Thymera looked down at the Dimension Fissure Report resting in her hand.

  “It happened again,” she muttered.

  She knew about dimension fissures. They were not catastrophes, not invasions, not some hostile force pushing its way into reality. They were closer to mistakes. Errors.

  As the saying went, nothing was perfect. Sometimes even reality developed small flaws.

  Most beings lived within a third-dimensional world, but that did not mean only three dimensions existed. Upper dimensions had always been there. The difference lay in access. How many layers could be reached. How many could be cracked open by accident, forming unstable channels into places that were never meant to touch.

  That was what a dimension fissure was.

  Thymera knew they appeared where reality itself was weak. Thin. Stressed.

  The last one had happened seven mortal years ago.

  Her job was simple in theory and exhausting in practice. She repaired the rupture and then reinforced the surrounding structure of reality. A fissure that formed once was likely to form again if left unattended.

  Thymera let out a long sigh.

  “More work…”

  But as the sigh left her lips, another thought slipped in right behind it.

  Isn’t this just another leave disguised as work?

  A small, pleased smile formed on her face.

  Then the air behind her went cold.

  A pressure settled on her spine, sharp and unmistakable. A predatory glare pressed into her back.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Rionis said, her voice low and chilling. “You will die here.”

  Thymera stiffened and turned slowly.

  “I mean, isn’t it important to maintain my continent?” she said in a small, hurried voice. “This is urgent. I really need to go and fix the problem.”

  Rionis smiled. Not kindly. Smugly.

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “I already fixed it.”

  Thymera blinked. “You did?”

  “I knew you would try to escape again,” Rionis continued calmly, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “So I sent someone else for the repair work. They may already be finished.”

  A confused expression settled over Thymera’s face.

  “But it’s my responsibility,” she said. “I can’t be that irresponsible. Let me go.”

  “Do whatever is in front of you for now,” Rionis replied, her tone unbothered.

  Thymera lowered her head, arms drooping.

  “It’s unfair,” she said, her voice slipping into something almost childish.

  Rionis glanced at her. “Did you say something?”

  Thymera hesitated, then looked up again. “Who did you send? There aren’t many who can handle that kind of repair work.”

  Rionis answered without hesitation. “My big sister. Riona.”

  Understanding dawned instantly on Thymera’s face.

  “Well… she can do it,” Thymera admitted. “Probably better than me. She is an eight-winged angel, after all. And the leader of the First Legion.”

  A faint, prideful smile tugged at Rionis’s lips before she smoothed it away. She did not comment, but the pride was real.

  When she was younger, she had wanted to become a fighter like Riona. A blade-bearing angel standing at the front of heaven’s armies. But she had never possessed that talent. Instead, she became a civil servant within the Divine Castle, buried in reports, laws, and containment orders.

  Different roles. Same responsibility.

  Thymera leaned back in her chair and stretched her limbs.

  “I just hope no one got caught in the fissure this time,” she said.

  The words stirred an old memory.

  Seven years ago, someone had been caught.

  A mortal nun. One of Thymera’s own.

  Back then, Thymera had been on observation duty. She sensed the disturbance within seconds. She remembered seeing a blonde girl being dragged toward the tear in reality.

  She had been fast.

  Not fast enough.

  By the time Thymera reached out, most of the girl’s body had already crossed the threshold. Thymera’s divine power surged, trying to pull her back, but the fissure had opened into a higher dimension. A place where spatial rules shredded lesser beings on contact.

  To save her completely, Thymera would have needed to be there in person.

  That had been impossible.

  The most likely outcome was annihilation. The girl’s body and soul split into countless fragments, scattered across unknown worlds.

  There was another possibility. A small one.

  That the girl might remain whole long enough to exit the dimension somewhere else. Somewhere impossibly far from this world.

  The odds were low. Very low.

  So Thymera chose the only option left to her.

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  She formed a divine barrier around the girl. The strongest she could create in the shortest possible time. It wrapped around the mortal like a shell of light, increasing her chances of survival by a significant margin.

  Seconds later, the fissure closed.

  The girl vanished with it.

  “Thank you for your service, my kind child,” Thymera had whispered, watching the tear seal itself. “I hope you live a happy life wherever you are.”

  The memory loosened its grip when Rionis spoke again.

  “Luckily, no one was caught this time,” she said, smiling genuinely.

  Thymera looked up and smiled in return.

  Rionis knew how lazy Thymera could be. She also knew how deeply she cared. Thymera loved her people, even if she complained endlessly about doing her job.

  That was why Rionis tolerated her.

  In her mind, Thymera and Riona were both like elder sisters. One strict and unyielding. The other a lazy disaster. Together, they kept a strange but perfect balance.

  Still, a reminder was necessary from time to time.

  Rionis placed a hand on Thymera’s shoulder.

  “I also have good news for you,” she said. “And a little troublesome news.”

  Thymera froze.

  “Good news?” she asked slowly. “Does that mean I can get out of here this evening?”

  That was the only good news she could imagine.

  Rionis laughed softly. Evilly.

  “Don’t talk about impossible things,” she said. “But trust me. You will like this.”

  Thymera slumped.

  “See the other document,” Rionis added, nodding toward the table.

  Thymera reached for the second paper.

  The moment she read it, her eyes widened.

  Shock spread across her face.

  From Thymera, a small laugh slipped free, soft and unguarded, leaving her beautiful lips before she could stop it.

  “So you were alive,” she said.

  The words were quiet, almost fragile.

  “I’m really glad.”

  She stared at the document in her hands, eyes unmoving, as if the ink itself might vanish if she looked away. The feeling that rose in her chest surprised her. Relief came first, sudden and warm, loosening something that had been tightly bound for years.

  Then came something else.

  Something heavier.

  Maybe a little too much.

  The document was a report. Clean. Official. Unemotional.

  Helena Winterwell.

  A human.

  The same mortal who had been swallowed by a dimension fissure seven years ago. The same girl Thymera had watched disappear into higher reality with nothing but a hastily formed divine barrier to protect her.

  “I was shocked too,” Rionis said, breaking the silence.

  She stood beside the table, posture straight, fingers resting lightly against its edge.

  “Honestly, I never expected her to survive. No one knew where she was sent. When I saw her fall out of a dimension fissure again, alive…” She paused, then frowned slightly. “I thought my senses were wrong.”

  Rionis adjusted her glasses.

  “The probability of survival was already extremely low. Returning to her original world through a fissure like that should not even be possible. I don’t think those possibilities exist at all.”

  She exhaled quietly.

  “It cannot even be called a miracle.”

  Thymera did not look up right away.

  “But you know,” she said after a moment, “there is no such thing as one hundred percent.”

  Her voice was calm. Certain.

  “And there is no such thing as zero percent either.”

  She finally lifted her gaze.

  “Anything can happen.”

  Rionis nodded, acknowledging the words even if they unsettled her.

  Thymera looked down again at the photograph attached to the report. Helena’s face was captured mid-expression, unaware of divine eyes, systems, or probabilities.

  “It really is a miracle,” Thymera murmured.

  Rionis thought it felt strange. Uncomfortable. Seeing a literal goddess speak about miracles as if she were an observer rather than their source.

  But whatever.

  Thymera’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Did you do a sloppy job?”

  Rionis stiffened.

  “Sloppy?” Her brows furrowed. “By me?”

  She already knew what Thymera was referring to.

  “It’s not my mistake,” Rionis said firmly.

  The document in Thymera’s hands was a full appraisal. Name. Time of birth. Psychological tendencies. Karma balance. Probabilistic future insights, including estimated natural death.

  Not certainties, but projections.

  Accidents could always interfere.

  Yet the problem was obvious.

  Large portions were missing.

  No recorded race.

  No projected time of death.

  And the karma value.

  The karma value was absurd.

  “Why doesn’t she have a normal amount of good karma?” Thymera asked. “At this rate, the God of Death will go bankrupt rewarding her.”

  She looked up sharply.

  “Can’t you appraise her properly?”

  “I can,” Rionis replied. “And I did.”

  Once. Twice. More times than she cared to count.

  “Same result every time.”

  Thymera leaned back slightly, thinking.

  “Maybe because she was somewhere outside our system.”

  Rionis hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. That is possible. But before we settle on that explanation, can you try to appraise her?”

  She met Thymera’s eyes.

  “Maybe your personal appraisal will work.”

  Thymera raised her hand.

  The air shimmered.

  A blurry, floating screen formed in front of them.

  Both of them froze.

  Their mouths fell open.

  On the screen was Helena.

  Naked.

  Sitting in a bath with other girls, steam drifting lazily around bare skin and stone walls.

  Helena leaned toward a silver-haired girl beside her.

  “Your breasts are really small,” Helena said casually.

  “Wah!” Laysandra screamed as Helena grabbed her. “Please don’t. Your hands are cold!”

  “Are you even eating properly?” Helena continued, poking her again. “Where is all your nutrition going? Your body is just… this?”

  “This is just how I am!” Laysandra shouted, humiliated and angry at the same time.

  Helena did not stop teasing her.

  For several seconds, Thymera and Rionis simply stared.

  Their cheeks slowly turned red.

  The silence stretched into something deeply awkward.

  Rionis coughed lightly. “Your Majesty. We have work to do.”

  Thymera blinked, clearly pulled out of focus.

  “Oh. Yes.” She coughed as well.

  Both of them looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Where were we?” Thymera asked.

  “We were about to appraise Helena,” Rionis replied.

  Thymera paused again.

  “What is that?”

  Rionis followed Thymera’s line of sight.

  It was fixed squarely on Helena’s chest.

  “Those are breasts,” Rionis said flatly. “Don’t you have yours? Why are you joking at a time like this?”

  “No, no,” Thymera said quickly. “I’m not talking about breasts. Although they are… a little too well shaped.”

  She leaned forward slightly.

  “I mean inside her chest.”

  Rionis focused harder.

  She saw nothing unusual.

  Thymera waved her hand again.

  The scene changed.

  The bath remained, but all color drained away. The screen turned black, leaving only white outlines of beings. Mana became visible.

  The air was filled with a light blue mist.

  Inside Laysandra’s body, the mist was slightly thicker. Human bodies naturally stored mana. That was normal.

  Then Rionis’s eyes widened behind her glasses.

  “What is this?”

  Inside Helena’s chest rested an oval-shaped object, dark crimson in color. It extended branches throughout her body like a second nervous system, or something fused directly with her nerves.

  It pulsed.

  Continuously.

  An absurd amount of crimson-black energy poured from it without pause. Not a single drop escaped Helena’s body.

  If that energy was an eternal flame, then Helena’s body was an eternally hungry monster, devouring everything before it could leak out.

  Rionis could not understand it.

  She could not explain it.

  Thymera was silent.

  Then she spoke.

  “I think I need to take a closer look.”

  Her golden eyes flared.

  Rionis took a step back instinctively.

  Thymera sat back into her throne-like chair. This time, her posture changed completely. Her expression lost all softness.

  She looked like a goddess.

  Her divine eyes could see through any mortal.

  Thymera’s gaze reached out toward Helena, cold and absolute.

  The divine power moved to enter Helena’s body.

  Helena raised her arm.

  The raging flame of dark energy erupted outward, turning into a storm that directly opposed Thymera’s divine power.

  It was like two invisible giant claws colliding.

  Both stopped.

  Neither pushed forward.

  Neither retreated.

  “A peeping tom?” Helena said.

  Thymera’s eyes widened slightly.

  Her divine ability had been stopped.

  Helena’s golden eyes burned crimson as they looked directly toward the source of the intrusion.

  If Thymera’s eyes were blazing with golden divinity, Helena’s reflected raw, violent crimson energy.

  Then Helena’s crimson force crushed Thymera’s golden probe.

  Thymera did nothing.

  She did not resist.

  She did not try again.

  She was far more interested now.

  Neither Laysandra nor Rionis noticed anything. The energy was not dense enough to be seen by mortal eyes.

  Seeing Thymera fall silent, Rionis asked carefully, “Your Majesty… were you able to appraise her?”

  Thymera’s glowing eyes dimmed, returning to normal.

  She turned toward Rionis.

  “That crimson energy,” she said slowly, “is Aether.”

  “Aether?” Rionis repeated, confused.

  Thymera smiled.

  Like a child filled with desire.

  “And,” she added softly, “I want her.”