Suriel

  Iteration Requested . Sanctum

  Date? Current Time

  Report Complete

  Suriel, Judge of the Pheonix division, sat as she and her presence ran through the Abidan Archives in her mind. She was searching for her friend, Ozriel.

  He had gone missing for a while now, and the Abidan needed their Reaper more than ever. A flicker of bitterness flashed through her: why did Ozriel not speak to her? Now that he is dead, there is nothing she can do other than find the cause of his death. If he were still alive, she would not know if she would forgive him.

  Sanctum was the heart of her power, the centre of the Phoenix division. And here, she could touch the Way so easily. Sanctum was a hospital of sorts, where everyone can recover through the Way. She felt the first Judge of the Abidan, Makiel, flexed his authority. The symbol on her office's door, a green Pheonix, shined as it opened.

  "Makiel," she greeted the Hound, her voice calm and measured. "How may I help you?"

  "Suriel," the dark-skinned man replied, stepping into the room and halting on the opposite side of her desk. His sharp and calculating eyes met hers, but his posture was stiff, betraying something unspoken.

  "You are uninjured," she observed. "How may I help you."

  Makiel nodded slightly, acknowledging her observation before asking, "Are you here?"

  Suriel knew what the first Judge meant. "I am currently scattered through 50 iterations and soon will make contact with iteration 986. A Vroshir incursion is taking place, and they have taken control of the iteration's defences."

  "Vroshirs are attacking everywhere," Makiel replied. He took a seat across her, eyeing Suriel carefully. "And yet you spread yourself so thick. "

  Suriel met his eyes, unflinched by his jibe. She wanted to get straight to the point. "Why are you here, Makiel?"

  "Tschk," Makiel kissed his teeth. "I've observed Cradle's activities during my investigations on the effects of your meddling."

  "You found something related to Ozriel?" Suriel's question came out less of a curiosity and more of a statement.

  For the first time since she had known him, Makiel hesitated. The rare vulnerability in his posture was almost imperceptible, but it was there. "Maybe," he said, his voice far softer than usual. "Our surveillance found an external incursion into Cradle fifty millennia ago." He tossed a dream tablet onto the desk as though it were a cursed item, something he was eager to rid himself of. His fingers twitched, reluctant to linger on the object any longer.

  Suriel caught the tablet in mid-air and drifted it towards her. Her presence got to work without needing her command. She had lived far longer than many beings, seen more things, and been to more worlds. But her eyes widened when her presence informed her of the tablet's contents. She activated the tablet once, twice, and then a hundred more.

  A second after she received her tablet, her eyes focused on Makiel. "The cursed pair?" she asked. "I've never heard of it. The first generation of Judges never passed down information on this through our mantle," she realised. "Why?"

  Makiel's gaze darkened; his eyes were like shadows on his dark skin, and his fists clenched at his sides. His voice was heavy when he spoke, and Suriel knew instantly that Makiel was as lost as he had never been.

  "I don't know," Makiel admitted for the first time since he ascended, his voice raw.

  Suriel's stomach tightened. It was one thing to hear that a fellow Judge did not know something; it was another entirely to hear it from Makiel, the one who always claimed to know everything. A Judge who had seen the branches of Fate, who never hesitated, never wavered. And now, in this moment, he admitted that even he was lost. "Where did you find it?" she asked, holding the ancient object tightly.

  "Our archives," he answered, his voice tinged with disbelief.

  "I've been there countless times, and so did our predecessors. Was it hidden so meticulously that it hasn't been found for...," Suriel paused. She looked down at the dream tablet in her hand. "Since the dawn of the Abidan?"

  "Doesn't make sense, does it?" Makiel muttered darkly.

  "When was a dream tablet first created?" Suriel asked her presence.

  Her presence's answer sent chills down her spine. [Half a millennium after the founding of the Abidan].

  "I've verified the authenticity of the dream tablet," Makiel added with a bitter edge to his tone, his lips curling into a distasteful smirk. "It's older than the first dream tablet ever created in history. It was created before the first generation of Judges retired."

  Suriel's mind races; even her presence could not deduce anything with a probability of more than 0.2%. "How did you find this?" Suriel finally asked.

  Makiel lowered his eyes, his hands flexing as though gripping an invisible, heavy weight. He looked older than his years, Suriel thought. "Like I said, I was in the archives investigating Cradle's activity and seeing the possible futures for the iteration." Makiel's shivering finger pointed at the tablet in Suriel's hands. "That's when I felt the Way scream at me, pulling me towards it. The tablet wasn't even hidden; it was just... there. Lying idly among others."

  "The birth of the first Vroshir," Suriel muttered. "It was the reason our organisation was born." Her green eyes narrowed. "But our founders beat them back," she explained what she saw in the tablet. "They've shattered and scattered the power of their leader. How would this have anything to do with Ozriel's disappearance?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I don't know," Makiel snarled through gritted teeth, each word laced with venom. "I was using the Way to find any clue to where Ozriel would be if he had gone missing."

  Suriel nodded. So, despite Makiel's previous bravado and surety of Ozriel's death, the Hound had hidden his uncertainty behind a mask all this time.

  Makiel continued. "But the Way guided me to that cursed tablet instead."

  Suriel looked down at the tablet, unsure herself. "This tablet was made at least half a millennium before it was possible." She looked up at the first Judge of Abidan. "What do we do now?"

  It was not often that Judges found themselves unable to control their emotions. But Makiel's confusion, hesitancy, and fear were visible for Suriel to see. And the truth was, she had begun feeling the same. Makiel closed his eyes in thought, and Suriel was sure he was speaking with his presence on what to say.

  It took a moment for his eyes to reopen and another moment for him to speak. "That brings me to another concern that I... recently discovered ," Makiel's last two words faltered slightly. "There was an incursion to Cradle over thirty-two millennia ago."

  "Thirty-two?" Suriel blurted, confused. "Our organisation has only existed for thirty. How would you know of an incursion two millennia before?"

  Makiel's voice came out as a low growl. "Because during my investigation, I read through the records kept by the first-generation Judges. It was written there." He slammed his fist on the desk, his frustration finally breaking through. "It is impossible! I remembered having checked the records in the past! And only this time did I see it there! I would never miss such a key detail."

  Suriel felt Makiel's presence sending her an image. She accepted it, and the scripts on her green eyes shifted as she viewed the image. There it was, the records of the first-generation Court of Seven, a book of endless pages. On the first line of the first page:

  2000 years before the establishment of the Court of Seven: Unknown incursion into Iteration 110: Cradle.

  "Check the record for any tampering," Suriel ordered her presence, not realising she had spoken it aloud. The original record was placed inside a high-security facility that only Judges could access, but she had to be sure.

  [Tampering not found], her presence replied.

  "When was this written, and by whom?" Suriel asked, her voice barely audible as she processed the implications of what she had just read.

  [Written by the first-generation Makiel thirty millennia ago.]

  "Impossible," Suriel muttered. She had seen the record previously and never remembered seeing such a line of an incursion to Cradle.

  [You've had], her presence informed.

  "Don't trust your presence," Makiel said. "Mine also says it has always been there, but we both know that isn't true."

  Suriel felt her skin grew pale. Currently, she was fighting a Vroshir incursion in four iterations, and she began to think it was four too much. Vroshir was attacking Abidan territory at all fronts, weakening their connection to the Way. The Mad King is out on the run, attacking iterations whenever a Judge is not nearby. And now Makiel had come to her and dropped another problem they had to deal with.

  "There's more," Makiel growled.

  More? Suriel thought. "What is it?" she asked Makiel, masking her emotions with impassivity.

  "I went through Ozriel's presence," Makiel replied.

  Suriel felt another message from Makiel through her presence. Like previously, she accepted it, but this time, it was a video of Ozriel from two millennia ago.

  Ozriel moved through Chaos, the blue of the Way far behind him. He found an unknown and unmarked Vroshir space station guarded by Nine Silverlords. Suriel watched as Ozriel easily dispatched the Silverlords, but her attention was not on the fight. The restoration aspect of the Way brought her attention to the space station and its blinking red lights.

  Just as soon as the red lights stopped permanently and turned dark, just before the space station imploded into nothingness, lives shot out of the space station into deep space. They were not lives such as living beings; the best way Suriel could describe them was consciousness. The restoration aspect of the Way resonated violently with the consciousness.

  I thought your aspect to the Way would allow you to see something I can't," Makiel said. "Judging from your reaction, I think I'm right."

  "Multiple consciousness," Suriel answered. "They flowed deeper through Chaos before disappearing from Ozrie's senses."

  Makiel nodded, and Suriel thought he looked more assured.

  "You have a theory?" Suriel asked.

  Makiel nodded. "It was initially unlikely, but you just made it more likely."

  Suriel watched Makiel's eyes turn glassy as he viewed the future. His gaze returned shortly after. "Branches of the future have recently multiplied by the trillions. At first, I thought it was due to interference from the Mad King. Only he had the power to make such an impact on Fate. But now-"

  "Get to the point, Makiel," Suriel urged him. "We do not have much time."

  Makiel nodded, agreeing with Suriel's sentiments. "Right now, I trust my memory more than my presence." His eyes met Suriel's, and she saw his confident arrogance returning. "And I recall that the branches of Fate only began to multiply to this degree," he paused, and his voice came in slow as he spoke his following words. "Starting from two millennia ago."

  Suriel's gaze turned cold as she believed Makiel's words. She sensed no lies, and the Way seemed to agree with her. But a part of her was afraid. Because if what Makiel said was true, then the current Court of Seven were out of their depths.

  "Finish it, Makiel," Suriel whispered. "Do not stop now."

  Makiel's stern gaze met Suriel's unflinching coldness. "I believe that the consciousness from that ship was the incursion in Cradle thirty-two millennia ago."

  Suriel shivered as the Way echoed with Makiel's words. She felt an unfamiliar comfort from the Way. Where it had always been a calming sense of order, this time, it was the nervousness and eagerness of war.

  "What do we do now?" Suriel asked.

  "The incursion occurred before the Eledari Pact, so we cannot take a direct intervention in Cradle," Makiel replied, his hands twitching. "Whatever those incursions and unknown Vroshir, they have abilities that we do not. Where the current Court of Seven is unmatched in our ability to manipulate the future, our enemies are manipulating the past."

  Suriel's hand unconsciously moved to the razor on her hip.

  "We will need to learn the truth about our enemies," Makiel continued, locking his fingers together. His powers ran through the Way to the edges of Abidan territory as he continued, " I am issuing an order for all Judges to take up the front lines. No more running away from a fight. "

  Suriel knew who he was talking about. Some of her peers would run away whenever they saw that there was a sliver of a chance they would die in a battle.

  " If anyone runs away, unless, under special conditions, their mantle will be stripped for more worthy ones ," Makiel finished, his voice daring anyone to challenge his authority.

  Gadrael, the Titan's authority, replied first through the Way, agreeing with Makiel's orders. A moment later, Suriel joined in agreement. Then Razel, the Wolf, agreed, quickly followed by Zachariel, the Fox. A few seconds later, reluctantly and begrudgingly, Darandiel the Ghost and Telariel the Spider agreed.

  Makiel released his authority as the Court of Seven unanimously agreed. He met Suriel's eyes. "The Phoenix is the most important Judge for this court; I will not allow you to search for or confront the Mad King."

  Suriel almost rolled her eyes. "What do you need me to do, Makiel?"

  Makiel closed his eyes. "I need you to temporarily let go of searching Ozriel," his eyes reopened. "I need you to search for a first-generation Judge. I need you to learn from them what exactly we are facing."

  Suriel nodded.

  ------------

  House of Blades

  Iteration requested. Amalgam

  Date? Request Rejected

  Report Complete

  "What's wrong?" Mang asked, his voice softer than usual.

  Dayang had never looked this sad before, not in all her countless visits over the years. She was always a burst of energy, her presence as natural and bright as the morning sun filtering through the trees. But now, she sat curled in on herself, her eyes red-rimmed and glistening with unshed tears.

  "My mother passed," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Mang felt a pang in his chest. He had never met her mother, but he knew how often Dayang spoke of her—how she admired her wisdom, her strength, how she carried her words like a shield against the world.

  "I'm sorry," he said, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. His touch was light, unsure.

  She leaned into him.

  They sat together under the shade of a towering tree, its gnarled roots twisting around them like ancient arms. The sun was high, but the thick canopy above softened its light, casting the world in hues of gold and green. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant rain.

  They spoke little. There was nothing that needed to be said.

  Dayang eventually shifted, resting against Mang’s chest, and he let his arms wrap around her. He could feel the weight of her grief in the way she breathed, the way her fingers clutched lightly at the fabric of his tunic. She felt small like this—so different from the stubborn, headstrong girl who had once walked into his clearing without fear.

  For a long while, they just stayed like that.

  Then, her voice broke the silence. "My father," she said hesitantly, as if forcing the words past a lump in her throat. "He's planning to marry me off."

  Mang’s arms stiffened slightly before he forced himself to relax. "...I see," he replied slowly. "And how do you feel about it?"

  "I hate it," Dayang admitted. Her voice shook with quiet anger. "I don't want it. I'm not a bargaining chip. That’s what my Mama always said."

  Mang hesitated, but then, before he could think better of it, the words left his mouth. "You could stay here."

  Dayang lifted her head, looking up at him.

  Mang cleared his throat, suddenly flustered. "I mean—if you're willing, of course." He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck.

  Dayang stared at him for a moment, then let out a small, tired laugh. A real laugh, despite everything. "I am," she said, smiling.

  Mang met her gaze, and for the first time since she had arrived that day, she looked like herself again.