Brill didn't move at first, just watched as she twirled and twirled like she wouldn't get dizzy.
"Hey..."
'It's really her!'
The girl kept spinning, her feet barely kissed the golden grass in soft steps that didn't leave behind a single mark; her arms were circling and lifted as she moved with a rhythm that was natural but looked studied like she wasn't dancing for anyone in particular. She looked completely overrun with joy.
And then as she was dancing, a tear slid down from the corner of her eye, and it didn't damage anything that she was doing or break her focus, she leaned into it with more dancing.
Brill scratched at his head and then dropped his hand and then scratched at it again because he didn't know what to do with himself and his brain was scrambling for something normal to say.
It found nothing remotely useful, and he blurted, "You dance really good!"
Guess that was good enough.
It came out louder than he had intended, and he immediately winced in on himself, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth. But the girl finally stopped, feet landing softly in the grass, and turned to him.
"Thank you!" she said back with a smile.
And then she looked at him with eyes that lingered. Not for just that moment that people always did before they quickly looked away again or make a face like they had tasted something terrible. She cocked her head, studying him for a moment, and something in her expression changed; recognition sliding into place like a puzzle piece.
"You… it's you from the Gate! I saw you!" She said.
Brill froze for half a second, then nodded much too quickly, as if trying to confirm before she could take it back. "Yeah," he said, then immediately messed it up with, "none of us got chosen by anything cool huh?"
The words just hung in the air and he realized exactly how awkward they sounded the second they came out.
He turned away then and smacked himself in the forehead. Then he smacked himself again, a little harder. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" he muttered under his breath; Anything was easier than just standing there looking like a moron.
He turned back to her then, his ears already burning and rushed before she could say anything about that. "Did you… get a contract with a Divine Beast?" Brill said.
The girl shook her head, the confusion sliding off her face like water from a duck. "Nope," she said, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "But I'm not sad anymore about it. I like it here..."
Brill blinked at that, eyebrows drawing together.
'Sophisticated,' he thought. He had come to the conclusion that this girl was one of those types.
"Oh. Okay," he mumbled. Because what was he supposed to say to that?
She cocked her head the other way. "Did you?"
Brill hesitated, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. He stared somewhere over her shoulder. "No… not really," he said, the words slow. "I mean… I didn't get chosen by anything cool or worthy like everyone else."
Honestly, he didn't want to stand there talking about this; he certainly didn't want to stand there talking about this with her there, so he grabbed the first thing that popped into his head and threw it out there. "W-what's your name?!"
It came out way too quickly and was almost too loud, and he blinked right after it, as if surprised that he'd said it.
The girl just tilted her head. "My name?" she repeated. Then she nodded. "It's Sinder. And you?"
"That's a cool name!" Brill said immediately, a little too fast again, but at least that didn't sound quite as dumb when he heard it this time. "I'm Brill. Brill Alpam!"
The Alpam part hung in the air, he could tell that Sinder recognized it. The subtle change of her expression, the tiny pause, but she didn't say anything about it, more like she didn't feel like it.
So she just nodded as her response. And, honestly, that was a whole lot better than questions.
She looked like she was about to start dancing again, her foot sliding forward, ready to fall into her routine like nothing else existed but her and the grass beneath her feet. But then something else captured her attention, and also Brill's complete.
The sun above them.
It was floating across the sky. Staying massive, those gigantic white wings beating softly in and out like some sort of gentle, regular breathing, each beat sending pulses of light through the entire space.
Golden clouds parted with each breath and a hushed silence settled over the ruins as voices began to drop out, one by one, until the chatter in the distance faded.
Brill stared up at it, mouth agape. "...What the..."
"Everyone!" Prince Judess's voice boomed out, echoing across the space without being amplified, reaching even the very edges of the ruins. "The goddess from inside the sun will speak to us! Gather 'round!"
And they listened, they all listened. Thousands of kids all moving in unison now, drawn to the same spot under the winged sun. All conversation silenced and replaced with whispers that were caught somewhere between awe and disbelief.
"A real goddess…?"
"She's really going to talk to us?"
"Do you think she can see us?"
"I think she can!"
"Of course she can!"
"This is amazing…"
Brill just stood there for a second, not moving with them yet, his face turned to focus on the sun. "...A goddess…?" he murmured like whispering the word could make it make more sense.
Sinder turned her head to look up at the sun as well, her previous dancing movements frozen. She stood perfectly still now, attention focused.
The air around Brill changed, it was like the area was being drowned in peaceful magic and light.
And then a voice came, and that voice was everywhere at once, wrapping around everyone and impossible to ignore, with an authority that didn't need to be loud to be heard.
"Children who have endured hardship in a broken world," it said, each word perfect and slow, unhurried. "you are well on your way to becoming unstoppable… and unbreakable."
Brill's fingers twitched at his sides. His eyes were still on the winged sun as the words seeped into his skin whether he wanted them to or not.
The sun was speaking, more like the goddess' voice from within the sun was speaking.
The voice settled over them like it had all the time in the world, like it knew none of them could leave even if they wanted to, and maybe that was the part that bothered Brill most, the way his feet stayed planted without him deciding anything.
"Life," the goddess spoke, "Is a path where light is given, taken, and misunderstood. You walk through a world that offers you shadows first, and only after you stumble do you begin to notice what little light was there all along."
The wings of the sun drew back again, each movement spilling brightness across the ruins and the gathered children, coating their skin, their hair, their clothes in a glow that didn't feel like sunlight and didn't feel like magic either.
"You have been pushed, ignored, cast aside, and dreadfully shaped by a world that measures worth with shallow eyes," she continued, her voice threading through every thought Brill tried to hold onto. "You have learned what it means to be overlooked. You have learned how quickly others decide what you are without knowing anything at all."
"And because of that," she went on, "you have already taken the first step toward becoming unbreakable."
Unbreakable…
"You believe strength is something proven through struggle alone," she said, almost as if she were correcting them, "but true strength is not in how often you are struck down. It is in reaching a state where nothing can shake you at all. Where no voice can twist your thoughts. Where no rejection can stain your sense of self."
The light above got a little deeper, the sky itself seeming to lean closer without actually moving.
"In the Holy Land, there is no doubt. There is no fear. There is no need to question whether you belong. You will stand as beings who cannot be fractured by the world's cruelty, beings who cannot be stopped by the expectations placed upon them."
A quiet murmur passed through the crowd, but it didn't grow loud. It stayed contained like even their reactions were being guided.
"Unstoppable," she added, letting the word settle beside the first. "Unbreakable. Not as ideas you chase, but as truths you become."
Brill looked down at his hand without thinking, his fingers flexing once, then twice.
The goddess continued. "This world you come from has already done its work," the goddess continued. "It has hardened your thoughts, forced you to see what others refuse to see, made you question, made you endure. You are more prepared than you realize. Even now, you understand more than you should at your age."
Her voice softened, just slightly.
"That is why you are here."
Brill's lips parted a little, his eyes still on his hand as he whispered, barely audible even to himself, "Unbreakable…"
The word felt too easy and too perfect to him, like something people said when they didn't have to prove it.
'Unbreakable…' he repeated in his head, and his thoughts turned messy, tripping over themselves. 'So no one looks at me like that again? No one steps back like I'm…like I'm disgusting?'
His fingers pressed into his palm harder.
'I wouldn't have to rush…' he thought, 'I wouldn't have to hurry and show them. I wouldn't have to…'
'I wanna be unbreakable…'
The words sat there, more meaningful than he expected, it sounded better in his head like it was a dream that could actually come true.
Next to him, Sinder didn't say anything. She just watched him.
The goddess's voice rose again but way clearer now. "But power is not given without condition. To walk within the Holy Land, to receive the fullness of light, you must follow what is asked of you."
The children stilled, even the whispers stopped:
"What does she mean?"
"Rules?"
"What you see here, what you hear, what you feel… must remain here," the goddess said. "This glimpse of the Holy Land within the world of dreams is a gift. A preparation; speak of it to those outside, and you will cast yourself back into fragility while those beside you move forward without you. You will watch them become what you could not," she continued, her tone still calm. "You will remain as you were, while they rise beyond you."
That didn't sit right at all, no matter how easy this sounded.
"And when I descend fully, when the Holy Land joins your world," she went on, "there will be those who resist. Those who fear what they do not understand. Those who cling to the broken structure of the world you know." Her voice did not change when she said the next part. "Those who oppose must be erased. That is all I ask."
Brill's chest felt strange again, like something inside it didn't agree but didn't know how to argue either.
Brill knew erase was just another word for kill.
'Kill…?' he thought, his mind immediately pulling up his mother's voice, the way she drilled it into him during training, over and over, never changing it:
Take a life if yours is about to be taken. Never just because you feel like it. Idemay always told him it's kill or be killed; And those people who deserve to die, must die for the sake of your own safety.
'This place…' he glanced around, at the gold fields, the ruins, the children who didn't look at him like he was something to avoid. 'It's too…good. What if we can have that forever?'
And then he remembered Hellfrit's task:
Devour the Holy Land.
Brill frowned, looking back up at the sky.
'Why would he say that about this…?' he thought, his jaw pressing together again. 'Why would anyone want to destroy something like this? It's perfect..'
The idea didn't line up, not with what he was seeing.
The goddess spoke again, and this time the light poured down from above in a steady wash like an ocean, settling over the children, over Brill, over everything, and it sank into his skin in a way that made his shoulders loosen.
"Prince Judess will welcome me to your world," she said, her voice carrying that same quiet certainty. "And together, we will become a family. A united existence beyond the flaws of your current lives."
Brill looked up just in time to see Judess rise.
Judess' body simply lifted, the air carrying him higher as the light gathered around his head, shaping itself into a crown that hovered just above his hair, glowing in clean white. A blade formed in his hand, long and bright, its surface reflecting nothing but more light.
No one questioned it, but the kids were amazed:
"Prince Judess!"
"Prepare for my arrival, my children," the goddess said. "We will be whole. We will be perfect. And unbreakable."
The light swelled.
"Now… wake up."
FWOOSH!
Brill's eyes popped open, his chest pulling in air as the brightness hit him all at once, real sunlight pouring through the window, rough and ordinary compared to what he had just seen, and for a second he just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, his hand still half curled like he was holding onto something that wasn't there anymore.