That pure-white silhouette had no face you could hold; a wisp of mist, gone the instant you glanced away. Merlin didn’t dare blink—his eyes fixed, his expression fever-bright.

With her arrival, the steel legions that had encircled Aphelia dropped to their knees in a single heartbeat. The feral reek of slaughter was washed clean by white radiance. Snarling armor smoothed into solemn silver, killing intent buried beneath plates—an iron-blooded host reborn.

And the one they bowed to was Aphelia… no—more true to say they bent to that pure-white shade.

A warped blade kissed Aphelia’s chest, stopped by slender ivory fingers. Holy wings of light unfurled behind her. Barren scorched earth stirred under her, and green shoots needled up through ash; life spread quiet as dawn.

“No sooner wake than face an old rival? Fine. Come—show me if you’ve grown after all this time!”

Her barked challenge cracked like thunder. Even the trio on the observation deck felt the world stall. Air itself leaned toward the white shade, every mote of power drawn as tide to moon. Even Merlin’s Aether flowed with it.

In breaths, an uncountable flood of force swirled around her, a colossal vortex with the white shade at its heart. Lines of silver armor traced themselves upon her frame. The Bracer Gauntlets Aphelia had shaped—art made for war—bloomed onto her arms, their engravings carved with mankind’s grand vistas.

From the vortex birthed a silver banner and a lance, hazy at first, then solid when her hand closed around them. Power surged in a tidal roar the moment the Pure One grasped the Silver Lance.

A pressure wave without form toppled Oz, who wielded a greatsword like a slab of night. To him the white light was venom; his twisted flesh began to melt, and his howl clawed at stone.

The converted soldiers braced with tower shields and met Oz’s tumbling body, hammering him back, shoving him before the white shade like a prisoner to the block.

While Oz still hung midair, a feral power buried in that warped body jolted awake. An antithetical force exploded out, the inverse of her purity, ripping him open in a storm of meat and black spray.

Oz, who a moment ago could still fight, lost all resistance under that backlash. His body withered, essence sucked dry in a blink. He dropped from the sky like a plumb line—mockery of natural law.

She didn’t flinch from the rancid, twisting force. Her war banner speared into the ground; its light became a tight bastion, cocooning the unconscious Aphelia. With a casual motion she etched a Rune and pressed its sigil upon Aphelia’s skin.

She turned, a small laugh like wind through glass, and swept the Silver Lance. The strike moved faster than sight. It punched through Oz, and the force caged in the lance erupted inside him like a bomb. What was broken became dust.

But the scattered flesh had its own hunger. From it snapped thorn-like tentacles, darting for the soldiers’ throats and hearts.

The white shade had predicted the ploy. She snorted cold, raised the Silver Lance, and sang a note not meant for human throats. Shafts of sacred light flared into suns, burning every fragment to clean ash.

A warped, black will peeled free at the light’s touch, slithering from the ruined meat. In midair it congealed, birthing a horror of tentacles and limbs. Soul-pricking screams rang through the space like wires drawn across bone.

Within that churning clump, a new terror began to seed. The wasteland, only just quickening with life, trembled as if the whole domain keened.

Worse was the pressure leaking through the portal. It wasn’t a True God, but it mimicked one—heavy, harsher, suffocating like a mountain on the chest.

“Merlin! Don’t let them open the portal!”

The Tower Spirit caught on first and shouted at Merlin, fear shaking her voice like glass.

Merlin seemed not to care. He didn’t even stir his Aether. He only spoke softly.

“No need. If she’s here, no need.”

“But… she hasn’t fully recovered…”

The Tower Spirit watched the chaos pool widen, dread knotting her heart till she looked away. Seeing Merlin unmoved, she sank to her knees, shut her eyes, and began to pray.

“Why not trust her? She’s never disappointed anyone… ever.”

Merlin ignored the prayer entirely. He murmured to himself, eyes fixed on the white shade below, pupils bright with hunger for what came next.

The white figure stood still, no longer striking at the chaos pool. White light gathered to her like snow to pine. Along the Silver Lance, cross-shaped sigils parted, as if unlocking seals. The power beneath that purity rolled out, a blanket meant to smother the black pool.

When the pit bloomed, Violet heard a thousand mad whispers. The words were nonsense, but the intent was lunacy and bloodlust; her veins boiled and she thrashed against her bonds.

A murmur soft as moth wings, a curse bitter as bile.

The restraints’ mechanisms detected Violet’s change and injected more fluid into her arms. The scarlet rising in her eyes sank back, but the whispers clung like burrs at her ear.

Then, the white light flooded the world.

The figure moved—suddenly, clean as a blade leaving its sheath.

The Silver Lance plunged through the black pool, carrying terror like a storm front. The malice it had spawned evaporated like frost at noon. The whispers died under a low chant not born of human lungs.

Even skewering the pool couldn’t fully halt the birth within. A desiccated, twisted arm pushed out, wreathed in black mist, groping for the world.

She only smiled, faint, amused. The holy weapon unfurled, revealing intricate, machine-like assemblies. Any master of arrays seeing it would lose half his soul to awe.

As the lance opened, a core of jeweled brilliance showed itself. The shedding parts formed ring after ring around the crystalline spear.

Those rings were arrays compressed to the edge of concept. Power beyond Demigods, stepped into the realm of ideas—force fit for True Gods. The white shade lifted the shining spear high. Wings of light spread behind her, tying her to the ocean of light like river to sea.

“This is her! This is her!”

Merlin wept on the observation deck, a zealot and a child in one body. Before the white shade, the Archmage’s mask of gravity and calm fell like old paint.

Beside him, the Tower Spirit knelt in devotion, chanting under her breath.

Violet, trussed by steel like a captive swan, couldn’t see as clearly as they did, but the beauty of that power drowned her reason. She wanted—without choosing—to bow.

“Get back to your world!”

Her roar was a victor’s trumpet. The jeweled spear, shrouded in arrays fit for True Gods, obliterated the twisted, desiccated arm, pierced the black pool, and struck the creature beyond the gate.

A scream rose to full throat—then a figure in pure-white feathered robes stepped out of the ocean of light. A gentle, tranquil melody flowed from that newborn being, smothering the shriek and erasing the whispers from Violet’s ears.

“This world will never welcome you!”

A declaration like a pennant on the wind. She wrenched the lance free. Power thundered, wrecking the portal within the chaos. Radiance spilled again, filling the world like dawn pouring down a mountainside.

The foes who would have forced Aphelia into a bitter struggle didn’t even get to resist. To the silver-white shade, they were dust swept with a wrist. Even those with pressure beyond a True God never stepped through; she drove them back before they could arrive.

She was a flag of pure power—a perfect script of the word strong.

Across the barren land, life returned. From blood and ruin, jeweled flowers pushed up, a garden born from sacrifice.

After ending Oz, the white shade walked back to the banner. She lifted the bastion around Aphelia. Even though her face stayed unreadable, everyone could feel it—she was smiling. Under that white glow, her unseen features had to be beauty that toppled cities.

She stroked Aphelia’s cheek, gentle as snowfall. The Silver Lance and her armor faded into air. Only the war banner remained, standing guard where she had planted it.