The Mystic Eyes of Crystallization were a miracle.
They let Astaraela freeze an area by turning her sapphire into a spreading crystalline field. Unlike most powers, Mystic Eyes do not demand energy to activate. For her, that meant the battlefield could become a crystal maze with a single glance and a single intent. The enemy did not always realize they were already inside the trap until their boots were locked to the ground and their weapons were half-buried in sapphire.
Her vision had fractured. That was why she wore the blindfold.
It was not about style, though the black cloth did make her look disturbingly elegant. The real reason was that her irises had shattered. She had golden eyes but was split through with blue cracks like a priceless gem dropped from a great height and was somehow still intact. Even her pupils had cracked. Her sight had become fragments of sight scattered across a wide field. She did not see the world in a simple straight line anymore. She saw it in angles, almost as if her awareness had been broken into mirrors and scattered around her head.
Most people would have called that a disability. Astaraela called it useful.
On the battlefield, fragmented vision was a gift. She could see different angles in a wide range at once, which meant she could catch movement from the side, behind and above without turning her head. It made ambushes nearly pointless. If she wanted, she could even force the fragments back into one whole image, but why would she? Why choose a single perspective when the battlefield was offering her several?
The blindfold itself though, was barely a blindfold. It was just cloth. A very dramatic piece of cloth, sure, but cloth all the same. What she really needed was a proper visor, and for that she had the tools. The Forge Furnace and the Mystical Forger soul Parasphlen housed within it were more than enough to build something practical. The moment she had free time, she intended to make a real one.
She had thought about splitting her body into her Pentarchs during the five-minute window when the Primal Force temporarily loosened its grip, but once she actually considered it, the idea stopped. The Primal Force of Time had already proven itself petty enough to punish the smallest rebellion. If she separated her body into Pentarchs too early, the realm might crush them before they were truly formed, or worse, leave them alive but useless. So she didn't use the Pentarch Technique.
For the moment, the commanders had agreed to recruit her and she signed the document. They now called her the Prism Madonna.
The pay was decent enough to make the whole thing feel less insane than it should have. She would earn ten thousand Isuone a week and fifty thousand a month. It sounded absurd until one remembered how wealth worked in a world where war consumed everything and the people who remained alive were often too tired to count money properly. Still, she had no intention of acting impressed. She had been through too much for that.
The commanders also gave her her own tent.
Apparently, women were not expected to bunk with the men, which was either courtesy, policy, or the battlefield's version of pretending to be civilized. She did not argue. She took Bio with her and went straight to the assigned space. The tent was plain, empty and smelled like damp canvas and shit. Apparently, immortals of the Timeless Realm used toilets. She was really lucky that she didn't need one.
Astaraela looked at it, then at the muddy ground and sighed.
"No."
Bio tilted her head. "No to what?"
"This floor. It's offensive to a Royal like me. Also, why does it smell like shit? Did someone use the canvas to wipe their asses with it?"
Bio gave her the look only a cat Therianthrope could give, which was to say the look of a creature judging an Aeterium for being dramatic while remaining too intelligent to dispute the point. Astaraela ignored her and raised one hand. Sapphire spread with a soft shimmer, flowing across the muddy ground and solidifying into a clean, smooth floor. It was elegant, practical, and, frankly, much easier to see. The entire tent looked better immediately. Bio stepped inside and then made the deeply unhelpful mistake of looking impressed.
"There, much better."
Bio pointed at the floor. "You crystallized a camp tent."
"Yes."
Astaraela smiled and opened Fool's Copy.
That was when the tent started to look less like a military assignment and more like a moving home.
Fool's Copy is one of the most useful Divine Artifacts she ever possessed second to Calimostria.
Given to her by Goddess Sirithiele, it could copy almost anything, store data about what it copied and then reproduce those things as needed. In her previous life, it always reminded her of a photocopier but smarter and vastly more dangerous. When she had received it at the age of seventeen, she had done the sensible thing and copied everything she owned into it.
Everything.
Food. Furniture. Shelter pieces. Spare clothes. Tools. Weapons. Even minor comforts that most people would forget to preserve were copied. If she had ever been told earlier to keep only one artifact, Fool's Copy would have won without competition.
She had modified it too, naturally.
She was a Mystical Forger. Leaving a perfectly good artifact untouched would have been almost rude. She had placed her own enchantments on it: [Indestructibility], [Soulbound], and [Energy Absorption]. It was clean, efficient and absolutely worth the effort.
Even better, she had two.
One remained with her daughters back in the Mortal Anchor and one remained with her. She had never given up her own. Fool's Copy had saved her too many times for that. In fact, if the Primal Force of Time had ever asked her to choose one possession to keep, the answer would have been immediate and insulting: Fool's Copy, no contest. After all, it had the copied data of Calimostria too.
She set the cube down in the middle of the tent and opened it.
Golden runes floated out in neat lines, hovering in front of he. The list appeared almost instantly. She had collected and preserved so many things over the years that the inventory looked less like a bag of belongings and more like the organized remains of several lifetimes.
"You really did copy everything."
"Of course I did."
"You know this makes you sound insane."
Astaraela looked at her without looking at her, which was to say the blindfold and the fractured sight made the gesture somehow more convincing.
"It makes me prepared to face anything."
Astaraela pulled out two beds, two mattresses, sheets, blankets and a simple table. The tent transformed immediately from battlefield nuisance to something almost comfortable. She placed the beds near opposite sides. One of the beds was for her and the other was for Bio. The table and four chairs made the finishing touch.
Bio looked at the second bed, then walked over and collapsed onto it with a dramatically relieved sigh.
"Finally. A surface that is not trying to murder my spine."
"You're welcome."
Bio rolled onto her back and folded her arms behind her head.
"I am very grateful to your unreasonable obsession with preparedness, Master."
"It's not unreasonable."
That silenced Bio for a second, which was fair. It was not often one could argue with survival.
Astaraela then pulled out a few more items: liquid soap, towels, spare clothes and a few other essentials she intended to use later. She set everything down. Her body felt lighter now, even if the world outside was still filthy with combat.
"What is all this?"
"A standard evening,"
Then Bio saw the soap. Her ears twitched.
"Oh. Bathing duty."
"Yes."
"I should warn you, I am only qualified for water-based operations."
"That's fine. Your original true form is a manta ray. Water is literally your entire brand. You just love being a cat."
"That sentence was rude."
"It was accurate."
"As your Divine Creature, I feel I should object."
"You can object after the bath."
Bio let out a theatrical sigh.
"Fine. But if you complain about the water temperature, I'm blaming your own life choices."
"Don't be dramatic, Lumine."
"You're the one who just turned a battlefield tent into a portable apartment."
Astaraela did not deny it. Bio was already moving to help as if the decision had been made ten minutes ago and she had merely waited to see how long Astaraela would pretend otherwise. That was the thing about them. They were companions, not slave and master. Nudity, privacy and the occasional absurdity of daily maintenance were not treated like scandals. They were treated like routine. When you had survived what they had survived, embarrassment became a luxury.
Astaraela sat on the edge of the bed and began removing the outer layers with. Bio turned away only out of habit, then glanced back and summoned water.
A clear stream rose from Bio's palm, formed cleanly into a sapphire bathtub Astaraela made, then warmed it under a gentle pulse of Soul Energy. Bio tested it with one finger and nodded in approval.
"Good. You're learning."
Bio gave her a dry look.
"I have always known how to bathe someone."
"Maybe for yourself, but you're in charge of your bathing now, apparently."
Astaraela sat in the tub while Bio began to bathe her. She glanced at her master and said:
"You know, this is probably the least intimidating I've ever seen you."
"Gee, thanks. You make me seem like I'm a monster"
"Because you are. You skinned corpses to fake your death."
Astaraela made an annoyed face and tossed the cloth at her with enough force to be rude. Bio caught it easily and sighed. She knew that she would have to get used to this. It was strange that his mind didn't break after a decade of extreme suffering but at least he was better.
------
Outside, the battlefield was still groaning with distant steel and dying light but inside everything had gone soft and hollow. Astaraela lay on her bed with one arm tucked beneath her head with her blindfold facing the canvas ceiling, while Bio lay on the opposite bed, both of them staring up as if the answer to everything might be stitched into the dark fabric above them.
Bio was the one who asked a question first.
"How are you enduring all this?"
Astaraela didn't answer right away. She kept staring at the ceiling. For a long moment Bio thought she might not respond at all. Then finally, Astaraela exhaled through her nose.
"I'm used to suffering. If I'm not suffering, then something's wrong. That's how my life has always been. Besides, I endured seven thousand seven hundred years in Erna Moon, did I not?."
"That's not normal."
"It is for me."
Bio went quiet again so she kept going.
"When I was separated into Pentarchs, my Time Pentarch was forcefully ascended to the Seventh Enlightenment. He stayed in a coma for two hundred years in a time bubble while time dragged him through force and consequence until he woke up stronger than he had any right to be."
Bio knew that but hearing from him felt different.
"Then the Protection Pentarch spent more than a hundred years in Regnum Musicae. He reached the Seventh Enlightenment there too. He got a Stellar Body. He became something that could stand in the same room as powers people only whisper about. And then I came here to this war that's already lasted a hundred years."
Bio didn't interrupt. Astaraela's fingers curled once against the blanket.
"Ten years of that war and then this. I don't endure this because I'm strong in some heroic way. I endure it because life's trained me to keep moving like this."
Bio stared at the ceiling for a while, as if she needed somewhere to put them. Then, quietly, she asked:
"Don't you miss them?"
Astaraela was silent. The question struck deeper than Bio probably meant it to.
"I do," Astaraela said at last.
Her voice was barely above a whisper now.
"Phaenora. Adelasta. Narisva. Asenane. Elyonari, I miss them all. I miss the sound of their voices. I miss seeing their faces without this distance between us. I want to tell them I'm fine. I want to sit in front of them and prove it but it had to be done because I had to die for them to grow."
"..."
"They're supposed to be the strongest beings capable of fighting against the Mopherian Pantheon. They shouldn't be trapped under the weight of my existence. They needed time, distance and the kind of rage that turns into discipline. That only happens if their foundation's gone."
Bio finally turned onto her side to look at her.
"You really think that was the only way?"
"Yes."
There was no hesitation in the answer.
"At first, they'll be angry. Furious, even. They'll burn with revenge. They'll curse me. They'll want answers. Then time will pass. Decades, maybe more. Eventually the anger will dull and all that will remain is the training. The only thing left for them to do will be to become stronger. That's what I planned for. I separated the Hidden Citadel from the rest of Spheraphase so time would move faster there. They'll have plenty of it."
Bio's ears lowered a little.
"My plan was to come here, enter the Time Trial, survive, become stronger and then return when I'd become someone worth the years they lost. That was the idea. That was always the idea."
"And if they forget you?"
Astaraela didn't answer at once.
"Love fades," she said finally.
Bio stared at her.
"It fades eventually, especially after they believe I'm dead. Time will pass for grief to calcify into memory. They may forget my voice. They may forget the details. They may remember me only as an ache they no longer know how to name. That's how time works."
"You really believe that?"
Astaraela gave a tiny, bitter laugh that held no humor in it.
"Of course I do. Who would want to take back a beloved who faked his death, brought unimaginable agony to them for decades and sealed them in a realm where time runs differently? Who'd rush towards that and call it love? I'm not expecting them to come running when I return. I'm not naive enough to think they'll feel the same way. Time changes people. It sure changed me, that's for sure."
Bio said nothing, because there was nothing clean to say to that.
"If I hadn't been transmigrated to Spheraphase, they'd all have become powerful figureheads in their own right. They weren't supposed to stay beneath me. I held them back by existing too close to them, by being the axis they revolved around. I love them all more than I care for myself but after what I did, they won't take me back. And if they do, it'll be out of pity for the suffering I went through because of what I chose."
She let that settle. Then, very softly, she said:
"That's exactly what they'll do."
Bio's eyes lowered. Astaraela turned her head just enough that the blindfold caught the faint edge of moonlight leaking through the tent seam.
"I prepared myself for that after I died. I came to terms with it. Once we leave the Timeless Realm and return to Spheraphase, I'll never interact with them again. It's better that way. It's better for them and better for me. They'll have moved on from my death so why should I drag the agony back into their lives after they spent so much time healing?"
Bio stared at her for a long time. Then she said the only thing left worth saying.
"That's unbelievably self-sacrificial of you."
"I know."
Bio looked almost offended by how calmly she said it.
"No, really. You're ridiculous."
"And yet you keep following me. You could have stayed with the others in the Mortal Anchor but you're here."
Bio opened her mouth, then shut it again because that one hit too close to home.
"I miss them, Bio. That's the part I didn't say out loud enough. I miss them constantly. It never stops. I just learned to keep moving anyway. If they remember me, then I'll face whatever they feel. If they don't, then I'll accept that too. Either way, I chose this. I knew what I was doing."
"And if it hurts too much when it ends?"
"Then it means I loved them properly."
Bio turned back to the ceiling, blinking hard. Astaraela closed her eyes behind the blindfold, though it changed very little of what she saw.
"So yes, I'm enduring it. I already lost the version of myself that expected anything else. I have to keep moving forward and endure. After my obligation with the world is done, I'll retire and maybe live in a farm or own a restaurant. That seems fine, doesn't it?"
And in the dark, with the battlefield breathing outside and the weight of all those names still hanging between them, Bio understood that the cruelest thing about Astaraela wasn't that she could survive anything.
It was that she could survive losing everything and still keep loving them anyway.