Brando watched helplessly as crystal spread upward along the Sage's neck, covering Ailanta's chin and lips, then the tip of her nose and lower eyelids. Her gaze, fixed on him, froze forever in that moment, forming a single piece of natural crystal suspended in the universe.
The scene beyond the crystal looked like a faded photograph, as though time itself had been sealed inside it.
Everything around them fell silent. Only the rumbling roar of magic and chaos surging in the depths of the void remained, like howling wind, like the sound of blood pulsing within the walls of a chamber.
Brando stood motionless. In the corner of his eye, he saw the halo around Vonder Continent's atmosphere. Pinpricks of light flickered across the luminous atmosphere, trailing long tails of flame as they fell toward the ground.
A flash of light appeared over the Wilds of the Four Borders. There was no sound in the universe, but countless points of light began appearing one after another around it. Brando blinked, as though jolted awake by the sight. Looking at the scene on the continent, he finally realized that the countdown to this world's destruction had only just begun.
The ancient sages had given their lives, but they had merely delayed its advance for the time being—perhaps by decades, perhaps ten years, perhaps only a few years. Brando knew he did not have much time left. He looked tenderly at Merchant's Daughter, sealed inside the crystal. He did not know how the players in The Amber Sword were supposed to oppose Twilight's Will, but perhaps finding The Amber Sword was the only way.
The Azure Knights had once wounded the Twilight Dragon with an incomplete Sky Lance. In the battle before this one, the only things that had posed a threat