Advent of eternity a lit.., p.1
Advent of Eternity: A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure (Shattered System Book 1), page 1
ADVENT OF ETERNITY
©2023 ACTUS
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CONTENTS
Also by Actus
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Interlude 1
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Interlude 2
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Interlude 3
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Thank you for reading Advent of Eternity
Groups
LitRPG
ALSO BY ACTUS
Shattered System
Advent of Eternity
My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror:
Blackmist
Greenblood
Duskbringer
Voidwalker
Steamforged Sorcery:
Steamforged Sorcery
Steamforged Heresy
Steamforged Apostasy
Morcster Chef:
Cleaver’s Edge
Into the Fire
Best Served Cold
1
The end of the gods began how most things did—with a birth. Shadows danced in faint torchlight, illuminating a large tent in the center of a clearing. The grass around it was trodden to little more than dirt, but not a single soul stood in the glade. Within the tarp shelter, a towering man loomed over his wife.
“Push, Lilly. It’s almost over,” Rynholt Coda urged, the knuckles of his massive hands turning white as he strangled a wooden bedpost. “You can do this.”
“Shut up,” Lilly hissed. Her cheeks were flushed red, and her breath came in irregular, pained gasps. She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut as a convulsion rocked her body. Rynholt had long since lost track of how long they’d been in his command tent.
“Almost there,” Rynholt repeated. “Just a little more.”
Lilly let out a cry, followed by a ragged wheeze for air. Then it was over. Rynholt released his stranglehold on the wooden post and marveled at the child that had appeared before him. The boy was covered with fluids and blood, what little hair he had matted down to his head. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“It’s done, Lilly,” he said, placing a rough hand on his wife’s cheek. She gave him the barest hint of a smile, her eyes still closed. Slowly, she opened them and took her first look at the boy.
His cheeks were clammy and his limbs limp. Not a single sound escaped the boy’s mouth. A heavy stillness hung in the air, devoid of all life. The child was lifeless.
“Healer!” Rynholt thundered, spinning and rushing out the tent, nearly ripping it down in his haste to throw the flaps open. The courtyard was empty. He knew that—he’d ordered it. The gods meddled far too often in his dealings, and he’d wanted to avoid another attempted assassination.
Rynholt drew on decades of training and bared his teeth, crushing his churning emotions into a ball and drawing deep within himself. Magical energy poured from his eyes and lips as he blurred, disappearing from view. He reformed seconds later, a baffled, white-robed man held tightly in his grip.
“Inside the tent, Fynn,” Rynholt barked. “My son. Save him.”
Fynn’s eyes widened, and he darted in. Rynholt followed him, pacing back and forth while the healer examined his son.
“Just hold still,” Fynn said, raising his hands over the still boy. “I’ll do everything I can.”
A gentle glow lit along his fingers, arcing down and entering his forehead and chest. Fynn’s brow furrowed. The lines of power grew in thickness. The room lit further, but the boy remained as still and lifeless as ever.
“Is it working?” Rynholt asked, unable to help himself.
“Be silent when I work,” Fynn snapped, not glancing away from his task. He snapped his fingers impatiently, an entirely different man than the one that Rynholt had grabbed moments ago. “Give me your power.”
Rynholt thrust his arm forth with such speed that he nearly impaled the healer. He gathered magic at his fingertips, offering it up to the other man. It leaped from his hand and into Fynn’s, siphoning into the healer’s body.
The magic coursing into the boy grew so bright that it filled the room like a miniature sun, making it impossible to see. Then, with a brilliant flash, it was gone. Fynn stood over Lilly, gasping for breath. Rynholt pushed past the man to see his son. Closed eyes and blue cheeks were all that he found.
“Save him!” Rynholt demanded, grabbing Fynn and shaking the man. “You’re the best godforsaken healer in the continent! Why can’t you fix a child?”
“I did everything I could,” Fynn wheezed. “He was never alive, sir. There was nothing to bring back. I’m sorry. I tried everything I could, I swear. I just can’t revive something that never lived in the first place.”
Fury marred Rynholt’s grizzled face, warring with the agony and pain that sprouted from the shattered remains of what had been joy mere instants ago.
Lilly’s face was blank. She stared at the corpse lying before her, unable to find the emotion through the thick haze setting in over her. Her mouth worked, but all that emerged was a strangled sob.
They’d been trying for a child for nearly ten years, but circumstance and the gods had never favored them. And now, at what should have been their greatest hour, they had been robbed once more.
A ray of sunlight broke through the tent as the s
“Impossible,” Rynholt whispered. “I’ll get more healers.”
“You know that won’t do anything,” Fynn said, shaking his head sadly. “Not even the gods can return that which never existed.”
“Damn the gods.” Rynholt clenched his fists. His fingernails broke through skin, and blood trickled down his hands, dripping onto the floor. He glanced up at Lilly, then slowly rose to his feet.
“Should I send for someone?” Fynn asked.
“No,” Rynholt replied, forcing his hands open. The words felt like ash as they left his mouth. “I— Just go. Prepare a small pyre and tell nobody.”
Fire danced in Rynholt’s eyes. It curled up the carefully arranged pile of wood at the center of his camp, curling just up to his eye level. The camp, which had been full of rejoicing men just one night before, stood silent and empty. Aside from him, the only souls present were Lilly and Fynn.
Lilly stepped forward, their son still clutched in her hands. Rynholt put a hand on her shoulder.
“If there was any god, any creature, at fault for this, then they will atone,” he swore, his eyes burning with fury and sorrow. “But I will speak of it no more today. My son’s memory will not be profaned.”
“Knell,” Lilly corrected, her voice raspy. “His name was Knell.”
She stepped toward the pyre. The flame licked at her feet, lighting her pale skin aglow, but it simply danced across her body instead of burning. She raised Knell in the air above her head as tears poured down her face.
Rynholt’s breath caught in his throat, and he bit his lip hard enough that the taste of copper erupted in his mouth. Fynn raised a hand to comfort the larger man but pressed his lips together and lowered it instead.
The church bell rang for the second time that day. It was a deep, thrumming noise that reverberated through Rynholt’s bones and imprinted itself forever into his memory.
Lilly started to lower her hands, bringing Knell down to the flame. A single tear beaded up in Rynholt’s eye, tracing down his rugged cheek. Then, when their son was just inches away from the flame, Lilly froze.
A single cry pierced the silence of the clearing, cutting through the crackling flame.
The cry of a newborn.
2
Nineteen Years Later
Acrid smoke stung Knell’s nostrils. He opened his eyes just instants before the mental alarm he’d prepared went off with a loud ding only audible to him. Knell grabbed the staff at his side and stood, gritting his teeth as pain shot through his lame right leg.
A faint metronome started ticking away in his mind. Knell’s lips curled up in a grin before his features returned to their normal, unreadable expression. Soot covered him, blending in with his dark hair. It made the black scar covering the left half of his face slightly less noticeable—but not nearly enough. He walked out of the tent with all the confidence he could muster, his staff thunking against the packed ground with every step. He had a schedule to keep.
Thick pillars of smoke curled into the air, and fire danced across the tents at the south of the Brennan Army’s camp. His team had been right on time. He wasn’t a huge fan of rescue missions—there were too many shifting variables. Too many possibilities for things to go wrong. But, to repay his father’s last favor, Knell had made an exception.
Just a few tents away, a large tent towered over its brethren. The captain’s—he’d made sure the night before.
A woman’s scream for help intermingled with the smoke as men rushed to the scene of the fire. Knell stepped over a man curled in a fetal position, surrounded by a pool of his own vomit, and wiped some soot across his face, smudging it even further. The metronome ticked away in his mind. He was still on time. He always was.
Knell paused for a moment, working his expression into a terrified rictus and hunching his back to look cowardly. He threw open the captain’s tent flap and staggered in, his breath coming in fake, ragged gasps. “Fire, Captain!”
“I can tell, you bumbling fool!” a large man midway through donning his armor snarled, pounding a hand into the wooden desk before him. He’d only managed to get the top half of his suit and the greaves on. “Why aren’t you doing something about it?”
Knell didn’t immediately respond. A small girl was chained to a chair, and the captain’s sword rested just beside her neck. She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. Her face was streaked with tears and dried blood from several minor injuries.
“I asked you a question, you crippled bastard! Who let you into the army?”
“I did my best to stop the fire, but the Hilldancers are attacking!” Knell exclaimed, giving the captain a shaky salute. “We thought this was just a supply raid, but they’ve somehow infiltrated our army. The men are turning on each other. I couldn’t trust any of the officers with the information, so I had to run here immediately. We need your help, sir. We’re getting slaughtered.”
Yusef let out a series of curses and stood, taking the blade away from the girl’s neck. “Godsdamned Hilldancer rats. They should have known better than to dare attack my camp directly. Where are they, boy?”
“I’ll lead you to them, Captain,” Knell said, turning and heading out of the tent. Pain racked his limbs and his lungs groaned in protest from overexertion, but he ignored them. The captain followed him toward the flame, roaring orders at the panicking men as they went.
“Move faster, boy!” Yusef ordered. “You walk like a cripple. What platoon are you part of? You’re pathetic.”
“I’m not, sir.”
“What?” Yusef asked, his bushy eyebrows furrowing in confusion as Knell stopped walking. He turned to look back at the soot-covered youth, his eyes narrowing. At the edge of the camp, the fire started to recede as the soldiers managed to bring it under control.
Knell twisted his staff, pulling it apart to reveal a thin blade that had been hidden within it. With a calculated strike, he drove the sword up through the captain’s stomach and straight into his heart, ripping it free and stepping to the side to avoid a flailing hand.
Yosef turned, his eyes wide in disbelief. He clutched at the wound, then looked up at Knell. “Please—”
Knell’s sword flashed, and Yusef spoke no more.
“I’m not in one of your platoons,” Knell finished, sheathing the staff once more. The metronome came to a stop. Right on time.
“You should have put the rest of your armor on, Captain. Leaving such an important part off just gives me a target.”
Sparkling white energy flooded from the fallen captain’s body, spiraling around itself as it entered Knell’s body. A trickle of adrenaline spiked his heartbeat, and he let out a satisfied breath.
