Chapter 236: Another Woman's Arms

Evan's arrival did not go unnoticed.

High above, beyond the cloud covered sky, beyond the very edge of the world's atmosphere, a vast and dense curtain of dark violet smoke could be seen enveloping the entire planet.

It was the Abyss.

For countless cycles, it had tried to invade this world, to corrupt it and destroy it completely. And for countless cycles, it had failed. Every single time, just as destruction seemed inevitable, someone had managed to stop it.

And that someone had always been Evan.

But hidden within that curtain of smoke lay something far greater.

An endless expanse of void energy, so vast it seemed to have no boundary at all.

Deep within this seemingly infinite expanse, a gigantic glowing purple sphere could be seen pulsing.

It was the center of the Abyss, its very core.

This was the force that commanded the Abyss, and the one to which every single Hollow in existence was tethered.

It was the beating heart of the Abyss, a heart inhabited by the most powerful entity the Abyss had ever known.

In that moment, above the enormous sphere, two pairs of eyes appeared.

They were enormous, and impossibly deep.

Eyes that seemed to hold an entire universe within them.

They didn't move, and yet their mere appearance seemed to affect the entire surrounding environment, which grew noticeably calmer.

For a moment, nothing else happened. Then an ancient voice resonated.

"This presence... So the time has finally come."

The voice sounded strangely tired, as though whoever it belonged to had just woken from a slumber that had lasted far too long.

But the effect those words had was the exact opposite. The instant they echoed out, the Abyss began to tremble.

The void energy stirred. The entire dark expanse seemed to come alive. The enormous sphere began pulsing rapidly. And something that had lain dormant for all this time, buried within it, was beginning to stir.

Meanwhile, on the surface, time seemed to resume. Sounds returned. Bodies of every kind, some clashing, some fleeing, moved once more, and the minds of every living being that had been frozen unlocked all at once.

Evangeline, who only an instant before had watched the humanoid Abyss God's attack closing in on her, now found herself looking at something else entirely.

Not the attack anymore, but someone's back.

A broad back that gave her a sense of safety only one being in her entire life had ever been able to give her.

It didn't take her long to understand who it was.

Evan turned his head just enough to look at the dragon woman behind him, and said,

"I hope I'm not too late, Eva."

His words were calm, but they echoed powerfully inside the dragon woman's mind. She recognized that tone. That gaze.

It was him. Really him. He had come back.

Before her mind could process anything else, and before Evan could say another word, she let herself go, throwing her arms around him from behind with a force that would have crushed a Demi God to death under normal circumstances, but for Evan, it was nothing more than a warm embrace, full of the woman's relief and joy.

"Hey, I just told Venom a moment ago that you would reprimand her if you ever saw her clinging to me like a koala. What am I supposed to tell her if she sees you like this?" Evan said, making no effort whatsoever to free himself.

Evangeline, letting herself be swept up by her own emotions, seemed to smile at those words as she loosened the embrace slightly.

"As her older sister, I have the right to scold her. And as your most loyal subordinate, I have the right to show my happiness," she said, her tone a little calmer now, though she still struggled to hide her emotions.

Evan, hearing that, shook his head, but he wasn't irritated, nor did it bother him. It simply wasn't the moment for any of that.

"I can't argue with that. Though I imagine it'll be difficult for you, considering I have a very jealous goddess waiting to hunt me down." he said. And as though those words had triggered something, another pillar of light burst forth, this time not from the sky, but rising from the ground toward it.

This one wasn't black, nor violet, but yellow, a pale, intensely luminous yellow, and its source was not the Fallen Lands, but the Kingdom of Solren itself, more precisely, west of Ashwick, within the Greymark Duchy.

There, where not even the remains of BranLeaf had survived, only a massive and incredibly deep crater remained.

Suddenly, the crater began to fill with light.

And from within it, the pillar of light shot toward the sky.

The moment it reached the clouds, they dissipated instantly, leaving behind only the pillar of light, which seemed to illuminate the entire duchy in a warm glow.

At the pillar's appearance, and at the light itself, beasts seemed to slow down and stop. Hollows seemed to retreat, as though fearing that light. And the people of the region, or at least the villagers still standing in the surrounding settlements, felt an intense sense of warmth the moment the pillar's light fell over them.

"Mother, what is that?" a small girl asked, her appearance a little battered, held tightly in her mother's arms. Her wide, innocent eyes, eyes that had already seen far more than anyone her age should ever have to see, stared up at the pillar of light, feeling that warmth spreading through her.

The mother, herself covered in wounds both small and large, held the girl tightly, as though afraid she might lose her at any moment. She too looked up at the pillar of light and felt that same sense of warmth.

She said nothing, not because she didn't want to, but because she didn't know what to say. She felt her wounds beginning to mend the moment that pillar appeared. She felt her energy returning. She felt her mind calming.

And the same thing was happening throughout the duchy. People watched the pillar with wide eyes as they felt its effects, and for a moment, none of them knew what was happening.

Then a realization seemed to strike some of them.

One born from the ancient stories surrounding the Greymark Duchy.

One that the eldest among them remembered as a bedtime story, told countless times over the years.

"It's the grace of the Goddess of Life," murmured an elderly man, his frail body sprawled on the ground, dying, in the middle of a battlefield that only moments ago had been more brutal than ever.

He had been lying there, breathing his last breaths, when the pillar appeared. And the moment he saw it, his eyes filled with tears, as the memories of the old stories, told to him as a child, stories he himself had once told to his own children, came flooding back.

When the world was surrounded by darkness, a golden ray pierced the shadows and lit up the earth, filling it once more with warmth and life.

And from that ray was born the divine grace of the Goddess of Life.

And now, in this very moment, he watched with his own eyes as that very grace appeared in the distance.

He wasn't the only one. Everyone saw it. Everyone could make out a strange structure rising in the distance, wrapped in that same ray of light. The structure thickened, branched outward, and grew majestic.

It was the Tree of Life.

Above the tree's branches, blooming before the eyes of the entire Greymark duchy, a cocoon of light began to form. It started small, no larger than a ball, then grew steadily until it reached a size close to that of an average person.

The cocoon trembled, and for an instant, the silhouette of a woman could be glimpsed within it. It moved, and the moment it did, the cocoon flared brightly as its surface began to crack, one crack, then two, then four, and within seconds it shattered entirely, leaving behind only a female figure.

She wore a long white dress that moved gently despite the complete absence of wind. Her figure was graceful and slender, and every movement she made carried a natural, almost unreal elegance.

Behind her, three pairs of white wings unfurled, each one made of feathers that glowed faintly with a soft, gentle light.

Her long golden hair cascaded down her back.

Her delicate face finally showed signs of life as her eyes began to open.

Her emerald irises appeared slowly beneath her delicate eyelids, clear and radiant, standing in sharp contrast to the serene expression on her face.

Her gaze dropped toward the land below.

Land she hadn't seen in a very, very long time.

The earth stretching out beneath her was familiar, and yet, at the same time, strangely different from what she remembered. The lands, the cities, even the very shape of the world had changed during her absence, turning that place into something both recognizable and foreign all at once.

She remained silent for a few moments, simply taking it all in.

Then her gaze shifted.

It swept across clouds, mountains, and forests, passing through countless cities as though none of them existed at all.

Until it finally settled, on a single figure.

Evan's.

Her golden eyes narrowed slightly as a faint glow appeared within her emerald irises.

Then her voice rang out, a voice that seemed to travel across vast distances to reach him.

"I lose sight of you for one moment, and you're already in the arms of another woman?"