When I came back to my senses, I still stood in the same spot as before, still the lecterns before me and the balcony behind. The council members seemed unaware of my episode and awaited my answer with bated breath. In their eyes, my talk with the painter could only have lasted a moment. However, within that moment I had understood something important. In my head, the pieces of a puzzle I wasn't even aware of fit themselves together.

Why had the Mystic trained me in the light-bending shape to such an extent, even at the cost of my sound-bending, something which had harmed me again and again? Why had he insisted I save all my mana up for this moment? Why had he implored me over and over to do what he himself couldn't?

At last I understood what the old man had regretted all his life. It wasn't that he had faltered at the last moment and chosen to retreat. Rather, at the crucial moment he had lacked the skills, the mana or the courage to press on and uncover the final veil, the last secret of Astralis. I still didn't sense a light-bending shape within the room, but I didn't have to see the barrier to know how to disrupt it. Destruction was always much easier than creation; and I still had plenty of mana left to play with. So I shaped my mana, as much as I could, and released it into the air, to unveil the last of the city’s lies! Finally, the council members realized my plans.

“Stop!”

They screamed and bounded over their lecterns to rush towards me, but unperturbed, I did as the Mystic had taught me. Countless shapes of force flew towards me, aimed to kill, but they bounced off my shell with no effect. The barrier discs of the guardians were really efficient after all, and the attacks of the council contained almost no mana. They would need minutes to break through, and I only took seconds to spread my shape throughout the room. The Grand Mages managed just a single step off their high chairs before they disappeared, and the illusion with them.

Freed from my final chains, I took a deep breath and looked around. Although the shape of the room was still the same, it had been transported hundreds, thousands of years into the future. The vibrant red and brown colors had washed out and made way for a uniform gray. My first look went over my shoulder, back out of the opened window.

To my dismay, I found the outside unfazed by my disruption. At least on this the council had been truthful: The outside world was in a sorry state. As for the Grand Mages themselves? In place of their lecterns, I found seven pods, familiar in appearance. A closer look confirmed my suspicions. They seemed almost the same as the training pods which had housed the second year students down below, the traps built to drain the mages of their mana. Only here, they seemed heavier, clunkier and much, much older.

Just like the ones down below, here as well I found windows in the front, to look at the Grand Mages inside. No matter which of the pods I picked, I found the same image. Corpses, dried up and mummified, lay there in a bed of cables and tubes. Though there was no light in their hollow eye sockets, I could see the faint movements of their chests. They were in even worse states than Eileen had been, yet somehow they were still alive.

“What have you done, you brat!?” a voice shrieked from one of the pods. It was just another magic trick of course. How could these things still form words without lips, tongues or throats?

“Why waste all this perfectly good mana just to uncover our shame!?” the voice continued.

“...it's all been a lie still, huh? All of it made up. You don't look like you became a mage this generation, 'Grand Mage Dawne'. And your pods are ancient too. You're the original seven, aren't you? The great Archmages, clinging to life by whatever means necessary.”

“Please wait! Yes, it is true, but we are the only ones who can save the city! No one else has even a fraction of our knowledge! Please look outside and see the world! We cannot fake that! Everything else we said has been the truth! Only if we work together can we rebuild the city as a shining beacon in the darkness!”

“Doesn't matter. You've built the entire city from lies, from the foundations of the sewers up to the top of the highest tower, just to keep yourselves alive for a few moments longer. Just to keep alive your malformed, incestuous brood. You've only ever cared about conserving the past, to preserve this purgatory just a little while longer. You're not looking for solutions. You’re happy where you are.”

I moved closer to the central pod, the one the leader had designated as his eternal resting place. I began to collect whatever I had left of my mana, the last of my reserves. I didn't even need a fancy shape for this. Destruction was easy.

“Stop! Or the ancient Archmages will use their strength to retaliate!”

“You know, a friend of mine had a good theory: The mages would have to channel and shape all the mana for the machines somehow, do the calculations. There had to be some sort of processing center. I just realized: That's you, isn't it? That's why you didn't kill me just now, or enslave me or do whatever you'd normally do with dissidents. You can't. You need every ounce of your being just to stay alive.”

Finally, the corpse turned quiet, though only for a moment. When I arrived in front of the pod, a final, defiant voice resounded in the room.

“You will shoulder the demise of the human race! You will commit the greatest crime in history! You will kill your own sisters!”

My answer was calm, my will unswayed.

“Whatever outcome, I will bear it on my conscience. Whatever the meaning of life, this city doesn't provide it. Whatever 'utopia' means, this city is the opposite. Rather than see it mold and fester any longer, I will make a decision, and burn it to the ground.”

My hand pressed against the warm pod and forced the last of my mana inside, right into the central heart of the city. To stop its beat and end its flow. Forever.