Atop the Black Dragon's chest, where the heartbeat of death drummed slowly like a sledgehammer striking the earth, Barbatos stood in a fragile silence.
He gazed at the black crystal imprisoning Aria. The woman looked so peaceful within her torment, a contradiction that made the Archon's spiritual core churn. Yet, emotion had no place in these decisive seconds.
The biggest problem wasn't how to extract Aria. The problem was what would happen after she was out.
Barbatos realized the horrific structure constructed by this dragon. Aria was not merely a battery; she was the linchpin holding the tent of reality in this valley together. The eternal storm confining the dragon was a manifestation of Aria's own power.
"If I pull her out now..." Barbatos thought, his eyes scanning the thousands of intertwining mana threads, "...the storm wall will collapse. This dragon will wake up, hungry and free."
He could not allow that. Orario was not ready. If this One-Eyed Calamity were released now, the world would burn to ash before dawn broke.
He had to create a substitute. A new seal.
But what kind of seal?
Barbatos's fingers of light paused in mid-air. His first instinct was to use his primary element: Wind. He could create a storm far more devastating than Aria's.
"No. That is suicide," he immediately refuted.
In Orario, he had registered himself as the Principal God of the Barbatos Familia. People knew he was associated with the wind element. If a god-level giant storm seal suddenly appeared in Dragon Valley, all eyes would instantly turn to him.
He had to use something else. Something transcending physical elements. Something that was the essence of the "Thousand-Year Wind" he represented alongside the Mother of Time.
Barbatos looked up at the gray sky. His memories drifted to a distant past, to a place in Teyvat called the Mare Jivari.
A sea of ash where the wind did not blow. A place truly silent, isolated from the outside world by an invisible wall.
"Mare Jivari is an isolation of space and wind..." he murmured. "Unfortunately, I do not possess the Authority of Space to move this valley to another dimension."
But he possessed a fragment of another power. A legacy from Istaroth.
"If I cannot move it spatially... then I will separate it temporally."
The idea was mad, yet brilliant.
He would not build a physical wall. He would cut Dragon Valley off from the Main Timeline of the DanMachi world.
He would create a Temporal Exile. Physically, the valley would remain in the north, but its time would be "phase-shifted" from the outside world. For those inside, time would slow to a near halt, or be trapped in a repeating second.
"The strategy must be precise," Barbatos steadied his breathing. "First, freeze local time. Second, sever the valley's temporal coordinates. Third, extract Aria. Fourth... run."
However, Barbatos knew the price he would have to pay.
The physical body of "Venti" he currently inhabited—a gift from the DanMachi world—had a limited capacity. Forcing high-level time manipulation techniques, especially without a Gnosis, would place an extreme burden on his spiritual core.
"This will burn through my reserves of Authority," he calculated quickly.
"At least half of my total power will be permanently drained to maintain this seal until I can restore it... whenever that may be. I will become weak... very weak after this."
But that was a price worth paying to save the world and Aria.
Preparations began.
Barbatos began to accumulate his power. His glowing spiritual form started to tremble, withstanding the burden of the time distortion around him.
First, Authority of Time: Stasis.
He did not intend to stop the world's time—that would attract the attention of this world's laws. He only needed a one-kilometer radius around the dragon.
Second, Authority of Time: Severance.
This was a forbidden technique. He would use the "Winds of Time" to slice through reality, separating the 'Present' of this valley from the 'Future' of the outside world.
And finally, the Arcanum of Harmony.
This was a new power he had been granted when this world bestowed upon him the status of a Deity. In the world of DanMachi, Gods were forbidden from using Arcanum in the Lower World, especially offensive ones. If he released an explosion of power, the Dungeon would react. Monsters would rampage, and the Juggernaut, an Irregular monster, might appear.
He recalled the tragedy of Artemis in the movie DanMachi: Arrow of Orion, and how the Dungeon reacted to divine power.
"I must not trigger the Dungeon's alarm," he asserted. "This Arcanum of Harmony is different. This is not an attack. This is a soothing song. A vibration that harmonizes the soul, rather than destroying it."
He would use it to soothe Aria. A vibration to harmonize her soul, ensuring Aria's transition from "dragon vessel" back to "individual" went smoothly without shattering her sanity.
Energy began to gather in his palm. It felt heavy, as if he were shouldering the sky. The light of his body dimmed for a moment, a sign that his energy was being siphoned into the technique.
"After this... I must run. Truly run. Fighting at half strength is suicide."
All pieces had been set on the chessboard. The scalpel of time had been sharpened.
However, before taking the first step, the majestic figure of Barbatos did one last thing. He bowed his head, praying to his old enemy for the stability of the structure he was about to build.
"Decarabian..." he whispered into the void.
The God of Storms. The Tyrant of the Tower of Old Mondstadt. The God who imprisoned his people within walls of wind to keep them untouched by the storms outside.
"You loved your walls, and I love my sky. But today... I need your concept of 'Isolation'."
Barbatos closed his eyes.
"Help me solidify this wall of time. Ensure that nothing can enter, and nothing can leave. Make this valley a silent tower like Old Mondstadt."
No lightning struck. Yet, a moment later, the wind around the dragon's chest rustled strangely.
The wind felt heavy, rigid, and stagnant. Like the air inside a sealed room abandoned for thousands of years.
Barbatos offered a faint smile. "Thank you, Tyrant."
He lifted his face. His cyan eyes now bore silver rings within the pupils—the mark of active Time power.
The countdown began.
Barbatos spread his arms. One hand reached toward the gray sky, the other toward the crystal in the dragon's chest.
"Begin."
Phase One: Moment of Eternity.
Barbatos stomped his foot against the dragon's chest.
Vooom.
It was not the sound of an explosion, but the sound of the world being muffled. A transparent shockwave spread out. The colors of the world faded instantly, turning into grayscale—monochromatic gray.
Dust particles suspended in mid-air. Lightning in the sky froze. The rising and falling of the Black Dragon's chest halted stiffly. Its heartbeat stopped between two beats.
Local time had stopped.
Phase Two: Temporal Severance.
Without wasting a single second of his relative time, Barbatos began the "operation."
His fingers danced in the air, pulling invisible silver threads—the fibers of time. Cold sweat—or at least its spiritual manifestation—began to appear on Barbatos's body. He felt his power draining rapidly, like water from a breached dam.
"Sever," he commanded.
With a sharp yank, he tore the threads.
The world outside the one-kilometer radius blurred. Dragon Valley was no longer connected to the temporal coordinates of Orario or the DanMachi world. The valley had become a bubble floating outside the river of time.
This dragon would not wake up in the future, because the future did not exist here.
Phase Three: Extraction.
Now, the hardest part.
Barbatos knelt before the black crystal. Inside this gray world, the golden light of Aria's hair was the only color that remained.
"Forgive my intrusion," Barbatos whispered.
His hand passed through the crystal wall of the cage as if it were mist. He reached Aria's body. His hand of light touched her shoulder.
Cold.
"Got you," he hissed.
Barbatos activated the Arcanum of Harmony. Soft white light flowed out, enveloping Aria's soul. He manipulated the dragon's perception, tricking its system into believing Aria was still fused with it.
Barbatos began to pull.
Slowly. Very slowly.
The veins of dragon flesh embedded in Aria's body began to stretch like rubber pulled to its limit.
Snap. Snap.
One by one, the parasitic connections snapped.
Aria floated out of the crystal, inch by inch. Her peaceful face was now right before Barbatos.
The moment her entire body was free of the crystal, Barbatos caught her. He wrapped Aria's body in a protective layer of wind so she wouldn't be destroyed by the effects of the time shift.
"Success..."
Barbatos held Aria close to his chest. His breathing was ragged. The teal light of his body dimmed significantly, no longer as bright as a star, but flickering like a candle in the wind. An overwhelming fatigue hit him, as if he had just held up the falling sky all by himself.
However, in that very instant, Barbatos felt a violent tremor in the reality around him.
The time dome... cracked.
It wasn't that Barbatos's magic had failed, but that the Black Dragon's Existence itself was too vast. The monster was the "Final Calamity." Its presence was so massive that it possessed its own gravity, refusing to be cast out of history.
The dragon was instinctively "pulling" itself back into the Main Timeline.
The walls of gray reality shook violently. Cracks spread across the sky. The colors of the world began to seep back in, forcing their way into the time bubble Barbatos had created.
The dragon's alarm had gone off.
The Temporal Severance seal would work, but it needed a few seconds to fully solidify. And in those few seconds... the dragon would wake.
"Damn it... it's too strong to be cast aside just like that!" Barbatos cursed with a hoarse voice.
He didn't wait.
With Aria safe in his arms and a body that felt twice as heavy as before, he spun around in mid-air.
Barbatos shot vertically upwards, away from the gaping emptiness of the dragon's chest. He had to escape the valley's radius before the time seal closed completely, or he would be trapped inside forever.
He flew as fast as he could.
But he wasn't far enough yet.
Just as he ascended a few dozen meters above the dragon's head, the reality he was holding back finally collapsed momentarily before reassembling itself.
CRACK!
A sound like the universe's glass shattering rang out.
Time resumed its flow with a violent jolt.
And beneath his feet, a pair of giant eyelids snapped open.
One glowing red eye. One dark, empty socket.
That gaze of death instantly locked onto the small figure flying away with his remaining strength.
The monster... was awake.