“A lot of people, especially priests and other members of the clergy, love to claim that they had been visited by the divine in their dreams and whatnot. All too often this was bogus, a parlor trick to fool the more gullible believers, usually for their own personal benefits or power. Those who actually received messages from the Deities mostly kept silent about the fact, and if the Deities really did wish to announce something, it wouldn’t just be one priest who heard about it, but all of them instead.” - Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 530 FP, after the debacle later known as the fake decree of Pesca.

Aideen had somewhat braced herself after Grandpa Aarin’s rather cryptic reminder about the Divine paying her a visit before long, but even she had not expected it to happen that very night.

She was asleep that night when she suddenly found herself aware of her surroundings, yet it was not the tent she had slept in. Her perception felt off for a while, until she realized that it was because she was perceiving her surroundings through mana instead of through her organs. Once she adjusted her mindset to match the method, she noticed the unexpected “view” of her surroundings.

It was as if she floated on top of what looked like a dense, shining cloud of pure mana, of such a size that she might well call it a floating island instead. Her mana couldn’t spread far enough to perceive much further than the general vicinity of where she was situated, but for some reason, she felt certain that there were more such floating islands in the distance.

Then the presence arrived that was in no way ignorable. A presence that demanded her full attention, not by force, but simply due to the gravity it had to it, an inexorable feeling that nothing else mattered in its presence. To Aideen it appeared like a blindingly bright humanoid figure of nondescript features. Its shine was far too bright for her perception to make out any distinguishable feature on the figure, yet it somehow gave her a warm and comfortable feeling nonetheless.

“Greetings, Child of Life and Death,” she ‘heard’ the figure speak in her mind. The voice was neither male nor female, and sounded as if it came from every direction around her, both near and far, echoing yet harmonious all at the same time. Aideen recalled another occasion when she faced a similar “voice”, which was when she fought against the mad king and the Deity descended over a month ago.

This was the same “voice” as what she heard at that time.

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The voice of Vitalis, Deity of Life.

Aideen looked at the glowing figure that seemed to be patiently waiting for her to respond, floating to the side. She mustered her courage to say something, but it felt like her throat was sealed shut at first, not unlike the feeling she had when the Deity descended before her to punish the mad king back on that eventful night a month ago.

“Uh… Hello?” Aideen managed to utter at last.

“Be not afraid, Child,” said the deity with what felt like some amused chuckling at Aideen’s nervous reply. “You are brought before our presence here not because you have done anything wrong. On the contrary, you have done well with your life, something we can only praise and applause from here. Far too many waste their lives and never reach their full potential, and that saddens us.”

“We believe that you had been notified that we would pay you a visit, yes?” the Deity continued. Aideen was uncertain whether she should answer the question or not. She had no intention of getting Grandpa Aarin into trouble, if his warning was something he shouldn’t have said to her. “Oh, none of that, Child. That warning was something he gave with our full knowledge and consent. Rest assured that all is well with it,” said the Deity as if they could read her mind, which for all Aideen knew might well be the case.

“We brought you for this visit because you have come across a secret of this world that is best kept as a secret, and ask for your understanding in the matter,” said the Deity next, which surprised Aideen somewhat. Her mind couldn’t help but churn and think of what secret the Deity might have meant, but couldn’t come up with anything even after a while.

“Ah, so you have yet to have time to truly think on what you have witnessed, that is understandable given the circumstances you faced in the past month. You have seen something that with some time, you will likely start questioning, and through it, the plans of us Deities as well. Feel free to think for a while, Child. Time means little here in this realm.”

Aideen pondered what the Deity had said, that she had seen something which touched upon the plans of the Deities. She knew that it must have happened during the night when the Deity manifested before her, when she fought the mad king, so she tried her best to remember what she had seen and felt throughout that night. Every little thing that she might have missed or otherwise discarded as unimportant at the time.

A long, timeless moment passed as Aideen pondered and reviewed her memories of the fateful night, of every little thing she could recall about it, of the mad king and the Deity, and even of the Divine Punishment. It was not until a long while that her thoughts started to converge on a possibility she had never thought about before, one that almost sounded blasphemous to even think of, much less in the presence of a Deity.

Yet when she put things together with how she had been visited by one of the Deities themselves, who said it out loud that she had seen things that touched upon the plans of the Divine, she couldn’t help but feel that the blasphemous thought she had was the answer she had been looking for all along, as unlikely as it seemed at first.