The crown of thorns dug into the Amalgam’s scalp. Her golden eyes glowed with pure bloodlust. A tinge of red mixed with the gold as it flickered like a flame was captured within her eyes.

The world was brought asunder. The trees of the Black Forest spontaneously combusted within a five-hundred-meter radius. The branches smoldered within a kilometer. The world was reduced to cinders as concrete towers depicting alien architecture replaced them.

What appeared to be a Corrupted Zone formed around the Amalgam. The White Rabbit’s world resonated so deeply that the flames could not be disguised over with illusion. They surrendered, giving the Amalgam free reign as Terrent was left face to face with the incarnation of fear itself.

The heat was intolerable, but he was still safe from it. Yet even so it was overwhelming. Every inch of his vision was smeared in the Amalgam’s wrath as she suddenly resumed her carnage, holding onto what was once his collar.

Despite how much he morphed, he did not take any damage whatsoever. A normal person would have perished immediately but he did not possess vital organs.

“Everything will burn.” The Amalgam warned with a deep voice. Red embers left her lips like the breath of a dragon. “Nothing will be left of you Impuritas once I reach your Hearts. There is only one language that can be spoken to your kind that.”

Crimson markings were drawn along her body, glowing as though lava coursed through her veins. A pair of fiery wings protruded a meter away from her back, each one connected to a flaming ring, and the tips of her hair glowed like red-hot iron.

She was an Angel of fire. No. A Demon of wrath. The most terrifying thing of all was that she did not attack with anything other than her bare hands.

“That is violence! You say fear is what determines who can and who cannot – yet you target the weak and hold them captive!” The Amalgam’s emotions ran rampant like her flames.

Terrent suffocated by the weight of her words. They came crashing down like her hands that sliced more and more of his body away. The rapid strikes slowed down to cold, methodical slashes. She moved at a speed that he could perceive, further entrenching him in a chasm of fear.

“Intentionally harming the healers, exploiting the cracks in the minds of people, then retreating to the earth. You were not born like them. But you… you are worse than monsters born with evil intent!”

The Amalgam held onto what was left of his pitiful form. He dangled from his sinews like a marionette as he trembled. But his ego would not allow him to fail now. In fact, he was waiting for an opportunity to present itself. The Amalgam’s mind was slowly showing her cracks.

“The only thing they fear is me. Every person. Every installation. Every Heart, and every one of those Aspiring Stars will disappear. All impurities of this world will be cleansed, beginning with you!”

He could feel it.

His body held onto the last sliver of life left.

If he didn’t manifest the Amalgam’s nightmares soon, then his very would be devoured here and now.

“I can’t expel the impurities from the Nex Megalopolis. I will therefore exterminate them. The rest of the world doesn’t need to suffer. Tell me, Worm, before you die here – why do you aspire to become ‘Stars’? Why do you aspire to become complete!?”

He saw it.

A rift in the Amalgam’s mind. The porous opening was the opportunity he needed. The fears that gripped his heart like the Amalgam disappeared as he felt himself slipping through those cracks.

“Ah… ahaha… hahaha!” Maniacal laugher rolled from his mangled form before his mind entered the Amalgam’s. The agony of his body was gone as he found himself in a black purgatory. “I’m here… Amalgam… Why must we become Stars? To become complete?”

He recited, knowing that the Amalgam could still hear his voice from the outside.

“Because they are the incarnation of terror itself. The Stars of the old! Why wish on a star when you can wish on yourself? This form that refuses Corruption – to me, that is completion! Our realization! No… our awakening into becoming our perfect selves!” His eloquent manner of speech was reduced to crazed drivels.

He reached into the darkness with his renewed, shadowy form. A glimmer of light appeared in the palm of his hand.

“Corruption is a gift that we cannot exercise. Gifts came from Stars in the ancient past. Those Stars were said to have been long gone. I can give my ‘gifts’ as freely as I wish. My radiance will be unlike any other! All we have to do is reach the Piece of the Fallen Star –”

He clasped at the light, vanquishing it from within the Amalgam’s mind.

“– AND IT WILL ALL BECOME REALIZED!”

However, that light was never in the palm of his hands.

In fact, it was so far away that he could not fathom its distance.

Suddenly, the light fell into the horizon, plunging him into pure darkness.

“… Was that not your fear? That Brightest Star?” He questioned, unable to navigate through this darkness. It became thick, like the air itself was as dense as oil. Before long he found himself trapped, suffocated by it all as he witnessed streaks of light pass across the sky.

“All these Stars. All in motion. What is the root of your fear? Why can’t I proceed further!?” He screamed, feeling the darkness slip through the cracks of his own mind.

Normally, he’d see a perfect picture of one’s deepest fears.

But the Amalgam’s…

… was a bottomless well.

He could not tell what it was.

Only that this place was perhaps the origin of fear itself.

As he tried to conceive of something – anything – his body began to melt into the darkness itself. The light in his blank face was all that was left, trapped within this empty place.

Then, he was struck by an inordinate wave of loneliness.

He felt like he had become a Star for a split second.

So why was everything around him so dark and distant…?