Light instantly spread throughout the entire Special Mirror World, illuminating Cheek and Tudor beside Angel, the faintly visible ruins of Fourth Epoch Trier below, and the boundaries where this realm met the other, ordinary Mirror Worlds and the Spirit World, forming a hazy barrier of light.
It blocked Klein and "0-17," who had just arrived, as well as Empress Roselle, who wore a jeweled crown and a black court gown. Despite the Master of the Mirror World's orders, she had been unwilling to get involved and had hidden in a corner.
Just as the Primordial Demoness Cheek had guessed, once the Original Creator began to awaken, a defense that no one could penetrate would spontaneously form, much like the barriers that had separated the Spirit World and the Astral World when the Creator fell upon this planet.
But less than a second later, that barrier of light abruptly vanished. The light illuminating everything disappeared with it, plunging the Mirror World back into profound darkness.
The smile had vanished from Cheek's face. She looked at the frowning Blood Emperor Tudor, then at Angel, who had already merged with the avatar formed from Cheek's Apocalypse characteristic and the Mirror Creator's Feminine Aspect. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something.
But Angel had no time to spare for Cheek's reaction, because she discovered that the instant the black-dressed "Cheek" merged into her body, she had escaped the restraints of petrification and could move freely.
Almost simultaneously, she lost her awareness of her flesh and spirituality. That familiar destructive impulse, born from the divinity within her, surged up again. This time, it also carried bewilderment at being newly born, contempt for all living things, and absolute affirmation of herself.
*I am the Creator... Though I exist within a mirror, sooner or