Gaia's tears spilled out, and her body trembled. Only then did she notice the other god nearby. She raised her head and, through her tear-blurred vision, saw that ink-dark figure. It was Erebus.
Her younger brother, the incarnation of darkness who spent most of his time asleep and was detached from emotion.
Gaia seemed to see hope. She leaned forward a little and reached toward Erebus, her tears still flowing.
"Erebus..." She called his name, a desperate plea in her voice, her fingers trembling in the air.
"My brother... help me. Help my children."
Erebus neither moved nor spoke. He remembered Nyx's words.
"Unless Gaia regains her clarity, do not intervene."
Gaia's tears continued to flow, but just as her brother's indifference nearly plunged her into despair again, the divine power within her began to recover slowly.
The cracks nourished by the essence of night were healing inch by inch, and divine power was once again spreading over the entire Earth Divine Domain.
Then the Delphic Oracle lit up. The stone pillar bearing "Know thyself" shone with unprecedented brilliance, rose from the ground, and flew toward Gaia.
As it landed in Gaia's outstretched palm, it automatically shrank into a short staff she could hold, divine light flowing along its shaft.
Something had been sealed within the stone pillar: the sliver of reason Gaia had drawn from her own consciousness before leaving the Earth Divine Domain for the sky.
Now, it had come home.
That sliver of reason touched Gaia. Her gaze shifted from grief and bewilderment to stillness, then the clarity belonging to the primordial Earth Mother herself returned, and the wisdom obscured by the power of fate fell back into place.
She remembered how she had been deceived. She remembered the loving gaze she had turned on Uranus, a gaze that now made her stomach churn at the memory.
The bewilderment and grief in her eyes turned cold, then anger and hatred surged. Gaia slowly straightened her back, and the patterns of earth upon her began to flow again.
Bracing herself against the ground, she slowly stood.
Her body was still weak, and her abdomen still ached faintly, but the majesty belonging to the Earth Mother, the eldest daughter of Chaos, was enveloping her once more, layer by layer. She returned the first stone pillar to the ranks of the Delphic Oracle, then turned to Erebus.
Though her voice was hoarse, it had changed from pleading to questioning.
"My brother, what... did Nyx tell you to do?"
Erebus nodded, approval appearing in his eyes. He saw a Gaia he recognized, not the docile wife manipulated by fate, nor the helpless mother. This was the goddess of earth who had stood at the world's very beginning and witnessed chaos shatter alongside him.
He extended his hand, and a mass of pure darkness gathered in his palm. The darkness compressed continuously until it formed a divinity with a dark purple sheen flowing across its surface.
It was the unknown divinity, one of darkness's associated attributes, representing authority over the unseen and the unknowable.
When night fell and it was activated, its bearer would become an unseen presence in the darkness. Even the god of the sky could not see them if he looked in person.
His voice was hoarser than the last time he had spoken before falling asleep, like two rough rocks slowly scraping against each other in the deep sea.
"The unknown divinity," Erebus said, his voice low. "When night falls, you can walk upon the earth without being discovered by the sky."
Gaia accepted the divinity and instantly understood its use: it would let her walk the earth at night while Uranus would be unable to pinpoint her location.
She instantly understood Nyx's arrangement. Having her walk the earth at night was meant to let her seek out that god of emotions.
A day earlier, she might still have hesitated. But now there was only one thing in her eyes: the desire to seize every possible chance for revenge.
Gaia tightened her grip on the divinity and pressed it into her divine core. The power of the unknown merged into her essence, slowly intertwining with her earth divinity and the healing power of night, beginning to accelerate her recovery.
"Give me a few days. Once I've recovered a little, I'll go find him immediately."
She returned to her divine throne and sat down. As she took her seat, the entire Earth Divine Domain trembled faintly, as though welcoming its master home. The Bottle of Life flew up from the ground and returned to her palm. Although it could not heal the earth itself, it could accelerate the recovery of divine power.
Then Gaia raised her head and looked at her brother.
The god of darkness still stood at the edge of the divine domain, but he was waiting for her to finish her final words.
"My brother." Gaia's voice softened a little. "Thank you both for your help. The earth will remember you forever."
Erebus did not answer. He was not good at responding to such emotional expressions with words. His silhouette dipped slightly toward his sister, then his form began to dissipate.
Gaia sat alone on her divine throne, her gaze passing beyond the boundaries of the Earth Divine Domain, across mountains and plains, to distant Proeon.
After watching for a while, she placed the Bottle of Life on her lap and closed her eyes for a time. She was gathering strength, waiting for her wounds to heal further.
Gaia's heart was full of hatred. One day, she would repay him twice over for today's humiliation.
She pressed a hand to her abdomen, feeling those tiny movements. She no longer cried. Her tears had run dry before her clarity returned. What she needed now was strength, not sorrow.
Her gaze returned to Nairmis's direction. She would go find him soon.
At the foot of Mount Proeon, Nairmis was awakened by the feeling of being watched.
He had been sleeping deeply in the shade of a tree, but as he slept, his emotion divinity was vibrating faintly.
He was stronger than those watching him, so he could sense the direction of those emotions: adoration, anticipation, curiosity, and more.
Nairmis frowned in his sleep. Those emotions were too close. His eyes snapped open.
The instant his eyes focused, he saw roughly fifteen to twenty life-forms of various shapes, radiating faint divine light, sitting quietly in a circle around him and staring fixedly at him.
Nairmis: "..."
His first reaction was, Am I still asleep?
Nairmis blinked hard twice, then rubbed his temples, but they did not disappear. They were still sitting there, quietly staring at him together.
He calmly covered his exposed lower body, then sat up. He coughed softly and beckoned to the water Nymph Acenoe.