The silence after the cataclysm was so deep that Astrid thought the universe had stopped breathing.
Solenne—or what remained of it—was a cemetery of fire and dust. The mountains smoked as if they were exhaling ashes. The air burned. And she, at the center of it all, stared at what she had done without fully understanding it.
The tears had dried; what remained was a strange stillness, a feeling of having touched something forbidden. Her mind was a whirlwind of overlapping images: Vellhara, Elisa, the dimensional rifts, the unified universes... and then this new sky, indifferent, foreign.
She remembered everything.
Everything.
The memories returned like a river.
Every fragment of her previous life embedded itself in her mind with physical pain. She remembered her journey through the ancient multiverse, the mission to unify everything, the confrontation with Elisa, her defeat, her death.
And now, awakening in a universe that wasn't hers.
For days she wandered through the ruins without direction. She did not speak, she did not sleep. She only thought, without a clear reason.
The thought consumed her: "How am I alive? If I'm alive... then someone brought me back. If all of this exists... someone created it."
And that thought had a name: Elisa.
The realization fell upon her like a sentence.
Had Elisa saved the multiverse? Or had she created a new one? She still didn't know.
She still didn't know that everything that had ever existed—people, worlds, memories, her own home—had been erased, replaced, and remade according to her decision.
Vellhara had not been destroyed: it had never existed in this new order.
Astrid broke.
The emptiness she felt was not sadness or anger at first, but absolute nothingness. It was as if reality itself had been ripped from her hands.
Weeks passed before she could think clearly.
When she did, she understood that she needed answers.
Remembering was not enough.
She had to understand what had happened from the moment of her death until her rebirth, and what had happened to her and Elisa.
The brooch was still with her, shining with a calm light, as if patiently waiting for its bearer to decide her next step.
Astrid took a deep breath, gathered what remained of her will, and set out on a new journey.
Her destination was a planet called Orvellis, known in cosmic records as the "world of the wise." It was a meeting point for scholars, archivists, and philosophers who dedicated their lives to studying the origin of the cosmos.
She arrived there without revealing who she truly was. She presented herself as a traveler interested in understanding the structure of the multiverse.
The air of Orvellis was light and transparent, and its cities seemed to float over lakes that reflected the sky like a mirror. The inhabitants were beings of condensed light, whose voices sounded like soft echoes. None of them knew war or misery; they sought only knowledge.
Astrid walked through their libraries and read inscriptions recounting the creation of the new order. In every mural, the same figure appeared: a woman wrapped in luminous shadows, with a mantle that merged with the void.
They called her The Goddess of Nonexistence.
"They say she was the one who brought existence to life," one of the sages explained to her, a tall being with eyes like liquid mirrors. "That from absolute emptiness she brought forth worlds and souls. Without her, none of this would exist, hence her name."
Astrid listened without interrupting him.
"And is it known who she was?" she asked in a neutral tone.
The sage shook his head with a faint glow.
"No. Her name was lost. Some believe she transcended. Others that she sleeps beyond the boundary of reality. All we know is that when she created the cosmos, she disappeared."
"And what about these beings called Guardians?" she asked, pretending to be ignorant.
"They were created to safeguard her work," the sage replied. "No one has seen them for ages."
Astrid nodded, pretending to be calm. But inside, every word was an open wound.
She knew exactly who that goddess was.
She knew exactly what she had done. After their fight, Elisa had recreated the entire multiverse by becoming the goddess of her artifact.
And for the first time, she understood everything.
That night, high atop an observatory, Astrid gazed at the sky of Orvellis. The stars reflected in her eyes like holes in memory.
She thought of Elisa: her face, the voice that had begged her to stop her ambition. How she had defeated her... and then replaced everything she had wanted to save.
The pain gave way to anger.
Anger gave way to indignation.
And indignation, finally, gave way to clarity.
"She did the same thing as the Guardians."
"She condemned one existence to create another."
"She stole my purpose from me... and the world I wanted to save."
Her hands trembled.
She could not accept that the reality she knew was a copy, an artificial echo of the original.
She could not accept that her sacrifice, her struggle, her death had been erased without leaving a trace.
The multiverse that now existed was a lie.
An illusion created to replace the truth.
From that moment on, something changed in her gaze.
The brooch continued to shine, but its light became colder, sharper.
Astrid no longer used it to heal or create. She observed it in silence, studying it, understanding its power even further. If the brooch was the manifestation of existence, then it could be used for any purpose... even to reverse it.
While the sages of Orvellis slept, Astrid wandered through the halls of the central temple, where a statue of the goddess stood at its center.
She stared at it for a long time.
In the carved stone, the goddess held a luminous orb: the symbol of creation.
"You destroyed everything," Astrid murmured. "You pretended to save it, but you erased it."
Her voice trembled between fury and sadness.
"I watched it burn... and you called it redemption. You did the same thing as the Guardians. You created a new world from the ashes of the old one."
The echo was lost among the pillars.
For the first time, the brooch responded with a strong pulse, as if it shared her anger.
The following days were a whirlwind of thoughts.
Astrid remembered the sages' words: "Without her, nothing would exist."
But in her mind, the phrase became distorted: "Because of her, what existed is no longer here."
That difference, that small change in perspective, became a fixed idea, one that was growing stronger and stronger.
At that moment, an illusion appeared behind Astrid once again: herself. Her past version, covered in wounds, with the broken brooch and a missing arm, exactly as she had been just before fading away.
"She took everything from you. Not just your world, but your entire reality disappeared, and it was all her fault. You can no longer save anything, Astrid. There is nothing left to save. But at least what you can still do is avenge it. You cannot recover what was lost, but you can eliminate the replica they put in its place," the illusion whispered in her ear.
"It's true. I cannot recover my world, but I can honor its memory. I won't let them desecrate its memory for another second," Astrid said as her eyes and brooch began to shine intensely.
"If this isn't my world... if my Vellhara no longer exists... then this universe is nothing more than a shadow."
"And every shadow must disappear."
Sadness became hatred.
Hatred became purpose.
Purpose became faith.
A faith turned upside down: the faith to destroy, not to create.
If Elisa had used the power of nonexistence to create a new reality, Astrid would use the power of existence to annihilate it.
It would be the inverse balance, the correction of what she believed to be a mistake.
Before leaving Orvellis, Astrid returned to the observatory where she had first heard the story of the goddess.
Dawn painted the sky in golden hues. The sages were still asleep.
She raised her gaze toward the stars—the very same ones she had helped form—and spoke in a low voice, almost like a prayer.
"I won't let this illusion endure," she whispered. "I won't allow the cycle to repeat itself once again. If the Guardians and the goddess erased everything I loved... then I will erase their lie."
The brooch shone with a fierce glow, responding to her determination. The blue light mixed with red flashes, a hue it had never displayed before.
Astrid smiled, tears still dry on her cheeks. She began to raise her power, causing the planet to tremble as the sages awoke from the thunderclaps, confused, and asked her what she was doing. But Astrid did not answer. She simply continued increasing her strength, only to then create an explosion that destroyed the entire planet.
And in the immense emptiness of space, among the ruins of what remained, she said firmly:
"I will use the power of creation to destroy everything that the Goddess of Nonexistence created. I am not going to leave ANYONE alive..."
Her voice broke, but her gaze hardened.
"I will be the creator of calamity."
The echo of those words crossed the firmament, and the universe seemed to hold its breath.
Destiny had changed course.