The terrifying shockwave unleashed by the Holy Tree of Eden, the one that had erased Central Vedelia from existence, rolled across every kingdoms of Sancta Vedelia.

Its explosion rang through the heavens with such force that it seemed to shake the world itself. And with it, the crimson stain that had drowned the sky began to vanish, fading at last as the Blood Moon Spell collapsed. The red curse that had hung over Sancta Vedelia like a wound in the heavens was gone.

What remained after was worse.

A deathly silence spread across the aftermath.

Where Central Vedelia had once stood, there was now only water, dark, restless water, spreading in waves and rivers around the vast chunk of land that still remained suspended beneath the Holy Tree. The Tree itself still stood, but it no longer carried that terrible, unstable radiance. Its dangerous luster had dimmed, leaving behind something that looked less like a sacred protector and more like the exhausted ruin of one.

Nihil stood alone in the sky for a moment, silent.

His gaze remained fixed on the Tree.

He said nothing. He did not move. But after a while, his jaw tightened ever so slightly, the smallest visible fracture in that endless, terrible composure of his. Then, without a word, he turned and vanished in a white glow.

Not far from there, Athena remained floating in the ruined air, watching the aftermath with an unreadable expression.

How many had died?

The question rose in her mind and stayed there.

Hundreds of thousands, surely.

Perhaps more.

And they had done nothing to stop it.

Or rather, nothing they had done had been enough.

It might have been worse, far worse, if not for Amael and Selene. Their intervention had changed something in the final moment, had prevented a catastrophe even greater than the one now lying broken beneath the Tree. That was why Athena had protected ’them’ in the end. Not out of sentiment, and not out of agreement, but to honor what Amael had done.

Slowly, she turned her gaze.

Vysindra was still there in the sky, vast and black-purple against the aftermath, his enormous form hovering over the ruined landscape. The Dragon King’s eyes were fixed on the Tree as though he were trying to see through it, to look past the bark, past the roots, past the devastation, and find what had been lost inside. It was difficult to read the expression on such a face but the way his scales burned slightly said enough about what he felt.

On his back, Sylvia and Lisandra stood frozen in disbelief.

Their faces were pale and horrified.

The scale of what had happened was still too great to fully enter the mind.

Then Sylvia moved first.

Without a word, she leapt from Vysindra’s back and flew downward at high speed toward the foot of the Tree. Lisandra followed her immediately, both of them driven by the same refusal to accept what their eyes had already seen and what it meant.

Vysindra did not stop them.

He simply remained where he was, Belle still lying unconscious across his back, waiting.

Not because he believed they would find anything.

But because he already knew they would not.

After a moment, Vysindra turned his great head toward Athena.

"How many innocent lives," he said coldly, "must be paid for the sins of gods?"

Athena gave no answer.

There was none worth giving.

Ever since the first Guardian had gone mad and tried to use the Tree to win the race wars three hundred years ago, the Holy Tree had never truly been stable. Freyja’s sacrifice had prevented an apocalypse in Sancta Vedelia, yes, but it had also created a worse kind of balance, one that was never truly balance at all. The Tree had been held together by the life of a literal goddess, sustained by something far too dangerous to call a solution.

It had always been a gamble.

And today, Central Vedelia had paid the price for it.

To stop the collapse, the Vessel of Samael Eveningstar also Horus’s grandson and the Vampire Witch had given up their lives.

Athena looked at the Tree one last time.

Then she turned and left.

***

-BOOOOOM!!

In the Garden of Eden, Michael was sent flying.

The impact hurled him backward before he crashed violently into the sacred ground of the garden, a powerful shockwave rippling outward from the point of impact. He grunted as blood ran down from his forehead, staining the side of his face, but he recovered quickly, wings snapping open as he twisted and launched himself back upright.

Then he looked ahead.

And saw Nihil.

"What have you done...?"

Nihil stood there with his face twisted by pure anger.

Not cold annoyance.

Not displeasure.

Only pure rage..

Barely restrained.

The sight alone was enough to freeze the angels nearby where they stood. They had seen Nihil calm in war, calm in judgment, calm in the face of ruin and sacrilege alike. But this version of him, this openly furious, barely controlled divinity, was something else entirely, something that made fear sink into the air itself.

Michael straightened, though the strain was visible in the way he held himself.

"Why this much anger over a Vessel, Nihil?" He asked with a glare.

Nihil took one step forward.

"You used Belle," he said, his hands clasped on his back clenched hard nails digging blood into his palms. "And then you used my son for your pathetic cowardly plan."

In the end A-Nox didn’t even come on her own.

She wasn’t that foolish.

As he advanced, a greater pressure moved with him.

It rolled outward with his divinity in a crushing wave that struck Michael head-on. Michael’s expression tensed immediately under the force, his body visibly straining against the impact of Nihil’s divinity.

"Something had to be done," Michael answered coldly. "Your son allied himself with A-Nox’s son. Did you expect me to remain silent? To stay calm about it?"

Nihil narrowed his eyes.

Then he vanished.

Michael’s expression changed at once. He groaned, and in the same instant a golden halo flared into existence above his head as he prepared himself to intercept whatever came next.

He had not seen Nihil like this before.

Not even once.

Nihil appeared again before Michael could even react.

His hand shot forward with terrifying speed, aimed straight for Michael’s face....and then stopped.

Just inches away.

Nihil’s fingers trembled in the air, straining as though some invisible force had seized his entire arm and locked it in place. For the first time in that exchange, even Michael blinked in surprise.

Then both of them looked up.

Pale pink feathers were drifting down through the golden air.

Raphiel descended slowly from above, her presence swallowing the entire Garden in an instant. Three vast pairs of wings spread behind her in majesty, pale and magnificent all at once, before folding inward as she touched the ground with quiet grace. There was no anger on her face, no visible upset, no mercy either. Her gaze was cold, empty, and dark as it settled on Nihil.

-BOOOOOOM!!!

Nihil’s body jolted.

A muffled grunt escaped him as one knee slammed into the ground.

The force pressing down on him was overwhelming. He could not move. Not a finger. Not a breath beyond what his body was forced to allow. Under Raphiel’s Chaos, even someone like him was reduced to his knees, the Holy Ground of the Garden trembling and rumbling under it.

Michael immediately stepped back.

For a brief moment, he turned his gaze toward Raphiel, but the instant her eyes swept over him, he flinched. Without a single word, he vanished in a golden glow, abandoning the scene to her judgment.

Raphiel’s eyes returned to Nihil.

"Sancta Vedelia was one of Eden’s dreams," she said calmly.

Her voice rang through the Garden deeply and emotionlessly yet everyone could tell she was very upset.

"Sancta Vedelia was left under your care," she continued. "And you failed."

Nihil said nothing.

He remained bowed beneath her pressure, enduring.

"This shall not be forgiven," Raphiel said. "And it must be corrected."

At last, Nihil lowered his head further.

"I will," he said quietly.

There was no protest in him. No attempt to justify himself. He knew he had failed. Whatever else had happened, whatever schemes had led them to this end, the result remained the same. Sancta Vedelia had fallen under his watch.

And beneath that acknowledgment, another pain was striking him with equal force.

Amael.

The loss of his son was only now beginning to settle into him, grief hitting him harder than he had expected.

Raphiel watched him for a moment longer.

Then she vanished.

And at once, the crushing pressure disappeared with her.

Nihil remained still for the briefest instant.

Then he began to rise...

-BAM!!

A fist smashed into his cheek and sent him crashing onto the ground.

"WHY?!"

He turned his head.

Belle was standing over him.

Her silver eyes were overflowing with tears, her face twisted into something shattered, grief and anger so strongly intertwined that they had become almost indistinguishable. Before he could move, she was already on him, straddling him, drawing back her fist again.

"WHY?!"

-BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!!

Her punches crashed into him one after another, each blow striking with enough force to release powerful shockwaves across the Garden. The ground beneath them cracked repeatedly under the impact. No one dared interfere. Not one angel moved. Not one voice rose. All of them remained frozen in place as Belle’s grief came down on him in blow after blow.

Nihil’s face snapped sideways with every strike.

Blood spilled from his mouth.

Belle kept hitting him.

Her tears streamed down her face without pause, mixing with rage, with pain, with the terrible disbelief of a mother whose world had just been torn open.

"MY BABY! YOU TOOK HIM FROM ME!!"

-BAM!! BAM!! BAM!!

"I PROTECTED HIM! HE WAS SAFE WITH ME! HE WAS GOOD, HE WAS ALIVE, AND YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME!!"

-BAM! BAM! BAM!!

"YOU KILLED MY SON!! YOU KILLED HIM!! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME! GIVE BACK MY BABY!!"

Her voice broke apart around the words. Tears fell freely, staining Nihil’s tunic along with the blood pouring from his ruined mouth and split skin.

Still she punched him.

For ten long minutes, she did not stop.

Again and again her fists came down, until her knuckles were bloodied, and bruised, until the blows slowly began to weaken not because her grief had lessened, but because her body could not keep matching the force of it forever.

At last, her strikes slowed.

Then stopped.

She looked down at him.

Nihil’s face was a bruised, bloodied ruin, but his white eyes remained fixed on her, almost unbearably still.

Belle’s expression twisted further.

"G—Give him back to me..." She whispered.

There was nothing left in her voice now but broken pleading.

Never before had she looked so vulnerable, so completely broken. Her lips trembled. Her breath came in ragged pulls. She seemed unable to hold herself together anymore, unable even to decide whether to scream, collapse, or keep begging.

Slowly, she climbed off him.

Then she stumbled away.

Nihil did not stop her.

He did not speak.

He simply lay there, staring wordlessly up at the golden sky as though time itself had gone still around him.

It felt like an eternity before he finally rose.

And when he vanished, he did not go far in purpose, only far enough to reach the one place he had already decided he must go next.

When he appeared again, he stood before his daughter.

Nevia remained encased within her eternal white chamber, silent as ever.

At first her back was turned to him.

Then, sensing his presence, she turned.

Her white eyes fell on him.

Nihil stared at her while the wounds on his face slowly began to heal.

"My daughter," he said.

The decision had already been made.

He had to do it.

That certainty did not lessen the disgust he felt toward himself. If anything, it made it worse. His son was dead, and now he had come here to condemn his daughter as well, to bind her to something from which there would be no return.

A new timeline had been born.

And to secure it, to make sure it wouldn’t be for nothing, the lost past would have to be rewritten.

He knew what it would cost her.

She would die for it.

"...."

Nevia continued to stare at him.

There was no surprise in her face at seeing him there.

No confusion.

And no hesitation.

She already knew.

She knew what he had come to ask of her.

She had expected this moment all along.

The first Amael Falkrona had fulfilled his prophecy.

Now the second Amael Falkrona would have to fulfill his.

At last, her lips parted.

"Father."