“The castle built on sand collapses as Guzelami’s cry heralds the coming demise,” Anahem chanted as though reciting an ancient poem. “And without the slightest scratch of resistance, the curtains will fall.”
Guzelami’s eerie cry echoed again as the sand towers trembled.
“Withered Burial—Endblade Guzelami.”
The enlarged Guzelami swung down on Vade. Like a picture of demise, the towers collapsed into sand.
“Go!”
I released a burst of magic power and accelerated like a bolt of light. We traveled against caving sand and burst out of the well through the collapsed ceiling, reaching the Withered Desert above.
Cracks had spread throughout the desert, splitting the ground apart. Some holes were deeper than the eye could see, sand pouring over the edges like waterfalls. The cracks were gradually widening, with new rifts opening at every moment. The loss of firedew and order was bringing an end to the Withered Desert.
“He’s sure made a mess of this place,” I said. “Da Qu Kadarte is the foundation of order. If the Round Garden falls, there’s no telling what will happen to the Firmament of the Gods.”
“Is this really the time for commentary?!” Sasha asked, clearly panicking. “Now we know someone’s behind the world’s ruin, but we still need to find them, right?”
Misha stared at the Withered Desert with her Magic Eyes. “There’s no time.”
“Don’t worry, I have an idea,” I said. I asked Misha, “Do you recall how you said the total magic power of the world was decreasing?”
The three of us flew through the Withered Desert. Misha, beside me, nodded in answer.
“The orders of destruction and creation are equal,” she said. “If there’s destruction happening without creation to balance it out, there may be magic power being stolen—just like the firedew of Da Qu Kadarte.”
I cast my gaze around and spotted a certain sand dune—the one with a mirage of a forest on it. The dune was the entrance to Dilfred’s divine domain. The once-green firedew leaves and large trees were now on the verge of wilting. His domain was also meeting its end. We landed on one of the few footholds left.
“From the first day of the world, firedew has been stolen. The Four Principles and Militia all failed to notice its gradual decrease. As gods of order, this was their blind spot,” I said. I stood before the mirage and gazed into its abyss with my mauve-stained Eyes. “Life is born, deepens, meets its demise, and changes. If you were to steal magic without the gods knowing, when would you do it?”
Misha blinked blankly, while Sasha frowned in thought. Birth, deepening, demise, and change—if magic power was stolen at any of these stages, the Four Principles would notice immediately. There was no way the total magic power could decrease without their notice.
However—
“In Da Qu Kadarte, there’s a zone where the Divine Eyes of the Four Principles cannot reach.”
I took a step forward and stuck my hand into the mirage.
“The light of a dying flame can overcome the darkness itself.”
“Ah!” Sasha exclaimed. “A source approaching ruin increases in magic power!”
I nodded.
“There’s no way of knowing how much magic increases at that stage,” I said, “so a tiny amount of magic power can be stolen every time someone approaches ruin without much fuss. And such a small amount taken means nothing immediately happens as a result. But if a small amount is continuously stolen over time, one day, a deficiency will appear somewhere, and something will have to pay for it.”
Whether it was during birth, deepening, demise, or change, the slight deviation would get passed down until one day, something was ruined. Thus, the balance of destruction and creation was made unequal.
“Dilfred said there was a void on the other side of this mirage. A boundary that is neither Nature’s Keep nor the Withered Desert. But,” I said, thinking, “it’d probably be more accurate to say it was both of them at the same time.”
At the end of deepening was demise. But where did depth end and demise begin? The answer was that they overlapped somewhere—a place that was both depth and demise. Somewhere that was outrageously vast, due to its place at the end of deepening, and somewhere tremendously frail, due to its place at the start of demise.
The only god who could see the end of depth was the God of Depth, Dilfred. But due to the order of demise overpowering his order of depth, his Divine Eyes were unable to reach the void. And the God of Demise, Anahem, didn’t have the Divine Eyes to see the bottom of its abyss.
“Whoever was stealing the firedew was using this blind spot. No, this blind spot has probably been here since the very beginning of the world.”
I leaped into the mirage, Misha and Sasha on my heels. There was a brief delay that barely lasted a moment—like a candle burning its brightest before going out, conquering its own destruction with light. My Magic Eyes had seen that moment unfold countless times before, so I should be able to see the abyss of the Divine Realm—the bottom of Da Qu Kadarte. Misha and Sasha too.
A faint light flashed in that instant, and I reached out for it. A blinding radiance covered me, and the scenery before us immediately changed.
It was the sky. A sea of clouds spread before us, and we were falling freely through it.
“Where are we?” Sasha asked.
“The bottom of Da Qu Kadarte’s abyss?” Misha guessed.
Firedew danced through the sky like fireflies, falling alongside us.
“So it seems,” I said.
I looked down. Temples were packed together in multiple rows. At the back of the rows stood a particularly large pyramid-shaped temple with a gate. The gate was open, and a stream of firedew fireflies were flowing into it.
When I strained my Eyes, I could see the Demon Castle Delsgade and Institute of the Gods Everastanzetta on the other side of the gate. Behind them, the Sun of Destruction Sarjieldenav and Moon of Creation Altiertonoa were overlapping each other in a solar eclipse.
“Militia, Abernyu,” I said, calling the names of two former gods. “Here. This is the defect of the world.”