Chapter 107: Fall of the Constellations
In the Kingdom of the Elves, the silence between Xingyue and Celestia finally broke.
"What did you say?" Xingyue’s voice was sharp. The place began to tremble; a power that did not belong to this world escaped from her body, generating cracks everywhere.
"What... what did you say?" Xingyue asked again. She was now standing, looking at the elf with a fury completely opposite to her usual state.
Celestia began to tremble; she fell to the ground, unable to stay on her feet as the entire place shook.
"That..." she stammered. "No, no... they’re looking for it."
Tears began to well up in the eyes of the angel-faced princess, until she burst into childish crying on the floor.
"I’m sorry!" she exclaimed, sniffing loudly. "I’m so sorry! I had to tell you what you wanted to hear... They told me that if I didn’t convince you to stay, they would take away my magical silk sheets and force me to sleep on a itchy straw bed! And they would also confiscate my feather pillow! I’m such a fool, I’m sorry!"
Celestia continued crying inconsolably, rubbing her eyes like a little girl.
As Xingyue’s anger diminished in the face of such... particular words, she looked at the woman on the floor, who was still wiping away her tears with doubt.
"Sheets? Over some sheets..." Xingyue murmured, incredulous.
Celestia seemed to hear this and frowned slightly, looking toward Xingyue and momentarily forgetting what was happening.
"And my feather pillow..." she added with childish firmness.
"Seriously, the worst thing they can do to you is something like that?"
Celestia seemed to realize what she had said and covered her mouth in shame. An intense blush appeared across her entire face and she lowered her head, embarrassed.
Xingyue narrowed her eyes, thinking: "If they’re not looking for him, then I have nothing more to do."
She turned around and prepared to leave, although with another idea in mind.
"Wait!" Celestia stopped her. "Take me with you! I want to see the world!"
"You want to see the world?" Xingyue asked with irony.
The smallest of the ten sisters did not carry that name for being the youngest or the weakest, but for being the last to join them.
And this did not mean she had not learned one or two things from her master.
"Alright," Xingyue smiled with a slightly crooked grin. "I’ll show you what the ’world’ is."
She grabbed the woman, who was still a mess with a red face and visible tears, dragged her as if she were a rag, and appeared at the highest point of the castle where they were staying.
Xingyue could feel they were in a hidden place, a concealed city where thousands, if not millions, of elves lived, and where the most powerful ones resided.
The power of the stars began to gather.
It was the full might of a Venerable in all its splendor.
She might not have reached the level of an Immortal Emperor yet and was far from an Ancestor like Siyin, but her mastery over the stars made her no less lethal than the former.
Celestia looked on in terror at what was about to happen.
The stars began to shine with violent intensity, descending not as guiding lights, but as projectiles of final judgment.
"Look closely, Celestia," Xingyue whispered, her voice vibrating with the resonance of an infinite void. "This is the world you want to see. A place where what has no strength simply ceases to exist."
"Fall of the Constellations," Xingyue murmured.
In that instant, the night sky over the elven kingdom seemed to collapse.
There were no loud explosions or flames; only an absolute and terrifying silence as thousands of points of light descended like spears of pure energy.
Each "star" that touched the ground instantly disintegrated everything in a radius of kilometers: buildings, ancient trees, and the bodies of thousands of elves turned into stellar dust before they could even process it.
If there were transcendents there, or the so-called gods, all were reduced to nothing.
Celestia watched without understanding, her gaze lost in the absolute void that had once been her home.
At that moment there was only shock, but in the future she would begin to understand better who they had been trying to deceive.
On the other hand, the Elf God who was near Pradiles, advancing toward the Demor territory, was completely unaware of what had happened there.
And Cassian, our protagonist, was enjoying desserts with his little sister.
I must say that the look the new maid gave him when she returned from speaking with Selyne was a bit curious.
But it was nothing compared to the one Cassian himself would make minutes later, sitting with the other women, enjoying the delicacies they had ordered.
Suddenly, his hand stopped halfway with the spoon.
A frown appeared on his face and he directed a piercing gaze toward a distant place, far beyond the borders of the empire.
"Xingyue...?" he murmured to himself.
"Brother? Is something wrong?" Bethany asked, noticing his sudden distraction and tilting her head with a piece of strawberry cake in her mouth.
Cassian relaxed his expression and smiled again, although his eyes remained lost in something else.
"It’s nothing, little one. I just... thought I saw a star fall in broad daylight."
"A star?" Bethany laughed. "Brother, I don’t think stars fall during the day."
"Why not?" Cassian replied. But before he could continue, Mina intervened in a professional tone.
"Technically, it’s possible, young mistress," explained the maid as she poured the tea. "But rather than a star, what one would actually see falling would be pieces of space debris burning up due to kinetic friction. If it really had been a star that fell, I’m afraid we all would have noticed it because of the absolute disaster it would have caused; the impact would wipe out entire kingdoms. It would be a phenomenon not only strange, but catastrophic. Therefore, with all due respect, the young master’s observation was probably just an optical illusion caused by the sun’s reflection... or perhaps he was just joking."
Bethany stopped dead, spoon halfway to her mouth, looking at Mina with eyes as wide as saucers, overflowing with absolute admiration.
"Incredible!" the little girl exclaimed, almost jumping in her seat with excitement. "Mina, you know everything!"
Cassian, for his part, simply raised an eyebrow calmly while watching his sister’s enthusiasm.
He didn’t say another word on the subject; he simply went back to poking a piece of his dessert and continued eating with imperturbable calm.
However, the doubt that had arisen earlier kept resurfacing in his head from time to time.
