"Are you alright now, Ilyra?" Lunara asked, her voice a soothing murmur in the quiet room.
Ilyra was still trembling slightly, but she managed to draw a deep, stabilizing breath and found her center. She slowly pulled back from the embrace, wiping the moisture from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
"I'm better… I think," Ilyra replied, though her voice lacked its usual judicial authority.
Lunara didn't let go entirely. She kept her arms around Ilyra as they both shifted to sit on the edge of the large bed. She could still feel the faint tremors running through her sister's shoulders despite her sudden attempt at bravado. It was obvious that the nightmare had shaken Ilyra to her core, no matter what she claimed.
Before either of them could speak further, a sudden, unnatural wind blew from the north, whistling sharply against the windowpane. The artificial starlight filtering into the chamber seemed to flicker and dim. On the floorboards, the shadow cast by the heavy wooden bedframe began to churn, coiling and coalescing like boiling ink.
"You've grown weak… and troubled, dear sister."
The voice cutting through the darkness was sharp, dry, and entirely devoid of pity. Ilyra's head snapped toward the sound, her posture rigid as she recognized the cadence immediately. Lunara, however, merely let out a long, weary sigh, as if she had been expecting the interruption.
"That voice!" Ilyra shrieked, her hand instinctively dropping to where her ceremonial blade would usually hang.
From the shifting pool of darkness, a figure stepped out, crossing the threshold into the pale light. Ilyra gazed upon the familiar silhouette, and a jolt of recognition ran through her. This was the exact image that had just haunted her dream—the woman who had lain cold in the catafalque while Thysera stood sentinel. The warrior with the shattered divine armor.
"Hardly a fit reaction for a being of your caliber," the woman scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Don't tell me you've finally lost your mind, Ilyra?"
Ilyra's grief evaporated, replaced instantly by a sharp glare as the figure slowly strolled closer to the bed. But before the Goddess of Justice could utter a single word of rebuke, Lunara spoke up, her tone shifting into a firm scowl.
"Stop it, Veyron," Lunara warned. "That's no way to treat your kin."
Veyron clicked her tongue in annoyance, her purple eyes flaring slightly in the dim room as she made her presence fully known to the glaring goddess on the bed. She didn't look like a ghost anymore; she looked exactly as she had before the fall, radiating an intense, prickly energy.
"Why are you here… Blight of Logos?" Ilyra snarled, the ancient title slipping past her teeth like a curse.
Veyron didn't seem bothered by the hostility. She simply offered a rebellious smirk and a low scoff before turning her back on Ilyra. She began pacing around the bedchamber, inspecting the fine tapestries and marble fixtures with an air of casual amusement, acting as if she owned the room entirely.
"I do miss the old name-calling from you, Ilyra," Veyron responded, pausing to run a finger over a polished marble bust near the wall. "I guess that's one thing that's never changed. You're still a stuck-up bitch."
Her words lacked any real venom, delivered with the casual disregard of someone who had long since stopped caring about the judgments of the High Council.
Ilyra sat up straighter on the edge of the mattress, her knuckles whitening against the silk sheets. She didn't rise to the bait, but her gaze remained razor-sharp, tracking Veyron's every movement as the warrior goddess resumed her slow pacing across the chamber. The rhythmic clicking of Veyron's boots was the only sound breaking the heavy silence of the room.
After pacing for a short while longer, Veyron stopped in her tracks. She turned on her heel and looked directly toward Ilyra, her purple eyes narrowing slightly.
"Where's Thysera?" Veyron asked, her tone shifting into something more direct.
Ilyra didn't answer her. She simply sat there, her jaw set in a rigid line, continuing to glare at her uninvited guest. The air between them grew thick and cold, a silent battle of wills that filled the space between the bed and the shadows. Lunara remained quiet beside her sister, her eyes shifting between the two, waiting to see if the fragile peace would hold.
Seeing that Ilyra had absolutely no intention of entertaining her question, Veyron shook her head and scoffed again.
"I'm wasting my time here," Veyron muttered, her shoulder dropping in a gesture of pure annoyance.
She turned and walked over to the bed, stepping close enough for the faint starlight to illuminate the sharp angles of her face. She reached out, tapping Lunara lightly on the shoulder in a silent signal, before turning her back on them both. Without another word, she strode back into the deepest shadow near the far corner of the room. The coiling darkness rose up to meet her, swallowing her form entirely until she vanished from the chamber, leaving the wind howling faintly outside the glass.
"There she goes," Lunara muttered, her voice breaking the stillness that Veyron had left behind.
Ilyra turned toward her with a stern, furious look. The initial shock of the reunion had passed, leaving behind the cold reality of what these sudden appearances actually meant.
"Why are you really here, Lunara?" Ilyra demanded, her voice tight. "I'm not a fool. I'm not convinced that you simply risked coming back to Elysium just to pay me a midnight visit."
Lunara met her sister's gaze, her neon-purple eyes unblinking in the dim starlight. She held the silence for a long beat, letting the weight of the question settle between them on the silk sheets. Finally, she sighed.
"It's true that I wanted to see you," Lunara said, her tone shifting from airy comfort to something far more grounded. "But you are correct. I'm not here just because of that. I'm here to deliver one final warning to Elysium."
The anger drained from Ilyra's face in an instant, replaced by a cold, hollow realization. Her hand drifted away from the edge of the mattress as the implication of those words hit her. Things were sliding out of control again. The fragile, decades-long peace was fracturing, and the Council was on the verge of provoking the one entity in existence they could never hope to contain.
"I trust you know what this means, Ilyra," Lunara warned gently, leaning in closer. "My lord still holds you in high regard for how you acted all those years ago. Don't let him down."
Ilyra sat rigid, completely stopped by the gravity of the warning. Lunara, sensing the sudden distress her sister was experiencing, leaned back in and pulled her into a gentle, reassurring embrace. She reached up, cupping Ilyra's left cheek with a soft palm.
The touch broke whatever resolve Ilyra had left. She trembled, her silver eyes filling with fresh tears that spilled over and traced hot lines down her face. She reached up, holding Lunara's hand tightly against her cheek as if desperately trying to anchor herself to the reality that her sister was truly alive and breathing beside her.
"I will never thank Natsu enough," Ilyra said, her voice shaking with a raw, uncharacteristic vulnerability. "For bringing you back to me. When Nyxara first left Elysium, it saddened me deeply. But when the reports came... when I heard you were among the casualties? It absolutely broke me, Lunara. I mourned you every single day."
"I know," Lunara murmured, her neon-purple eyes softening. "I know that my passing broke your heart, sister. But I am back. Even if it wasn't under the best of circumstances."
Lunara slowly pulled her hand away from Ilyra's cheek, using her thumb to brush the remaining tears off the goddess's ageless face. She turned her gaze toward the window, her features tightening as her playful expression vanished, replaced by a sudden, severe seriousness.
"I know you still remember it," Lunara muttered, her voice dropping an octave. "In fact, I know you'll never forget it."
Ilyra sensed the immediate shift in the atmosphere. The temperature inside the bedchamber plummeted so rapidly that her breath caught, coming out as a faint white fog in the dim room. A chill ran down her spine, and her cheeks flushed pink from the biting cold. She followed Lunara's gaze, looking out beyond her veranda toward the horizon.
As she stared into the artificial night, the starlight began to warp.
The shadows unraveled, and the darkness was violently burned away by a memory. The night turned into a piercing, absolute day. The light of Elysium's artificial heavens flooded the landscape, and the sweeping marble architecture of the Adytum materialized around her once more.
The High Council had called for an emergency meeting, summoning every pantheon that could physically cross the divine thresholds. Ilyra found herself sitting back in her high, high-backed stone seat as deities from across the corners of existence poured into the massive amphitheater. It was a staggering gathering of the divine—the kind of assembly that only occurred when something entirely unprecedented had shattered the status quo.
This meeting was being held exactly one year after Natsu's violent storming of Elysium. The realm was still hollow, nursing the deep wounds of countless casualties and dead deities whose seats now sat empty and cold.
As Ilyra sat deep in her thoughts, a heavy metallic clinking snapped her out of her daze. Someone firmly tapped her shoulder. She leaned back in her stone chair and looked behind her, finding Thysera, who offered her a tight, reassuring smile. Thysera was seated beside Athena; the Goddess of Wisdom also offered Ilyra a somber nod of acknowledgment. Both goddesses were completely clad in their heavy, polished celestial armor, their weapons resting against their knees. The tension in the row behind her was palpable.
The council seats continued to fill until several thousands of deities occupied the tier after tier of stone benches. The air was thick with the suffocating hum of thousands of voices talking over one another, arguing, speculating, and trading rumors. The noise mixed and mingled into a chaotic roar until, suddenly, the massive central doors groaned.
The council room went dead silent in a heartbeat.
The reinforced doors were pushed wide by two pairs of divine guards. From the brightly lit corridor beyond, a solitary figure stepped into the amphitheater. She wore long, flowing black gothic robes that seemed to drink the light of the chamber, a heavy hood completely obscuring her face. She marched with a slow, deliberate pace toward the very center of the council floor, stopping in the middle of the mosaic seal to face the thousands of gods watching her with intense scrutiny.
"Nyxara…" Ilyra muttered to herself, her expression twisting into one of profound sadness.
The silence didn't last. The moment the High Goddess of Death was recognized, thousands of voices erupted into a chorus of judgment, scorn, and open mockery. Insults and declarations of her apostasy filled the high arches of the chamber.
Ilyra twitched in her seat, her gauntlets shaking against the stone armrests as the blatant disrespect rang through her ears. She wanted to demand order, but the sheer volume of the pantheon's collective ego was a wall she couldn't break.
Then, the mockery stopped. The insults died mid-sentence, replaced by a wave of sharp, terrified gasps.
The brilliant light of the council room dimmed, losing its luster as the shadows in every corner of the amphitheater began to twitch and stretch unnaturally, crawling along the walls like living oil.
From the shadows of the open doorway, another figure walked in. He walked with a casual, unimpressed stride, pausing to stand directly beside the hooded Goddess of Death. It was the same young man in the black hoodie who had brought the entire realm to its knees in a single afternoon.
Ilyra's breath caught in her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she stared at the impossible, ordinary-looking figure who stood defiantly in the center of their sacred hall. As she gazed at him, the ancient, forbidden name slipped past her lips like a whispered curse.
"Mornagathos…" Ilyra muttered.