Uriel grinned.
"Well if that isn’t interesting..."
The fact that Kael’s father made Kael believe he’d crippled Korynth could tell anyone that the man was working alongside Korynth toward a certain goal.
And that goal seed to be faking her death, and who else would that screw over if not Korynth’s people back in her world?
If Uriel had to guess...
"Oh my..."
War.
"You’re trying to cause a war?!"
Ithuril was at war.
These enemies that Uriel was constantly told about lay in the shadows, the forces that in the previous loops always destroyed Ithuril, the forces that the Golden Circle had been fighting against...
War.
A war of worlds.
"But who?" Uriel muttered to himself.
The thought sounded idiotic, but Uriel didn’t think it was.
By all evidence, he knew that other worlds existed. If not because of Korynth, then through pure logic.
Ayah had already told him that a calamity had torn their universe apart, leaving Ithuril as the only planet with life across the entire universe.
Everything else was infested with horrors.
And beyond that, he could rember Ayah clearly saying that back then, the Sentinels had discovered that soone or sothing had placed a lock or seal on their universe, trapping them inside.
Her words had been very specific.
...
["Trapped?" he asked, his voice cutting through her laughter, which had been reigning for a few monts already.]
[He could tell she was spiraling.]
[Her bell-like laughter slowly ca to a halt and she nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes.]
["Yes."]
[She took a deep breath and ran a hand through her long lavender hair. She exhaled.]
["In the past, before I was born, the Supre Spirit used to be extrely present and active in our lives. But then, he died."]
[Uriel’s heart skipped a beat.]
["And a new one erged. With the ergence of the new Spirit, the laws of the world changed, and a new generation of Sentinels was born, the generation of my ancestors."]
["But with the old Spirit gone... the ancient generation went mad, and at that ti, a war raged between the old and the new."]
["In the end, no side won, and they rged, becoming those that ruled during my life."]
[She leaned back, cushioned by the sofa.]
["But that left the new Spirit with far more questions than answers. How could the Old Spirit die? Why did the Old Sentinels go mad?"]
["So, she began to co up with a plan with her children, the Royal Tribes, and the civil war was the result of that plan."]
["I don’t know how, but that war proved to them that sothing was wrong with the universe, and that so sort of barrier or shackle had been placed upon it."]
[She stared at the ceiling, laughter creeping in as she thought about the ridiculous absurdity of what she was about to say, but this ti she managed to hold it in.]
["After the war, the most accomplished nobles were sent away from the planetary core to explore the universe and find out what was wrong."]
["Perhaps we could find ancient races from the Old Spirit’s ti to answer our questions, or even find clues. Ithuril had nothing, history wiped from the point of the Old Spirit’s death."]
["And even the Old Mad Sentinels that survived had lost mory of the past, so we were lost. And thus, we went looking for answers."]
[Silence stretched for a long while.]
["The universe was empty."]
[Her gaze left the ceiling and finally refocused on Uriel.]
["Every single planet outside of Ithuril was a corrupted ss, filled with mad creatures, and every star a center of foul and impure aether, sothing that was supposed to be impossible in a non-awakened world."]
["The universe was empty; no other races, no other habitable planets, nothing. Just death and darkness, and ruins of a ti none rember."]
...
The last of Ayah’s words echoed in his mind.
’Maybe the rcury Clans left Ithuril and ford a separate dinsional space to protect themselves from the corruption spreading across the universe...’
His gaze sharpened. ’But that’d an our clans have existed since the tis of the Old Sentinels, the era of the first Supre Spirit.’
’And if they left to protect themselves from the corruption, then how are the normal humans on Ithuril fine? How did life even sprout again?’
’Are we... fine?’
Uriel himself had been born sick. He wondered if there was a link.
But then he frowned. For so reason, his mind had veered off and made a dozen other connections, yet none of them seed directly related to the war.
Or did they?
The War. Corruption. The Church. The Royals. The Sentinels. The Green Horrors. The Seal. The Emptiness.
There was a link, he knew it. He was just missing a single piece of the puzzle, a single piece of context.
He’d gotten more answers in a re hour than he had in sixteen years, yet he still found himself wanting more. The more he learned about Ithuril’s secrets and landscape, the deeper he realised it all truly went.
"..."
Uriel exhaled slowly and cald his mind down. In due ti, all answers would co to him.
He’d waited this long to learn this much. Waiting a little longer was nothing in comparison.
"So you and Kael’s father faked your death to trigger a war. Noted. So—"
Korynth’s cold gaze widened slightly. "I never—!"
"—you said the ancestors live in the holy capital of the Wildlands, right?" he asked, cutting her off. "What is it called?"
He didn’t even bother listening to her lies. She realised she’d already revealed too much, but it was too late.
Exhaling a sigh of frustration, she had no choice but to answer.
"The Holy Capital is called Balatro."
Uriel nodded, then stood up, his joints cracking as he stretched and straightened his posture.
’I’ll have to pay these so-called ancestors a visit to learn the truth, I suppose.’
"One last question." Uriel looked down at her. "You said Samael and I are Panaceas while we were detained. What does that an?"
BANG! BOOOOM!
The air exploded, sparks igniting into flas as space nearly tore apart and a towering aura bent the fabric around them to such an extent that it curved into a do.
Uriel barely had ti to blink before realising Ariel was standing in front of him, his back facing him, one hand tightly wrapped around Korynth’s throat.
Purple flas leaked out of his mouth like venom as the fury in his gaze deepened by the second.
Korynth hung limply from his grasp, already turning purple, unable to breathe or even think, Ariel’s maddening aura pressing onto her psyche like a blazing sun.
"You..." Ariel’s aura swelled even further. "...told Kael about it?!"
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