Chapter 152: Inside His Broken Heart [1] — The Bridge Of Heaven

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“You have to wake up, Louis. You cannot continue like this…”

“I know you’re going through a lot, but… there are so many people outside suffering because of what you’ve become…!”

“Louis, please…! Answer me…”

Niflheim kept whispering to Louis, who stared silently at the floor. His body slowly crumbled into dust as the dark red wood spread further across the barren wasteland.

“This feels like when the Gardener invaded his Fantasy Heart. Is it somehow related? But how?”

She scanned the area, analyzing the tree’s composition, only to realize it was Louis himself. The wood contained his blood, bone, flesh, and soul.

It was an aberrant extension of his existence—a cancerous mass that continued multiplying, surging into the real world to warp space and create its own Fantasy Realm.

“But why does it feel so similar? Where is that damn flower?”

Niflheim floated slowly around the destroyed, leaking Fantasy Heart Realm, searching for the flower. Instead she found dozens of roses blooming across the trees, each with red eyes staring outward.

“The Gardener?!”

She gasped and hid behind a mountain of ashes. The eyes scanned the area in silence… then she realized they weren’t exactly him either.

“What’s happening? Why… why is this happening? I never imagined Louis would go this far…”

Niflheim sighed and flew back to him. She found he had crumbled even more; his brittle body was falling apart piece by piece.

“Not only did you lose Zorba, but you lost your father… Even though you’ve lost them before, their deaths in this timeline must have caused you unbearable pain… so much agony and trauma that you turned into this, huh?”

Niflheim sighed again.

Despite how selfish and arrogant Louis often acted, he was someone who lived for others. Watching his friend die and then his father brutally murdered had left a deep scar…

Because he cared—he cared too much about these people—and yet he never admitted it.

He buried those feelings deep inside, pretending not to care, pretending it didn’t matter.

Without Zorba to cheer him up, without his father waiting at home, without his entire Kingdom now in ruins…

What did Louis have left?

Without his family, without his friend, without his Kingdom.

He was… nothing.

He felt completely hollow.

Thus, he became a hollowed being. With nothing left to hold him together, his emptiness filled with Madness.

So much Madness that it spilled everywhere, unleashing the Abyssal Dragon Tree of Ruin upon the world.

“Louis, you can always return to the past… you can always fix this…”

Niflheim tried to comfort him, but her words struck colder than intended.

She didn’t understand.

He couldn’t fix this.

Every timeline was left behind as new ones opened.

No matter how hard he tried, he could never truly change the past.

In fact, his original world had been abandoned long ago when he died from poison. A world without him likely ended the same way—or worse.

The more he thought about the worlds he left behind, the people he lost, the connections that could never return… the more desperate and depressed Louis became.

Yet he held on, hoping to grow stronger and change the future of the new timelines he would create—timelines identical to the rest.

He coped by believing that perhaps, eventually, he could alter the future of at least one of them.

A future where his mother would finally be healed.

A future where his father wouldn’t be killed.

A future where his kingdom wouldn’t fall to ruin.

A future where Zorba didn’t die.

A future where… he finally became a dragon.

But it was all pointless. None of it mattered in the end. No matter how he tried to change the future, it would never be his future.

And no matter how hard he tried anyway, it would never come to pass. Fate constantly worked to crush him in every imaginable way.

It felt as though the world itself conspired against him.

He was a living error—someone who should have already died and become a zombie, a puppet of the Vultarn High Dominion.

He was not fulfilling his role in the “Story,” so worse things would keep happening until history and fate corrected themselves.

But because he kept returning to the past, that correction could never occur. It trapped him in an endless loop where fighting back felt impossible and pointless.

He had only died six times, yet those deaths were enough to make Louis feel he couldn’t go on.

Was he a coward? Was he unworthy of his power?

Perhaps he was. He thought the same.

He no longer wanted this power. He wanted to give it away, to die and be released from all this pain.

From this Spiral of Madness.

Thus, he broke. He shattered into countless pieces and let all the darkness, grief, and suffering he had held inside spill out.

Turning him into a Grievance—the very beings he abhorred and found disgusting.

Perhaps his hostility toward them had always stemmed from his own insecurity. Every time he saw those pitiful, monstrous creatures, he feared he could become like them at any moment.

Lost, mad, without purpose beyond propagation, unable to properly recall who he was or the people he loved.

Now, as his transformation completed, the last remnants of his consciousness slowly broke apart like brittle glass.

“Belladine…?”

Niflheim noticed a small fairy flying toward Louis’s glass-like body. She landed on his hands, only to shatter the piece she stood on.

“Ah…”

“Wait, don’t sit on him… he’s very brittle. Even the smallest breeze will break him further.”

“What do we do? Master is… Master…”

Little Belladine was a very young spirit, yet thanks to her bond with Louis and the magical energy he supplied, she had grown and matured quickly—even learning to speak, though still in an immature, childish tone.

“I… don’t know…” Niflheim lamented. “What can we do now? How can we fix this? We are so powerless… I am not even my true self, only a fragment. I wish I had been less selfish. If I had let Louis refine me completely into his Soul Treasure, I could have come in my full form… and maybe… maybe I could have done something, maybe changed something…”

“Niflheim…” Belladine sighed and patted her with a tiny hand. “Huh?”

The fairy looked into the dark skies, noticing commotion outside. Using her spiritual power, she peered beyond her master’s heart.

And there she saw a great battle. Mirai and the survivors were fighting the monstrous Grievance Louis had become, trying to save him from his curse.

“Ahh! Maybe we can do something! Outside! They’re fighting outside! They want to save him! Mirai and the others!”

“M-Mirai?!”

Niflheim suddenly felt something—a connection, a bond between her spiritual being and her “true self” from this timeline. Though the two had never interacted, it was a link between similar entities, forming a kind of singularity.

“My other self…! She’s reacting to me—wait, that’s it!”

“Eh?”

“Belladine, I need your help. Please lend me your Spiritual Power. You’re still bonded to Louis and somehow still safe… maybe the little consciousness he has left hasn’t dared harm you. Maybe he truly loves you dearly.”

“R-Really?”

“Yes… how else are we so safe in this chaotic domain? It feels like even despite everything… Louis doesn’t want to lose us.”

“…!”

“I have an idea. If Niflheim and Tisha can understand what I’m trying to tell them, we could save Louis by bringing them here… or at least one person.”

“Okay!”

Belladine nodded and poured all her power into Niflheim—enough to reduce her back to a small golden butterfly.

“Did it work?”

“Yes, thank you, little one… And I’m sorry. Please stand back. It looks like they understood. They’re coming.”

“Oh?!”

Niflheim floated above the dark skies, harnessing all her power as a Sword Soul Heart. Then, with every ounce of strength…

“Open the Bridge of Heavens! Bifrost!”

SLAAAASH!

She slashed through the sky, splitting open the Fantasy Field within Louis’s corrupted heart and creating a small hole.

An opening connected to Tisha and Niflheim’s technique.

RUMBLE!

Another attack struck the hole, widening it as a giant bridge of rainbow frost manifested. It invaded the entire Fantasy Field and froze everything around it.

The dark wood of the Abyssal Dragon Tree of Ruin writhed in agony, fighting back against the bright rainbow ice—only to freeze further and shatter.

A tenth of the Fantasy Field was suddenly completely encased in ice.

Through that bridge, someone fell—a meteor of blazing chaos.

BOOOMMM!!!

The moment the meteor landed, everything around it exploded and burned. The Grievance rooted throughout the domain turned to ashes and recoiled in agony, constantly pushed back.

Amid the explosion, a large pillar of dark red wood burned away completely, revealing a golden lance that fell to the ashen wasteland below. Slowly it regained its spiritual power and floated in midair.

Seeking its master.

“D-Did it work?!”

Belladine looked into the skies as they quickly closed. The destruction caused by the “meteor” continued; the dark red trees writhed in pain and anger, shaking the entire domain.

At the same time, they realized the meteor had plunged into a sea of black, liquid void. But slowly, from its depths, someone emerged onto the shore.

And it was her.

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