"There's no need for restraint," the skies were painfully clear. The sun shone brightly, which was a pity.
I've always noticed, whenever I tried using my "spells" or something similar to it, I almost never feel any fatigue. Almost like...
It was never magic in the first place,
but rather, something I was never meant to understand.
"Nine cities... forty villages... more than half a million lives," I slowly lifted a hand over my head. And just like earlier, there was no incantations needed.
The world looked peaceful. Too peaceful for what was to come.
I snapped my fingers, the sound reverberated across the kingdom as dozens of colossal black pillars tore into existence above the kingdom. Silent, impossible, each carved with ancient runes that pulsed like a heartbeat.
I hovered beside the one over the capital city and watched as the people looked up. Their gazes were curious, which was expected.
"I don't exactly have any use for any of you..." I murmured, gently closing my eyes before looking back down at people below.
"I just... need something to channel this rage out from..."
I'm sorry.
The pillars fell.
The capital didn't have time to scream.
And before the world could even understand what happened, dozens of flashes washed over the continent. Neighboring countries probably thought of it as just a mage using light element to demonstrate their capabilities.
That is... until the tremors followed. Then came the shockwave that rippled across the planet's surface, the forests nearby each village and city in the kingdom reduced into scorching wastelands. The points of impact themselves were reduced into a gaping hole on the planet's surface.
There were no survivors.
It was sudden. Inevitable.
Three hundred years of history, gone within minutes. And from that moment, the world knew.
A God was walking among them.
---
The news of the kingdom's annihilation spread like wildfire.
Its name... right. The Kingdom of Saiin. And the capital was... Maref.
But none of that mattered.
Neighboring nations, the Empire of Kazar, and Ishtar, immediately dispatched search parties to check for survivors. But the moment they crossed into Saiin, what used to be Saiin, they found nothing.
Only a wasteland stretching past the horizon, blackened and dead.
I returned to the Nutriscu estate shortly after. Now, I sat on my bed, staring at the sheets. I felt no joy, no grief, not even a sense of accomplishment. The report about Saiin's infiltration unit sent to plunder deep within Ishtar's territory barely registered in my mind.
I just felt... numb. Empty.
Days passed in a blur, but the image of my parents' lifeless bodies, still holding each other, stayed sharp. So did the memory of reducing Saiin into a smoldering wasteland.
According to Roselia, the world leaders were still debating how a kingdom that large could be destroyed overnight. It was obvious it wasn't natural. And one by one, they all pointed their fingers at the same person, the only Eleventh-Tier Archmage, the one who flattened mountains.
Me.
But they couldn't act on it. Not when Roselia told them I was unstable and under her care.
So they hesitated.
Afraid, most likely, that their own kingdoms would be next.
While the leaders argued over how to move forward, word had already spread that the one who destroyed Saiin... was me.
Knowing this, I couldn't step outside the estate without a disguise. Unless I wanted to deal with the terrified looks people gave me. Fair, I guess. Anyone would think the same. One person, snuffing out half a million lives in an instant, erasing three hundred years of history as if it never existed.
Every time I went out without Roselia's knowledge, all I heard were arguments.
Whether to keep me in Kazar as an ally... or exile me entirely for what I had done.
So I left Vàr without telling anyone and found myself atop the twin peaks where an ancient dragon was said to dwell high in the mountains between Kazar and Ishtar.
But instead of facing an ancient dragon that had once burned down entire civilizations, what I found was a girl.
A white-haired girl with pale skin, vivid crystalline blue eyes, and an aura that didn't belong to this world.
She descended without a sound, her hair fanning out around her despite the stillness of the air at this height.
"Third Fragment Bearer... located."
Her voice didn't reach my ears, it echoed straight into my mind. I staggered back, clutching my head as a sudden, sharp pain lanced through my skull.
"Third Fragment Bearer...?" I muttered.
But when I looked up, her hand was already raised.
A sphere of pure white energy hovered above her palm, so bright it seemed to bend space, pulling the air inward with a faint, distorted hum.
"Commencing retrieval."
Everything happened at once.
My vision went white.
The mountains vanished.
Sound, sensation, gravity, gone.
I didn't feel pain.
I didn't feel anything.
It was as if a higher entity itself had reached down and erased reality before my eyes.
"Where... am I?"
I pushed myself upright. The pain in my head was gone, wiped clean, as if it had never existed.
"Welcome."
I spun toward the voice.
Another girl stood there.
White hair, just like the one on the mountain-
but her eyes were vivid, crystalline crimson, glowing faintly against the pale, horizonless space surrounding us.
"No need to panic," she said gently, her smile calm yet unreadable. "You're not dead, nor anywhere close to the afterlife."
She spread her arms slightly, as if presenting the blank, shimmering void around us.
"Welcome to the Collective Sphere.
An incomprehensible structure containing infinite closed Extraversal Continuums,"
Her smile deepened-warm, but holding something immeasurable behind it.
"And I," she continued,
"am Anathasia."
A small pause.
"Or, if you prefer... the Law Weaver."
I didn't answer.
I only narrowed my eyes, trying to read the girl in front of me.
Anathasia tilted her head slightly in curiosity, or amusement, or something in between.
"Okay then," she said lightly. "Let's cut to the chase, shall we, Rania?"
She began walking toward me.
Each tap of her heel echoed through the endless white, even though the space didn't feel like it had air, or walls, or even a direction for sound to travel.
"You're not a chosen one," she said, hands clasped behind her back. "Not even close."
Her crimson eyes glimmered.
"What you carry is a fragment. A piece of something far older than this world.
A splinter of the Constant herself."
I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised a finger-almost playfully.
"Who is the Constant, you're wondering?"
Her smile sharpened at the edges.
"Let's just say..."
She leaned forward slightly, lowering her voice as though sharing a secret that could rewrite reality.
"She is someone,
or rather, something,
that was never meant to exist."
A blink.
Barely a moment.
"Yet existed anyway."
She turned away, as if the revelation meant nothing to her.
"That being said," she added lightly, "you're wondering how I know your name, aren't you?"
I froze.
Standing before her felt like standing before an exposed nerve, like anything I tried to hide would be peeled open and laid bare with a thought.
Sensing my unease, she turned back, her expression softening. Though the softness itself felt deliberate, like she chose to mimic something she had seen mortals do.
"I oversee the multiverses, Rania," she said. "All of them. I see what happens inside and outside each universe, each strand, each narrative thread."
Her steps echoed in the space where no sound should logically exist.
"I'm sure you can deduce the rest."
Reluctantly, I nodded.
She was saying she was omniscient across multiple universes—
"Infinite multiverses, Rania."
Her gentle correction hit like a blade wrapped in silk.
"That being said," she continued, "you're no longer a mortal, but one of my own."
I froze, the words refusing to register for a moment.
"One of your own...?" I murmured.
She nodded.
"An Outer God."
She drifted around me, each footstep echoing in the void despite the lack of air or ground.
"Ever wonder why you never used mana? Why you never felt even a hint of fatigue when you used your powers?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
"Think of the battle at the Kazar border," she said softly. "Or when you erased Saiin from the map."
She vanished, only to reappear right in front of me, her crimson eyes filling my vision.
"That wasn't magic, Rania. That was a fraction of your authority as the future Third Outer God... the Third Fragment of the Constant."
Anathasia's smile softened, pulling away and reaching for my cheek before mumbling.
"At last... I can finally dump the responsibility of maintaining the Collective Sphere to someone else."
"Eh?" my eyes widened fractionally, Anathasia cleared her throat.
"That being said, welcome, Rania Eunuella," her finger traced my jaw. "No... Rania Eon Augthorth."