Vivian, Star of the Silken Sky, Pearl of the Blackest Ocean, and Prophet to the Great Goddess Renewal, took a rather sizable amount of pride in her work.

She lived by a very simple principle. When something had to be done, she did it to the extent of her very significant abilities. That wasn’t to say that everything she did was perfect. It was to say that everything she did was exactly what she wanted it to be.

If a potter pasted the shards of a cracked jug together to keep it from crumbling apart, he did not expect that jug to miraculously become whole the next day. The jug was still broken. He hadn’t set out to fix the damned thing. He’d just pasted it together. This update is available on NovєlFіre.net

But he had pasted it together. And he’d done that well. He certainly wasn’t going to expect it to randomly explode into a thousand little shards. The jug wasn’t fixed, but it wasn’t meant to be in pieces either.

So Vivian was understandably surprised when she felt the fruits of her labor blow away like dust in the wind.

She’d repaired the soul of the being that called himself Noah Vines, and with no little amount of power. Even though it hadn’t been a significant exertion to the tiny fragment of her attention that had graced the thief, she’d still spent quite a bit of power on the repairs.

More than enough to hold the man together while she dealt with the situation at hand. She’d been fairly certain that Noah would have ended up coming to knock on her door when the proverbial paste started to melt away.

But that should have taken days if not weeks or even months. It most certainly not should have happened within a few minutes of her repairing the damage. And stranger still was the fact that she could still feel her work.

She could still feel Noah Vines’ soul… but it was fading. Not out of existence, but away from her attention. He wasn’t dead. She’d have felt it if he was. No, this was something else. Noah had destroyed her efforts.

Why would he do that? Did he realize I can observe his presence as long as my energy remains within him? But even if he did… who would willingly allow their soul to continue shattering just to cut me off?

It certainly hadn’t been Father who had destroyed her work. The Rank 7 was nowhere near powerful enough to perform something like that. He might have been a competent cockroach, but there was a chasm between his talents and the intricate skill needed to remove her work from his soul without shattering it entirely.

Father certainly doesn’t have the ability to remove my magic through brute force at such a speed. Even Noah shouldn’t have been able to pull that off. It may be his soul, but he would need to have such an incredible understanding of his own being to remove my magic so quickly, not to mention a very significant amount of magical power.

Far more than a mere Rank 5 should have.

So how did he do it?

Disgust welled within Vivian. She should have seen this coming. One could never predict what someone like that would do. Noah was the worst kind of man.

A greedy one.

He’d stolen, not just from the Honorable Renewal herself, but from her vilest foe. Noah was some unholy union between all that was pure and all that was anything but. He had stained Renewal’s beautiful magic with the sickly, rancid stench of Decras.

And for that… she could never forgive him.

Nobody could be blamed for coveting Renewal’s power. She was beautiful. Incredible beyond belief. The most holy of holy beings. But to take that power, only to stain it with that of her wretched foe, made Vivian’s soul weep.

Only one thing gave her pause.

There had been a time when Vivian’s communication with Renewal, however weak and limited it had been, was frequent. But that had changed. The Goddess spoke to her less and less. It had been months since her last message from Renewal when she’d suddenly gotten one today.

And it had made absolutely no sense.

I like peaches. Tell him I said that.

That had been it. Renewal had told her to pass that message along to none other than the vile wretch that named itself Noah. One who wasn’t even fit to kneel in her presence. And Renewal had told her to be his messenger.

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Shame welled within Vivian.

It wasn’t even from how debasing it was to be used as a glorified carrier pigeon for some Rank 5 that had somehow managed to get his hands on Renewal’s power.

Perhaps it’s partially because of that.

But the majority of it was because she hadn’t properly delivered her message. Renewal had told her to inform Noah that she herself had spoken. But Vivian hadn’t mentioned who the message had come from when she’d conveyed it to Noah.

I disobeyed Renewal.

Vivian repressed a wince at that thought. She, who was closest among all others upon this world to Renewal, had disobeyed an order.

The edge of her domain trembled. Annoyance welled within Vivian. Something was bothering her pondering time.

Nobody was allowed to bother her while she pondered.

Her gaze swept out, landing on the writhing mass of twisting Order magic that was the Night’s Shadow.

It had once been nearly the size of the sky above Arbalest.

She’d compressed it into the size of a city. It was nothing more than a pulsating ball of stone flesh and agonized screams, and the infuriating noise was really

starting to pierce Vivian’s ears.

What do I do with this thing? I can’t just destroy it completely. Renewal has said how important the Order is. It’s been so many years since those messages. My skill was far weaker then, my understanding and comprehension worse. But the truth still remains.

I cannot purge Order from this world. This creature is a twisted abomination, but it still bears the same purpose as Renewal.

Nor could she leave it here. The Night’s Shadow had completely ruined their experiment. The Empire was in shambles. And, worse, the writhing mess of tentacles had annoyed her.

And that was unforgivable.

Vivian flicked her finger up.

What remained of the Night’s Shadow jerked into the air. It barely put up any more resistance. The monster had been under the misconception that it could stand in her way because it, too, was a Rank 8.

That thought lightened Vivian’s mood considerably. Her lips curled in amusement. There was nothing similar between herself and the writhing wretch beyond the 8 in their Rank. Her runes were incomparable to those of the Shadow.

In truth, the beast only had one Rune of any true value to Vivian.

And, unfortunately, that rune would completely ruin everything. Her Divine Rune was already so close to fruition. Corrupting it with the horrid song of the Night’s Shadow would doom her.

If there were someone that stood by my side and bore the capability to use this power… someone that actually possessed honor, I would give it to them. But the members of the Church are not much better than the Apostles themselves.

There is nobody who I could trust not to be corrupted by the Night’s Shadow’s power, who would not destroy everyone around them in exchange for their own gain.

I’m no exception to that.

But someone must be perfect. The sheep need a herder to follow.

I suppose I’ll just toss it in the trash.

Vivian blew out a sigh. Today was turning out to be quite the hassle. She snapped her fingers.

The air crunched. Reality bent at the midsection as it bowed to her — and what remained of the Night’s Shadow vanished.

She felt it still, in some distant part of her mind, as the great being was deposited like a dirty piece of tissue paper — not that someone as perfect as her knew what dirty tissue paper was, of course — in the great White Maw, the expanse that existed between all existence.

Nobody will find the Shadow there. I’ll deal with the damn thing later, once I have less on my mind. For now… I need to figure out what to do with the rubble of what was once an empire. Then I have to find out how to get this horrid screaming magic out of my hair. It’s going to ruin my curls.

***

Noah floated in the infinite white.

It was so bright. It seared into him from every direction, as if trying to burn his very essence away.

His soul was gone. He’d left it somewhere behind him, within the weaving paths of the Line that spun through his mindspace.

Noah didn’t even know what he was. He’d thought that he was his soul, but apparently that wasn’t the case. If it was, then he’d have been destroyed already. He wouldn’t have been here.

But here he was.

And, strangely enough, the pain from the burning light felt muted. Distant. Everything did. Confusion still drifted through his thoughts in a thick haze as it tried to obscure his memories.

But it couldn’t.

Noah’s fists clenched at his sides. Then, despite everything, he smiled.

He still existed.

His soul was probably shredded to pieces, and his mind was likely so badly warped by the Line that it had become little more than mush.

But he still existed.

And if he did, there was no cage, no hell, that could keep him from getting back to Moxie. From getting back to Lee. From getting back to Brayden and his students and everyone else that he had fought for. To everyone that had fought for him.

To his home. Not a place, but the people that he had found since arriving at Arbitage. To the anchor that had held strong through even the Line itself.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got a few dart games I’ve promised to make up, after all.

Noah turned. There was a way out of this void. He knew it. He just had to —

And then something bloomed in the white. A flash of gray in the distance, little more than a blip, followed by a muted whisper.

And then there was silence once more. But the patch of gray remained. It was impossible to miss. When everything else was white, even a single dot of anything else was like an oasis in the desert.

Noah’s head tilted to the side.

Then he set off toward the blip.

Wait for me, Moxie, Lee.

I’m coming home.