Long ago, there was a great flood.
It was an enormous flood that swallowed the entire world.
Rain poured down so suddenly and in such vast quantities that humans could not possibly cope, storms raged across the sea, and tsunamis rose.
It was a massive calamity ordered by Zeus, who judged that humanity had fallen, and brought about by Poseidon. It poured down for days on end, raising the sea level without limit.
As the sea level rose, the two continents gradually shrank in area, countries along the coasts and further inland collapsed one after another, and humans slowly gathered toward the center of the continents.
In response, Aetius resisted the will of the gods. Because of that, it cast aside the name Aetius and became the continent it is now, Palind.
Agoris bowed its head to the gods’ calamity and followed their will. That is why Agoris is still Agoris.
This was humanity’s first calamity, the beginning of everything—of the endless wars fought over and over between humans and gods.
It was what, in the world Frondier had come from, was called “Deucalion’s Flood.”
"......At last!"
Asgard. Gladsheim.
Odin, who had been standing still at its center, threw back his head and shouted.
"The Moirai are dead!"
A voice thrilled with joy. Eyes shining.
All the gods around him nodded as they watched him.
"Now we no longer have to live shackled by that damned fate! There is no such thing as Ragnarok anymore!"
From the moment he ascended as king of the gods, through endless ages, Odin had lived in fear of Ragnarok.
Ragnarok, which pointed to the fate that the gods would one day fall. You could say that he had lived his life to avoid it.
In this Asgard, the goddesses of fate were not the Moirai but a trio called the Norn, yet they were three all the same. Each called Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld.
However, in the Norn’s case, they clung strictly to the position of “observers,” and even if you wept and begged them, fate would not change. They only spoke of what they had seen.
Originally, the Moirai had been the same. They presided over fate, but they did not manipulate it. They merely adjusted things so everything would proceed according to the natural order, the proper way.
But that stance changed after the “first” Ragnarok.
The day they fought their first war against the giants. The gods had won. They had shed much blood, but in the end they had emerged victorious.
That had certainly been Ragnarok. Without a doubt.
But the Norn did not think so. Nor did the Moirai.
They said this was not Ragnarok, and that the true end would come next.
They said the same in the war after that, and in the war after that as well.
That was when Odin realized it.
That the Moirai were using this threat called “Ragnarok” to make the gods move according to their own will. That Ragnarok was a phantom.
In practice, «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» the Moirai were beings the gods could not lay a hand on. The gods could never oppose those who peered into fate. Because, more than anyone, it was the gods who were closest to fate.
But those Moirai were dead. The curse of Ragnarok that had bound Odin was gone.
"Thor!"
Odin shouted.
Thor sighed and flicked a finger in his ear.
"I get it, I get it. Don’t shout, it’s loud."
"Go kill Frondier right this instant and come back!"
"I said I get it."
Thor’s face was one of annoyance, but there was interest in his eyes.
They had killed those Moirai? Was there really a fate they could not read?
"But what if you’re mistaken?"
Thor asked Odin.
"Mistaken?"
"What if Ragnarok is real. What if the Moirai weren’t manipulating things, and it really just hasn’t come yet. Then you won’t be able to foresee or prepare for anything, and you’ll get caught by Ragnarok with no way out. Just like all the gods here."
At Thor’s words, anxiety flickered across the faces of the gods nearby.
Odin snorted and shook his head, as if the idea were absurd.
"Heh, it doesn’t matter how things turn out. The Moirai and the Norn have endlessly proclaimed the threat of Ragnarok. We had no choice but to hear it, whether we wanted to or not. And we’ve already experienced that the deeds we did to avoid it only drove us closer to fate."
"......You mean a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"Exactly. There is no such thing as Ragnarok. Think of how our attempts to avoid it only made our situation worse."
At that, Thor’s eyes dimmed a little.
There was nothing wrong in what Odin said. It was undeniably true that every act carried out to avoid Ragnarok had made the gods’ situation worse. There was an irony in that, where they only came to feel the power of fate more strongly.
But even so, to dismiss it all as nothing.
"......Odin, I’ve never liked anything you’ve done."
Thor turned and began to walk. He’d been given an order, after all.
He threw his words over his shoulder to Odin behind him.
"Back when you greedily clawed after wisdom, at least then one could still call you a god."
"Thor! How dare you!"
Baldur cried out at those words. Thor flapped a hand lightly, then gave a small jump in place.
With that alone, he was no longer there.
***
The imperial palace’s conference chamber.
Here too, they naturally felt the earth-shaking tremors.
Reports came pouring in along with them, flooding into Philly’s ears.
"......The sea has sunk......?"
Philly muttered, as if she found it hard to believe. But no matter where the reports came from, they all said the same thing.
The level of the sea had dropped. As a result, the land beneath the sea had revealed itself.
In other words, the continent had grown wider.
Philly pressed a hand to her temple.
"Even as empress, this is a scale I can’t handle."
Then she looked at Bartello beside her.
"How about you, Your Majesty?"
"If you can’t handle it, how could I."
Bartello shook his head as he spoke.
"If you can’t see the whole staircase, how about climbing it one step at a time."
"......You really are you."
Philly nodded.
Just then, the Zodiacs, who had still been groaning and letting out labored breaths, all of a sudden lifted their heads.
"What the......?"
One of them spoke.
"It’s gone."
"The pressure from the possessions......."
The Zodiacs looked toward one another as they rose to their feet.
Ospreet canceled the spell he was in the middle of chanting.
Up until now, he had been casting magic on Zodiacs who looked like they couldn’t endure any longer.
Honestly, he didn’t want to do it anymore.
"Hoo......."
Beside him, Aten, who was in charge of recovery, let out a breath of relief too.
Thanks to her, the Zodiacs had come out relatively safe even after being struck by Ospreet’s magic.
"You did splendidly, Lady Aten."
"I simply tended to the people, that’s all."
Aten spoke modestly, but Ospreet did not see it that way.
Aten’s healing magic was on an astounding level.
Even for Ospreet, not every field of magic was at the highest level. In the case of healing magic, his attainment was relatively lower than his other spells.
So he couldn’t precisely gauge just how high Aten’s level in healing magic was.
‘Can something at that level even be called “healing magic” anymore?’
Aten was treating the damage Ospreet had inflicted.
Her work looked less like healing and more like rewinding things to the state before the injury.
"Your Majesty!!"
Just then, a retainer came running in haste.
He dropped to one knee before Bartello.
"A message has come from Teiven!"
Teiven?
Bartello and Philly’s eyes narrowed.
They were certain this would be more talk about the sea. Or else one of the many reports of wild beasts and flocks of birds that had come in along with it.
But if it was Teiven, then it couldn’t be any of those. The sea was not nearby, and it was far too cold a region for wild beasts or birds.
"It is a sighting report from the Barrier. They said a single pillar of light was seen beyond the north!"
"......Light......? Can’t you give a more precise description?"
When Philly asked, the retainer stammered in reply.
"Th-the, based on the fact that it was seen from the Barrier, we believe the light is exceedingly bright and also wide in scope. The light was in a vertical shape, stretching from the ground all the way to the edge of the sky!"
A single shaft of light, connecting the earth to the sky.
Philly couldn’t put her finger on it, so she asked again.
"The exact location?"
"Th-that is......."
At that moment, the retainer’s eyes flicked for an instant.
For a very brief moment, his gaze turned toward where the Zodiacs were gathered.
"......Ah!"
Among those Zodiacs,
Ridwi von Urpa cried out.
"That’d be the place! Where I woke up!"
"Woke up?"
"Same as you lot, I was possessed by a god in the past. But the god that possessed me didn’t go to Agoris! It headed to some place beyond Teiven’s Barrier."
Beyond Teiven’s Barrier. In some cave.
There, Ridwi had seen it.
─The roots suck in everything in the world, and the flower spits everything back out into the world. Yet the two belong to different worlds.
─There were humans there. Rotten flesh, crushed bones, dried blood had piled up. Even if you craned your neck, you could not see above it.
Ridwi had seen that scene. To be precise, he remembered it.
He remembered it because a god had possessed him and seen that sight.
Where Ridwi had been, there was Yggdrasil. The very place Frondier had gone to save Atjie.
But Frondier, there, had seen skulls but no humans. He had not seen the mound of corpses Ridwi had seen.
That was not a memory of the present. It was a memory of the past.
The memory the god possessed had been projected into Ridwi.
"You’re saying light suddenly appeared there!"
Which meant that light had shot up above Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil was a trunk rooted inside the cave. But above that cave, there had been nothing.
If that light was in exactly the same position as the Yggdrasil located within the cave—
"......Are the gods coming."
Having finished his speculation, Ospreet asked. Ridwi nodded.
"Aye. All the gods will ride that light down to the surface."
"So that’s why the possessions stopped."
"That’s right. There’s no need for them to possess anyone anymore."
Philly, who had heard all of this, immediately looked to Bartello.
When Bartello nodded, Philly shouted,
"All Zodiacs, to Teiven!"
"Yes, Your Majesty!!"
The Zodiacs began to move at once.
Ospreet, in particular, moved quickly. He lifted his body and, before taking flight, spoke,
"Those who can’t fly, wait here for a bit. I’ll leave a ‘Gate’ for you."
Then he passed a message to Philly.
"Please inform the other soldiers as well. I’ll link the Gate to that same one from last time."
"What do you mean, ‘that Gate’?"
At that, Ospreet smiled.
"You remember the meeting during the Manggot War, don’t you. The Gate that pinned Frondier down when he was trying to sneak out of the imperial palace."
"Ah."
Philly smiled. She nodded.
Ospreet flew off, and,
"Then I’ll go too."
Elodie followed after him. She was the only one who could match Ospreet’s flying speed.
The other Zodiacs capable of flight moved as well.
Philly looked at Aten and said,
"You’ve worked hard, my girl. Rest a little."
Aten nodded. Sweat beaded on her face.
She had expended a considerable amount of strength continually healing the Zodiacs.
Once the war against the gods began, her power would be in enormous demand. She needed to rest, at least for this little while.
"Just a moment, Aten."
But there was someone who called out to her.
Aten raised her head.
Philly tilted her head slightly, puzzled as she looked to the side.
"You?"
It was the emperor, Bartello, who had called Aten.
"There’s somewhere I’d like you to go."
At those words, Aten blinked blankly at the emperor.
If it had been anyone else, they would at once have dropped to one knee, but Aten was different.
If anything, she was confused now.
She didn’t know whether Bartello was speaking as her father, or as emperor.
Even so, Aten did her best to be proper as she asked,
"Yes, where would you like me to go?"
The emperor answered,
"Could you go to House Roach."
Twitch.
Aten’s body trembled for a moment at those words.
The illustrious House Roach was now in a completely broken state.
The eldest son, Atjie, was dead, and the second son, Frondier, had crossed worlds to save his dead brother. Both his brother’s rescue and his own return hung on a sliver of a chance.
Angfer and Malia had lost the will to fight.
Their eldest son had died on the way home from the imperial palace, and their second son had been driven out of the country.
What were they supposed to fight for? There was no one who could answer.
But Aten didn’t show it and simply asked again,
"May I ask why?"
"It hardly needs to be said. The enemy is coming from the north. We need the northern iron wall."
"......My dear."
At that, Philly narrowed her eyes.
"Aten is exhausted right now. If you want to ask Angfer for help, there are many people who could go. It doesn’t have to be Aten."
"No, I want Aten to go."
Bartello spoke, looking at Aten.
Aten’s exhaustion would be visible even to Bartello’s eyes.
Even so, he did not change his expression as he spoke.
"Aten, can you go?"
At that, Aten’s eyes sank.
Right. This was Bartello.
“As a father,” huh. Aten, what were you expecting.
She had never once seen anything like that in Bartello.
"......I’m not sure I have the right to move that person."
"No."
Bartello shook his head.
"You’re the only one who can."
"......I’m the only one?"
Aten asked in confusion.
"After you transferred to Constel,"
Bartello’s gaze tilted slightly.
"You sat next to Frondier, didn’t you."
"......Yes."
"You chased after him to get hints about the Dragon Heart. You received help on the exam along the way."
Bartello’s calm voice went on.
Aten listened, blankly.
'......So you knew everything.'
He knew it all. He must have received reports about Aten.
He’d read all of them, and remembered all of it.
"How was it, that first time you faced Renzo?"
"......I did what I had to do, as imperial princess,"
"No."
Bartello shook his head slowly.
"Aten. I’m not asking the princess. I’m asking you."
"......."
"Weren’t you afraid."
"......I was afraid."
"During the vacation, what about in Teiven. You fought monsters across the Barrier, didn’t you."
"I was afraid then too."
At Aten’s words, Bartello briefly closed his eyes.
"I’m sorry."
"......!"
"I used my frailty as an excuse and failed to look after you."
At that, Aten’s eyes trembled. Philly, startled, even parted her lips.
Bartello spoke again.
"......Aten. When you were in danger, Frondier was at your side. If it’s you, you can move Angfer. You believe in Frondier’s survival and success more than anyone—"
"I!"
Aten cried out then.
Cutting off Bartello—the emperor’s—words.
"Do you know when I was most afraid?"
When she asked that, Aten was,
Biting her lip, fists clenched tight, looking at Bartello with eyes full of resentment.
"Your Majesty, do you remember when I met Frondier at the imperial palace? The occasion to commend the joint operation between Pro and the palace."
"......Of course I remember."
"It was then that I first learned."
Aten looked straight at Bartello.
"That Your Majesty had grown frail."
"......!"
"I had so few chances to face you that I had only ever met you as emperor, and I never knew, all that time, that you’d grown so weak......!"
When Aten had seen Bartello then,
Bartello had been sitting in his chair, withered, as if he might die at any moment.
He had no idea how shocking that had been.
The emperor had always been the emperor.
Not once had he ever been a father.
And yet.
That emperor had, over a time his daughter knew nothing of, been continually losing strength.
"......The next time we meet."
Aten clenched her teeth. In the end, tears dripped down from the corners of her eyes.
"It felt like you were going to vanish."
"......."
"Without me knowing what kind of situation you were in, how hard and painful it was for you, without knowing anything."
Her voice shook with sobs.
Bartello simply listened.
Philly, watching from the side, kept her mouth shut.
Elicia, who had been walking briskly down the corridor, stopped in the middle of her steps.
Salle, who had been poring over operational maps, lifted his head.
The family of Terst, all of them,
Were listening to their youngest daughter’s voice.
"I don’t know anything about you yet, and all I have for memories are your appearances as emperor. I was afraid you’d disappear just like that, with me still knowing nothing."
Aten covered her eyes with both hands. Held down by her tears, her words wouldn’t come out properly. Her voice only grew rougher and louder.
"That was what I was most......."
Afraid of.
Compared to that, everything Bartello was asking her now was nothing.
She had poured her all into holding back the enemy, treating the wounded, saving people. Because she’d learned that heart from Frondier.
So it was fine. She could endure that kind of fear.
But before she could heal or save anyone.
If he were to disappear somewhere, someday, without anyone knowing where or when.
What would she possibly be able to do.
"......Aten."
Bartello quietly called her name.
A warm voice. Probably the first time Aten had heard it, and the first time Bartello himself had spoken in that tone.
Ssshhh.
Bartello rose to his feet.
He came closer to Aten and placed both hands on her shoulders.
"In that case, you have to go."
"......Dad."
"It’s very late, but not everything is too late, is it."
Bartello asked gently, and Aten hid her tears and nodded.
Bartello gave a quiet smile.
"You already know what it is to be crushed by guilt in a father’s heart."
Go to Angfer. Go to House Roach.
Just as you’ve done until now.
To save people.
