A memory from long, long ago—a memory of the very beginning, after the world had been re-created numerous times.
A silver-haired girl opened her eyes. The first thing her Divine Eyes reflected was a pure white sky. There was no up or down, nor left or right. As far as she could see, white continued in every direction.
“Good morning,” a voice echoed. “Good morning, the final child.”
The silver-haired girl blinked. She looked around herself, but she couldn’t find the owner of the voice.
“You won’t be able to find me, for I am no longer here. I have already perished. I created this voice to tell you something important.”
“Who are you...?” the girl asked.
The gentle voice answered. “I am the Goddess of Creation who preceded you. My name is Elenesia, and I am your and your little sister’s mother.”
“Little sister?”
The silver-haired girl looked over her shoulder. She quietly reached out behind her, but felt only empty space. Though she felt as if someone were there, the feeling itself was just an illusion; there was no one there. Yet she continued to grasp at the air, as though reaching for someone’s hand.
“I didn’t leave enough of this voice behind to tell you everything. But, my beloved child, I must tell you about my mistake—about the end of Elenesia’s world.”
The pure white world melted away like soft, gentle snow. Eventually, a desolate land appeared behind the pure white world—ruined towns and villages, dried up oceans, withered forests, crumbled mountains. Beyond the young girl’s eyes was a dead world, devoid of life.
“This is the end of Elenesia’s world.”
“A sad world,” the silver-haired girl murmured.
“Thank goodness,” Elenesia’s voice said. “At the very end, I was able to give birth to a kind child.”
A large amount of sadness—and a tiny amount of hope—could be felt in her words.
“My beloved child, listen to me carefully. This is the history of the world that we gods of creation have repeated over and over. A nursery tale of sorts, passed from mother to daughter for generations.”
As she listened to the voice of her mother that was no longer here, the silver-haired girl looked down on the ruined world.
“The world was created by the Goddess of Creation, Elenesia. It was a beautiful world, abundant with greenery. All kinds of life lived there. In order to stabilize the world, the balance of order had to be maintained. If destruction and creation weren’t made equal, the world would cease its cycle of life and death, and sources would be removed from the circle of death and rebirth.”
Faint light was scattered about the wasted world—sources of lives already ended.
“I maintained order. I balanced destruction and creation to the best of my ability. But in Elenesia’s world, there was always war. People continued to fight, and the world slowly approached destruction. The result is as you see.”
As death and destruction grew rampant, the world reached its limit. The sources floating through the wasteland were unable to gain bodies and were left to wander aimlessly.
“But I may have been mistaken. From the very beginning, when I first made the world, I may have made a mistake. And that’s why Elenesia’s world is incomplete. The smallest defect at the creation of order eventually spread until it destroyed the entire world. I was unable to create a kind world.”
Her regret was clear. The wind carried away the grief of a god unable to fulfill her duty.
“What caused the defect in order?” the silver-haired girl asked.
From the moment the girl was born, she knew that she was about to create a world herself. There was no doubt she was the Goddess of Creation and had inherited Elenesia’s order.
“I don’t know. My Divine Eyes couldn’t see the defect. To me, the world I created seemed perfect. Though I was watching the entire time, I could never see it.”
The sad voice echoed heavily, as though confessing to a crime.
“I wasn’t the only one. My mother, the Goddess of Creation before Elenesia, the god before her, and all the gods that came before them—all of them failed to notice the flaw in the world. And without their realizing the world they created reached its limit, forcing us all to make our final creation.”
“Final creation?”
“The Goddess of Creation can only use the Lunar Eclipse of Origin twice in a lifetime: at the start of the world, and at the end.”
The silver-haired girl blinked twice before opening her mouth. “When making the new world, and when making the new Goddess of Creation?”
“That’s right. When the world reaches its limit, the Goddess of Creation sacrifices her dying source to create a daughter. This new creation god re-creates the world, and life begins anew.”
One by one, the floating lights on the wasteland went out; sources that had left the cycle of rebirth were fading. As Elenesia said, her world had long reached its limit.
“Perhaps the universe reached its end a long time ago. We’ve re-created the world countless times now, but no matter how many times we try to prevent it, the end of the world inevitably arrives. Maybe there is no flaw in the world to begin with. Maybe it’s our destiny to end.”
She seemed to suggest that the world she thought she was resurrecting was a world long perished, and that, even if she, as the Goddess of Creation, sacrificed her source, there was no way the world could be truly brought to life; it could only be made to appear alive.