Chapter 730: If only

Divine power rose from the corpse in vast, luminous currents.

The victor guided it with trembling hands, separating and reshaping what remained of his foe until immense strands extended across the shattered landscape.

They reached into the earth.

Broken landmasses shuddered, their drifting edges slowing as those radiant lengths wound around and beneath them.

Across distances Elion could scarcely comprehend, colossal anchors took shape, their foundations sinking into the world’s deepest surviving layers.

Chains followed.

They stretched through the wounded depths, immense links forming from power and godly remains, binding the scattered pieces before they could drift farther apart.

Elion felt the breath leave his spectral body as understanding dawned on him.

’Those chains...’

But the vision gave him no time to dwell upon it.

The man stood at the center of an expanding formation, its intricate geometry spreading beneath his feet. Rings passed through rings, enclosing countless inscriptions that moved with a precision far beyond anything Elion had ever seen.

It crossed mountains and descended into abysses.

Its radiance shone beneath the remnants of cities, reaching through the fractured world until the trembling finally began to subside.

The land held, though barely.

Even then, it remained a place where almost nothing could live. Poisonous vapor drifted over scorched plains, and the little water that remained lay beneath layers of ash.

The man understood that as well, but he could not draw any more divine power from his foe’s remains... Nothing but ash was left of them.

So, he raised his hands again, and this time, the power came from within him.

His body bent beneath the strain as a second formation unfolded, its delicate lines intertwining with the first. Where the greater structure held the world together, this one sank into its wounds, drawing upon what remained and guiding it slowly toward recovery.

Elion watched color leave the man’s face.

The radiance surrounding him diminished, pouring into that extraordinary work until his knees buckled beneath his own weight. Even after he fell, he continued, pressing one shaking hand against the ground while the last lines found their places.

Only when the formation was complete did he finally collapse.

The survivors rushed toward him.

Their gratitude reached Elion as a confused chorus of voices, hands lifting their wounded savior while others knelt upon ground that had at last stopped shaking.

He had brought their world back from the brink of destruction, but restoring it would take time.

The vision passed into preparations, then departure. Those who remained gathered what little they could carry and followed their weakened leader through a passage of light, leaving the ruined world to recover beneath the formations he had created.

Beyond that passage lay green land and an unfamiliar sky. For a time, they prospered, and Elion thought their suffering had finally ended, that is, until he saw the chains they were made to wear.

These were much smaller than those holding their world together.

They circled wrists and throats, binding the survivors to mines, fields, and great stone works beneath the watch of people whose language Elion did not know.

He saw their homes and possessions get pillaged, their families separated, and their exhausted bodies abused to the point of despair.

Their leader could not stop it; he was too weak.

The strength he had expended upon their world had left wounds that centuries could scarcely begin to mend.

When he tried to intervene, he was forced back, protecting those within his reach while the rest remained beyond his help.

The years passed through Elion in a succession of faces.

Children became adults. Those adults grew old, and their children inherited the same burdens.

The survivors’ gratitude curdled beneath generations of humiliation, until the story of the ancestor who had saved them became inseparable from the memory of the battle that had destroyed their home.

They wanted to return, but their leader refused.

"It is not ready."

He said repeatedly, his voice frail but resolute. Before him stood people whose hands were scarred from work, whose backs had bent beneath lives they had never chosen.

They asked again, and once again, he warned them.

The formations needed more time. The green returning to the land would not mean that its deeper wounds had healed, and bringing everyone back too soon would endanger the recovery he had sacrificed so much to begin.

But they were tired of waiting.

Tired of chains, of burying their children in foreign soil, of being told that freedom lay somewhere beyond another century they would never live to see.

Their pleas became accusations, and those accusations inevitably became demands.

Elion watched the weakened man retreat beneath the fury of the people he had once gathered from the ashes.

They forced him to reveal the method he had prepared for their eventual return, taking the knowledge he had refused to use before its time.

Even then, it was not enough.

The passage required power.

Their ancestor had recovered a little over the centuries, carefully preserving what strength he could spare to protect them.

They took that too.

He looked upon their faces as they gathered around him, and Elion saw the moment he understood their intent.

Their ancestor died within a crowded chamber, too frail to resist the hands of the people he had saved, or so they thought.

The strength remaining within him became fuel for their formation. Light rose between them, widening into a passage through which a familiar world awaited.

They crossed.

Elion went with them, watching with wondrous eyes as green hills unfolded beneath an open sky.

Young forests clothed the slopes, their leaves stirring in a clean breeze, while clear streams wound through valleys that had once been filled with fire and ash. In the distance, broken towers rose above the trees, their weathered stone softened by flowering vines.

The people began to cry... Others fell to their knees, pressing their hands into the grass as though afraid it would disappear beneath their touch.

Laughter followed the tears, rising from voices that had spent generations speaking quietly beneath another people’s rule.

Their home was beautiful.

Their ancestor had been wrong, and they had been right.

That certainty spread among them as they walked into the sunlight, already imagining rebuilt cities and cultivated fields, kingdoms rising beneath their old banners.

Their world had once been the envy of countless others, a place of magnificent powers and prosperous nations.

Looking upon those green hills, they believed it would become so again... Or so they thought.

If only things could be so simple.