Unknown
Obsidian District, New Boston
North Atlantic Federation Arc Zone
Western Hemisphere, UEF
2435 A.D
"An Anti-Pocket?!" Archie blurted, her voice breaking the tense silence that followed Nine's defeat.
This wasn't her true body—just a Reflection Clone, a projection anchored to the command chamber. Her real self had followed Heloth to their next objective. Still, the clone's shock was genuine. Through the mirrored monitors lining the room, she'd watched everything unfold—Elias's effortless dismantling of Nine's Rule Pocket, the impossible precision of his strike, and the collapse of the Loom of Consequence itself.
Xerna stood beside her, arms crossed, eyes cold and unreadable as the mirrored surface rippled with fading light. She had observed the entire exchange—the weaving of Nine's domain, Elias's vow, and the silent fracture that had erased it all.
Archie turned toward her, still reeling. "That was—an Anti-Pocket. That's supposed to be an advanced Barrier Weave! No Crown-tier should be able to perform it freely like that. Even most Prism-tier can't do it without heavy Gemtech support."
Xerna didn't look surprised. If anything, she looked faintly amused.
"Your knowledge of the Corporate Dynasties is... incomplete," Xerna said, her tone smooth but dismissive. "Though I can't blame you. The Major Houses have spent centuries erasing any record of their bloodline abilities from public archives."
Archie frowned, her gaze flicking between the mirror and Xerna. "You're not even surprised by what he did."
"Why would I be?" Xerna replied coolly. "Countering a Rule Pocket with an Anti-Pocket is fundamental in domain warfare. Every House trains for it. The difference is that the Vasselheims do it through Oaths."
She stepped closer to the flickering image of Elias on the monitor, her reflection merging with his. "Their strength comes from promises bound in emotion. Each vow is both a shackle and a weapon. The greater the conviction behind it, the stronger the burn it produces."
Archie's brow furrowed. "That sounds like one of the tenets of Luminis Weaving—how intent defines structure and emotion amplifies it."
"It applies to them too," Xerna said. "They're descendants of the earliest oath-weavers. Their vows don't just guide their will—they reshape reality's compliance with that will."
The Reflection clone glanced back at the fading image of Nine, lying unconscious amid the ashes of his broken domain. "So he never stood a chance."
Xerna's expression didn't change. "He underestimated conviction. That was his mistake."
She turned away from the monitor, her long coat brushing against the steel floor as she approached the massive machine at the center of the chamber—a towering construct of mirrored panels and coiling conduits humming with pale light.
"Come," she said over her shoulder. "We have work to finish."
Archie lingered for one last glance at the broken image on the screen—the faint reflection of Elias standing victorious—before following Xerna toward the heart of their plan.
****
Diego staggered back a step, his eyes widening as the air itself began to shimmer.
Ellira rose into the air, her entire form transfigured into brilliance. Her body glowed with blinding intensity, golden hair fanning upward as if gravity had forgotten her. Her skin turned translucent, refracting the light within her veins until she resembled a living crystal statue—a being sculpted from sunlight. The faint hum of her energy filled the room, resonating with the frequency of divinity itself.
Diego's grin faltered.
He had seen this once before—recordings, theories, data from Project Heliospire—but to witness it firsthand was something else entirely.
The Ascended State.
Xerna had spoken of it: the Photonic Form unique to Luminiarons—their true selves.
Most Luminia existed naturally in this form—semi-crystalline beings of pure Lumenis—but Luminiarons were hybrids, carbon-based like humans. Their potential was bound by biology, sealed away at birth. Only through immense emotional and energetic breakthroughs could they force open the photonic gate within their cores.
And now Ellira had done it.
Her transformation flooded the entire space with light, erasing shadow, saturating every surface in gold. Diego raised an arm to shield his face, his armor's sensors blinking in protest as his visor dimmed automatically. The air grew hot, shimmering from the radiant flux.
When he lowered his arm, she was already moving.
Spears of radiant energy formed around her, each one spinning with contained force. They were pure constructs of Lumenis—dense, luminous, vibrating with harmonic resonance.
Then they fell.
Ellira's hand flicked once, and the spears descended faster than lightning, faster than thought. They tore through the air, screaming as they broke the sound barrier.
Diego leapt back, his foot leaving Naia's spine as he rolled away just in time. The first spear struck where he'd stood a heartbeat before—
—and the world erupted.
Columns of radiant destruction slammed into the ground, one after another, each detonation blinding and absolute. The shockwaves shredded concrete, vaporized steel, and turned the floor into molten glass. Every strike left behind a crater, light still burning at the edges.
The sheer purity of the energy made Diego's skin crawl. His reinforced armor absorbed some of the impact, but even that groaned under the stress.
He landed hard, panting, his grin returning despite the pain. His eyes gleamed with excitement as he stared up at the blazing figure above him.
"So this is the true power of a Luminiaron…" he muttered, half in awe, half in anticipation.
Ellira hovered there, radiant and terrible, the light pouring off her body like the dawn made flesh—ready to strike again.
Ellira descended like a falling sun, the light around her dimming to a gentler glow as she touched down beside Naia.
Her photonic form rippled, the radiance along her crystalline body softening into warm gold. Extending one hand, she wove a barrier of interlocking sigils around Naia—a protective weave of refracted Lumenis, hexagonal patterns spinning into place with surgical precision. The barrier sealed the wounds across Naia's body, halting the bleeding and freezing her injuries in stasis. Even unconscious, Naia's breathing steadied under the golden field.
Ellira's expression softened. Though her heart pounded and her energy flared dangerously close to burnout, her intent alone had shielded Naia from the blast of her earlier attack. Every radiant spear she'd cast had curved—just enough—to spare the woman beneath her protection.
From a distance, Diego steadied himself, his eyes narrowing as he studied the luminous hybrid before him.
Something had changed.
The power she had unleashed wasn't simply an offensive weave. It had felt different—structured, layered, yet raw. It carried the complexity of a Facet technique, not a Weave art.
His gaze fell on the gems embedded within Ellira's sockets. As her light pulsed, he noticed it: faint, deliberate lines—cuts—running across each gem's surface, shining with a new metaphysical geometry.
A low, surprised chuckle escaped him."So," he murmured, "you finally achieved a cut on your gems."
He knew exactly what that meant.
When a Gemcrafter bonded with a Gem at the Grit tier, the bond was stable but incomplete—raw potential waiting to be shaped. To evolve further, one needed to cut the gem—physically or metaphysically—to produce a Facet, the crystallized expression of that Gem's power. That breakthrough marked the transition to the Facet tier, granting the Gemcrafter a Base Facet, the core of their personal ability.
But for Luminiarons, the process was different.
When they bonded with a Gem, their hybrid physiology and innate Lumenis resonance granted them an instant cut, gifting them a Base Facet from the start. Still, growth required mastery. Every new cut—each Cut Facet—was a hard-won evolution, a refinement of soul, skill, and intent.
Those cuts were what defined one's path: offensive, defensive, or support techniques—the pillars that made a Gemcrafter versatile and deadly.
And Ellira Solenne, up until now, had lived her entire life without a single Cut Facet.
She had reached Crown-tier strength relying solely on her Base Facet and her bloodline Solar Weave, a feat so rare that even among the Corporate Dynasties, it bordered on myth. It was proof of just how extraordinary the hybrid generation of Luminiarons truly was.
Diego exhaled slowly, his grin returning as the realization sank in."So, that's it," he said under his breath. "You finally crossed the threshold."
He flexed his hands, energy swirling around his body."I'm Mid-Crown," he continued, voice low but charged with excitement. "You were Low-Crown before… but now—"
The air between them crackled with the pressure of two equal forces.
"Now you've reached my level."
Ellira's golden eyes lifted toward him, her expression serene but unwavering. The radiance behind her shimmered like dawn breaking over ruins.
And for the first time, Diego Grimwall smiled without mockery—only anticipation. Ellira raised her staff once more. The air around her vibrated, a radiant pulse expanding from her form as shards of pure sunlight crystallized in midair. Dozens—no, hundreds—of them spun around her like a storm of tiny stars, each humming with lethal focus.
Then, with a flick of her wrist, she unleashed them.
The shards streaked toward Diego in blinding arcs, cutting through the air like radiant meteors. Each one left a trail of light so intense it warped the shadows around it.
This was no simple weave.This was the offensive Facet of her Sol Gem—a new cut that shaped her radiant energy into something meant to destroy, not protect.
Its name was Corona Shard.
Each shard carried immense kinetic and photonic pressure, enough to tear through reinforced alloy or destabilize a Lumenis barrier. Diego's instincts screamed at him not to block them. His bloodline facet, which let him absorb impact, would shatter under that sheer magnitude.
He darted through the barrage, the ground erupting behind him wherever a shard struck. Concrete vaporized into molten dust. The corridor's reinforced plating glowed red-hot from residual heat.
"I thought you Luminia hybrids were all pacifists," Diego shouted as he rolled across the fractured floor.
"I am," Ellira replied calmly, her golden eyes unblinking. "Normally, I only use defensive weaves."
Diego snarled, ducking under another burst of radiant spears. "Then what the hell do you call this?"
Ellira's expression didn't change. "A realization."
The air thickened, the light around her intensifying until her voice echoed through the heat haze."As your people once said… the best defense is offense."
With that, she raised her free hand—her Aether Gem pulsed, space around Diego locking in place as her Base Facet froze his movement mid-step.
Then she channeled her Sol Gem's newly cut facet, energy spiraling around her staff as she traced a radiant sigil in the air.
"Corona Pillar."
A column of searing, concentrated light exploded from beneath Diego's feet, engulfing him in pure brilliance.
The technique was an evolution of Corona Shard—its precision sacrificed for overwhelming range and raw power. Where the Shard cut cleanly, the Pillar erased.
And within that roaring pillar of light, Ellira Solenne—the pacifist—finally looked like a god of war.
As the dust began to settle, a shadow burst out of the smoke, cutting through the haze with explosive force.
Diego shot upward, his body wreathed in glowing threads of Lumenis that pulsed like living veins. Dozens of Thread Weaves snaked across his limbs and torso, forming a mesh of reinforcement sigils that had shielded him from total obliteration. The Corona Pillar had torn straight through the upper floors of the complex—leaving a molten tunnel of destruction that reached the night sky—yet somehow, Diego still stood.
He hovered midair, panting, his armor half-melted, the weave patterns on his body glowing from the strain. His grin was gone now, replaced with a grim, razor-edged focus.
Below him, Ellira stood amid a crater of molten glass, her golden form shimmering like a celestial being amidst ruin. Her staff glowed fiercely; the Aether Gem embedded within her socket at the Crown socket pulsed with amethyst light. A single, sharp cut ran across the Gem's surface—thin, clean, deliberate.
At that instant, a new Facet was born. She raised her hand. The space around Diego warped, folding and twisting in a violet net of energy.
Aether Pull
The very air bent. Gravity reversed. Diego's body lurched violently downward as invisible threads of Lumenis rewrote the gravity vectors around him, assigning him a new point of attraction—her.
The force dragged him toward her like a meteor, unable to stabilize himself. But Ellira wasn't done. The second cut on her Aether Gem flared, and a razor-thin crescent of compressed gravitation manifested beside her staff.
Graviton Slice.
A microscopic shear plane of gravity erupted forward, slicing through the air with an almost inaudible hum. Within that slim crescent, gravitational pressure diverged violently—a plane so dense it could sever molecular bonds.
It arced toward Diego with surgical precision.
Diego's instincts screamed. His eyes snapped wide as he reacted instantly, his hands weaving threads faster than the eye could follow. A glowing thread platform materialized beneath his foot, charged with coiled Lumenis tension.
Spring Impact Kick!
The kinetic force detonated beneath his heel, propelling him upward in a burst of speed that blurred him from sight. The Graviton Slice tore through the afterimage he left behind, cleaving the ceiling apart instead.
Now, Diego was moving faster than ever, bouncing through the air from one glowing thread platform to another. Each kick detonated like thunder, sending shockwaves across the ruined chamber as he zigzagged through the space in erratic, unpredictable bursts. At the same time, he unleashed upon her his own Offensive Weave, using Flux weave to fire Beam projectiles at her.
The speed and direction of his attacks would normally be unpredictable due to his actions, but that did not bother Ellira one bit. Her eyes followed his every motion. Calm. Focused. Her defensive Facet flared upon being activated.
The Aether Gem pulsed again, unfolding a radiant construct around her—a barrier shaped like layered petals of folded space. Each layer shimmered with different refraction angles, overlapping like a cosmic bloom.
Every petal absorbed, redirected, or nullified incoming force, bending space itself to deflect attacks. In that instant, the room became a duel between light and velocity—Diego, the kinetic storm, and Ellira, the gravitational sun.
Diego's movements became a blur of velocity and heat, the air snapping apart in violent waves as he built up momentum. He broke through Ellira's folded barrier, shattering the layers of refracted space with sheer kinetic force.
His fist rocketed toward her face—an impact that could have crushed reinforced alloy—but Ellira was ready.
A lattice of golden light erupted across her skin, solidifying into a translucent armor of photonic plates, hexagonal and radiant. The blow landed, detonating a shockwave through the chamber—yet Ellira didn't flinch. The armor shimmered, dispersing the impact through an intricate lattice network woven into the barrier, converting kinetic energy into harmless streams of Lumenis.
Diego's eyes widened as his strike was absorbed, the power behind it scattering like light through a prism. He jumped back instantly, retreating several meters, his mind recalibrating.
But Ellira didn't give him the chance.
Her Aether Gem pulsed once, and she swung her staff through the air—"Graviton Slice."
The crescent of gravitational shear rippled forward, not meant to cut this time, but to disrupt. The attack struck near Diego's feet, warping gravity vectors in an instant. His balance faltered; his footing cracked under him.
It was all the opening Ellira needed.
Her Sol Gem flared, a single shard of condensed light forming above her hand."Corona Shard."
The shard screamed through the air, grazing Diego's shoulder before detonating in a flash of molten gold. His Reinforcement Weave sizzled and burned away, the smell of scorched Lumenis threads filling the air. Blood spattered down his arm, red against the black of his armor.
Diego landed, twisting with a snarl, a feral grin cutting through his pain."You're good," he said, almost laughing through clenched teeth.
"Aether Pull," Ellira whispered.
The world tilted. The gravitational field around them inverted again, dragging Diego toward her like a collapsing star. The air itself seemed to fold inward, and space warped visibly between them.
But Diego's will exploded outward in defiance. He thrust his hand forward, casting a beam projectile—a spiral of kinetic Lumenis that crashed against her barrier. Ellira's Fold Blossom Facet unfolded reflexively, the petals of refracted space intercepting the blast and scattering it into harmless light.
Even as his attack failed, Diego fired a thread line toward a nearby pillar. The glowing filament embedded itself in the stone, and he used it to swing hard, wrenching himself free from her gravitational pull. The moment his feet hit the ground, he reinforced his body with Lumenis, his aura flaring violently.
He understood the principle now. As long as he poured more will and Lumenis into his field, he could counter her Facet's influence. Battles between Lumenis wielders were never just physical—they were wars of intent, conviction, and control. The stronger one's resolve, the more completely they could bend reality to their design.
Diego's conviction burned bright. He swung around the pillar, kicking off it with explosive speed, ricocheting across the room in zigzag arcs. His movements blurred into a storm of afterimages, his laughter echoing like static. Ellira exhaled softly. Her expression didn't change.
Rows of Fold Blossom shields bloomed around her—dozens of radiant petals, overlapping like a celestial lotus. At the same time, her staff spun in her hand as she fired volley after volley of Corona Shards, each one tracing radiant arcs across the battlefield.
The shards tore through walls and columns, but Diego moved too fast, his movements a streak of red and gold light. The chamber trembled from their duel—speed against precision, chaos against control.
Diego thrived in the chaos. Every heartbeat of the fight, every pulse of Lumenis that burned through his veins, filled him with exhilaration. This was what he lived for—a battle that tested the limits of his existence.
Ellira's radiance, her composure, her strength—it all reminded him of Xerna, the one person he had never managed to defeat. That same impossible presence now loomed before him, unflinching and brilliant. And for a fleeting moment, he almost laughed at how fate seemed to mock him.
Then—he saw it.
A mistake.
The rhythm of her Corona Shards faltered—one pattern breaking in her otherwise perfect barrage. The flow of Lumenis streaming through her body stuttered, her aura dimming ever so slightly. To anyone else, it would have gone unnoticed, but Diego's instincts screamed that this was his moment.
He launched forward, weaving through the golden storm, slipping past each shard as if threading a needle through light itself. The air cracked as he appeared in front of her, his fist already chambered, energy surging into his arm.
"You should be conservative with your energy," Diego growled, his grin returning, feral and certain. "You've burned through your stamina in that state of yours."
"Is that so?" Ellira's voice was calm—eerily calm.
Before Diego could even process it, her body shimmered, the photonic radiance collapsing into flesh and form. She reverted to her human guise, her luminous aura folding inward like dying starlight.
For half a second, Diego thought she had given up—until a shiver of pure dread crawled up his spine. Something else moved. A pulse, deep and resonant, reverberated through the air. Diego's instincts screamed as he turned and saw death.
All around them, the remnants of her Corona Shards had not vanished. They were converging, drawn by the gravitational weave of her Fold Blossom Facet. The reflective petals scattered across the battlefield had bent space itself, redirecting every unfired shard—every stray beam—back into a single converging point.
A sphere of radiant energy, blinding and dense as a miniature sun, floated behind him. The moment he turned to face it, it collapsed through one of the folded petals—and fired. It was instantaneous. The beam struck him point-blank, a torrent of condensed solar fury. It devoured sound, color, and air, hurling him backward as the ground beneath him vaporized.
The explosion tore through the chamber, a wave of molten light swallowing Diego whole as he crashed through the far wall, his silhouette consumed by the storm of gold. And through it all, Ellira stood perfectly still. Her staff lowered, eyes calm, the quiet of her resolve louder than any explosion.