CHAPTER 205: CHAPTER 206: HER BRILLIANCE

Aurora.

A High Mage. A prodigy. A genius. A talent never seen in the history of magehood.

At ten, she memorized every spell in the basic tome. Each line engraved into memory, not just in recitation but in essence. She didn’t perform magic. She embodied it.

At twelve, she was recognized by the most powerful mage of the era—Merlin. A man whose eyes saw through dimensions, who spoke in tones that bent storms and gods alike. He had watched her from afar, silently, until she forced even his hand to move. He had named her heir. The mage-child with stardust for veins.

At eighteen, she did the unspeakable. She created. New spells—systems, not just formulas. Spells that bent known structure. Spells that resonated like music across ley lines. Spells that frightened the old and enraptured the young. One spell turned sea into glass. Another bent moonlight into swords.

By fifty, she surpassed High Mages in power, wisdom, and knowledge. The towers of the Northern Council bowed to her name. Her letters were studied as scripture. Her laughter alone was said to cure madness in some circles, and cause it in others.

At eighty, she touched the edge of divinity. Her body no longer obeyed mortal time. She shimmered, almost constantly, her skin marked with unseen runes that shifted when she cast no spells at all. Her beauty became legend—cold, divine, unreachable. Kings carved her name into rings. Emperors dreamed of her and awoke bleeding.

But at one hundred and seven... she broke.

There was no path forward. No higher realm. She had touched the highest limit mortals could comprehend. And that limit was a cage—clear, cruel, eternal.

Despair, the quiet kind, the ancient kind, folded into her bones.

That was when she left. With Loki. With nothing but her own hunger and the legacy of Merlin behind her.

She left a silence so violent that continents whispered her absence.

Merlin’s rage was felt across every leyline and magical circle. Books burst into flame. Moons trembled. The winds howled her name in unknown dialects.

And then—nothing. For decades, centuries perhaps, she was lost to myth. Gone. No sign. No echo. Until—

She returned.

Loki chained in the dark continent. The chaos demi god silenced.

And Aurora, silent, older yet ageless, crowned in a new magic not born of this plane, stood beside Berkimhum’s throne. Not as queen. Not as prisoner. But as something else.

And that was all history knew.

But...

The ’Book of the Damned’ did not choose lightly.

It searched. It hungered. It clung only to those who could speak laws, not spells. Only to those who broke the shape of the world with words alone.

And she—Aurora—was the one who had reached that place.

She went where gods refused. She walked past the gates of....

HELL

hell itself.

And smiled.

She passed through with nothing but smile and came back with the same smile. Nobody knew what had happened. As hell was realm where all stories were locked not shared.

.

.

And then—the battle.

"Hy@\$\$@%%@% plus heli@%\$%m—"

The incantation crackled across the battlefield like broken lightning across glass. Words mangled in syllables never meant for human tongues. Even for her, they struck a nerve of dread.

Aurora saw it. No—she felt it. A breath before the reaction, her mind mapped the outcome.

Air itself shifted. Each molecule crackled, twisted. The temperature reversed itself. The fabric of space bent. The air began to ignite in chain reactions, not in flames—but in collapse.

The sky turned thin. As if the very world were exhaling.

She had seconds.

No—less.

’Foolish old man,’ Aurora thought, nostrils flaring, not in anger—in sorrow. Merlin’s name echoed somewhere in the back of her mind. This was his sealwork, his last gambit.

This would not just scorch the land.

This would ’burn the ends of both berkimhum and the empire’.

{Hold}.

Her voice was quiet. Almost gentle.

But the magic wasn’t. The LAW wasn’t.

It didn’t cast. It obeyed.

Reality itself froze. Not stopped. Not paused. Held.

The armies on both sides stilled—veins frozen, sweat suspended mid-fall. The Prime Knights, still in motionless glory. Loki, his laughter caught in mid-breath, eyes wild and eternally unblinking. Lara’s blade mid-arc. Eli’s mouth just slightly open, like she had been about to call someone’s name.

Even the wind paused.

But the particles—the cursed ignition particles—still flickered. Still danced. Like stars struggling to be born.

’Not enough,’ Aurora thought, arms trembling under the effort. Her law was active—but laws did not undo destiny, only delay it.

’This will reach across kingdoms. It’s already begun...’

But.....Aurora remembered something..something she wished she forgot.....A bet.

It returned to her not as a memory, but as a weight—an ache that crept beneath her ribs and curled around her lungs. A moment buried so deep even time had learned not to speak of it. But now, as her hand hovered just inches from invoking damnation, the past clawed its way back.

She had reached the Chair of Power within the circle of the Seven Demon Kings—not by trickery, not by subjugation, but by sheer force of brilliance. The throne had been carved from obsidian flame, scorched into the roots of hell itself, and no mortal had ever even glimpsed it—let alone stood before it as an equal. But Aurora had not come as a supplicant. She had come as herself.

That meeting had not begun in words. Hell was not a place of talk—it was a realm of proof. Fire spoke louder than dialogue. And the seven demon kings had greeted her with hospitality, but also with tests. One after the other—flesh trials, mana distortions, false timelines, mirror selves. And yet, she endured. Not through brute force. Not through borrowed divinity.

But through genius.

She bent one of their own traps against them. Reversed a curse that had swallowed realms. And with that, the Seven sat. And listened.

There had been wine, black and thick, poured into chalices made from the skulls of fallen gods. Flames that moved like silk. And in the center, the Demon Empress herself—’@#$$&$#’, crowned in dusk and adorned in horns of curling bone that shimmered with starlight. Her skin was pale obsidian, her hair like rippling ink, and her gaze... unblinking. Heavy. Wise in the cruelest way.

She had tilted her head then, a bemused smile curling along lips stained with blood and prophecy.

"Child of the Mortal Spark," she had said, voice low and symphonic, "you walk among kings. What do you seek?"

Aurora had replied simply: "Knowledge."

The Empress leaned forward.

"Then let us wager."

There had been a stillness after those words—one that even demons respected. A stillness that smelled of copper and scorched oaths.

She continued, her tone now ceremonial. Almost gentle.

"There will come a time, Mortal, when your world will burn. Not from our doing—oh no, we are not so predictable—but from yours. Your wars. Your hunger. Your fractured loyalties. And in the midst of that chaos, you will think of us. You will wonder... what if."

Aurora had smiled.

"And I will call upon you."

The Demon Empress nodded slowly. Then raised her hand. A page appeared, hovering between them—dark as oil, etched in crimson lines that moved like veins. It pulsed. It knew.

"This is a piece of the Relic. Use it. Call us, and we shall answer."

Aurora had reached for it without fear.

But her voice stopped her mid-motion.

"The price," she said. "You are not foolish enough to think we deal in favors."

Aurora met her gaze. "What do you want?"

"A piece of you."

The Empress’s eyes glinted with something ancient. Something almost tender.

"Each of us. A slice of your brilliance . Not your power—not your mana pool. We want your utter brilliance . The thing that makes you singular. The mind that rewrote the laws. The spark that even gods envy."

Aurora’s hand hovered.

To give a demon a sliver of talent was not like giving away a memory or a skill. It was ’cutting your essence’. That slice would become theirs. Fuel for their own madness. She would never reclaim it. Never even ’remember’ what had been lost.

But still, she smiled.

Because in that moment, surrounded by creatures of hell and fire, Aurora knew something that made her smile even at damnation:

She had enough talent to spare.

"Agreed."

Her voice echoed across the chamber, and every Demon King smiled. All seven of them. Not in mockery. Not in hunger.

But in respect.

The page curled into her palm, warm like blood and humming with forbidden possibility. Aurora had tucked it into the weave of her soul—not her robe, not her vault. Her soul.

A relic she never planned to use.

Until now.

And now, standing at the edge of catastrophe, her fingers brushing the hidden sigil where that page still pulsed, Aurora felt the echo of that moment. Her body remembered the warmth. Her mind remembered the smile.

But her soul—

Her soul remembered the cost.

They would come. The Seven. They would answer. Not because they were loyal, but because the bet was sacred.

But when they came, they would each take a bite of her brilliance. They would feast on her mind’s edge. And there would be no undoing it.

And yet—

She still smiled again.

Because what was genius worth, if not wielded when the world hung on a hair’s breadth?

Because she had always known this day would come.

Because the bet wasn’t just a gamble.

It was a promise.

A pact made not out of desperation—but out of *certainty.

Because even among demons, Aurora had never been a guest.

She had been a True Master in her own right.

And Hell remembered her.

"I...Aurora...use the relic of the Council...Call upon the Seven Demon Kings for a seeki—"

Her voice trembled, just slightly. Not in fear. But in disgust. She had vowed never to use this. Not after what they took from her in return last time.

Her hands brushed her collarbone, where no mark was visible—but beneath, etched in bone, was still the sigil of Pride. The First Demon King.

And then—

"Stop."

A voice.

Familiar.

Soft, but absolute.

Like a thread through a hurricane.

Her lips parted—not in spellcasting, but in shock.

She turned.

Hold was still active. Every being and every moment still suspended.

Every other being.

And there he was.

Atlas.