Origins of Blood (RE)-Chapter 178: Red Flood (7)

“Where is the real Golden Reaper!”

The Golden light screams, but it isn’t sound—it’s pressure. It builds inside my skull, vibrates through bone and blood, until my eyes feel like they’ll burst.

Eriksson’s knees give in, and the world tilts sideways. I fall, vision shattering into colors that shouldn’t exist.

My chin hits the stone first. Pain follows, rippling through the body I cannot control. Needles stab through flesh, turning to blades, slicing deep where nerves meet thought.

My neck seizes, my limbs lock. Rain strikes my back, cool and merciless. It should soothe—but it burns. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Dust catches in my throat as I cough, face pressed into the dirt, and then—

The world turns Red.

It swallows everything. The ground. The air. The sea. Me.

At first, it drips—small.

Drip.

Then heavy.

Thud.

Something lands beside me—a head—or what’s left of one.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Bodies. Dozens. Falling from above. Painting the island Red.

And through it all, the Golden moon watches. Unmoved. Unfeeling.

“Father, the—” The smaller of the two Golden beings speaks, voice quaking through the storm, but the larger cuts him off.

“I know.”

The vibration of that voice hits harder than any weapon I’ve known. It crushes thought. It crushes me.

And then—a flicker of memory. Cassandra. Elena. Names. Not mine, but they stab through my head like broken glass.

I turn, and the pain in my chest is too human to be someone else’s.

“You... monster!” I scream, and this time it’s me. Me.

The Red storm thickens—flesh and rain merge. The air tastes of dead iron. The entire world bleeds.

The coast, the mountains, the people; all turned to pulp and silence. The screams fade, swallowed by the deluge.

My—Eriksson’s—legs stagger upward, moving without command. I stumble back from Harmon, from the radiant gods above him.

The rain of blood refuses to touch their skin. It curves away, deflected as if purity itself rejects them. Only Harmon stands stained, Red soaking through Orange. He falls to his knees, face upturned.

“Selina—” he pleads. His voice breaks apart in the Crimson downpour.

“GIVE HER BACK! APOLLO, YOU PROMISED IT!” His scream tears through the rain.

I don’t look back. I can’t.

“Elena...” I whisper. She’s gone. The little girl on the mountain bird—gone. So are the others. Only the broken remain: Vis, Grim, Aston, and the rest. Only the Blue child sits on the mountain bird; eyes hollow, faces painted in Red despair.

“Where is she?” My voice cracks, more breath than sound. “Where?”

Thud.

Something heavy strikes my head, but I barely feel it. My body is numb. Heartbeats stretch. Each one feels eternal, like the void I came from.

Thud!

A body drops before me. I don’t recognize it. I can’t. Eriksson can’t. And together, we break.

“APOLLO, YOU PROMISED IT!” Harmon screams again.

I turn—too slow—and Apollo holds Aston by the face. His Golden hand glows against flesh that burns from within. When he throws him aside, Aston’s cheek explodes in a flash of Blue and Red, colors melting like oil in water.

“Golden Reaper...” Apollo says it like a curse and a prayer all at once. His voice hums with delight. His radiant eyes lock on me.

Blue blood drips from his fingers, glimmering as it falls. “So you’re here.”

He vanishes—then reappears before me, too fast for breath to catch.

“But how?” His words crush the air around me. “This event should not exist!”

The scream in my skull returns, tenfold. The world tilts again; my right eye goes blind. The rest of me burns.

“Golden Reaper... where are you?”

This time, his mouth moves, and I feel his words tear through flesh and soul alike. His fingers pierce my chest—not the body’s, mine.

“Where are you?”

I try to scream, but only air escapes through Eriksson’s lips. The pain isn’t physical—it’s deeper, rawer. He digs through me. Through everything.

“There you are—”

“Father!”

The smaller one’s voice cuts through, urgent.

“The abyss will close anytime!”

And just like that, Apollo releases me. The world snaps. I fall backward into Red, into silence.

“I will come for you, Golden Reaper.” His voice fades, “One year.”

Then he’s gon—thee light with him. Darkness swallows everything.

A heartbeat. Then another, and the rain thins.

My body—Eriksson’s—barely breathes. I can’t tell where I end, and he begins.

The sky above shifts again, empty and godless. Then it bleeds. The Red deepens, burns, tears itself open. A small dot forms—growing, expanding—until it swells to the size of a head.

A Red Eclipse.