Chapter 2: A Disastrous Performance

The marble streets were deserted, but the air vibrated with a dense, euphoric sound. As we approached the border in the Ascending Cloud, the murmur swelled into a deafening roar.

The pier and the grand ceremonial platform were unrecognizable. The crowd was suffocating. Gods clustered on solid ground, elbowing each other for space, while others hovered in the air or rested upon the immaterial waters. Astral projections flickered above our heads. The heat of hundreds of divine auras bled together, creating an overwhelming, chaotic haze.

In the center of the colossal stage, a god draped in a scarlet ceremonial garb—trimmed with white details and a long, billowing cape—raised his hand. An intense beam of red light struck an almost tangible silence; a collective breath held by the entire crowd.

"Gods and Goddesses! Creatures and Entities!" The presenter's euphoric voice echoed, vibrating across the border. "Today, at the Ceremony of the Solar Storm, we welcome the Transient Gods to Hyperion! We bless our priests in the mortal world with premonitions, and we will enjoy the grand presentation of the gods of light, in the presence of Elder Gods such as Apollo, Ra, Helios, and Amaterasu! We hope you enjoy this unique moment!"

A wave of euphoric cheers erupted from the crowd. The spectators' anticipation pulsed in the air.

"Heavens! It's starting!" I shouted, slipping between celestial bodies and gently shoving shoulders aside to get a better view of the stage.

"Stella, weren't you supposed to be up there?" Ahria asked, leaning into us so she wouldn't be swept away by the crowd.

"I was... I was supposed to be called. I am a goddess of light after all, even if I'm still in the integration process..." Stella's voice cracked. She adjusted her dress, her golden eyes constantly scanning the crowd, terrified someone would notice she had disobeyed. The doubt of not being summoned left her insecure about her standing in the palace.

A new beam of red light blinded us. Silence returned, and an incredibly delicate melody began to play.

The stage was now swarming with entities. Some flew, others danced on the ground, weaving beams of golden light that collided in the air. The lights sculpted the silhouette of a newborn world and the shapes of constellations. The spectacle illustrated the legend of creation, the dance of the sun and the moon, culminating in the immaterial figure of the Creator of all—the untouchable entity who had dictated the absolute laws of Primitia.

"Frauds..." Yae muttered. She crossed her arms, her expression twisted in pure disgust as she analyzed the optical illusions.

Stella, visibly uncomfortable, jerked her head around. Her eyes darted through the crowd, quickly assessing who was around us, terrified that some high-ranking god might have heard the insult.

"Be cordial, Yae. Show a minimum of respect for the gods of the palace, and for me!" Stella scolded, her voice tense as she gave my sister a light, but urgent, smack on the shoulder.

Yae rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed by the reprimand.

"Alright, alright. I'll play nice for today."

"For today?!" Stella's voice went up a pitch, the final straw spilling over from her panic of being scolded. The volume drew curious glances from nearby gods. "We must be courteous always! We are goddesses! We are not vulgar creatures from Primitia!"

"Hey, calm down, Stella. She gets it," Ahria intervened, gently resting a hand on the trembling shoulder of the goddess of light, trying to put out the fire.

Stella shoved Ahria's hand away violently. Her face was flushed—not with anger, but with the suffocating panic of being associated with us in front of the palace.

"Ugh! It is exactly because of attitudes like this that you will never set foot in the Greater Cloud!" Stella snapped, her voice breaking. She turned her back on us dramatically, shoved her way through the crowd in desperation, and began to hurry away.

"Stella..." I murmured, reaching out into the empty air, my heart sinking at her disdain.

"Never?! And who does she think she is to talk to us like that?!" Yae growled, indignation blazing in her pale eyes.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this..." I vented, sadness dulling my voice and robbing me of any interest in the stage lights. "We were supposed to come here to have fun. To enjoy the moment together..."

Frustrated and with a lump in my throat, I started forcing my way through the crowd to leave the square. The argument had drained me. Yae followed immediately, shooting poorly disguised glares of pure anger at anyone who got in her way, but Ahria stayed behind, still trying to watch the melancholy end of the ceremony.

As I tried to escape the mess, the air around me froze. An absolutely terrifying, unnatural silence fell over Hyperion. The music stopped mid-chord. The beams of light on the stage died out.

"Did you feel that?" I asked, stopping dead in my tracks and looking at my sister.

Yae's furious expression had vanished, replaced by a tense, feline alertness. The exposed skin on her arms was visibly covered in goosebumps.

"Yeah... What is it?" she murmured, changing her mind and starting to shove her way back toward the stage.

The performing gods all looked disoriented. The presenter stared blankly at the crowd without saying a word, glanced over his shoulder toward the ethereal border separating Hyperion from Primitia, and then looked back at the gods.

"Well... it seems we've had a slight hiccup!" His voice faltered through the amplification magic. "The second part of the Ceremony is about to begin..."

The silence grew thick and suffocating. Above us, the immaterial clouds of Hyperion began to swirl violently, painting the once-white clouds a dark, bruising gray. An abnormal gravity pushed down on our shoulders, and oxygen momentarily abandoned the square.

And then, the world cracked.

It wasn't just a sound. It was a wave of physical force that made the solid cloud floor buckle and fracture beneath our feet. The impact of the roar pierced my eardrums, making my brain throb in pure agony. The sound was harsh, primal, and mercilessly terrifying—something that didn't belong to a god or any beast known to Primitia. I dropped to my knees, clapping both hands over my ears, my heart skipping a beat.

"W-what was that?!" I stuttered, grabbing my sister's arm, my teeth chattering in terror.

"I don't know, but we better go get Ahria! Now!" Yae replied, hauling me to my feet with desperate strength.

The sky darkened abruptly. Hyperion's radiant sun was swallowed by an anomalous eclipse. For a brief, chilling fraction of a second, against the dying light, I saw it. A formless shadow, loomed high above the clouds, watching us with a suffocating stillness before melting away into the dark. The magical border tore apart, opening like a grotesque wound in the fabric of reality.

The spectator gods remained rooted to the ground, paralyzed by doubt. "What is happening?" some murmured. "Is this part of the show?" a trembling voice echoed in the distance.

The rift in the border began to pulse with an unstable glow, a sickly blue mixed with a corrupted gold. Suddenly, the abyss spat something out into the center of the stage.

Three bodies slammed into the marble with a wet thud. They were the corpses of transient deities. Humans who had ascended to gods, yet somehow... they were dead. Their bodies were utterly mangled, decapitated, and butchered. Fresh celestial blood exploded outwards, staining the sacred floor and the faces of the performers in the front row. That hadn't been a death in battle; it had been a massacre for pure sport.

"By the gods of Hyperion..." I muttered, my voice thick, my breath catching at the sight of the carnage.

Panic erupted. The static crowd morphed into a hysterical stampede, with gods and entities running wildly in the opposite direction, trampling each other.

"Ahria! Ahria!" we both screamed in unison, physically fighting tooth and nail, throwing elbows and shoves against the desperate tide of bodies to reach the front.

The hole in the border seemed to try and close, but was forced open again with thunderous violence. A winged horde of creatures began pouring through the portal at breakneck speed. One after another. They were hideous monsters, with teeth the size of pillars, thick scales like plated armor, and serpentine tails covered in bone spikes.

They brought the storm with them. The wind turned into a slashing hurricane. The very clouds of Hyperion wept hail, screaming through erratic lightning strikes that tore across the sky.

"Dragons?! In Primitia?! How is that possible?!" Yae yelled over the roar of the wind, gripping my wrist hard. "Forget it, Neiva! We can't look for Ahria! We have to protect our own lives!"

Terror froze my stomach. Abandon Ahria? Leave her behind in an apocalyptic wasteland? She was our family. What was she going to do against monsters that size all by herself? She was a goddess of the wind, smart, but she had no way to defend herself in a head-on fight of this scale!

"What if she needs us?! I can't leave her behind! She can't defend herself alone!" I argued in a tone of absolute desperation, wrenching my hand free from hers. "We're not going to abandon her the way the palace gods abandoned us!"

"Stella is much safer up in the palace than with us! And Ahria... Ahria is a genius! She'll find a way to get out on her own!" Yae replied, trying to drag me away from the epicenter of the invasion.

I looked deeply into my sister's feline eyes. Beneath that mask of rationality, she was just as terrified as I was. She just didn't want me to notice. She wanted to make sure the two of us survived. But I had already made my decision.

I ripped my hand away from hers again roughly and shook my head. Without waiting for another argument, I spun around and threw myself into the panicking crowd, sprinting toward the main square in search of Ahria.

A monumental marble tower collapsed to my right, swallowing the screams of dozens of gods in a suffocating cloud of dust. The ground shook with such extreme violence that my knees buckled for a second. The nauseating metallic scent of fresh celestial blood began to mix with the ozone of wild magic and the sulfurous smoke of the dragons.

There were no longer any gods, nobility, or hierarchies in the clouds. In that moment, we were all just meat waiting to be crushed.