The Guardian gods-Chapter 500

And what he saw was enough to quiet even his curiosity.

Millions of souls, Old and young. Women and men. Newborns that never took a breath. Fetuses torn from silence—not one, but many.

All of them bound to the old man like rusted chains forged from suffering. They clung to him in layers, draped over him like a cloak of the damned, their translucent forms barely visible—moaning, screaming, whispering.

And they cursed him. Not with magic or hexes, But with emotion. Pure, unfiltered rage. Crushing sorrow. Jealousy so sharp it could cut through reality and was having effect on the old mage.

Ikenga could hear them.

Whispers not meant for the living, echoing through realms—curses he’d never encountered before. Languages long dead, carried by unborn tongues. A child whispering hate with the knowledge of an elder. A mother weeping promises of vengeance as she hovered beside her killer. A fetus... cursing the very idea of its own conception.

And through it all, the old man simply stood there, unaware of the full horror he carried.

"You’re not alone," Ikenga said, his voice softer now. "You never were. They’ve followed you for years."

The old man didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His mouth opened, but no sound came.

And for the first time in decades, he felt... small. A man swallowed by shadows he himself had nurtured.

Ikenga took a step forward—not to threaten, but to examine. To understand.

"How long," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone, "can a man wear the dead before they start to wear him?"

Ikenga took a slow step forward, the earth beneath his bare feet trembling gently—not from force, but reverence.

The old man, despite his vast knowledge and twisted strength, felt it immediately: he had no control here. The space around Ikenga bent, not from pressure, but from acknowledgment. The land remembered him. The air honored him. The curse within the world itself sang his name in a tone older than language.

Even among sixth stage mages—beings capable of warping the sky and tearing mountains—the old man felt small.

And then, before he could blink, Ikenga was in front of him.

He hadn’t seen him move.

No wind, no blur—just a god, suddenly near.

An arm reached out. Long, steady, calloused not from time but from purpose. The old man tried to step back, to cast something, anything, but his body refused. His limbs were frozen, not by spell or paralysis, but by the sheer weight of the curses who were now holding him down looking down at him with anger.

Ikenga’s palm rested gently upon the old man’s scalp, like one might touch a child, or a beast. Not in malice—but in solemnity.

The cursed markings across Ikenga’s chest and arms pulsed—a deep, organic rhythm like a second heartbeat. The drawings, inked in languages that had died long before this world’s first empire rose, began to shift and shimmer. Words twisted. Symbols rotated like gears in an eternal mechanism. They weren’t just marks—they were living etchings, and they were hungry.

And then they fed.

The cursed energy clinging to the old man—thick, layered with decades of ritual and death—peeled away from him like mist in sunlight. Not torn, not extracted violently, but absorbed, drawn in like water into thirsty soil.

Ikenga’s body responded—new markings bloomed across his skin, coiling like vines on fresh bark. His upper torso became something impossible to comprehend—an infinite space, as if he were both man and forest, shrine and void, a living domain unto himself.

The old man opened his mouth to scream.

Only then did pain arrive. It came not in fire or blades, but in the truth being devoured: every cursed soul he had bound now being unbound, redirected, given voice.

The whispers turned to shrieks. The fetuses screamed with ancestral rage. The mothers howled through teeth they never grew. The warriors cursed him and the unborn wept in betrayal and unfairness of not being born.

As the other mages snapped to action—trying to understand, trying to move—it was already over.

A scream tore through the air, jagged and inhuman, not just from the throat but from the very soul of the old man. It echoed through the clouds, split the sky in two, and was silenced in the blink of an eye.

And where he once stood— There was nothing but a severed head, hovering just above the ground. Its mouth still open in defiance, its eyes wide in disbelief and agony. His soul, still trapped within, churned inside the flesh like a moth beneath wax.

Ikenga’s hand remained open a moment longer before he lowered it, the markings across his body settling, now glowing with dark Purple and violet hues—new curses written into his very being.

He turned slightly, admiring the head. Not as a trophy. Not as an act of cruelty. But as a gift.

"Perfect," he murmured. "Keles will appreciate this one." ƒгeewёbnovel.com

The head floated into his palm, the faintest hum of curses still vibrating within it—like a heart that refused to die, too stubborn for peace.

A wooden tendril, gnarled and dark like the roots of an old tree, unfurled from Ikenga’s waist. It coiled with organic precision around the head, gently latching it like an offering on his belt. The tendril pulsed once, acknowledging the new burden, and then stiffened, holding the head in place. The hum of curses continued, now syncopated with the slow breath of the god of nature and curses.

Behind him, the four remaining mages stood frozen—silent, still as statues.

For the first time since they reached the sixth stage of magical ascension—becoming beings capable of rewriting the laws of nature with their will—they felt something unfamiliar gnaw at their core.

Not fear of death. They had danced on that edge many times.

But this? This was something older. Something primal.

It was the fear of not knowing. The fear of being in the presence of a god whose nature defied all records, all philosophies, all prepared contingencies.

Ikenga was something other and not knowing what he was terrified them more than anything.

Ikenga turned slightly, feeling the subtle pull of shifting energies behind him. His single eye locked onto Vellok, whose form had begun to flicker with phantom wings—wings made of pure white feathers and a slight lovely hymn, half-formed by panic and instinct.

But something stopped the transformation.

A new presence pressed against the world.

Vellok felt it first. He turned slightly, eyes widening. He didn’t speak. He didn’t cast a spell. He simply took a single step back—and the space behind him ripped open, like paper cut with an invisible blade. Without a sound, he vanished.

His retreat was not questioned.

The remaining three mages didn’t even blink. They weren’t surprised as they knew why he retreated "He was given an order"

Now they looked at Ikenga with new eyes. Not with arrogance, not with terror. But with caution.

Measured. Calculating. As if their minds were scrambling to build new frameworks to define the kind of god they now faced.

The presence of the Emperor made itself known. He extended his will through the fabric of existence like a ripple across still water, touching the hearts and minds of his subjects with both authority and clarity.

From his distant vantage, he observed the aftermath of the confrontation. When he saw how the old mage had fallen, he was momentarily taken aback—not by the death itself, but by the manner of it. It lacked the chaos and struggle one might expect from a practitioner of such a high level. But the clues were there, faint and fragmented, embedded in the remnants of magic and will that still lingered like fading echoes in the air. With a thought, he pieced them together.

The Emperor understood. But Vellok and the others who had been closer, who had felt the clash with their own eyes, did not. The fear that clung to them was not from ignorance of death—it was from the uncomprehending nature of it. Something had happened that defied what they thought they knew about power and the way it should behave.

So, the Emperor extended his will once more, this time as a balm. Through this link, he conveyed what had truly occurred.

"The old mage," his voice echoed within them, both near and infinite, "was both fortunate and unfortunate to encounter one such as Ikenga. In another time, under different stars, Ikenga might have guided him. There is wisdom in Ikenga—stillness, patience, even compassion. But today, they were enemies.

The mage walked a path flawed from its very foundation. Ikenga merely revealed it. He did not strike him down in brute force; he simply showed him the inevitable consequence of his choices. The collapse was internal—Ikenga only gave it the gentlest push. That is why the old man fell so easily. A sixth stage practitioner... undone not by might, but by the truth he could no longer bear to carry."

A hush fell over those gathered. The explanation did not erase the fear, but it gave it shape. And

In understanding, there was a grim sort of comfort. The Emperor said no more. His presence receded like the tide, but the impression he left remained.