The silence in the throne room was absolute, more terrifying than the cacophony of battle had been. Princess Alessia's heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Before her stood the paradox of her salvation—Kanji Naein, a Beyonder Ranker. His simple presence was a physical pressure, a weight on the soul that made the air itself feel thick and heavy. He had not moved, not threatened, yet the sheer totality of his existence in this space made the gilded throne behind her feel like a child's toy.
"What do you want to talk about?" she asked, her voice a carefully controlled whisper, betraying none of the primal fear coiling in her gut.
His crimson eyes, pools of ancient, still blood, fixed on her. They did not glance; they absorbed. "Are you a Descendant of Altaria?"
The question was a key turning in a lock she did not know she possessed. It struck a chord so deep within her it felt less like memory and more like ancestry awakening. The royal archives, the faded tapestries, the lullabies sung in a tongue no one fully understood—it all converged in that single, direct question.
She was a ruler, trained to measure every word. But against that gaze, deception was inconceivable. "I am," she confirmed, her chin lifting a fraction in a reflex of inherited pride. "How do you know of a name lost to all but a few?"
"We need to talk in private," he stated. His tone was flat, devoid of request. It was a declaration of fact. The fate of a billion undead had been a trivial distraction to him; this, clearly, was the main event.
---
He did not follow her to a secluded chamber; he simply arrived there, a shadow detaching itself from the deeper shadows of the room she had chosen. The air grew cold, the dancing fire in the hearth seeming to shrink away from him.
"Tell me of your lineage," he commanded. It was not a request for a story, but a demand for a report.
Alessia folded her hands, the gesture as much to still their tremor as to appear composed. "For over a thousand years, the women of my family have carried the blood and the burden of Altaria. We are the keepers of the legends, the guardians of a legacy whose full meaning has faded into myth."
A flicker of something—not emotion, but a seismic shift in his immense focus—crossed Kanji's stoic face. "I must be over 2000 years old now," he murmured, the statement casual, yet it crashed through the room like a falling monolith. He was not just ancient; he was a contemporary of her oldest legends.
His voice then changed. It did not soften, but it acquired a rare, resonant timbre, like a bell struck in a deep cavern. "Altaria was not a mere fairy. She was an Empress of the Fae, a sovereign of a realm that brushed against the divine. Her voice could coax stars from the heavens and silence the raging seas. Your blood carries an echo of that grace." Then, as if a cloud passed over a barren moon, the reverence vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp darkness. "I hold a grudge against her. A deep and lasting one."
He leaned forward, and the space between them seemed to shrink. "Yet, fate is the sharpest blade of all. I am here to ensure her line does not perish, for a great danger approaches—one that makes the puppet-show you just witnessed look like a village pantomime."
"What danger?"
"Your blood grants you a power Altaria herself wielded: the authority to call upon the gods. I did not save your kingdom out of charity, Princess. I require that power. I need you to summon the Goddess of the Constellation, Vega."
Alessia's mind reeled. To call upon a god was one thing; to summon a specific, high-tier deity of the celestial spheres was an act of staggering audacity. "Why? What could a being like you possibly need from a goddess you so clearly disdain?"
A ghost of a smile, thin and sharp as a razor, touched his lips. "Some knowledge is a poison, and I am the only one who can stomach the dose. Trust that my purpose, however foul it may seem, is aimed at a threat that would unmake your world in a heartbeat. Call her. And when you do," his eyes glinted, "tell her it is I, Kanji, who seeks an audience."
---
The royal church was still scarred from the earlier massacre, the scent of incense struggling to mask the phantom odor of blood. Alessia knelt on the cold stone, feeling the weight of centuries in the silence. She poured her will, her lineage, her very soul into the prayer. It was not a plea, but a summons, using her blood as the key.
The air in the chapel grew taut, then shattered. A voice, vast and star-filled, echoed not in her ears but in the core of her being. "WHO DARES TO CALL UPON ME?"
Her throat was dry. "It is the one named Kanji," she whispered, the words feeling both sacrilegious and inevitable, "who has called upon you, Great Goddess Vega."
The space above the altar tore open. A portal of swirling nebulae and nascent suns erupted, and from it descended Vega. She was not a woman; she was a concept given form—a symphony of cosmic geometry and cold, brilliant light. Divine fury radiated from her, a palpable heat that made the stone beneath Alessia's knees grow warm.
In an instant that defied time, she was across the chamber. A hand forged from starlight and gravity seized Kanji by his collar, lifting him with effortless, terrifying force. The rafters groaned.
"YOU DARE SUMMON ME, MORTAL? YOU, WHO HAVE SPAT UPON THE DIVINE, STAINED THE HEAVENS WITH YOUR INSOLENCE?" Her voice was a cosmic tremor, shaking the very foundations of reality in the enclosed space.
Kanji remained impassive, his feet dangling, a rock in the face of a supernova. To him, her title was a mere label, her fury a predictable weather pattern. This was the creature who had fought five hundred gods to a standstill, who had painted the corridors of the divine with the viscera of angels and the shadows of demons.
"Indeed, I summoned you," he said, his voice unnervingly calm, a flat line against the peak of her fury. "I have a purpose."
"AND WHAT PURPOSE COULD A WRETCHED, VIOLENT MORTAL HAVE THAT CONCERNS ME?"
"A purpose named Khazad."
The name was a weapon. It struck the goddess with the force of a dying universe. Her fury vanished, extinguished like a candle in the void. The starlight of her form flickered. The cosmic heat bled away into a sudden, profound cold. Her grip on his collar loosened by a fraction. The name of the Demon God, the architect of the First Celestial War two million years in the past—a conflict so cataclysmic it had forced every god, emperor, and primordial being, even the notoriously independent Naein Clan, to unite in a desperate, sacrificial struggle for mere survival.
"To even hope to seal him," Kanji continued, his words dropping into the silence like stones into a bottomless well, "the Great Goddess of Beginning and Ending, Sophia, had to weave her own existence into the prison. She is not asleep; she is a component of the lock. And that lock," he met her wide, horrified gaze, "is straining. The threat has not vanished. It stirs once more."
He reached up, not with violence, but with a deliberate slowness, and gently pried her fingers from his collar, his feet settling back on the ground. "Let us speak in your realm, Vega. Privately. The walls here have ears, and the air has memories."
The Goddess of the Constellation, her divine wrath replaced by a cold, focused dread that was far more terrifying, simply nodded. Without a word, she opened a new portal, this one a blinding tear of pure, silent light. She glanced at him once, a look of ancient understanding passing between them, and then she pulled him through. The portal snapped shut, leaving behind a vacuum of silence and a princess alone on her knees, the scent of ozone and starlight the only proof it had not all been a dream.
---
In the days that followed, a fragile, shell-shocked peace settled over the kingdom. The fields were cleared of the fine black dust that was all that remained of a billion souls. The dead were honored, and life, stubborn and resilient, began to return to a semblance of normal.
In the Adventurers' Guild, the air was thick with smoke and the clinking of ale mugs, a cacophony of forced celebration. Sarah and Kenta sat among their comrades, but they were islands in the noise. Their eyes met across the scarred wooden table, sharing a grim, unspoken understanding. They had witnessed the scale of true power—first a horde that blackened the horizon, then a being who erased it from existence with a flick of his wrist. Their own strength, the product of so much struggle and pain, now felt like a small, flickering candle held against a hurricane.
"We have to get stronger," Sarah said, her voice low, the words not a wish but a vow. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her tankard. "Not just a little. We have to break our limits. We have to transcend."
Kenta nodded slowly, his hand resting on the cursed hilt of Yami to Hikari. He could feel the dark blade's answering hum, a promise of power and peril. "The battles to come," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "will make the war we just fought look like a sparring match."
Meanwhile, high in her castle, Princess Alessia stood at the arched window of her solar, watching a gentle afternoon breeze rustle the vibrant leaves of the royal gardens. She had saved her kingdom from one apocalypse, only to have its savior pull back the curtain and reveal a far grander, more terrifying stage. She was no longer just a ruler of a kingdom; she was a piece on a cosmic board, her bloodline a key in a lock guarding a prison for a horror older than time. The breeze was peaceful, the scene idyllic, but her heart was an anchor of dread, heavy with the weight of futures she could scarcely imagine.
The battle for her kingdom was won. The war for their world, and all worlds, was just beginning.