THE GENERAL'S DISGRACED HEIR
Chapter 404 - 404: THE CONVERGENCE OF SOULS

The world dissolved around David like watercolors bleeding in rain.

One moment he had been locked in Sacred Essence Cultivation with Seraphina, their bodies and souls intertwining in the most intimate of magical rituals. The next, he found himself standing in a vast expanse of shifting twilight, where fragments of memory and consciousness floated like islands in an endless sea of possibility.

His mindscape.

But something was wrong. The familiar architecture of his inner world, usually a reflection of controlled order and calculated precision, now rippled with instability. Cracks of silver light spider-webbed across the dark horizon, and the very air hummed with tension that made his teeth ache.

"What the hell?" David muttered, his voice echoing strangely in the ethereal space. He was still dressed in his elegant noble attire, shadows dancing around him like living things responding to his confusion. The Nightveil Embrace clung to his form even here, a reminder of the power he wielded in the physical realm.

That's when he saw himself.

Thirty paces away, another figure stood motionless against the fractured landscape. At first glance, it was unmistakably David, the same facial structure, the same height, the same bearing that spoke of confidence and authority. But where David's hair cascaded down his back like liquid moonlight, this other version's was jet-black, cropped shorter and somehow duller, as if it had never known the touch of divine transformation.

Where David maintained a lean, athletic physique honed through cultivation and combat, this other self was gaunt, almost skeletal. His frame spoke of hunger and deprivation, of strength carved through necessity rather than enhancement. Dark, withered grey armor encased his form, the metal pitted and scarred as if it had endured countless battles without proper maintenance. A massive longsword hung across his back, its blade visible above his shoulder, not ornate or enchanted, but brutally functional.

This was a warrior. A killer. Someone who had lived by the blade and expected to die by it.

"You," the words slipped from David's lips before he could stop them, recognition hitting him like a physical blow.

The armored figure's head turned slowly, revealing eyes that held depths of weariness David had never experienced. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of years David couldn't remember living.

"You've been quite busy," Dead David observed, his tone neither accusatory nor approving, merely stating fact. His gaze swept over David's elegant attire, the shadows that responded to his will, the aura of power that radiated from his form. "I made a promise, didn't I?"

David's mind raced, fragments of memory struggling to surface like drowning swimmers fighting toward light. There had been something, some agreement made in darkness, some understanding reached between versions of himself that existed in spaces he couldn't quite recall.

"What promise?" David demanded, stepping forward. "What are you talking about? How are you even here?"

Dead David's lips curved in what might have been a smile if it had held any warmth. "Always demanding answers before you've earned them. Some things never change, even across iterations." He tilted his head, studying David with the intensity of a predator evaluating prey. "Tell me, Mark, do you even remember who you were before you became David De Gror?"

The name hit David like a physical blow. Mark. His original name, from his original life, before the dimensional fractures, before the reincarnation, before everything that had led him to this world and this body. How did this other version know that name when David himself rarely allowed himself to think it?

Before he could formulate a response, the mindscape began to shake.

Not the gentle tremor of settling earth, but violent convulsions that sent cracks racing across the twilight sky. Islands of memory collided and shattered, their fragments raining down like burning stars. The very fabric of David's consciousness writhed as if something massive was stirring in its depths.

Dead David remained perfectly steady despite the chaos, his armored form unaffected by the reality storm tearing through their shared mental space. "Ah," he said with something approaching satisfaction. "Right on schedule."

"What's happening?" David shouted over the growing din, shadows exploding outward from his form as he fought to maintain his footing. "What did you do?"

"I did nothing," Dead David replied, already beginning to fade around the edges like morning mist before sunlight. "This is what happens when different aspects of the same soul occupy the same space for too long. The universe doesn't appreciate paradoxes."

David lunged forward, desperate for answers that seemed to slip away like water through his fingers. "Wait! Explain yourself! What promise? What truth about our existence?"

But Dead David was dissolving faster now, his armored form breaking apart into drifting particles of dark sand. "You should learn to find me yourself," he said, his voice growing distant even as his eyes remained fixed on David with something approaching pity. "Then I can share the truth behind our existence. But not before you're ready to hear it."

"I'm ready now!" David snarled, reaching out with both hands as if he could physically grasp the disappearing figure. "Tell me!"

The last coherent piece of Dead David's form, his face, lingered a moment longer than the rest. When he spoke, his voice carried across the chaotic mindscape with crystal clarity, each word etching itself into David's consciousness with the weight of absolute truth.

"Love Angelica."

Then he was gone, scattered like ash on a wind that existed only in the spaces between thoughts.

David stood alone in his fracturing mindscape, fists clenched, shadows writhing around him in response to his fury. Angelica. Of course it came back to her. The mysterious executioner he'd taken from his aunt's service, the deadly beauty who had never quite fit into the neat categories he'd created for his other shadow maidens.

He'd brought her into his fold because of some half-remembered promise, some obligation he couldn't quite define. The plan had been simple enough, make her fall for him, bind her loyalty through the same combination of enhancement and affection that had worked so perfectly with Vivian, Seraphina, and the others. It was only fair, only just, that she love the version of David who actually existed rather than some ghost of who he used to be.

But why was Dead David appearing now? What had triggered this convergence of—

Fate answered his question with the subtlety of an avalanche.

To his left, reality simply split.

Not cracked, not torn, but cleanly divided as if someone had taken a knife to the fabric of existence itself. Through the gap, another world bled through, a realm so alien to David's mindscape that his enhanced perception struggled to process what he was seeing.

A throne room of impossible luxury sprawled beyond the dimensional breach. Walls of what appeared to be living coral stretched toward a ceiling that depicted the depths of an endless ocean, complete with the gentle sway of kelp forests and the distant shadows of creatures too vast to comprehend. The floor was a mosaic of pearls and abalone shell that caught and reflected light that seemed to emanate from the water itself.

And at the center of it all, upon a throne carved from a single massive conch shell, sat a figure that defied easy description.