Music, visuals, and a form that had never been seen before.
The audience's brains directly crashed. It was fortunate that there were no insiders here.
When the audience first saw Phainon in this form...
They didn't know why Phainon had become like this, nor did they understand what this scene meant.
It was precisely this complete unknown that drove the audience crazy.
In the world from where Xia Wen crossed over, Phainon's early appearance had come before the official announcement.
Because of insiders, data mining, and the numerous analysis bloggers, the relationship between Phainon, Reincarnation cycles, and the Flame Reaver was basically already known to most of the audience before Khaslana appeared.
Although compared to Firefly's leaks back during the Penacony period, the situation was still much better.
But it had already reached the point where the audience had been spoiled and their expectations had been exhausted in advance.
Yet under such unfavorable circumstances, when everyone's expectations had already been raised so high... the appearance of the Coronal Radiance, along with this exaggerated transformation, still created a legendary scene that left the audience speechless.
The audience still felt a shock and sense of coolness they had never experienced before.
And now.
In this world, there were no spoilers, no insiders. The audience's understanding of Phainon was based solely on the series itself.
After Khaslana appeared, their brains began receiving one insane shock after another.
This form... This might... Just who exactly is Phainon...?
Could it be that everything we saw before was only the tip of the iceberg?
Amid their shock, the audience once again developed an uncontrollable curiosity.
I really want to know...
I really want to know!
I really want to know what happened, why he became like this!
...
: I can't even speak anymore...
: This is too shocking...
: The purest kind of impact!
: Someone save me aaaaaaa!! My heart, my brain, everything is completely overwhelmed!!
: Why has he become so sacred?!
: I can imagine Phainon becoming a Deliverer, becoming the Worldbearing Titan, but this scene has clearly gone beyond what you could call a "Titan," right?!
: Just how many secrets is Phainon still hiding?!
: Cyrene, his past... So it turns out that until now, we actually knew nothing about Phainon?!
...
The comments frantically swept across the screen. And the impact brought by the visuals continued.
Amid increasingly fierce electric-guitar sounds, the scene arrived at an extremely dramatic moment.
Phainon was suspended in midair, as though he had become some kind of god.
Okhema, no, all of Amphoreus, was dyed in ominous black and red, transforming into countless black data blocks that all converged into Phainon's hand.
Until everything had completely disintegrated.
Phainon clenched his empty hand, grasping the data gathered in his palm, and everything around him began rapidly collapsing.
And amid this apocalyptic scene, the Flame Reaver strode into the frame.
He flicked his left hand, causing the cloak behind him to flutter violently, then walked toward Phainon in the sky without even looking back.
This scene actually gave the audience a momentary illusion.
The Flame Reaver's back seemed somewhat imposing, somewhat resolute... The audience could hardly believe it.
Yet the narration continued to push forward, and Phainon's low voice rang out:
"If this is not the end..."
"Then I will keep walking..."
"Until I witness the end of this journey."
As his words sounded, the dead Chrysos Heirs flashed rapidly across the screen one after another.
Then, Phainon spread his arms beneath the sky filled with the Black Tide.
Light suddenly appeared. The gloomy sky was torn apart by flames.
A gigantic meteor descended from the skies, surrounded by countless streaks of light.
The flames and radiance it carried burned the Black Tide a brilliant red.
The apocalypse? The meteors summoned by Phainon looked even more like the apocalypse than the Black Tide itself. And they carried an even stronger sense of destruction!
Across the earth, those Black Tide creatures that had once been the greatest enemies of all Amphoreus appeared as tiny as ants beneath such a spectacular sight.
Meteors and shooting stars fell without any obstruction. Everything along their path was burned to nothing.
The earth they touched, along with the Black Tide creatures upon it, was swallowed up together, melting into flames and destruction.
"But I will never submit..."
"To this idea of fate."
Phainon's voice rang out.
And amid this destruction, only the Flame Reaver stared directly at the falling meteor and suddenly raised his sword!
The tip of his sword pointed straight toward the sky, challenging the skies themselves!
Beneath that enormous meteor, already burning red like the sun, the Flame Reaver's stance as he raised his sword gave the audience the absurdity and tragedy of a human straight into a fire pit.
That line of dialogue seemed not to be describing Phainon at all. It sounded as though it was describing the Flame Reaver instead.
At the same time, the electric guitar had already climbed to its absolute peak. The prolonged, distorted high note was mixed with a desperate, piercing cry of equal intensity.
The audience's scalps were already tingling from the sound and visuals. They stared wide-eyed as they watched the meteor collide with the Flame Reaver.
A blinding light instantly engulfed the entire screen. Within the radiance of destruction, Khaslana in the sky merely lowered his eyes and looked at the scene before him.
That expression... It was impossible to discern happiness or anger from it.
The only thing visible was a trace of compassion, mixed with a hint of numbness and exhaustion.
At that moment, the audience felt it. Perhaps Phainon wasn't looking at the Flame Reaver beneath him at all.
Instead, he was looking at the entire world that was about to be destroyed.
At the very end of the sound and visuals, Phainon, wearing that expression, slowly closed his eyes.
The next second, black cracks and explosions completely destroyed a spherical object, possibly Amphoreus itself.
But immediately afterward, all the fragments, cracks, and light that had been blasted away began moving backward at incredible speed, like time itself was reversing.
They rapidly converged into the darkness and completely disappeared.
The camera consequently fell into a long stretch of darkness.
All the accompanying music stopped at this moment.
Only the humming sound continued.
Once again, it was an extreme visual contrast.
One second had been an incredibly violent destruction. The next second had immediately become complete darkness and nothingness.
"Never!"
In the darkness, Phainon's resolute voice rang out.
After his voice faded, there were several more seconds of silence.
Only then did the piano melody that had appeared at the beginning of the opening sequence begin playing again. It was still the same monotonous melody, accompanied by the man's humming, completing a callback to the opening scene.
Only, at the beginning of the PV, Phainon had stood with his back to the sun, revealing his face.
Now, there wasn't even any sunlight around Phainon.
The image appeared again.
Phainon stood amid a world of chaos and destruction. The camera did not show his entire body, instead focusing on his hand.
In his hand, he was holding a molten golden-metal mask.
From its appearance, it was exactly the same as the Flame Reaver's mask.
After lingering on the mask for a moment, the camera slowly moved upward and switched to Phainon's profile.
The Deliverer stood amid the ashes, his hair covering most of his face, his expression impossible to discern.
A gentle breeze passed by, causing the ribbons behind him to flutter violently. Embers and sparks came rushing toward the screen, adding several more shades of desolation to the scene.
The humming also disappeared.
At the very beginning of the PV, Phainon had his back to the sun, revealing his entire face.
But now, there wasn't even any sunlight around Phainon anymore.
The only accompaniment remaining throughout the scene was the piano.
The intervals between the monotonous notes stretched out, as if being endlessly pressed down by some invisible weight.
Despair... There was no hope... That was the instinctive feeling the viewers experienced when they saw this scene.
Until, among those rushing embers, several golden points of light appeared.
The piano notes also became slightly more prolonged at this moment.
The camera suddenly changed.
It switched to a wide-angle shot.
The viewers' breathing caught in their throats, because the entire screen was divided into two halves by a giant tree.
On the left side of the tree was Phainon, standing in the ashes.
On the right side of the tree was Amphoreus, bathed in brilliant light and surrounded by flowers and green grass.
Destruction and hope. The past and the future.
After seeing this scene, the obscure concepts of the Flame-Chase journey and the reincarnation cycles were suddenly given vivid form, deeply engraving themselves into the viewers' hearts.
No words were necessary.
Simply seeing Phainon standing amid destruction, gazing toward the light, seeing that a single step would be enough to reach the new world that was clearly within arm's reach, yet seeing a boundary that he could not cross even half a step, naturally caused a sentence to emerge in the viewers' minds: Phainon has once again embarked upon the cycle of reincarnation.
As for why they thought of such a thing, it was simply because Phainon was still holding the mask of the Flame Reaver in his hand.
The implication of this scene was simply too strong.
There was no need for Phainon to actually put on the mask. It was already enough to make the viewers understand the so-called reincarnation on an even deeper level.
...
: It's already become art at this point...
: What a tragic and beautiful scene...
: This is the pinnacle of expression, without a doubt. Peak!
: Too shocking, too shocking!
: It has nothing to do with choices, nothing to do with life or death... When you see this scene, you can understand everything.
: The Flame-Chase journey, reincarnation cycles, and the story behind Phainon, we actually haven't seen the whole picture at all.
: I can't describe how this PV makes me feel. At this point, I can only use four words to describe it: hero, god, puppet, prisoner.
: What... what the hell... This is way too damn good.
: Not a single lyric was written for nothing.
: Chat press F!
.....
This was a genuine work of art.
It was even more emotionally shaking than an ordinary tragedy or comedy.
The viewers' feelings at this moment were like those of a human being climbing a snow-covered mountain.
After enduring countless hardships, suffering, and sorrow, they finally reached the summit. After seeing an unparalleled, breathtaking landscape, they experienced a feeling that could only come from such a moment.
Even if what they were looking at was the absolute end of a destroyed world, it was still enough to make someone lose themselves in it even on the brink of destruction.
Finally, the "Coronal Radiance" reached its conclusion.
Amid complete silence, black and red covered the entire screen, even turning the preceding logo into a blurred, dissolving image.
Beneath the logo, that string of numbers appeared once again.
In the final second, the last 5 quietly changed, becoming a 6.
Coronal Radiance, the PV ended.
The viewers remained unwilling to leave for a long time.
Many of them simply sat in their seats, staring at the pitch-black screen, but their thoughts had already drifted far away.
They were replaying everything they had just seen in their minds.
Although this PV was short, when it came to its presentation and the amount of information contained within it, it was terrifyingly dense.
The first half, was it one of Phainon's experiences from a certain reincarnation cycle?
...
Okhema was breached, the Chrysos Heirs died tragically, and even Phainon himself died at the hands of the Flame Reaver.
Then, the rhythm suddenly changed, and the story began developing to a point that even the viewers' brains could barely process.
In this section, most of the images were fragmented and broken, making them difficult to connect together.
Because there was no beginning or end. Yet these fragmented images carried extremely strong implications.
The two mirrored versions of Phainon appeared repeatedly. Then he tore himself open, transforming into that godlike form.
But this form did not bring salvation or redemption. Instead, what it contrasted against was the destruction of all of Amphoreus, even reaching the point where only the outskirts of Okhema and the other three cities remained...
This was extremely worthy of contemplation. And that was merely the contrast between Phainon and the background.
Beneath that, there was also a contrast between the dialogue and the characters. Phainon's voice had always appeared as narration.
The Phainon shown in the scenes never spoke. Neither did the Flame Reaver.
But through the way the scenes were arranged, for example, when the Flame Reaver raised his sword toward the sky, the narration happened to reach the words "to oppose fate."
The camera did not show Phainon. Instead, it showed the figure of the Flame Reaver. It was as though, in this scene, the Flame Reaver was actually the protagonist who opposed fate.
This kind of dislocated presentation worked extremely well.
Many viewers were frantically replaying this scene in their minds at this moment. And then they thought about their impression of the Flame Reaver before the PV appeared.
The deepest impression was naturally the scene where the Flame Reaver killed the Chrysos Heirs without the slightest hesitation.
It was precisely because of this action that viewers became angry with the Flame Reaver and refused to acknowledge that the Flame Reaver was Phainon.
But now. After watching this PV, that idea was completely overturned.
The viewers still, of course, did not understand the connection between Phainon and the Flame Reaver.
But they had gradually begun accepting that Phainon was the Flame Reaver, and the Flame Reaver was Phainon.
Yet the more they accepted this, the harder it became for them to imagine.
Just what would Phainon, a person like this, have to go through in order to become someone who could kill the Chrysos Heirs and his own people without the slightest attachment or hesitation?
That string of numbers... And the final scene, with Phainon holding the Flame Reaver's mask in his hand, gazing toward hope that was beyond his reach.
Reincarnation cycle... Perhaps it was not what they had originally imagined.
Perhaps reincarnation was not an endless cycle that simply continued forward like a river flowing onward.
The Chrysos Heirs and Titans of each Era were different, but they all retained a certain fundamental similarity.
Chrysos Heirs → Genesis → Titans → Chrysos Heirs → Genesis...
This was the cycle of reincarnation. Before watching the PV, most people had always believed that this was what reincarnation meant.
But now, they finally realized.
This reincarnation... might actually revolve around Phainon, forming an even deeper cycle of reincarnation.
What the PV revealed was merely a tiny part of it.
Behind that string of numbers, 33550335, there was probably the true despair.