As the climactic battle raged in its frenzy, it suddenly snapped to an end. The figures locked in combat faded like mist, their shouts swallowed by silence. From the ruins of the great kingdom, the broken stones trembled, shifting and pulling themselves into place. Cracked avenues stitched themselves together like healing scars. Fallen pillars rolled upright and slotted into sockets that remembered them. Roads laced like silver threads across a blackened tapestry, and the wind that had carried ash and screams now swept the streets with a monk's quiet broom.

A timelapse unfolded, as if centuries were being compressed into seconds. Where once towers burned and walls lay shattered, a temple slowly emerged, rising layer upon layer above the charred ground.

Lower vaults knitted; flying buttresses sprouted like the ribs of a cathedral whale; frescoes painted themselves in strokes of light. Its spires stretched toward heaven, each one glowing faintly with sealing wards, concentric circles, and squares overlaid with stern geometry. Bells that had never been cast tolled in mute vision, and prayers that had never been spoken pressed into stone as bright glyphs.

"Whoa... What kind of a Temple is that?!"

"That must be before the calamity... That is what the Temple you were in would have looked like in its glory days."

At its very heart, buried beneath countless layers of sanctified rock and scripture-hardened mortar, a strange statue of fire and ice.

"Is that...?"

"Gemini," Libra answered.

There, Gemini was locked away, bound deep inside. The temple's crown gleamed, radiant and oppressive, an eternal reminder of the prison it had become, a mountain of judgment polished to a mirror's sheen.

The scene drew in closer, past the glowing halls, past the sigils blazing like miniature suns, until the world tilted, and the view tunneled down toward a quieter corner of the city. There, tucked away like something overlooked in the great drama of war, was a school: a long, low building with kind windows and a courtyard shaded by trees that had somehow survived.

The camera of the Celestial TV slipped through the window of a classroom and came to rest on a tall figure at the front. Aetarion Magus stood there, presence commanding even with only a chalkboard at his back. His voice bridged the battle outside and the knowledge within, thunder wrapped in velvet.

Aetarion paced the classroom, robes trailing faint sparks of mana as though the air itself remembered his mastery.

"From birth, I was unlike others. Gemini's presence warped my flesh, giving me a rare mutation. I was the first child in his kingdom whose body could grow mana. Angels were power-given form, but mortals were not. Yet I was different."

He raised a hand, and a glowing diagram hovered above his palm: a tiny infant wrapped in glyphs of fire and frost, the marks crawling over skin like constellations settling into place.

"Gemini saw me and saw a chance! If he could fashion another like him! If this boy who could wield magic as angels could, then Gemini would have a weapon in the wars to come! Because, unlike the created monsters, humans had spirit and soul." His lips thinned.

"So he fed me, nurtured me, grew me, shaping a body with rich magical energy. But it was only mana, a river without a channel. I could not yet turn it to flame or ice or stone. In his arrogance, Gemini possessed me often, wearing me like a glove. Through me, he exerted his control, fought his battles, and conquered his foes. Through me, he even managed to wound the dark lord, Libra."

Thane, watching from his side of the screen with arms folded and chin tipped, turned to Libra.

"Really? Landed a hit on you? That's bragging rights. Bet it was more than just a scratch, huh? You still remember him after a few thousand years."

Libra's misty face twisted; a thousand eyes along the smoke narrowed, then rolled.

"It was… demeaning... The first time a human managed to wound me. I cannot forget." He turned back to the screen as if to avoid giving Thane the satisfaction of a grin.

"But little did Gemini know, I remembered. Every sensation. Every pathway. Every channel he carved through me, I kept. The burning of fire, the freezing of ice, the very way mana moved as it entered flesh, with such severe pain. Because of that pain, I remembered. I learned. And in secret, I prepared."

Glowing diagrams unfurled in the air: the human body peeled back layer by layer, bones overlaid with rivers of light, veins pulsing with mana like hot glass being drawn into thread. Nodes blossomed like stars and dimmed, practicing their breathing.

"That one!" Libra snapped, unexpectedly fierce.

"Conqueror! Memorize that as if it's Scripture!"

Thane's eyes sharpened. The diagram Aetarion painted, those channels, those reservoirs, it mirrored what he'd seen once when Libra split himself across flesh and fog, a map of power stamped on bone.

Aetarion raised his hand, and the drawings pulsed with a heartbeat you could hear.

"It was through those possessions that I discovered how to fight back. From Gemini's dominion, I forged something new. Something he never believed I could. The first ever Mana Core! A mana core for man! A mana core that could bear the magic equal to angels!"

His staff struck the ground with a crack, and the diagrams shifted again. Luminous streams of light coursed through outlines of human forms, sparks bursting as they flowed into nodes glowing like suns.

"And so I perfected it! The Body of Mana! Taking the most potent cores from the champions of Libra, Taurus, and Cancer, I created the first vessel within mortal flesh. A body carved open for power to dwell. With it, mortals may not only house mana, but as we can command it!"

The screen flashed images: a bull-like titan with emerald scales that overlapped like armored leaves; a gigantic humanoid whose forearms ended in snapping, scissor-like claws; a being composed of hundreds of bones locked into the serpentine frame of a dragon, each rib a prayer bead of hatred.

"THAT BRAT!" Libra contorted, smoke boiling for a heartbeat, seeing his greatest general, a Skeleton Dragon, being used as material.

Thane chuckled. "He really knows how to make use of his opportunities! He got possessed, remembered the whole thing, and turned it into a how-to manual! And then he took the spoils from your angelic battles. Genius!"

"Even I never knew this." Libra sounded almost reverent through his disgust.

"He betrayed Gemini with Gemini's own knowledge… No wonder he commanded fire and ice. He took the champions we crafted and used their cores."

A pause, grudging.

"I… understand now."

Numerous explanations flowed. Aetarion revealed the core of Gemini's paradox. "The False Dichotomy of Gemini," he pressed on, chalk scratching glowing lines.

"He was of fire and ice! I had the best possible opportunity! Had it been any other Angel that was my master, I could never have done this! You see, elements in conflict, and yet bound together, inspired me to make two incompatible things work! How can flesh carry fire? His possession tore me apart, but from that tearing, I learned. If one body could contain two warring elements, how much easier to build one body for just a single element!"

His hand swept the air, and diagrams unfolded in tighter detail, close-work and fine etching. Bones revealed glyphs like snowflakes carved into ivory; veins wove in braids of light; channels spiraled around organs like whirlpools around stones in a river. Thane pointed.

"Hmmm? His bones have glyphs?"

"That's all part of the Body of Mana. That's why I told you to memorize that little chart he made earlier. Mana Pathing. Mana Resonance. That's what humans called it."

Thane nodded, absorbing, the gears in his head clicking like tumblers aligning. Aetarion continued, patient and remorseless.

"A body unprepared will reject magic. Just as soil without sun kills a seed, so too will a body without vessels kill the core. But when the body is readied, mana grows like fire in a hearth."

The episode deepened. Aetarion moved from theory to craft, from craft to caution. He spoke of grafting cores the way a vintner speaks of grafting vines, slowly, knowingly, respecting the life on both sides of the cut. He held up a small core from a spell-capable beetle-creature and explained how its aligned pathways could teach a hand to hold heat without blistering, how another from a water serpent could teach the lungs to drink the air.

"Cores must be added step by step!" he warned.

"From weaker to stronger. A worm before a wolf. A wolf before a wyvern. A wyvern before a drake. To leap too soon is to collapse."

Drawings of broken bodies appeared as various black-and-white clips depicting an ancient time where men and women half-changed, eyes unfocused, limbs ruined by power that didn't fit. Some even exploded and burst into flames!

But despite the scenes, Thane's eyes could barely keep open.

Libra noticed this.

"Conqueror. When was the last time you did the human act known as sleeping?" Libra asked.

But Libra didn't need to hear the answer.

THUD!

"Roar!" Esau screeched.

Relax," Libra said, already dimming the screen with a practiced gesture.

"He's just asleep." He paused the show on a frame where lines of mana sang across a drawn hand.

"Just when I was about to see how they created our cores…" He sighed.

"Nevertheless, Conqueror has gone without rest, battling mana fatigue and spirit fatigue both. Esau. Prepare a bed for your master." Libra watched the screen once more.

"Does this TV hold the best wisdom of this world?" Libra was in deep thought.

He watched and couldn't help but imagine the possibilities. He knew that with this, he would have a shot at fighting all those other angels in power.

"...Why? Was I not doomed for the fire of Eternity? Why am I here serving a Conqueror? And why...?" Libra wondered.

"...Why am I hoping for salvation now? Why now...? Can I dare inquire this of you? Oh, Most High? Can one as me... dream of salvation?" Libra asked the heavens for the very first time.

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