1. From the Past (Vir Pov)

  The wind howled over the scorched plateau, whispering through shattered statues of gods who no longer answered prayers. Above them, the moons were silver daggers, casting long shadows over the rebel encampment which was little more than a ring of tents, flickering torchlight, and half-buried hopes.

  Vir stood at the edge of it all, cloaked in black, eyes sharp and unblinking as the cold bit into his weathered skin.

  Three hundred years of silence had made men forget what it meant to resist.

  He hadn't.

  Behind him, the war-table glowed faintly with arcane glyphs scraped together by Centaur scribes and Half Verdant mages who still remembered the ancient ways. Around it stood those few willing to defy history.

  Drakkin commanders with molten eyes, human scouts hardened by desperation, and Half Verdants whose skin still shimmered with the old magic of the world.

  Vir’s fingers tightened around the iron ring on his thumb, a relic from the second rebellion, polished smooth by time. He had never met the man it belonged to. Just read his letters, hidden in library margins and whispered between pages that smelled of dust and defiance.

  That man had died in the tunnels beneath Zevrin, lungs crushed by Ministry stonebinders.

  “The first time,” Vir said aloud, voice low and even, “they believed unity alone would be enough. Three empires, one alliance, all broken by divine fire.”

  No one spoke, no one interrupted him as he continued.

  “The second time, they believed numbers would win. Fifty billion marched, and fifty billion burned.” His gaze lifted toward the horizon. “They thought the False Gods wouldn’t descend again, they did.”

  A Drakkin warrior shifted, his tail curling reflexively.

  “But we are not them,” Vir continued, stepping closer to the table, “We do not rely on thrones or numbers, we are not trying to reclaim the old world.”

  He looked up, and every eye met his.

  “We are here to break it.”

  A hush fell. The kind born not of fear, but alignment, focus, calculus made flesh.

  “We know the Pact of Dominion,” Vir said. “We know the False Gods cannot act unless we threaten the Ministry itself. So we won’t, not at first. We won’t draw swords against temples or towers, not until we’ve rewritten the very spellwork that binds them.”

  A spark of understanding lit the eyes of a Half Verdant woman beside him. She nodded.

  Good, some were beginning to see.

  Vir stepped back from the table. “We will fracture their foundations, whisper by whisper, and cut the lines between the Ministry and the Empires. We will make the figureheads remember they are men, not puppets, and when the Ministry finally sees us?”

  He exhaled. “It will already be too late.”

  “Do you think we’ll succeed?” asked a younger voice, Keller, his second-in-command. Still too soft, too full of heart.

  Good, but dangerous.

  “No, I know we must.” He answered.

  That was enough.

  They began to disperse. Centaurs returned to their posts, Drakkin adjusted armor with silent reverence, Half Verdants whispered to the trees near the edge of the camp, sending word through roots older than the Ministry itself.

  Vir lingered, alone with the stars and the taste of future ash.

  He remembered reading about the Second War’s end, how the skies had burned red for days, how the gods had walked like giants. People had stopped calling them false then. They had just called them "real".

  But real didn’t mean right, and he would make them remember that.

  This would be the Third Judgment, and this time, it would not come from gods, but from men who remembered how to build fire beneath stone, and how to make it last.

  That night the sky did not darken, it bled.

  Vir had seen the omens in the weeks before, the stars veering off course, half Verdant roots whispering of hollowborn seedlings, the Drakkin flames flickering sideways as if afraid, but he had not believed.

  Not truly, not until now, until the world itself screamed.

  He staggered to his feet as the ground beneath the rebel encampment split open, a jagged chasm cleaving through sacred stone and war-maps alike. The screams of his soldiers, their terror, were barely audible over the thunder that was not thunder.

  Above them, the heavens cracked, and through that fracture poured not light, not rain, but divinity.

  Twelve silhouettes emerged from the rift. Not as mortals, not even as gods, but as truths, rewritten into the fabric of the world.

  Their very presence twisted the laws of reality.

  Where Zareth walked, blades rusted to dust and rage bloomed like wildfire.

  Where Orithis stood, silence consumed, a void so vast sound fled from it.

  Vaelis sprouted life so aggressive the trees choked each other in seconds.

  Fenros howled and beasts across a hundred leagues answered.

  Vir’s knees nearly gave out. He wanted to fall, but he didn’t, he couldn’t.

  They have broken the Pact.

  The thought hit like a sword to the gut. For centuries, even the False Gods had honored their binding contract with the Ministry. They did not rule, they enforced, they kept their leashes close, but not tight enough to strangle.

  But now they wanted more, now they wanted everything.

  A Half Verdant scout sprinted to him, face streaked with blood and ash. “They’re burning the Spires of Accord! The Ministry isn’t even resisting! They’re—”

  A pulse of Theurgy silenced her. Not with force, but inevitability. Her mouth moved, but her voice was gone.

  Vir turned his gaze skyward again, to the burning canopy where divinity had torn through cloud and law alike. The Ministry had promised peace, even as it ruled with iron and false piety. It had bargained with these gods, thinking it controlled them.

  Fools. They had never controlled anything. Only delayed the inevitable.

  And now it had arrived.

  All around him, his rebellion, still unborn, crumbled, and his commanders fell to their knees.

  So this is how it ends, Vir thought, but the thought soured before it finished.

  No, this was not the end. Not yet, not now, not until he remained.

  Vir looked down at the war-table, shattered, half-melted. Still, beneath the ruin, he saw the carving he had etched just two days ago.

  Judgment comes, but fire rises first.

  The sky was a fracture, a wound in the fabric of reality where divinity bled like wildfire.

  He stood amid a dying world, his breath shallow with dust and divine ash, as mountains cracked and oceans clawed upward in defiance of gravity. The False Gods had come in their splendor and savagery, and Eridithia wept beneath their feet.

  And still, Veyrion was silent.

  All around him, mortals burned. Zareth’s warfire cleaved armies in half, Vaelis bloomed forests of carnivorous thorns that devoured flesh and steel alike, and Deus-Vael’s machines marched across the sky, raining logic-born death on the shrines of old.

  The ground beneath Vir stilled, and for the first time since the end began, he felt it.

  The Blessing, his second. He still had two left.

  He knelt, fingers pressed to the scorched earth, blood and mud caked along his jaw. His voice was not loud, but it was resolute.

  “I call upon the Eternal Wellspring, Veyrion, father of renewal. You granted me life once, now grant the world its justice. Let the pact-breakers be judged, not by mortals, but by those above them.”

  Around him the massacre continued, within him was a stillness deeper than void.

  And then, they descended.

  They did not arrive as warriors, nor as kings.

  The True Gods fell like truths from the sky, and the world shuddered beneath their weight.

  Xirathis unfurled across the sky, a tapestry of stars forming runes in the firmament.

  Nythera stepped from the threshold of death itself, cloaked in a silence that made Orithis recoil.

  Irothar cracked his knuckles and continents shattered at the sound.

  Varethis walked, and with each step, a False God dropped their weapons in dread.

  Syltheris bloomed behind Vaelis, and the earth itself chose who to devour.

  Kael’tharion’s eyes opened across the horizon, thousands of them, each a mirror to cosmic logic, and Deus-Vael’s constructs froze, undone by the very principle of flawlessness they once served.

  And Veyrion, the father who had once blessed a mortal named Vir, descended last.

  He was not fire, nor storm, nor wrath. He was life itself, endless, inexorable, forgiving...

  ... and terrible.

  The battle that followed was not war, it was correction.

  Zareth, god of conquest, screamed, not in rage, but in fear, as Irothar met him in kind, fists slamming into his divine frame like judgment given form.

  Vaelis shrieked as Syltheris wove her essence back into the natural cycle, erasing her dominion like rot peeled from bone.

  Deus-Vael cracked as Kael’tharion rewrote his mind mid-thought, deconstructing his theorems before he could finish them.

  It was divine carnage, a massacre not born of hate, but order.

  Vir stood still as stone, eyes wide as gods were broken like brittle toys. He should have wept, rejoiced, screamed, but instead, he thought of her.

  His daughter.

  Rina.

  Safe, somewhere far beyond the mountain lines, with her mother, with soft hands and lullabies.

  His first blessing, the one he had begged for in tears and blood years ago. The one Veyrion had granted without hesitation.

  The life of a child destined to die, a future.

  But now…

  He clutched his side. A spear, one of Fenros’s wild-born hunters, had pierced his flank minutes before the gods began their purge.

  He hadn’t noticed until now, but it was deep, already black at the edges.

  He sank to his knees.

  Not yet, he whispered, please, not yet.

  But he knew, this was his end, but he had one blessing left, and he remembered what it meant.

  “Three times, and never more,” Veyrion had whispered, all those years ago. “Ask well, Champion.”

  The first was love, the second salvation, and the third…

  Not for me.

  Vir closed his eyes, and reached past the screaming, past the fire, past the divinity.

  He reached into Veyrion.

  “Father… I ask again.”

  No words passed his lips, this was not a plea, it was a seed.

  A question planted into the Wellspring itself, laced with intent no god could unweave.

  A blessing not for now, not even for centuries, but one day, it would bloom.

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  And it would change everything, for better or for worse. Veyrion said nothing, but he accepted.

  Vir exhaled, long and low, and he felt the warmth in his chest fade. His blood pooled, forgotten among so many others.

  He looked to the sky once more, as False Gods fell like comets around him, and his last thoughts were not of glory.

  But of guilt.

  I’m sorry, he thought, Rina. I gave you life, and then I gave away the world that should have raised you.

  His vision faded.

  Forgive me, my love, for in my final breath... I may have damned us all.

  2. In the Present (Lucius Hargrove pov)

  The city shimmered beneath the pale-gold haze of morning wards, protective sigils thrumming faintly across marble spires and floating obelisks like the heartbeat of a living giant.

  From the high terrace of the Ministry Citadel, Lucius Hargrove watched Valthirion stir, a walled heart of power beating in sync with his own wearied rhythm.

  He descended the Spire’s inner lift slowly, draped in Ministry gold, his aged hands clasped behind his back. The cloak he wore had been enchanted to resist the winds of time, but not even the finest craftsmanship could hide the heaviness in his gait.

  One hundred and twenty years, thirty-six on the throne. He still remembered what it felt like to want this power, now he merely bore it.

  As his retinue fell into silent formation behind him, non conclave half-Verdant slaves cloaked in Ministry teal, eyes downcast and dutiful, Lucius stepped into the Aurum District’s gilded streets. Here, merchant princes whispered behind closed balconies, and noble banners shimmered with silent enchantments.

  He greeted them all with the grace expected of the Minister. A nod, a phrase of formal warmth, a reminder that the world still turned beneath his steady hand.

  He did not stop walking, there was only one destination this morning, the Heart-Spire Rune, the greatest teleportation nexus in Erdithia. A marvel of geomantic convergence, it pulsed with leyline energy so potent it could collapse the distance between continents in a single blink.

  He passed the statue of Augustus Beaumont, his predecessor and the only man whose shadow still clung to the Citadel's marble walls.

  Thirty-eight years, just two more and Lucius would outlast him, and yet, the thought brought no triumph, only an ache behind the ribs.

  “Minister Hargrove.”

  The voice came like the turning of a well-oiled page. Lucius turned and found a familiar figure waiting in the shade of an arcanite archway.

  “Lord Crowley,” Lucius said, lips folding into a smile both cordial and careful. “Out among the rabble today?”

  Raphael Crowley, the Lord of Chains, wore gray layered robes lined with warded steel-thread, his white beard impeccably trimmed. His ceremonial ring, etched with beast-sigils, glinted in the sun.

  “I thought it prudent,” Raphael said, falling into step beside him, “to remind Valthirion that we old lions still walk its streets.”

  Lucius gave a soft laugh. “And what reminder are you here to offer?”

  “Just a conversation,” Crowley replied, voice laced with that old steel velvet. “About sons.”

  That made Lucius pause, not his stride, but his mind.

  Sons and daughters, so often the topic of aging men, yet always laced with what they could not say aloud. Pride, disappointment, loss.

  “Adrian manages the provinces with diligence,” Lucius offered. “Damian’s treaties with the Aetherborn hold our eastern borders, and Cassandra… well, Cassandra makes the House proud.”

  “I didn’t mean yours,” Raphael said quietly. “I meant mine.”

  The air between them shifted. Even in a city built on silence and secrets, a name still crackled like static behind stone.

  “Kaelith,” Lucius said softly.

  Raphael nodded once. “I dreamed of him again last night, standing at the edge of Valthirion’s bridges, holding a lantern. He didn’t speak, just looked at me.”

  Lucius exhaled. “We both know dreams aren’t idle things in this city.”

  “No,” Raphael murmured. “Especially not here.”

  For a time, they walked in silence, the distant hum of Thaumaturgic rails and the whisper of scrying towers shadowing their steps.

  “I fought for the law that banished him,” Raphael finally said. “Voted for it, even wrote parts of it, and yet…” His voice trailed off.

  Lucius laid a hand gently on his colleague’s arm. “And yet you remain a Lord of the House, a pillar. A father.”

  “Do those ever reconcile?”

  Lucius did not answer, not because he didn’t have one, but because in this city, sometimes silence was the only kindness left.

  Ahead, the Heart-Spire Rune came into view, vast and radiant, like a living sun etched into the world’s stone skin. Mages in Ministry regalia circled it, preparing the coordinates, and the air tasted of ozone and fate.

  Lucius stepped toward it.

  “Where are you headed?” Raphael asked, eyes narrowing with familiar curiosity.

  Lucius paused.

  “Nowhere I truly wish to be, but the Minister has duties.”

  And with that, the ruler of Erdithia stepped into the light.

  He stepped through the veil of silver fire as the teleportation rune dissolved around him, his boots settling onto the marble floor of Evergrace Academy’s grand receiving hall with a quiet finality.

  The scent here was always the same, aged parchment, polished mahogany, and the faint electric residue of spells long since cast.

  The hall stood quiet but no less magnificent for it. Vaulted ceilings stretched high above, domed with stained glass panels that shifted hue with the angle of the sun, depicting legendary spell duels, sermons from false gods, and the Ministry’s rise from fractured kingdoms.

  Here, education was not a right, it was a legacy. Evergrace had trained kings, tacticians, wizards whose names were etched into history with divine ink, and now it would host this year’s Council of Selection.

  A rare privilege, this gathering of the Seven Elite Academies, a meeting held only once a year, following the Grand Selection Exam. Despite being private institutions, these schools still extended deference to the Ministry, inviting Lucius as a "guest of honor."

  They acted as if the Ministry's approval were optional, and he allowed them their traditions. Rituals had power in a land like Eridithia, after all.

  The receiving chamber, while regal, was empty of its usual bustle. That was no surprise. Lucius had arrived early, by design.

  Only two others were present, standing at the far end of the hall beneath a towering arch of rune-etched obsidian.

  Magnus Aurelius turned first. As ever, the man looked carved from something ancient and defiant, crimson-streaked hair tied back with soldier’s precision, golden eyes sharp beneath the eternal scar that slashed down the left side of his face.

  Despite the titles he'd refused, the power he wielded, Magnus had chosen the life of an educator. A strange, infuriating, and undeniably noble decision.

  Beside him stood Leonidas Drake, Deputy Headmaster of Aurelian Academy, his stance straight-backed and expression unreadable. Always the tactician, always watching.

  “Lucius,” Magnus greeted, voice a low baritone edged with warmth and warning alike. “You’re early.”

  “I prefer silence over storm,” Lucius replied, smiling as he clasped forearms with the man. “Though I see you’ve brought one.”

  Leonidas gave a curt nod. “Aureum sent their delegate this morning, and the others are en route.”

  “Then they will be late,” Lucius said dryly, turning his gaze up to the enchanted murals. “Evergrace hasn’t changed.”

  “No,” came a voice behind them, deep, aged, and unmistakably proud.

  Lord Edmund Beaumont, Headmaster of Evergrace, approached with slow, deliberate steps, flanked by his wife and Deputy Headmistress, Lady Genevieve. “And it won’t, not while I draw breath.”

  Lucius inclined his head in respect. “Evergrace is eternal because of you, Lord Edmund. I’m honored.”

  “Spare me the courtly words, Minister,” Edmund said with a smirk, though his eyes twinkled with respect. “You didn’t come all this way to flatter old men.”

  Lucius chuckled, tension easing between his shoulders. “No, I came to make sure the next generation knows whom they serve.”

  And he meant it. For all its vaunted freedom, the elite educational system still fed directly into the veins of the Ministry. Scholars, mages, clerics, even insurgents in waiting. The GSE sorted the wheat from the chaff, but the Council of Selection decided where that wheat was milled, shaped, weaponized.

  Magnus folded his arms. “Let’s hope this year’s batch isn’t as… fiery as last year’s. The Obsidian Spire representative still limps.”

  Lucius’s smile deepened. “They will be sharper, I assure you. The questions on this year’s Exam were written personally by my office, we made sure only the obedient passed.”

  Genevieve’s eyes gleamed. “Obedience without brilliance is dull steel.”

  “And brilliance without obedience,” Lucius replied, “is a blade turned on its master.”

  The chamber fell into a thoughtful silence. Behind them, the runes of the arrival gate pulsed again, signaling more delegates arriving. The day’s business would soon begin, the arguments, the bargaining, the subtle warfare of choosing which student went where, and who would claim the most promising paths.

  But for now, Lucius stood still, hands clasped behind his back, golden eyes sweeping across the symbols carved into the stonework of Evergrace.

  The seven elite academies were more than mere schools. They were a forge of the future, and Lucius Hargrove intended to see exactly what was being forged in the fires this year.

  The last of the Headmasters arrived with a rustle of fine robes and the echoing clicks of polished boots on stone.

  Lucius Hargrove barely glanced up from the parchment in his hands as the heavy chamber doors groaned shut behind them. Formalities were exchanged, and seats filled. The air thickened with prestige and ancient rivalries, as it always did when the leaders of Erdithia’s elite academies gathered.

  The meeting began, minutes slipping into a dull haze of logistical drivel. He made a note to congratulate the transcription clerks for sitting through these things daily without succumbing to madness.

  “—Celos Thalorin has submitted a personal request,” Headmistress Vale was saying, her voice smooth and crisp like winter silk. “His youngest, third child. Her GSE results were... middling, yet he wishes her placed at Aurelian.”

  Lucius did not look up, he didn’t need to. Of course he asked, and of course Magnus agreed. Of course no one would refuse the Lord of the Thalorins, not unless they had a death wish or a vendetta carved in fire, and none of the people here were fools. The room murmured faintly.

  No one protested.

  He absently traced the rim of his goblet, his thoughts elsewhere.

  Then, he heard that name.

  “—Darius Blackwood.”

  It hit like cold iron, and he stiffened, eyes narrowing as the sound curled through the chamber.

  The ancient disgrace slithered up from history, coiling in his gut like a serpent.

  Darius Blackwood.

  Who in the name of Veyrion named their child after the man who nearly sold Erdithia to the Verdant Lords? Eight centuries of shame, and someone still dared to bear that name like a badge.

  “There were... complications,” Garrick Vael grunted, arms crossed. “None of the academies offered him a seat.”

  “Except Aurelian,” Edmund Beaumont added dryly, voice dipped in honeyed disdain.

  A slow breath filtered through Lucius’s nostrils, but he remained silent. The fire was banked behind his calm eyes, but it was fire nonetheless. Not a single word needed to be spoken, everyone here had felt the weight of that name, everyone here understood.

  And as if that wasn’t enough,

  “Then there’s the Drakkin boy, Kieran.”

  A few glances were exchanged, a faint tightening of shoulders.

  Drakkin.

  The very word brought an unspoken wariness to the chamber. Legal citizens, yes. Valued allies, yes, but trust? That was harder won, and this one, barely passed the GSE, yet somehow made it into Aurelian.

  “Magnus does have a taste for lost causes,” murmured Ivy Maren, with a flutter of amusement in her tone.

  The next topic was about Cassius Valerian and Elias Corvus, the top two GSE scorers. Another minor stir.

  Magnus wanted them both, of course he did.

  Lucius was asked for his opinion, the room leaning toward him with the subtle weight of power deferred.

  He smiled, bland, polished, impenetrable. “Magnus Aurelius is the most capable man in all of Erdithia. It is only natural he be drawn to the most capable students.”

  A few scoffs, a few sneers, but no one openly contradicted him. He was the Minister, their sneers couldn’t cut him.

  The meeting dragged on for another half hour, full of talk about dormitory expansions, Thaumaturgy resource allocation, curriculum reviews. Lucius listened only when names of consequence flickered through the discussion.

  Selene Virell making changes to Crimson Bastion's combat program. Torvald Grimm pushing for stricter combat trials. Seraphina Vale championing more diplomacy-focused modules.

  At last, the meeting came to its close.

  Lucius stood, smoothing his robes with a sigh of restrained relief. The others filed out, still murmuring amongst themselves. Magnus stayed seated, pen scratching at a scroll. Lucius didn’t pause.

  As he stepped into the corridor, the echo of his own footsteps trailing behind him, he shook his head once, slowly.

  A Blackwood, and a Drakkin, at Aurelian, of all places.

  Lucius Hargrove didn’t believe in omens, but if he did...

  ...This year was destined to be cursed.

  3. Of the Future (Ni pov)

  The gears sang softly above him.

  Polished teeth interlocked in harmonious rhythm, ticking time with unerring certainty. Beneath their ceaseless motion stood Ni, High Artilect of the Mechanis Archive, clad not in armor but in reason, not in robes but in precision, his body a lattice of light-threaded alloy, humming with energy, and his mind a cathedral of possibility.

  The calculations were correct. He had checked them, then checked again, and then he had built six recursive engines to check them once more, each one more advanced than the last.

  Every model, every probability tree, every quantum-cascade simulation whispered the same truth.

  He knew it, and he wished he didn’t.

  Ni lowered his gaze from the ever-turning machine-lattice of the Sanctum’s ceiling to the shimmering gateway below. His internal chronometer ticked in tempo with the vault’s acceleration cycle.

  One by one, they began to arrive, envoys from every known realm. Mortal, divine, infernal. Each chosen representative passed through the dimensional veil with expressions carefully masked in diplomacy, but behind their eyes, he saw it.

  Doubt, suspicion, fear, and why wouldn’t they doubt him?

  The Mechanis Archive was not known for prophecy or dreams or divine revelation. They dealt in fact, in logic, in truths so objective they made lesser minds weep.

  And Ni, Ni who had bested even the Prime Cortex in calculation duels, stood now before gods and monsters alike, warning them of something none of them could see.

  He folded his hands behind his back, hiding the subtle tremor in his actuated fingers. Not malfunction, only anticipation.

  Excitement. Terror.

  A High Elf from Sylvaris adjusted her shimmering veil, a Sanquira Duke from Bloodveil whispered something cold to his shadow. The Maleborn envoy from the Infernal Dominion smirked, and even the Nullborn… were watching.

  Only those of Zenith and Erdithia had not been invited, and it was important why.

  Ni stepped forward, the echo of his footfalls reverberating through the grand chamber.

  “I thank you for coming,” he said, his voice modulated yet calm, curiously human despite its source. “I know it was… inconvenient.”

  A few chuckles, one snort, one hiss.

  He activated the central projection ring, and the real meeting began, not with politics, but with the mathematics of annihilation. The spinning spheres, the overlapping frequency gates, the resonance arcs of the planes.

  Not prophecy, but proof.

  And as the Realms watched in silence, Ni found himself thinking not of victory, but of mercy.

  For their sake, he hoped they would believe him.

  Ni did not blink, he never needed to, but if he had possessed eyelids, if his optic receptors were not polished aurium lenses etched with fractal vision scripts, he might have closed them, just for a moment.

  A moment to exhale the weight of what he was about to say. Not because he doubted it.

  He didn’t, that was the worst part.

  “The shift began,” he said, voice precise and flat, “approximately sixteen Erdithian years ago, I mention Erdithian time because the main change happened there Not in the political sphere, not in mortal chronicles, but along the cosmic filament between Eridithia and the Zenith Expanse.”

  His voice echoed in the chamber, too quiet for how loud the truth should have been.

  Before him, the Envoys of the Realms sat in silence. Their expressions varied, serene, guarded, indifferent, but he mapped each micro-expression, each fluctuation in aura, each kinetic tic. They were listening, but not hearing, not yet.

  Ni gestured, and above his outstretched hand, a lattice of energy expanded, cosmic harmonics rendered in cascading light.

  “My models are sound,” he continued. “Cross-referenced against divine temporal sequences, harmonized with Umbral null-waves, and corroborated by three independent Cognition Engines. There has been an energy displacement. Small, and statistically negligible to divine metrics.”

  He paused. “But not meaningless.”

  A flicker of discomfort passed through the crowd, and sven the Maleborn envoy shifted, eyes narrowed.

  “This energy,” Ni went on, “is not simply lost. It has moved. From the Zenith Expanse. To Eridithia.”

  That word, Eridithia, cracked like thunder across divine egos and demonic pride.

  “Erdithia? Where in Eridithia?” asked the Verdant Envoy from Sylvaris, her voice a melodic thread, careful and curious. “You imply a destination, something... specific.”

  Ni nodded once. “Yes, it has entered mortal containers.”

  A second of stillness, then the Sanguira Lord from Bloodveil rose, eyes gleaming like garnets set in shadowed marble. “You presume too much, construct. What you are suggesting” His voice curled into a sneer. “is that fragments of the true gods have taken mortal form. Preposterous.”

  Ni inclined his head, not in deference, but in restraint.

  “I wish I were wrong,” he said quietly. “I desire, more than any of you, to find error in my own logic, but the resonance patterns, the loss of nonlocal divine harmonics, the compression signature in the Eridithian fieldlines, they are consistent. The fragments exist, somewhere within the Mortal Veil.”

  “Why?” asked the Verdant Envoy. Her voice was steadier now, colder.

  Ni hesitated, for the first time. Not because he lacked a hypothesis, but because he had too many.

  “That,” he said, “is what terrifies me.”

  He turned, slow and deliberate, as the projected lattice spiraled into shifting simulations.

  “If these mortal vessels are aware of what they contain, then something is being planned. Silently, carefully, by minds still beyond all comprehension, by the true gods themselves.”

  He looked up. “And if they are not aware... then we are already living through a cosmic accident, a godhood untethered, without understanding or control.”

  Murmurs followed, soft, uneasy.

  He pressed on, knowing the rejection before it came.

  “I do not seek power, nor prophecy. Only to warn. The equations speak, something impossible has occurred, and continues to occur.”

  But even as he finished, he saw it in their eyes, not disdain, not skepticism.

  Fear.

  Even the Chief Designer, his own superior, whose lattice-mind had once shaped the Logic of the Archive, stood and said nothing.

  She left without a word.

  The Envoys followed, one by one, not convinced, not comforted.

  Not ready.

  Ni remained in the chamber alone, and the gears still turned above, uncaring.

  He knew why they had dismissed him. Not because they found flaws in his logic, there were none. Nor because the evidence was lacking. It was thorough, peerless.

  They dismissed him because the truth was unbearable.

  The True Gods had never acted except by distant design, never descended to meddle in the affairs of mortals or monsters. Their will was abstract, indifferent.

  If even a fraction of that power now walked Eridithia in human skin.

  Unknown, perhaps unaware, then the game had changed, and not for Eridithia alone.

  But for everything.