“The Eldritch Gods’ power was once peerless; when it first rose, civilization took a mortal wound and ruin spread like winter frost.”

Hrok didn’t spare their shock a glance; his voice marched on like iron through fog.

“We didn’t survive a hundred million years by cowering. Even before that, we were at True God level, like mountains under noon sun. After a hundred million years, we dregs of an age hardened like old steel. If we join hands, we can shore the levees and keep civilization from drowning.”

“But… if that’s true, why do the histories—official or tavern gossip—record at most the Valkyrie?”

Aphelia still fought the current; doubt stung like sleet on skin, yet the strength they showed loomed like storm towers.

She’d endured too much; mistrust rose in her like brambles. Faced with self‑proclaimed survivors of a prior civilization, she wanted to believe nothing, not a single shred.

Seeing her stance, Hrok’s sword‑brows lifted like drawn bowstrings. He meant to speak, but Shilwen’s hand, light as drifting silk, halted him.

“It’s not that there are no records,” she sang, a smile like moonlight on water. “Do you know what mask we wore in history? Need a nudge to recall the Holy Pontiff of the First Epoch?”

“The Holy Pontiff of the First Epoch… the portrait shows a purple‑haired elder, misted like dawn—gender, well…”

Aphelia jerked her head up; disbelief flared like lightning in her eyes. Her voice trembled like a plucked string.

“That Holy Pontiff—was you?!”

“Correct~”

“This… how can that be? His Holiness was a True God acknowledged by the God of Light, a pillar like a sunlit pillar. The portrait hides the face, and that Pontiff wielded pure Light Aether.”

Aphelia’s protest drew a soft laugh; Aether around Shilwen rippled like a pond in wind. A deep‑violet malice cloaked her like dusk. Light bent as if poured from glass, and when it stilled, a different figure stood before Aphelia like a statue come alive.

A face neither wholly man nor woman; a regal Pontiff’s robe that flowed like a river; and in that hand, the Church’s most famed relic—the Judgment Scepter, heavy as thunder.

“Do you still doubt?” The voice now carried age and authority, steady as an oak in rain. At those words, Light Aether around them surged like startled birds, then nestled to Shilwen’s side like tame hounds.

“This… this can’t be…”

Masks can lie, but the Judgment Scepter can’t, nor can Light Aether’s pulse, bright as dawn. Aphelia had wielded that relic once in war; the identical wave overturned her world like a flipped table.

Seeing the point land, Shilwen laughed, a bell in mist, and let the guise dissolve like snow. She returned to her mature, willow‑slender grace.

“See? A perfect match~”

“If you founded the Church, Shilwen, why did it curdle into this?”

Aphelia held her calm like a candle in wind. She bit her lip, eyes fixed on Shilwen, hunting for cracks in the words like a hawk over fields.

More than that, her ruin was the Church’s bridge‑burning, a knife in the back. Without their tightening vise, how would her friends in the mortal world have suffered like wheat in hail?

She met Shilwen’s deep‑violet gaze, refusing to yield, like stone facing tide.

“That starts with our goal back then…”

Shilwen smiled, serene as a lake, and pressed her Aether down until it was still as glass. Memory rose like incense; her story unwound like silk.

Far in the First Epoch, the mortal continent was a chessboard of warlords; war was daily bread, smoke in every valley. Culture and tech stopped at the sword, stuck like wheels in mud.

There was no standard for power; cultivation was blind groping in a cave. Killing was the chorus, drums beating night after night.

Left to run, before world‑changers could rise, the continent would shatter like dry clay.

Waking from the last civilization’s sleep, Shilwen and her peers found a quagmire, thick as tar. A near‑barbarian world facing another Eldritch invasion was laughable, like paper shields in a storm.

So Shilwen, a True God like a peak above clouds, took on the mantle of the First Epoch’s Holy Pontiff. As a god’s mouthpiece, she walked the earth, sowed faith like seed, and in nearly a century, ended the battlefield like rain ending dust.

When war ceased, ruins stood like broken ribs. Using prior‑age power as scaffolding, Shilwen spent decades lifting humanity from nothing to something, laying bedrock like stone courses. Without her, reaching today by the Third Epoch would be a daydream, a castle in fog.

Under the fever of Light, the world rushed toward utopia like a sunlit tide.

“If so, why didn’t you keep leading the Church? If you remained, how could it rot into this?” Aphelia cut in, words sharp as glass.

Shilwen didn’t answer head‑on; she gave her a sidelong glance, a blade of humor. “Name an organization that stays saintly for a century while a holy figure keeps a throne like winter moon. And getting people to swallow utopia inside a hundred years? That’s a bird cage with no door—human frailty, you know~”

The line left Aphelia mute, like a bell struck but held. Lena’s lessons echoed like footfalls: in mortal history, schemers bloom like weeds; especially in a keystone institution like the Church.

After the war, the twelve Red Cardinals—originally sworn to fairness—planned, in shadow, a fresh bloodstorm. They meant to force the “Holy Pontiff” off the stage with knives wrapped in silk.

Shilwen had lived a hundred million years; she knew crooked roads like river bends. Before their rebellion, she vanished into “cultivation,” a fog‑thin excuse, and left the relic to them like bait. The rest flowed downhill.

They revised books and rewrote history, raising Shilwen’s image like a statue to the sky, yet swapping her deeds with borrowed faces like masks. They polished a halo to worship, then preached a doctrine reversed like a mirror.

People knew there were flaws, but gratitude after war wrapped eyes like gauze. Who would question the hand that ended bloodshed?

So influence seeped; the Church shaped the world like water shaping stone. The Holy Pontiff became a distant radiance, a star you can name but never touch.

“…It may sound presumptuous, Shilwen, but if you stepped in again, showed a key face, and unified the Church, it wouldn’t be hard for you, right?” Shame pricked Aphelia; her head dipped like a stem in rain.

Whatever Shilwen’s mask, she ended war, unified nations, and forged a complete power system—merit bright as constellations.

To be betrayed by her own and still be asked to shepherd the world again was arrogance, a child tossing stones at the moon.

Shilwen just waved it off, smiling easy as spring wind. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Aphelia’s brows drew together like wings; the reason wouldn’t come, hovering like a bird beyond reach.

“Yes. Can’t. Civilization moves with inertia, like a river with current. Before the First Epoch, it was a knotty rope, twisted and tight. What I did was pull it straight, set a heading like a compass.”

“The rope may knot again; it may bend like reeds. But once the heading is set, it will work through snags and return to the track like a cart on rails. If I meddle again, I replace civilization’s will, a keystone pulled from an arch. Should I fall, collapse follows like a hillside in rain.”

“So I can play the leader chosen by that will, not the will itself. If they must rebel, let them; it’s growing pain, bones lengthening with ache.”

“Like Brynhildr now. At most, she adds a ballast to the ship. Without that restraint, that legion wouldn’t have smashed only the Church and sailed off like shadows. In civilization, she’s a special case, a comet that bends paths.”

Aphelia fell silent; the concept hovered ahead of her like mist over a river. She could grasp the outline, not the spine.

Shilwen didn’t press. Guiding people and guiding civilizations share one rule: point a direction like a lighthouse; that’s enough. Interfere too much, and Aphelia won’t become herself—she’ll become another “Shilwen,” a reflection in still water.

Remembering that other one, Shilwen’s smile turned wry, a crescent with a crack. She watched Aphelia’s daze and felt old echoes stir like leaves.

“Then… Shilwen, by your measure, what am I to this civilization?” After a long hush, Aphelia raised her head. Her voice rasped like dry paper; in her black eyes, pain and doubt pooled like winter ink.