CHAPTER 226: DIVINE JUDGEMENT

They approached the altar together, neither leading nor following but walking in synchronization, their steps matching without conscious coordination.

The black ice platform seemed to drink light, making the Star-Shards glow even brighter by contrast as they placed them in Serah’s outstretched hands.

The High Priestess held both shards up, examining them with professional assessment that shifted into something closer to shock as she registered their qualities.

"An Elder Elk," she murmured, studying Soren’s shard. "You killed an Elder Elk alone." Not a question, the shard’s size and purity confirmed it but disbelief colored her tone nonetheless.

"It seemed like the thing to do," Soren replied modestly, though his grin suggested he was deeply pleased with himself.

Serah turned her attention to Eris’s shard, her expression shifting through confusion to understanding to something that might have been approval. "And you freed a Frostfang Lynx from a trap. Let it die in peace rather than pain."

"It deserved better than to bleed out alone," Eris said quietly.

"Mercy and violence," Serah said, more to herself than them. "The fire queen shows compassion, the ice emperor seeks challenge. Aenithra’s sense of humor grows more complex with each generation."

She moved to the sacred bowl, a vessel carved from ice so ancient and compressed it had achieved density beyond normal frozen water, had become something closer to crystalline stone, completely immune to melting despite its frozen nature.

The bowl sat upon a pedestal of similar material, positioned at the altar’s exact center where centuries of ritual had worn grooves into the black ice.

Serah placed both Star-Shards into the bowl with ceremonial care, then began chanting in Old Nevarian, a language that predated the empire, that existed in the gap between human speech and the sounds wind made through ice caverns, that hurt mortal throats to speak for extended periods.

The words rose and fell in rhythms that suggested breathing, suggested heartbeat, suggested the slow grinding movement of glaciers that measured time in geological epochs.

Other priests joined the chant, their voices layering harmonies that created something beyond mere sound, something that resonated in bones and blood and the spaces between thoughts.

Then Serah lit the sacred fire.

It shouldn’t have been possible, fire beneath ice, heat applied to something that by definition couldn’t withstand heat. But this was ritual fire, unnatural flame, burning with purpose beyond simple combustion. It flickered blue and white and colors that didn’t exist in normal eyes, generating warmth that somehow never touched the bowl, that directed all its energy inward toward the Star-Shards instead.

The shards began to glow.

First Soren’s, the blue intensifying until it was painful to look at directly. Then Eris’s, the white brightening until it competed with the fading sun. The light built and built, pulsing in rhythm with the chanting, responding to magic and prayer and something older than both.

Then they began to melt.

Not like ice melting into water, but like solid transforming into liquid light, the crystalline structures losing cohesion, flowing together while maintaining their luminescence, becoming something between matter and energy, between physical substance and pure magic.

The crowd held their collective breath. This was the moment. The test. The divine judgment on whether this union was blessed or doomed.

If the shards rejected each other, they would burn the bowl black, crack it, potentially explode with enough force to injure those standing too close. If they merely tolerated each other, they would remain separate even in liquid form, would crystallize back into individual shards that could never quite merge. Only if the union was truly blessed would the shards combine, would they create something new rather than remaining eternally divided.

The liquid light swirled—blue and white chasing each other around the bowl’s interior, circling like predators or dancers, testing boundaries, seeking either harmony or dominance.

For several heartbeats, the outcome remained uncertain.

Then the colors began to merge.

Not tentatively. Not gradually. But enthusiastically, rushing together like long-separated lovers, intertwining with speed that suggested eagerness rather than reluctance. Blue and white spiraled faster and faster until they became a single color that was somehow both and neither, a shade that existed only in this moment, in this specific fusion of elements that should have been opposed.

The spiral accelerated until It was a blur, a miniature vortex of liquid magic spinning so fast it defied physics, climbing the bowl’s sides, threatening to escape containment entirely.

Then it crystallized.

The transformation happened between one heartbeat and the next—liquid to solid without transition, the spiral freezing in place, solidifying into a single Star-Shard that was larger than both originals combined, its structure impossibly complex, blue and white interwoven so thoroughly that separating them would mean destroying the whole.

It pulsed with light that wasn’t reflection, that came from within, that suggested the thing was alive in ways that transcended mere magical artifact.

Perfect fusion. No cracks. No scorching. No evidence of struggle or rejection or anything except complete, enthusiastic union that had created something greater than the sum of its parts.

Serah stared at it, her professional composure completely shattered. Her hands trembled as she reached into the bowl, lifting the fused shard with care that bordered on reverence.

"This..." her voice cracked, requiring her to start again. "This has never happened. Not in three centuries of recorded rituals. Not in the oldest texts. Not in the most optimistic prophecies."

She turned to face the crowd, holding the shard high where everyone could see, where its light painted the darkening sky in shades that had no names.

"This is more than blessing!" Her voice rang out across the mountaintop, carrying with power that suggested divine amplification, that made even those at the farthest edges hear every syllable with perfect clarity.

"This is Aenithra herself witnessing this union! The Frostmother acknowledges what we see before us, that the Emperor and his bride are destined to reshape the empire! That their union will bring changes that will echo through generations!"

The prophecy hit like physical force.

Everyone dropped to their knees.... nobles who’d been skeptical about this foreign marriage, priests who’d worried about fire and ice destroying each other, servants who’d merely been curious observers, guards who’d seen too much to believe in fairy tales.

All of them knelt before what they’d just witnessed, before proof that divine forces took interest in mortal affairs, before the terrifying and exhilarating possibility that their Emperor had chosen well after all.

Even Bianca, still present despite every instinct screaming to leave, to flee, to escape before witnessing more evidence that her dreams were ashes. Her knees hit ice with enough force to bruise, her jaw clenching hard enough to crack teeth, tears freezing on her cheeks as she knelt before the union she’d spent years believing should have been hers.

Chanting began, spontaneous at first, then building into coordinated rhythm as voices found harmony:

"Blessed be the crown of Nevareth!"

Over and over, the words rolling across the mountaintop like waves, like prayer, like the desperate hope of people who needed to believe their leaders were chosen by forces beyond politics and bloodlines.

In the center of this fervor, surrounded by kneeling witnesses and divine proclamations, Eris and Soren stood together, still holding hands, both slightly overwhelmed by the weight of expectation that had just been placed on them.

"Well," Soren said quietly, his voice pitched for her alone, "that’s going to be difficult to live up to."

"Reshaping the empire," Eris replied, equally quiet. "No pressure."

"We were already planning to cause problems. This just makes it official."

Despite everything, the exhaustion, the cold, the sudden burden of prophecy, she smiled. Short and sharp and genuine, the sound carrying more truth than any formal response could have managed.

Soren squeezed her hand once, his grip warm despite the cold, steady despite the chaos.

She squeezed back, answering without words, acknowledging without promises she couldn’t keep.

Tomorrow they would marry. Would bind themselves legally, politically, magically. Would step into roles that prophecy claimed were divinely ordained, that would demand more than either of them might be capable of giving.

But today, for this perfect moment on a mountaintop surrounded by kneeling crowds and fading light and the echo of divine favor, they were simply two people who’d survived their respective hunts and returned to each other whole.

It felt like enough.

It felt like everything.

It felt like the last moment of peace before the storm that neither of them saw coming, that waited in the shadows beyond torchlight, that wore faces they thought they knew and carried knives they wouldn’t see until steel met flesh.