"How did your cultivation session go? Did you learn to use the new foundation?" Adrian asked, shifting the conversation from the political burdens as they walked side-by-side down the pathway of the Azure Garden.
Hestia's steps slowed, a look of lingering disbelief washing over her elegant features.
"It felt like I was living inside a dream," Hestia murmured, shaking her head as she looked down at her hands. "Adrian, I actually dismantled the merge of Crimson Vital Dominion and Verdant Genesis... the very fusion that essentially made me an Astral Stage being."
She looked up at him, "The moment I separated the rule fragments into their individual chambers within the essence seed, my power felt like it regressed back to the Peak Rule Stage. But the terrifying part was... nothing happened to me. There was no backlash. My foundation didn't crack, my mana channels didn't collapse, and I was completely fine."
Adrian smiled warmly, unsurprised by the result since he had lived with the same internal architecture for years. "And putting it back together?"
"It was effortless," Hestia breathed out, still marveling at the concept. "I was able to simply merge the rules back into the Crimson Genesis with a mere thought, and my Astral-stage presence returned instantly. To be able to endlessly build and break divine concepts without destroying one's foundation... it completely defies everything the universe considers absolute."
As they continued to roam through the garden, Hestia animatedly detailed more of her internal experiments, discussing how she planned to isolate specific life rules and restructure her domains for maximum efficiency. They talked about a myriad of things, stepping away from the looming shadows of Great Sects and ancient monsters to simply enjoy the peaceful paradise they had built together.
…
Days passed in quiet tranquility within the Azure Garden.
Unlike his usual relentless routine of pushing his limits inside a stacked time formation, Adrian spent his days normally, abstaining from cultivation. His current willforce was nowhere near its peak level. Facing the ancient will had nearly ripped away most of his wilforce, leaving his Anchor-stage mind heavily strained.
While devouring Tenyz's physical body and absorbing his consciousness had provided a slight recovery to his willforce, it had barely recovered a fraction of the immense toll. To recover his willforce fully and mend the throbbing ache behind his eyes, Adrian knew he would need months of continuous meditation, even with the passive Willforce Recovery spell circulating through his mind.
So, Adrian simply allowed himself to rest. He spent his time surrounded by the people who anchored his humanity. He shared long meals with his parents, Thomas and Elara, listening to his father boast about the supremacy war while his mother fussed over Adrian's marriage. He sat with the Celestials, laughing as Draven and Max endlessly bickered over their ongoing bet to reach the next cultivation stage.
He also spent hours sitting by the training fields, quietly watching over Aerin as she practiced her spatial compression drills, occasionally offering a helpless smile when she dramatically complained about Hestia's strict regimens. And in the quiet evenings, he walked the winding paths of the inner zone with Hestia, watching the sun of the relic planet dip below the horizon.
…
Meanwhile, inside the Elyrian Sanctuary that now floated securely at the edge of the inner-zone base, the days of quiet recovery were also passing.
The first Elyrian to awaken from the deep slumber induced by Androxus's overwhelming golden light was Xeolze. As an Astral Stage warrior who had reached the Chime of Consciousness, the shadow guard possessed the deepest mental foundation among his people. The mysterious golden dot of energy resting within his mind, the true hallmark of the first stage of consciousness mastery, pulsed steadily, accelerating his recovery and clearing the oppressive fog from his thoughts much faster than the others.
Mariska was the next to awaken. The princess blinked her eyes open shortly after, her own Chime-stage consciousness pushing back the lingering suppression.
However, the others, including King Elyras and the Crown Prince, took several more days to finally break free from the mental paralysis. Physically, neither of them were in any pain. The horrific scars, mangled wings, and severe malnourishment the Crown Prince had suffered from a millennium of blood extraction had already been completely healed away. It was solely their minds that had needed the time to slowly mend.
When the Crown Prince finally opened his eyes, the immediate reality around him felt impossible to grasp.
Within a grand, sunlit chamber of the castle, the royal family was finally reunited. King Elyras sat near the edge of the bed, his regal composure breaking as tears streamed down his face. He reached out, his trembling hands grasping the shoulders of his son.
"It has been so long, Aelion..." the King whispered, his voice filled with grief and relief. "It has been so long since the three of us have been together like this, in the same room."
The Crown Prince sat up slowly. He looked at his hands, then at his father, and finally at his sister, Mariska, who was weeping silently at the foot of the bed. For a thousand years, Aelion had endured the abyss-dark holding blocks beneath the golden spire, remaining silent as the Yiphraens bled him daily to refine their Life-Blood Pills. He had accepted his endless torment to protect the spatial coordinates of their hidden sanctuary.
To suddenly awaken in a soft bed, surrounded by his family, felt like an illusion designed to break his mind.
"How?" Aelion rasped, his voice rough from a millennium of disuse. He looked at Mariska, his stoic expression cracking. "Who was it? Who was the senior who shattered my chains and saved us from the central plaza?"
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Mariska sat beside him and began to explain, with King Elyras occasionally adding his own awestruck perspective.
They recounted the impossible story of a man who called himself a lonely wanderer.
Aelion listened in stunned silence.
"But that is not even the most miraculous part, Brother," Mariska concluded, a radiant smile breaking across her face. "After I awakened a few days back, I tried to go out and check what had transpired after we fainted from that strange golden light. I thought we were still in the Hub. But when I looked past the sanctuary's borders... I found out that the senior had already moved our entire micro-dimension."
Aelion's breath hitched. "Moved it?"
"We are no longer inside the Providence Hub, Aelion," King Elyras confirmed, his voice vibrating with a reborn hope. "The senior had relocated our entire sanctuary, along with every soul within it, to his own territory. We are now safely resting in a place called the Azure Garden, hidden deep within the Virelith Galaxy."
The King squeezed Aelion's shoulder. "We are safe, my son. We can finally, truly live without fear."
Hearing all of this, the Crown Prince sat perfectly rigid. He stared blankly at the wall for quite some moment, his mind stalling as it tried to process the overwhelming reality of their salvation. The millennium of darkness, the daily extractions, it was all actually over.
Suddenly, Aelion reached out and pinched Mariska's arm with a sharp, forceful twist of his fingers.
"ACHOO—Ouch!" Mariska shrieked, swatting his hand away as a stinging pain flared across her skin. She glared at her brother, her wings bristling in annoyance. "Why the hell did you do that?!"
Aelion blinked, looking at his fingers with a deadpan expression. "It felt too much like a dream. I had to check if I was hallucinating."
Mariska rubbed her arm, scowling fiercely at him. "Then you should try that on your own damn body, you idiot!"
The King, Mariska, and Crown Prince Aelion all stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. The absurdity of the moment, the simple, mundane bickering between siblings, was something they hadn't shared in many years.
Suddenly, King Elyras threw his head back and let out a joyous laugh that echoed freely through the chamber. "Aelion," the King chuckled, wiping a fresh tear from his eye, "Nearly a thousand years in chains, and you truly never changed."
Aelion offered a faint smirk, the heavy shadows of his imprisonment finally beginning to lift from his eyes.
"Father," Mariska said, her brow furrowing, "why did you conceal Xeolze from us? A being reaching the Chime of Consciousness within our own civilization is monumental news. You kept it from everyone, even us. Why?"
From the years she had spent alongside Xeolze in the azure garden, Mariska had already learned a great deal, like how her father had raised him in secret, and how he had employed their severance artefact to carve out a small micro-dimension nested within their existing one, concealing Xeolze's advancement whenever he drew close to stepping into the first stage of consciousness.
But what she still couldn't grasp was why her father had felt the need to conceal it even from his own children.
Aelion blinked. The name Xeolze meant nothing to him, yet he had glimpsed the shadow guard back in the plaza, and as Mariska's question landed, the pieces fell into place on their own.
Both looked at the King, expecting an answer.
"He was our final survival card," King Elyras said. "And I kept him hidden from everyone, even the two of you, because I know you both far too well. Had you known of Xeolze's existence, you wouldn't have listened to a word I said. You would have pulled him straight into your troubles without a second thought. I was waiting for you both to grow first. But circumstances moved faster than I anticipated, and here we are."
Aelion and Mariska both nodded, understanding their father's reasoning. Had Aelion known of Xeolze's existence, he would no doubt have brought him along when he rushed to the hub, and that would have meant two prisoners instead of one. But his expression quickly sobered, replaced by the dutiful resolve of a royal heir.
"We should go meet this senior immediately," Aelion said, shifting his legs to the edge of the bed. "I need to look him in the eye and truly thank him for my life, and for the future of our people."
Mariska and the King exchanged a hesitant look, both nodding slowly.
"We will," Mariska said gently, placing a hand on his chest to stop him. "But you need some rest first, Brother. Your physical wounds are healed, but your willforce has barely recovered. You should meditate."
Aelion shook his head, gently but firmly brushing her hand aside. He stood up, his posture rigid and unyielding. "If I wait for my willforce to fully recover, it will take months of sitting in this room," Aelion rejected flatly. "For now, I am stable enough to move, and my mind is my own again. I will not make our savior wait a single second longer."
Seeing the unbreakable stoicism that had allowed him to survive a millennium of torture, King Elyras smiled and nodded. "Very well. Let us go."
With Mariska leading the way and the King walking proudly beside his son, the three Elyrian royals exited the castle. They traversed the paths of the sanctuary, making their way to the very edge of the micro-dimension.
With a subtle pulse of her consciousness, Mariska commanded the boundary to open.
The moment they stepped through the threshold and out into the Azure Garden, both the King and the Crown Prince froze in their tracks. They looked around the Garden and were utterly flabbergasted.
Towering trees with luminescent leaves formed a breathtaking canopy overhead. The sound of rushing waterfalls and flowing streams echoed peacefully through the valley. But what shocked them the most was the air itself. The atmosphere was so heavily saturated with impossibly pure, life-aspected mana that simply drawing a breath felt like consuming a high-grade restorative pill.
King Elyras stood paralyzed, his eyes wide as he stared at the vibrant flora surrounding them. A deep, bitter irony washed over him.
"For millions of years..." the King murmured, a dry chuckle escaping his lips as he looked at Aelion and Mariska. "...the Yiphraens kept us locked in the dark, chaining our kin and bleeding us to death, all just to extract the life essence within our blood."
He reached out, letting the life-drenched breeze of the Azure Garden wash over his open palm.
"And here, in this man's sanctuary," the King whispered, "that same life essence is as abundant and freely given as the air itself."