Ascension (3): The Frozen Moment
The blade of the poisoned dagger touches his skin in that instant.
Tick.
Something—a strange sound—echoes through the air. And with it, everything stops.
The moment the dagger's edge presses against his throat, close enough to feel the sticky texture of the venom, Lyclean's body freezes like stone. Is it his own actions that have slowed? Has he truly become the powerless god they desired, unable to do anything?
Dyed in despair, Lyclean scans his surroundings with the only part of him that still moves: his eyes.
And then.
"…!"
He sees them. The gods, frozen just like him, unable to twitch a muscle, their eyeballs rolling frantically to take in the scene. Seeing them, Lyclean realizes he's not the only one immobilized.
But how? How could these mighty gods stand as still as statues? As if the world itself has frozen solid.
The answer.
Lies with the girl who suddenly appears before his eyes.
Many have wondered.
Why does the sun rise and set in this world?
Why does the world keep changing?
Why does time flow onward?
Some believed that the two children of the Light God—the Sun God and the Moon God—harnessed the sun and moon to chariots, driving them across the sky to bring day and night.
Others thought a massive serpent coiled deep underground, spinning the world into rotation with its endless turns.
Still others claimed an unproven Time God overturned a colossal hourglass to let time trickle forth.
But none could provide clear proof.
What is time? Why does it flow? These simple questions yielded no answers.
In the end, must we simply accept time as it is, knowing nothing more?
As I pondered this, I had a fateful encounter.
With an elderly lizardman shaman, wandering in search of something lost.
The old lizardman shared many tales with me: stories of the lizardmen who existed long before humans walked the earth; tales of the Dragon Era, when countless dragons dominated the land; accounts of the Divine Dragon that ended that age; legends of the Divine Dragon they worshipped.
And stories of the Divine Dragon that would destroy and reset everything at the world's end.
The Divine Dragon that creates all, and destroys all.
But those two Divine Dragons were merely two aspects of a single being—so by that Divine Dragon, the world is created, sustained, and destroyed.
From those tales, I felt a vague intuition.
If the world was made by the Genesis Divine Dragon, sustained by the Divine Dragon, and shattered by the Apocalypse Divine Dragon...
If the world is upheld by that Divine Dragon...
Then perhaps the flow of time is governed by its power?
Of course, these are unconvincing stories at best.
But if—truly if—the Genesis Divine Dragon worshipped by the lizardmen truly exists...
Then time... the entity closest to a Time God... might be the Genesis Divine Dragon itself?
No firm evidence yet, of course.
But as a scholar, it's only natural to grow intrigued by such tales.
Thus, I weave together the stories from that lizardman and my own research on the Genesis Divine Dragon faith into this book.
May its readers take greater interest in tales of the Genesis Divine Dragon.
This book meticulously examines lizardman beliefs, explained from a human perspective.
Yet the academic world at the time dismissed it as a study of the lizardmen's lingering barbarism.
Only later, with a reevaluation of the lizardmen, did this book gain true value—but that's a tale for the distant future.
"Well now. Let's see."
In a world where everything has ground to a halt, the silver-haired girl with grand horns steps forward casually.
"I was late getting everything ready... but this is quite the entertaining situation."
Lyclean instinctively knows who she is. The appearance matches Hades from the underworld perfectly—save for the silver hair—and those horns on her head. She looks just like the Dragon Maiden described in the hero's tales.
So, the girl before him must be the Dragon Maiden.
It had to be.
"Alright then... let's start by letting just Lyclean speak. I'm curious what he'll say, after all."
The girl snaps her fingers lightly, and Lyclean realizes his mouth can move. The other gods remain utterly frozen, but he can speak now. He can convey his will to the girl before him.
Lyclean opens his mouth, gazing at her.
If his guess is right, she is the Dragon Maiden.
So.
"Gaia...?"
But the name that slips from Lyclean's lips is something else entirely. Shocked by his own unwitting words, he startles.
Why did he say someone else's name? No—how does he even know that's a name?
Lyclean's mind tangles further in confusion, and the girl before him widens her eyes in surprise.
"Well... that's peculiar. To think you'd utter that name... Didn't you lose your memories?"
"No... I... it just came out. I'm sorry."
"Hmm... Memories wiped, but traces linger in the soul? Peculiar indeed. Very peculiar. Well, whatever."
The girl called Gaia examines Lyclean from every angle, then pulls something small from her bosom, fiddles with it, and presses something beside her. Suddenly, Lyclean's body moves on its own.
No—not just him. Zeus and all the gods of the Pantheon begin moving against their will.
"There. Let's rewind things properly, shall we?"
The dagger at Lyclean's throat pulls away. The poison pouch discarded nearby flies back into his hand of its own accord. The venom lifts from the blade and returns to the pouch, which ties itself neatly.
A scene as if time itself is reversing.
The dagger's hilt slips into Lyclean's mouth, the club thrown at Zeus returns to him, the pouch tucks into Lyclean's bosom, and the dagger sheathes at his waist.
Everything rewinds further into the past. Time flows backward.
The surrounding gods return to their original positions. Poseidon, his head crushed by the club, reforms and rises, his shattered skull regenerating.
Lyclean's body, transforming into a god, reverts to normal. The faith churning within him ebbs away.
The followers who sacrificed themselves for the ritual revive one by one.
Everything reverses.
Witnessing this, all who encircled them tremble in fear.
Reversing time. No matter what is done, what is achieved, what end is witnessed—it undoes it all, as if it never happened.
"Well then. Let's begin from here."
Once the gods have rewound to before they seized Lyclean, the girl called Gaia smiles brightly and speaks.
"Zeus. I'll grant you alone the right to speak. Now, you've done quite the amusing deed."
"L-Life Goddess...!"
Lyclean's eyes widen in shock at Zeus's words, now able to move again.
Life Goddess?
Not the Dragon Maiden, but the Life Goddess herself? Her appearance matches the descriptions so perfectly, yet she's the actual Life Goddess, not some lookalike.
Wait—does that mean the Dragon Maiden resembles the Life Goddess? The thought flashes through Lyclean's mind.
"You... had no intention of forgiving us?!"
"Forgiveness? Forgive... Hm. It's not that I wouldn't. Not that I wouldn't."
The girl smiles sweetly.
"I set the condition that if this child ascended to godhood and returned as king of the gods... But he refused, so that's the end of it, right?"
"But!!"
"Quiet."
The Life Goddess's low murmur seals Zeus's mouth shut. As if speech is forbidden—no, as if everything is forbidden. His entire body freezes solid.
"You refused to accept it gracefully and tried to force him into godhood? The ritual itself was intriguing enough... but did you think I'd just let it slide?"
"…!"
Zeus strains to convey something, but immobilized, he cannot.
"Sacrificing countless lives to force ascension... Crude and rough, but undeniably effective. If he hadn't resisted with full power, he couldn't have escaped godhood."
The Life Goddess speaks calmly. Yet faint anger simmers beneath—rage at gods who casually sacrificed lives under her domain. Fury at the violation of her realm.
"No matter how you feared oblivion, forcing someone who said no... What good is that?"
She approaches Zeus with light steps.
"It won't do, will it? Zeus?"
She reaches out casually and grasps the crown atop his head.
The crown holding Baal's power and authority.
