Azraüs and Nathanaël finally reached the throne.
Despite all the Rosia Clan's subordinates and every warrior who had stood in their way, they had finally arrived at their final destination.
Nathanaël remembered every face he had fought up to this point. He even remembered those who had let them pass. On their faces, Nathanaël could read gratitude, hope, and a desire for change, but he had been too focused to see it clearly.
He had already guessed that very few warriors truly supported Azraël in his cause, and that if they wanted to achieve their goal, they had to step aside.
Yet, in Nathanaël's mind, they were still bloodthirsty beasts who sought nothing but battle. So seeing some of them refuse even the slightest bloodshed left him puzzled about their true intentions.
Had they already accepted defeat? Did they simply believe the outcome was inevitable?
Nathanaël didn't know.
There was also the faint hope that a wind of change would finally reach this nation, but he gave it very little credit.
Still, Nathanaël pushed all those thoughts aside the moment they saw the scene waiting for them at the top of the stairs.
The Ogre sat calmly beside the throne, a peaceful smile resting on his face, while Azraël stood before him, his expression dark, staring silently at his father.
Azraüs looked at his father with vacant eyes, searching the impossible tableau before him for an answer to what had happened.
Then, he slowly lowered his head.
The answer was obvious after all...
"Do you remember the day he came home after we learned Mom had died? He looked pathetic... crying... and I hated him for lying to me. I thought only Mom wasn't invincible, but I was wrong. Seeing him like this makes me realize... death takes everyone."
A suffocating silence settled over them for a long minute.
Then Azraël finally spoke.
Neither of them looked the other in the eyes. Each was lost within his own thoughts as the atmosphere grew heavier and heavier.
At last, Azraël answered.
"For once, something intelligent comes out of your mouth, brother. It was about time."
His voice sounded weak and fragile, as though the Clan Chief he had become was about to collapse at any moment.
"Even so, I will turn Nozras into a nation of peace, and no one will stop me. Not Father. Not you. Not your friend. No one. We've lived in bloodshed and chaos for far too long. We've done nothing but kill each other throughout history. There's no reason for us to remain this pathetic and miserable... these heartless barbarians. Peace will reign. I will change this nation."
Azraüs didn't answer immediately.
His eyes remained fixed on his late father.
"And I'll make you regret what you've done... brother."
**
The Fourth Book.
Astra was protecting the Fourth Book.
Jin didn't know why, nor did he bother trying to understand.
The book rested upon a pedestal of ice, itself standing within a cavern made entirely of ice.
The thing before him was simply too powerful.
"So, the genius of fighting ? You wanted to defeat me? You wanted to see what level you had reached?"
Even her voice was far from ordinary. Within this frozen landscape, the Natural Disaster sounded like a raging blizzard every time she spoke.
Her power was far beyond that of a mere natural disaster.
Jin couldn't even get close. Walls of ice constantly rose before him. When it wasn't that, a massive pit of lava would suddenly open beneath his feet, or hailstones the size of footballs would rain down upon him. Every natural disaster imaginable was unleashed against him while Astra floated not far away, her body still made entirely of water.
"Damn"
Jin leaped backward to avoid an enormous boulder crashing down where he had stood.
Jin was undoubtedly among humanity's strongest. Very few humans could stand against him. He believed perhaps only his master, the Emperor, and maybe the warriors of the Nation of War could rival him.
He didn't know them personally.
But this was another world. The rules were different. The powers were different. Even the very nature of energy was different.
And above all...
Jin possessed nothing extraordinary himself.
After hearing Marc and his companions' stories, combined with his own experiences, Jin now knew of several beings : A destructive entity whose aura was darker than the void of space... perhaps even darker. A being capable of destroying the world itself.
A being who could create time loops whenever he wished, at any point in time. Completely overpowered. Jin believed that being was probably even stronger than Astra. He had fought him himself.
The white beings, who appeared to be the most ordinary of them all, possessed the ability to adapt to their opponents. The more often they encountered someone, the stronger they became, meaning that one day they would likely surpass everyone.
A strange woman made of dust and shattered glass, whose powers remained as mysterious as they were unknown.
And finally...
He knew a little about the Four Horsemen.
In fact, Jin hadn't held back.
He had read the first book Marc had brought back—the one Marc himself had been afraid to read.
The moment he opened the first page, words appeared before him.
"You who aid the Hero must leave him. A terrible enemy awaits you in the Empire at the center of the world. There, you will learn to master your aura and deepen your understanding of strength."
Those were the only lines that truly spoke to Jin.
The rest described the course of the war, Aeros, Astra, and the other two Horsemen. It explained how they would be defeated and exactly how those events were meant to unfold.
In fact, the entire apocalypse was recorded in painstaking detail throughout the book.
Except for one small section that had been deliberately left unclear...
But Jin had focused almost entirely on Astra. Everything was written there. From her arrival to her end.
It was unsettling.
Jin had read this:
"Astra was born on the day of the first storm. When nature claimed a human life for the very first time. It was the first catastrophe... the first natural catastrophe. When she opened her eyes, she was the storm itself. And the first thing she did resembled a newborn crying. But instead of tears... she unleashed herself upon the world."
Jin wasn't fond of reading.
Yet what he had read disturbed him. Far too much to tell Marc about it.
After all, the book had instructed him to go fight somewhere else.
So he did.
He left his master behind.
It was disturbing how everything unfolded exactly as foretold. How the destiny written inside those books seemed inevitable.
Marc had refused to read what was written inside them, so Jin had kept silent, even though he had thought it was foolish.
At least...
that was before he read it himself.
Jin actually knew why Astra was guarding this book.
He knew why the books had been scattered across the world in this precise way.
He knew why the Four Horsemen had descended.
He knew why Marc was the Chosen One.
He knew why Marc had received those visions instead of him.
He knew why it was the apocalypse.
He knew why...
Reading those books was pointless.
Suddenly, a tornado formed beside him, cutting off his useless thoughts.
It wasn't very large at first, but it grew bigger with every second. Astra was already smiling at the thought of ending Jin's life.
The wind spun faster and faster, sweeping everything in its path. Before long, the tornado had become enormous and terrifying.
Jin had no way to stop it.
Unless...
he learned what exactly was aura...
**
Nathanaël had wondered about it...
That strange energy that Nathanaël and Marc had brought back the first time they returned from the other world.
That time, Nathanaël had felt it. The air was different. It contained something like a gas that escaped his understanding. The world was different, but not in the way it looked—in the way it felt.
It was a disturbing sensation he would never forget. Marc must have felt it far more times than he had. After all, he had traveled to the other world countless times.
But not Nathanaël. He had been forced to understand and master it by himself.
The first time he saw it on someone, it was on Marc. It was black, horrifyingly dark. He had been afraid of it. So afraid that he had not dared approach him. Yet in the end, he had studied it anyway.
He could see a kind of vapor, a sort of smoke, escaping from Marc's body. It was dark and peculiar, much denser than ordinary smoke. Perhaps it was even denser than water. It rose upward, though it did not seem to travel very far. However, the more time Marc spent in the other world, the higher it rose.
Then there were the days when it exploded.
The Church of Zvenne : Marc had fallen into a mad rage, and his aura had erupted in every direction. The strange smoke swirling around him burst outward violently. It was terrifying because Marc's aura was dark—pitch black—and nothing seemed darker except the Man in Black himself.
The second time was when he carried Elie on his back.
That time, Marc had tried to control his aura himself, and it had been a complete failure. The black aura scattered like pressurized gas, crushing every White Being in its path. The scene was horrifying, but Nathanaël had understood something.
Aura was almost a consciousness of its own.
It did not always obey what its owner wanted. Even if it looked like a projection of a person's power, it possessed a will separate from its user's mind and was not always under control.
At least, that was true for Marc.
Since Marc had become his subject of study, Nathanaël compared him with everything he encountered. He had also noticed that quantity did not necessarily mean power.
The first time he returned home, Nathanaël noticed that his house was glowing. After a brief examination, he realized it was covered in his own aura. The amount was enormous, yet he doubted his house was stronger than Marc.
Secondly, the beings of the other world possessed strange auras.
To begin with, everything was supposed to have an aura, yet the White Beings had none. Nathanaël did not really want to dwell on that fact, but it was still worth noting.
Then there were the entities.
Or rather, those who had names.
Goagi, for example, possessed an incredibly powerful aura. Far greater than anyone else's Nathanaël had encountered. Even Astra did not possess such an aura. Neither she nor the Lady of the Ruins.
At first, Goagi's aura was orange, as though he did not want to be noticed. But the moment he revealed himself, it became a mixture of blue and violet.
Nathanaël did not know whether colors truly mattered. He did not think so.
But seeing how Marc's aura perfectly matched his gloomy demeanor and depression, he had begun to doubt that assumption.
Goagi's aura had occupied his entire field of vision. Everything he saw was swallowed by that strange gas—or liquid—or floating energy drifting through the air.
It was beautiful sometimes but also strange.
Looking closer, Nathanaël noticed that his aura was made of countless tiny loops, each bearing the symbol of infinity.
They were so small that they were almost meaningless, especially since Goagi had already explained his own powers.
He could not draw much else from that powerful being of the other world, but once again, it was worth noting.
Then there was Marc's testimony about the Man in Black.
"Seeing him in dreams is one thing. Seeing him in real life is impossible. I don't even know how I managed to stay standing. It was horrible. Horrible. His six black wings, his long dark robe... He looked exactly like an angel abandoned by the heavens. But the worst part was his aura. The moment we opened the door, it was everywhere. It was dark and sorrowful. Every negative emotion rushed into your head. And above all... it was black. There was nothing except blackness. Pure, absolute loneliness surrounded you. It felt like being alone, lost in infinite abyss."
That testimony had chilled Nathanaël to the bone.
Before he had learned to see aura, he had simply viewed the Man in Black as an ordinary fallen angel—albeit a terrifying one. He had never imagined such a side of him existed within a world invisible to the eye.
He could never defeat that man. He did not believe he could, even if he gathered all the aura in the world. Because he had realized something else :
Aura could be contained.
That physical manifestation reflected influence more than raw strength. Strength obviously played a huge role, since the powerful naturally possessed influence, which caused their aura to grow. So sometimes the amount of aura simply came from size, explaining why Nathanaël's house possessed such an enormous aura.
Even if that still did not explain why it shone so brightly.
But the important point was this:
If Nathanaël's house could possess such a vast aura because of its size—and therefore its influence—then there was no reason why the Man in Black's aura should not cover the entire world.
It was impossible for that man to possess less influence than a house.
And yet, although Marc had noticed that his aura filled the entire cathedral, it had not covered the whole mountain when they first arrived.
So...
He was containing it.
Something Marc had failed to do because of his lack of mastery.
Which meant the aura mastery possessed by the beings of the other world had to be so terrifying that, if they truly wished it...
Their aura alone could destroy their world.