She stood like a proud empress, delivering a final verdict to the few who still drew breath.

Between the two sides yawned a chasm, a night sea so wide that numbers couldn’t bridge it.

Only now did they realize it: Uroboros, a True God, had the strength to erase them in a heartbeat from the very start.

What did it matter that they halted that pitch-black legion’s march?

They’d only forced Uroboros to choose a different way to end them, and they still didn’t know if her divine domain was even unfurled.

A mindscape without a formed domain was brittle glass before True God might. Multiple Demigod domains? Chaotic elemental bombardment?

Uroboros tossed her spear, and that thought dissolved like smoke at dawn.

“Cough… as expected, the gap between a True God and a Demigod can’t be crossed by borrowed power.”

Senro rose slowly from the crater, shards of a faintly-shaped barrier shedding from her like frozen petals.

It was that barrier that saved her from Uroboros’s single strike, yet her breath was tangled yarn, frayed and cold.

Twelve golden phantoms had shattered; the deep starfield had cracked; each was a wound carved by winter knives.

Beneath a True God, all beings were ants, scurrying beneath a storm.

Senro felt a bleak relief—she’d fought with foreign aid; without it, that one blow would have snuffed her like a candle in wind.

If her Demigod mindscape had truly broken, she’d likely be howling mad by now, a soul lost in black snow.

She faced the near-perfect figure in the sky, awe and a hard glint sharing her gaze.

“Suicide?”

Duke Dion laughed, rough as gravel in a stream. Propped by his comrades, he squared his stance and raised his chin to the sky.

Those supporting him were hardly better off, faces pale under stormlight.

Arcane Power ran wild within them, and True God force used their bodies as a battlefield, clashing like thunder and ice.

All they could do was shield their organs with what little Arcane Power remained, lest backlash char them to coal or freeze them to glass.

One casual gesture from Uroboros and their combat strength had been stripped away; suicide would be the softest death.

Call it the last mercy of a True God.

“Your Grace… you’re strong, strong enough to slaughter us mortals like sheep.”

Dion pushed his friends aside with a nod, calm as a soldier facing rain.

A surging sea of Thunder rose around him, and his companions stumbled back from the violet tide that slipped its handler’s leash.

“I guess you were toying with us all this time, weren’t you?”

Uroboros tilted her head, almost cute, watching him like a child peers at a wind-up toy.

Black wings unfurled from her ornate feathered robe, starlight drinking in their midnight sheen.

A noble empress stepped down a stairway to heaven, fall turned to grace, like a fallen archangel riding a sacred and sinful breeze.

She ignored the roaring sea of Thunder and alighted lightly before him, feather-snow settling as if winter bowed.

The raging Thunder flickered like stray fireflies before her; it couldn’t scar her, not even a whisper.

She cradled a bursting bolt, deep violet streaming across her fingertips like ink through water.

She leaned close; crimson lips lured like wine, and a pale, slender palm settled on Dion’s left chest, a lover’s whisper at the ear.

“So what?”

Arrogant? Yes. But before Senro’s battered group, even if Uroboros had played them like drums, so what?

What could they do against absolute strength, a mountain moving under moonlight?

Approach True God power? Senro’s wounds spoke for themselves; backlash gnawed her bones, and any twitch risked turning her to ash.

Demigod force? A snap turned it to chaotic Arcane Power, a loose wind vanishing into space.

Their mindscapes—the famed threshold of a True God—were moths before black streamers; any attempt to unfold would feed that dark glow.

What power could possibly stand against her?

None of them had an answer. Yet behind them, Senro’s eyes held an odd, cool light.

“Ah… so that’s it. You held rank in this world once. But a general cast out—why die for a world that cast you aside?”

Uroboros’s smile bloomed red as a peony; her lips parted, and a devil’s promise slipped out like incense.

“Come to me. The True God power you crave is within reach, a fruit in your hand.”

Dion trembled. Her white palm burned like a brand, and his instincts lurched back—only to be pinned by invisible chains.

He had to meet her eyes. He couldn’t look away.

Those black irises carried a strange charm, a gravity that stole the will to turn.

True God power was a forbidden fruit—sweet and irresistible—and Uroboros had proven she wore that crown.

The world didn’t reject her. If anything, the world seemed to bow.

“I…”

His voice shook. Something eerie pressed on his mind, reason and instinct wrestling like wolves in snow.

He clenched his teeth, a resolve like iron scraping stone; his aged eyes went bloodshot and muddy.

“You are a True God yourself. How do you prove you can make another?”

Uroboros laughed, a tremor of petals and silk, a spring beneath winter.

Soft flesh under the feathered robe seemed to glow, and Dion’s gaze almost forgot to breathe.

“What an amusing question. In that case, now feel the power of a True God.”

Every heart there wavered, a reed in storm.

Could one simply give True God power, just like that? They were enemies—would she not fear betrayal?

“You… you…”

Dion thought his will was iron, that he’d resisted the first temptation; what more could touch his heart?

But her words shattered him like glass under a hammer; desire overflowed, dark wine spilling in his eyes.

True God power—who wouldn’t go mad for it?

“Accept the embrace of Primal Dusk, human.”

Uroboros nudged Dion away, and her scepter tapped, a quiet bell in fog.

Gray mist surged from a Rune, twining with black streamers like smoke and river, swallowing his sea of Thunder.

It wrapped him like a cocoon spun by night moths.

“Damn it, stop!”

The red-haired mage roared; a crimson dragon’s phantom coiled around her like a blazing banner.

Uroboros glanced, a winter blade in her eyes, and the dragon turned to ash; the mage flew back, struck like a falling leaf.

Two companions rushed in, wounds forgotten, catching her as she tumbled.

A brutal force pressed them flat; they had to wrench chaotic Arcane Power into motion, retreating several steps to steady their feet.

“The Star Remnant over there—you still have cards unplayed. Why hold back? Waiting for something?”

Her words had barely fallen when ice-blue beams knifed up from every side, cold stars cutting through cloud.

An icy white point dropped from the sky, and colossal pillars of ice tore through the plain, circling Uroboros in a frozen ring.

Senro, standing at the rear, smiled, snow-pale and steady. She climbed from the crater like frost blooming.

The chaotic True God aura around her dispersed, a cold wind emptied of knives.

Her deep-blue wand drifted to her side, and a domain of ice unfolded, a quiet sea under winter moon.

“As expected of a True God—my little tricks can’t hide from your eyes. But this much is enough.”

A figure of frost formed behind Senro, features sharpening like a statue thawing; it was her mirror, carved from winter.

Black Arcane Power clashed with the drifting white, night and snow biting each other like wolves.

“Since you’re a True God, taste a divine art.”

Senro smiled as she spoke, and the deep-blue wand fell into the frost avatar’s hand.

A chant rose, like a sacred hymn sung in winter halls.

“Glad to oblige.”

Uroboros watched the falling white, excitement flickering bright as a star behind dusk.

Her black wings spread, and something perilous gathered there, a storm coiling under velvet.

“Let all things end; let only the will of ice endure!”

A vortex of frost sealed Uroboros in a spinning, silver maw, and the entire plain vanished under a blizzard’s cloak.

Only Senro’s allies stood clear within an ice-blue glow, lanterns in storm.

Deep-blue ice grew from the ground like living roots, crawling toward Uroboros with slow, implacable hunger.

Snowflakes swarmed with intent, seeking to bury her under a white sea.

From the deep-blue wand, beams of light lanced through the storm, spearing the ice-bound Uroboros with winter’s spears.