The Deity of Justice, Justus, fell silent. Something clicked. His scepter swung heavier, like a verdict weighing down.

He swung only harder than before. He never bent his waist; left hand tucked behind, right hand alone wielding the scepter, spine straight like a cedar.

Each strike landed true on Stini’s Holy Sword, chipping off wide swaths of gleaming ruin, like ice shearing.

At first he crushed the sword’s tip with bare fingers. Now only half the blade remained, like frost gnawing metal.

Stini backed away, unwilling, then surged again, only to be shoved back by greater force. Mortals don’t beat a Divine Being, not ever. This stubborn fool refused to admit it.

If he were still manic, he’d toss out “idiot” and gut her arguments with blows. He’d make her feel how cruel justice-versus-justice can be, how foolish her free thought.

But now the Divine Being was calm. His hand hit harder, yet his spirit smoothed over like still water.

He’d found what he wanted, and had no wish to argue, like a hunter who spots the trail.

Each step he took forward forced Stini back one pace. I walked with them, step by step, bearing witness like a lantern in rain.

Power mechanics, strike timing, spellwork, bladecraft—still mortal arts, beads on the same thread.

Stini could cleave sky and earth, yet couldn’t cross the mortal threshold, like a bird hitting glass.

With this mortal frame, how can one touch the vault of heaven?

The Deity of Justice kept his left hand behind him, spine noble-straight, and strode on, like a white crane.

Each scepter fall was a tsunami, a running thunder, a decree, an ending. Every blow shattered the world and cast it anew.

He used no sorcery, only craft. Yet even craft broke mortal limits and touched the far shore of gods.

Within minutes, he had 206 chances to smash Stini’s skull,

783 chances to pulp her organs,

1,940 chances to snap her arms or break her knees.

To kill her or spare her lay solely in his hands, like the weight in a judge’s scale.

The Deity of Justice stayed silent. He aimed at the broken Holy Sword and hammered the fracture, strike after strike. Fragments sprayed along Stini’s retreat, rare alloys—mithril, aurichalcum—glittering across a hundred meters of street like stardust.

When only one-third of the blade remained, Stini hit her limit, like a candle guttering.

She dropped to one knee, drenched as if hauled from a river. Sweat slicked her face. She gasped hard. Blood beaded at her lips and fell.

She tried to brace on the sword, but it was too short—little more than a hilt stuck in earth, like a root cut.

A warrior’s peak window is finite. Body taut on the life-death wire. Mind whirring, weighing every cut and every wound. Dragons or winged folk can fight longer, but that window still ends.

With many blessings from Divine Beings, Stini can battle seven days straight. On the eighth sunrise she returns to full strength, stronger yet, so long as she stops before that sun sets.

But that’s planned time. Pauses and safe distance let mind and body knit quick, like a bow unstrung between shots.

Stini knows how to fight to feed fighting. Yet in minutes she burned out. It means the Divine Being smothered her completely, left her no breath.

Each strike landed right on her inhale, forcing her to meet it. No room for a clean breath, like a tide hitting the shore mid-breath.

Literally, the scepter kept sweeping the broken blade without pause. Stini spent almost all focus just to keep the stump from flying free, and still hunted for a turnabout.

The result: the Divine Being’s power far surpassed expectation, like a mountain under fog.

To find tiny breaths inside a tide of blows and hold out this long—honestly, she’s done well.

Now she can’t even stand, so the legendary spell “Hero’s Funeral” can’t hold.

The Deity of Justice lifted his head. He watched the pure-white world slowly take on real color, like ink spreading in water.

We stood on the streets of SkywardCity, the stones gleaming under a high sky.

Onlookers saw a figure radiant with unworldly light. If not for “while the Hero is present, the Immunity Privilege holds,” they’d grasp justice in a heartbeat. They’d be rinsed by thought too vast and become a fragment of Deity of Justice Justus.

People began to feel it was wrong. Staring at a Divine Being is no different from staring at a Demon King. Corruption and ascension are two faces of one coin, ending the same. Instinct drove them away fast, and warned them not to look back.

Even the maids sitting in front of the Heretic Inquisition fled—after I sent out a pulse of Shadow.

Now this zone was no different from the pocket world of “Hero’s Funeral.” Only Stini, the Divine Being, and I remained.

The Divine Being let his scepter dissolve into light. He closed his eyes, faced the wind, opened his arms, and listened in stillness.

“Not like this,” he said.

“The wind should carry children’s laughter, a lover’s whisper, a sage’s burning words. Not this cold, lonesome gale.”

He walked to the flowerbed and breathed in their scent, like tasting sun and dew.

“Not like this,” he said.

“Fragrance should make one happy. It should smell of the sun’s warmth and the moon’s softness. Not this heap of raw odor compounds.”

He cupped soil, cupped water. He ignored the stain on his white robe and noble hands, and let earth and water scatter into the wind.

“Not like this.”

He shut his eyes in disappointment and slowly shook his head, like a willow in rain.

“In my memory, the world wasn’t like this.”

He looked at me, then at the battered Stini, hoping for our answer, like a pilgrim at a shrine.

Fear tightened first. Stini couldn’t speak. I had to stop him from letting his domain flood the world. I watched him, taut as a bowstring.

My original plan was to smash him the moment he stepped out, using a collected artifact that severs domains of authority. It would block any use of power to rewrite mortal rules. Safe, yes. Ugly, yes. And without a proper pretext.

Stini gave me the perfect opening, beyond my hopes—she made the Deity question his own legitimacy. He stepped out from the “Hero’s Funeral” pocket and didn’t instantly reset the world’s idea of justice. Her words truly shook him.

No—by now, he’d confirmed it.

No one answered. The Divine Being nodded and said:

“You’re right. This isn’t my world. Not the one I swore to guard. Not the Children I swore to protect.”

“Now this mortal world no longer needs absolute justice. You prefer freedom, don’t you. Unbound thinking, sky-galloping answers—hm. Like fools. No value, no efficiency, no meaning.”

“The only thing left is self-satisfaction and self-affirmation.”

The Deity of Justice sneered. “Is that all there is, for a god?”

He sighed in pity. “Yet for the Children, that is the whole of it.”

He sighed and looked up at the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom, like a traveler counting distant fires.

It seemed the gods looked back at their kin below. Though day blazed, the stars still flickered and dared the sun.

“What do you think?”

He asked, and no one answered.

No one wished to deny this justice.

The stars glittered, cast down divine attention, and nothing more.

“Am I wrong?”

“Is it wrong to make this world shed no more futile blood and tears?”

“Come, persuade me. Defeat me. Use your reason and tell me I am wrong.”

He wasn’t manic now. He spoke his grief calmly, like a river under ice.

The ugliness ended here. No anger, no rancor, no refusal. Not even a furrowed brow. A soul beyond good and evil. A figure above and apart—fit for a god.

“I understand. Hmph. I understand.”

“I am not wrong… only the era no longer needs this justice, right?”

“To carry freedom’s cost and swallow freedom’s bitter fruit—that’s the choice of Children and gods alike. So you no longer need me? Truly, truly won’t accept this bloodless, tearless justice?”

Sorrow stained his face, and the great halo behind his head dimmed, like a sunset failing.

It started to rain.

Clouds piled up and smothered the once-clear stars. All of SkywardCity sank under gust and downpour.

It wasn’t the rain that made the Deity mourn; it was the Deity’s sorrow that brought the rain.

“But I remember the vow I made. I said I would guard all the Creator loved…”

The rain poured slantwise. Drop-beads, big as beans, struck the holy and stung. None of us fled. We stood in it and waited for the fated future.

All of it will be written in history. All of it is already written.

I didn’t retreat to a shop’s eaves. I chose to take the rain with Stini and the Deity of Justice. I watched them quietly and witnessed legend unfold.

The Deity of Justice is the thirteenth Primordial Deity, a seat that should stand alongside the Twelve Crowned Seats.

His domains of authority include absolute justice, the single correct solution, and the inevitable right argument.

He alone judges and divides all right and not-right, good and not-good. His justice is always optimal. His path is always the fastest.

If Deity of Justice Justus unifies justice and reclaims the power of “Justice,” the world will return to the Golden Era—a bloodless, tearless era. It would be incomplete, yet as the only Justice, he could do it.

—Therefore, Deity of Justice Justus must die.

The root difference between the Silver Era and the Golden lies in “absolute justice.” I learned that after reading the history of Abigail’s Godslayer Sword.

Time cannot turn back because we won’t allow it. It would only make the world worse, like a river wrecked by a backward tide.

So the Golden cannot return, and Justus cannot live. Head and I agreed upon that history. Thus it is fate.

He must die, yet not by god or Demon King. Since the Seven-Day War, gods and demons haven’t clashed. Breaking that would spark dispute and stain the nearby peace summit.

So only Stini can do it.

I weighed which gesture would look best when I hand Stini the Godslayer Sword’s “Awakening,” like passing a torch in storm.