Dimensional Descent

Anya felt a great pressure descending onto her, a suffocating aura threatening to rip all the air out of her body.

Aina only stood there in silence, and yet Anya’s knees creaked and her bones almost collapsed beneath her.

Anya roared out, gathering what power she had left to burst out in a rain of light and darkness. Her two Sovereignties twisted and danced around one another, trying to form a barrier of momentum to fight against Aina. And yet...

CRACK.

BANG!

Anya was sent flying, her momentum shattering so thoroughly that she was sent spiraling.

She crashed into the ground below, hacking up mouthfuls of blood.

A sad smile spread across her lips. ”He’s dangerous...” she said to herself. ”... He’s too dangerous...”

Aina looked down indifferently. The words made her ears twitch for a moment, but she didn’t have the time to carefully consider them as she sensed something else.

She looked up to find that the Four Great Families that had come to support Anya were trying to sneak around her and toward her children.

Aina frowned.

Logically, she knew that they stood no chance in doing such a thing. She was too powerful. But her motherly instincts made her feel antsy.

She didn’t just want her children to be safe, she didn’t want them to come even close to harm.

Taking a step back, Aina drew her ax across the air. There was a slow ripple before it suddenly exploded in speed, slicing the Four Great Family members in two.

When her attention turned back to Anya, she found that the woman had already struggled to her feet. Even now, she was still mumbling the same things, but there was a light of confusion in Anya’s eyes as though she couldn’t quite understand what she was saying.

Aina realized then that Anya was quite the victim herself. Raised in the Three Finger Cult, she only knew one way of life.

Meaning...

She had always been a pawn of the Demoness. Unfortunately, she had become a

worthless pawn. Leonel had grown up too fast at every turn.

This was the last chance Anya would have had to deal a death blow to Leonel, and yet it had ended up failing this time as well. In fact, she wasn’t even worthy of fighting Leonel himself. She couldn’t even last a single strike against his wife.

Anya coughed up another mouthful of blood and looked toward Aina with bloodshot

eyes.

”You have... no idea... what you’re doing...”

Aina didn’t respond, continuing to stare at Anya as though she was deciding whether she should feel pity or not.

It was clear and obvious to her that Anya had feelings for her husband. Why that was, or how they had come to be, she didn’t know, nor did she particularly care.

What was important was that those feelings had seemingly become twisted by a mass of something else... something weighed down by duty and a twisted sense of control and suffocation.

Aina had put a great deal of effort into improving her Dream Force in these last few years, ever since she almost lost her babies to the schemes of the Sylvans. But this she felt...

Was far beyond her paygrade.

Aina slowly raised her ax.

There was only one way to deal with this situation, and that was to end it here.

However, when her ax reached its apex, she hesitated again.

Leonel had already done this before, hadn’t he? He had killed her already. Aina knew that for sure.

So how was she here?

Someone had brought her back. But for what purpose?

A Union of Light and Darkness will reveal the Twelve Pointed Star.

The sudden thought didn’t come from her. It came from Leonel. Their souls were intertwined and when they so chose, they could practically share their minds when they wanted.

That was when it clicked for Aina.

Wasn’t Anya a Light and Shadow Sovereign locked away in a single body?

Could this prophecy have had nothing to do with Leonel or Aina?

”You have... no idea... what you’re doing...”

The words repeated like a broken record. Anya’s body shuddered and seemed to split

in two before they came back together. Then they split again and fused once more.

A twin pair of versions of herself rippled out into existence time and time again, fusing once more every time.

Aina’s gaze became sharper as she chose to take a step back. In a flash, she had appeared on the Spear monument once more, protecting her two children with her

body.

There was a rumbling that shook the Idol Battlefield to its core and the world seemed to be flipping and overturning right before their eyes.

The Idol Battlefield pulsed and rippled, delaminating into two much like Anya before snapping back together.

Every time this happened, there was a cascading force that rippled outward.

Anya stumbled down below, holding onto her forehead with a palm while her other hand barely held onto her scythe.

Her confusion was only growing with every passing second. All she could mumble about was how dangerous ”he” was, but it wasn’t clear if she was referring to Leonel

or someone else entirely.

Logic seemed to dictate that she was speaking of Leonel. Since the first time they had met, she had said that he was a danger.

But if she meant him... it was odd that she didn’t look toward Leonel a single time, almost as though she couldn’t bear to face him.

The shaking of the battlefield only grew more feverish, and soon, it felt like the entire world was shaking along with it.

The grip Anya had on her head only grew stronger until she suddenly pierced skin, her nails digging into her scalp in what seemed like nothing more than an accident.

”You have... no idea... what you’re doing...”

The words that had always been directed at Aina seemed now directed at herself.

”He’s too dangerous... no... I’m too dangerous...”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!