Vastarael was still trying to make sense of everything she had said. His mind spun with pieces of Supreme Entities, Nexuses and the curse of the First Generation Deities. But there was one thing still haunting him.
"And what about the Aquatic Goddesses?"
Annierouge stopped in her tracks. The look she gave him then was as cold as the deepest trench in the oceans that pressure no mortal being could withstand. .
"You want to know about them? Fine."
She turned, facing the sea again, as though it helped her speak through what came next.
"After Alhalysira was stripped of her memories and remade as a Primordial Goddess, she was forced to serve in the Mopherian Pantheon like a doll wearing the skin of something she had never been. She wasn't who she used to be. Her vast power was sealed, her wisdom rewritten and her place… conveniently reduced to one of subservience. They married her off to a weak, pitiful First Generation Water God. He was a man so irrelevant his name never even survived the wars. She had seven children by him, all daughters. They were born of water, divinity, and half of what used to be Alhalysira."
Vastarael's eyes narrowed. "They're the Aquatic Goddesses."
"Yes. Avrea, Maruvel, Sevastra, Rinmala, Iraen, Lyvxie and Dyphira. They are the seven who now act as the figureheads of aquatic domains across the world. But, they're nothing more than political ornaments born from a defiled bloodline."
There was silence for a moment before she continued.
"During the Destras Era, when the First Generation was exterminating their own children, the Second Generation Deities, Yumeran stepped in. You want to know what saved the Aquatic Goddesses from death? It wasn't their power. It wasn't their father. It was Yumeran."
"She protected them," Vastarael muttered.
"Their father was going to sacrifice his own daughters as offerings to gain more power to fight in the war. Alhalysira, still without her true memories, stood beside him like the puppet she had become. Yumeran intervened. She tore the children away and hid them in Inexpelcae. But then came the ending of the war. The Second Generation won. All of the First were destroyed. And Lysameria... returned. She found Alhalysira. She had been watching and even though their mother had no memory of her daughters, even though she had no awareness of her crimes, Lysameria killed her."
"Why?"
"Because she saw her as dead already. The woman who raised her, the one who sang to her under the ocean, who carved dreams into seashells for her… that woman was gone. And in her place was a hollow puppet, a mother in name only. Lysameria gave her the only mercy she could."
Vastarael closed his eyes.
"And she didn't stop there. She went after the First Generation water god who had dared to defile her mother. She ripped him apart, literally. She drowned him in the blood of his own creations. They say the ocean turned black for a week after his death."
"But what about the Aquatic Goddesses?"
Annierouge looked at him. And for once, there was no mockery.
"They were next."
Vastarael froze.
"She was going to kill them too, not because they had done anything wrong but because they were the product of everything that had destroyed her life. Her father's murder, her mother's erasure, the war, they were the last remaining thread connecting her to that broken story."
"But she didn't."
"No, because Yumeran stopped her. They fought. And of course, Lysameria was stronger. No one else in Spheraphase could defeat her, not even another Nexus. She was the Blade Nexus after all. She could have ended them all but Yumeran begged her. For the first and only time in her life, she fell to her knees and begged. And Lysameria made a deal. If Yumeran and her seven half-sisters, the Aquatic Goddesses, would dedicate the entirety of the Inexpelcae Islands to the training of all Divine Rank beings, then they would be spared. All of this was to preserve Divine strength through the ages."
Vastarael breathed out slowly, as if the truth had stolen all the air from his lungs.
"And that's how the Islands of Inexpelcae became what they are today. Not by divine grace or heavenly design but through blood, loss, and compromise."
He looked at her, voice low.
"And no one knows this?"
She gave a cold smile.
"No one alive dares to speak it. But now you know. Think of it as a Hidden Truth."
There was silence again. The breeze danced through the leaves, light bending around them. Vastarael said nothing because what could he say?
They walked side by side through the last stretch of rainforest as the cliffs of the beach. Vastarael, his shirt still slung over his shoulder and the sapphire axe glinting beside him, slowed his steps. There was one more thing gnawing at him.
"So how were you born from Yumeran? I mean… you don't really act like you were."
Annierouge's gaze didn't shift. She kept walking forward, arms loosely folded. Her voice was monotone.
"I wasn't born like you. I was created."
"Created?"
"Parthenocarpy birth. She didn't need a partner. She used her divine power and a part of her own soul. She crafted me like she was patching a hole in a ship."
Vastarael took a long breath and chuckled.
"You're not the only one, then. Elyonari and her brother were created by her mother too. Technically, we are somehow related. So that makes you and I… cousins, in a weird, non-literal way."
Annierouge still didn't look at him.
"We're not family. We're patterns."
He blinked, unsure how to respond to that, but instead pivoted.
"So… then why do you hate my mother so much?"
Annierouge finally stopped walking. The breeze caught the ends of her long skirt, brushing it to the side, but her posture stayed perfectly still. She sighed and tilted her head back slightly, as if trying to stretch out a thought that had grown too heavy.
"She doesn't take her role seriously. She is the ruler of the oceans as her father gave her the rights and she wanders around like she's not tethered to anything. She barely even acknowledges her title."
Vastarael scoffed, "That's because she doesn't care about titles. She cares about my father, my siblings, the women my father married and me. That's it. Everyone else? She doesn't even blink twice."
"And that," Annierouge said, "is why she's the failure."
"She's not a failure. She's just not a liar. And if Yumeran thinks letting me onto this island somehow bridges the chaos of the past, I'll tell you right now, it doesn't."
"That's what I hoped you'd say. And now, I'm glad."
Vastarael narrowed his eyes. "You really don't care about your creator, do you? Not even a little?"
Her voice was almost too soft to hear but the expression she gave was so cold that he literally stepped back.
"Why would I care about a creator who forged me just to quiet the echo of her own loneliness? She didn't give me life. She gave herself a distraction."
The silence between them stretched for several seconds. Vastarael said nothing. He didn't know what to say.
"So you hate me?"
"Of course. You don't even have the blessing of waters as a Major Divinity. Disgusting and waste of talent."
"Well I don't care. Anyways, I better go. Happy patrol!"
Vastarael jumped off the cliff and headed to the beach, leaving Annierouge looking at him before he vanished out of sight. She looked up at the skies and grinned.
"That was a good way to pass the time to prevent speaking to the Goddesses... I'm sure they won't mind if I'm late..."