The path to the forest's heart was marked by silence. Snow hung suspended from ancient pines, a frozen tableau untouched by wind. What little sunlight filtered through the canopy scattered across the crystalline ground, casting refractions that sparkled like fallen stars in the perpetual twilight.

  A red fox paused at the edge of a clearing, ears pricked forward, its breath forming delicate clouds in the frigid air. Something was wrong about this place. The natural order had been... inverted. Predators moved with unusual hesitation. Prey showed no fear. The fox's whiskers twitched as it lowered its snout, sensing disturbances in the earth that its simple mind could not comprehend.

  Deeper within the frozen woodland stood a mountain, its face scarred with a single dark opening—a cavern mouth that seemed to breathe shadow into the white landscape. The entrance was unremarkable, easily missed by wandering eyes, yet it radiated a subtle wrongness that kept forest creatures at bay. All except the fox, which approached with uncharacteristic determination, drawn by curiosity or perhaps by strings beyond mortal comprehension.

  The passage descended gradually, trading ice for stone. Walls of ancient rock closed in, bearing markings in languages no living tongue could pronounce. The deeper the descent, the warmer the air became—not the comforting warmth of hearth and home, but the disquieting heat of fever and decay.

  At the cavern's terminus stood a door.

  Not a simple wooden barrier, but a monument of metallurgical impossibility. Seventy-two locks lined its perimeter, each crafted from materials that defied classification—metals that shimmered with inner light, alloys that whispered when touched. The door itself bore no markings, no warnings. It simply existed as an absolute division between what was allowed and what was forbidden.

  Behind this door sat Solomon.

  The Mage King reclined on a throne of worn stone, the simplicity of his seat a stark contrast to the complexity of the man. His beard, once black as midnight, now hung white and wispy to his waist. Wrinkles mapped his face like the borders of forgotten kingdoms, yet his eyes—those ancient, terrible eyes—blazed with the vigor of youth and the wisdom of eons.

  He wore no crown, no royal garments. A simple robe of undyed cloth draped over his frail form, belying the power contained within. Before him lay no arcane circles, no sacrificial altars. The floor was bare stone, swept clean of dust by unseen hands.

  Solomon's lips moved, forming words in a tongue that had died thirty-one worlds ago. His voice was barely audible, a susurration that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The air rippled around him as reality itself bent to accommodate the impossibility of his speech.

  "Is this truly necessary, Solomon?"

  The voice was honey poured over broken glass—sweet, yet with edges that cut. From the shadows behind the throne, a figure coalesced. Neither male nor female, neither young nor old, Samael stepped into the dim light. Their form shifted subtly, never quite settling on a single appearance, though always beautiful, always terrible.

  "After everything," Samael continued, "all your wisdom, your countless lives... this is your answer? Do you understand the price of your transgression?"

  Solomon didn't look up, didn't break the rhythm of his whispered incantation. After several moments, he paused, a wry smile playing across his lips.

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  "Seven times during the Second World, I rejected ascension," he said, voice gravelly from disuse. "Do you truly believe I would fall for your enchantments now?"

  Before Samael could respond, sounds echoed from beyond the door—voices, raised in argument, punctuated by laughter that held no mirth, only cruelty.

  "There is still time," Samael urged, a note of genuine concern in their ever-shifting voice. "Join one of the pantheons. Gain their protection. This path leads only to—"

  Solomon's laugh was dry as ancient parchment. "Never did I expect to hear the Rebel counsel submission." His eyes flickered up, meeting Samael's shifting gaze. "Never did I expect Lucifer, of all beings, to suggest I bow my head."

  Samael's form flickered, momentarily revealing something vast and terrible before settling again. "You misunderstand my concern—"

  The seventy-two locks shattered simultaneously as the door exploded inward, torn from its hinges by a short-handled hammer that glowed with divine fury. Dust and fragments of metal swirled in the sudden draft, revealing three figures silhouetted in the doorway.

  Thor stood at the forefront, his hammer returning to his hand like an obedient hound. The thunder god's red beard bristled with electricity, his eyes narrowed in contempt. To his right stood Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of war, her breath hot enough to wither the air around her. And to his left loomed Izanagi, creator god, his spear dripping with the waters of creation and destruction.

  "Enough games, mortal," Thor growled, stepping forward. "Your meddling ends now."

  Solomon rose slowly, his frail body seemingly unable to support the weight of his knowledge. "Does it pain you, Thunderer, to know you've been manipulated? That your strength serves only as the instrument of universal erasure?"

  Sekhmet snarled, feline features contorting. "You speak of things beyond your comprehension, little man. Thirty-one times we have cleansed. Thirty-one times we have renewed. The cycle is necessary."

  "Necessary?" Solomon's voice gained strength, echoing off the stone walls. "Was it necessary to drown the Seventh World when its people developed dimensional travel? Was it necessary to burn the Nineteenth when they questioned your divinity?"

  "Restraint." Izanagi's voice rippled like water over stones. "It is our burden to maintain cosmic balance. Without our intervention, reality itself would unravel."

  Solomon's smile widened as he lifted his hands, revealing the invisible threads of power that now wrapped around the chamber. "I've heard your justifications across lifetimes. I've witnessed your fear disguised as wisdom. And now—" his voice took on an almost poetic cadence "—the ritual is complete. The relationship between gods and worlds will be... rather different henceforth."

  The three deities lunged forward simultaneously, only to be caught midstep by chains of pure metaphysical force. Energy coursed from their bodies, drawn inexorably into the ritual Solomon had been whispering into existence.

  "What have you done?" Thor bellowed, struggling against the invisible bonds as his divine essence drained away.

  Solomon's body began to decompose, flesh withering and sloughing away at a speed visible to the naked eye. Yet he laughed—a terrible, insane sound of triumph and release.

  "The gods will destroy the world no more," he proclaimed through rapidly decaying lips, "for a mortal has destroyed it first! And in this destruction, mortals gain the power to defend themselves at last."

  Samael watched in silence, neither helping nor hindering, as reality bent and fractured around them all.

  "You've doomed everything," Sekhmet hissed through fangs that were already beginning to fade.

  "No," Solomon whispered as his body crumbled to dust. "I've freed it."

  A pulse of energy—invisible yet undeniable—expanded outward from the chamber, racing across the Earth and beyond, touching every habitable world in the universe. As it passed, it left behind a fundamental change in how reality functioned, a new energy permeating the very air.

  When the pulse faded, nothing remained of Solomon but a simple gold ring lying amid ashes on the stone floor.

  The fox, having followed the strange procession into the depths, watched from the shadows as the cavern began to collapse. It darted forward, snatched the ring in its teeth, and fled toward the surface, carrying the last remnant of the man who had broken the world to save it.

  Across the Earth and countless other worlds, beings of all kinds paused as they felt something shift within them—a new awareness, a beckoning to power that had never before existed. The age of gods had ended.

  The age of Paths had begun.