"What do you want, Diov?"
"What I want," he said smoothly, "is simple. I want you to be bound to me for eternity as a subordinate. You are the grandson of Vasreveilder Nov Aeteria, after all."
That actually made Vastarael silent. For the first time since this whole confrontation began, genuine surprise flickered across her face.
"You truly didn't know? When your mother and father explored the Hidden Citadel, they discovered records of the Aeterium Explorer. Dilasyus was not ignorant of his lineage. You are the blood of Vasreveilder Nov Aeteria, the Founder of Civilizations, the progenitor of structured existence. He was the royal Aeterium authority incarnate."
Reynolds' eyes widened so hard they looked like they might burst. Vastarael exhaled slowly through her nose.
"That explains a lot."
Diov raised a finger. "In the name of Spheraphase, I promise you this: accept my proposal and I will release you all from the Sucking Void. You will return to Central Station unharmed. Your family lives. Your Dynasty prospers. Serve me and all of this ends peacefully."
Vastarael stared at him before she sighed.
"You really are smart. I'll give you that. But let's cover some truths, shall we? The Sucking Void is a realm of the Hidden Citadel. Which means it must have a purpose. I have one question. Depending on your answer, I'll decide."
Diov shrugged. "Ask. It's not like you have the option to refuse."
Vastarael met his gaze.
"Is the Sucking Void the realm of the dead?"
Diov did not answer. Vastarael's eyes slowly widened in realization.
"Right. Now everything makes sense."
She looked around at the endless darkness, the drifting fragments and the writhing forms of Voidborn still kneeling in the distance.
"If Transmigrators' souls went to Spheraphase's heaven when they died, I'd know. I'm friends with the current rulers of heaven. So where do the souls of the Hidden Citadel go? Here. The Sinking Void."
Reynolds' pupils shrank. Even Diov's expression faltered.
"That's why the void reacts violently to Soul Energy. And also why the Voidborn are fragile against it. Soul Energy is incorporeal but it's lethal to both body and soul."
Her gaze shifted to the Voidborn Mages.
"And they are sentient which means they're not creations. They're subordinates. You're not just the Reniatsus of the Sinking Void. You're the Reniatsus of the underworld of the Hidden Citadel."
Reynolds' eyes shook violently. Even he—a Reniatsus himself—had never known.
"Heh. For a second there, I actually thought you might hurt us. But I think it's time we stop pretending."
Her eyes locked onto Diov.
"I reject your proposal."
Golden Protection Mystic Circles detonated into existence around every single one of them. The suffocating darkness shattered, dissolving into nothingness. Asenane dropped to the ground as her wings opened up instinctively. Shimmer and Runner landed beside her. Phaenora caught herself mid-air. Reynolds and Miranda collapsed hard, gasping as the void released their bodies.
Diov recoiled.
"What—"
Vastarael stepped forward.
"You just met the wrong opponent. Your sole weakness is the thing I have in excess. I don't know what happens when you kill a Reniatsus of an underworld realm."
Her golden light tore through the void.
"But I guess we're about to find out. NOW!"
The Sinking Void responded as if reality itself had been waiting for permission. For an infinitesimal moment, nothing happened before the Void convulsed. The horizon tore apart in silent fractures and through those ruptures poured substance, definition and form.
Landscapes began to materialize from nothing.
Meadows erupted outward in all directions. Vast carpets of emerald grass materialized simultaneously across distances that should have required centuries of natural formation. Massive hills surged upward as though pulled from beneath the fabric of existence by unseen hands. There was no gradual layering or tectonic preamble. It was an instantaneous completion, as if the world had always been there and reality had merely been reminded of it.
The Sinking Void was being overwritten.
The artificial sun ignited above them next, blooming into existence with a controlled brilliance that mimicked divinity without ever pretending to be it. Its light cascaded across the newborn land, calibrated not to burn but to nurture. Moments later, a perfect blue sky stretched infinitely overhead. Wind swept across the grasslands, carrying scent, moisture and sound, proving beyond all doubt that this was no illusion.
Where once there had been nothing was now a world. Everyone except Vastarael stood frozen.
"I expected you to arrive, you know."
Several heads turned toward Vastarael.
"After all, I already knew the Chief of Broomshaven was the Reniatsus of the Sinking Void. Once you fell here, it all aligned. We came with you to the Hidden Citadel and you vanished. For the past five days, I've been helping Luke advance."
The ground beneath them answered her words.
A low, tectonic groan reverberated through the forming world as the land itself began to rise. Hills swelled into mountains. Valleys deepened. From beneath the expanding terrain, something vast began to surface.
The turtle was no longer merely massive. It was continental.
Luke's shell expanded outward like a living landmass. Forests had not yet taken root but the potential for them was written into the soil itself. Rivers traced themselves across his back, carving channels that flowed toward horizons still forming. Diov staggered backward, his composure finally breaking.
"That... that's a Divine Creature! You— you converted it into an Aeterium?!"
Vastarael did not look back.
"It wasn't difficult. Changing the race of a Divine Creature is trivial once you establish a true bond. And I did. What, you thought I was doing nothing for five days? I'm not that lazy."
Luke was a Landscape Turtle.
Landscape Turtles are Divine Creatures whose existence was measured not in years or centuries but in eras. Their species possessed three definitive phases of growth, each governed not by time alone but by accumulated energy.
The First Phase was infancy. They were small enough to rest within a single palm. They were indistinguishable from an ordinary creature save for the faint spatial distortion that clung to its shell.
The Second Phase marked awakening. At this stage, a Landscape Turtle expanded to cover kilometers in diameter. Its body becomes terrain unto itself, capable of sustaining ecosystems and reshaping localized reality.
The Third Phase, however, was extremely rare.
It required millennia of uninterrupted energy absorption. Most Landscape Turtles never reached it. Those that did became something else entirely.
Vastarael's voice carried calmly over the roaring wind.
"Luke has been consuming the Void for millennia. He had enough energy to transition, just not the right kind. Aeterium possess close to infinite Soul Energy. Once Luke became Aeterium, his internal constraints ceased to exist."
Luke's accumulated Void energy, combined with the infinite regenerative capacity of an Aeterium soul, triggered the impossible.
The Third Phase, Terraformation.
A Landscape Turtle in Terraformation did not impose a design arbitrarily. It mirrored and transformed its surroundings into a grand expression of its lived experience. Luke had lived in the Sinking Void for millennia. Thus, the Void was not being erased.
It was being altered.
Endless emptiness became boundless fields. Collapsing nothingness became hills. Conceptual decay inverted into fertile potential. The Sinking Void, stripped of its defining absence, was being reborn as a world shaped by Luke at an incredible pace.
Diov screamed in rage.
"ATTACK!"
The air split as his subordinates appears and began to attack. Vastarael finally turned fully toward the rest.
"Leave Diov to me. Handle the rest."
She punched the air using the First Plenituse, Viridescence.
Space collapsed inward around her fist, compressing potential, momentum and force into a single, catastrophic release that struck Diov. The tyrant vanished in a streak across the horizon. The force hurled him kilometers away as land continued to form beneath him.
Vastarael did not hesitate.
She vanished, reappearing midair at velocities that caused shockwaves to emerge from the wind.