A rainbow of destruction and power, reaching upward and upward, until it pierced through the clouds and continued into the dark expanse of space itself.

It was a pillar of pure and terrifying energy that seemed to have no end and purpose other than to announce that something had gone terribly wrong in the world.

The beam tore the sky in a line of devastating rupture, a jagged scar across the fabric of the heavens.

But it ended before it would reach the ground, stopping at the last possible moment as if someone had pressed an emergency brake on the apocalypse.

The phenomenon was so haunting, so terrifying in its scale and its implications, that the noon time immediately became night time in an instant, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off the sun itself.

Because the beam had blasted away the color from the sky itself, stripping it of blue and white and leaving nothing but empty darkness, revealing the stars of space covering vast miles of what should have been daytime sky.

To the people living around three hundred miles underneath the line of the sky tear, it was night time in the middle of the day, a black and starry expanse where the sun should have been shining.

And to people everywhere else in the world, a single beam towered into the sky for a few seconds and curved a little as it ascended, then a bright light shone over them with waves of pressure pressing against their bodies like an invisible ocean current.

People five hundred miles away from the epicenter would witness the space around Whispering Wilds as a "tear in the sky," a wound in reality that bled darkness and starlight instead of blood, visible even from such a tremendous distance.

And people from the other side of the world experienced a light so bright, so overwhelming in its intensity, that it turned their nights into day, and their day into even brighter days that hurt to look at directly.

Even though some saw no tear in the sky where they stood, the light reached them anyway, crossing oceans, and continents, and mountain ranges as if distance meant nothing to it.

The entire world felt the thing that just happened.

Every living being on the planet, from the smallest insect to the largest dragon, sensed the disturbance in some way.

Many went blind from staring directly at the light without protection, their eyes unable to handle the sheer intensity of what they were witnessing.

So a lot of spirits were working erratically across the globe to fix the casualties immediately, healing eyes and trying to restore some semblance of order to the chaos.

What cosmic threat would have caused such a world threatening display?

What kind of power could produce such a devastating effect on the entire planet at once?

The question was on everyone’s lips, but no one had an answer.

Not until;

[Ahaha! I went way overboard, didn’t I? That was more than I intended. Please, tell everyone to not panic or do anything rash. I was just trying to show off and shock Tensei, but I ended up shocking myself in the process. Hahaha! So, seriously, please calm down, nothing bad is happening right now. I love all of you, and I will explain everything when I return.]

This was the telepathic message that hit the women Benjamin could send it to, arriving in their minds like a stone dropped into still water, rippling outward with his apology, his reassurance, and his awkward laughter.

"What... did we fall in love with...?" Titania asked, watching the tear in the sky close up slowly.

Air and color were starting to fill the void once more as reality repaired itself, the stars fading and the blue returning inch by inch.

"Elara, this is bad. This is very, very bad." Sakura, likewise all the people there, watched the dark night bleach back into late noon, the sun reappearing as if it had never left, the warmth returning to the air around them. "The spirits will not let this slide without consequences. They cannot ignore something of this magnitude. The entire world must have felt that blast... The entire world."

"...I know..." Elara wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, her silver eyes still fixed on the sky as if expecting something else to fall from it.

She had thought, for a brief and terrible moment, that the world had ended some seconds ago.

That everything she knew and loved had been erased from existence in a flash of light.

"We will have to discuss this with Benjamin when he returns," she continued, "I think he does not know just the extent of his fast growing power. I do not think he understands what he is capable of now."

Marina’s eyes were dilating, her pupils expanding and contracting erratically, her arms trembling at her sides.

If the worst had happened, if the beam had not stopped before reaching the ground, she would not have been able to protect her queen at all.

The thought was terrifying in its implications because... she might not have even realized they had died, in fact.

Because death would have been instantaneous, painless, and utterly without warning.

"Hahaha! He sure is full of surprises, is he not?" Violette laughed, watching the sky now return to normal, the blue restored and the clouds reforming, and the sun shining down as if nothing had ever happened. "When I saw him first, messing with elemental stones like they were an infinite resource that would never run out, I thought for real that he was a god."

Sakura was about to be amazed at Violette’s strange calmness in the face of what had just happened, that serene and unbothered expression she wore even after witnessing a tear in the sky and a blast that had turned noon into night.

But then Sakura remembered something from the distant past.

A memory that had been buried under centuries of newer experiences and more recent concerns, a story told by older spirits, but one Sakura had witnessed firsthand.

"Ah, yes...