The Exiled King | ✔

Chapter 25 - Worlds Saved

"My powers have returned. Fully," The creator god announced.

He had gathered the sibling gods together at the seeing pool.

Aeliyas gasped softly and immediately crouched by the seeing pool and peered deep into its depths.

"How?!" Pelos cried, his whole body sagging as he huffed out a long breath and sank down to the ground on his knees.

"I... do not know," Haert replied, the smallest of frowns creasing his temple.

With a shaky voice, Aeliyas stepped away from the seeing pool and stood up, saying, "I know. G-Grandfather, we imbued a key with a fragment of your power... it was meant to protect the mortals... And, well, I suppose it did, actually. One mortal used the power to rewind time itself."

She drew in a deep breath and continued in a quavering voice, "Y-Your power was absorbed into that mortal when he turned back time. It... became a part of him. And he... had children, and grandchildren... who all carried a shard of your power within them. Your powers returned when they perished off the mortal realm."

Pelos let out a low groan and Gialan asked quietly, "How did you find out, sister? Did you always know?"

Aeliyas shook her head. "I didn't know until the woman and baby died in Throeyns castle. The last remaining descendants were the twins."

"But they would not just have decided to die! Mortals have the strongest survival instincts! Was there a freak accident?! What happened?" Pelos cried, clawing at his face.

Aeliyas could not meet his eyes.

Barely more than a whisper, she admitted, "I told them. I told them that they had to die to save the world."

His face twisted into a mask of pure rage, Pelos lunged at his sister. Gialan, who had anticipated his brother's actions as soon as he heard those words, surged forward and grabbed his arm in an iron grip, holding him back.

"See past your rage, brother! Dargon is saved!" He hissed.

Aeliyas whipped her head back and gazed pleadingly at Pelos.

"Pelos! Brother, you know what I did was the right choice! Two lives for our world! It was the only possible outcome! If they had not died, then grandfather would have destroyed the world and they, along with everything else would return to nothingness! At least now their souls still exist... their spirits still roam the Ether! What is 'death' anyway, except the transition between realms? It is not erasure!"

She turned her gaze towards Haert and cried, "All your power is removed from our creation now! You have no reason to destroy it now... you will spare it, right?"

The creator god was silent for a few moments, the tension hanging thick in the air. Pelos had stopped struggling, though Gialan still held his arm firmly. All three siblings peered at Haert with bated breaths.

Then, Haert nodded and said, "You may keep the creation."

"But," He continued, "You must log it... your cluster of worlds... you may call it 'Sagar'. Also, should the balance of any of the worlds within Sagar skew too far, you must swear you will not intervene again. You will do nothing and you will merely watch as it self-corrects. Is that clear?"

The three siblings nodded and answered in unison, "So we swear!"

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I sense that he should be around here... somewhere, Pelos thought, pushing branches out of his way as he navigated the forest. He had landed on Dargon in the eastern fringe of the Ahyeld forest, where Cassiel's mana signature had last been sensed.