[ Trait Upgraded: Draconic Affinity + Iron Will -> Monarch's Bloodline.]

[ Your draconic heritage is now dominant. Significantly increases all attributes. Grants major resistance to all elemental damage and psychic effects. Your aura of majesty now passively weakens the resolve and combat effectiveness of lesser beings.]

The notifications burned with a finality and grandeur that matched the felled titan before him.

"Is everyone okay?" Adam's mental voice was strained, laced with pain as he forced his battered body to move.

«I'm… I'm okay, Boss! Just… really crispy and my leg hurts,» Ignis groaned, trying to push herself up from where she'd been flung.

«I require… a moment of convalescence. But I am functional,» Lilith replied, her psychic voice thinner than usual, several of her legs held at awkward angles.

But there was no response from Alice.

Adam's head snapped around. Alice lay where she had been after shielding Lilith, but she wasn't moving. Her form, usually a solid silhouette of elegant void, was… wavering. Like smoke disturbed by an unseen wind. The void energy that composed her wasn't just leaking; it was crawling away from her body in tendrils that seemed to have a life of their own, licking at the pale stone and dying it a deeper black.

"Alice?" Adam called, slithering closer, his new power momentarily forgotten. "Alice, talk to me."

She didn't stir. Her eyes were open, her purple gaze unfocused, staring at nothing. She didn't seem to hear him.

«This is… anomalous,» Lilith stated, dragging herself closer, her crimson eyes wide with analytical alarm. «This is not a normal state of injury or exhaustion. Her essence is… destabilizing. Acting autonomously.»

"Is she… evolving?" Adam asked, hope and fear warring in his voice. But this felt wrong. Evolution was a process of consolidation, of pulling power inward. This was a scattering, a dissolution.

Before Lilith could answer, the crawling void around Alice coalesced. It pulled itself from her body and from the air, drawing together a few feet away. It formed a humanoid shape, but one made of absolute, light-eating darkness, a silhouette so profound it hurt to look at. Features were indistinct, smoothed away by the void, save for two points where eyes might be points that held not light, but a deeper, more terrible absence.

Adam hadn't sensed its approach. He hadn't sensed it at all. His Hunter's Tri-Sense was silent. His Monarch's Bloodline thrummed with a sudden, instinctive warning of overwhelming threat.

He tried to access a status panel.

[ ??? ]

[ ????? ]

[ ?????????? ]

Nothing but error symbols and encroaching static. The sheer disparity in power was so vast the System itself seemed to stutter.

The Void Humanoid turned its head slightly, those depthless eyes looking down at Alice's still form. It raised a hand, a limb of smoothed shadow, and reached for her.

Every cell in Adam's body screamed. "DON'T YOU TOUCH HER!" he roared, ignoring the agony in his ribs and wings. He forced himself forward, his massive body a desperate barricade between the entity and his companion.

The Void Humanoid's hand didn't stop. It didn't even seem to register Adam's movement. It simply… flicked its wrist.

There was no flash of light, no burst of energy. The air in front of Adam solidified into an impassable wall of compressed force and then shoved. It was like being hit by a mountain moving at the speed of thought. Adam, Ignis, and Lilith were hurled backward as if made of straw, crashing into the far canyon wall in a tangle of limbs, scales, and pained cries.

Adam pushed himself up, blood dripping from his snout, his vision swimming. He saw the entity kneel beside Alice, its shadow-hand gently brushing her forehead. A memory, sharp and cold, cut through his pain. The diary.

'…a shape of living darkness… it didn't attack, it just… consumed them. Made them vanish into the void…'

This wasn't just a monster. This was the horror from the old journal. The true apex predator of the void. And it had its sights set on Alice.

The void-humanoid entity paid no heed to Adam's roar. Its shadow-hand, resting on Alice's forehead, seemed to pull. Not at her physically, but at the very essence of her being. The wavering void-tendrils around Alice were siphoned into the entity, and Alice's body arched off the ground in a silent scream of absolute agony. Her form flickered violently, threatening to dissipate entirely.

Adam felt it too—a rending, tearing sensation in the very core of his being. The Soul-Link he shared with Alice wasn't just strained; it was being unraveled, thread by psychic thread. It felt like losing a part of his own mind, his own spirit.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HER?!" Adam's fury exploded, overriding pain and reason. He activated Mirage Cascade, his form blurring through four rapid teleports as he closed the distance, and followed it with a desperate, Monarch's Pierce aimed at the entity's head.

It was like striking a mountain made of smoke. His horns, which had just pierced the skull of a legendary serpent, passed through the shadowy form without resistance. Worse, the void around the entity reacted. It wasn't a defense; it was a dominion. The very air solidified into a cage of absolute blackness, wrapping around Adam mid-strike and freezing him in place. He hung there, helpless, a fly in cosmic amber.

He could only watch as Ignis, dragging her wounded body, breathed a torrent of desperate fire. "LET HER GO!" The Solar Flare roared into the entity's back… and was swallowed without a trace, absorbed into its infinite darkness.

Lilith, from her crumpled position, unleashed her last Sovereign Silk and a final, weakening Crimson Gaze. The silk dissolved upon contact. The psychic beam vanished into those depthless eye-points. The entity didn't even turn. A casual pulse of void energy, like a dismissive sigh, slammed into them both. Ignis was thrown back with a sickening crunch. Lilith went utterly still, her psychic presence dwindling to a faint, fading ember.

"YOU… YOU DAMNED…!" Adam raged against his invisible bonds, watching his family break. He couldn't move, but he could still attack. He poured every ounce of mana, every shred of pain and fury, into a relentless barrage. Ember Shard Shot. Tempest Fangs. Stormrend. He fired them all blindly, chaotically, into the void holding him.

The attacks fizzled and died, absorbed or negated, accomplishing nothing but draining his already depleted reserves. His body screamed in protest, his vision darkening at the edges from mana exhaustion and physical trauma. But he wouldn't stop. He couldn't. He had promised. He had to protect them.

The Void Entity finally turned its gaze from Alice to look at Adam, a slight tilt of its head conveying something akin to… mild curiosity at the persistent gnat. It raised its other hand. The void around it coalesced, forming a long, sleek blade of absolute negation—a Voidrend Blade. Without ceremony, it thrust the blade forward.

It pierced Adam's Monarch's Aegis as if it were paper. It punched through his legendary scales, his flesh, and speared deep into his chest, just beside his core. Agony, cold and hollow, exploded through him. It wasn't just physical pain; it felt like a piece of his existence was being erased.

"ADAM!" Ignis's shattered cry reached him.

Lilith's psychic presence was gone, submerged beneath the pain.

'I… promised…' Adam's thoughts slurred. 'We were going to see the sky… together… I can't… fall here…'

As his consciousness wavered, a new sound cut through the haze—not from the entity, but from within. A sharp CRACK, like fracturing ice.

The Crown of the Hollow Glutton on his brow split down the middle.

And a voice, ancient, hungry, and intimately familiar, whispered directly into his crumbling soul. "Hunger… meets a greater Hunger. To consume the Void… you must feed me more. Not just souls… Give me your Life. The very years of your existence. Burn your future… for power in the present. Accept… and devour."

The offer was insanity. A deal with the artifact's true, ravenous nature. But below him, Alice was dying. Beside him, Ignis and Lilith were broken. Before him was an enemy he couldn't even comprehend.

He had no future if they died here.

"TAKE IT!" Adam screamed internally, not in despair, but in furious, final defiance. "TAKE WHAT YOU WANT AND GIVE ME THE POWER TO SAVE THEM!"

The Crown shuddered. The crack widened, and from it, a sensation of dreadful, greedy satisfaction flowed. It didn't just take mana. It reached into Adam's very being and began to feast on the fundamental energy of his life. He felt it draining, a cold suction at the core of his vitality.

[ WARNING: Vitality Attribute permanently reduced by 20. ]

[ Vitality: 72 -> 52 ]

[ Temporary State Activated: Glutton's Avatar (Void-Eater). ]

[ Duration: Limited (Scales with life-force sacrificed). ]

[ Effects: Immunity to void-based corrosion and absorption. Temporary massive boost to Strength and magical potency. Aura of All-Consuming Hunger emanates, passively destabilizing foreign void energies.]

A violent, violet-tinged aura exploded from Adam's body. It wasn't light; it was anti-void, a hungry, negation field that tore at the darkness holding him. The void-cage around him shattered like black glass. The Voidrend Blade still in his chest trembled, then began to dissolve, eaten away by the violent violet energy now coursing through his veins.

Adam dropped to the ground, the hole in his chest weeping not just blood, but motes of the same hungry violet light. He felt simultaneously weaker, as if hollowed out, and incalculably stronger, pulsing with stolen, desperate power. His body looked leaner, almost gaunt, as if years of growth had been stripped away, but his eyes blazed with apocalyptic fury.

The Void Entity finally showed a clear reaction. It straightened up, releasing Alice, who collapsed bonelessly. It turned fully to face Adam. Its featureless gaze seemed to fix on the cracked, glowing crown. For a moment, the crushing pressure of its presence hesitated, replaced by something else… a deep, unsettling recognition.

A tilt of its head that spoke of forgotten memories.

Adam pushed himself to his feet, the violet aura wreathing him like a shroud of starving flames. He spoke, his voice raspy, blood-flecked, but ringing with absolute, murderous conviction.

"You," Adam growled, the Glutton's power warping his voice into a layered echo. "You're going to regret ever laying a shadow on what's mine."

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