Nairmis carefully sensed the newly born divinity of crafting within him. Compared with the two subordinate divinities of tools and musical instruments, the divinity of crafting was more complex. It was not the crystallization of a single concept, but an aggregate of multiple acts of creation.
The feel of the stone knife shaving wood, the memory of repeatedly adjusting the curve of the lyre's arms, the tension fed back to his fingertips as he tightened the hair strings-all of these settled within the divinity, becoming an almost instinctive understanding.
He looked down at the stone knife and lyre in his hands and suddenly understood many details he had previously explored by intuition.
The grain density varied between different parts of the wood, the angle at which the blade entered affected the direction of splitting, and the curvature of the lyre's arms determined how long the strings' notes resonated. This knowledge flowed naturally into his consciousness.
While he was still immersed in these insights, he suddenly sensed something and looked up at the sky.
Nymph raised her head almost at the same time. Daylight was rapidly receding, with no sunset glow to bridge the transition and no twilight to soften it. Between light and darkness, there was only a moving boundary.
When the last patch of daylight vanished beyond the horizon, the entire world sank into pure darkness.
The world as it stood had no moon and no stars. Night was a lightless black cloth, covering everything between heaven and earth without a gap.
According to the world's rhythm, the God of Sleep's divine power would blanket the earth at this time. Living beings would yield to that drowsiness and fall peacefully asleep, awaiting the next day.
But tonight was different. The creatures that had endured the aftermath of the divine battle, the herds that had escaped disaster, the tree spirits that had survived, and the water spirits trembling in their pools-their consciousnesses were seared by the memories of the day.
One by one, they huddled in their dens, in tree hollows, and beneath cracks in the rocks, staring out into the endless darkness with bloodshot eyes.
Their homes had been destroyed, their loved ones had died, and their companions were gone. The smell of scorching and blood still lingered over those ruins. They could not sleep.
Nor did they want to. Sorrow, pain, and despair rose from every corner of the earth, silently resisting the God of Sleep's divine power.
Nymph's eyelids were fighting to stay open, and her body began to sway.
The God of Sleep's power was too strong for her. She was only a little water spirit and could not resist for long. Her head drooped lower and lower until she finally leaned against the rock beside her and slowly closed her eyes.
But even asleep, she was restless. Her brows were slightly furrowed, her fingers clenched unconsciously, and faint whimpers escaped her throat.
Nairmis also felt that intense drowsiness. The God of Sleep's power permeated everything, but with a thought, his emotion divinity trembled gently. The sorrow pouring in from the earth passed through his consciousness and directly extinguished his sleepiness.
Then he looked down at Nymph, sleeping restlessly beside him, before looking toward the creatures resisting sleep in the darkness.
He sat cross-legged, laid the lyre across his knees, and placed all ten fingers on its strings.
A melody surfaced from the depths of his memory. Late one night in his previous life, he had heard a piece of music.
It had no name and no known source, only simple, gentle notes that caressed the listener's soul, reminding him of many happy things. It was deeply healing.
He plucked the first string. Golden light poured from his fingertips, flowed down the hair strings, and gathered, vibrated, and spilled out within the soundbox.
The notes were ignited by his emotional divine power, becoming silver motes visible to the naked eye. Like fireflies, they flew from the body of his lyre, circling him, drifting apart, and spreading into the darkness.
Nairmis closed his eyes and used his emotion divinity to sense all the creatures resisting sleep-their locations and their sorrow.
Then he plucked the strings, sending the healing music along those threads of emotion.
His divine power was draining rapidly, and his emotion divinity blazed with scorching light. He had only recently been born and had accumulated little divine power to begin with. Now, great amounts of power left his body every second.
The divinities of tools, musical instruments, and crafting lit up simultaneously. Like three pillars standing side by side, the three faint divinities barely sustained the emotion divinity's expenditure, keeping the melody from breaking off.
He gritted his teeth, his fingers never stopping. Golden notes continued drifting outward, but their light was already far dimmer than at the start.
Finally, at the last moment before his divine power ran dry, the melody reached every grieving creature across this land.
A piece of music they had never heard before sounded simultaneously in the ears of those creatures who refused to sleep. The melody was gentle, and as the first note fell, their fear slowly faded.
As the second note fell, their sorrow eased considerably. With the third and fourth notes, the fragments of memories torn apart by the day's cruelty slowly fitted themselves together, revealing forgotten scenes of warmth beneath.
A doe remembered the morning her fawn had first stood up. A water spirit remembered the ripples that had spread when the first fallen leaf drifted across the pool. A tree spirit remembered the joy of first coming into existence.
Their negative emotions ebbed like a tide, and their heavy eyelids finally closed.
There were also those creatures on the verge of death: tree spirits with their last breath trapped beneath rubble, stream spirits whose essences had been scorched by the aftershocks of divine power, and those nameless beings as tiny as dust.
They heard that melody, and a trace of a smile rose at the corners of their mouths. The light about to go out in their eyes flickered gently one last time.
Then their souls left their broken bodies, no longer resisting.
The pull of the Underworld came from deep beneath the earth. Those peaceful souls floated up, pausing briefly in the air to look back at the world they had once lived in. Then, quietly, they drifted toward the Underworld above the Abyss.
A figure emerged from the earth. He wore a long black cloak, its hood hiding most of his face and leaving only a stretch of pale jaw exposed.
He watched those souls willingly making their way toward the Underworld. He was the God of Death, a son of Nyx like the God of Sleep, the being who presided over death.
He cast a distant glance in Nairmis's direction. Thanks to this music from the God of Emotions, carrying out his duties today had gone far more smoothly than usual.
The souls no longer struggled or tried to cling to their remaining bodies and refuse to leave. They departed quietly, saving him a great deal of effort.
The God of Death withdrew his gaze, turned, and vanished into the Underworld.
Beneath the earth, within a vast underground space.
The graceful, magnificent Gaia reclined against her divine throne, her long hair spilling over her shoulders. She could sense everything happening on the surface.
The day's war had left too many wounds on her body and in her heart, and she could not stop her tears. Then she heard that music.
Gaia froze for a moment, then gradually unclenched her jaw as the music played.
Something deep in her memory was stirred. When chaos had first opened, the joy of witnessing her own birth, the happiness of seeing her children appear-her sorrow loosened a little.
A warm current welled up from the depths of her consciousness and flowed throughout her body.
She exhaled softly, closed her eyes, and let the corners of her lips curve slightly.
When the piece ended, Nairmis's hands slipped from the strings. He gasped for breath, his long golden hair clinging messily to both sides of his face, his fingertips still seeping blood.
But he smiled, because a tremendous force of emotion was surging toward him from the entire world: from the creatures he had soothed, from the souls that had met death peacefully, and from beneath the earth, the recognition and emotional divine power feedback of the primordial goddess Gaia.
That was the weightiest surge. His emotion divinity shook violently and broke through directly, becoming a lesser divinity and expanding its authority.
Nairmis closed his eyes and looked within. His emotion divinity shone with a steady silver light. He moved his fingers, and a sense of abundant power flowed from the divinity throughout his body.
He, too, had become a lesser deity, finally escaping his position at the very bottom of this world.
Though above him there were still the third, second, and first ranks, the great, the supreme, and the primordial, with a long road ahead, at least he had made progress again.
His perception continued to wander as he looked inward. Beside his emotion divinity, two new divinities were taking shape under the influence of the laws. He was no longer particularly surprised, and was even getting a little used to it.
The first was the music divinity, a subordinate divinity, very close to the divinity of musical instruments. This was within his expectations. Musical instruments were the vessel, and music was the content. The two had always been two sides of the same thing.
The second divinity surprised him somewhat. Its fluctuations of divine power were clearly stronger than those of the music divinity. Upon sensing it, he found that it was actually a lesser divinity: the healing divinity.
Then he examined it carefully and discovered that this healing divinity was far from simple. It actually involved the domain of souls. It was not merely the healing of flesh or closing of wounds, but touched directly upon the soul.
He could soothe wounds to the soul, and even help shattered souls piece themselves back into a complete form.
This was an exceedingly precious authority, but his heart immediately tightened.
If his memory was correct, the ruler of the domain of souls should have been His Highness Iapetus, one of the Twelve Titans.
That ancient Titan wielded all powers related to souls. Though he was now imprisoned in the sky by Uranus, one day he would break free and reclaim his divine office.
When that time came, would he deal with a lesser deity who held authority touching upon his domain of souls?
While he was worrying, he suddenly sensed a fluctuation of divine power rapidly approaching from afar. It was not concealed in the slightest, and it was coming for him.