Two and a half months into the school year, her History instructor— she was still a bit bitter that she hadn’t been placed with Avyr for any of their common core classes, and relieved she hadn’t got his bastard of a teacher— started the class with an unusually taciturn expression. Typically, he was a rather genial fellow, though he tended to focus on modern history far more than Lily thought necessary— who cared about the last two wars? Everyone knew everything that had happened in them, and it wasn’t like those were the reasons the Empires and Sects were fighting.

Not this time, though. Lily— and much of the rest of the class— watched in a confused sort of half silence as he lowered the projector screen and dimmed the lights, and shut the shutters, and took his usual spot at the podium. “All of you in this class know about the last war with the Empire of Nine Sunlights, and the cascade effects of conflict that failed to reach Ca Cao.”

Lily resisted the urge to groan— not this again. She very much did not want to hear about the last war. It tended to dredge up bad memories…

“I won’t be talking about the last war today.” Thank goodness for that. “Rather, I just want you to keep in mind how even far-flung conflicts can cause socioeconomic devastation without so much as touching Ca Cao, or the northern continent… or even coming to Aurelia at all.” With that rather ominous statement, he turned on the projector to an image of… the moon? No, after a second of observation, she realized that it wasn’t the moon, but a moon— its face subtly different from Aurelia’s scarred and pock-marked satellite.

“Typically Realm Astrography is reserved for the latter half of the school year due to its difficulty, but with these exigent circumstances, I thought it would be fitting to have this lesson now. To those who aren’t experts in astronomy and don’t recognize it, this is a video taken by an amateur astronomer of one of the moons of Egress II, a minor world between Soli and Ratagao; if you don’t know where that is, don’t worry about it. We’ll get there in a few months. As for why I’m showing you this…” he paused for a second. “I’ll let the video speak for itself.”

The video began, softly— a peaceful scene at night, the sort of thing that only grabbed Lily’s attention from the sheer mystery of it. Tree branches swayed in the periphery of the shot, denuded of leaves by winter’s breath or some such thing— and for a long second, it was utterly mundane.

Then something impacted the moon.

A crater exploded into existence as a massive plume of dust blasted off the surface of the moon, and now Lily’s attention was thoroughly ensnared by the video. The class was much the same, muttering and whispering in awe over the sheer power being that blow— how large was that crater? The size of East Saffron? Of Ca Cao? Was that the power of Immortal Ascension cultivators when they fought? A single blow to level everything she’d ever known. If that had been turned on any city in existence, that city would have been gone. Erased, just like that.

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It was an awe inspiring display of power, and as she watched the ejecta tumble through the void around the planet, she couldn’t help but find herself a little inspired. One day, she would have that sort of power. She would be the one fighting amongst the stars, and—

Then, the moon exploded.

It happened in—

A shudder, then a flash, light harsh enough to momentarily blot out the camera’s recording turning night to day, and— the sky was awash with the color of violence, as the entire moon was burst like an overripe fruit or a water balloon or a sack of rotten trash, like a shotgun blast sprayed out into the unseeing cosmos, like— simile failed her. Mere emotion failed her.

It was almost horrifying, how casually it came. How silently. No blast, no roar of sound, nothing but an unsettled forest and a moon reduced to pieces. This time, no one in the class dared comment, merely sitting silent and watching the great devastation.

The true power of those who stood at the very cusp of immortality.

They kept watching in silence until the video ended a moment later, the molten shards of the moon already starting to cool in the vacuum of space. Then they stayed silent for a few minutes longer, nobody wanting to be the first one to speak after that.

Finally, her instructor took back the podium, raising the lights and rolling up the projector screen. “Hopefully you all understood the implications of that video.” Someone had destroyed a moon! Obviously they understood the implications! Probably! “In some senses, we’re very, very lucky. From what I’ve heard, the destruction of Egress IIb was caused by a third party, which likely prevented the worst of the possibilities from unfolding. Still, if you think there won’t be consequences from this, then you’re a fool. This is the first recorded destruction of a celestial body by a cultivator since the War in Heaven that saw the Empire of Twelve Constellations destroyed.”Lily had to take a second to absorb that. That was truly ancient history— legendary history, even, on which had been written the foundation of the very society they lived in. And that meant the moon’s destruction was important in a way which Lily could only barely begin to grasp. “I want a two thousand word essay on the knock-on impacts of this event—” and then, even though they still had most of the period left— “class dismissed.”

That… that had been crazy. Lily couldn’t tear her mind away from it for the rest of the day, not when she was working on her formations packet, not when she was helping Avyr try and figure out what he wanted, not even laying in bed at night and staring out her small window towards the heavens above. The terrifying scope of it still weighed on her, but…

Someone had done it. Someone had achieved the sort of power that allowed them to smite the very heavens themselves.

She fell asleep dreaming of the sundering of worlds.