Residue and Inertia

The fine sand in the hourglass continued to flow downward, as if it could keep going for a long time. Duncan carefully held the hourglass in his hand and spoke with the ancient "god."

"The gods are rotting"—this was not the first time he had heard those words. The popes of the Four Gods had once told him the same thing, and they had said that the stench of the gods' decay was gradually seeping into the mortal world, gnawing away at this world alongside the apocalypse.

But this was the first time he had heard it from one of the "gods" themselves, and realized that the current state of affairs was already the result of their efforts to delay the process as much as possible.

"This hastily constructed sanctuary has far too many flaws... Everything is temporary: that curtain, the 'sun,' the foundation of the archipelago, and ourselves. Before the first long night even began, we had already reached our own end."

Within the monotonous black, white, and gray tones of the Spirit World, the ancient Queen Leviathan spoke softly. This terrifying behemoth possessed a gentle voice, one like a dream floating in deep water, slowly recounting all that had happened to Duncan—

"It took us a long time to realize that we were 'dead.' Then it took Bartok a long time to figure out what exactly had happened to us in this state of 'death without cessation.'

"We are the 'inertia' of the Old World."

"The inertia of the Old World?" Duncan immediately frowned, certain suspicions surfacing in his mind.

"You should already know what destroyed our world—those countless worlds. Then you should also know that the Great Annihilation did not completely destroy everything in those worlds. There were always some 'remnants' that survived the collision of worlds,