The deepest core laboratory of the space station "Herta" exudes a solemnity and precision far beyond what the outside world could fathom. As Ester stepped inside, it was as if he'd entered a frigid temple woven from pure geometric lines and flowing data.
Countless holographic projections hovered in the air, displaying incomprehensible models and formulas of the cosmic deep. The low hum of instruments was the only backdrop.
At the center of the room, a delicate, art-like doll with black hair stood motionless at the console. Its inorganic purple eyes swiveled toward Ester—sharp, efficient, devoid of any extraneous emotion.
"Knight of Beauty, Ester," the doll's lips moved, emitting Herta's signature, slightly electronic, cool voice. "How goes your 'investigation'? Have you tracked down those skulking Stellaron Hunters?" Her gaze, sharp as a scalpel, cut straight to the point.
Ester didn't answer immediately. He took a deep breath, steadying the lingering chill in his chest from that earlier, inexplicable thrill.
He extended his right hand, palm up, and focused his will. The air rippled like water, and an ancient, elegant shield—adorned with eternal rose vine carvings along its edges—materialized out of thin air: the Perlagis Mirror Shield.
It glowed with a warm, pure radiance, like solidified moonlight. Its core pulsed with the fundamental power of the Path of Beauty, softening even the cold data streams around it for a moment.
"I've come to keep my promise, Lady Herta," Ester said, his voice steady. He gently pushed the shield forward.
An invisible force field lifted it, floating slowly before Herta's doll.
The doll's purple eyes flared with intense light. Tiny scanning beams, like greedy tendrils, lapped at every inch of the shield's surface. The hum of the instruments around the console spiked, readings spiking wildly.
"Oh? So this is the artifact containing Idrila's essence... Perlagis," Herta's voice held a rare, unadulterated academic excitement. "A flawless energy structure, inscribed at the level of law... Its value in perfecting the deep logic of the Path of Beauty in the Simulated Universe, even tracing the quantum echoes of an Aeon's fall, is immeasurable!"
It was as if she could already see countless breakthrough experiments unfolding before her.
"But," Ester interrupted her immersion, his voice carrying an unignorable gravity, "this isn't my only reason for coming."
Herta's doll finally tore its gaze from the shield, refocusing on Ester's face. A faint flicker of data—barely registering as "surprise"—passed through its inorganic eyes.
"Oh? The leader of the Knights of Beauty makes a personal visit, and beyond fulfilling a deal, there's something more important requiring the station's cooperation?" It tilted its head slightly, a gesture like "listening." "Go on, then."
Ester met those purple eyes, which seemed to pierce all secrets, and spoke slowly: "Myself... and the entire Knights of Beauty, are under direct interference and threat from an Aeon." He deliberately omitted Elio, the prophecy, and core details about Caelus, stating only the most immediate, irrefutable fact. "Qlipoth, the Aeon of Equilibrium. Its will descended once, seeking to erase me. I have no doubt it will strike again."
"Qlipoth?" Herta's voice sharpened with interest, no longer just that of a trader. "The so-called 'neutral' Aeon said to only maintain the universe's basic constants, indifferent to mortal affairs or the rise and fall of other Paths? It personally intervened to target the leader of a shattered Path's knight order?"
The doll's fingers tapped rapidly in midair, pulling up every record of the Aeon of Equilibrium in the database. Countless theoretical models flickered behind it, forming and collapsing in an instant.
"That contradicts its established logic. Ester, what's the specific reason for its interference? That's the crux."
Ester felt an invisible pressure. Concealment grew excruciatingly difficult before a mind as vast as Herta's.
"I don't know," he replied—truthful enough, and safe. His voice held genuine confusion, and a weight of being targeted by a god. "Perhaps the Path of Beauty itself disrupts some 'balance' it upholds? Or... maybe in my search for answers, I unwittingly stepped into a forbidden zone it demarcated?" He subtly wove in his ostensible motive: "seeking Idrila."
"'Don't know'?" Herta repeated. The doll's delicate face remained expressionless, but Ester distinctly felt a cold, scrutinizing light flicker in the depths of those purple eyes. The air seemed to freeze for seconds, only the instruments' low hum persisting.
Finally, Herta's voice returned to its detached rationality: "Ester, I appreciate your candor—or rather, your selective candor. But I'll warn you: confronting an Aeon head-on isn't courage. It's sheer folly."
She manipulated the doll into taking a step. The star map projected behind it zoomed in instantly, focusing on the abstract symbol of the Path of Equilibrium—a vast, cold construct of countless precise gears and scales, encompassing everything.
"Factions that worship it, like the Arbiters—you can maneuver against them, fight them, even use rules to counter rules. But the Aeon itself?" Herta's voice held a near-cruel mockery. "Its will is part of the universe's laws. It doesn't need to descend. A single thought, and the 'equilibrium' it embodies can act upon you—erasing your 'imbalance' like wiping a stray chalk dust from a blackboard. Tell me, mortal: how do you fight a law itself?"
Ester's heart tightened at the unvarnished truth, but he stood tall, his gaze unflinching. "I understand the danger, Lady Herta. That's why I'm here—seeking your wisdom and power. The station has technology beyond mortal ken; you possess a genius that pierces the universe's mysteries. I implore you... help me again. Any price—whatever Ester can do, I will not refuse."
"Any price?" The doll let out a faint, electronic approximation of a laugh—cold, direct. "Let's be realistic, Captain Ester. What remains of the Knights of Beauty, or the entire Path of Beauty, since Idrila's disappearance? Broken knights with faltering faith, scattered relics, a few holy artifacts clinging to past glory... what could打动 a 'genius' chasing the universe's ultimate answers to risk antagonizing an Aeon?
"Your Perlagis? It's valuable for research, but alone, it won't cover the cost of opposing Qlipoth. That cost could be the entire station dragged into an Aeon's law storm, 'balanced' out of existence."
A brief silence hung in the lab's cold air, broken only by the hum of machinery. Ester could feel the rational calculations racing through Herta's mind, cold logic chains leading to a single conclusion.
As expected, the doll tilted its chin, delivering judgment: "Based on risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, the Herta Space Station cannot provide substantive support in opposing Qlipoth, the Aeon of Equilibrium. My apologies, Captain Ester."
Ester's heart sank, but he wasn't surprised. It had always been a long shot. A shattered Path, a captain teetering on the edge—what leverage could they offer to tempt the "genius" Herta into defying a supreme god? He'd known it was nearly impossible.
"However," Herta suddenly added, and the floating Perlagis Mirror Shield drifted back to Ester. "Given our past cooperation, keep this shield for now. It's one of the few useful 'weapons' you have left. Here, it's just a sample waiting to be studied. In your hands? It might block a few fatal blows—though against an Aeon, its use will be negligible." A cold, rational kindness.
Ester took the shield silently. Its warm glow felt unbearably heavy now. He watched as the doll, seemingly done with the conversation, turned toward the main console—smooth movements, but with a clear intent to "log off." To Herta's true self, this unproductive dialogue was over; her focus belonged to more worthy cosmic puzzles.
As the doll's form neared merging with the cold data streams, Ester looked up, a desperate fire in his eyes. His voice cut through the lab's stillness:
"Lady Herta!"
The doll froze mid-turn.
Ester drew a breath, as if squeezing every ounce of air from his lungs. Each word landed like a hammer, resonant, unshakable:
"If I told you that everything I do, every power I seek—it's not for clinging to life or empty vengeance..."
He locked eyes with the doll's emotionless purple gaze, as if staring past the vessel to the genius hidden beyond countless dimensions, laying down his final, reality-shattering gambit:
"...but to herald the birth of a new Aeon?"
In the mysterious expanse of the "Transcendent Realm," a voice—ancient, grand, as if forged from the cold rhythms of a billion stars—exploded directly in the depths of their consciousness. Each syllable carried the weight to shatter souls, the tone of ultimate judgment:
"Blasphemers!"
"Dare you use filthy tricks to blind the eyes of supreme law?"
"What you protect is a cancer on the established order, a toxin to existence!"
"This is—"
"The gravest blasphemy against 'Equilibrium'! Unforgivable—"
"Imbalance!"
As the judgment fell, the blood-mist cyclops erupted with countless pale chains woven from pure "equilibrium" law.
These chains ignored the barriers of space and consciousness, like divine spears of judgment, slamming into the ritual circle's foundations and the core of Elio and the others' minds.
"Ugh—!" A Mirror Holder let out mental shriek. Their defenses dissolved like tissue paper before the law chains; the light of their power core dimmed drastically, nearly winking out.
The other two Mirror Holders strained to rally their strength, but against an Aeon's Emanator, their power felt pitiful. Once, their arts could move stars—now, they were as futile as a mantis trying to stop a chariot, only delaying the chains' advance as their own strength crumbled and dwindled.
Elio bore the brunt. As the ritual's core and the prophecy's linchpin, he endured over seventy percent of the chains' assault.
A brilliant glow of beauty erupted around him, trying to weave a barrier from his remaining Path power. But that light carried the frailty of exhaustion—Idrila's fall, the Path's collapse, had gutted his strength. The radiance of a once-mighty Emanator had long faded; now, he burned like embers.
A symbolic crack echoed in their minds. Elio's beauty barrier spiderwebbed with fractures under the chains' onslaught, light flickering wildly.
He felt his consciousness plunged into an ice sea, pierced by a billion red-hot needles. The law-level suppression made even thinking agony. He grunted, his mental form trembling, its glow shrinking, dimming.
The blood-mist cyclops watched coldly as the four struggled under the chains, power draining. The judgmental voice thundered again, an unyielding ultimatum:
"Hear your final verdict!"
"In Qlipoth's name! In the order of Equilibrium!"
"The 'abomination' you nurture—its existence profanes the universe's foundations. Destroy it, or perish with it in eternal 'equilibrium'!"
"The Arbiters' judgment approaches! Your fate enters its final countdown!"
The last syllable tolled like a funeral bell. The cyclops and its pale chains vanished instantly, as if never there.
But chaos remained. The Transcendent Realm was riddled with invisible fractures, energy turbulence raging. The three Mirror Holders' mental forms dimmed to embers, their auras faint—gravely wounded, barely functional.
Elio fared marginally better, but only relatively. His glow was dim, his form insubstantial; resisting had drained nearly all his remaining power. He forced his fraying consciousness to steady, mental "gasps" echoing.
Silence blanketed the shattered mental space. Despair, like a cold tide, threatened to drown every mind.
"...The prophecy... Caelus..." Elio's weak but unshakable mental voice cut through it, a faint spark in darkness. "For beauty... for the future... we... can't stop."
He turned to the three barely functioning Mirror Holders, sending a clear command: "Leave at once... find more Stellar Dust and Void Prisms... the ritual materials... must be replaced! Go!" He had to protect these last allies who believed in the prophecy.
The Mirror Holders' auras flickered weakly in assent, bitter and unwilling. They strained their last strength, like wounded birds, fleeing through the tattered mental pathways from this danger zone marked by Qlipoth's will.
Elio hovered alone in the broken Transcendent Realm, feeling his power dwindle and the omnipresent law suppression. Arbiters... judgment... time was short.
His consciousness suddenly locked onto a coordinate in the material universe, urgency searing through it:
"Ester... danger... arriving faster... than anticipated..." He had to find allies—before the Arbiters' hammer fell.