She Believed, She Really Believed

"Time, heed my command—stop!"

In the Star Country, as Diya chanted aloud, the Chiming Bronze Dragon behind her spread its giant metal wings. The left wing was carved with the sun, moon, and stars; the right was engraved with scales, feathers, birds, and beasts. When the bronze dragon folded its wings around the Four Pillar Gods Church arcanists, a huge round clock surfaced over its body. The clock had only one hand, and its face had only three time marks.

When the hand jumped to the first mark, the Rampart's Starry Sky Barrier shattered, and starlight drowned everything—only the bronze dragon was spared.

When it jumped to the second mark, ripples splashed through space-time across the entire area. Stones twisted, soil churned, light bent, and the whole world looked like a mass of mixed paint.

When it jumped to the third mark, the ruins where the Four Pillar God Artificers stood were destroyed a second time, and all nearby arcanist phantoms were reduced to ash.

Once the three marks ended, the Chiming Bronze Dragon's phantom quietly dissipated, and Diya also returned to the form of the White-Haired Little Girl, no longer able to maintain the posture of an adult Empress.

She looked at the clock Command Seal on the back of her hand in extreme displeasure and said with a pout, "I don't have any time left at all!"

But Diya's sacrifice this time was worth it. Thanks to her "Time Stop Saint Domain," the Four Pillar God Artificers safely survived the second shattering of the starry sky.

Unlike time stopping as ordinary people understood it, what she stopped was not the world's time, but the time inside her own Saint Domain.

That kind where the whole world stood still while she alone could move was stopping the world's time;