The battlefield had fallen into a silence that felt almost sacred, and within that vast silence, the towering thirty-meter pillar of crystal-blue ice stood like a grave marker for a woman who had not yet been laid to rest, her body frozen, pale as moonlight, her arms limp.
Vastarael stood at the foot of a glacier, his boots crunching across the frost-laced stone as his steps echoed in the dead air and with every step forward, he carried the weight of a decision he had sworn to never make.
Narisva was gone not in body, not even in soul but in will. And without that will, not even all the Tethers in Spheraphase would bring her back.
He looked up at her, and for the first time in his life, his sapphire eyes did not shine with light, did not reflect hope, did not even tremble with tears. They were dull, sunken, calculating and calm in the way that only comes when a man has decided to burn the world to save one star.
Everything had gone wrong. They had lost. But she hadn't. She just needed one final push.
"Then let it be this way."
He raised his right hand, the insignia of the Obsidian Runic Spire glowing violently across his palm, and his Divine Core exploded outward, illuminating the battlefield in a searing, obsidian light that stretched beyond the volcano and reached the sky itself.
Then he whispered the words Erna told him that would be the last resort.
"As the Towermaster of the Spire, I, Vastarael Richinaria, initiate the Harvesting Protocol. Purpose, Artificial Divine Awakening. Narisva Starisnova."
Far above, within the highest chamber of the Obsidian Runic Spire, an ivory sanctum with arching ceilings engraved in floating constellations, walls lined with crystalline books encoded with laws written before light was born. Erna sat on her bed, fingers laced together, watching the eclipse filter in through her enchanted window when it hit her.
A shiver passed through her body. Her pupils narrowed like glass fracturing under pressure. Her eyes turned entirely white for just a breath before she gasped.
"No... no no no no no!"
Phaenora, who had been leaning silently by the windowsill, snapped her head around, her teasing demeanor gone in an instant, her expression now drenched in tension.
"What? What's wrong?"
Erna's lips trembled, her body unable to stop quaking as she gripped the edge of the bed.
"He's doing it... He's initiating the Harvesting... but not for the Spire... not for the archipelago's defense... he's doing it for her."
Elsewhere, all throughout the Obsidian Runic Spire, tens of thousands— of souls stirred uneasily.
Inhabitants of the Erna Isles who had all, unknowingly, been moved into the Spire's inner sanctums, stood together in various domes, plazas, libraries, and chambers, murmuring in confusion as the air grew heavier as golden light flickered above them like fireflies.
Some of them had been baking. Others were preparing for evening meals. Some were just holding their children. Then without warning it began. A child, no older than six, looked up at her brother with wide, wondering eyes as her body began to flicker, her edges glowing gold and sapphire.
"Brother? I feel warm…"
"Why are you glowing?" He whispered, backing away slightly, panic rising in his voice.
She reached out to touch him but her hand crumbled into particles. And then she vanished just like that.
Her brother screamed.
"SOMEONE HELP HER—SHE'S GONE—SHE—!"
But no one could because two more children flickered. And then four. And then fifty. One by one, across the floors of the Obsidian Runic Spire, the youngest began to vanish first.
Their bodies were being converted into energy.
Parents began to scream as they saw their babies dissolve before their eyes, holding them close only for their arms to pass through golden mist. Cries echoed through every floor. Some tried to run. Some tried to fight. Others dropped to their knees, praying in desperation.
One mother collapsed, holding the last slipper of her child as the child's face turned to light, smiling up at her before it faded.
A father stood frozen as his wife and sons vanished all at once, their arms interlocked, their bodies glowing and fading like sunset mist in slow motion.
"What is this?! WHAT IS THIS?!"
Every adult could feel it. It crept under their skin like a chill that didn't belong in this world. The golden light that had once flickered softly above their heads and they knew.
They didn't need to be told.
They had been spared, once. Transported from their isles, from Volxane, from the Halo Islands, even from the roots of Sanctum's Grove, the great arboreal refuge founded by the Divine Elyonari herself. They had all been gathered and placed in this towering sanctuary that pierced the sky, told they were safe, that salvation had come, that the horrors of the war had passed.
But salvation had only delayed the inevitable. And now it had arrived.
It started with the children. Hundreds were gone in seconds. Now the adults stood frozen in the aftermath, their minds failing to grasp what had just happened. Some wept. Some fell to their knees. Others held their remaining family tighter, desperate for time that was slipping through their fingers like fine ash in a storm.
One man, once a poet of Volxane's moonlit halls, stood beside his wife and simply whispered:
"It was always going to be this way, wasn't it?"
She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears, but her hands steady as she pulled him close, their foreheads touching as the golden shimmer crept over their shoulders, pulling them apart grain by grain until only their silhouettes remained, glowing gently like fading memories in the dark.
Entire lineages began to vanish together, families that had survived winters, mothers clutching the hands of their sons, elderly artisans embracing their great-grandchildren...
And as their bodies began to turn to golden motes, none of them ran .They just stood still, and faced it.
Because what else was there to do?
In the middle of a silver hall overlooking a starlit mural, Runner and Shimmer stood frozen, their youthful eyes wide, trembling, their hands clasped together as they watched the unimaginable unfold before them. The walls were now glowing with life signatures being absorbed. Golden particles shimmered where people once stood. Laughter, conversation, and joy had all been replaced by silence… and vanishing.
"Why are they all… disappearing…?"
Runner whispered, barely audible, as if any louder would break the world further.
Shimmer clutched her sister's hand tighter, her heart pounding so violently it hurt, her breath caught halfway between fear and disbelief.
They had seen war. They had seen the battlefield. They had even seen death. But this... this was something else.
"I don't know," Shimmer murmured, her voice cracking as she stared at where an entire family had just stood, now nothing but soft golden dust being carried by winds that weren't real.
Down one of the ivory staircases that led to a garden filled with glowing blue hydrangeas, Siranna knelt beside her children; her three-year-old son trembling as he held onto her leg, and her daughters, Rienne and Taryenne, trying to stay brave. She didn't lie to them. She didn't tell them it would be okay. Because it wouldn't.
She only whispered the truth, in a voice heavy with grace.
"Our master… failed. And now it's time for us to go, my darlings."
Her daughters' lips trembled as they both tried to smile, nodding in unison. The boy didn't understand—he was too young to—but he saw their calm faces, their tears, and he knew something was ending.
Siranna pulled all three of them into a tight embrace, her arms trembling as she kissed each one on the head. They wrapped their arms around her at the same time.
And then… all four of them vanished together.
By the time the final two minutes had passed, eight hundred thousand lives had disappeared.
Their stories had ended. Their memories would not return.
Only the 5,000 Minafallen students remained, their bodies trembling not from exhaustion or wounds but from the impossible realization that they were now the last living witnesses to a genocide that no one would remember except them.
And even among them, over a hundred of their classmates had already perished in the Sandstorm Desert during the battle with Permafrost's Grasp,, their names etched in battlefield dust. And now they stood, staring into the air as they saw the golden light coalescing into a beam. Some dropped to their knees. Some screamed. Others just stood in paralyzed silence.
Because there were no words left.
The silence had devoured them all.
No answer came because far away, he was receiving the essence of every being. But he had to because Narisva was still dying. Body and Soul Reconstruction would not help her.
And he loved her, even if it cost him everything.
The sky shattered in half as the energy from hundreds of thousands of Erna Isles inhabitants poured into him, creating a corona of divine brilliance.