She approached, light radiating from the hem of her robes—yet no warmth came from her. The air was still. The silence between us stretched like a bridge over a chasm neither of us dared cross yet.
I studied her quietly.
This wasn't what I expected.
Her hair shimmered like threads of gold silk, falling loosely across her back. Her eyes mirrored the sun, but no longer blazed like the celestial fire I saw during ceremonies. Her presence was still divine, but muted—like a candle seen through tears.
"You've changed," I said finally, breaking the silence.
She tilted her head, gently.
"How so?"
"You used to speak with a thousand voices," I said. "During rites… ceremonies… your presence echoed like a choir of stars."
I stepped forward.
"But now you speak like me."
Solviel gave a faint smile—not of joy, but of understanding.
"Because now I speak to you."
Her voice carried no reverb. No godly tone. Just words. Human, almost. Gentle.
"The chorus is for the world," she continued. "But this… is for you alone."
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat.
"Then speak, Solviel," I said. "Because I don't understand."
She waited.
"I was told about Gren Leviyatan. About how you were tasked to destroy him. And how you failed."
The mirrors around us rippled. One cracked and reformed in the distance.
"They said… you begged," I said quietly. "That you offered yourself. That because of you, he endured."
Her gaze lowered slightly. Not in shame. In memory.
"Yes," she said simply.
No defense. No denial.
"I begged," she repeated.
The mirrors around us flickered—some now glowing, some darkening, as if reacting to her words.
"Why?" I asked, not angrily—but aching. "You were born from hope. From salvation. You were supposed to end him."
"And I failed," she said. "Because I believed salvation could be offered… even to chaos."
Her eyes met mine again, and I saw something I had never seen before.
Guilt.
"You believed he could change?" I whispered.
"No," she replied. "I believed… I had to try."
She turned, and one of the fractured mirrors floated toward her—slowly rotating to reveal a blurred scene: a battlefield made of broken stars and oceans inverted, where golden chains curled through the sky and something vast moved beneath them.
"I will show you," she said. "But not all at once."
Her voice wavered now.
"Because the truth may hurt more than the shame ever did."
She placed her hand on the mirror's surface.
"But if you truly wish to walk the path ahead… you must see the ruin I left behind."
Solviel placed her hand upon the mirror's surface.
The moment her fingers touched the glass, light bled outward, flooding the space around us with a golden shimmer.
"You wanted to understand," she said quietly, not looking at me. "Then witness what was never meant to be remembered."
The mirror cracked, not in destruction—but in revelation.
And then, the temple disappeared.
I stood upon the edge of a collapsing sky.
The horizon twisted in impossible angles—where oceans flowed above the clouds, and stars bled like rivers of light down a battlefield no map had ever dared record.
Mountains were torn asunder in the distance, levitating in frozen pieces. Great spirits roared across the air in spectral form, half-formed and fading, while fragments of once-living gods lay shattered beneath the remnants of skyfire.
In the center of it all stood him.
Gren Leviyatan.
He was not a dragon. Nor a beast. Nor a storm.
He was a man-shaped shadow, tall and still, clothed in nothing but the absence of light. His body held no detail—just shape and motion.But his eyes…
His eyes glowed with an impossible duality:
One a deep azure blue, calm and infinite like the trenchless sea.
The other a wild, brazen brown, flickering like molten earth cracking open.
Even in silence, his presence hummed—a quiet rumble in the bones, like thunder too distant to be heard but too close to ignore.
And in front of him—
Solviel.
Her former self burned like a descending comet, haloed in golden divinity. Wings made of glass and sun extended behind her, each feather etched with ancient runes.The golden chains of dominion spiraled around her hands, each link glowing with divine law—concepts wrapped in metal.
Other spirits flanked her—seven in all. Spirits of war, wisdom, sorrow, judgment… each roaring with their own radiant forms.
They all lunged.
Chains flew. Runes ignited.
Solviel led the assault. Her voice—then the voice of heaven itself—sang commands that split the air.
"By the Will of the Pantheon, Gren Leviyatan—you are unmade!"
The chains struck his chest like light spears—binding him in spirals of gold.
Spirits surrounded him, each one releasing their domains: time-flood, memory-burn, light-claw, echo-blade—forces that could raze nations and burn immortal will.
But Gren Leviyatan—
He only smiled.
And then…
He clasped the golden chains with his hands.
Not to break them.
But to hold them.
Like he was simply… curious.
Solviel faltered. I felt it—through her.
"No…"
She poured more power into the chains. More light. Runes screamed.
The other spirits shouted. Their awakeners bled from their mouths, collapsing from the force they were channeling into this last stand.
But Gren never retaliated.
He only held the chains. Studied them. Turned his head slightly—as if inspecting a gift from a child.
"This… is the extent of your divinity?" a voice rumbled.But it did not come from his lips.
It came from everywhere. Beneath the earth. Above the stars.
And then…
He snapped one link.
Not all.
Just one.
A single crack of divine law broken—and the battlefield collapsed.
Spirits screamed. Solviel's wings shattered. Time unraveled in threads. The oceans fell from the sky and the stars began to bleed backward.
She fell.
And as the other spirits faded—crushed, silenced, undone—Solviel dragged herself through the ruin, broken and flickering.
She approached Gren Leviyatan, who still stood untouched—shadow made man, eyes still alight.
And then—
She knelt.
"Please…" she whispered, golden ichor leaking from her chest. "Spare them. Spare them. Take what you will. My fragment. My name. My glory."
"But let the others live."
Gren did not speak. He only tilted his head again.
And in a strange gesture…
He smiled.
Not cruelly.
Almost… gently.
He extended one hand—and touched her forehead.
And in that moment, Solviel fractured.
Not her body.
But her divinity.
A single fragment floated outward—into Gren's grasp.
He held it like a coin of light. Then, wordlessly, he turned away.
The memory faded.
The mirror dimmed.
The temple returned.
The fractured mirrors rotated around us once again.
I stood motionless.
Solviel stood beside me, her head slightly bowed.
"That," she said softly, "is what I did."
The golden light in the temple dimmed around us.
The fractured mirror that had shown the memory slowly drifted away, fading back into the void of this realm. My body still stood firm… but inside, something had shattered.
Not in anger.
Not in hatred.
But in something far quieter.
Sorrow.
I didn't speak. I couldn't. The silence between Solviel and me now felt like the aftermath of thunder—deafening in its own stillness.
She stood beside me, eyes lowered. Her wings were gone, her glow faint. For the first time, she looked not divine…
…but deeply human.
"The spirits I saved…" Solviel began, voice soft and weathered by centuries, "they lived. Their forms endured. But their awakeners—"She paused.
"They did not."
I turned my eyes toward her, and she met them.
"Even with their spirits restored," she continued, "the human soul cannot survive what was undone. The price to reknit a divine form was paid by mortal lives. They returned to us… but only to carry the memory of those they failed to protect."
A golden mirror floated between us for a moment, showing flickers of faceless figures kneeling in a field of stars—spirits without partners, wandering in silence.
"Some faded. Others sealed themselves away. A few… refused ever to awaken again."
Her fingers curled into her robes.
"And so I, the spirit of hope and salvation, became a reminder of failure."
I looked down at my hands—faint light pulsing beneath the skin. That same fragment.
"And you chose silence," I whispered.
Solviel nodded.
"What voice could I raise after all that? I remained only to guide the line of Gadriel. Not as a savior… but as a witness."
A hush passed.
Then—
Just as the mirrors around us stilled, and the golden glow began to settle—
Something shifted.
A crack. No—a whisper.
So faint I thought it might be my own breath caught in sorrow.
"…So… this is your new vessel?"
I froze.
The words echoed not from Solviel.
Not from within me.
But from the golden fragment itself.
It was like a thought breathed into glass—barely audible, brittle in tone. A voice without sound, yet carried with weight that stirred the very fabric of the domain.
Solviel's eyes widened. Not in fear. But recognition.
A pause.A silence.Then it was gone.
The mirrors trembled faintly… and then calmed.
"Was that—" I began, my voice shaken.
Solviel raised a hand gently.
"Yes… but only a whisper. A memory echo."
She looked toward the mirror that had just drifted out of sight.
"That fragment… it was accepted freely by Gren. As such, it carries a trace of his will. Not consciousness. Not control. But… a sliver of who he is."
She turned her gaze to me, her golden eyes dimmed by worry.
"So long as I remain within you, he will not reach you. But I must never let that echo deepen. Never."
The silence returned.
But it was no longer empty.
It was filled—with history, with grief, and with the faint breath of a danger yet to come.
I closed my eyes… and exhaled.
"Then we move forward," I said. "Together."
Solviel looked at me—and though her lips didn't move, I could feel her words ripple through the space.
"Yes… together."