Alfia stood frozen, her cold mask beginning to crack as Hera continued speaking, each word landing like a hammer blow against her carefully constructed defenses.
"I felt drastic changes in the fate of some unfortunate people," Hera said, her voice carrying the weight of divine foresight. "A new hope and life for them—including you. You know you have little time left to live, and since I raised you all these years, I know exactly what you're planning to do next."
Alfia's heterochromatic eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
"You intend to play the villain," Hera continued relentlessly, her aged face filled with both sorrow and understanding. "To paint yourself as the public enemy of Orario, making yourself a stepping stone for the current 'strongest' Familias' advancement—if you can even call them truly strong with their meager strength compared to what we once had."
The Silence couldn't meet her goddess's gaze. Every word spoken was a blade cutting through her intentions, exposing the desperate plan she had formulated in the darkest hours of her dying days. With her time running out like sand through an hourglass, with hope extinguished after witnessing the annihilation of her friends and comrades at the claws of the Black Dragon, and then receiving the devastating intelligence of her sister's death after giving birth to her nephew—the child she still desperately searched for—what else could she do? At least in death, she could serve some purpose. At least her sacrifice could mean something, even if it was just helping those weaker adventurers grow stronger through her defeat.
"Look at me, child." Hera's voice softened but lost none of its authority. "I still haven't finished yet."
Reluctantly, Alfia raised her eyes.
"As I said, many people's fates have changed—including yours. What should be a flame of life nearing extinction, I now see that flame reaching out, clinging desperately to existence, fighting to continue burning." Hera stepped closer, her ancient eyes boring into Alfia's soul. "And spare me your next words about having no reason to live anymore. The very least you can do is meet this goddess, talk to her, and see if she can change you—if she can give you hope again."
Alfia remained silent for a long moment, taking her goddess's words deep into her heart, turning them over in her mind like precious gemstones examined under light. What was she going to do? Could she dare to hope again? Did she even deserve such a gift?
---
**[Tower of Babel - Throne Room]**
For Ouranos, the ancient prayer-god who had witnessed countless divine descents throughout the ages, this should have been just another familiar scene, another deity arriving to join the endless game the gods played in the lower world. Normally, he wouldn't care—one more god among hundreds meant little to one who had seen civilizations rise and fall.
But this case was disturbingly different.
The very act of this descent had changed numerous courses of fate simultaneously, like a massive stone thrown into a still pond, sending ripples cascading outward in all directions. But even more unsettling—no, genuinely shocking—was what Ouranos felt from the Dungeon itself.
The Dungeon was stirring. Not with violence or malevolence as it usually did, but with something he had never felt from it before: expectation. Anticipation. Even... happiness?
It was utterly bizarre. The Dungeon had always harbored an instinctive, visceral hatred for the gods—loathing them to its very core. Whenever it sensed a deity's presence within its depths, it would spawn the cleaners, those terrifying Juggernauts designed specifically to purge divine contamination from its halls. That was the natural order, the expected response.
Yet now, for the first time in all his eons of existence, Ouranos felt the Dungeon emitting feelings toward a certain person that were completely contrary to its nature—not hatred or malice, but something almost like... welcome? Acceptance? And this person wasn't even within the Dungeon yet!
Even more astonishing, Ouranos could sense divine energy entering the Dungeon's depths, and rather than rejecting it violently as it always had, the Dungeon was accepting this energy, holding it gently like a mother cradling a newborn child. For a primordial god who had lived since the very beginning of Tenkai's existence, who had witnessed the birth of worlds and the death of ages, this was profoundly shocking.
And then he witnessed something that defied all understanding—the Dungeon was using this divine energy to create another realm entirely within itself, a separate dimension filling with mysteries even deeper and more profound than those already existing in its endless corridors.
After contemplating these unprecedented phenomena for several long moments, Ouranos finally spoke to his loyal servant who waited in the shadows. "Fels. There is a new divine newcomer coming to the city soon."
"Yes, my lord," the skeletal mage responded, stepping partially into the dim light.
"When he or she arrives, observe them closely and report everything to me. Better yet—" Ouranos paused, his ancient eyes glowing with rare interest, "—speak to Royman. Inform him to instruct all Guild employees that if this deity requests a meeting with me, grant it immediately with no delays or questions about their purpose."
"As you wish, my lord." Fels bowed deeply before retreating back into the room's shadows like smoke dissolving into darkness.
Alone once more, Ouranos—the ever-stoic, eternally composed prayer-god—allowed himself a small murmur of genuine intrigue. "Hmm, very interesting indeed. Having an authority similar to mine means this fellow deity is not like the other frivolous ones... well, except for Indra, of course. I find myself very intrigued."
---
Meanwhile, across various locations in Orario, several gods who held dominion over death and the underworld suddenly felt an icy chill race down their immortal spines. It was a sensation they had never experienced before—the feeling of their own end, their own demise, as if Death itself had turned its gaze upon them and found them wanting.
What made it even more terrifying was that some of them felt this malevolent attention directed specifically at them, personally. And their divine instincts screamed that this feeling was absolutely true, not paranoia or imagination.
These were the leaders, the masterminds, the architects of Evilus—gods whose twisted entertainment came from orchestrating chaos, suffering, and death among mortals. They were the ones who reveled in the massacre of innocents, who found pleasure in the screams of the elderly, the cries of children, even the destruction of the unborn. They soaked themselves in depravity like pigs wallowing in filth, and now someone—something—had marked them for eradication.
Someone was coming to hunt them. An Aestoria of divine judgment, looking to massacre them for their twisted minds and corrupted souls.
Terror seized them—genuine, primal terror that they hadn't felt since their descent to the lower world. They were filth to be eradicated, and they knew it in the deepest parts of their beings.
Panicking, they immediately issued emergency orders to their Familia children and Evilus members: kill this newcomer without hesitation, without monologue, without delay. Strike first, strike hard, show no mercy.
What these foolish gods didn't realize was that their hasty, fear-driven commands would result in their followers' deaths even before their minds could register what killed them. And this would make her plan so much easier to execute.
The goddess who descended carried the authority of the End itself, and those who had sown death would now reap it a thousandfold.