The night fell like a suffocating, pitch-black blanket over the Bastion. A deathly silence reigned in the sleeping quarters, but for Nyx, the quiet was pure torture. She lay tossing and turning in her bed, the sheets wrapped tightly around her body as if trying to hold her back. Every time she closed her eyes, images of the fight flashed past: the liquid void-blood, the collapsing hall, the absolute emptiness that Silarias had left behind. Her thoughts spun in a vicious circle, and she could not distract her mind, no matter how hard she tried to shut her brain down to catch at least a few minutes of sleep.
Right at the moment she managed to close her eyes for a split second, her senses registered a soft, suspicious creak near her bed.
Her instincts immediately kicked into the highest gear. But before she could jump up to draw her dagger, a warm, firm hand slapped over her mouth with brute speed.
"Shh, it's me," whispered a familiar, husky voice right next to her ear.
It was Jane. Her eyes glistened in the scarce moonlight falling through the narrow window. She bent deeply over Nyx, her grip on Nyx's mouth firm but not painful. "So, what's the plan? Silarias isn't dead, I know it damn well for sure. And you already had something in your head, right? I've known you longer than today, princess," she whispered fiercely, her gaze full of impatient determination.
Nyx widened her eyes. She didn't look at Jane, but just past her shoulder. There, in the shadow of the doorway, stood Cilla. The cold discipline of the entire day had completely vanished from Cilla's face; rolling tears glistened as they streamed down her cheeks in the dark.
"What to do…" Cilla brought out trembling, her voice nothing more than a breathless plea for direction.
Nyx tried to answer immediately, but with Jane's hand still pressed tightly over her lips, nothing came out except an unintelligible mess of gibberish. Her voice melted into a muffled, frustrated murmur.
Jane realized what she was doing and pulled her hand off Nyx's mouth with a quick movement. "Sorry. Say it."
Nyx braced herself, took a deep breath, and let a single, trembling word slip past her lips that the two girls never saw coming:
"Mom."
Cilla and Jane exchanged a quick, utterly confused look in the darkness. They stared at Nyx with a bone-dry, thunderstruck expression. "Mom?!" they said synchronously in a muffled, incredulous whispering chorus.
Nyx didn't even react to their confusion. She shot upright, threw her arms unconditionally around the necks of both girls, pulled them tight against her, and cried out once more with a mix of pure desperation and relief: "Mom!"
Before Jane or Cilla could move a single muscle to break free, the room exploded into a blinding, silvery light. Gravity vanished for a fraction of a second, and the walls of the Bastion simply dissolved into nothingness.
In a flash, the three girls suddenly stood with their feet in the soft, shimmering stardust of the Goddess Realm. The air around them was an infinite, deep blue cosmos full of dancing nebulae and softly falling moonlight. And right before their feet, seated on a throne of pure, liquid silver, was the Moon Goddess. Nyx's mother. Her divine presence filled the space with a calming, ancient energy.
"HA! Haven't seen those in a long time!"
The solemn silence of the divine realm was instantly and roughly shattered by a loud, enthusiastic voice. Pope Bernard came sprinting down the star path at full tilt, his ceremonial robes fluttering behind his heels. Thundering right behind him came two gigantic figures: Toki and the cat. Toki, a colossal, terrifying figure looking identical to a three-headed Cerberus hound, and the cat, a pitch-black panther-like appearance the size of a fully grown Dire Beast.
Jane and Cilla lost all their warrior mentality in a single blow. At the sight of the three-headed hellhound and the massive predatory cat, the two girls began screaming like two scared, helpless children, grabbing onto each other terrified.
But Toki thought otherwise. The colossal dog braked right in front of them, dropped his heads synchronously, and began licking the two girls' faces dry and enthusiastic with his gigantic tongues. Immediately after, the massive beast flopped onto his back and started rolling around them happily, his tail wagging wildly in the stardust. At the same time, the pitch-black cat swallowed her hunting instinct; she walked purring toward the pair and began giving Jane and Cilla soft, massive headbutts against their trembling knees.
The Moon Goddess looked amused at the scene and decided it was time for her official welcome. She raised her hand, let her silver aura light up, and launched her most stately, divine speech. Her voice echoed like pure poetry through the cosmos:
"DAUGHTER. It fills my heart with joy to welcome you here into my domain… But tell me, what is going on that you,"
Before the goddess could even finish her solemn sentence, the fragile composure Nyx had held together all day completely shattered. The stoic, cold facade of the 'Architect' vanished in a single, agonizing instant. Nyx shoved herself away from the girls, collapsed onto her knees in the shimmering stardust, and let out a raw, high-pitched scream of pure teenage frustration and agony.
"I CAN'T DO THIS, MOM!" Nyx shrieked, her voice cracking violently as tears burst from her eyes, hot and uncontrollable, streaming down her red cheeks. She clawed at the stardust, her shoulders shaking violently as she sobbed like a broken child. "It's not fair! It's just not damn fair! Silarias is gone! He vanished into nothingness right in front of me and I couldn't do ANYTHING! I was right there! I'm supposed to be strong, I'm supposed to be this stupid architect building everything, but I'm just so angry! I hate everything! I hate this world, I hate the void, I hate that everyone expects me to have answers when I'm just terrified!"
She slammed her small fists repeatedly against the floor, hyperventilating wildly, her chest heaving as choked wails ripped from her throat. "I just want him back! I miss him so much it feels like my chest is going to explode, Mom! Why does everything have to fall on us?! Why do I have to lose everything?!"
The sheer, raw agony of her breakdown hit the realm like a physical strike.
Jane froze, her tough soldier mentality instantly crumbling to dust. Watching Nyx, the royal girl who always kept her head high, break down into a helpless, crying teenager hit her right in the heart. Jane's lynx ears flattened completely back against her skull in deep guilt and sorrow, and her thick tail dropped low, tucked tightly between her legs. Her eyes welled up with thick tears that she frantically tried to blink away, her chest aching as she took a shaky, painful breath.
Beside her, Cilla's breath hitched in her throat. The lingering lilac vines around her wrists began to quiver as her own tears spilled over her eyelashes. The soft, vibrant purple leaves floating around her aura instantly withered and turned a deep, obsidian black, fluttering down like delicate ash onto the floor. Cilla clenched her jaw, her whole body trembling as she tried with everything inside her to stay strong, biting her lip so hard it nearly bled as tears silently tracked down her face.
The Moon Goddess dropped her divine status instantly. The stately posture dissolved into pure, motherly instinct. With an intensely worried, heartbroken look, Abysia slid off her silver throne and rushed forward, dropping to her knees right in the stardust beside her sobbing daughter.
She gathered Nyx tightly into her arms, pulling the hysterical teenager flush against her chest. Nyx buried her face into her mother's neck, her small hands tightly bunching up the divine silver robes, crying so hard she could barely catch her breath.
"Shh, my sweet baby... I know, I know," Abysia murmured tenderly, rocking Nyx gently back and forth, rubbing firm, comforting circles into her back while resting her cheek against Nyx's trembling head. "Let it out. Speak it all out, sweetheart. You don't have to be the architect right now. You're allowed to be angry. You're allowed to be a scared kid. I've got you."
While holding her weeping daughter close, Abysia looked up over Nyx's shoulder at the two trembling girls. Her warm, grounding gaze swept over Jane's lowered lynx ears and Cilla's blackened leaves.
"We will get properly acquainted in a moment," the goddess said soft and low to the duo, her voice dripping with genuine warmth. "Don't carry that guilt. Friends of my daughter are my daughters from now on." Her gaze rested a second longer on Cilla, pointing a slender, gentle finger at her. "And as for you, young lady... I will come back to you very specifically in a bit."
Cilla and Jane exchanged a tearful, bewildered glance, pointing shaking fingers at themselves at the same time. Us?!
Abysia turned all her motherly focus back to Nyx, stroking her silver hair until the frantic hyperventilating turned into small, hiccuping sobs. "It is okay to be angry, Nyx. That rage doesn't mean you have lost your purity; it means you care about him with all your soul. But don't let that anger blind you to the structure you must build. The architect doesn't build walls out of hatred, but out of love for what needs to survive inside. Cry, let it all out, but know that power lives in your cells."
Only when Nyx's breathing finally settled into a soft rhythm did the goddess stand up slowly. She smoothed her silver robe, turned toward Jane and Cilla, and introduced herself informally, her eyes twinkling with motherly affection.
"Well, hello girls. I am Abysia, the mother of this stubborn child here," she said gently, chuckling as the two soldiers stood at rigid attention, wiping their tears away. "Haha, yes… Not you, daughter of the chieftain," she added with a warm wink at Jane, whose lynx ears twitched slightly back up. "I feel truly honored that you kept supporting her, by the way."
Then Abysia stepped slowly toward Cilla. Her look became softer, deeper, and a mysterious smile glided across her lips as she looked Cilla straight in the eyes. "And as for you… You are Cilla. Or Lila… Or whatever you prefer to call yourself in this life."
The words were still hanging in the air when Jane's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Her jaw dropped so far it hurt her cheeks. She stared from the goddess to Cilla as if she were seeing a ghost.
Nyx, still sniffling on the ground with her thoughts frantically tied to Silarias, abruptly wiped her swollen eyes. The unfamiliar name sliced right through her lingering tears. She looked up, repeated the word in her head, and interrupted her mother's sentence with a hoarse frown.
"Wait… What?" Nyx brought out, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "Wait a minute… Lila?!"
An icy, layered silence fell over the Goddess Realm. Even Toki stopped rolling and the pitch-black cat sat upright on her hind legs, her yellow eyes locked onto Cilla.
Cilla stood there, bathed in silvery moonlight. Rolling tears were still on her cheeks, but her scared, trembling posture vanished. She forced a weak, nervous smile and tried to break the immense tension by awkwardly laughing it off.
"Haha… well," Cilla began, her voice growing steadily firmer and more regal as she slowly stood tall. She squared her shoulders, a posture she had frantically hidden all this time in the Bastion. "I guess the cat's out of the bag."
She looked Nyx and the bewildered Jane straight in the eyes.
"I am indeed Lila," she explained, as the soft glow of the divine realm reflected her true, royal aura. "My kingdom has been locked in a brutal, bloody war with the Inquisition for a very long time. Those monsters burned everything to the ground. To survive, and to prevent them from exploiting my bloodline, I had to go into hiding under a false name. I had to become a Nobody among the soldiers."
Her voice dropped to a cold, bitter whisper that sliced like an icicle through the cosmos.
"My entire kingdom, everything left of it, is currently being hunted by the most horrific, sadistic people this world knows. If the Inquisition finds out that I am here… the Bastion is no longer a sanctuary, but an execution ground."
The icy silence that followed Lila's confession hung like a gallows above the stardust. Jane's jaws were clenched so hard that the cartilage in her ears creaked; her right hand kept trembling at her side, clawing for the familiar grip of a sword that was not there. Nyx did not even move. She stared at the glistening splinters under her fingernails, her breathing a faltering, mechanical rhythm.
"Lila Aureoflora…" Jane repeated, uttering the name as if it were poison on her tongue. Her voice shifted razor-sharp into a bitter, raw laugh that echoed hollowly against the cosmos. "So the elite soldier who personally dragged half my division out of the bloody mud is the reason the Inquisition is slaughtering entire villages to their very foundations?! The crown princess of the golden kingdom was goddamn sitting around peeling potatoes in our kitchens?! All this time we were keeping a ticking time bomb warm!"
Lila swallowed the lump in her throat, but her chin went up unyieldingly. Her voice dropped to a cold, royal whisper that instantly plummeted the temperature in the divine realm far below freezing.
"Do you think I wanted this, Jane?! Do you think I enjoyed the stench of the kitchens while my people were being butchered?!" Lila's voice cracked, trembling with pent-up rage. "Every place I took a breath turned into a mass grave within a day! Those sadistic monsters of the Inquisition aren't just looking for an heir to the throne to make a political statement; they are hunting the pure, untouched blood in my cells to feed their filthy, bloody rituals! The Bastion was my absolute last straw, my ultimate hiding place. If the Inquisition finds out that the Aureoflora line is still breathing here… they will filter the blood of every man, woman, and child through the stones of your walls! Then nothing, absolutely nothing, will remain of the Bastion!"
Jane took a slow step forward, her lynx ears pinning flat again, her eyes narrowing into cold, dangerous slits as she glared directly into Lila's face. The betrayal burned raw in her chest, overriding every trace of military camaraderie they had shared in the trenches.
"And you thought you could just bleed us dry while playing the humble recruit?!" Jane spat out, her voice trembling with intense fury. "I trusted you with my back in every goddamn skirmish, Lila! If the Inquisition comes knocking at our gates for your precious bloodline, every single soldier I swore to protect is going to bleed for a lie you fed us every single day!"
Lila didn't step back; she held Jane's burning gaze, tears glistening in her eyes despite her rigid stance. "I took that burden to keep them alive! If I had spoken, the Inquisition would have leveled the Bastion the very same hour!"
Jane's knuckles turned bone-white as she clenched her fists. She opened her mouth to snap another furious counter, her chest heaving violently, but before the argument could spiral into an all-out clash, a suffocating pressure descended upon them.
"Enough drama, children," Abysia's voice cut straight through the rising tension with brute, divine authority.
The Moon Goddess was no longer leaning back nonchalantly on her throne. She leaned forward slowly, terrifyingly. Her silver pupils tightened like the bows of hungry hunters in the night. A heavy, suffocating, hypnotic pressure began spreading across the space like liquid lead, painfully squeezing the lungs of the three girls.
"You talk as if it were a coincidence that your fleeing feet found those specific stones, Lila," Abysia spoke, her voice swelling like a rising, thundering tide that made the entire cosmos tremble. "Did you really think it was pure luck that the commanders of the Bastion overlooked your royal features? Who do you think bestowed that golden kingdom of yours out of the smoldering ashes centuries ago, young lady?! Who blessed those sacred foundations with her own hands?! Think very deeply, princess… what is carved in indestructible silver upon the giant gates of your burning palace?! What did all your family crests actually have in common throughout the entire realm?!"
Lila's breathing stopped abruptly. Her eyes shot wildly from left to right, as if the burning history of her youth were projecting itself in flames before her. Her knees began to tremble uncontrollably under the crushing weight of historical realization.
"The… the golden crescent moon," she brought out barely audibly, while a thick, glistening tear strained over her cheekbone and shattered into the stardust with a fragile sound. "A… a moon?!"
"A moon, indeed," Abysia confirmed with a cold, proud smile that bared her teeth. "I am a goddess, Lila, and I do not let my precious investments simply perish or be exploited by a gang of sadistic inquisitors. I guided you there."
Behind the silver throne, the deep blue cosmos suddenly began to tear open with frightening violence. It was no magical gate opening smoothly; the air itself folded, crumpled, and cracked open with the deafening sound of breaking glacial ice. With a deep, blood-curdling bass vibration that the girls felt deep in their stomachs and bones, a monumental, grotesque gate of rough, shimmering meteorite glass rammed its way through the rift with brute force. The heavy doors slid open with a grinding crunch, and the suffocating stench of burnt flesh, ash, and heavy medicinal herbs wafted into the cosmos.
The figures wandering out through the thick smoke looked like walking corpses out of a nightmare. They moved slowly, leaning heavily on each other's shoulders. Thick, grey, soot-stained layers of linen bandages covered their bodies, and in countless spots, fresh, dark blood was still bleeding through. But they breathed. They were alive.
Leading the way was a woman with the exact same ash-colored locks as Lila. Her royal cloak was reduced to a tattered, blood-stained rag around her heavily mutilated shoulders, but her gaze was still that of an untamed ruler.
"MOM!!!"
The cry that ripped from Lila's throat was so raw, hoarse, and utterly hysterical that it scattered the mists of the divine realm. She threw every form of military discipline and royal dignity overboard, stumbled blindly over her own feet through the stardust, and launched herself with a dull thud against her mother's battered, wrapped body. The queen caught her with a sharp, painful groan, but unconditionally closed her bandage-draped arms around her trembling daughter. The rest of the surviving court joined in limping, groaning, and weeping; a chaotic, shattering tangle of tears, bloodstains, and reclaimed pride.
Jane and Nyx stood as if nailed to the floor. Their mouths hung open, their gazes completely locked onto the emotional battlefield before them. The pure, overwhelming intensity of this act of kindness cut deeper than the sharpest dagger. This was no abstract magic lesson; this was a doctrine burned directly, indelibly into the irises of both girls. This is what true, divine power did. This was the structure that needed to be protected from the outside world.
Nyx looked up at her mother with a trembling lower jaw and moist eyes. Abysia was now standing straight as an arrow before her throne, her slender hands casually resting on her hips. She looked at the farthest stars in the firmament with an exaggerated, feigned disinterest and whistled a soft, innocent tune, as if she had absolutely nothing to do with this and was playing dumb.
Suddenly, the whistling stopped abruptly. Abysia's face darkened into a cold expression and she brought her right heel down onto the shimmering ground with brute, explosive power.
BOOOM!!!
A chilling shockwave of silver resonance shot across the floor in a perfect, razor-sharp circle, splashing the stardust meters into the air. The vibration slammed through the girls' legs like an electric shock.
"Weep and embrace each other, but do it damn fast," Abysia spoke, her voice now completely transformed into that of a cold, ruthless general. "Because the clock is ticking, even though I have violently frozen it just now. Listen closely, Nyx: anger without structure is nothing more than fleeting smoke. The Inquisition needs Lila's blood to plunge this world into darkness, and Silarias has been cast somewhere into the absolute, bottomless void. Those two lines are not isolated incidents; they intersect at the exact same center of misery. But in your current, weak state, you are nothing more than easy prey for the wolves."
The goddess raised her left hand high into the air. Three massive, silver rings of pure, liquid light spun around her wrist with a screeching, hissing sound.
"That stomp just now activated the resonance of the night," Abysia continued with a cold gaze. "Time in the Bastion is frozen solid for the next six hours. Not a single second will tick by, not a single enemy will take a step, not a single guard will blink an eye. You have been granted exactly three hundred and sixty minutes outside the boundaries of reality to reinvent yourselves."
Abysia stepped toward the weeping princess with slow, menacing strides. "Lila. Are you ready to bleed during training to avenge your kingdom, or do you choose to hide ingloriously behind the skirts of your wounded mother for the next six hours?! I completely understand if you are too broken and too weak."
Lila swallowed her tears in one hard, audible breath. She released her mother's hand, turned around with a sharp jerk, and walked with large, heavy strides straight toward Nyx and Jane. The fear was completely erased from her face; the true princess of the Aureoflora kingdom stood unyielding at her post.
The corners of Abysia's mouth curled slowly upward into a terrifying, predatory grin. "Splendid. LADIES… TRAINING TIME?!"
CLICKS!
With a single dry snap of her fingers, the idyllic, deep blue cosmos imploded with a loud hissing sound. The soft stardust beneath their feet turned in a fraction of a second into razor-sharp, pitch-black obsidian sand that instantly cut painfully through the leather of their boots. The magnificent star nebulae condensed at roaring speed into thick, purple-black storm clouds that suffocated the entire horizon. A bitter, harsh storm rose and howled through their clothes with a slicing sound. The silver throne melted away entirely, leaving behind nothing but a jagged, man-sized formation of razor-sharp moon glass.
Abysia took a heavy step forward into the dark zone, and with every millimeter she moved, her form escalated at a terrifying pace. Her grounded, motherly demeanor literally flaked off her body like dry, burning paint. Her silver robe transformed with a heavy metallic clatter into a pitch-black, skin-tight armor of otherworldly material that simply swallowed and destroyed all present light.
Two giant, pulsating arcs of silver battle aura flashed up around her fists with loud crackling, deafening violence. She stood there, heavy in her muscles, her white hair blowing wildly in the storm, breathing like a hungry predator staring her prey in the eyes. Battle ready. Her gaze promised nothing less than pure, unadulterated hell.
"Come at me," the Moon Goddess whispered, and gravity increased so exponentially that the obsidian sand began to tremble and the girls spontaneously had to take a step back to avoid collapsing under the weight.
On the sidelines, Pope Bernard took a brute, unexpected run-up. With a wild, fiery look in his eyes, he threw his meters-high ceremonial hat into the dark zone at tremendous speed. He launched his own body right behind it with a perfect, aerodynamic dive. In the middle of the slicing wind, he executed a tight, triple flip, only to land straight inside the falling hat headfirst, exact to the moment his feet touched the black obsidian sand.
His white robes closed tightly around his muscular torso with a loud snap, his massive staff kneeled at the ready, and his eyes spewed pure, white fire. Training ready.
Without a shred of warning or mercy, Abysia launched her body forward. The black obsidian sand blasted meters high into the air as the Moon Goddess pushed off, her form turned into a silver, lethal lightning bolt thundering straight at the trio at brute speed. The air pressure she displaced was so absurdly high that the walls of moon glass around them began to crack and splinter spontaneously.
There was no time to confer. No time to discuss tactics or take a step back. Nyx, Jane, and Lila snapped simultaneously; their deepest survival instincts completely took over their minds. They had to act out of pure, unadulterated intuition, and in that fraction of a second, their inner, hidden power broke through to the surface with a brute visual escalation.
Nyx's transformation set in first. Her hair exploded into a liquid, silver glow that drifted and lit up through the harsh storm around her like weightless water. Her fingers changed into a terrifying contrast; her hands turned deep pitch-black, pulsating with a cold, hungry void energy that made the air around her ripple. At the same time, the ice earring in her ear reacted with a hissing, freezing violence. A thick, icy vapor rose around her temples, after which a razor-sharp, frozen crown materialized directly onto her head with the loud sound of cracking glacial ice. The look in her eyes shifted to pure, cold, and merciless royalty.
Right beside her, Jane underwent a beastly, brute metamorphosis. Her spirit beast, the giant pitch-black panther, burst out of her shadow in a fierce surge of pure spiritual energy and instantly merged with her own body into a brute hybrid form. Her fangs shot outward, her nails turned into lethal claws, and her muscles swelled terrifyingly beneath her clothes. Coupled with her electric earring, her entire body discharged in an insane explosion of energy. Neon blue, electric jolts crackled around her torso with the sound of tearing heavens. Jane looked into her own hands with a wild, predatory gaze and clenched her fists together, where a rattling, electric whip of pure neon blue current immediately formed, striking deep grooves across the obsidian sand with hissing violence.
At the same time, the ground beneath Lila's feet exploded. Thick, lilac-purple vines shot out of the black sand like possessed things, wrapping around her legs with brute speed and pulling her down into the depths with one hard jerk. The floor spewed out a dense, suffocating cloud of razor-sharp, purple leaves that shot around like a buzzsaw wind, completely blocking the vision of the entire zone.
BOOM!!!
With a deafening crack, the black ground split open again. Lila launched herself upward out of the floor, completely transformed into her new, superior form. She hovered half above the sand like a lethal, royal vine wielder; meters-long lilac vines covered in thick thorns spun around her arms, glowing with royal energy, ready to tear anything that moved to pieces.
The three girls stood in their brand-new, activated awakened forms, their powerful auras clashing against each other with screeching violence and brightly illuminating the dark moon zone.
Right before them, Abysia's silver streak broke through the purple leaf wind, her fists raised to test the three transformed warriors in one destructive blow, with Pope Bernard right in her slipstream like a white, lethal arrow. The pressure was suffocating, the impact seemed inevitable. Nyx raised her pitch-black void hands, Jane raised her crackling whip, and Lila's thorny vines tightened like steel cables.
But the devastating blow never came.
With a bizarre, almost impossible display of muscle control, Abysia and Bernard braked synchronously. The silver and white auras clashed with a hissing sound against the neon blue and lilac powers of the girls, but the massive fists of the goddess and the heavy staff of the pope stopped exact to the millimeter right in front of their faces. The brute wind displaced by their strike blew the hair of Nyx and Jane flat back, but not a single physical blow landed.
The deathly, menacing look on Abysia's face melted away completely in a fraction of a second, making way for a broad, proud, and loud grin. She calmly pulled her fists back and relaxed her muscles, though her pitch-black armor continued to glisten in the storm.
"HAH! I knew it!" Abysia shouted loudly, her voice echoing through the dark zone with pure pleasure and triumph. "Intuition! Pure, unadulterated intuition! Only from this exact point can we truly get down to business!"
She stepped back laughing and surveyed the three heavily breathing, trembling, and transformed girls with a look of deep satisfaction. Bernard landed smoothly and noiselessly beside her, inspected his staff, and placed his hat back straight on his head with a flamboyant, calm motion.
"As if I would actually beat up my own daughter and her loyal friends, haha… Of course not," the Moon Goddess continued her monologue, intensely enjoying the slack-jawed expressions and confusion of the trio. "This was purely the test to see if your instinct was still alive. This is the absolute foundation I needed. Now that the fire is stoked, the proper training truly begins. You are going to learn what real structure is."
Abysia turned her head forty-five degrees toward the shadowy sideline of the dark zone, where the pitch-black panther-like cat sat motionless and majestic, watching the spectacle with her large, bright yellow eyes. The goddess gave the giant cat a short, tight, and telling nod.
The cat reacted immediately. She raised a massive, pitch-black claw with glistening nails and gave a hard, dry tap against a giant, antique hourglass made of crystal and silver that had just materialized noiselessly out of the purple mists beside her. With a dull, rolling, and echoing sound, the huge hourglass flipped completely on its axis.
The shimmering, silver sand inside the glass began to seep down slowly but inexorably. The three hundred and sixty minutes outside of reality had now officially, irreversibly, and with an iron law begun.