What I wanted, what I craved, was not merely a place, but a paradise, a perfect oasis where all could live, breathe, and exist without fear.
I longed for it with every fragment of my being, and I poured everything into that yearning.
My heart, my mind, my body, even my will itself.
I offered them all without reservation, sacrificing everything in the hope of crafting a world that had no room for suffering.
And yet, in my pursuit of the flawless, I lost everything.
Every possession, every relationship, every certainty I had clung to vanished before me, leaving only the stark emptiness of my own ambition.
My efforts, though once fueled by hope, had become feeble in the face of what I sought.
I had reached for the infinite, and in doing so, I fell. I was a fool.
The greatest fool of them all, blind to the cost of perfection even as I waded further into the chaos of my desires.
And still, even in the ruins, I reached.
I grasped for the light that had guided me here, the infinite, radiant force that had whispered promises of salvation and dominion.
It called to me, unyielding, as if the universe itself conspired to bind me to my dream.
Yes, this was the consequence of my choices, the bitter fruit of my obsession.
And yet, even knowing the cost, I could not abandon it.
I would see my vision realized, my paradise born, even if the world itself tore beneath my hands.
Fractured justice, I understood then, is the cruelest form of truth. For in striving to grant it to all, I had condemned myself.
The light I chased was no savior, and no path could grant absolution.
Yet I pressed on, and in pressing on, I became both architect and destroyer of the dream I had once called hope.
The island vanished, erased from existence entirely. The altar for the resurrection was destroyed as well.
No matter. I flew back and crashed into the lush lands of the northern continent. After that fight, the seasons had shifted into an eternal spring.
I landed near a river, and Nicholas arrived, shaking his head as rain began to fall.
His eyes looked down at me, expressionless. "Strive a little more, and reach out."
I grit my teeth. "Paradise King: Olsalsia."
Instantly, we moved to my inner world, a lush field of flowers beneath a pale blue sky.
It was infinitely greater than Earth, a realm of my own design, my oasis.
He looked around and sighed. "This is the best you could do?"
His hands reached out, but I moved, skidding across the grass, swinging instinctively.
"Oasis!" I called.
With this ability, any event involving me would result in a miracle being born.
The ability to bring about miracles, the Oasis would not be nullified.
Furthermore, with it, I could see all possible timelines and select the perfect one.
I am the strongest Saint, I can't die, I don't age, I can even resist void magic.
I was born with holy magic that could burn away time and space.
And yet, when I activated it, all I saw was darkness.
Blood splattered onto the ground as my eyes began to burn.
"I feel it, the gaze of a man who stands below me. How foolish of you to gaze at a king."
I had forgotten. He had undergone the ritual. He had become a king, absolute in dominion over all forces under his control.
Time and space, even their higher extensions, bent tightly within his grasp.
"It's not right! Why do you openly reject this world I wish to create so much!" I began coughing, tears spilling from my eyes.
"Not only do I reject it, I don't believe it is real." His voice was quiet, almost fragile, yet impossible to ignore.
His expression shifted into one of pity. Yes, that was it. He pitied me, just as I had once pitied him.
He was crying for me, crying because of me, crying because he understood the justice of my efforts.
And yet, he did not care. He sought something far worse.
Free will, I realized, can be defined as the ability to act without the constraint of necessity or fate, to act at one's own discretion.
And yet, what I craved was certainty, a set result, a pre-established event that had to exist. My will demanded it.
"No! I don't accept your tears, Nicholas! Your lazy, foolish, weak, sick, vile, nothing!"
Nicholas's tears crystallized, hard as stone. He reached out. "Yes. That is exactly why everything you do will amount to me."
I took his hand, and died. Death was nothing compared to him, compared to the entity I had set my eyes upon.
Compared to my Regalia, which allowed me to infinitely create miracles, this was worse.
His Regalia seemed to grant him full control over all extensions of the end.
I began to fall, and yet I did not fall as one dies.
I plunged into the abyss that was Nicholas's soul, the totality of void and death combined.
Even the Astral Sea, the very blood of this being, could not contain me. And yet.
I found myself suspended in a place that should not be perceivable, caught in the stillness of an impossible moment.
This was unlike Heaven, which stood beyond existence itself.
It was not bound to cause or permanence.
Wholly unreachable to something like me.
What I witnessed was not the stirring of thoughts, but the movement of concepts themselves.
Such things do not bend easily, for without a vessel they remain untouchable, formless, and beyond reach.
Yet here they shifted before me, like a mocking to my efforts.
It could only mean that Nicholas's True Self had fully embodied them.
He was sculpted from black and white, impossibly tall, humanoid yet transcending form entirely.
Threads of starlight flowed from him like liquid constellations, weaving through the space around him yet passing through nothing.
His skin was woven ink and snowfall, impossibly smooth, impossibly alive.
Massive wings stretched behind him, swallowing all light, regal, terrifying, infinite.
At the center of his chest bloomed a single white rose, pulsating slowly like a dying star.
Petal by petal it opened with each heartbeat, each a quiet prophecy I could not fully grasp.
Reality contains an infinite number of realms, yet even the furthest extensions of these realms would falter before it.
There exists a term: True Self.
It refers to the ultimate, genuine form of those who exist, the essence of their being.
It is you which rises to Heaven, falls to Hell, or might bask in the Astral Sea.
My True Self would likely resemble my Mythical Beast, though incomparably lesser than a being capable of containing entire realms within its veins.
To house the Astral Sea within its blood meant that, should it ever bleed, all of reality could be consumed.
This was not absurd in error, nor a crime to acknowledge; it was simply the truth of something truly endless, boundless and unfathomable.
It could be said that any attempt to reach this terrible creature was destined to occur.
No it resisted, but because it was the end, the very terminus of all things.
Such a statement encompassed nothing and everything at once.
Light, darkness, time, space, the void, even death itself, all would inevitably converge upon it.
And when they did, they would encounter an event that was both eternal and final, a cessation that could not be reversed or escaped.
As I closed my eyes, I did not ascend to Heaven, nor did I find solace in the Astral Sea.
I did not cling to any memory of existence. I simply faded into him, swallowed by the absolute.
This was true death.
Not the gentle passage of sleep, not the release of spirit, but a reckoning beyond choice, beyond desire, a truth I could no longer evade.
Here, my will, my life, and my understanding all ceased to matter.
To exist beyond Nicholas was impossible, and to resist him was meaningless.
I had reached the end, and I was compelled to accept it.
***
[Nicole Anstalionah.]
I walked slowly, pulsating mana through my sword as Nicholas fell to his knees.
Before me, a radiant light shimmered, as if an angel were about to be born.
One thing was certain: he had defeated Griffin. After all this fighting, I had no intention of letting its resurrection continue.
I had wanted to kill it, to obtain true transcendence, to reach the Heavens and slay God itself.
But as I watched Nicholas, I realized something, he possessed enough power to serve as fuel on his own.
Why risk this world that Jennifer seemed to cherish?
So, just as the light exploded, I reached out and drew it from the world, from reality itself, erasing it completely.
Valadeus would not be resurrected; he would remain nothing more than a distant memory.
Nicholas, however, would not share this fate. I stepped forward and gripped his sleeping body.
Then I moved, and was stopped by an unexpected force.
It was not Mirabel, nor Kivana. It was Makilah.