The ministers were filing out of the hall when light fell from the sky.
It hit the floor of the temple in a column so pure and bright that half the ministers reached for their Divine Power reflexively, thinking that the Great Aetherium's Angels had entered the capital. Then they saw what was inside the light.
A woman in a long white dress. A golden crown. A golden scepter. A face that matched or exceeded anything even the Elf lineages could produce. And radiating from her was Supreme God Tier Divine Power, stronger than even Asher's own.
Several ministers who had been believers of faith in the Ancient Era nearly went to their knees by reflex. Some of them had followed this woman before abandoning faith for Truth when the Faith Faction withdrew from the Endless Continent.
The old instinct was deep in the body, but they caught themselves because they were Gods of Truth now, not believers of Faith. They could not kneel to a Goddess of Faith, regardless of what their bodies remembered.
Asher rose from his throne.
"Her Holiness Pandora."
Yes, this was Pandora, the Goddess of Light, leader of the Light Pantheon, ancient enough that she had fought the Gods of Darkness in the Ancient Era hundreds of thousands of years ago, when Asher's ancestors hadn't yet been born. In front of her, this Emperor was just a child. He didn't pretend otherwise.
"I've heard your name often from the Gods under my command." Pandora said, with a smile that carried the same holy warmth her Divine Power projected, "Meeting you now is an honor."
"The honor is mine, Your Holiness." Asher said, "Those of us who pursue the 'Light' have learned from your divine path."
"Your empire has developed remarkably." Pandora said, "Without this war, your future would have been even more brilliant." She took a pause, "I'll come to the point. I'm here to help the Light Empire."
The hall erupted, not in cheers, but in something quieter and more desperate. Relief. The kind that comes after a long time without it.
'Our savior has arrived.'
The Light Empire was not quite at its end, but it could see that end from where it stood. If the Nivara line broke, the central territory lay open. Every legion and supernatural had been committed to that river's defense, leaving the cities behind it empty. The Great Aetherium and Castle Faction would sweep through without resistance and reach the imperial capital within days.
Even with hundreds of thousands of True Gods gathered there and every defensive treasure deployed, Asher had no confidence the capital could hold against multiple Supreme God Tier Angels and the armies behind them. The doomsday clock was running. They needed outside help.
Pandora's arrival had felt like a rope thrown to a drowning man. The hall had erupted in relief, more than twenty High God Tier ministers barely restraining the impulse to prostrate themselves before her. Asher rose from his throne with more genuine feeling than he'd shown in weeks.
He let himself think through what it meant. The Light Pantheon had over a million Gods of Faith. Pandora herself had risen since the ancient war, from intermediate-stage of the Supreme God Tier back then to the late-stage now, the same level as Malakar and Skarion before Haru suppressed them.
More importantly, she was stronger than Asher by a measurable margin, her Divine Power was second only to the Elven Goddess Elunara among the leaders of Pantheons of Faith. If she brought her Gods and stood with the empire's True Gods at the Imperial Capital, holding until the Divine War arrived became not just possible but likely.
He had not felt this kind of confidence in quite some time. And the source of his recent gloom went deeper than just the war. It was the structural tragedy of the whole situation. The Great Aetherium and the Light Empire belonged to the same Light Faction. In the coming battle of planets, they should have been natural allies, perhaps they could've treaty partners.
But they were direct neighbors, separated only by the wilderness no-man's land that the Great Aetherium had already absorbed. The Endless Continent's Laws defined Castle Faction and local forces as hostile factions by definition, and the proximity made conflict inevitable regardless of the Light Faction alignment.
Even if the Light Empire survived the battle of planets intact, the Great Aetherium would still come for them afterward, because they were next door, and because the faction hostility never went away. A war between them had always been a matter of when, not if. The tragedy was that both of them knew it.
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