Final Book

4

The clash of storm and starlight was a sight that defied description. The valley was bathed in blinding light, the air thrumming with the collision of the elements.

And yet... The Guardian’s Ocean of Light, though it possessed the monstrous power of a Law, could not overcome the General’s storm. Blow after blow, lunge after lunge, maneuver after maneuver, Hadjar cut more and more chunks out of the Ocean of Light. And with each attack he landed, bloody wounds appeared on the Guardian’s body.

The Guardian, who was ignoring her wounds despite bleeding profusely, poured more and more power into the Ocean. But it was all in vain. The Blue Blade, already a storm in its own right, literally swallowed the Ocean of Light the same way ice might swallow water.

This pivotal moment was the turning point in their epic duel. Hadjar channeled all of his remaining power into the Blue Blade. Recognizing the impending threat, the Guardian summoned the last of her energy reserves, her golden robes shining like a beacon in an effort to defy the coming storm.

With a roar that melded with the howl of the storm, Hadjar unleashed the fury of his sword not only upon the Guardian, but seemingly upon the very fabric of reality itself, seeking to end their fight with a single, decisive strike. In response, his opponent enveloped her blade in a barrier of starlight, the last shield she had the strength to conjure.

Light and shadow, storm and starlight all collided in a final flash of blinding brilliance. When the light faded, the valley was silent, the air clear, the earth still.

On the ground, right before the General, lay the wounded Guardian. Her hair was tangled and disheveled, her once-beautiful robes tattered and shredded, and she was barely breathing.

Hadjar, with only a few new burns on his body, sat down beside her. Gently, carefully, he lifted the girl’s head and laid it in his lap.

“You couldn’t...” she gasped. “Change my fate, North Wind.” Blood trickled from the corners of her mouth. It looked like the glistening surface of a lake at dawn. “But I would... like to believe... that you will change yours.”

She closed her eyes and took one last breath, then stilled forever.

Hadjar, lowering her back down to the grass, finished the traditional phrase she’d begun their duel with:

“And die with honor, Guardian of the Seventh Heaven.”

Silently, he turned toward the mountain peak that seemed to be so high it had gotten lost somewhere up in the clouds. Somehow, he knew that even if he summoned a path of the Wind and used all of his Therna, mysteries, and Soul Power to their fullest, he still wouldn’t be able to ascend to the Abode of the Gods. Such was the twisted humor of the creators of this place — they’d left a Guardian condemned to a useless watch here. After all, she was so strong that she could defeat almost anyone, and even someone stronger than her still couldn’t do anything to the mountain. Unless...

From somewhere deep in the General’s memory, the voice of Freya reminded him:

“Hint number two: remember the gift.”

Hadjar looked up at the top of the mountain, and with a breath, he called upon something that had been stored in his soul for centuries.

Behind him, two white wings came out of his back, wings given to him long ago by the White Dragon, the ancestor of all dragons.

The General flapped them and lifted himself off the ground, moving farther and farther away from the foot of the mountain with each passing second, not noticing the white feathers detaching from his wings to form a ladder behind him.

Chapter 1904

Hadjar reached down and pressed the palm of his hand to whatever was acting as a replacement for the ground within the Seventh Heaven. His palm had barely grazed the white, swirling haze of light before he instantly recalled the sensations of morning mist and the faint, frosty dew falling from the leaves.

Except that here, in the Abode of the Gods, the ‘fog’ was solid. It was as if he were touching not the clouds beneath his feet, but something very firm that could hold up the entire Nameless World.

The General looked up and saw no horizon. The endless, snow-white expanse stretched out as far as the eye could see. And the sky... there was no sky in the usual sense. There were no stars, no clouds. Even the sun was absent.

Light seemed to be coming from everywhere. Energy emanated from every bit of the local reality, illuminating it in its entirety. However, the space itself seemed to consist of a tiny jigsaw puzzle assembled by a child, containing many miniature pieces of the whole, but somehow scrambled and...

Hadjar covered his eyes for a moment.

Helmer had told him on the way to the Land of the Immortals that the Seventh Heaven was nothing like the Spirit World, the Demon World, or even the Mortal Realm. But it was one thing to hear stories about an ephemeral world that seemed to exist outside of reality, and quite another to actually stand within it and try to endure its madness.

The General opened his eyes again and, trying not to think about what he was seeing before him, looked up once more. Where there’d once been clouds hovering above him, the sun shining, and at night, the moon had danced with the stars, there was now an endless, inky void.

And sometimes, if you looked hard enough, you could see reflections in it. These were bright, colorful flashes of every possible hue that could be found in the palettes of all four ‘lands’ of the Nameless World.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Someone standing not far from Hadjar asked.

He didn’t move toward the person yet. The General, who had flown using the wings of the White Dragon to the world of the gods, or at least its outer edge, could clearly see that he was now standing atop a stone pedestal — if what he was standing on could even be called stone — with many runes and writings carved into it.

After more than half a millennium of wandering around the Nameless World, it wasn’t hard for him to guess that the thing he’d found himself on was some sort of landing platform. In any case, this was probably the spot where those few madmen who had traveled the entirety of the Path of Cultivation attained divine essence after reaching the very pinnacle of said path. Either that, or they would lose everything that made them who they were and trade all their meaning and self-worth for the infinity of the gods. It was a purely philosophical question at this point. Einen would surely have had something wise to say about all of this.

“Don’t worry,” the stranger continued. “Everyone who sees the Seventh Heaven for the first time is shocked by our world. But it’s just a matter of getting used to it. You’ll get there in a few thousand years.”

Hadjar finally turned away from his contemplation of the void and looked at the guards who had greeted him. They didn’t look like... anything the General had ever seen before. It took him a long time to make out the silhouettes of the two ‘young men’ in the flashes of the World River’s energy, Soul Power, and mysteries.

They were probably older than anyone else Hadjar had encountered along his journey. Except the Ancients, of course. But then, they were Ancients as well. The two looked more like ordinary men than anything, but were dressed in masterfully-forged armor so fine it could have been mistaken for silken clothing. In a way, they resembled what the Seventh Heaven’s Guardian had worn and been, but in reverse.

“Have a little patience,” the other said. “Your mind will begin to adjust what you are seeing to what you are used to.”

And they were right — not even a few minutes had passed before the blobs of energy standing in front of him had gradually lost all the elaborate flashes and swirls of color that had replaced their flesh, until finally, two people appeared before the General. They were about the same age, with completely atypical features — too round, too beautiful, too flawless to be human.

But that was understandable. If even simple cultivators, as they progressed through the levels of cultivation, acquired more and more beautiful features of both face and body, what could one expect from the gods themselves, or at least those who called themselves such?