Alastor's mind raced as he assessed the chaos unfolding before him, his Sage's Eyes automatically analyzing every detail with the precision that had made him one of the world's most formidable mages.
'I could forcefully terminate the ritual,' he thought grimly, magical power gathering around him like a storm barely held in check. 'But the backlash would likely destroy not just the hall, but Arthur himself. His mana circuits would fry completely.'
His gaze shifted to the small figure clinging desperately to Arthur's unconscious form—a girl with violet hair and golden eyes whose presence pressed against his senses like a blade drawn across silk. The power radiating from her was unmistakable, ancient and profound despite her childlike appearance.
The recognition hit him with startling clarity as his Sage's Eyes pierced through layers of concealment and misdirection. Not a Divine Beast summoned by the ritual—qilins weren't categorized as such. More concerning, this wasn't a juvenile creature like Rachel's phoenix.
'A fully mature qilin, bound by seals so powerful they strain even my sight to penetrate.'
'What is such a being doing here? And why is she so obviously connected to Arthur?'
Before he could pursue that line of investigation further, reality shifted in ways that made his blood freeze.
And suddenly, impossibly, she was there.
His wife. The love of his life and mother of his daughters. The woman whose brilliant mind and extraordinary Gift had helped protect the Northern continent for decades. The woman he had been forced to imprison for reasons that still tore at his soul every day.
Alastor's power erupted instinctively, a corona of devastating energy that could have leveled mountains, but even as his magic blazed with the fury of a Radiant-ranker, he felt small before her presence. Isolde stood there with the calm composure of someone who had transcended such concerns, her sapphire eyes holding depths that spoke to knowledge beyond mortal comprehension.
Acting on instincts honed by decades of protecting sensitive information, Alastor fractured the space around them with surgical precision. Light bent and twisted at his command, creating a pocket of distorted reality that would hide whatever was about to unfold from any potential observers. In the same instant, he extended his power toward Reika and Kali, rendering them unconscious before they could fully process what they were seeing.
'Some truths are too dangerous to witness.'
"M-mother?" Rachel's voice cut through the tension like a broken chord, her face draining of color as recognition dawned. Her hand flew to cover her mouth as her body began trembling with memories that should have been buried.
Alastor moved swiftly to support his daughter as her legs threatened to give out, feeling his heart break as he witnessed the trauma Isolde's mere presence could still inflict. Rachel's reaction was understandable—the last time she had seen her mother, the encounter had left scars that years of healing hadn't fully erased.
'This is exactly why I had to make that choice,' he reminded himself, though the justification felt hollow in the face of his daughter's pain.
"What are you doing here, Isolde?" Alastor demanded, his voice carrying the authority of someone accustomed to commanding respect from continental leaders. "How did you escape containment? And why now?"
'If she's here to harm Arthur, I'll have to stop her. Even if it means...'
"I am saving the boy's life, Alastor," Isolde replied with the calm certainty of someone stating obvious facts. "Nothing more, nothing less."
Her eyes met his directly, and despite all his power, all his experience, all his careful preparation, Alastor felt himself diminish under that gaze. Because Isolde's eyes weren't merely special—they transcended the normal categories of supernatural ability entirely.
The Gift that connected her directly to the Akashic Records, granting sight that encompassed past, present, and future. Not true omniscience—even Isolde's considerable talent limited her to high Immortal-rank in terms of raw power—but something far more dangerous than mere strength.
'She can see outcomes I can't even imagine. Possibilities that stretch across centuries of causality.'
Which meant that if Isolde claimed she could save Arthur, she wasn't speaking from hope or theory. She had seen the path to success with her own impossible sight.
"How will you save him?" Alastor asked, choosing his words carefully. A thousand other questions burned in his mind—why she had changed, what had driven her to the actions that had forced his hand, whether the woman he had loved still existed beneath whatever she had become—but he forced himself to focus on immediate necessity.
"The boy's balance has been shattered," Isolde said, her clinical tone at odds with the gravity of Arthur's condition. "Deepdark energy is consuming his body from within, overwhelming his Purelight channels and creating cascade failures throughout his entire system."
'I can see that much myself,' Alastor thought impatiently. 'What I need to know is how to fix it.'
"The solution is elegant in its simplicity," Isolde continued. "I will inscribe a Divine Miracle directly onto his body, creating a stabilizing matrix that can contain the opposing forces."
Alastor frowned, his analytical mind immediately identifying the flaw in her reasoning. "Standard Divine Miracles aren't powerful enough for this level of instability. The inscription would burn out before it could establish equilibrium."
"Which is why I won't be placing it on his skin," Isolde said with the patience of someone explaining basic concepts to a child. "I will inscribe it directly into his blood. Or rather, Luna will."
'Luna?' The name clicked into place as Alastor's gaze shifted back to the qilin clinging to Arthur's form. 'That's her name.'
But the implications of Isolde's statement hit him like a physical blow. "A Divine Miracle inscribed in blood... that's only been accomplished by..."
"Saintesses," Isolde confirmed. "Women whose entire bodies have been sanctified by divine power, allowing even their life essence to carry Purelight enchantments."
Alastor's thoughts stuttered as he realized the magnitude of what Isolde was suggesting. If Luna possessed the ability to inscribe Divine Miracles into blood, and Arthur's blood could handle that, it implied capabilities that defied everything he understood about magical taxonomy.
'What exactly is that qilin?'
Rachel had lost consciousness in his arms, her body finally succumbing to the trauma of seeing her mother after years of separation. As Alastor supported her unconscious form, he found himself face to face with the woman who had once been his partner in everything—ruling their territory, protecting their people, raising their children.
The woman who had been his anchor in a world gone mad with power and politics.
"Why did you become ?" The question escaped before he could stop it, carrying years of suppressed pain and confusion. "Why did you change, Isolde?"
For a moment, something shifted in her expression. The cold calculation that had defined her recent actions gave way to something softer, more familiar—a glimpse of the woman he had fallen in love with decades ago.
"I was proud of being born with these eyes," she said quietly, her voice carrying echoes of long-buried warmth. "I became prouder and happier when I was with you, Alastor. I was proud when we protected our homeland together, proud when I gave birth to our daughters, proud to be a queen and mother."
'But?' Alastor thought, hearing the unspoken qualifier in her tone.
Isolde's expression hardened again, the brief vulnerability vanishing behind walls of necessity and terrible knowledge. "But the world had other plans for me. Even now, they are moving—calculations that have been in motion for thousands of years, forces powerful enough to destroy planets when bored."
Her gaze grew distant, as if she were seeing beyond the present moment into futures that stretched across impossible timescales. "And she is still coming. For the plan to succeed, I must devote everything to its completion. It is my burden to bear, after all."
'She?' Alastor thought with growing unease. 'Who is still coming?'
Isolde's attention shifted briefly to Arthur's unconscious form, and for an instant, her expression carried something that might have been sympathy.
"I am not the only one cursed with knowledge, after all," she said softly. "Though his burden will prove different from mine. And incomparably greater. After all, Arthur Nightingale is the sole hope in this world."