Chapter 765: 765

Crepuscular remained.

He looked out over the ruins before him, the drifting continents, the shattered echoes of a world that had failed to endure divine excess. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted the small sun higher into the void.

Then he released it.

The moment it left his palm, its power unfurled in full.

Gravity roared to life.

Fragments of stone, oceans frozen mid-motion, entire landmasses were ripped from their aimless drift and dragged screaming toward the growing star. Mountains collapsed inward. Divine residue, world-fragments, and broken laws themselves were pulled in, stripped, purified, and consumed.

With every piece absorbed, the sun grew.

Crepuscular turned away as the Upside-Down World began its final undoing, stepping through a tear in space of his own making. The rupture sealed behind him leaving the expanding sun alone in the void.

Where a fractured world once lingered, there would soon be only darkness... and a star that ensured nothing impure would remain.

Once the Origin Gods returned to reality, their strength finally gave out.

One by one, they descended into their own realms, bodies heavy, divinity exhausted. The moment they crossed their thresholds, they collapsed sinking into a sleep-like trance, neither fully unconscious nor aware. A a forced withdrawal, a retreat of the self so that something deeper could work.

Their realms responded immediately.

The foundations of their domains stirred, mechanisms of divinity awakening. Power flowed inward, wrapping around their broken forms. Golden light seeped into fractured flesh, knitting wounds that had resisted healing since the battle. The faint traces of foreign law, imposed by their counterparts were slowly unraveled and erased, thread by thread.

More troubling were the remnants of corrupted divinity. These stains clung stubbornly, embedded deep within their essence. It took time, weeks of silent purification for their realms to burn them away completely. Only when the last echoes were gone did their divinity stabilize once more.

And so, the Origin Gods slept.

Two months passed.

In the Upside-Down World, there was nothing left.

No fragments, no drifting islands. No echoes of structure or form.

Only the sun remained.

It had grown vast, bloated with stolen mass, divine residue, and the purified remains of an entire world. Yet its size was a lie. The star was unstable, its core collapsing inward as the laws sustaining it devoured themselves.

Slowly, inevitably, it began to shrink.

Light folded into itself. Gravity spiked beyond reason. What had once been a blazing sun condensed further and further, until it became a small black hole, silent and absolute, hanging alone in the void.

For a brief moment, there was perfect stillness.

Then, The black hole collapsed.

It detonated into a colossal wave of light, a blinding surge of purified radiance that tore through the Upside-Down World in every direction. What little remained of that broken realm was scoured clean, erased down to the conceptual level. Even the void itself seemed to recoil as the light passed through it.

The shock did not stop there. The wave pierced the boundary between worlds.

In reality, the effect was felt instantly.

Stars flickered. Leylines screamed and a subtle earthquake affceted the whole world.

Across the world, sensitive beings felt a sudden pressure in their chests, a flash of warmth followed by dread, as though something immense had exhaled after holding its breath for far too long. The sky itself seemed brighter for a heartbeat then returned to normal, leaving only confusion behind.

It was at this time that Nana rested within her own realm, lying sideways upon the bed her son had prepared for her. The surface was warm, shaped by his power and concern alike, yet sleep refused to come. Her gaze drifted beyond the veil of her domain, toward the distant realms where her children lay recovering.

They were wounded, exhausted, but alive.

As a mother, pride swelled quietly within her. They had acted decisively, without hesitation, and that single choice had spared their world from calamity. Nana knew better, survival often demanded resolve that mercy could not afford. For that, she was grateful... and proud.

Yet her relief was short lived, her thoughts returned, again and again, to the two who were absent, Ikenga and Keles.

How long would it take before they returned? Days? Years? Or would the currents of fate delay them far longer than she could afford?

She needed Ikenga now more than ever.

Her world was changing fast. It was approaching the threshold of the Sixth Tier, an age where beings of immense power would begin to rise, figures capable of shaping nations or civilizations, and influencing the very direction the world itself would take.

On the surface, this should have been a cause for celebration. The emergence of Sixth Tier powers was proof that the world’s heritage was deepening, its foundations growing strong enough to give birth to such entities. By all natural measures, it was a sign of progress.

But Nana felt no comfort in it.

If these emerging figures shared a single purpose, if they stood beneath one banner, bound by a common vision then she would have nothing to fear. Order could be maintained. Growth could be guided.

But her world was not so simple because of the multiple strong kingdoms and races in it.

Each Sixth Tier being would rise carrying their own ideals, their own ambitions, their own interpretation of what the world should become. And where ideals diverged, conflict was inevitable.

It was then that Nana felt it.

A calling so faint that she nearly dismissed it as longing made manifest. For a heartbeat, she thought her mind was betraying her, weaving hope from absence. But the sensation did not fade. It grew steadier, more insistent, resonating deep within her essence.

It was real.

Her children were reaching for her.

Ikenga and Keles were returning, their voices calling out for her to anchor herself to the plane they now occupied so she could draw them home. There was no hesitation in Nana’s response.

She acted at once.

With a single wave of her hand, the space before her shimmered and folded in on itself. Starlight spilled outward as a gate took shape, countless points of light forming an archway that seemed to lead not merely across distance, but across worlds.

Nana stepped forward and reached for the handle formed of condensed constellations. She pulled.

The gate opened.

A rush of unfamiliar air washed over her, heavy with traces of conflict and foreign power. Nana took a measured step back and waited, her expression calm even as her heart tightened with anticipation.

Soon, two silhouettes emerged from the sea of stars, their forms growing clearer with each step they took toward her.

Her children had come home.

After leaving Zarvok’s layer, Ikenga and Keles found themselves ascending a long, quiet stairway that stretched upward into nothingness. Then, before them, a gate appeared.

It bloomed into existence without warning, its edges glowing with familiar starlight. From beyond it, both of them felt it at the same time,

Home.

Relief surged through them, followed almost immediately by trepidation. Excitement warred with unease, for they knew that some of their actions, however necessary, would wound the very ones they longed to see again.

Ikenga reached for Keles’s hand.

The gesture grounded him, steadying the storm of thoughts threatening to overtake his composure. At the same time, it was a promise, a silent vow that no matter what awaited them beyond the gate, he would stand beside her.

Keles tightened her grip in return.

Together, they stepped forward, crossing the threshold toward the one who had been waiting for them all along.

Both stepped through the gate and found themselves in a place that felt instantly familiar.

Before either could speak, Nana was already there.

She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and wrapped them both in an embrace that left no room for hesitation. Ikenga and Keles leaned into it without resistance, the tension they had carried for so long finally loosening in her arms.

Within her presence, each of them felt something different.

To Ikenga, Nana carried the scent of living earth, lush forests after rainfall, roots deep in fertile soil, the quiet endurance of nature that had always grounded him.

To Keles, the scent was different.

She was welcomed by the familiar calm of death, not rot or decay, but the stillness that followed an ending, the peace of a final breath, the certainty that all things, once complete, were allowed to rest. It was comforting in a way only she could understand.

Nana mirrored them both perfectly, "Welcome home," Nana said softly.

She stepped back, her hands lingering on their shoulders before her gaze shifted, drawn instinctively to Keles. Her eyes lowered, then widened as they took in her daughter’s noticeably swollen stomach.

For a moment, Nana simply stared.

Then she reached out, her movements uncharacteristically careful, as though the very air might bruise what she touched. She took Keles’s arm and gently placed her palm upon her daughter’s stomach, her touch warm and reverent.

Joy lit her face, bright and unrestrained.

"It seems you both had quite the adventure," she said, her voice rich with amusement and delight.