Mordret's Desperate Gamble

Mordret revealed that his plan had never been to stop Asterion, but merely to buy some time, using the advance of the Hunger Domain as a delay. As Cassie realized, the countless dead vessels across the battlefield were not destroyed by any external force — rather, Mordret himself was collecting the millions of fragments of his soul he had torn away to inhabit the legion of stolen bodies back, assembling his soul like a puzzle. Despite the unnatural impossibility of such an act, since souls healed instead of accepting lost fragments, he was absorbing them nevertheless, forcing his soul to swell to a dreadful, impossible size, deeper than even a Supreme soul was meant to be. Admitting it was a desperate gamble born from desperation and having nothing to lose, Mordret sought to overturn the situation entirely, attempting something akin to Apotheosis — to flip the board rather than win within its rules. His Reflections, each formed from his soul cores and strengthened by harvesting fragments across the battlefield, served as extensions of this plan, and he ultimately began reclaiming them as well, even shattering one Reflection to absorb its power and soul cores back into himself.^[2]

Cassie had recoiled against the stone wall of the Ebony Tower, watching in horror as Mordret shattered his Reflections and absorbed their soul cores, pushing his already vast soul far beyond its natural limits. As his power grew monstrously, the strain manifested physically, warping the surroundings while he attempted a seemingly impossible path to Apotheosis by consuming himself. Realizing he might succeed due to his unique nature, Cassie hesitated at the chance to strike him during his vulnerable transformation, ultimately choosing not to act. She had remained still, relinquishing certainty, as Mordret's soul began collapsing under the pressure, its many cores shattering before being forced together into a single radiant sphere.^[3]

Mordret's gamble ended in disaster when his Apotheosis failed at the last moment. Although he briefly reached the empyrean heights of godhood, the Corruption entered his newly formed Sacred core, damaged it, and began consuming him from within. With only one soul core left after shattering the others to fuel his Apotheosis, he could no longer save himself by discarding a corrupted core. His body and mind were already undergoing the profane transformation into a Nightmare Creature, leaving him trapped with no escape.^[5]

As Asterion and the army of the Hunger Domain entered the shattered Ebony Tower, Mordret knelt on the fractured floor in agony, staring at Asterion with desperation, pain, and hatred in his eyes. Then he suddenly disappeared, leaving behind only a shallow puddle of blood. His failed Apotheosis and escape left the battle seemingly lost and forced Cassie to flee while Asterion turned his attention toward her instead of pursuing Mordret.^[5]

Mordret's failure in Apotheosis was not the result of any external interference and it had been preordained. Asterion described Mordret as someone who simply never stood a chance and attributed the outcome to his arrogance, noting that he attempted Apotheosis without first understanding its required knowledge and principles.^[6]

Apotheosis is the process of ascending to godhood, more precisely defined as becoming a Spirit. In this progression, a Transcendent's soul expands beyond the confines of their mortal shell, while a Supreme's soul draws on its source element and grows to encompass a Domain. A Spirit is an entity whose soul embodies its source element, expands to encompass an entire realm, and fuses with the laws governing that realm. At the highest level, a Divine being, or true god, is someone whose essence encompasses all of existence, woven into the universal laws that rule it.^[6]

Asterion also stated that individuals from the War Realm face inherent limitations because their realm denies their existence, forcing attempts at Apotheosis to occur in the Dream Realm. He argued that Mordret's failure resulted from attempting to fuse his soul with the laws of the Realm of Corruption, a domain he was not prepared to withstand. He concluded that Mordret was neither ready to become a god nor capable of enduring the darkness within that realm, and therefore his failure was inevitable and solely his responsibility.^[6]

As Mordret escaped the mirror beneath Ebony Tower while being consumed by Corruption, he bitterly confronted his reflection about failure, hatred, and unfairness before ultimately dragging his other self from the mirror and demanding that he destroy him rather than let the Dreamspawn or Corruption claim him.^[7]

Long ago, a forsaken child conquered a Nightmare and was split into seven fragments, but the fragment without regret killed the others to reclaim himself, sparing only the final fragment who carried their death. As Corruption consumed him beneath Ebony Tower, Mordret begged his last remaining reflection to kill him out of love before he became a monster, lamenting that the only being who ever loved him was the one he hated most. When the mirror shattered and darkness overtook him completely, Mordret forced a shard into his other self's hand and commanded him to strike.^[8]

After the Ebony Tower quaked, Mordret awakened in the shattered underground hall^[9] where the mirror and the man who had become the King of Nothing had vanished, leaving only a bloodied mirror shard in his hand. Having finally absorbed the last shard of himself after decades spent shattered and incomplete, he became whole and human again, though burdened by memories of both his cruel, vengeful self from the Dream Realm and the meek, compassionate self shaped by the Great Mirror. Now able to truly feel guilt, regret, pain, and sorrow, Mordret realized that although he was no longer shattered, the scars of his Flaw would always remain like cracks in a repaired porcelain vase. Despite becoming Supreme, he had lost his vessels, Reflections, Domain, and nearly all his soul cores, leaving only a king who ruled nobody and had nothing.^[10]

When soldiers of the Hunger Domain led by Saint Jest stormed the chamber to kill him, Mordret slaughtered them almost instantly after Jest's warning to close their eyes came too late. He then confronted Jest about the ambush on the Chained Isles that destroyed his original body, condemned blind loyalty as vile, yet spared the old man's life while threatening that perhaps he wished to make him watch his family die first.^[10]

After speaking into the air to Cassia, questioning whether she had known what would happen to them and agreeing to an unknown request, Mordret disappeared into the reflections in the blood pooled around the corpses and reappeared aboard the Night Garden, where he shattered the living hull that tried to swallow him and calmly warned the gathered defenders of the Great Citadel that there were two ways to settle the situation — a pleasant one and a gruesome one — while admitting he hoped they would choose the latter.^[10]