Chapter 4 : What History Refuses to Say
A week after Ami woke up.
Night clung to the capital like a held breath.
The Grand Library of the Empire of Heaven was never truly dark.
Instead of torches or candles, vast crystalline lattices were embedded into the ceiling—floating structures that bent light itself, emitting a sterile, star-like glow. Data-streams flickered inside them like miniature galaxies, updating in real time.
There were no normal shelves.
Instead, endless rows of thin glass tablets hovered in the air, stacked in geometric arrays that stretched beyond sight. When touched, they unfolded into layered holographic archives—moving texts, animated diagrams, recorded memories, entire histories playing like living simulations.
At the centre, one desk looked like a battlefield.
Glass sheets scattered everywhere. Some flickered with corrupted data. Others displayed torn holograms where someone had forcefully erased sections. Notes written in ink—actual physical ink—were scribbled on paper, like a rebellion against the system
.
Ami sat there, shoulders tense, eyes burning.
“I checked everything,” she muttered. “Imperial archives. Religious databases. War memory vaults. Even restricted divine records.”
She flicked her fingers, and a glass sheet activated, projecting a three-dimensional star map filled with red fracture marks.
She glanced sideways.
“While you idiots were busy sightseeing. I explored this world from here, and I found this.”
Itsuki, half-asleep on a floating couch, his sword magnetically anchored to the side, cracked one eye open.
“Hey, exploring a fantasy capital is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And this place is literally sci-fi heaven. And this is… ?”
Ami didn’t even look at him.
“You’re distracted by buildings. This place has interstellar trade logs, god-level communications, cosmic infrastructure—everything… and I finally managed to activate the Crest.”
She tapped the back of her hand.
Light unfolded from her skin like a digital bloom.
A translucent panel formed—layered UI symbols she didn’t understand.
Name: Ami Hayasaka
Class: Summoned Hero
Crest: Crest of Order
Race: Bound Mortal
Rank: A
— Further Data Not Found —
“…That’s all it gives me,” she said. “The rest is locked on a system level.”
Itsuki squinted. “That’s sketchy. Don’t you have skills like the rest of us? And I can't even read it, Shouldn’t the auto-translation we got during the summoning work?”
“Yeah. Welcome to divine bureaucracy.”
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She dismissed the panel and stood, grabbing a black crystalline slate from the air. It solidified into a physical tome the moment she touched it.
“This world didn’t summon us because it needs us,” Ami said. “It summoned us because it’s desperate.”
Itsuki sat up. “Desperate for what?”
She activated the slate.
Holograms erupted—shattered stars, erased constellations, planets labelled #k-9: final war of great war.
“The Great War.”
He groaned. “We got the summary when we arrived—”
“Shut up,” she snapped. “This isn’t history. This is a warning.”
She swiped through cosmic footage reconstructed by divine AI.
“It wasn’t a war between nations. Or races. Or gods fighting over worship.”
She looked at him.
“It was a war that spanned the entire universe.”
Itsuki went quiet.
“One name shows up everywhere,” Ami continued. “Perfect documentation. No contradictions. No censorship.”
She expanded the data node.
ENTITY: SHADOW MAN
“Figures,” Itsuki muttered. “Final boss energy.”
“Yes,” Ami said. “And no.”
She pulled up another file. A smaller one, data stitched together like someone recovered it.
“There’s another figure,” she said slowly. “But no dedicated archive. No biography. Not atleast here, Just scattered fragments that I found here.”
Itsuki frowned. “Who?”
“The Goddess of Time.”
The temperature regulation field in the library subtly dropped.
“I didn’t find much, but” Ami said. “She was on par with that shadow man.”
She expanded fragmented footage—glitching images, censored timelines, reality distortions.
“Sometimes she’s called a saviour. Sometimes a tyrant. Sometimes a weapon.”
A hologram formed: a woman seen from behind—space folding around her, two spear-like constructs anchored into her back like divine engines.
Her voice hardened.
“And sometimes… she’s called worse than Shadow Man.”
Itsuki blinked. “Worse?”
“Yes. Shadow Man destroyed openly.”
She highlighted a line of text.
“She ruled.”
Itsuki leaned forward now.
“During the Great War, there was a nation that rose.”
She paused.
“Archiea.”
His eyes widened. “The one on the other continent of this planet?”
“Yes. But it is way bigger now, back then it wasn’t an empire. Just a nation.”
She expanded growth projections—territories spreading like a virus across star systems.
“It didn’t annex planets. It absorbed them. Every world became a subordinate node. Every planet became an extension of Archiea.”
She swallowed.
“By the time the war peaked, Archiea wasn’t a country anymore.”
“It was a universe-wide empire.”
Itsuki exhaled sharply. “And she ruled it?”
Ami nodded.
“But they don’t call her Empress.”
She projected the title field.
Designation: Queen
No domain.
No species classification.
No divine hierarchy tag.
“She killed gods,” Ami said. “Started the Great War. Ended wars by erasing their causes from time.”
Her fingers trembled slightly.
“And when Shadow Man rose… she didn’t stop him immediately.”
Itsuki frowned. “Why not?”
“Because the war only ended after both of them moved.”
She shut down the hologram hard.
“Shadow Man was a monster,” she said. “But the Queen—”
She hesitated.
“—was something the universe had to survive.”
Silence stretched between them.
“…So she beat him,” Itsuki said slowly. “Killed him. Trapped him.”
“Yes,” Ami replied. “And then she disappeared.”
“Just like that?”
“No,” Ami said. “That’s the problem.”
She opened a final archive. Entire data sectors were burned out—divine-level deletion.
“After the war, the empire remained,” she said. “But its ruler didn’t.”
Itsuki’s voice dropped. “What happened to her?”
Ami shook her head.
“No one says.”
She met his eyes.
“And there is no further knowledge about her. Not here. Not in Heaven’s servers.”
She expanded the last entry.
Status: Deceased (verified)
"I doubt it."
“So… we’re walking into the aftermath of a universe-level apocalypse?” Itsuki said.
Outside the library, the twin moons synchronized in their orbit like clockwork mechanisms.
Let’s meet at the garden… after tomorrow’s weapon selection ceremony or whatever." Ami said.
BUT far beyond records, prayers, and names—
Something ancient remained unspoken.
Not forgotten.
Just… avoided.
