Dead Nerds Society: What Do You Mean My Guild Was Also Isekaid?-Chapter 68: The Veil Trembles

The cave had become a cathedral of repurposed machinery.

Cecilia had cleared its center during the last hours. Now the translucent runic plates she had inscribed floated in concentric rings around her, each one humming softly with the white-violet warmth of rebirth magic.

Every glyph was written in the curling circular script of Ephyrael, meant to mirror the Cycle. Beginnings feeding endings, endings feeding beginnings.

Ten orbs drifted within the innermost circle. Ten trapped souls, flickering like half-remembered dreams. One pulsed a familiar pale blue.

Helen.

Marya stood beside Cecilia, close enough that their shoulders brushed when the light flared too brightly. The girl’s hands trembled as she held the bowl of rebirth resins, the mist of them rising in a thin ribbon.

Jules and Ephyrael held the perimeter. Jules with his sword unsheathed, boots wide.

Ephyrael stood on the opposite side. A swirl of deep shadow and pale starlight, long fingers resting on the pommel of his blackened staff, eyes half-lidded as if listening to something beneath reality’s skin.

The ritual was already in motion. Time had begun to thicken, sound bending around the edges like heat.

Cecilia inhaled.

"Ephemarion phor-ael. En nythera-velion. Theryn lythaen."

("Soul journey. In the veil of the death-gate. Song of fading.")

Her voice dropped into that liturgical cadence as she looped those three phrases over and over again. Slow, deliberate, soaked in the softness of fading things. The script hovering around her brightened in pulses that matched her heartbeat.

Marya swallowed.

"Master... you’re sure the boundary will hold?"

"I’m not sure of anything. But doubting is not the same as surrendering. Keep feeding the circle."

Cecilia smiled faintly, though she didn’t look away from the hovering souls.

Marya nodded fiercely and knelt, extending her hands into the secondary weave. Her mana bent into the formation. Her thin, trembling threads of magical energy weaving between Cecilia’s heavier currents.

Then, the air cooled in an unnatural way.

Jules stiffened.

"There. South corridor. Something’s-"

Ephyrael’s head turned sharply.

"No... everywhere."

The floating scripts dimmed, as if a great hand brushed across them.

Cecilia felt it through her bones. A pressure. A hush that wasn’t silence but negation. Not the absence of sound, but the opposite of sound, like negative vibration.

A voice boomed, coming from no direction and all directions.

"Morielen... child of the waning wing... why do you disturb what has accepted its stillness?"

The souls’ brightness flickered as if they were under a terrifying pressure.

Marya dropped the resin bowl with a gasp. The mist coiled around her fingers like frightened serpents.

"Muvetheret."

Ephyrael whispered, as if naming him risked being trapped in the syllables. Even after all those centuries, he still recognized the voice of the god of undeath.

A windless chill swept over the chamber, shrouding everything in a deep darkness.

Cecilia did not turn or move. The ritual circle was her anchor and also her only protection.

"You have no claim over these souls."

"I have claim over everything that wishes not to suffer again."

They sounded kind and gentle, like a parent soothing an injured child.

"You pry them from peace, priestess. You call them back to pain, to hunger, to grief. Why? For your comfort? For your guilt?"

A thin crack lanced across the outer ring of runes.

Marya cried out.

"Master! The bridge is destabilizing!"

Cecilia tensed, cold sweat soaking her robes.

"I see it. Jules and Ephyrael, brace the perimeter. He’s trying to collapse the cycle-binding."

Jules gripped his sword with both hands as the shadows along the walls thickened, forming vaguely humanoid silhouettes with hollow centers. He had no idea what those were, but Ephyrael was very familiar with them.

"Stilled echoes. Do not let them touch you."

"Not planning on it."

Jules lunged forward, blade slicing through the first echo with a ripple of light. It dissolved like brittle ash.

Cecilia resumed the incantation, raising her hands.

"Phaneros ephemar. phor-ael en cycle. anathyra elendar."

("Revealed soul... journey-in-cycle... breath renewed in dawn.")

The souls brightened a little, steadying their flicker. Though the edges of their silhouettes quivered like something tugging from behind.

Muvetheret’s reply was soft enough to sound like comfort.

"You return them to uncertainty. To decay. To fear. You undo the only mercy I offer."

Cecilia’s voice shook, just once.

"Mercy? You freeze them in a half-life. They cannot grow. They cannot pass. They cannot return."

The god sneered at her words.

"They cannot suffer. You, who tasted suffering so exquisitely, should understand. Change wounds. Change breaks. Let them rest. Let them remain. Let them be still."

Something inside Cecilia twisted. Memories of hospital machines, of a body unresponsive, of years without breath or warmth. Her throat tightened without her permission.

Marya felt the shift in her master’s aura.

"Sensei..."

But the darkness in the cave kept only deepening.

From the far edges of the ritual, the air thickened into a humanoid form. It was tall as a dying cypress, with limbs long and tapering like dry bone wrapped in silk. The form was ethereal, like a shadow silhouette.

It leaned toward her.

"You clung to the cycle once because it promised change. But you have changed. You are tired. You are afraid. Let it go."

Cecilia’s chant stuttered. The runes sagged like wilted petals.

Ephyraeon’s voice snapped like a whip.

"Master! His logic eats emotion first. Anchor yourself!"

Jules slashed another echo aside.

"Cecilia, don’t you dare stop! We didn’t come this far to lose someone again!"

Marya pressed her palms to Cecilia’s spine, pouring mana wildly into her master.

"Please. Come back."

Cecilia inhaled sharply at the contact. Marya’s mana was turbulent, unrefined, and deeply alive. It stung, in the way cold water stings a numbing limb awake.

Her voice returned, strained.

"Lythaen. Lythaen-aelys. Phaneros myrath."

("Fading. Wing-in-fading. Light emerging as dawn.")

The silhouette recoiled a bit.

Muvetheret’s tone sharpened. It was still gentle, but now it carried a commanding undertone.

"Do you think you can defy stillness with borrowed breath? Priestess... look through your own hands."

She did, and what she saw startled her.

Her fingers trembled. Her palms looked almost... translucent. Not literally, but in a metaphorical way. It was as if the god had wrapped her self-image in stillness, convincing her she had no motion left to give.

The souls dimmed again. Two of them flickered into near-extinction.

One of those orbs, stronger than the others, spasmed in place as if pulled in two directions at once.

Ephyrael stopped his slashing of the shadow forms to shout at Cecilia.

"Master. Sing the joining-verse. Now."

"I-"

Her voice cracked.

"I don’t... I don’t know if I can stabilize them in this state."

Muvetheret’s whisper caressed her ear, cold and intimate.

"You don’t need to. Release them. Let them drift. Let them rest in me."

Marya’s fingers dug into Cecilia’s robe.

"Sensei... listen to me. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re you. Please."

Cecilia’s will teetered like a candle in a draft between the two voices. She felt like those souls being pushed around.

And then that soul she just noticed that was stronger than the others spoke.

Not in words, but in a shock of emotional memory. It just projected scenes into Cecilia’s mind.

Helen laughing beside her during a late-night dungeon run.

Helen swearing at a respawn point.

Helen’s voice cracking when she said she wanted to help people in-game the way she never could in life.

Cecilia’s whole body shivered. It was like a spark had just been rekindled within her. It evened her breath and she soon focused her will again.

Muvetheret’s voice sharpened with something almost like disappointment.

"So fragile. Even now, you cling to impermanent attachments."

Cecilia lifted her head, drawing a long breath.

"Impermanent things are the only things that move."

The silhouette hissed. The god felt her determination.

Cecilia raised her hands again. Her voice barely steadied. It wasn’t as firm as in other times, but it was enough.

"Ephemar theryn, aelysion elendar.

Phor-ael, phor-ael, en cycle, en cycle."

("The soul sings, chrysalis renewed.

Soul-journey, soul-journey. In the cycle, in the cycle.")

The runes flared bright, pushing back the shadows. The temperature in the cave rose, warming the four of them.

Jules roared and cut through three echoes at once, their shapes bursting like dry ink.

Ephyrael’s staff struck the ground, sending a pulse that forced the silhouette of Muvetheret back a step.

"This is not over."

His whisper hollowed the air.

"Your resolve cracks. Your voice trembles. You will break, Morielen. And when you do... I will catch you."

He dissolved into dust-like motes, absorbed by the unlit corners of the chamber.

The cave had finally returned to its normality, and Cecilia allowed herself to sigh.

But the ritual circle was still unstable, wavering like heat ripples. The souls spun erratically, their tethers fraying.

Marya’s voice was high with fear.

"Sensei, the bindings are unraveling! I-I don’t know how to hold them!"

Cecilia swallowed hard.

Her limbs felt heavy, her mind thick with Muvetheret’s lingering quiet. The certainty she had held minutes ago was gone.