Inside the Womb of Arian
The waters shimmered with a silent light.
Kaelya stirred beneath their surface, her limbs moving like she'd forgotten gravity. Her eyes, dark and ancient, fluttered open slowly—as if the act of waking was an offense to the stillness around her.
She rose from the lake like a memory, not a person. Her glistening skin caught the glow of the fireflies that danced over the cavern's ceiling like constellations trying to remember how to shine.
Her soaked garments clung to every curve, heavy with grief and time.
With each step forward, she undressed—not with shame, not with seduction, but with solemn ritual.
A soldier unburdening armor.
A priestess offering penance.
She walked, bare and fearless, toward the silent figure in the center of the glade.
Seraphyx.
"You're still not awake," she whispered, voice soft as falling ash.
Droplets slid from her jet-black hair, each one echoing like time's heartbeat as it hit the stone floor.
"If you don't wake up soon… I may have to take you to Mother Rosen."
A shiver laced her tone. Not fear—defiance of despair.
She stepped into the grass—and the land responded.
Vines curled around her ankles. Leaves unfolded, tender and reverent, weaving themselves into cloth. The dress formed not to clothe her shame, but to crown her intent. Nature itself dressing her for battle.
"Our efforts won't be for nigh…" she said as she reached him. Her hand hovered above his heart. "I'll bring you back."
Her fingers brushed his chest—
---
Inside Seraphyx's Mindscape
THE LOSS OF SUBCONSCIOUSNESS
There was no voice.
No echo. No echo of an echo.
Just a void where identity once lived.
The mindscape—once a palace of fire and radiant steel—was now cold ash.
Not burning. Not extinguished.
Gone.
Seraphyx had ceased to exist.
---
Outside his body
The cavern quieted.
Seraphyx's breath stilled.
His chest did not rise.
His skin no longer held the warmth of flame or memory.
Kaelya's hand trembled as she took his in hers.
"Seraphyx…"
Her voice cracked.
Then her eyes widened—realization crashing through her body like thunder.
"No… No, no—"
But she didn't cry.
Not yet.
She leaned closer, pressed her forehead to his, and whispered in a language only the Sovereigns knew—
"…I'm still here."
She cradled Seraphyx in her arms.
At her feet, the earth responded—
A colossal flower bloomed, ancient as the first breath of the world, its petals quivering with unspoken sorrow.
It wrapped around them both like a mother's final embrace.
And then—
They were gone.
---
Before the Head of VlastMoroz.
Rosen stirred.
Her eyes, titanic and ageless, opened with dreadful slowness—
as if awakening to the end of something holy.
She saw.
She understood.
And she wept.
A single tear—vast enough to drown the fields of Arian—cascaded down her marble cheek,
shattering upon the frozen ground like a falling star.
The land beneath her bowed in reverence.
---
Within Aethercastle.
Yandelf rose in silence, the weight of countless battles behind her,
but none prepared her for this.
Her gaze locked onto the distant head of her sovereign.
And then—
Her composure cracked.
Tears, unbidden and unrestrained, fell like rain.
Grief beyond memory surged through her veins.
The silence turned reverent.
All the Guests of Arian present there widened their eyes a little in surprise after seeing the side of Yandelf that condemn vurneability.
A single tear slid down Queen Minerva's cheek.
"…Why am I crying?" she whispered.
But the question echoed without answer.
The Royal Knights—men and women forged in duty and steel—fell to their knees as if struck by an invisible hand.
They tore off their armor.
And they wept.
Without understanding.
Without resistance.
---
At the Knights Academy.
Orion collapsed to the ground, his hand clutching his chest as though the air itself had turned to lead.
Beside him, Merry gasped—a choked, trembling sound—before breaking down entirely.
Tera screamed without voice, her lips trembling, soaked in tears.
They all fell.
Hundreds of students. Teachers. Servants.
All overcome.
Not by fear.
Not by magic.
But by a grief that rippled through the very essence of the realm.
Even the winds howled in lament.
Only Elynas remained standing, her tearless eyes wide with confusion—
as though she alone doesn't have the connection with the Emblem who was considered the Mother of Arian for Centuries here.
---
Near the Head of VlastMoroz.
Twin rifts carved through the air, the sky itself parting in reverent silence.
From them stepped two figures—
broken not by wounds, but by emotion.
Ignarion emerged first, every step a struggle against the tide inside him.
Tears streamed down his face in silence, betrayal etched into every line.
He tried to hold it in.
He failed.
Morven followed—
No sobs. No tremble.
Only silent tears tracing down a face carved in stone.
Then, the soil stirred.
Another bloom unfolded.
And from within it stepped Kaelya.
Seraphyx lay limp in her trembling arms.
"Mother… Seraphyx… he…"
She tried to speak—
But her voice fractured, as if the grief itself had reached into her throat and stolen her breath.
Tears spilled, face flushed with sorrow.
A sob escaped her lips, raw and helpless.
She collapsed to her knees, still clutching him to her chest—
As though if she held him tightly enough…
the world might undo itself.
But it didn't.
And all the world continued to weep.
For the first time in five years—
VlastMoroz stirred.
A low rumble rolled across Arian as her head rose from its resting place beneath the ice-veiled peaks.
The air crystallized mid-breath.
The stars themselves seemed to blink in reverence.
And with her motion—
the terrain of Arian shifted.
Mountains folded. Rivers froze. Forests tilted toward her like worshippers in prayer.
The Emblems watched in silence—
Eyes wide.
Hearts stilled.
As if witnessing the return of something ancient and absolute.
---
Across the nation—
From castle to crater, from Nyxhara's deep courts to the highest turrets of Aethercastle—
the people stepped outside.
Orion.
Yandelf.
Headmaster Orion the First.
Granny Suri.
Queen Minerva.
Children, soldiers, spirits, sovereigns.
Every soul in Arian looked upward.
And beheld her.
The Leviathan of Cryo.
VlastMoroz, Sovereign of the Cold Eternal.
She rose into the sky, a being of impossible scale.
Her wings unfurled like glaciers unraveling time itself—
casting a shadow that drowned the entire nation.
Each movement shifted the jetstreams.
Each breath bent the seasons.
And then—
She spoke.
Her voice was not sound.
It was a resonance—
carried by wind, echoed by mountain, whispered by snow, and etched into the bones of the world.
"Seraphyx…
…is not dead."
The words spread faster than light.
Faster than thought.
Filling every chest with a breath they didn't know they were holding.
Relief bloomed like spring in midwinter.
The weeping stopped.
Hope cracked open like dawn over a frozen sea.
---
Outside Aethercastle.
Neuvillette stood upon a balcony etched with frost and flame.
He gazed toward the sky—toward the Leviathan—and exhaled slowly.
"So… the Day of Judgment arrives," he murmured.
"Now, all that remains—
is to see whether Seraphyx will rise… or fall."
---
Across the realm, grief paused.
Children clutched their chests.
Soldiers lowered their blades.
Mothers held their daughters close, as if sheltering the hope returning to the world.
The land itself seemed to exhale.
And then—
the wind shifted.
Zephyr arrived.
Not by motion—
But by absence.
The world forgot he was not there, and so he appeared.
The Sovereign of Anemo, Formless and Ever-Wandering.
He bore no body—only presence.
No flesh—only movement.
His wings were currents sculpted into grace, vast enough to bridge stars.
Where he passed, the ley lines trembled, realigned.
He was not wind.
He was the idea of it—freedom, breath, change.
"It seems," he said with a smirk etched into the breeze,
"the ploy has succeeded after all."
---
Another storm descended.
But it did not bring rain.
It brought Raiclaus.
The Sovereign of Electro.
She did not fly—she fell,
splitting the sky with her arrival, leaving cracks of violet fire trailing across the firmament.
She bore no scales.
No softness.
Only jagged, living lightning shaped into wings like guillotine blades.
She did not roar.
She did not announce.
She screamed, and the air fractured around her cry.
"Indeed," she said, lightning dancing across her serrated silhouette.
"Why else would we not pursue Orion and Frieda's child with urgency?
The ploy required our silence."
The skies groaned under her arrival.