Within the veil of time, Ezmelral and Raiking watched as the God-King and the Keeper of Time and Fate stood poised in the ruins below. A deep sorrow twisted in Ezmelral's heart, for she now carried a truth known only to her—a burden seared into her soul by her lookalike's memories.
She turned toward Raiking, her voice trembling between grief and disbelief.
"Did you know about the Elders' plan? Or was this vengeance alone?"
"I knew," Raiking said, his crimson eyes darkening under the weight of his admission. "When I heard their loyalists corrupting the minds of the Entities, my first thought was of your first life—how truth itself was turned into a weapon. How they twisted it into a blade sharper than any sword."
Ezmelral's heart clenched. She understood that hopelessness now—not as sympathy, but as lived memory. To give everything for others, only to be condemned by their fear—to have loyalty and goodness erased by a single act of treachery—was a despair that reached into her marrow.
"So you did what you wish she could have done in that moment…" she said softly, voice steady despite the ache threading through it. "…to fight back—"
"But she couldn't," Raiking cut in, his tone taut with restrained fury. "That void dagger fed on her Bloodline—her last safeguard against corruption turned against her. Tell me, how else could the strongest mortal in the cosmos fall to such mere evil?"
Ezmelral fell silent, her lips pressing into a thin, resolute line. Through her lookalike's eyes, she relived that moment of horrifying clarity—the instant she recognized the void dagger in Osculi Iudæ's hand, feeling her very essence siphoned away like water through cracked earth. It was the perfect weapon, designed to ensure her silence, paving the way for the Elders' next move: harnessing the God-King's righteous wrath to blind the masses, validating their past warnings about his potential for carnage in the hearts of the unwise.
It was a flawless trap. Once the well from which everyone drank was poisoned, truth became a hollow echo, irrelevant in the face of manipulation. Tragedy, then, became inevitable—a cycle forged by design.
Her gaze drifted back to the tragic confrontation unfolding below, her heart heavy with the futility of it all. She watched as the God-King faced his master, two pillars of cosmic order poised to clash, their collision destined to fulfill the very cycle of manipulation they had sought to shatter.
---
"Back then," the God-King's voice rumbled low, heavy with the gravity of eons, "on the balcony—when we spoke of dreamstates—you called it fate's threads communicating with me."
His tone darkened, a storm gathering in every syllable.
"Did you know they showed me her death?"
"I did," the Keeper of Time and Fate replied, her voice calm but unflinching, each word a golden filament of truth stretched taut across the silence.
A root erupted from the shattered ground, striking upward with lethal speed—halting a breath away from her throat. Its tip quivered, vibrating with the restrained fury of a god barely holding back the urge to destroy.
The Keeper did not flinch. Her gaze met his, unyielding as the cosmic laws she guarded.
The God-King stepped past her, his cloak dragging through the dust and blood. He ascended slowly, each step a deliberate rejection of the bond that had once tethered them.
When he spoke again, his voice was a final decree—calm, yet absolute.
"With that, my debt to you is paid. In this lifetime, we shall not meet again."
The root dropped to the earth with a dull thud, wilting like a severed nerve.
The air grew thick, heavy with what neither could say.
The Keeper stood unmoving amid the chaos, her golden sands swirling faintly around her—a halo of inevitability, fragile and eternal. The faintest flicker crossed her eyes, not sorrow, but understanding. This was the thread she had seen long ago. And now, it had reached its end.
---
In the veil of time, Raiking's gaze lingered on the Keeper below, a silent longing in his crimson eyes—a look Ezmelral now recognized from their very first encounter within this temporal tapestry. She felt the weight of that gaze, a silent ache connecting them across eons.
As Raiking began to drift after the God-King, his form phasing forward—
A tug at his sleeve halted him.He turned, puzzlement etching his features.
Ezmelral met his gaze, her voice steady yet heavy with the weight of revelation.
"I have something to tell you."
"What is it?" he asked, cautious now, the stillness before a storm.
"The one who resurrected me…"—she paused, her breath trembling—"…was the Keeper of Time and Fate."
Raiking froze. For a moment, his immortal heart forgot to beat.
"What are you saying?"
"I can't explain how I know," she said, her tone unwavering. "But it's the truth. Think back. In my first life, when the Seed of Corruption bloomed, I bore all of L'uminix's corruption within me. That kind of burden doesn't simply fade."
The realization hit him like a collapsing star.
He remembered retrieving her lifeless body from the cross—skin cold and gray, long past any hope of revival. And yet, she lived again.
Only one being could have defied such finality.
Only one with mastery over the threads of Time Essence..
His gaze snapped downward.
The Keeper of Time and Fate was already looking up—not just at him, but at both of them, reunited across time. The faint smile on her face lingered for a single heartbeat… then slowly vanished with her.
In the next instant, Raiking was already there—
—but too late.
The golden sands of the Keeper's power brushed against his fingertips as he reached for her, phasing through the dissolving light. The touch passed like smoke, the echo of her presence fading into nothing. The impact reverberated through the silent dimension—a hollow sound that felt too vast for words.
When the dust settled, Ezmelral knelt beside him, her hand a gentle weight on his trembling shoulder.
The full cost of the revelation pressed upon them both. To meddle with time was to defy the Cosmic Will itself; and for such defiance, the backlash would always fall upon the one who bent it.
The very being who had taught him to master time… had sacrificed herself to change it.
If she had truly altered the flow to this extent, then only the Cosmic Will could know the price she had paid.
Ezmelral's voice broke the silence, soft yet unshakable—
"Your mother," she whispered, her words trembling yet resolute,
"loved you more than you will ever know."
---
The shift was jarring.
Within the palace, where the Eldest Entity and his peers had taken refuge, fear spread like ivy through stone. The air quivered with restrained panic; whispers fractured into frantic breaths.
They had underestimated him.
Their plan had seemed flawless—unite every remaining Entity under one banner, draw on collective might, and strike while the God-King was still bound by grief.
But grief had transformed into something else.
It had become power.
The ceiling above them dimmed. Shadows gathered.
And then he appeared—descending through the fractured light, his silhouette vast and unrelenting.
The Elders, stripped of their Void Essence, felt the weight of his presence before they even saw his face.
"God—"
The word never finished.
An invisible pressure exploded outward, crushing them to their knees. The air itself became an executioner—forcing ancient bones to creak, crack, and finally collapse beneath an unseen weight. The walls trembled; the floor splintered.
The scene inverted the moment of their greatest arrogance—when they had once stormed into his throne room.
Now, the order of things was restored.
The God-King's Gravitational Essence pressed down, absolute and inescapable, declaring a single eternal truth:
No matter the past. No matter the future.
Your life has always been in my hands.
The pressure intensified. A single wet splat echoed through the hall.
Then another.
And another.
When the silence finally returned, it was broken only by the slow patter of blood dripping from the ceiling.
The Elders—timeless no longer—had become part of the color of their own walls.
Their sanctuary was now a tomb, painted in the vivid, final shade of their arrogance.