paradox born from Fate..."