Time froze completely. Darian had already felt this happen a few other times when he stood in front of extremely high-level entities.

His ethereal body… had it been possessed by someone? Darian wondered in a daze, feeling like the Draconic Bloodline of the body was being burned during the process.

The pair of eyes stared at him silently for a few seconds. Then, a snort echoed, followed by a calm voice.

"You really have a talent for getting yourself into trouble. Typical of a missionary."

Darian took a deep breath, "May I know who Senior is?"

"My will already spoke to you before. You created a connection and karma with all the Primordial Dragons. I'm the Yin Chaos Dragon, and I came in that brat's place, because I'm the only one who can help you."

Darian went silent. The "brat" she mentioned was probably his Master. Meru had told him she could only see him when he did something the laws allowed — something that created an opening for her to interfere a little. She couldn't come on her own.

"Senior…"

The voice answered dryly, "Yes, Heaven's Will called me and said I was allowed to talk to you too, since you have a connection with me. Anyway… we don't have all the time in the world."

Her eyes turned behind her, observing Niara and the Corrupted Dragon frozen in the skies.

"You brainless idiot…"

The voice carried so much anger that it left Darian even more confused. Was she talking about Niara, or about the Divine Dragon that wasn't even in that body anymore?

After a second, she spoke in a softer tone:

"This whole mess is partly my fault too. A long time ago, I found in this universe a young Primordial Dragon who seemed extremely talented to me. But her talent, I soon discovered, was proportional to her recklessness. She had a very strange personality, liked to act on instinct, without thinking about the consequences… Even so, she achieved shocking feats with ease — things even I found difficult at her age."

"Because I admired her talent, I revealed to her where I lived and told her that, in the future, she could come to me. But for that, she'd need to transcend her maximum power level; and the only way was by fusing with her universe's core. I explained clearly: she was still way too young and needed to develop true love in order to be accepted by that universe's consciousness."

"You know what happened after that, don't you? She told another Primordial Beast from her universe — some dark idiot who liked studying the power of universes. Not long after that, she tried absorbing that power directly, without fulfilling the requirement."

"In the end… she regretted her foolishness and finally valued her home, choosing to sacrifice herself to give her universe a chance. I watched everything. I saw when she and Enfield did everything they could to damage that other vile Beast. They succeeded, but were captured and taken over."

"In the future, both would be turned into puppets. But she knew that, if that happened, it would be almost impossible for a Missionary or Spiritual Guardian to save this place. So she made an even more terrible choice: she completely sacrificed herself and burned the immortal power of her soul. She used her own dark karma to gain the minimum amount of power, and over thousands of years, her existence faded until nothing was left. That was a complete soul death, but she didn't hesitate."

"Her soul simply dissolved, without that vile creature noticing in time. That way, that soulless body would have very little power and be of almost no use to him."

After a long sigh, she continued:

"At that point, I felt so guilty for interfering that I personally went to ask Heaven's Will for forgiveness and help. He even had to move His people to this universe because of me. I asked Him to take the soul fragments of that idiot and restore her."

"He agreed, but set conditions: she could only be saved if she became a mortal permanently, with no power at all. She would be thrown into the reincarnation cycle like any ordinary person and, worse, all the heavy karma she'd accumulated would have to be returned to her. However, because she was deeply connected to this place, she would only be able to live in this universe."

"I accepted, because I wanted to give her a chance to redeem herself and return. It was better than being dead forever, with her soul broken the way it was. From that point on… I watched her live several horrifyingly painful incarnations, where even without making mistakes, tragedy fell on her nonstop. And still… slowly, she began to stabilize and never fully lost herself."

"After many lives, surprisingly, her personality and her natural talents from before started to emerge again. Until… in one incarnation… her destiny finally connected to something much bigger."

The voice paused for a moment, then turned to face Darian, who had a thoughtful and confused expression, like he couldn't figure out where she was going with this.

"The Missionary finally awakened and was on his way to help save this universe. She was born and matured at the same time as him." She continued slowly, "No Mannaz can have their fate tied to someone as abnormal as a Missionary, because all of them are incompatible to be his partner. Only she, with such a deep past and that hidden potential, could have that destiny…"

At that moment, Darian's eyes widened, finally understanding something that had never once crossed his mind.

"Yes, you never thought it was strange how she had such an abnormal talent for doing everything, without even studying or thinking too much about anything? You never thought it was absurd how she had perfect control over a Primordial Bloodline, and still had such a good mutation that she could perfectly use to improve herself? She was always an anomaly."

"W-wait! You're telling me that Niara was actually the Divine Dragon? She's fighting her own old body right now? And she's using the Bloodline that came from herself?" Darian blurted quickly, stuttering a bit.

"That doesn't seem to make sense… years ago, the two of us met the Divine Dragon's will. That will see Niara and didn't notice anything? It even said it felt its body and soul in the universe, and warned us we would have to defeat it in the future."

A dry snort echoed, "The current Niara is 99.999% different from what she used to be. Not even the smallest trace of her immortal power is inside her. Her soul was completely destroyed before, then restored to become something entirely different. Even the memories from when she was the Divine Dragon disappeared from her forever."

"As for that will, it had no power left and was about to disappear, besides being sealed inside a small world far from the universe for a long time. How could it notice anything? It was already a great feat that it managed to feel that its true soul and body still existed."

Darian went catatonic when he heard all that. It really did make sense.

Of course, that will wouldn't notice anything properly… but it probably still felt something, and just chose not to say anything because it had no clue what was happening. Proof of that was that it gave Niara many things that helped her a lot without explaining anything.

"So… heavens…" Darian could only stutter, overwhelmed by that revelation.

Those eyes stared at Darian with a different glint, as if giving a faint laugh:

"No need to be so shocked, because all of this was very good for her. After living for so long in suffering, she finally learned what she needed to learn, and also… she discovered and found everything she was missing. I'm sure that even if she knew everything she would have to go through and suffer to reach this point, she would still happily do it just to be here now."

Darian took a deep breath… able to imagine Niara's face with a soft smile, telling him she was doing just fine now.