Alma 109 A Price Paid in Tears

Across the land, people silently gazed up at the empty void and waited for the end to come. There was little else that they could do. People hugged their families and comforted each other as they waited for the inevitable.

Even the contender and conquerors that had survived could no longer see the Light of Hope anymore. They had struggled valiantly against the Infestation but it had made little difference. The disabled, broken warships and their crewmen were in no condition to fight either.

Where were the Four Sovereigns? Why had they not come to defend the realm? In this time of crisis, where they had gone? Not once had they shown themselves to defend the realm during its hour of need.

The four pillars that once united the world together had disappeared.

Sephira longingly gazed at the void and shed tears of pure joy. She could not have been happier. Her plan had worked to perfection.

The Heaven Barrier is almost gone! All that remains is that weak, outer shell and I can break through that myself!! Finally! Sweet, sweet freedom!

Even in her adult form, she would not have been able to destroy the Heavenly Barrier even with all her newfound power. That was why she had required the assistance of the Divine Furnace. Had she not used its almighty power, it would have been impossible for her to escape.

She would have been imprisoned for eternity inside of the sealed dimension even if she had wiped the continent clean of all life. Doomed to forever exist in an empty cage without a means of ever escaping…

There was nothing to hold her back anymore. Sephira called out to the inhabitants of Mulia and said, "The time has come, my children! Let us rid ourselves of the shackles that bind us to this accursed existence! To the Great Beyond, we go together as one!"

Sephira closed her wings as she gathered an unimaginable amount of Anima in preparation.

A warm, golden hue began to shine off of them, illuminating the darkened world. It was almost like the people of the world were seeing the final sunset of their world.

She would destroy the continent with a single, merciful strike and release them from their suffering instantaneously. That was the least she could do for them.

The winged angel took a deep breath and opened her wings in a display of joyous celebration, bathing the land in her majestic radiance.

"I, Sephira of the East, hereby release you of your suffering!"

Overwhelming light flooded out of the angel's wings and then...

A lonesome voice spoke for all to hear and said, "No."

Sephira's cleansing flood of light was blown out of existence. It was as if someone had put out a flickering candle. An attack that would have destroyed the entire continent had been snuffed out with a single word.

By the time Sephira had realized what had happened, it had already disappeared. She couldn't understand because it did not make sense, at least in theory. It had been incomplete — how could he have made it work as intended?

Impossible! How?! They never finished it in time! It should have malfunctioned as soon as the initial power surge coursed through it!

She hurriedly scanned the continent with her Anima in a desperate attempt to stop him but could not find it. Never in her life would she have thought that this could have been possible.

Had she been played? No, Sephira was certain that they had not completed it. After all, she had never divulged everything she knew to Mulians during her imprisonment in Xibalba. She had even fed them half-truths along with lies to hamper the development of the Divine Furnace...

Sephira gathered Anima again and said, "Stop or I will proselytize her soul! I offer a bargain! Spare me and I will give you her soul along with all the others I have taken! What say you, boy?!"

The lonesome voice let out a small sigh and said, "Be still."

She suddenly froze in place, unable to move. Not even Anima had been spared — it, too, had been forced into stasis along with her — turning the winged angel into a beautiful statue of glowing, static light...

It was then that it happened.

At first, it had been nothing more than a twinkling dot of light in the shattered, pitch-black canvas that had once been the sky.

But it kept growing as it descended. For every second that passed, it grew larger and larger until it had become the sky itself.

It had shrouded the entirety of what could be considered the sky, but even that was not enough to see all of it. Not even remotely close.

What had descended was... a single, luminescent arm of indescribable size.

From with the depths of the Void and beyond, it had come down upon Mulia.

Two fingers descended upon the continent, which was like a single grain of sand to it in comparison, and then — defying understanding — picked up the frozen angel in a mind-numbing display of finesse and delicacy.  The arm took its prey and swiftly pulled out its frozen prey into the void with a single, fluid movement. 

"Be sealed."

The sky reformed under command by the formless voice and the void quickly disappeared as the world continued to repair itself. A wave of Anima resounded across the continent when the sky finished repairing and bathed the lands with a blessing of protection and healing from the unknown entity.

Silence reigned supreme as people stared at the shining, clear-blue sky in disbelief.

The fight had ended...

Deep within the void, a single boy cried out in grief as he cradled a tiny, fading speck of light in his hands. Its essence — the unique will held within it — had begun to disappear.

It was being taken into the Divine Furnace, where it would join the Grand Collective of Wills and would serve to empower the almighty device in perpetuity.

Such was the means by which the Divine Furnace grew stronger — by taking souls and removing them of the essence that gave them their unique spark of life.

Their will to live. To survive. To desire. To dream. To struggle.

It siphoned that which made them alive. What made them creations with color, shape, and meaning.

Without their will, one would turn into nothing but a faint shade of they once were. They would become unrecognizable — they would lose what made gave them definition to the world.

If the individual had their will taken from them while they were alive, they would become hollow husks of what they had once been, never to awaken ever again.

The flesh was merely a vessel for the soul, after all. As such, a vessel with a hollow soul was akin to not having a soul in the first place...

Millions of precious, unique lives had been sacrificed in order to kick-start the Divine Furnace — to create a spark for the dormant relic.

The Divine Furnace took everything that Sephira had collected for itself. It had purified whatever had been tainted and then extracted it of its essence — added their wills to the Grand Collective, the conglomeration of everything that had been added to it over an unknown period of time.

The people of Fourth Heaven.

The people of the Ashborn and Dragoncrest families.

The people of Raku, the City of the Sun.

The citizens of North who had lived in the south-western region.

The noble contenders and conquerors who had perished during the battle.

The Twilight Children who had been nothing more than unfortunate pawns.

And...…

A cry of grief filled the empty void as one lonesome boy held a lifeless figure in his arms. It would no longer stir nor wake, no matter how much he wished for it to happen.

Even he, who had reached a state befitting of a demiurge for a moment, had not been able to reverse what had been done.

Her Will would now forever exist within the Divine Furnace as a part of it, so long as he existed.

The almighty construct had found its true master and would now coexist within him, waiting for the day he would take center stage and do what needed to be done.

To fulfill the covenant he had formed an age and life ago....

Thus, the day had ended. The Twilight War had concluded.

In total, approximately 7.8 million people died during the tragic incident and resulted in damages totaling upwards of 2.3 trillion credits. In a single day, 8% of Mulia's population died.

It was reported that in total, 1,379 contenders and 1,570 conquerors — nearly 20% of the Four Empire's Chosen — had died protecting the continent. Every warship that survived the conflict was rendered inoperable, unfit for duty.

A devastating loss that would surely cripple the Four Empires for centuries, perhaps even millennia depending on how well the empires recovered…

The people of Mulia did not sleep that night. They couldn't… not after what they had witnessed.

Some prayed. Some cried. Others drank. Did their best to cope with the losses as best they could. That was all they could do, Chosen or Mortal alike…

The three moons in the night sky silently observed as two figures descended upon the world in secret and shone brighter in their presence.

They wished for nothing but peace for them but knew that was not written in their fates.

No, they would have to struggle and suffer… that was their fate.

Until their work… was done.

Chapter end