The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Calm. Feminine. But the kind of calm that made blood curdle—a stillness so absolute it cracked the ground beneath the Emperor's feet like an earthquake disguised as a whisper.
It didn't yell. It didn't threaten. It simply was—and that was enough to make the air itself tighten around every soldier's throat.
Rudwick's hands trembled. He brought them to his face, confused, and found blood on his lips. His mouth was bleeding. He hadn't even noticed.
When did it start? Why did it feel like he was suffocating?
"What...?" he choked, blinking hard, trying to steady his focus.
But then he looked.
And he saw.
Astara no longer stood. She hovered.
Her body was no longer a body—it was an outline drenched in blood, saturated until it glowed, until the red stopped being color and became a living force.
The bag she held, the one carrying the severed head of the man she loved—was gone. But in her arms remained the head, silver-haired, glowing, radiating with a light that didn't belong to flesh or magic.
And both—the head and her body—vibrated together, two tones merging into one, like strings of a forgotten instrument strummed by the hands of a forgotten god. They resonated not with the world, but beyond it, beyond language, beyond species, beyond empire.
His mind reeled.
He wasn't witnessing resurrection.
He was witnessing return.
Thud
His knees hit the ground. Hard. The pain lanced through his legs, but it felt distant—like someone else's pain wearing his body.
His hands went slack. The sword that had once cleaved mountains, a relic forged in the abyss of the black ocean, shattered. Not broken. Not split.
Reduced to ash.
And suddenly, the battlefield changed. The corpses—the thousands littering the field, humans, beasts, soldiers—began to emit a faint glow. Not blue, not white, not ghostly. Red.
The same red now pulsing inside her. Their souls, their anger, their forgotten names, their final screams—all of it was rising, like vapor feeding a storm.
Even his body began to glow faintly. But something stopped him. His golden bloodline flared in defense, a layer of protective energy rising like instinct, shielding him from the pull.
Yet it trembled—because it knew this was a fight it wouldn't win.
"The story didn't end quite well… I am hurt for my child."
That voice again.
But it wasn't hers.
Not Astara.
Not the girl who screamed on her knees.
Not the woman who tore open reality for love.
This voice came from something older—something inside her, something wearing her, awakening through her.
A mother. A source. A current of energy that didn't need flesh to speak.
She was no longer human, or beast.
She was... power.
Crystallized into will. Bound in heartbreak. Birthed in rage.
And she was collecting.
The silver glow of Aven's soul began to dissolve, not fade, but merge. It spiraled into her chest like a vow returning to its maker.
She absorbed him—not to dominate, but to preserve. His light became part of her red, and the whole sky seemed to hum in surrender.
"K-Kundalini…?" the Emperor gasped, voice hollow, bones rattling. He had read of it. Heard myths. Seen ancient scrolls hidden in forbidden temples.
But no book had warned what it felt like—to stand in front of the original current, the feminine source that had given birth to power, not borrowed it.
A woman who gives birth to a child, and now a woman who gave birth to this world—he witnessed both in one life.
And then she spoke again. No lips moved. No eyes blinked. The sound came through the air itself, from the soil, the sky, the inside of his skull.
"I told her," it said, "that her feminine energy would be too strong for a single man to hold."
Her head lifted. No face. No expression. Just a red glow with eyes made of pressure and heartbreak. She didn't look angry. She didn't look triumphant.
She looked inevitable.
And he knew.
He'd never had power.
He had merely been allowed to pretend.
Swish
The last piece of Aven—the silver head—evaporated mid-air like mist, disappearing in total silence.
"But she said… she wanted to love someone deeply. Just once. To feel what it means... to fall."
Rudwick's spine convulsed.
"Uuurrghhh—n... y-you…!"
A growl, a gasp, a protest. That was all he had left. His neck clenched. His golden eyes bled red. The whites in them flooded like broken vessels, and his vision blurred.
The bloodline that once crowned him now cursed him. His own energy, loyal for decades, turned violent—devouring him from within.
And through his fading breath, he heard the final words.
"This time," the voice echoed, "I bind her soul with the Seven…"
"What…?" he rasped, but the voice no longer cared if he heard it. His mind was slipping. The battlefield, the color, the noise—all fading. All gone. He was collapsing into a void he didn't even have the strength to name.
But the voice remained.
"…those who possess… the urge to power… must be tamed… by… her."