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Hero walks towards the towers. He doesn’t know when exactly he will be pulled into that white space again, but he figures that it will happen whenever he gets close enough like the last time.

Fara and Sloo watch from the distance, as do most others, as he walks closer to his target.

Val, as much as she wishes to try and convince him to change his mind, can only watch from the back.

They can all tell when Hero is pulled away from this mortal realm by him dropping to his knees and staring up at the tops of the towers.

Aorilae’s voice comes from all directions in this blank, white space. “You have made a decision, and what a curious path you have chosen. Do you realize that choosing this option over the other means that you would die? To reject me is to reject your very life. You will not be able to live out your life with the girl as she so desperately wishes to do so with you.”

Hero tries his best to stay calm when she tries using Fara against him.

“And that slime – what is her name, Sloo? You realize that, without your blood to sustain her, she would need to kill, do you not? Without you, she will likely turn on the first person near her. The girl likes staying with the slime, doesn’t she?”

Hero knows. He’s already thought this through for once. He has no choice but to place his trust in Sloo and hope that Fara can think of an alternative.

“Yet your decision remains unchanged. Are you heartless, or are you selfless?”

“Why are you doing any of this?” Hero asks.

“I realized I was boring the last time we spoke. That is all, really. There is nothing you could do that could ever surprise me. I know exactly how this is going to end, and I knew since before I ever gave you the choice in the first place.”

“How is it a choice if you already knew?”

“You were always going to choose to reject me in the same way that a fish needs water to survive.”

“Then what was the point?”

“Things need to happen in an order, Hero.”

Hero doesn’t understand her logic, but it doesn’t matter. He knows that she isn’t lying about anything which is enough for him. “If I reject you, you won’t know what happens next?” he asks.

“That is correct, Hero. I will no longer be tied to this world. As you believe, we will both be truly free for the first time.”

“Do you want to be free?”

“It is not that I want to be free. It is that I wish for my children to be free. I cannot watch over them forever.”

“What will happen to you?”

“I will start again. There are worlds before this one, and there will be worlds after it.”

“Aether,” Hero looks down at his hands, “is part of you?” Something tells him that he’s right, but he isn’t sure what. It’s just a feeling.

“Aether is me. When you use it, you are using my very own energy and manipulating it for your own purposes.”

So that’s why all the aether will leave if she does. It would be impossible to have it otherwise.

“What are you?” Hero asks.

“That is a question I do not have an answer for.”

“You don’t know what you are?”

“It is not that I do not know, it is that there is no way for me to explain it in an accurate way. All I can do is show you this,” she says, pausing to let her raw, unfiltered energy course through Hero’s body.

It feels warm. Soft. Right.

She is a creator. She created this world. She created everybody who inhabits it. Its history, its people, its oceans and mountains – all are a result of her work. Yet, she is not the creator. She is but one being in the universe capable of performing such magnificent feats.

That is everything she is able to share with him by allowing him to fully experience her energy in its truest state.

“Why me? Why now?”

“These things happen in an order, my dear child.”

“What happens to the other people here?” Hero asks. This space is full of the memories and feelings of others, and if he can talk to them, doesn’t that make them still alive in here?

“They will come with me and be the seeds to start life upon a new world.”

“What happens to the people who die here?”

“Every death will create new life.”

“You… made it sound like rejecting you is bad. Why? You sound like you want me to choose it.”

“Would you have been so determined to reject me otherwise? Hero, you are my child, and you are representative of this world. You are representative of humanity. Right now, you and humanity have finally reached your rebellious stage and are ready to be independent. As much as it pains me to leave you, if you are ready to be independent, it is not my place to force my will on you.”

“How long will I have? Before I die?”

“You ask me questions I cannot answer, Hero. There is no way for me to know what will come after this. Your kind usually live until their nineties, and you are only eighteen right now, so you should have quite a fair amount of time left.”

“You mean I’m not going to die soon?”

“You might, you might not.”

“You made it sound like I would die as soon as I reject you.”

“You are making me abandon my children whom I so dearly love. It is only fair that I have a bit of final fun with you.”

Hero can’t see her, but he can feel her smiling.

He never thought that, after being exiled, he would end up traveling to a place where he gets to talk one-on-one with a timeless being and get teased by her. Of course, he never thought that most of any of this would happen.

“Why did Heln try stopping me?” Hero asks.

“Because he did not know that I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell him anything?”

“Only my First may communicate with me directly, and you are the only true First to exist in over a thousand years. You are the one closest to me in this world. One day, your life’s energy will likely become another one of us to spread seeds and cultivate worlds. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

There is so much that Hero wants to know, but he knows that it is time to accept the situation and allow freedom to finally begin.

“Where this world heads after this moment is up to its peoples and its peoples only. There will be no mystic forces pulling the strings, there will be no creator watching over her creation, nor will there be aether to halt innovation and technology. I will visit this world someday far, far in the future, and I look forward to seeing what story you wish to tell me.”

“How long in the future?”

“I do not know yet, my precious Hero. I only visited my first world when they began traversing the stars and cultivating worlds of their own.”

A vision is flashed in Hero’s vision of large, white constructs floating weightlessly amongst the stars.

It is the last vision he is shown.

Hero collapses on the ground.

“Hero!” Fara’s voice reaches his ears, but he feels too weak to turn to look at her.

“Hero! Are you alright?! What happened?” she continues shouting. Everybody else is running over to check on him as well.

“Your third eye… is gone,” Val says. “You rejected her?”

Fara and Sloo both lean over him. The clear concern on their faces is enough to make Hero smile.

It’s nice being so genuinely cared for.

When he looks at the towers, he no longer feels anything calling him closer, nor does he see the vortex of raw aether. There are but three tall, white towers.

“Sir, I… feel weird,” Rat says.

Hero looks around. A few other Tarthans are nearby, but they’re all down on their knees or lying on the ground.

Aether is what made them so large and powerful in the first place, and now aether is leaving this world.

They are no longer First, Ascended, nor Tarthans. They are becoming human.

Hero tries getting up off the ground but struggles greatly doing so. He feels as if there are hundreds of pounds worth of weight weighing him down, or like he only has access to a small fraction of his strength.

It almost feels similar to when he first had those cuffs placed on him.

If this is what is happening, then it’s good news for civilization.

The rest of the cuffs that were stored full of aether will be depleted. Darkblight crystals will be naught more than lavender crystals without any aether to absorb. Dark elves will no longer be able to turn into dralneths from an overexposure to aether. The plot to change the world with a necromancer in the west will fail without aether to animate the necromancer’s legions.

This is no longer a world of magic. It is entering a new age.