Aziz took a deep breath, before turning to Marie. “Is there someone else who has been called the Lost Star in the past two decades or so, someone other than little Gaius?”

“No.” Marie’s face was cramped up. “I swear, that kid is really a bundle of surprises. Every time we hear about him, there’s always something we never expect. At the East, he was busy playing a pivotal role in the war. When we were at the North, he was in a coma. When we met once more in the Heaven-cleaving Fortress, the guy was busy trying to fend off the governments of the Five Lands. And now, Hereward is telling me that he’s someone capable of standing against the great gods.”

She rubbed her head. “There’s a headache coming on, and I don’t like it at all.”

“The surprises don’t end there,” Aziz noted wryly. “After all, he’s not just someone capable of standing against the great gods, he is also someone who can apparently cut off the path to rising in the hierarchy of life, command an immortal army of monsters and create a world to boot.”

“Yeah.”

The two of them fell silent.

“You two know quite a lot about him, huh?” Minister Pauline asked. “Right, I visited him a long time ago, when he was in the South.”

“I think ‘a long time ago’ is wrong here, though,” Aziz pointed out. “It couldn’t have been more than three years.”

“It’s a turn of phrase, okay? And with so many things that happened in the past three years, it felt long to me, so get off my back,” Pauline replied. “I see why you’re still single so far.”

Aziz clutched his chest. “Excuse me? I’ll have you know that I’m only single because there’s always so much work on my desk! It’s not my fault if my bosses dump their unfinished work on me and Marie every day.”

They exchanged a few verbal barbs, but from what Aziz could hear from the general conversation in the auditorium, everyone else was more concerned with how a teenager had apparently gained so much power. To be honest, that was probably the more logical option, but only fools needed to think this hard to get an answer.

…He definitely wasn’t deriding the rest of the audience as fools, though.

After three minutes of heated discussion, the Sentinel of Space cleared his throat. The great god had been standing there in silence the whole time, seemingly content to let the audience discuss with fervour and everything.

“The person Orb calls the Lost Star, the slayer of the Human God, had been the Chosen of the Abyss for quite some time,” Hereward continued, as if there hadn’t been any pause between his previous words and his current sentence. “From my understanding, his original goal was to stop his fated nemesis, the Demon Sovereign, and help Orb tide through the invasion. After that, he would vanish from Orb forever. However, many things…changed.”

The radiant shadow looked up for the moment. “The demon invasion, which he had hoped would foster unity and bring about an end to this turbulent age, was defeated with ease. Everyone here knows what happened next, and he soon lost faith.”

His chilling words swept across the auditorium. Aziz understood what the great god meant. The demon invasion had been a catastrophic failure — the Five Lands ended up plotting against each other, to the point that more people died at the hands of their so-called allies than from their incursion into the Wildlands itself.

“…Hey.” Marie looked at Aziz. “Do you still remember?”

“Remember?” Aziz asked. “Remember what?”

“When we were invading the Wildlands, we saw him quite often, right?” Marie asked. “He was flitting in and out of the Wildlands often, carrying grievously injured people to the hospital in the Wildlands. He did that lots of times.”

A layered image of a teenager flying to and fro, with an injured person on his back. At times, he would help bring an entire convoy’s worth of supplies to camps, and…

Aziz took a deep breath, before shoving away the relevant memories. “Yeah, I do. That dumbass. Soldiers aren’t supposed to feel anything on the frontlines. Death is a given, it’s natural. That fool couldn’t accept that for some reason.”

Pinnacle Kolya walked over to Hereward, his face pale. “Hereward, why are you telling us this? For what purpose? Do you not intend for us to help after all?”

“I am telling you all this to let you learn his motive. Make no mistake — the genesis of his utopia is a mistake through and through. The spatial fabric of Orb has been damaged; the possibility for this entire world — nay, universe — would be destroyed with its advent is not zero. And for me, a non-zero percentage is too high a risk.” Hereward closed his eyes. “This isn’t about who’s right or wrong. Nor is it about what’s for the best. It’s about the risk his grand undertaking poses to all life.”

“For the greater good? Well, that’s what he’s saying too, according to you.” Kolya glared at the great god. “This is ridiculous.”

“Yes. It is. The great enemy of this world is trying to save you lot from yourself — that itself is already ridiculous,” Hereward replied. “I do not tell you this to garner sympathy for the poor fool. I tell you this so that everyone present can make adequate preparations, should the Abyss Sovereign ever truly reveal his motivations. If he does speak to the world candidly about his motivations, I fear that your armies will instantly defect or rise up in mutiny.”

He paused, and somehow, Aziz could see a fatigued, helpless smile on the featureless face of the radiant shadow. “After all, there is already a very convenient way of defecting up there, no?”

“You’re telling us…” Kolya clenched his fist. “You’re telling us to vilify him. To run his name into the mud, turn him into the object of our hate.”

“Precisely so. That way, his words would not carry much effect; his memories would be treated as propaganda, aimed to lower the guards of Orb’s people,” Hereward replied, his voice quiet.

The great god’s candid admission was enough to provoke an outbreak of bedlam within the auditorium, and as chaos swept the place, Aziz clenched his fist silently.

“Are we the bad guys here?”

“Maybe.” Pauline had a tired smile on her face. “At times, I envy Ark City. Being able to detach themselves from the Five Lands is great, no?”

She paused. “I’m tired. This whole thing is a farce.”

“Yes.” Marie’s shoulders drooped. “It is.”