"This world reshapes itself once every thousand years. New rules emerge. What's been accumulated is wiped away in a massive upheaval."
It sounded like a story that would go on for quite a while.
Theo kept his guard up, thinking this might be a trick—or an attempt to confuse and deceive him.
But Bael continued her story regardless of how wary he was.
"This world originally belonged to the fairies and great beasts. Gigantic animals roamed freely, and fairies and spirits would sing to the world from every little spring."
Bael waved her hand through the air as if wiping a blackboard with an eraser. The sunlit tea-party scenery flickered, and new images overlaid it.
What appeared were massive deer and squirrels, large enough to look up at in awe. They drank from shimmering pools, where fairies sat half-submerged, chatting away.
Theo could understand that what he was seeing was a vision of a long-forgotten past. A time before the world belonged to humans.
"But twilight came to this world, too."
With another wave of her hand, the peaceful springs turned blood-red. The surroundings caught fire. Fairies screamed, and beasts began dying—corpses piling up.
It was a vision of total chaos. It looked like war.
The heat of the flames, the acrid smoke, and the metallic tang of blood felt terrifyingly real in his nostrils.
Theo grimaced and tried to look away from the gruesome scene. That was when Bael spoke.
"You probably don't want to see this—but you should. Because what you're about to bring upon this world... will look just ."
"Yes. I thought Queen Aira was the key. But watching the world through her, I realized—the final fragment is you."
"The final fragment?"
One incomprehensible idea flowed into another. Like the mythical serpent that grew two heads for every one cut off, asking one question only led to two more.
It might have been Bael's intent all along.
To draw him into this endless philosophical babble and then, when he let his guard down, sink her teeth into his throat.
She had betrayed Solomon—so it wouldn't be strange if she betrayed Theo, too. Not that there was ever trust between them to begin with.
Trying to take control of the conversation, Theo said coolly:
"Your words are too obscure. Explain it so I can actually understand."
Bael let out a small sigh.
With another wave of her hand, the burning scenery vanished, and the peaceful garden tea party returned.
"After the Nymph died, Solomon began studying life and death. And eventually, he realized something. No one can overcome death—not even an era itself."
According to Bael, the Demon King Solomon, in his studies of death, came to understand that not only humans and animals, but also eras and even the world itself, had lifespans—and would inevitably perish.
The lifespan of an era: about a thousand years.
Every millennium, the world underwent a massive shift.
"That war you showed earlier—that was one of those shifts."
"Exactly. Now you're starting to understand. A thousand years ago, the world belonged to the fairies. But then, a wholly foreign concept disrupted everything. That concept is now what we call a god."
"You mean the God of Scorching Flame?"
In Theo's mind appeared an image—one hand holding a lantern, the other clutching a handful of salt.
The one called "god" in this world was none other than the Scorching Flame God, ruler of light and salt. All others were deemed heretical.
"The God of Scorching Flame. A truly divine being, no doubt. But back in the age of the fairies, there were no 'only god' doctrines, no divine magic. That external concept came and changed this world. Or you could say—it polluted it."
Theo had heard something before.
That the fall of the fairies and great spirits began when humans awakened to mana.
As worship turned away from the spirits and fairies, their powers waned. They declined.
And into that ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) vacuum stepped the Church's god and the magicians.
"This past millennium clearly belonged to the Church. But even that age is nearing its end. This era is about to declare its own extinction."
"So what you're saying is—"
The world changes in thousand-year cycles. And now, that cycle has returned?
If Bael's words were true, then maybe the collapse of the wall and the surge of the shadow horde had something to do with it, too.
Though... none of that had happened.
"But I stopped it. In the end, Aira wasn't executed. The wall didn't collapse either."
To that, Bael shook her head.
"No, you didn't stop it. You defeated me, after all."
So his last spell had worked.
"Yes. I'm dying. And in the midst of dying, I'm speaking to you. I only have enough time left for one more cup of tea. But that's plenty."
Bael pulled something from beneath the table and held it out toward Theo.
"This is what you're curious about, isn't it?"
It was a book, bound in brown leather.
Theo opened it and flipped through the pages. It was filled with formulas, materials, and magical constructions.
Reading it on the spot, he couldn't immediately understand all of it—but the countless scribbled notes and revisions proved it had been studied and refined over a very long time.
"Solomon made me—Bael—and then, at the end, created a human. We were all just stepping stones for the creation of that human. You know who I mean."
A human created by Solomon?
Only one name came to mind.
"Correct. He's Solomon's perfect duplicate. The king's very soul and memory, from his days of goodness, were copied into him. Now do you understand why Solomon and House Drayco studied soul transference together?"
Soul transference—banhonsul.
A technique for placing a soul into a vessel.
A spell designed to return the soul of the dead to the flesh once more.