Prologue — Round and Round

  Two beings stood within a realm of fire and chaos, their presence stabilizing the Way, giving form to what was Empyreal. They stood on a platform of obsidian rock, surrounded by raging flames filled with colors of all existence. They watched a crack in the Way close up as a winged being stepped through the weakness in the reality and into the Incarnate Realm. Their brother, the sixth born of their family, had gone to the current turning, carrying with him their anger and hate.

  “He won’t know where to find her,” one of them, a pale woman with black wings and emerald eyes that flashed with red, spoke. She was the eldest of her siblings who had embraced Pandemonium, the third born out of their mother’s womb.

  “The area is small, only the part that was once old Terra. The stories say that it was a primitive wasteland at this time in the turning, there isn’t anything that can threaten him then,” her brother responded, his voice projecting certainty, but she knew him well enough to know the truth. The Way around him trembled, his emotions shaky with uncertainty. He was the Ninth born of their siblings, and had always felt as if he was behind the rest.

  His sister shook her head. “We cannot hold the knowledge of our turn as a certainty, you know this. Changes between the turnings are common. It is only chance that we detected the weakness in the Way at that time. Something had to have happened that hasn’t in the past turnings, there are no records for this weak spot. Be calm Marcus, there is little that we can do now but let fate decide.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” her brother, Marcus, nodded, then whispered. “We were bred to stand at the summit of an empire spanning countless worlds, nothing in that pitiful world can contend with Zayn.”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. Kirios birthed Valair Ankha and his Grand Spell, its birth is what has broken the last Cycle and ushered this one,” she added. “Besides, it is also mother’s birthplace.”

  “What if he is too late Ana?” Her brother asked. “Or too soon? Maybe we all should’ve gone.”

  “We can’t know any of that. And besides, using any more Source would’ve alerted other higher beings. Not all in Pandemonium are as resistant to its baser nature as we are,” Ana said.

  “I hate this,” his eyes flashed to full red, his black wings stretching behind him as his lips pulled back to show bared fanged teeth, emotion grabbing hold. “Perhaps we should’ve gone to one of the Gods, make a deal.”

  “Pandemonium is freedom,” Ana responded, a pulse of her power spread around them, stabilizing the Way further, lessening the pull of Pandemonium and letting her brother fight the grip off. “It is also indulgence, and the Pandemonium Gods are avarice personified. Besides, you know what the Lesser Eidolon are like, they infect everything that they touch, we don’t want that to be our legacy.”

  Marcus sighed, his wings twitching behind him. “Yeah, you’re right, as you almost always are.”

  They turned away and left this place. This was not their domain, and they could not risk remaining for long lest they drew the eye of those who dwelled in this place.

  They put their hope in their brother, and fate.

  And as it was often with beings such as them, who held such great power that could rival even the Gods. They did not notice a being far beneath them, a Lesser Eidolon of flames and dance, hiding in the fire, observing them.

  There is no flow of time, there are only the Cycles and Turns. The most fundamental law of the Way and the Source. A reality in three parts.

  The center of the existence was the universe—the Incarnate Realm—the origin of thought and emotion, the birthing explosion and expansion, then entropy and collapse—the pulsing imitation of the lie that was time, a single turn.

  Around the Incarnate Realm in its forever turnings, existed the Empyreal Realms, Pandemonium—the realm of emotion, freedom, and darkness—and Harmony—the realm of thought, order, and light.

  Though the two were part of the same whole and could not exist without each other, there was always a battle for dominance between the two, with the Incarnate Realm as its stage. There was no beginning and there would never be an end, existence simply always was.

  Harmony and Pandemonium were two oceans of Source, weaving a tapestry of reality, neither god nor evil, simply different sides of the same coin. Within the domain of Harmony, in the place where the weaving of the Source was stable enough for a simulacrum of structure to exist, a being walked.

  Every step taking him across leagues beyond counting, an infinity in a step. Eventually, a step deposited him before a giant tower, stretching forever into the abyss above. He was a denizen of the Empyreal, a natural one, born out of the echoes transferring across the Way from the Incarnate Realm in its forever orbit between the two Empyreal Realms.

  His body was porcelain, white streaked with flickers of red, for even in the deepest reaches of Harmony, there was Pandemonium, and no being was whole of one side. He was humanoid, slender and tall, wearing a suit of armor woven out of light itself, with a crown of jewels upon his brow.

  He approached the entrance to the tower and placed his palms against the doors woven out of color and sound, parting them with no effort at all. He entered a circular hall, with three pillars on either side of him, each fashioned of a different material. They blazed with colors that mortals in the Incarnate Realm didn’t even know existed, the gentle weave of music in the room was filled with notes that would drive Incarnate beings mad.

  Across from him was a throne, carved out of white light and fit for a titan. Upon it sat a resplendent being. She was wrapped in a robe made out of the purest Source, a piece of the Way itself, its threads shrouded her and also touched upon every part of the Empyreal of Harmony, as well as the Incarnate Realm itself.

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  He bowed before the throne, and waited.

  It took an eternity and a moment, then he was acknowledged.

  “Valor,” a voice that touched at the very fabric of Valor’s being sounded all around him, generated out of the Way itself, for the being upon the throne had no mouth to speak.

  He raised his head, and gazed upon her. She towered over him, her skin an ever changing kaleidoscope of light. Her true face unknowable, but to him looking kind, with soft eyes and a smiling lips. Her hair wove the Source behind her, swaying in a dance that he had no hope of understanding. Source bent at her whim and the very Empyreal of Harmony twisted by her design, at least in her domain.

  “I greet you, Lady of Hope, Mistress of Weaves, Goddess of Light.” Three titles, from myriad, as was customary for one of his station when addressing one of the Constants, the Gods of the Empyreal.

  The Lady of Hope smiled down on him. “Why have you come?”

  Valor hesitated for just a moment before answering. “A ripple in the Way was detected. An intrusion into the Incarnate Realm by a Higher Eidolon from the Pandemonium’s side.”

  Light flickered around the Lady of Hope, a gesture that Valor had no hope of understanding.

  “How do you know?”

  “A Lesser Eidolon came to me, offering the knowledge.”

  “One of Harmony?”

  “One of both, Flames and Dance. He observed a gathering of three such beings in the deep Pandemonium.”

  “Lesser Eidolon’s are fickle, unstable beings, Valor,” the Goddess added.

  “Its words were too specifics to be just a misremembering of a past turn.”

  “Regardless, such intrusions are not uncommon. Why does this instance concern you now?”

  “The Higher Eidolon is an Echo of a past turning, the Sixth born of… her Autarchs,” Valor said.

  “In Pandemonium? Then, one of the Fallen,” the Lady of Hope mused. “Unusual, but still not something that should concern us. Harmony has held dominion over the Incarnate Realm’s Way for the past four Cycles.”

  The Lady of Hope’s voice held an absolute conviction, a faith that Valor lacked. She continued.

  “There had been a thousand turns in this Cycle, this is the way of things. Pandemonium touches the Incarnate, letting the Lower Eidolons seep through the Way, preparing the way for their generals, all in the attempt to subvert the turnings to change the Cycle, regain dominance, and Valair’s gift stops them. That is how this Cycle goes. There have been no signs that this turning will be any different.”

  “I understand,” Valor said. “But this isn’t an Eidolon loyal to the Gods of Pandemonium, the Autarchs defy the will of all Gods. The Sixth Son’s involvement is outside the norm.”

  “Then it is an Incarnate matter. The Autarch is an Echo of Soul spun out of the turning, his connection to the Incarnate is greater than to the Empyreal. It can not influence the turn to any great degree, it will be spun back into the turning eventually.”

  “He stepped into the Incarnate in the flesh, at a point before his birth. The Fallen draw deeply from the Pandemonium Domains, they could influence it unwittingly.”

  “I see that this bothers you greatly, Valor.”

  “Pandemonium has failed for more Cycles in a row than ever before. The arrival of Valair’s Grand Spell has defeated their design utterly. Anything that puts the turn at risk also risks change large enough to subvert the turn and usher in a new Cycle.”

  “Very well,” the Lady of Hope said. “You may keep an eye on the turn.”

  Valor bowed. “I shall.”

  Then her entire being flashed to deeper and darker colors, because even in the heart of Harmony, a spark of Pandemonium existed, and even Hope could easily turn cruel. “Proceed with care. Do not draw the attention of the Grand Spell, it does not distinguish between Harmony and Pandemonium, and has not encountered the Higher Eidolon’s at this point in the Incarnate Realm’s orbit. The Grand Spell’s full attention, even in its infancy, is enough to eradicate your soul. Do not change the turn.”

  Valor bowed his head. “It will be so.”

  Zayn, sixth born, Autarch of Division, walked the wasteland of the old Terra. It did not take him long after his arrival from the Empyreal to realize that the dead zone around him was created by the use of a primitive and inefficient weapon. He snorted as he flexed his wings, the Source was dead around him, consumed as the Way around him was severed by the radiation. It wasn’t a powerful enough explosion to sunder it completely from the Way as the weapons of his turn had been, for which he was grateful. It is what had created the weakness in the Way that allowed him a way into the turn. He was no Lesser Eidolon that could simply fall through the Way into a host, too mindless to warrant the Way’s resistance.

  There were too few true gateways into the Incarnate Realm, and none in this particular place in its orbit. They were lucky, but after countless turns, luck was bound to swing their way.

  Zayn spread his wings, his Source forged might was unusable within the dead zone, but he was still a vampire. Even though the radiation attempted to kill his cells, to rip him to pieces, it could do nothing against the thirst within him.

  He beat his wings and shot up into the sky, high enough to pierce through the clouds. The force of his passing blew the white curtain away, but he didn’t stop until he felt the dead zone end, and the full might of the Source returned to him.

  He took a deep, unneeded, breath, and enjoyed the feeling. He was diminished, the Way had caught the part of him that had grown in the Empyreal, it could not allow his full being to enter the Incarnate. And… he lacked the connection to the Grand Spell. He felt it brush against him, and quickly wrapped Source around himself, hiding from its sight. Letting it touch him would be… unwise. The Grand Spell was beyond him, beyond everything. It would know whose blood coursed through his veins, both his mother and father, it would want answers.

  Content that he had successfully hidden himself, he flexed his arms. His might was as it had been at the peak of the last turn, before he and the others passed through back into the Empyreal.

  “This will be enough,” he whispered to himself as he looked around, trying to find any landmarks that he recognized. He knew nothing of this place. It did not exist as it did now, back when he knew it. Anger surged from within, the touch of Pandemonium on his Soul raging at the situation.

  “I’ll find you,” Zayn hissed, then with a beat of his wings flew away. Searching.

  At the bottom of the ocean of Kirios, blood mixed with water. Naga-shan corpses floated impotently, torn apart in their hundreds. Their blood spreading like a cloud in the water.

  A lone survivor floated frozen, gripping his harpoon in tight grip as a figure walked across the bedrock through the blood and carnage it had wrought. A beast of death and metal, that shook the rock with every step, emerald light shining through the tiny gap in the metal surface.

  Tisho didn’t dare make any moves, he was just a lowly scrall, sent to investigate the reports of something walking across their lands beneath the ocean, heading for the newly arrived content of Terra, passing near one of their settlements close to the eastern coast of Okean.

  The monstrosity of death was challenged, and had ignored all attempts at communication, until they tried to bar its way. Then it moved, faster than anything Tisho had ever seen, it stomped, and it grabbed, it crushed, and it killed. It cut through them like the company of Naga-shan finest was nothing before it. Using weapons that boiled the water as they passed through to slice the armor worn by their leader, the honorable Velshu-Ori, a Sixth Investment Depth Hunter, as if it was nothing but algae sheet.

  Tisho didn’t move a muscle until the monstrosity was gone, a long time after he could no longer see it lumbering across the ocean floor in the distance. He remained frozen, with the bodies and blood of his old comrades surrounding him.

  Then, finally, he decided that it was time. He turned and swam, as fast as he ever had. He had to return, he had to warn his people. Death was walking toward the new continent.