Lilo was clearly unhappy with her strike. She hadn’t even grazed Aphelia; in a blink, her aim slid off like an arrow skidding past the moon. A normal fighter might blunder like that. But Lilo was a Demigod, one step from a True God, a blade’s breadth from the summit.

In that instant, she’d felt no ripple of Aphelia’s power. Without a current to read, there was no way to break it, like fishing in a still lake without a ripple.

But Lilo wasn’t easy prey. Deep-blue fire bloomed again, quiet as ocean glare. Before Aphelia could move, Lilo faded from her flank. The silent blaze lunged straight at Aphelia like a shadowed wave.

Before the flames kissed her skin, a jeweled crystal blossom drifted forward like a drifting star. Pure-white threads spread from it, as soft as frost-silk. They swallowed the blue fire whole. It didn’t even struggle. It just vanished into the air like mist at dawn.

Lilo tumbled out of the void, a little ragged, disbelief shining in her eyes like cracked glass. She leveled out midair in a breath. Her Mageblade flared deep blue. She drove it at Aphelia like lightning spearing a calm sea.

Crimson fire charged like a hunting beast, snapping in from both flanks. She meant to give Aphelia no window to guard the thrust from above. From Lilo’s sightline, even if Aphelia had touched the threshold of True God before her, without going all-out, there was no way she’d walk away clean from this strike.

But Aphelia kept that faint smile, light as a crescent moon, as if dodging never even crossed her mind.

Seeing it, Lilo bit down hard. Her heart steeled; the blade plunged. If Aphelia was that confident, she must be ready. Then… there was no reason to hold back at all.

The deep-blue flame along the blade hitched, a hiccup in the wind. In that breath, the edge pierced Aphelia. The charging blaze burst like a storming wave. Blood flashed like a red petal in rain. Lilo’s golden eyes flared brighter than coins in sunlight. A dragon’s roar shook heaven and earth. Arrays opened in the heat like lotus wheels, and they burned Aphelia’s body without pity. The dragon’s might surged into an invisible domain, and even the ground split like dry clay.

Spellchain—Twinborn Flames!

Along with the Dragon’s Might exploding—

The instant the blade cut Aphelia, Lilo felt death. It rose from instinct, a cliff-edge under her feet. She detonated by reflex and ignited the blood of the red dragon.

But the cut had landed. She knew that feeling of flesh parting under steel. She would never mistake it.

After the blow, a bad chill slid through her. She moved to pull back, to fix it. The flames peeled away. Her blade held nothing, like a net yanked up empty.

“Good thing I raised a barrier. With noise like yours, we’d be blown wide open.”

Aphelia’s teasing voice came from behind, cool as a night breeze. Lilo whipped around. Aphelia stood there, twirling the jeweled crystal flower as if plucking a string.

Countless white threads spilled from the blossom, glittering like frost. They flashed into bright nodes and built a small barrier around Lilo, a lantern of light. It sealed her tight. Even the eruption of force was corked and tidy, like thunder trapped in a jar.

“What is this? Aphelia…”

At this point, there was no point in wasting motion. The instant the barrier bloomed, Aphelia could’ve ended it. But Lilo had never sensed when it rose. She was, plain as sunrise, at a disadvantage.

Lilo lowered the Mageblade. The deep-blue flame guttered out in her palm like a dying ember. The dragon’s might that had become a domain sank back with the dimming of her golden eyes.

“You did cut me,” Aphelia said, light as falling ash. “But I threw that moment so far into the future it’s out of sight.”

She let the Aether fade from her forearms. Pure white receded into the dark like snow in shade. At her shoulder-blade, her martial garb showed a savage tear and a faint scorch. But under it, the pale skin was unmarked, a winter field without a print.

There was no wound. Yet a fine veil of white light still lay over that skin, quiet as frost.

“Thrown into the future? Wait… Aphelia, never mind how you dodged that hit. How did you, in that blink, not only build a barrier without me sensing it, but keep my power from touching you?”

Lilo stared at her and lit those golden eyes again, dawn-kindled. This time, her dragon’s might stayed leashed close, a tide held by a wall. She scanned around Aphelia and found no trace of her own red flame, not a soot-speck, not a scorch.

“How to put it…” Aphelia paused, weighing words like stones. “I wanted you to feel this power for real. First, I cut the flame’s time away, so the moment of you cutting me kept happening. Then I tossed that happening into the future.”

“Second, inside the time where you did cut me—since I hurled it forward—everything tied to it doesn’t exist here now. In that spare span, I stepped out of your reach and built the barrier.”

“That way, before your power could touch anything, the barrier was already done. And everything that followed unraveled inside it.”

She finished and gave a small, sheepish smile, like a cat caught with cream. She’d explained it in neat lines. But for her, it had been instinct—save for the deliberate throw into the future.

For Lilo, that alone was enough to shake mountain and marrow. She blurted, heart first, thought after,

“Didn’t you already take that damage? What about later?”

Her voice tightened, a string drawn too far. Worry came first, then heat of regret. Why hadn’t she checked her strength? Why push Aphelia to prove it this way?

“As for that… give me a sec.”

Aphelia laughed, airy as a flake of snow, and didn’t seem to care. Pure white gathered at her fingertips like moonmilk. She traced the covered patch by her shoulder-blade, slow as a brush over silk.

Beads of blood rose on the pale skin like red dew. A hair-thin cut surfaced, barely more than a whisper. In a blink it knit, then parted again. It repeated, bloom then fall, several times. At last the white glow sheathing the wound faded like the last frost. The cracked lines vanished as if they’d never been, a wave smoothing sand.

“It can do that?”

Lilo was stunned, clean and simple. Let the wound surface slow, then heal—like catching a falling star on a cushion. Even mortal hurts might be tugged back from the brink.

She couldn’t help it—she stared at Aphelia like a moonlit monster out of legend. Her earlier act, playing the bad cop to care for Aphelia, felt useless. With power like this, how many in this world could kill Aphelia?

Aphelia caught her thought and shook her head, a helpless little sigh.

“Not like that. I haven’t crossed a True God with this. Who knows what another’s domain or Aether would do to me. For now, sure, not many can touch me.”

She said it without pride. On the contrary, whenever that pure-white silhouette rose in her mind, a dull stone pressed on her chest. Something clung like cold fog that wouldn’t lift.

“Then… what level are you now?”

“Strictly speaking, a True God. But my domain isn’t finished yet. I’m heading to the Abyss to complete it.”

Bitterness washed over Lilo’s face like ash in rain. It felt like all her years of climbing were pebbles before Aphelia. But it wasn’t true. In the Demon World, Lilo was the clear first of her generation. Only the imperial princess—Fenrir—could stand at her height.

With her gift, she was summit-tier anywhere. On her own strength, she’d reached Demigod young. Given the Valkyrie’s gift of True God power, she’d still cut her own road. Even without that boon, someone like her could reach True God.

Only… before a “monster” like Aphelia, even that shone pale as dawn before noon. A youth already stepped into True God, on the verge of shaping a domain—across the ages, there were few like that.

“So. Any other questions?”

“Your power… can you send someone else’s death to the future? Make that fact vanish now?”

She didn’t know why she said it. The words slipped out like a spirit through a door. Expectation lit her gaze on Aphelia, bright and shy, like a flame that feared wind.

Firelight brushed both their faces, masks of quiet. Silence fell, soft as ash. One waited. The other hesitated.

Lilo’s question was simple, a single character at heart: resurrection. Across time long as deserts, no one had done it, save in legend. Those rough undead—scrubbed of personhood, left with broken shards of memory—never counted.

Aphelia parted her lips and let fall a plain answer.

“Maybe yes. Maybe not.”

Such simple words made Lilo’s heart pound like war drums. Aphelia gave her no room to chase it. “I’m going to rest,” she said, dropped like a pebble in a pond, and tore a magic scroll. Her figure blinked away from the fire. Lilo stood alone by the flames, her face a braid of light and shadow.