The light of the battlefield had dimmed.
The Frozen God, once howling with rage, now floated in stunned, frozen silence, as if even he could interfere with what was unfolding.
Vastarael stood at the peak of the sapphire staircase. His body was fractured and coming apart in pieces, but he didn't tremble, he didn't scream.
He only held her. And now he knelt with her in his arms, her head against his chest as his body flickered and faded. His voice came in a whisper, one meant only for her, even though she could no longer hear him.
"I'm sorry… I won't be going back with you."
He tucked her closer, hugging her unconscious body with the kind of desperation that only dying men can afford.
"I promised I'd never die to Elyonari. But I think… this time, you'll understand. Goodbye, Narisva."
And then… it began.
His fingers pressed gently against her back, where her soul had been tethered to the Celestial. Vastarael's palm ignited in sapphire fire and Soul Reconstruction began.
The process wasn't gentle. It never was.
She was a pure Celestial, a being whose very essence was intertwined with dimensional threads and spatial density. Reconstructing her soul meant rewiring existence itself inside her. Even for an Aeterium, even one born with limitless Soul Energy, it was too much.
The harvested power still swirled inside him, but his body was not made for this. The combined pressure of millions of souls, Origin Element resistance, and Celestial core fusion… was crushing him. He let it happen because she needed to live.
Particles began to fall from his skin like burning feathers. His glaive Calimostria dematerialized without a sound. His legs collapsed under him and he fell to his knees, holding her tighter as more of him turned to light.
The process continued. Her soul, cracked and separated by the Celestial pact, was healing. It wasn't just being restored. He was sacrificing his own life force to overwrite the ancient pact that had claimed her all those years ago.
He took her chains into himself. And in return, he gave her back her soul.
His breath grew shallow. His heartbeat faltered.
But his smile only grew. It all started to come back.
His mind, now unchained from time, unfolded every second he'd lived with crystal clarity. His first memory: the warm hands of his mother cradling him. His father's booming laugh. Teaching his sister Anamorsia teaching him how to tie his cloak. Milliania's silent gestures. Leones and Leon sparring with him in the moonlight.
The palace halls of Dynasty Richinaria echoed again in his mind.
The warmth of Adelasta. The coldest woman in the world, who held his hand during the firestorms. Who said she loved him only once, and meant it more than anyone else ever could.
Elyonari's laugh, her stubbornness, her divine presence that always felt like home. Her arms around his neck when she cried. Her fury when he overstepped.
Minafallen. The academy. That first three months. That day he met Narisva Starisnova in a date like setting.
The Raukerai tribe.
The moment Peccavi submitted herself to him. Farrynelle's word. Xander's pride.
Shimmer and Runner.
Their tiny hands wrapped around his. Their giggles. The word "Dad" echoing down his ears. He never thought he would be a father.
Sirithiele, the goddess who told him to live life.
The Obsidian Runic Spire. Every trial. Every floor.
Erna. The moonlight on her balcony.
The Fallen Bridge.
His wedding in the quiet room with Adelasta's head on his shoulder the morning after they got married.
The secret, stolen kiss from Elyonari. The taste of hope.
And finally, his Fate.
He remembered the exact moment he saw it etched in the Mirror of Threads, back in Minafallen.
"A Death in the Embrace of Love."
And now twenty years later, it was happening exactly as foretold.
As the final particles of his arm turned to stardust, and his face began to fade, Vastarael pressed a kiss to her temple and let his forehead rest against hers one last time.
His voice, softer than breath, said with a light laugh.
"I kept my promise, didn't I, Thyrexxa?"
And then, he was gone.
His soul dissolved into sapphire particles that coiled like ribbon around Narisva, anchoring to her Core, protecting her, preserving her soul, wrapping around her like armor forged from grief and love.
His body collapsed next to her.
------
Vastarael's particles of his soul wrapped around her like translucent threads. And for a second, it seemed like she would remain there forever, still, lifeless, bound in grief.
Then… her fingers twitched and the world flinched.
Her eyes opened and they were pitch black, the stars inside them gone, replaced with a swirling celestial void. A moment later, the entire frozen field detonated in a pulse of reverse gravity that snapped the air itself apart.
Narisva Starisnova was no longer a Third Phase Ascender.
She had broken past her bottleneck, her own death forced into reversal by the price Vastarael paid, her soul forcibly reconstructed.
She had become a Divine. And her awakening... was not silent.
The moment it happened, the sky cracked not just above Submerged Island, but above the entire Erna Isles, which until now had floated above Spheraphase's upper exosphere, a lunar cradle known only to a few.
The Frozen God staggered for the first time in centuries.
A wave of blinding Spatial Energy tore through the battlefield like a blade of spatial annihilation. The temperature snapped from absolute zero to unstable cosmic heat in under a second, melting the permafrost that had blanketed the moon's surface.
But it wasn't the heat that made the Frozen God flinch. It was the backlash.
The energy from the Harvesting hadn't faded. Vastarael hadn't just handed over raw power. He had threaded it into a trap, a second-layer backlash that detonated only when Narisva broke through her bottleneck.
Nine pseudo-cores, gifted to Vastarael by eight Forgotten Rank Krepsunas and bound to him through his body, all detonated at once, triggered by the surge of Divine presence born from Narisva's body.
The Frozen God screamed.
"You… immortal insect!!"
His form collapsed inward, the massive 3-meter ice monstrosity cracking with radiant scars. Divine Frost ruptured along his frame as his armor shattered. It wasn't enough to kill him.
But it was enough to destroy the moon.
Submerged Island collapsed inward, the volcanic base cratering from the shock. The ocean above it rippled into space, vaporizing from the sheer Divine output. The tectonic crust of Erna Isles couldn't hold anymore.
Cracks formed across the entire moon.
The celestial surface, already damaged from Vastarael's Harvesting, could no longer bear the weight of Narisva's transformation. Gravitational distortion bent the moon like a dying beast, and in less than three seconds it cracked open like an egg.
Mountains split apart. Frozen oceans boiled into steam. Every structure shattered as billions of tons of lunar rock fragmented and flung outward.
The entire moon exploded.
A planetary ring of shattered ice, cities, temples, forests, and ruins spiraled out in every direction, glowing with the remnants of Divine combustion. The dark side of the moon caved into the burst point like glass being punched through from the inside.
The death of an immortal had been horrifying but the awakening of a Divine was apocalyptic. And yet… not a single Minafallen student died.
The Seventh Enlightenment members, scattered across the battlefield, were flung back from the eruption but they were not destroyed. Their bodies were coated in sapphire shields, the final act of the Obsidian Runic Spire's core defense, activated by the Master's death.
Over 5,000 students, many still bleeding from the war in the Sandstorm Desert, hovered inside protective barriers that kept the atmospheric pressure from crushing them.
They witnessed the birth of Narisva the Divine. Even now, amidst the wreckage of a moon, among drifting lunar fragments and void-black sky, she hovered in silence. Her form had changed.
She was now four meters tall, wrapped in a gravitational cloak of falling stars. Her hair floated upward like it no longer obeyed gravity, her armor laced in glimmering spatial material. Her wings, fractals of starlight and compressed galaxies, extended behind her.
"Huh...? Where's Veneri?"