The heavy bronze doors of the Spirit Hall groaned open, their echoes spilling through the vaulted chamber like the tolling of a funeral bell. Shadows stretched across the crystal floor, bending in strange directions as though even light hesitated to step forward. At the far end of the hall, a throne stood carved from ivory and obsidian, flanked by banners depicting ancient wars long forgotten. The air tasted of incense, thick with an otherworldly stillness, as if the entire realm itself held its breath.
Illyria entered.
Her steps were unhurried, but each sound of her heel against the floor seemed louder than the last—measured beats in a symphony that no one else could hear. The gathered spirits—the Elders, the soldiers, her kin, her mother Serenia—turned toward her. Gasps rippled. A low murmur stirred like a restless tide.
Too many eyes… too many hearts clinging to me as if I am still the same child they once sheltered. But I am no child anymore.
Her gaze lifted slowly. High above, the stained-glass dome shimmered with shifting constellations. The heavens were watching. The weight of their judgment pressed down upon her shoulders, but she did not falter. Not tonight.
She could feel the pulse in her veins—no, not her veins, but the power coiled deep within. The remnants of her father's essence, taken when she embraced her true inheritance. It thrummed like a second heart, vast and incomprehensible, a rhythm that did not belong to the mortal world.
And with every beat, the hall seemed to warp. Sound dulled. Colors deepened. Even the murmurs of the Elders bled into silence. Time itself quivered.
Illyria closed her eyes.
And in the next breath, the world stopped.
---
The world ended with a single breath.
Illyria did not hear it happen, but she felt it—the exact instant when sound fled the air, when motion drowned beneath her palm, when every particle of existence shuddered and then obeyed her. She had taken her father's power, unwilling and trembling, but it had answered her like a river breaking its dam. Time itself staggered, then froze. The battlefield became a painting, a suspended canvas of dust and agony and unspoken screams.
The clang of blades, the flicker of flames, the widening horror in her mother's eyes—all of it stilled. Even Azeriel, god of devouring emotions, stood like a statue carved from night, his black wings arrested mid-spread, his hand extended toward the people of the Spirit Realm as though he had already claimed their hearts.
Illyria stood in the eye of the silence, and for the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to hold eternity in her veins.
Her fingers trembled. She closed them into fists. Five seconds. That is all this stolen power can grant me. Five seconds where the universe bends to me, five seconds to change the script of fate.
Her breath felt like thunder in her chest. She could hear nothing else—no rustle, no cry, no heartbeat but her own. She moved, and the world did not.
The silence was absolute. No flicker of torchlight moved, no robes shifted with the air, no frightened glance darted across the hall. Serenia's lips were parted, but the words froze on her tongue. Azeriel, who had been seated on the obsidian dais with a smile sharp enough to cut glass, remained suspended mid-motion, his fingers poised like talons in the air.
The Spirit Hall had become a painting.
Illyria exhaled slowly, the sound deafening in its isolation.
Her gaze turned to the figures behind her—her mother Serenia, the high council of the Spirit Realm, the countless souls who had gathered with desperate faith that their princess, their last light, would shield them. Their faces were twisted with fear, but frozen, preserved in this fracture of eternity.
Illyria's throat burned. If I fail… if I hesitate… The weight pressed on her ribs, heavier than Azeriel's shadow, heavier than the silence itself.
"So this," she whispered to no one, "is the shape of my father's throne… when time itself bends before me."
Her voice did not echo. It simply was.
For five eternal seconds, she stood alone in a world of statues, her body the only living thing in a cosmos brought to its knees. She walked forward, each step deliberate, savoring the gravity of what she had done. Her hands did not tremble; her heart did not waver. Fifty years of practice—fifty years of illusions layered upon illusions, of weaving creation and deception into one seamless thread—had led her here.
She stopped in front of her mother. Serenia's eyes, frozen mid-shock, still held the softness Illyria remembered from childhood. That softness was both her greatest comfort and her most unbearable burden.
I'm sorry, Mother. You'll hate me for this lie. But hatred is better than death. And I cannot lose you again—not like this, not when he is watching.
Illyria raised her hand. The glow of her creation flared, weaving threads of light and shadow around Serenia and the others from the Spiritual Realm. Her fingers traced sigils that did not belong to any known tongue, a dance of symbols that bled reality into dream.
She raised her hand, and the Gate of Elyndra unfurled like a wound in the air. A seam of white fire tore through the sky, its light flooding the stillness, brighter than all illusions, purer than all hope. She had learned to call this gate in secret, through half a century of exile and endless practice, through whispers with the bones of creation itself. Now, it answered her like a loyal blade unsheathed.
The Gate of Elyndra bloomed open behind her—a great rift of silver light, its edges singing like crystal struck by eternity.
Go.
Her power surged outward. It wrapped her mother, her council, her people—each soul pulled into the cascade of white fire. One by one, the frozen bodies vanished, slipping past the seam into Elyndra's safety, though they would never know what had saved them. To them, it would feel like only the space of a blink, a turn of the head. They would awaken inside Elyndra's embrace, confused but alive.
One by one, she transported them through. Serenia, the Elders, the soldiers, her people—her entire bloodline, vanished into the safety of that hidden sanctuary. Their bodies melted into light as they crossed the threshold, and then they were gone.
The silence deepened, crushing, as the last spirit vanished.
All that remained was silence, the faint shimmer of the closing gate, and Illyria herself.
---
But the battlefield could not know this. Azeriel could not know this.
So Illyria created.
She drew on the second river within her—the river she had nurtured not from her father's blood, but her own endurance. Illusion. The magic of lies, of shadows made flesh, of dreams spun until they became reality. Yet tonight her illusion was not dream, but survival. She wove the faces of her mother, the council, the people. She painted them in blood and light and memory, every breath, every tremble of fear, every strand of hair exactly as they had been. They stood again behind her, carbon copies forged from the union of her illusion and the fragment of creation she had stolen.
And the world—frozen as it was—believed her.
Her hands shook. Sweat rolled down her temples. Her chest ached with the strain of holding both time and truth apart. Hurry, Illyria. Three seconds left.
Her gaze snapped to Azeriel. The god's eyes, red as abyssal fire, were locked on her. Even still, frozen, he radiated hunger. His lips were parted, as though a word had already been spilling forth before she stopped the flow of time. That word would come when time breathed again.
And she feared it.
She swallowed, forcing her pulse to slow. She looked once more at the illusions she had birthed. Her mother Serenia's face was serene yet terrified, her lips just opening to shape her daughter's name. The councilmen looked grim. The soldiers braced. Perfect copies. Too perfect. She almost wanted to reach out, to touch her mother's hand—yet she knew there would be no warmth. Just light and void.
Her throat tightened. Will I be strong enough to endure it when Azeriel kills her—kills this version of her? Even if it is not truly her, even if the real Serenia is safe, what my eyes will see… will I break?
The thought carved into her chest. She nearly faltered. But she pressed her palm against her ribs, forcing herself to stand tall.
If I had not trained, if I had not practiced for eternity, if I had not clawed at every shard of future that once slipped from me, I would never be here. I would never have had the chance to rewrite this moment. This is why I lived, why I endured. To face Azeriel with my people hidden. To carry their safety in secret. Even if my heart shatters when I watch my mother die, I must let the illusion break instead of me.
Five seconds bent. Four. Three.
The weight of time pushed against her skin, aching to be released. Already her body screamed under the pressure—her father had borne this power with ease, but she was mortal, fragile, her veins not made for infinity.
Her knees quivered. Blood welled at the corner of her mouth.
Two seconds.
Her eyes fixed on Azeriel. The god was terrible in his stillness, his wings frozen in a pose of dominance, feathers like shards of void. She could not bear to look too long, for she felt he might still move, even here, even now. That he might find a way to break through the silence she had forged.
One second.
Her illusion shimmered into place, locking with the threads of creation. Her mother breathed again, her soldiers braced again, the battlefield became whole again—perfectly staged, as though nothing had ever shifted.
Time, return.
Sound crashed back into the world.
The screams resumed. The crackle of fire swallowed the silence. The stench of blood surged to her nose. Azeriel's voice thundered as though it had never paused:
"—surrender, or I will kill them."
The words fell like a guillotine.
Illyria did not flinch.
The Spirit Hall stirred to life again. Torches flickered. Voices rose. Serenia gasped as though nothing had happened. The soldiers tightened their grips on their weapons. And Azeriel's smile curved wider, his gaze fixed on Illyria with the hunger of a predator who had finally found prey worth devouring.
"Daughter of Serenia," Azeriel purred, his tone honeyed venom. "You carry the weight of the throne well. But tell me… will you surrender quietly, or must I peel obedience from your flesh piece by piece?"
His hand extended, elegant and merciless. Shadows writhed at his fingertips.
Illyria flinched, though she had known they were coming. She lifted her chin, masking her heaving breath. The people—illusions, lies, shadows—cowered behind her, believing themselves real, believing their fear mattered.
Azeriel's gaze narrowed. His wings beat once, and the earth trembled beneath their frozen tableau. "You cannot protect them all, Illyria. Even your father's stolen power will not be enough. You are but a child clinging to borrowed eternity. Choose: bow to me, or watch your realm be devoured."
Illyria's lips parted, but no words came. Not yet. Her chest tightened, her throat raw.
This is it.
This was the confrontation she had trained for, dreamed of, dreaded. All her lies, all her deceptions, all her long nights whispering spells to herself in empty darkness—they were for this. Five seconds had bought her people's freedom. But the price had only begun to rise.
And though she knew Azeriel spoke to the illusion, though she knew her mother stood alive beyond this battlefield, she could not stop the tremor in her heart. Because when Azeriel's hand closed on the phantom of Serenia's throat, when her mother's copy looked back at her with wide, wet eyes, whispering Illyria—it would not feel false.
It would feel like loss.
Her vision blurred. She swallowed the ache, straightened her spine, and stepped forward into Azeriel's shadow.
"I will not surrender."
Her voice rang across the battlefield like a blade unsheathed.
And as the first sparks of their clash ignited, the world held its breath once more.