Kiaria held her hands.
Her fingers were small, soft, and faintly cold–as if the chill of earlier battles and terror still clung to her skin. Yet beneath that coolness, a gentle warmth pulsed quietly, steadily, like a secret flame refusing to die.
He looked at her face closely, forgetting for a brief moment that the Goddess–her newly acknowledged Aunt–stood only a few steps away.
"Dia," he said, his voice low and warm, "congratulations. Your mount has successfully adapted to both Heavenly and Abyssal spirit."
Diala's eyelashes trembled. Her beast companion, now White Jade in its new form, lay not far behind her in a resting state. Its breathing had finally calmed, but the magnitude of what had happened still clung to the air like a lingering echo.
"Both of you look like siblings," the Goddess of Nemesis commented with an amused lilt in her tone, "with how closely you stand and how your attires match."
Diala stiffened for a moment. A faint flush colored her cheeks. She instinctively tried to pull her hands back, but Kiaria unconsciously tightened his grip, not in possession, but in reassurance.
He quickly cleared his throat and replied, "Now you can use at least fifty percent of your potential freely. And you can let your beast companion rest inside your spiritual consciousness whenever needed."
Diala met his gaze for a second, then smiled.
"Not only that," she said softly, "the sword has fully become a spiritual weapon–like yours. This sword was your gift. We'll show our brothers when we return and make them take back those hurtful words."
Kiaria's expression flickered.
The day they first prepared for the journey to Re Ze Lure surfaced in his mind. Elder Joufa's cold judgment. The mercenary brothers' dismissive laughter. Those careless words that cut deeper than blades.
He exhaled slowly.
What's the point of thinking about that now… he thought. This is already something they can't even imagine.
He forced the shadows of memory aside and looked toward the small object floating in the air a short distance away.
The box.
"Dia," he said, a faint trace of impatience slipping through his composure, "open the box. Let's see what's inside."
His anxious tone made Diala's heartbeat quicken. She turned her gaze toward the object suspended above the ground.
The wooden box hovered in mid-air, as if resting on an invisible altar. It did not float too high nor too low–just at a height that was perfectly comfortable for her to reach.
It was not shaped like an ordinary box.
From afar it resembled a small, irregular cube. But when seen up close, the structure was fragmented, made up of countless tiny segments fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. Each shard had something carved onto it–thin lines of runes etched with unfathomable precision.
The words were ancient.
Diala narrowed her eyes, trying to read them, but the characters twisted in her vision, beyond the comprehension of mortal language.
Her fingers hovered before the small box for a moment. She glanced sideways, meeting Kiaria's eyes, then briefly at Nemesis. The Goddess said nothing, only watched quietly, her gaze unreadable.
Diala took a breath and gently placed her finger on the central knob of the box.
The world around them shifted.
A thin ring of light flared along the surface of the wooden shards. The spell that had been silently lying dormant suddenly lifted from its hidden state. Symbols and lines of power peeled away from the wood like glowing threads, rising into the air before their eyes.
The box trembled.
Then it began to move.
More than a thousand wooden shards loosened from their locked positions, separating cleanly without a single splinter. Each shard was a tiny rectangular block, but unlike normal wood, their length could stretch and shrink at will, forming different lines and angles.
Kiaria's eyes sharpened.
He watched the shards spread out, forming small scattered clusters in the air around Diala.
"One, two, three… sixteen," he muttered under his breath as the first cluster aligned.
The first sixteen shards elongated and rotated into position, forming a square ring, inscriptions shining along their edges.
The rune carved onto each block pulsed with faint light. The letters were not simple decoration–they were directives, commands woven into matter itself, each stroke controlling the behavior of the shard it was carved upon.
Diala's mouth parted slightly as she watched.
The spell formation grew more complex.
Sixteen shards formed a configuration–then another set of sixteen slid into place above it, interlocking seamlessly like moving gears. The sigils overlapped, creating a new pattern altogether.
"The spell is the trigger," Kiaria thought, silently following the changes. "The shards… and the letters themselves… are the formation nodes."
Each configuration of sixteen shards completed one segment of a larger formation. Every time one layer finished assembling, a faint hum echoed, like the click of a lock being opened.
"Diala," the Goddess' voice came from the side, calm yet edged with seriousness, "stay focused. Do not be distracted. You have stepped into the core of the formation."
Diala gulped and nodded silently.
Her fingers remained lightly touching the central knob, but she didn't need to move. The box's mechanism responded only to her identity and presence. The rest was unfolding on its own.
Kiaria's mind worked quickly.
"One formation… two… three…" he counted in his heart, watching the sets of sixteen blocks assemble, dissolve, and reassemble into newer, more complex structures. "With this pace… one hundred layers… and a total of one thousand six hundred shards…"
As he calculated, Diala also felt numbers instinctively lining up in her mind. It was strange. She wasn't consciously counting, yet her heart quietly traced the layers and combinations, as though something hidden in her blood was guiding her to understand.
Time stretched.
The air became filled with softly rotating shapes made of wooden shards, glowing inscriptions, and gentle humming sounds–click, slide, rotate, connect, dissolve, reform.
Layer after layer.
The formation was not violent. It was intricate–elegant like an ancient dance recorded by time itself.
After what felt like both an instant and an eternity, the motion began to slow.
The final shards moved into place.
The glowing formation compressed.
All of the scattered fragments aligned with a smooth, flowing motion, folding inward as if guided by invisible hands.
The wooden shards clustered together, each elongated piece folding, bending and locking at precise angles until the chaotic fragments formed… a new shape.
A small wooden phoenix.
Its wings were folded close to its body. Its tail feathers curved elegantly. In its eyes were faint indents where something like pupils could be.
It hovered in the air at eye-level.
Diala's lips parted in wonder.
"What a beautiful…" she whispered unconsciously.
She reached out and gently touched its forehead.
The moment her fingers brushed that point–
The phoenix's eyes burst into light.
Twin points of piercing radiance ignited, almost too bright to stare into directly. Diala felt her breath caught in her throat, her gaze irresistibly drawn inward.
The next instant–
A thread shot out.
It was too fast for a normal eye to follow–barely more than a line of color carving across space.
A narrow reddish thread, shrouded in a thin sheath of partially transparent blue flame, rushed through the air like a living arrow searching for its target.
Kiaria's reflexes had been honed through countless battles. His body was always in a constant state of alert. Even in peace, he never let his guard down.
But this thread did not come from a physical realm.
It appeared inside existence.
By the time his senses screamed, it had already reached him.
The red thread penetrated his spiritual defense and physical armor as if both were illusions. It slipped through Dragon Scale armor, skin, and muscle without leaving a single mark, piercing directly into his heart.
Kiaria's body jerked slightly–but there was no pain.
Instead–
There was warmth.
Indescribable warmth.
Not the warmth of fire. Not the warmth of blood. Something that melted the edges of loneliness deep inside and seeped into places that had never known comfort.
He closed his eyes without realizing he had done so.
This warmth…
I have never felt it before…
He didn't think of danger. He didn't think of resistance. Only one thought formed clearly in his mind:
If she can feel this too… maybe it'll be even more beautiful.
The world around him dissolved.
He felt like he had been gently tilted forward and allowed to fall–not downward, but inward.
Into his own sea of consciousness.
–
The first thing he noticed was the sky.
In his inner world, the sky had once been dominated by a blood moon. Rivers of blood, mist of slaughter, and the oppressive presence of Heart Demon–his sea of consciousness had always reflected the weight of his struggles and sins.
But now–
The sky was clear.
A full white moon hung high above, casting a gentle glow across a vast expanse. White clouds floated calmly, touched with silver from the moonlight.
No blood rivers.
No oppressive mist.
Instead, floating islands of lush greenery drifted through the sky. Waterfalls cascaded from them, turning into shining streams that vanished into the spiritual sea below.
The sea beneath his feet was calm and deep, reflecting the moon and islands with perfect clarity.
But–
There was no Primordial Spirit standing upon the water.
No familiar shades of his grandfathers.
No heart demon lurking in the distance.
Yet the reflection on the sea's surface still showed the former appearance of his inner world, as if the new sky and old reflection existed together, overlapping.
Kiaria opened his eyes fully and realized he was standing on the water. Each step he took rippled softly, yet no sound echoed.
He walked.
He didn't know for how long.
He only knew that after what felt like an hour of silent steps, he blinked for the first time–and saw them.
Two figures stood not far ahead.
A man and a woman walking side-by-side.
Faces clear. Expressions gentle. Their silhouettes seemed simple, like any ordinary couple in the mortal world.
Kiasin and Asaira.
He did not recognize them.
But his heart reacted before his mind.
A feeling of profound comfort flooded his chest–like the moment Diala had first seen her father's soul and understood, without explanation, who he was.
Kiaria's memories were sealed.
To him, these people were strangers. Just random forms of unknown passersby.
Yet his soul strained toward them as if something essential was slipping through his fingers.
Unconsciously, he walked faster.
"Senior!" he called out. "Seniors…!"
They did not turn around.
He quickened his pace into a run.
The distance felt short, yet each step seemed to pull the world longer. When he finally reached out and stretched his hand toward the man's wrist–
His fingers passed through.
The two figures dispersed like mist dissolving in sunlight.
Kiaria froze.
He looked down at his palm, then around again, bewildered.
The empty sea of consciousness felt suddenly vast. The place where warmth had been was once again distant.
Then–
Two more silhouettes appeared.
This time they were walking toward him from afar.
He narrowed his eyes. Unlike the earlier pair, their faces were blurred–not hidden by veils or masks, but gently obscured by something like soft light.
He couldn't see their clothes clearly.
He couldn't see the details of their posture.
Yet somehow, he could still tell:
A man and a woman…
Husband and wife, maybe…
The earlier couple's faces had been clear, but they had walked away from him. These two, whose features he couldn't even see, moved closer with every step. But from the presence, he can tell this couple were not them.
They stopped before him.
Without a word, the woman reached out and pulled him gently into an embrace. The man laid a hand on his shoulder and then cupped his face.
They leaned down.
A kiss touched his forehead.
Warm. Trembling. Overflowing with emotion so big it barely fit into any ordinary feeling he'd known.
The earlier couple had vanished at his touch.
But these two could touch him.
Their warmth stayed. Their presence did not scatter.
Tears glimmered in their unseen eyes.
They smiled at him–smiles full of love, relief, and joy so intense that it felt like it might break them.
And then–
They, too, disappeared.
Not scattered like mist, not blown away like dust. They faded gently, leaving behind a lingering warmth that soaked into his bones.
Unprecedented happiness welled up inside Kiaria's heart.
His body relaxed.
His soul relaxed.
The tightness he hadn't even known was there unwound.
He wanted to see their faces–to lock their features into his memory. But no matter how hard he tried to recall the blurred silhouettes, nothing would sharpen.
His eyes opened.
The sea of consciousness shattered around him like a reflection disturbed by a pebble.
–
When his vision cleared again, he found himself back where he had been.
He was still holding Diala's hands.
Her eyes were open.
She was looking at him with the same dazed wonder that he felt inside himself.
Both of them were breathing slowly–calm, yet their hearts beat with an unfamiliar, overflowing warmth. A happiness that did not come from victory, nor power, nor escape.
Something deeper.
They both tried to move their hands.
They couldn't.
Their fingers were interlocked, but that was not the true reason.
They saw it at the same time.
A red thread passed through their wrists.
One end was buried inside Kiaria's heart. From there it extended down his arm, coiling around his wrist like a tight band, then pierced his skin without leaving a wound and entered Diala's wrist–continuing up to her heart.
Kiaria's sight changed.
He activated his monochrome vision.
Colors bled away from the world, turning everything into layers of white, black, and endless shades of grey. In this state, all emotional and spiritual energies manifested in visible patterns.
The red thread glowed intensely even in monochrome. Everything turned into black and white in monochrome, but, red thread still remained in red.
"Dia," Kiaria said quietly, "did you see something? A vision–or your sea of consciousness?"
"I saw my father," Diala replied softly. "You… and…"
She hesitated.
"And a snowy light. That light… made me wake up before you did."
"Any words? Any actions?" he asked.
"You have too many questions…" she muttered, her face flushing as she looked away.
He huffed a faint breath that was almost a laugh.
Then his expression turned serious as he scanned their surroundings.
The box was nowhere to be seen.
Kiaria released his sixth sense, extending it outward to search for traces of hostile will or malicious presence.
The red thread pulsed.
His vision was forcibly drawn back toward it. The thread was not just a link–it was a path.
He released a wave of monochrome perception, letting it travel along the red thread.
His senses followed the line.
He felt their existence–in two places at once.
In the real world, they were standing there holding hands.
But at the same time–
He felt both himself and Diala positioned within the eyes of the wooden phoenix.
The phoenix was no longer just a box or a mechanism.
It was alive.
The left eye held him.
The right eye held her.
And the red thread that bound their hearts was connected to every single one of the one thousand six hundred wooden shards that made up the phoenix's body.
In his monochrome vision, he saw the red thread pulse like a living artery.
It rose from his heart, split into countless branches, and flowed outward through his chest, down his arm, into his wrist–then extended into the phoenix, linking each wooden block like a network of veins, before finally reaching Diala's heart.
He sent another monochrome wave.
This time, the mapped flow reversed.
He saw Diala's heart as the source, her thread branching outward as arteries, reaching the shards and then returning into him like veins.
Wave after wave.
Each time, the roles inverted.
First, he was the artery and she the vein.
Then she the artery and he the vein.
Their existence pulsed in alternating rhythm, each of them acting as origin and return, over and over again.
There were no other changes.
No external interference.
Only this interconnected flow that linked them, the phoenix, and the shards in one continuous, throbbing circuit.
After several cycles, he finally withdrew his sight.
A few quiet minutes passed.
Then–
A soft chill brushed past his skin.
From the edges of the meadow, a dense milky-white mist began to rise. It wasn't the cold, devouring mist of death, but a snow-like spiritual fog, pure and heavy with presence.
It rolled inward from all directions.
The mist thickened and slowly spiraled upward, gathering into a single point before them. A shape began to form at its center.
Head.
Shoulders.
Arms.
A human-like figure began to emerge, carved out of snow and light.