CSS 1391 - Somewhere on the Reynor Continent.
Seen from the peaks of the Kendanor Mountains, the continent of Reynor looked like an endless waste. Crags, dry valleys, dusty plains. A place where life clung on by force, and beauty had never truly settled.
The woman gliding through the sky looked down. Her white hair streamed in the wind while her violet eyes swept the rocks one by one. There was nothing on her face. No anger, no impatience, no curiosity. Only a deep, ancient stillness.
"So my wayward daughter abandoned her family for these barren rocks. Hmph."
Her murmur scattered into the wind — yet even its faint tremor was enough to start an avalanche on Kendanor's peaks. The snow cracked, crumbled, and began to pour down the slopes. She did not even notice.
"I can feel her presence to the north of here. Let us see if she can refuse me this time."
She was about to move when she stopped. A feeling. More than one presence, approaching. She closed her eyes and waited.
Minutes later, the figures appeared. Seventeen of them. Judging by the mana they radiated, they were all local gods of this continent. The woman laughed inwardly. The thinness of their mana alone betrayed how barren this land truly was. And yet the sheer arrogance of daring to call themselves gods — she found it genuinely amusing.
The one standing at their head, looking like arrogance given flesh, spoke first.
"You do not belong here, demon."
The woman looked at him. For a long moment she said nothing at all. Then she spoke, slowly.
"Oh? And do you belong here?"
"Playing word games will buy you nothing." Another figure spoke from the back, its voice harsher. "Leave, or suffer the consequences."
The arrogant one stepped forward again. "Leave, or you will suffer the consequences." As he repeated the words, the woman's gaze measured him from crown to heel. Then she spoke lightly, almost with disinterest.
"I can feel the weapon you keep hidden in your void space, child." Her voice was flat. "It does not belong to you. I do not know who gave it to you — but I suspect the one watching us from a few thousand kilometers away, behind a veil of concealment magic, has some idea."
The arrogant figure's brow furrowed. Sensing an object inside a void space was impossible. Even gods could not do it. As for whoever had given him the weapon — he had never cared. No matter. They had not come here to talk, and there was no point in dragging this out.
"Very well. Then let us waste no more time. You should never have come here, Vaelantys."
The moment the words ended, a colossal manifestation of the sun blazed into being behind him. Its heat began boiling the snow off the mountains and scorching the barren valley below. Had the gods not woven mana shields to protect the continent, the mortals who prayed to them would have already been ash. The others activated their spells and abilities in the same breath.
Their target — the white-haired woman — simply stood there, unmoving. Her violet eyes watched them: utterly calm, utterly indifferent. Nothing enraged the arrogant figure more. How dare she stand unmoved before the sun?
He struck first. He hurled the colossal sun at his target. The sun, as it always had, would burn away everything beneath it. That, at least, was his expectation.
The woman did not even bother to meet it.
The manifestation struck her — and scattered, as if it had never existed. With the sun's abrupt death the world went dark; slowly, the true sun's light crept back and lit the land once more. The woman stood in the same spot. She had not moved. Her face still held nothing at all.
The others waited no longer.
A figure that melted through shadow appeared at her back, daggers raised — and burst apart before the blades could fall. Where he had stood, a dense sphere of blood formed; blood streamed into it from every direction, and the sphere turned slowly above the woman's head. Enraged by his companion's death, another god lunged — and before his stride was finished, his blood too was ripped into the sphere, his body collapsing like an emptied skin.
The arrogant figure watched, then spoke. "So this is the famed Blood Dominion. The power that let your kind rule the world." His lip curled. "And yet I see none of that old glory in it, Vaelantys."
The words had barely ended when three more gods charged. All three were dragged into the sphere of blood at once, and were gone. In the same instant, a god at the rear attacked with torrents of water that surged like a great river, conjuring spears of water to split her attention.
"Very well. Let us have some fun."
By the time the words were heard, she was already moving. She had set the blood magic aside; now she used her fists and her feet. The gods' spells crumbled and scattered before they could come near her. The only one able to meet her blows and answer them was a hulking figure, half man and half tiger. But while the woman turned his strikes aside with one hand, every blow from her slender frame folded him over and made him cough blood. He endured a few seconds more — then a single punch to his side sent him hurtling away like a meteor, into one of Kendanor's peaks. Shattered stone flew in every direction.
In that moment, a second manifestation of the sun was rising behind her. This one was far mightier than the first. Unable to accept his own inferiority, the arrogant figure had poured all his power, all his majesty — perhaps every prayer that flowed to him — into it.
The woman raised her hand and snapped her fingers.
The colossal sun died faster than the first. Where it unraveled, a dark haze of violet-black dust hung in the air, slowly dissolving. It was the physical form of chaotic mana — and the instant the arrogant figure saw that dust, every survival instinct he possessed screamed at once, commanding him to flee.
He could not. She had already caught him.
"It seems you have a personal fondness for the sun. But you have not truly understood it, boy." Her voice was almost gentle. "Perhaps seeing it up close will deepen your understanding."
The words ended — and the god found himself flung beyond the world, and only a heartbeat later realized he was being pulled into the sun.That accursed demon threw me into the sun. "HOW DARE YOU!" he roared; but his aura and his body were already igniting in the sun's fury, his mana rapidly losing its balance.
While he burned, the woman went on playing with the remaining gods. She murmured inwardly. So this is what little Kaelossyra spoke of. The moment she had set foot on this continent, a figure had slipped out of the darkness, bowed before her, and whispered that the local gods were laying a plan. She had not cared. Toying with these newborn gods was entertaining. Truly, they had gone so blind with pride and ambition that they believed themselves true gods — believed they could take the place of the Ralakh.
It was pathetic.
With that thought, a silent, deep wave of chaos mana rolled out from her — and every god within its reach crumbled to dust in seconds.
Four gods remained. Seventeen had come.
For a moment, the woman genuinely wondered if she was getting old. That seventeen provincial godlings had delayed her this long...
"Per Valys!"
The cry of fury split the sky. Lightning cracked; black stormclouds gathered from every horizon. The four remaining gods fell to their knees and pressed their faces to the earth, unwilling. Behind the woman, a crimson moon had risen — red as blood.
Before her anger could settle, a voice spoke behind her.
"Truly... a demon... dares to throw me into the sun!" The voice was burned and cracked, but standing. "Did you truly believe the sun could destroy me? I am the sun! I am the whole of its glory made flesh!"
Even as he raged, he felt that something was wrong. The sun had burned him, but the prayers still flowing to him had carried him out alive — though his core mana was scorched, and would take centuries at least to mend. Had he been a god of few prayers, like the others, he would already be dead. But a god who received the prayers of an entire continent would, so long as those prayers flowed, sooner or later be born anew. And — just as the woman had said — the experience truly had deepened his understanding of the sun.
He would have raged on — but only now did he see it: of his pantheon, only four remained. Thalassia and the others were gravely wounded. Water poured from Thalassia's body to the earth below like a falling cascade; her mana was draining, her strength failing.
And nowhere — nowhere could he see his son. Auren.
In that instant, he understood everything.
"YOU! HOW DARE YOU KILL MY SON!"
He lunged — and the woman turned on him with a voice like iron. "ENOUGH. Know your place, whelp." Then her tone leveled; it became cool, almost courteous. "If you wish to see how your son died, I can show you. After all — you missed his death while you were sunbathing."
A dense cloud of blood gathered around her. Out of it, Auren emerged — sea-blue eyes, golden hair. The moment his eyes opened he began to cough; and in that same moment, the violet-eyed woman drove a blade woven of chaotic mana into the throat of the god she had just remade.
Auren died for the second time without ever understanding the first.
The arrogant figure's scream of fury shook the continent. In the eyes of Thalassia — she who seemed a living reflection of the sea — there was rage as well; but what weighed on her far more heavily was guilt. We should never have come here, she thought, over and over. We should never have come.
The violet-eyed woman answered the god's fury with a laugh that rolled across the whole of the land.
And in that moment — the moment no one expected — a figure appeared silently at her side.
"That is enough, Emilia. You have had your fun."
The sealing of Emilia followed the words almost in the same instant. The weapon the arrogant figure had hidden in his void space now rested in this mysterious figure's hand. The figure had been watching from afar since the battle began — since the moment Emilia had first set foot upon this continent. It had known, of course, that she had noticed it. All it had needed was the right moment.
And at last, that moment had come.
With Emilia's sealing, the sensation of something vast and invisible breaking echoed through the entire world at once. Below, a violet-black dust settled slowly over the barren valley in the battle's shadow; the earth drank it in silence. That valley would never grow green again.
The mysterious figure felt the fracture run through the world from end to end, and murmured to itself:
"The balance is broken at last. Now it is your turn, Direa."