Apocalypse Era, Year 466.
Myria Continent, the Northern Frontier.
The silver-gray sky was gloomy and dim. The biting cold wind roared as always, while swirling snowflakes spun and leapt wildly. Driven by the gale, they wove together into an airtight white net that blocked vision and blurred the horizon.
Artemis, incarnated as Lilith, gazed at the sky beyond the stone window. Goose-feather blizzards were reflected in her silver-gray pupils.
“Lilith! Stop staring out the window! Don’t worry—your father will make it back in ti. Co help stack the firewood!”
Her mother’s voice ca from behind, but it did not affect “Lilith” at all. She continued to stare calmly at the horizon, until the gathered clouds began to churn. Only then did a trace of change appear in her silver-gray eyes.
“It’s coming…”
Coming?
Tamia, her mother, who was adding fuel to the hearth, frowned.
She subconsciously looked outside. She did not see her husband Hafdan, but her attention was quickly seized by the abnormal sky.
At so unknown mont, the vast heavens suddenly darkened. Dense lightning slowly gathered across the firmant.
Purple lightning surged without cease, as though the entire sky were trembling. Then—when the thunderous roar reached a certain peak—the heavens abruptly split open!
“Moon Goddess… this… this is…”
Staring at the apocalyptic sky, Tamia’s face filled with terror.
But the next second, silver radiance spread through the stone house. Her mind grew heavy, and she quickly fell asleep.
Lilith stood up.
She glanced at her “mother” collapsed on the ground, then at Harald, who was still playing with his toys in a dazed, foolish manner. With a casual gesture, she sent him into sleep as well and placed both of them onto the bed.
Then she stepped forward and left the stone house.
With a single step, her figure seed to cross thousands of miles, arriving in the high heavens.
Her silver hair lengthened, her form shifted, and she swiftly returned to the appearance of the Moon Goddess Artemis.
Beams of divine power lit up across the continent, then rushed toward the site of the anomaly. Clearly, the gods had also been alard.
Artemis frowned slightly.
She had not expected the appearance of a spaceti rift to cause such a commotion.
This did not match her mories. In the recollections imparted by Teacher Charlotte, she had not seen such a grand spectacle in her previous life.
“This won’t do. Such a disturbance—if it wakes the one who sleeps…”
Concern showed on Artemis’s face.
Just as she was rapidly considering counterasures, crimson light suddenly blood at her waist.
Her heart stirred. Lowering her gaze, she saw that the source of the glow was the Gospel of Blood Charlotte had given her.
As if realizing sothing, a glimr of understanding flashed through the Moon Goddess’s eyes. She reached out and took hold of the illusory book.
At the instant she touched the Gospel of Blood, an invisible ripple spread outward with the gospel at its center.
Where it passed, all color drained away. The world turned gray and white.
The wind stopped. The snow ceased. Even the many gods rushing toward the sky froze in place as color faded from them.
In that mont, the entire world seed to beco a still, black-and-white painting.
“Ti and space… have stopped…”
Artemis’s heart stirred.
This was the power of the laws of ti and space—a creation divine power that even the Origin had not mastered, a power belonging to Teacher Charlotte!
Under the cover of this power, Artemis beca one of the only three points of color left in the world.
One was the Gospel of Blood in her hand—its radiance shielded her. The other was the rotating lightning vortex at the center of the anomaly.
But at this mont, that lightning had turned crimson, faintly exuding a power aura Artemis found incomparably familiar.
It was also the aura of the Gospel of Blood.
Only far weaker than the one in her hand—and far more rigid.
Artemis imdiately understood.
That was the gospel belonging to her teacher from another spaceti—her teacher who had crossed history.
“Lilith, you must deliver it to the future ‘.’”
Charlotte’s words before falling into slumber echoed again in Artemis’s mind.
Sensing the aura of the other Gospel of Blood, Artemis did not hesitate. She sent the to in her hand forward.
The Gospel of Blood left her grasp. Deprived of divine protection, Artemis herself began to be dyed by the gray of ti-space stasis.
Yet having been enveloped by the gospel’s radiance, before the grayness completely swallowed her vision, Artemis—relying on divine perception—still saw what followed.
The illusory Gospel of Blood was sent into the spaceti rift, then, as if drawn by so unseen pull, rged into one with another identical aura sowhere beyond perception.
In an instant, Artemis saw countless shattered images:
A leaf wrapped in crimson, appearing upon a vast, desolate land…
A silver-haired girl standing atop mountains of corpses and seas of blood, leaning on a broken sword and roaring at the sky…
The True Ancestor of Blood seated upon a throne, slowly awakening…
A golden-haired girl lying within a crystal coffin, sinking into deep slumber…
…
Artemis quickly judged that these were scenes of Teacher Charlotte before and after crossing ti.
Ti flowed from back to front, continuously retracing itself. With each passing scene, the light of the Gospel of Blood she had sent dimd by a fraction, while the gospel within those scenes grew stronger by a fraction.
“The sa thing cannot exist within the sa spaceti.”
Artemis recalled what her teacher had once said and instantly understood—these Gospel of Blood from different spacetis were “rging,” becoming one.
The images kept flashing, then shattering as the two crimson lights fused—crossing again and again, cycle after cycle… until the end.
The end was also the beginning.
It was an ornate noble bed.
Upon it lay a pale-skinned, beautiful girl, seemingly twelve or thirteen years old.
Her eyes were closed, golden hair scattered, life already gone.
It was the corpse of a young girl.
Outside the bed, a woman with blood-red eyes held a black spellbook, incessantly chanting a spell to summon a bound holy spirit.
Crimson light spread.
The illusory Gospel of Blood instantly subrged into the girl’s body, and then… she slowly opened her eyes.
…
The image shattered here.
Everything Artemis had just seen in her mind dissolved like bubbles. mories scattered and vanished, as though they had never existed. When she ca back to herself, she realized she was still standing inside the stone house.
She was still using Lilith’s incarnation, still gazing toward the distant sky—only now there was no thunder, no rift, only swirling snow.
Artemis frowned. She felt as if she had forgotten sothing, but soon… even that sense of forgetting faded away.
The next instant, however, she discovered that the Gospel of Blood entrusted to her by her teacher was “gone.”
Her heart clenched. Almost instinctively, Artemis stood up, her expression grave.
The blizzard stopped.
Harald, at the age of playful mischief, excitedly tugged at “Lilith,” urging her to go outside and play.
But Artemis had little interest.
While responding to Harald as any ordinary child would, she repeatedly swept the area with divine power, frantically searching for traces of the Gospel of Blood. Her mood sank steadily.
“Did the Origin act?”
“Or did so change I don’t know about occur?”
“The gospel… where did it go?!”
“The Origin… has it truly awakened again?”
Her expression grew increasingly grim, terror faintly surfacing in her eyes.
Until—
Commotion arose in the distance.
Along with it ca “Father” Hafdan’s familiar booming voice.
“Hahaha! Honored Blessed One! Please, try our ad!”
At that title, Artemis froze.
She grabbed Harald and rushed back to the stone house like a madwoman. Then she saw her father sitting carelessly by the campfire—and opposite him, a petite figure both deeply familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar.
eting the curious gaze of the golden-haired girl, and sensing from her the familiar aura of the Gospel of Blood, a sudden understanding surged through Artemis’s heart.
She let out a long breath, her eyes filling with excitent.
“Ah… so that’s how it is…”
“It seems… I had already succeeded in delivering it into my teacher’s hands…”
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