Lysameria Plenituse Richinaria hovered in midair barefoot as waves stretched infinitely in every direction. The horizon had no edges. It was an endless realm of midnight waters, illuminated only by the faint shimmer of something that could have been stars or fragments of the nothingness that had been before. She exhaled slowly and clapped once.
Slowly, like a curtain being drawn back, the oppressive darkness faded. Ocean waves replaced it. They crashed endlessly against some invisible shore, yet no shore existed. The smell of the salty sea filled the empty realm.
"I know you're here. I know exactly who you are and why you're doing this."
Her words seemed to stir the ocean itself. Ripples twisted into massive whirlpools.
From the center of the churning waters, a figure emerged. The feminine silhouette hovered effortlessly above the waves. Her crimson eyes glared at her. Every wave seemed to recoil in respect—or fear—of her. No other features were immediately discernible. She was a shadow given form and yet her presence radiated an authority so absolute it threatened to warp the fabric of the oceans itself.
"Why are you trying so hard to bring back someone you betrayed? You, the villain of the world, the one who made everything crumble! Do you have any idea what your selfish desires caused?"
Her eyes glimmered with barely contained fury.
"Do you even care that my son suffered beyond measure because of you? He… he has no heart left. He lost an arm. He died in there, and you… you just kept scheming, pulling the strings to serve your whims!"
The woman didn't respond. Lysameria's voice trembled with the effort of containing her rage.
"Tell me why! Tell me why you did it! Because of what, some foolish, impossible love? Because of some tie you couldn't let go of?"
Finally, the woman spoke. Her tone was cold but calm.
"Because of what your son endured, he is alive, is he not? He is stronger now. That is my purpose. I raised him to be strong enough to endure the trials of a Dynasty Monarch. Isn't that what you would have wanted, Lysameria? That he would be unbreakable?"
Lysameria's blood ran cold. Her hands clenched into fists.
"You… you cheated on your husband! You had Axia with Spheraphase, abandoned him and yet you want to drag him back into your designs? He found love after you betrayed him, and yet you insist on reviving someone who is no longer part of this world for eons?"
The woman's crimson eyes gleamed brighter.
"I will not apologize for what I did. And yet… everything I have done, everything I am doing, is for the one I loved and lost. Even through betrayal, wars and death, the outcome has always been my focus."
"You are the reason the war between the First and Second Generation started! You made the First Generation kill their own parents, the Minor Supreme Entities! You caused the Epoch Cycle itself! Do you even understand the pain you've caused?"
The figure tilted her head, as if observing a particularly foolish insect. Her crimson eyes narrowed with a subtle amusement.
"Do you think your son can be controlled by your pleas? He is blessed by a Primordial. He is… beyond my reach. You, Lysameria, are only begging me because it soothes your guilt."
Lysameria's knees nearly buckled under the weight of the revelation.
"He's already endured enough! Please! Do not torture him any further!"
The woman let out a quiet, sardonic laugh that rolled across the waves.
"I will not stop. My beloved is all that matters. Everything else is secondary. You see, I am not just a Supreme Entity. I am a woman haunted by the fear of my own potential. If I took my place fully, if I truly embraced my role, perhaps the outcome would have been different. But even then…"
She snapped her fingers and the waves twisted violently, turning into sharp crystalline shards.
"It is not in my nature to listen. Not to you, not to anyone. I have a role to play and everyone else are pawns. I do what must be done, because I must."
Lysameria glared at her.
"You think you understand the balance of power, Lysameria, but even you do not yet know the stakes. You do not yet know who is truly alive, who is truly dead, and who is pulling the strings behind the veil of reality. Your son, Vastarael is a key. And the question is not whether I will succeed, but whether the world will survive the cost of my obsession."
The woman snapped her fingers.
The ocean froze. The waves were locked in place as if reality itself hesitated. The air fractured into crimson holograms across the sky.
Lysameria's eyes widened.
"I won't let you do this again."
The ocean responded to her will.
Water surged upward, coiling around her arm and condensing into steel-blue brilliance. A sword manifested in her grasp. The silhouette woman laughed. Her crimson eyes glowed brighter as the holograms expanded. They were enough to even cover the tallest mountains.
"What do you think you can do? You are a Nexus and I am a Supreme Entity. I am a law unto myself!"
Her presence filled the oceans. Lysameria's knees slammed into the surface of the water. Every instinct screamed at her to kneel and submit. The woman's voice echoed from everywhere.
"No matter what you do, you cannot stop me!"
Lysameria coughed blood. After that, she smiled. She rose slowly, forcing herself upright.
"Oh, I know that. That's the funny part. We can't kill each other."
Lysameria's stance shifted. Her feet positioned themselves on the water. Her breathing slowed down. The ocean beneath her began to respond harmonize with her pulse.
"It's way simpler than that, really. I don't have to stop you."
The crimson holograms began to swell. Entire skies worth of projections kept enlarging as the woman laughed again, louder this time.
"It's too late! It has already begun and now—"
Lysameria's eyes blazed cerulean.
"I disrupt you. Plenituse First Form, Viridescence."
She swung horizontally.
There was no flash or explosion at first. A perfectly horizontal cerulean line so thin it looked unreal cut across existence itself.
The sky and ocean split. This did not happen metaphorically or symbolically. It was literally cut.
The ocean and the atmosphere collapsed into cascading fragments of shattered laws. Gravity was warped. Entire layers of reality peeled away like wet paper. The crimson holograms flickered before they glitched violently.
In Spheraphase, The Asmapheri Oceans parted. The ocean itself split cleanly in two.
A colossal trench carved across the world, stretching for thousands of kilometers. The scar was so deep the ocean floor was carved into an even deeper trench. Water stood on either side before gravity remembered itself. The trench didn't touch the continents but it came close enough that tectonic plates screamed. Earthquakes were experienced all over the world. That was before the water collapsed.
Back to the two women, the silhouette woman staggered. Her crimson eyes widened.
"Eh?"
Her holograms shattered into corrupted static. She screamed as her form shuddered violently. Pieces of her silhouette were glitching.
"You... you've ruined them all! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
Lysameria didn't answer. She was staring upward in complete shock. Above them, she could see the cracked moon, Erna. However, the cerulean line didn't stop at the ocean. It extended all the way towards space.
The moon exploded from the slash.
Fragments of the moon flew outward in a silent bloom of annihilation before sound returned and roared across the heavens.
Debris rained like falling stars. The sky burned. The ocean below raged.
The silhouette woman screamed in pain as her form destabilized, fracturing under the consequences she hadn't calculated. Her knees still shook. Her chest burned but her voice was steady.
"Next time, don't assume I'm powerless just because I play by the rules."