[First Era – Year 6 of the Divinity War; The Faint, region undefined]

  Leaving Saffrael, even temporarily, was harder than he’d expected. He’d come to rely on her presence, her warmth and kindness, even the comfort of her stardust freckled beauty, and her sweet winterblossom scent. But Break and Shore had been alone for so long—well, not alone, but without him—and he wanted to check on their progress.

  As a knight, he believed he could finally make the journey alone. He reached out to the runic key he’d left there, on a rock that he’d entangled above the world. Elithir and others had done this enough times that he knew what it felt like, even the technical details, but he’d never had the strength to try it himself.

  He reached for the space around him, entangling it with the space around that runic key so far away. Distance was no obstacle for an entanglement, only connection mattered. Gathering all his strength, his will, his self-assurance, he merged those two spaces, he made them one. Entropy slammed into his mind like a falling mountain. He staggered at the chaos, erecting walls of his will to contain it—breathing, meditating until it was under control.

  He opened his eyes to gaze once more upon that burnt yellow sun. He had made it. Standing upon that floating rock, he slowly whittled down the entropy with his will, reversing it, turning chaos into order. He whistled, while in his mind he called out to Break and Shore. When it was at last enough, he looked down a quarter mile to that churning surface. It was a long way. Yet his self-assurance not only reinforced his will, his entanglements, his strength, and his mind, but it did the same for his body.

  He stepped off of the rock, feeling the wind tearing at him, drying his eyes. He blinked them shut until he felt the aura of the world nearing. Stone cracked and shattered into splinters as he slammed into the earth. The jarring force through his bones was greater than he’d expected, but his body held firm and his gratitude made up the rest, healing the few small fractures his bones had endured.

  So this was what power felt like.

  He entangled the ground beneath him with salt, stabilizing it, pushing back the mithsyrium, now further, and further still, miles out in every direction. Then he released the entanglement, sat down, and waited for his pets to arrive.

  The sun was falling low by the time Break and Shore emerged. They came together, each with something glittering in their teeth. Fragments of his memories. He could feel them resonating with him even at this distance. My … they had grown, now nearing waist height. They approached, leaping upon him and playfully rolling about. He scratched, embraced, and wrestled them until their excitement chilled.

  Sitting still, expectantly, he held out a hand, and they each dropped a mouthful of glittering fragments into his palm.

  “Nine!? Good job. You’ve been busy.” He petted them each in gratitude, a mystic smile spreading across his face. Then he remembered he should pay them some of his gratitude as well. He let a fair-sized chunk of the sliver warmth well up in his free hand and offered it to each of them. They took it and pranced around in excitement, stamping and clicking.

  He turned his attention to the fragments and began to absorb them slowly, one at a time, remembering snippets of his life from before. Training, playing games with Saffrael and Norgoth, time with his father and mother, his kind neighbors upon the First Star, times of loneliness and loss, searching the universe for his missing friends. So much beauty and warmth, as well as struggle, difficulty, and hardship. They were like puzzle pieces, just beginning to fill out a picture of who he was, still too vague to know for certain, but giving him a sense of the tone of his life from before.

  He measured his aura and stared in awe at how far he’d come in so short a time. But he had to remember he was only regaining pieces of what he’d lost. Nineteen thousand four hundred and fifty-nine. That brought him so near the rank of general that he could almost taste it. He flexed his strength and looked up at the speck of rock he’d fallen from, high above. He wondered if he could reach it. At least he could try.

  Crouching low, he gathered all his energy, ready to spring up toward that rock so high above him. Then he leaped, shooting into the sky with such force that Shore and Break dove into the earth to avoid the splintering chunks of rock that sprayed about him in his wake. Higher and higher he flew until, at last, he began to slow, nearly halfway to his goal. Not quite enough, but it had still been an impressive distance.

  After his return fall, he called Break and Shore back to him. Though he had failed to secure a copy of Marsh’s golem research, he’d managed something better, to sneak runic keys into two models of Marsh’s self-replicating golems. No wonder he’d been so secretive. It was genius in its detail and complexity. So well thought out. The ability for a male and female to produce replications of themselves together, thereby creating variety while maintaining certain parameters ... The plans were of such a scope that he’d never even imagined such a thing.

  Break and Shore were fantastic, of course, but if they could replicate, and if those offspring could in turn replicate, each instilled with the same—what did he call them—instincts to find his memory fragments, there was no telling how quickly they could be recovered.

  His mind staggered as he began to consider the wealth of tasks self-replicating golems could be designed to perform. Not just on the battlefield, for gathering resources, perhaps refining them, growing them, even. He could use them to accomplish so much work—to build a house, a mansion, maybe a palace. They could repurpose worlds. The possibilities were endless.

  Shore nudged him out of his thoughts and he petted her, smiling.

  He knew the modifications to their bodies would not be easy, not for any of them, but if this worked it would be a greater boon than anything else he could imagine. First, he laid a hand upon Break. To entangle all the systems of the male self-reproducing golem with his pet would require hundreds—no thousands of entanglements. He counted them. With so much self-assurance bolstering his mental power, the calculation went quickly. Three thousand seven hundred and eighty-one. So many complicated and interdependent entanglements.

  He sighed at the scope of it all.

  Well, nothing left but to begin the work. The excitement began to build, as did the entropy, but as a peak knight, so near reaching the rank of general, he could handle it.

  * * *

  

[Deep space, aboard a Severed vessel]

  Moraithe and Norgoth had done it. They had infiltrated the Severed’s inner circle, their true identities as drackmoor remained hidden. No one suspected a thing. Their subtle manipulation, careful planning, and patience had earned them the trust of those dark leaders.

  They floated together with the Severed, and in that chamber, they began to formulate a bold, sweeping plan to strike at one of the greatest stronghold worlds in the universe—an operation that if it succeeded would topple Moraithe’s true allies in a single devastating blow. Even as they strategized, he considered ways to undermine it.

  Then, just as their plan was taking shape, like an explosion of ink, a grim darkness flooded the chamber. It didn’t enter through the door or materialize in any natural way—it simply was. It filled the water, thickening it with a sensation of pure weight, of being choked by something far greater, far darker than the Severed themselves.

  Moraithe tensed, instinctively reaching for his weapons, but it was too late. He was already enveloped in the crushing presence. The darkness was not merely a physical thing—it was alive. It clung to water, air, space itself, drowning out everything.

  From the oppressive shadow, Barthum pulsed forward, his form barely visible in the inky haze he commanded. The researcher had changed from the kind and mousy fellow with a perpetual smile, into a hulking brute with a grim sneer. No snogbreather covered his face, but he showed no signs of suffocation. A chill swept through the depths of the chamber, an unnatural energy settling like blood in the water. The Severed fluttered arms and tentacles, backing away, their faces stricken with fear.

  “Your master has come,” Barthum’s voice resonated, not through his mouth but as a pulse of sheer power that vibrated in their bones. His voice carried the weight of absolute command. “And now, you belong to me.”

  A sudden wave of realization hit the Severed. There was no fighting this. They had no means of escaping it. They were caught in his grip. The room trembled, the darkness swirling around them like a living thing, suffocating them with its power.

  Moraithe tried to move, to break free of the isolating grip of Barthum’s presence, but it was useless. No force he could muster would shake the shackles that had been placed upon them. He glanced to Norgoth, but his friend’s face was drawn tight with fear, his hands trembling. This was a presence as indomitable as Elithir at least. There was nothing they could do. They were completely outmatched.

  Barthum’s voice boomed through their minds, invading their thoughts with terrifying ease. “You think you are powerful. You think you have the universe under your control. But you were blind to the darkness that hides beneath it all. I am the darkness.” The universe trembled at the force of those words.

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  A shudder ran through Moraithe’s spine as Barthum continued, his dark power manifesting in tendrils that curled around the Severed like chains.

  “I have entangled myself with every shadow, every void, every piece of darkness in the universe. I see all that touches it. Every secret, every hidden truth. All things that lurk in the dark, I know them. There is nowhere you can hide from me, no secret you can keep.”

  Moraithe’s heart nearly burst at those words. Does he already know? He struggled to keep his gaze from drifting over to Norgoth.

  “And now …” Barthum’s voice became smooth, like silk, the threat wrapped in a promise. “With this power, I will make you unstoppable. With my power, we can bring all our enemies to the dust. I will see their worlds burn. I will make the universe bow.”

  The room hung in silence for a moment, the full weight of Barthum’s words settling in. The Severed, once so terrifying in their own right, stood in stunned silence. The plan to destroy a stronghold world? It seemed laughable now. How could their own strength compare to a being who commanded the darkness itself, who had entangled his very existence with the vastness of the universe’s shadow?

  Moraithe's mind spun. Barthum had become something beyond powerful—he was omniscient in the dark spaces, connected to every secret, every hidden move. His power was limitless, his reach unfathomable. The very foundations of the drackmoor were built on secrets, on hidden things, and Barthum had just shattered that.

  Norgoth turned to him, luminous veins thrumming. Have we finally been revealed?

  Moraithe’s heart pounded in his chest as Barthum’s darkness tightened around them. They were trapped—no escape, no hope of a counterattack. He had never felt so powerless.

  “Hear my decree,” Barthum’s voice rumbled, deepening like thunder. An ominous silence waited to hear his words. “I will perceive every lie. With my power, nothing can hide in the shadows. With my power, we will conquer. You are now my armies. Together, we will sweep across the stars, and no one will dare to defy us again. Be faithful to me and I will reward you.

  “But more than this, I have a plan that will strip all power from my enemies, and only those whom I choose to protect will retain any portion of their strength. I will snuff out the stars, conquer the light, and bring every soul under my dominion forever.”

  Barthum’s laugh echoed through the chamber, dark and all-encompassing. The Severed, their faces empty of the arrogance they once carried, slowly bowed their heads, one by one, utterly broken. They had no choice but to submit. This was no longer a war. This was survival—a new era—and Barthum would rule all.

  The enemy had managed to do exactly what he’d been struggling to accomplish—to gain an overwhelming advantage. But they could not yield to the Severed. Now how would they win this war?

  Finally, Moraithe dared a glance at Norgoth. The plans they had fought so hard to set in motion were nothing compared to the vast and terrible designs of the one who had wrapped the universe in shadow—had become darkness itself.

  * * *

  

[Kapurn, command palaces]

  It was the second time in recent memory Moraithe had needed to use the door, but Elithir had to hear the news. He needed to know about Barthum, what he’d become.

  Once more in the grand hall where Elithir worked, Moraithe felt the unnatural stillness of the place. His footsteps echoed like thunder through that silence, a silence far too deep. “Elithir?”

  But no voice answered. He scanned the room and his eyes immediately fell upon a statue carved in the perfect likeness of his father, sitting upon his chair.

  He rushed over to it and stopped, gaping at the incredible lifelike detail of the sculpture. It captured everything about Elithir down to the minutest detail. That expression of deep concentration, the way he held his eyebrows, even their fine hairs were all carved into the stone. It was as if this were truly the stone form of Elithir himself.

  Reaching for the statue, he dared place a single finger upon that cold, shaped stone. In that instant, a presence seemed to settle in beside his own thoughts. “That did not go as I planned.” The words seemed to say. “There were some unintended side effects of entangling myself across eternity.” It was Elithir’s voice echoing in the chambers of his mind, calm but tinged with regret.

  “Elithir? Is that you?”

  “It seems entangling across time has the unfortunate side-effect of petrifying oneself. Or that is how it seems. I am not actually stone, merely a fixed point across time. Fixed and unmoving, frozen just like this. But in the far future, I have found the answer. I have found a way to fix myself. Although, alas, it shall not be for many eons until I will be able to do so.”

  Moraithe frowned, hand splaying across the surface of the stone, his heart heavy with the realization. “So, how do we fix it?”

  Elithir’s voice vibrated through his thoughts, steady but resigned. “Entangling myself across all time bound me along these three dimensions. But if I were to be entangled across all of space as well, then I would be in all things and throughout all things. In short, all things would be mine, and I would have all power. I have long called myself Infinite, but only then would I truly become such.” A pause, a heavy silence. “However, there are a few, narrow places we must pass through to get to that point.”

  Moraithe blinked, struggling to come to terms with Elithir’s petrification. “Like what?”

  Elithir’s presence seemed to shift slightly, the tone of his voice darkening with the weight of what was to come. “The Amnesia Bomb.”

  Moraithe stared at the stone face, struggling to process what he had just heard. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  Elithir expounded, his words becoming more precise, “Really, it is more of an Entropy Bomb. But the effect on most people will be complete and total amnesia, destroying them, body and mind, regressing every soul back to where they were in the beginning before you woke them.”

  Moraithe took a step back, his stomach turning. “Wait. Before anyone knew one another? Before I woke them? How could—”

  “But I think we can find a way to soften the blow,” Elithir interjected quickly, the urgency in his tone not lost on Moraithe. “If we can bend time in such a manner that they overlap at the moment of the blast, the entropy will be somewhat diffused. It will still cause amnesia, but in lesser repeating waves—no worse than what Throm’tor put you through.”

  Moraithe’s eyes widened as he replayed the horror of Throm’tor’s spell in his mind. The confusion, the lost moments, the sense of time slipping through his fingers. So much loss. “Ah, no worse than that … great.”

  Elithir’s voice softened, though it carried the weight of endless eons of contemplation. “It will at least allow civilization to continue in some form until we can fix this whole thing.”

  “How are we supposed to handle that, facing amnesia again and again and again.”

  “Remember what I always said.” Elithir somehow seemed to mentally pat his shoulder. “Resistance yields growth.”

  Moraithe nodded, considering. “But amnesia takes away power.”

  “It will be a different kind of training, not for the mind, but for the soul. Soul training expands how quickly you gain self-assurance. It is excruciating, but is also the secret to my strength. And you have a head start. Of all people, you can handle this. You’ve faced it before.”

  “Soul training?”

  “You will grow faster and faster every time you lose your power. It will hurt in the short term, but in the long term, you will grow stronger than me. And that is the only way to win. Entangled like this I am a fixed point. I can no longer grow. I need you—I need all of the drackmoor to grow to exceed my power. And you will need me to guide you through it all. Only then can you manage an entanglement of such magnitude.”

  The words hung in his mind, heavy and certain. Moraithe glanced up into the stone eyes of the statue of Elithir—no, of Elithir himself, the Infinite now trapped in his own entanglement. And for the first time, Moraithe realized how truly fragile time, space, and life itself could be. He was nervous, and this time even Elithir’s presence could not calm him.