Suddenly, the ground beneath them flickered and glitched and from the wavering darkness, and a portal emerged, spiraling with deep green energy.
A figure stepped through and even before he fully materialized, Vastarael's eyes narrowed with recognition. The man who emerged was stunning. His skin was a rich, deep black wreathed in white glitter that drifted and twinkled. He wore a flowing white robe. To Vastarael, he hadn't changed one bit.
The man said with a smooth, deep voice with a faint, almost playful edge.
"It really took you long enough to figure it out. Bravo on that."
Vastarael let out a small, almost reluctant smile.
"It's been a long time, Natas, Omniscient of History."
"I expected you to be angry and try and kill me."
"I'm not stupid. You're a Deity, Natas. And I'm not stupid enough to attack someone who could erase me without a second thought."
Asenane, standing close behind him, instinctively moved as if to strike but Natas's voice cut through her thoughts.
"Listen to your husband."
Vastarael shot her a quick nod. Asenane sighed, lowering her hands.
"Why are you making him glitch like that?"
Natas shook his head, almost apologetically.
"It wasn't my intention. I didn't even expect you to be back here. I am not your enemy. I just want to talk."
He stepped forward toward the portal, gesturing for them to follow and added;
"I promise, in the name of Spheraphase, I mean no harm."
Vastarael exhaled slowly and walked ahead, Asenane following closely. When they stepped through, the world shifted abruptly.
On the other side, they found themselves in a chamber Vastarael immediately recognized from long ago. It was the very same place he had seen during his Seventh Trial at Minafallen Academy. It was dominated by a black sphere larger than any structure he had ever encountered with wires and tubes spiraling out across the walls, connecting to the sphere like veins. The green currents of power pulsed across the wires.
"Where's your humanoid subordinate?"
"I killed it. Used it as a disguise to make it appear as though Principal Natas was dead."
Vastarael's eyes widened slightly. He had almost forgotten that detail.
As he remembered the aftermath of the First Epoch Cycle, everything slotted into place. An explosion had obliterated Minafallen Academy after the First Epoch Cycle ended. Along with the corpses of every student and staff member was the body of Principal Natas that had been found. That incident claimed more than eighty-nine thousand lives in the aftermath.
Natas's voice broke through his reverie.
"That explosion was... spectacular. Every soul and body was absorbed by the sphere. It made it far more powerful than before. I disabled the Academy System the instant the First Epoch Cycle ended. Since then, I've been in hiding. Not that anyone could catch me."
He turned his gaze to both Vastarael and Asenane. His voice took on an oddly curious tone.
"And yet, you aren't angry. I just admitted to killing more than ninety thousand Spheraphasians. Why are you not furious?"
Vastarael's lips curved into a faint, almost lazy smile.
"Angry? I killed eight hundred thousand people. In the grand scheme of eternity, your ninety thousand is... an inconvenience. I'm not saying it's nothing. I'm saying context matters. I've done worse. And besides..."
His gaze turned toward Asenane.
"We've all done what we had to do to survive, to achieve what was required. You don't scare us, Natas."
Asenane finally spoke.
"And I've annihilated civilizations in the guise of a Phantasm. So in comparison, your little exploit feels... smaller. Not because it isn't horrifying, but because it isn't unique. We've all carried this kind of weight, haven't we?"
Natas laughed.
"Monsters, that's all I can call you two. I thought I was emotional. I thought I was something terrifying in my own right. And yet, you two surpass me. You're worse than I am, far worse even. I was wrong to assume you felt guilt like I do. Clearly, monsters like you don't dwell on such things. Alright, let me tell you what happened for me to get this sphere."
Natas' eyes drifted toward the black sphere.
"After the tribe fled the colosseum and carved themselves a home in the forests of Cassandra, they did something remarkable. Millennia passed and the people you once saved, Vastarael, became a civilization, one that endured for three thousand years. They were known as the Herynas Tribe, and their society, by all accounts, became astonishingly sophisticated. Their culture, their hierarchy, the traditions they maintained, they did all of it without your guidance. Because of the artifact you gave them and your initial influence, they grew beyond anything the land had seen before."
Veneri has always known he altered timelines and his interventions had ripple effects, but hearing the scope laid bare like this felt strange.
"Of course perfection is rare. Even the Herynas Tribe couldn't escape their nature. A disagreement arose. Civil war consumed them from within, tearing the society apart. Every last member fell to conflict. And yet even as they perished, the artifact endured, growing with them, absorbing the energies of their civilization, their ambitions, their failures and eventually their very lives. By the time it returned to me, it was no longer the same object you handed to them. It had expanded, evolved and integrated the essence of countless generations, becoming something far greater than either of us could have imagined at the time."
"Wait so the artifact I gave them wasn't just a weapon or a tool? It was... alive?"
Natas smiled faintly. His expression was though he was explaining something simple to a child.
"Alive, perhaps. A vessel, certainly. It's a fragment of creation encoded in form, growing with the energy it was exposed to. And because I am the Omniscient of History, because my power extends beyond the mere linearity of time, I could see it. I could witness its growth and so I retrieved it from the Hidden Citadel and the very realm of Cassandra itself. I observed the Herynas and took the artifact when it had reached a form that would ensure both stability and utility in the cycles to come."
"That artifact is the same one they called Minafallen. They gave it a name in honor of a myth, of a hero who freed them from slavery and death, though neither they nor anyone else knew the truth behind it. They believed it to be the deeds of an ancient gladiator who worked with a Handsome Prince of Freedom. Funny, isn't it? That the myth was accurate in detail, yet misattributed in identity. Arletta, your Chainless, and you, Veneri, were those figures."
"So every story, every name, every legend they believed, it's all a fabrication orchestrated by you?"
"No. I just waited until they killed themselves and took the sphere. I also took on the role of a simple Spheraphasian, walked among the people as one of them and established what would become Minafallen Academy, right after the Destras Cataclysm concluded. I created a history for the academy that would inspire. I wove a story about a hybrid named Minafallen, a hero who ended the war and in so doing, made the Mortals and Immortals build the academy atop the ruins of both myth and reality. The Nexuses knew the truth—especially your parents, Vastarael—but it served a greater purpose at the time. The world needed a unifying myth, and who better than a fabricated hero to guide them through reconstruction? No one suspected that the man behind the legend was an Omniscient, and even if they had, the protection afforded to me by the world was more than enough to conceal my involvement."
Asenane glanced at Vastarael. He wasn't shocked at all. In fact, he was beginning to understand what he said. Natas was the Deity called Minafallen who saved the Mortals and Immortals of Anqerise by 'sacrificing' himself from the Overlord Krepsuna that appeared during that final battle that happened in Anqerise in the Destras Cataclysm.
"And you set all of this in motion knowing he'd eventually experience it? The Timeskipping, the cycles, all of it?"
"Exactly. I orchestrated it carefully. Using the Timeskipping Event, with EPOCH herself assisting when necessary, I ensured the First Epoch Cycle would unfold precisely as it did. And when you, Veneri, stepped into that Timeskipping Event, you fulfilled it. The predestination paradox was closed by your actions, your choices and your very existence. It all converged on you because, quite simply, you were meant to be both the catalyst and the anchor of that history. Without you, without your intervention, none of it would have held together, and the timelines would have fractured beyond repair."
Vastarael's eyes narrowed slightly. A small laugh amazed Natas.
"So you basically made me the linchpin for every damn thing that happened back then. It all circles back to me. I've been walking a path someone else designed yet somehow I did it myself?"
"Precisely,"
It is the paradox of history. You act, yet your actions are guided. You choose, yet the choice is inevitable. You live, yet your life fulfills the predetermined story. And now you know, at last, the scope of your role and the truth behind the artifact you wielded without understanding its origin. If you kept the artifact, Minafallen Academy wouldn't exist and the First Epoch Cycle wouldn't either."