Nihility [ Isekai • Dragon Evolution ]

"What can you say about them?" Avorá, the pontiff of the Church of Space, asked Ferdinand, one of the cardinals of the same church. They were both in Avorá's office in the capital, one of the most isolated places in the word as it exists between folds of space only accessible to those who Avorá allowed entry as she was the one who placed the office in those folds.

"They appear to be holding quite well considering the world they came from wasn't as violent as this one, according to them" Ferdinand answered. He noticed that during the last week Avorá was trembling constantly and looking over her shoulders over any small sound, but decided not to comment on it, as he knew the reason. They had lost the only egg of the Dragon King, not lost as it completely disintegrated. Who knew how long they still had to live as Lilith, the first angel of the Dragon King, would destroy this whole country because of it. "Although some of them have showed some psychotic tendencies"

Ferdinand slipped a paper over to Avorá who picked it up and began to read it.

"So this Vinicius, Rafael and Thiago showed no care about their classmates when they were fighting the half-demons. What did the professors report about them?" Avorá asked

"They form a group between themselves and bully their classmates. They think the professors don't have high enough perception to notice as they don't interfere with their comportament as per your orders"

"Apparently one of them has time-like skills. I just don't know who. The pontiff of the Church of Time sent me a letter the day after the ritual. He said I shouldn't meddle with them too much as there's already sotobro waves coming from the future" She said as she got up and turned to the window, seeing the complex folds of space swirling around just outside of the walls of her office.

"But still, pontiff. If they're left to their own devices, they might cause more damage-" Ferdinand started, but was stopped by Avorá.

"I am well aware of it, but if we try to meddle too much it may cause even more damage. Gabriel explicitly told me in the letter that these waves were bigger than anything he ever felt, and last I know he is over a thousand years old," Avorá said. She knew Gabriel was a human with an average life expectancy of just 100 years give or take, but he was also one of the most powerful temporal priests that existed, at least for the last few thousands of years, and managed to do something with his age to live for so long, and she knew enough not to ignore advices from beings that powerful.

"And the egg?" The voice made Avorá and Ferdinand freeze on the spot. It was the voice of Lilith, coming from the side. They both looked over at the source of the voice and found a snow leopard therian with white wings on their back, but the voice was undoubtful Lilith's, and they knew how often she changed her outwards appearance, one of the many things that separated angels from mortals.

"Lilith. I was wondering when you'd come. Would you like a cup of tea?" Avorá said, dripping with a cold sweat. She turned to Ferdinand and addressed him before returning her attention to Lilith. "Cardinal. You are dismissed. Theo be with you"

Ferdinand bowed towards them and then left through the door, which remained closed for the entire duration of their talk until now, revealing how little their defenses mattered for the first angel.

"As you're offering" Lilith said as she took the unoccupied chair in front of the table. Avorá tore open a small hole in space and retrieved a small set of cups and a teapot with sigils to keep it warm. She placed the cup in front of Lilith and one for herself as she poured the deep red liquid. Then stored the teapot and sat down, picking the cup and taking a small sip from the warm liquid.

Lilith also picked the cup and took a larger sip, not bothering to check for poisons as she knew there wasn't anything the elf woman in front of her could do to her that would cause lasting damage to her, and even if she somehow managed to do it, Lilith could just discard her current body and made a new one. As a being made out of pure divinity, a material body was just a comfortable vessel to interact with the world, but she could do without one.

"We both know why I came" Lilith said as she placed her cup back on the table.

"Yes. I imagine I do" Avorá said, accepting her fate and wishing towards the Goddess of Death for a more peaceful life after she reincarnates as her current one would be over soon enough. "Could I just ask for you to spare the summoned? They are innocent and shouldn't deserve this"

"Oh? But aren't they the reason why my Master's egg is completely destroyed?" Lilith's words tore through Avorá's chest like hot knives on butter.

"Technically that is true. But I must ask you to reconsider. They were only brought here because of me. I was the one who used a forbidden ritual. I was the one who sent for the matrix to act as the catalyst for it, so the blame should fall on me and the Church, not on some kids from another universe that were caught up in this mess" Avorá pleaded.

Lilith smiled, a kind of smile that sent shivers down Avorá's spine. "You are so lucky and don't even realize it"

Avorá didn't try to hide her confused face as it would be for naught in the face of Lilith, who just laughed at her expression.

"I am being honest when I say that if it depended on me, we wouldn't be having this conversation as I would be already over destroying this entire kingdom and leveling every building belonging to the Church of Space. Theo would have to find others to rebuild his Church, if he even bothered to do it that is. Please remind me of how long ago was the last contact from the Great ones" Lilith asked.

"According to the records, it's been around ten thousand years since the Greater Gods have interacted with us mortals besides granting us their divine powers so we can have priests and paladins" Avorá answered honestly.

Lilith nodded and continued to speak. "Luckily for you. I was ordered to not do anything to you, your Church and this kingdom" As Lilith said it, Avorá couldn't contain her shock. The only being that could order Lilith around was her master, the Dragon King himself. But wasn't he angry they destroyed his only egg? Avorá couldn't understand. "He ordered me to come here to explain to you that you don't have to worry about punishment coming from the Myriad Palace. He also wants the records you have on the summoned"

Avorá took a moment to process what Lilith had said. What does the Dragon King mean there wouldn't be punishment? They had killed his only child and he was not angry? Or maybe he was but destroying the Church wasn't enough? Avorá couldn't understand why. After five seconds Avorá processed the second part of what Lilith asked and quickly got up before going over and opening one of the many cabinets in her office and picking some folders that had the reports on each of the summoned. She went back and gave Lilith the folders.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Lilith counted the folders and then looked at Avorá. "Where's the last one?"

"What?" Avorá couldn't help but ask, as she had delivered every copy of the reports they had about the summoned she kept in her office.

"There's only nineteen here. My Master told me there were twenty" Lilith said

"What?" Avorá asked again.

Juliana woke up feeling like ten trucks had hit her during her sleep. She couldn't sleep well after her son had vanished together with a whole classroom of students, including the room itself. The whole school was closed down after the incident. The news was telling that it was a bomb attack from someone in the school, but there wasn't any evidence to determine who was actually responsible, but Juliana knew it wasn't anything the media was telling the masses.

She got up from her bed and went to brush her teeth and take a morning bath. It was enough to get some of the tiredness off from her shoulders, but there was still a weight pressing down on her.

After her bath, she went to the kitchen to eat breakfast that her husband had made for her as he had to wake up earlier to go to work. While she ate it, she couldn't help but think of how the sadness her husband showed towards the death of their son was made up, as if he was hiding things from her.

It's the little things she thought as she recalled as to how he only cried whenever she was within earshot or not distracted.

No. She couldn't start thinking like this or she would fall into a downward spiral, and her professors taught her better than to allow those types of thoughts to enter her mind, else she would be driven insane. She placed her hand on the necklace her husband had gifted her so many years ago. Even now she could feel the love for her that he had in the necklace. He had told her it was going to protect her from what he couldn't.

After she had finished eating the breakfast, she looked at her phone, but her contact had not sent her a single message since the incident, and worse, they had actually started to ignore her.

"That's enough" She said as she got up, changed clothes and left their house, entering her car and driving towards the city hall, not stopping for nothing.

After she arrived at the building, she entered it as if she owned the place and went straight to the elevators. Some of the clerks saw her and were going to stop her, but the moment they saw she was going towards the elevators they stopped and went back to their usual work. They were instructed to ignore people entering and going in that specific direction, after all.

She stood in front of the two elevators, separated by a big space on the wall, and started tapping the call button for them in a specific order. Two pushes on the left, one on the right, two others on the left, two on the right and another on the left.

She waited as a ding echoed through the hall she was in and the wall slid open, revealing another elevator hidden in plain sight. She entered the elevator and pressed the button to close the door, then she looked at the mirror that occupied the back wall of the elevator, taking a few moments to adjust her hair and dress as she walked and simply passed through the mirror as if it was not there, the mirror itself just undulating like a lake when a stone is dropped on it, but returned to the normal mirror wall when Juliana finished walking through it.

She took a moment to see if there were any chances to the place before going straight to a specific door and walked towards the clerk working on a computer. They didn't even have the chance to say their usual introduction before they were cut off by Juliana.

"Tell Ricardo that Juliana is here to speak with him, and that I will not accept a no or any kind of delay for an answer. You have 5 minutes" She said and then moved to one of the chairs that were in the office, picking up a cup of water that had appeared on the small table in front of it.

After a few minutes, less than the 5 minutes Juliana had said they had, a man in a white suit appeared out of a door on the side.

"Juliana, it's been so long" He came and went to hug her, but stopped when he saw her angry eyes. "We'd better move to one of our reunion rooms. Please follow me"

Juliana got up and followed the man until they arrived in a large room which had a projector on the roof and a white screen in one of the walls. The middle of the room was an elongated table with a dozen chairs. As they closed the door behind them, the air conditioner turned on by itself, cooling the entire room in mere moments.

"Silencio" The man said as he flicked a wooden wand in the direction of the door. "As happy as I am to see you, I must remind you that you made an oath to abandon your authority in the magic high commission of Brazil when you chose to marry your normal husband"

"I am well aware of it, Ricardo" Juliana said as she sat on the chair furthest from the white wall the projector would display a screen, the place usually reserved to those of the highest ranking in the room. It was a clear display of disregard for their own rules, but Ricardo chose to not comment on that, instead sitting on one of the chairs on the side of it.

"So, what can I do for you?" Ricardo asked.

"You know very much what you can do for me. Tell me, who did it?" She told him.

Ricardo sighed, knowing the reason Juliana came here would be the death of her only son, even if her son wasn't a wizard like his mother. "We had personnel on the site a few hours after the incident, but they came up blank. There wasn't any residual magic on the school, and it wasn't an explosion, the rebuilding spell would have fixed the classroom if it were. The investigation was archived after two days"

"ARCHIVED?!" She shouted. The entire room trembled with her anger, such was the power of an arch-wizard. "WHY WOULD THE MAGICAL INVESTIGATION BUREAU ARCHIVE SUCH BLATANT USE OF MAGIC LIKE THIS?"

"It's not that we wanted to, but recent events have forced our hand" Ricardo sighed as he snapped his fingers and the projector turned on, showing a map of São Paulo with at least ten blue points spread out through it. "Each point you see is a manifestation of magic like none the magical community has ever seen. They are fractures on the very fabric of space, leading to some extra dimensional space filled with strange magical creatures. The weirdest part is there seems to be a secondary effect that only affects the normals, giving them magical powers different from what we are used to"

"So what?" Juliana said nonchalantly, but inside she was studying the information given to her, and trying to see if there would be a connection to what happened to her son. "Just close off the area and don't let the normals approach"

Ricardo smiled softly at the same order he was given from the current leaders of the bureau. "If it were that easy" He snapped his fingers and another map of São Paulo appeared, this time showing double the amount of blue dots. "They are increasing daily. We are lucky that any clairvoyance spell are locating those spaces before they fully manifest"

Juliana took in the information silently before getting up and looking directly at Ricardo.

"Take me there. I will see it with my own eyes" She said as she moved towards the door. "And bring me my wand while you're at it. I know they stored it on the golden archives"

Ricardo smiled fondly at his old boss. Even when she is literally retired, and partially banned from the magical community, she does things her way, ignoring the other arch-wizards as she does things whoever she deems fit.

"So?" With Juliana's sudden question, Ricardo rapidly went to the golden archives to retrieve his boss's wand while muttering to himself.

"Juliana is back."