"A completely new power… You might as well say it's from another world."
When Astraea watched Loki flaunt the flame on her ring, she understood at once: this wasn't a power born of this world. Its source had no linkage to anything here.
After a bit of showing off, Loki snuffed the fire and smiled at her.
"It is from another world."
"!?"
Astraea's expression turned solemn. "You're serious?"
"I'm always serious."
"So—it's that child?"
"Mm."
Astraea let out a slow breath. She hadn't expected something so outrageous to have happened below.
"I never thought someone could really arrive from another world. I assumed it was impossible."
"It is—no matter how we try, we can't do it," Loki agreed. She knew perfectly well that they, the gods, could not pierce the "world-bubble" to go anywhere else.
"Not just me—none of us can. The world-bubble shields within and cuts off without. The barrier and distance between worlds are thicker than anyone imagines. We can't cross it; we can't even scratch it.
"But Tsunayoshi did—without meaning to."
She remembered that day a month and a half ago, when the bathroom itself seemed to open a hole in reality and the boy fell through. From the way his made-things landed and took, she'd suspected he could open a seam by his own will. That was why she'd moved to bring him into her familia.
Loki refocused on Astraea.
"Astraea, Tsunayoshi wants to spread this power to your children—and to you."
Astraea's eyelid twitched. Not a bad proposition in itself. "So you roped me in, too?"
She doubted the boy would have thought to include her on his own; if someone was recruiting her, it had to be Loki. Loki didn't deny it. She set a silver ring before Astraea.
"I am being sincere."
"This… the child made it?"
At a glance the band looked ordinary—precisely what made Astraea think of Tsunayoshi's craft.
"It resists charm."
"Hah? Ishtar's charm on you or me?" Astraea scoffed. "What about Freya?"
She fell quiet. She wasn't one of those extreme virgin goddesses with innate warding against enthrallment, but Ishtar's charm had little bite against her. Freya, though—that was different. Freya's charm outstripped Ishtar's by far, whether Ishtar admitted it or not.
"Astraea, we don't die," Loki said softly. "Even if the lower world is destroyed. But your children?"
"Will you watch them face death again?"
Astraea had no answer to that. If she could have watched her girls die, she wouldn't have risked expulsion by using divinity back then. Destruction below could erase a god's body, but not a god. Given ages, they reawakened in heaven.
Mortals did not.
"So you mean to treat the other world as a fallback option?"
"Will he agree?"
"If he wouldn't, would he be choosing to seed this power at all?"
So both of them had the same thought. Astraea paused, then saw the shape of it.
"But in that case—"
"Right. His world faces its own crisis," Loki said. "He hasn't laid out details, but his actions say enough. How would a 'normal' world produce a power like this?"
"Which is why he's training himself so hard. That was our earlier choice—his and mine."
"Earlier?" Astraea frowned.
Loki nodded. "Yes. Earlier. He may not realize it yet, but you should know why I changed course."
I should know?
Confusion flickered—but Astraea's mind was already working through the clues Loki had scattered. The answer lit like a spark: the very act of Loki flaunting another world's power.
Boasting, yes—but proof of something else as well.
Why could Loki wield a power from another world? In principle, that should not happen. Different worlds, different systems, different foundations—mortals below are thus, and gods even more so.
But reality diverged. Someone who shouldn't hold that power held it. That meant the people of two worlds were intersecting—and the powers of two worlds were directly influencing each other.
How had the link formed?
The answer was obvious.
"The worlds have connected," Astraea said. "You can take in the boy's world's power—just as he has been accepted by this world's power."
"The future once fixed for our world has already been broken," she concluded. "As the worlds draw tight, the course of tomorrow bends with them."
"No wonder you invited me in."
(End of Chapter)
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