My Twin Is a Void Lord? I Still Pinched Him Into Submission

The blinding white light of a dying universe shattered.

Emerson's consciousness slammed into a confined, pitch-black space. A violent wave of nausea hit her. She tried to gasp for air, but thick, warm liquid rushed into her lungs. Her tiny body convulsed. Her chest spasmed.

Panic lasted only a fraction of a second. The cold, calculating logic of a supreme architect took over. She stopped thrashing. Oxygen was pulsing into her abdomen through a thick, fleshy tube.

She tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids were fused shut.

She was a fetus.

Emerson pulled her awareness inward, scanning the microscopic architecture of her new physical form. The result sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through her developing nervous system. Her Arcane Circuits were flawless. It was a vessel built for absolute power.

Before she could process the satisfaction, a sharp, hollow ache ripped through her gut. Her soul energy flickered, dimming like a dying candle.

Someone was draining her.

She pushed her senses outward, piercing the amniotic fluid. Curled up inches away from her was another heartbeat. Her twin brother.

A chaotic, greedy vortex of dark energy churned inside his tiny chest. It acted like a black hole, violently sucking the pure Aether essence meant for her straight through the fluid and into his own core.

Emerson's heart rate plummeted. Her limbs grew heavy. If this continued, she would be born a stillborn corpse.

A spike of ice-cold fury pierced her mind.

You do not steal from me.

She forced her underdeveloped right arm to move. She swung her tiny fist through the dense fluid, aiming for his ribs. The water resistance slowed the punch to a pathetic, soft nudge against his back.

Physical attacks were useless.

Emerson abandoned her body. She sank her consciousness deep into the Noetic Space-the mental vault of her past life. She scraped together a single, microscopic fraction of her supreme soul pressure. She compressed it until it felt like a physical, burning needle in her mind.

She aimed. She drove the invisible needle straight through the amniotic fluid and into the center of her brother's forehead.

His body jerked violently. The greedy suction stopped instantly.

The dark energy inside him flared, sensing a threat. Invisible, chaotic tentacles lashed out through the water, rushing toward Emerson's face.

Emerson didn't flinch. She unleashed the full weight of her soul pressure. A solid, impenetrable barrier of pure will slammed down between them.

The dark tentacles crashed into the barrier and shattered. A pathetic, whimpering vibration echoed from her brother's soul.

Stay down, Emerson commanded through sheer intent. I am in charge.

The chaotic energy inside him collapsed, shrinking back into his core like a beaten dog. The theft ended. Pure, warm Aether essence flooded back through Emerson's umbilical cord. Her heartbeat steadied.

She immediately grabbed the Aether, forcing it down into her abdomen to construct a rudimentary Mana Core. The energy was rich. It tasted of high-grade alchemy. Her new mother was not a commoner.

Emerson accelerated the absorption. A tiny, invisible whirlpool of magic spun around her body.

Outside the womb, a muffled, gentle voice vibrated through the fluid. A hand pressed warmly against the stomach wall.

"Someone is very active today."

Emerson paused her spinning core. She settled into a deep meditation, hoarding her strength.

Then, heavy boots thudded against a wooden floor outside. A man's voice cut through the warmth, sharp and smelling of sulfur.

Emerson pushed her awareness against the uterine wall. She focused her newly gathered Aether into her developing auditory nerves. The muffled sounds outside sharpened into brutal clarity.

A low, frantic chanting vibrated through the floorboards. The stench of sulfur and rotting blood hit Kamala, causing a violent wave of nausea. The sudden spike of intense, suffocating terror flooded her bloodstream with stress hormones, chilling the amniotic fluid.

"Josue, what are you doing?" Kamala's voice trembled. "What is this circle?"

The chanting stopped.

"Sacrifices must be made, Kamala," Josue said. His voice was dead, devoid of any human warmth. "If I am to reach Ascension, I need fuel."

Kamala's heartbeat skyrocketed. The frantic thumping echoed like war drums in Emerson's ears.

"I am your wife!" Kamala screamed. "I am carrying our children!"

"The bloodline of a high-born heiress," Josue mocked, his boots stepping closer. "Combined with the pure, unborn souls of twins. It is the perfect catalyst."

A wave of pure terror crashed through Kamala's bloodstream. The temperature of the womb plummeted.

A sickening, freezing mass of Shadow Aether locked onto Kamala's stomach.

Emerson reacted instantly. She drained her tiny Mana Core, throwing up a razor-thin shield of magic around herself and her brother.

Shhhk.

The wet, heavy sound of a blade tearing through flesh and muscle echoed in the dark.

Kamala let out a blood-curdling shriek. Her entire body convulsed. The violent spasm crushed Emerson against the uterine wall.

Life force began pouring out of Kamala, draining away like water down a cracked sink. The sacrificial circle on the floor below them pulled like a magnet, trying to rip Emerson's soul straight out of her chest.

Beside her, Jaden's chaotic energy flared again, provoked by the dark magic. He was about to explode.

Emerson slammed her soul pressure down on him. Do not move. You will tear her apart.

Outside, Kamala's maternal instinct overrode her agony. Her bloody hands clamped down on Josue's wrist, her fingernails digging into his skin.

"You will not touch them!" Kamala roared. The love in her voice was gone. Only raw, bleeding hatred remained.

Kamala shoved her free hand into her pocket. Her fingers crushed a silver Rune Stone.

A blinding, explosive light detonated in the basement.

A massive spatial shockwave slammed into Josue, throwing him backward. His spine cracked against the stone wall. The sacrificial pull snapped.

Kamala clamped both hands over the gaping wound in her abdomen. She stumbled forward, her boots slipping on her own blood, and kicked the iron door open.

Freezing rain and howling wind slapped against her face. She threw herself into the pitch-black pine forest.

Her boots sank into the thick mud. She fell hard to her knees, the impact jarring the babies inside her. She forced herself back up, gasping for air, her lungs wheezing.

Inside, Emerson pushed tiny pulses of Aether toward the wound, trying to clot the severed blood vessels. But Josue's Shadow Aether coated the blade's entry point. It ate through Emerson's healing magic like acid.

"You cannot run, Kamala!" Josue's furious roar echoed through the trees behind them. "The perimeter is sealed!"

Kamala ground her teeth together. She leaned her shoulder against a rough pine trunk and dragged her feet forward.

Emerson felt the mother's heart rate slowing. The blood loss was too severe. Kamala had less than ten minutes before her organs failed.

If Kamala died, they all died.

Emerson made her choice. She sank her consciousness to the absolute bottom of her Noetic Space. She reached for the heavy, forbidden iron doors of her past life's power.

Emerson's mind ripped the first seal off the Noetic doors.

A tsunami of ancient memories and raw power violently crashed into her fragile consciousness. Her soul felt like it was being torn into shreds. She gritted her nonexistent teeth and extracted a single, microscopic drop of the Architect's Essence.

Outside, Kamala's knees buckled. She collapsed face-first into the freezing mud.

A violent contraction seized the womb. Kamala let out a suffocated whimper. The pressure inside shifted dangerously. The amniotic sac was close to rupturing.

"I can't die here..." Kamala's fingers clawed at the dirt, her nails breaking and bleeding.

Before Kamala could pass out, a terrifying, blistering heat erupted from deep inside her stomach.

Emerson injected the Architect's Essence directly into her fragile Mana Core. She forced it to compress.

Novice. Adept. Expert.

The fetus's magic level skyrocketed in a matter of seconds. The sheer gravitational pull of her core instantly sucked the surrounding forest dry of all ambient magic. A visible vacuum of Aether formed around Kamala's body.

The falling raindrops froze in mid-air. A split second later, the intense magical pressure vaporized the water into thick white steam.

Emerson's core stabilized with a silent, internal boom. She was at the Master-tier.

The universe noticed.

A fetus reaching the Master-tier violated the fundamental laws of existence. The Reality Correction mechanism engaged instantly.

High above the forest, the ordinary storm clouds violently twisted into a massive, dark purple vortex. The sky roared. The thunder sounded like the grinding of tectonic plates. The ground beneath Kamala shook.

Josue stopped running. He pushed through a thicket of thorns and stared up at the swirling purple sky, his chest heaving.

"A high-tier beast advancing?" Josue muttered, his eyes widening with greed. "Or an artifact?"

He looked down and saw Kamala bleeding out in the mud.

Josue laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound. "The heavens are blessing my Ascension."

He raised his blood-soaked dagger. Thick, black Shadow Aether dripped from the blade.

Kamala saw him. She curled into a tight ball, wrapping her arms and legs around her stomach to take the blade in her back.

Inside the womb, Emerson felt the vibration of Josue's footsteps.

You know nothing of power, insect.

Emerson carefully extracted a single thread of dark, abyssal magic from her brother's dormant core. She pushed it out through Kamala's skin, mixing the dark essence directly into the localized Reality Correction storm she had just triggered. The thread acted as an invisible, magnetic beacon, guiding the heavens' wrath to lock onto the nearest, most concentrated source of matching dark energy-Josue.

The Reality Correction storm above was blindly searching for the source of the anomaly. It instantly locked onto the massive spike of Shadow Aether radiating from Josue's dagger and the thread on his leg.

The targeting shifted.

A pillar of blinding purple lightning, thick as a redwood tree, tore through the sky.

The static electricity made Josue's hair stand on end. The air around him tasted like copper. He looked up. The purple light consumed his pupils.

"No-!"

Josue screamed. He shoved all his magic into his defensive shields.

The lightning struck him dead center. The world vanished into a blinding white flash.