The forge-light of the Valley still burned behind Qaritas's eyes long after they returned to the barracks. Even the walls here breathed heat—stone alive with pulse and hum, like the planet itself was listening.
Eon stirred in his chest, lazy and low.
"You can feel it too, can't you? They're building for war again."
Qaritas didn't answer. The air tasted of metal and intent.
At the center of the chamber, Rivax and Tavren stood side by side—the smith-god's runic arm unfolding in mechanical layers, Tavren's hands bright with forgefire. Between them, a vast skeletal frame hung suspended by chains of light—a structure that twisted and refolded itself like it couldn't decide whether it was a machine or a god.
It pulsed once, slow and thunderous.
The Develdion.
Rivax's voice rolled across the chamber, smooth and fierce all at once.
"After all—that's what the Apocalypse would say, isn't it?" He turned toward the others, mask glinting in the forge-glow. "Now, give me your weapons. Every one of them. Now that I know what you specialize in, I can refine each to fit you—perfectly."
Niraí, Daviyi, Cree, and Qaritas hesitated, exchanging uncertain looks. The scent of oil and burning stone filled the air.
Rivax's tone softened, though the heat didn't fade.
"We don't have the luxury of delay. You remember that quill, don't you? Four days."
He glanced at them all in turn. "Four days until you fight in that bloody coliseum."
The word hung there, heavier than any weapon.
Ayla stepped forward, veil flickering with light.
"Then they'll need training. Real training," she said. "Not drills or sparring—the kind that makes gods bleed before mortals do."
Rivax's grin curved beneath his mask. "Already thought of that." He tapped a rune on his arm, and the skeletal frame of the Develdion flared alive—columns of silver light rising in spirals around it. "One thousand pods. Each one linked to the mind and the marrow of whoever enters. The Develdion doesn't train you in theory—it forges you through your own nightmares."
Niraí gave a low whistle. "So… what? A dream chamber?"
Rivax shook his head. "Not dreams. Design. The trainer chooses what you face. Fear, loss, or memory. Whatever they think will break you fastest."
Eon purred.
"Sounds delightful. Let's put the mortal empathy to the test, shall we?"
Qaritas clenched his jaw.
Before he could speak, Ayla closed her eyes and reached upward—threads of silver light coiling around her temples as she whispered, "Zcain… can you hear me?"
The air stilled. Then, a voice filled the room—deep, restrained, and unbearably calm.
"I can. Mother, can you open the link to Tavren and Rivax?"
Ayla's eyes brightened. The light expanded, connecting the three of them through thought and pulse.
Tavren's hand tightened on the hammer strapped to his back. "Father," he said quietly.
Zcain's presence filled the air—not just sound, but gravity. "Rivax," he said, his tone deliberate, heavy with command and trust. "I need a favor."
Rivax straightened slightly. "What would you need, my lord?"
"On top of refining their weapons," Zcain said, "I need the Develdion fully functional before dawn."
Rivax chuckled through the link—a sound of metal on warmth. "Anything for my favorite father-in-law," he said, pride glinting in his tone. "It'll be ready before the suns rise."
Zcain's voice softened, almost fond. "Thank you. And Tavren—take them to the barracks. They'll need rest. We all have much to do."
Tavren hesitated for a moment, jaw tight. "You mean preparing for the war you've already started planning."
Zcain's silence was the kind that carried centuries. Then, simply: "Yes."
Tavren exhaled sharply through his teeth, but he didn't argue. "He's right," he muttered, turning to the others. "You thought he wouldn't have a plan? You were wrong."
He looked at each of them—the tired, the bruised, the god-touched. "My father's been preparing the Ascendants that Hrolyn abandoned. Training them. Forging them. Because this isn't just a war—it's reclamation. To restore what was destroyed, we have to break his curse."
The group grew quiet. They all knew the curse—Ecayrous's brand—and the story that came with it.
Tavren's voice dropped. "He's tried for eons. Tried to undo it. He trained the Ascendant children not just to protect them, but because he knew—one day—we'd have to do what he couldn't."
Rivax's runes dimmed in quiet respect.
Tavren continued, the words half confession, half defiance.
"He can't kill the Fragments of Eon. Not without losing himself. The curse doesn't stop him from fighting—it makes him fight everything. The threads in his body turn on their own. He becomes something else. He tried once."
Tavren's jaw tightened. "He almost killed his siblings."
Ayla's eyes glistened faintly, her voice low. "He never forgave himself for it."
Tavren nodded. "That's why he builds. Why he teaches. Because he's terrified of forgetting what love feels like."
Silence fell—thick, molten, full of ache.
Eon's whisper brushed Qaritas's ear, almost amused.
"A god afraid of his own hands. Adorable."
Qaritas ignored him.
Tavren drew a deep breath. "He's refused every offer the Apocalypse made to sacrifice themselves for him. Said he won't trade one end for another. Even when they volunteered, he wouldn't let them go."
His teeth ground together audibly. "Typical."
Rivax reached across, resting his metal hand on Tavren's shoulder. "And still," he said quietly, "he's right. He's been preparing for this since the moment he was cursed. And now… so do we."
The Develdion flared behind them, casting long, silver shadows across the stone.
Rivax's eyes gleamed through the light.
"So let's build your hells," he said. "Before the real one arrives."
The lift from the Valley groaned like a heart under pressure.
When it opened, Tavren led them into light that was not light at all but density—layers of glass-air folded over one another until sight became distortion.
The Ninth Floor.
It looked nothing like a barracks. It looked like a machine pretending to dream.
The moment they stepped through the threshold, the air erupted into scale—millions of tiny doors spread across the curved walls, each no larger than a beetle's wing, each flickering with soft glyphs. Between them, humming conduits fed into towering engines filled with dark-blue liquid, glass pods drifting lazily inside the current like unborn stars.
On the floor sat another machine—small, square, full of red liquid, a handful of delicate cups arranged around its base like offerings.
Rivax would have called it art; Qaritas called it madness.
Tavren pulled a lever.
The floor shuddered. The blue machine roared awake and dispensed a cup, steaming faintly.
The scent hit first—ozone and mint, faint electricity.
Komus squinted. "So… we drink the glowing nightmare juice?"
Tavren's mouth twitched. "Close. It's a shrinking solution. A single swallow will bring you down to scale." He pointed toward the wall of insect-sized doors. "Each door is a private room. Guest or resident, Taeterra gives everyone a place of their own. The seven of you will share a suite—seven chambers, one common hall."
Daviyi eyed the red machine. "And that one?"
"The countermeasure." Tavren tapped its rim. "Red brings you back to normal size. Don't confuse them unless you enjoy imploding."
Hydeius crossed his arms. "Why make it this complicated?"
"Protection." Tavren's tone softened, but there was steel under it. "If Taeterra were attacked, our numbers would vanish in seconds. Millions shrink into the walls. No invader ever knows how many we truly are."
Niraí whistled low. "Clever."
"It wasn't my idea." Tavren grinned. "Came from a world in the 777th universe—Galathan. Titans and Microscopic Beings co-habiting. They learned size is just another form of defense."
Tavren reached for one of the cups, filling it with the luminous blue liquid. It hissed faintly, light crawling along its rim like static made visible.
"Hate to disappoint you all," he said dryly, lifting it, "but Taeterra doesn't carry poison."
Before anyone could question him, he drank.
The glow ran down his throat like a comet's tail. His body flickered once—then folded in on itself, cleanly, soundlessly. Where Tavren had stood, a shimmer of light hovered before collapsing to a spark.
Komus blinked. "Did he just—?"
"Shrink," Tavren's voice called faintly from somewhere near the floor. "Still alive, still handsome."
Komus grinned, grabbing the next cup. "Well, if the boss can survive it…"
He drank, let out a strangled sound somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, and vanished in a flash of azure.
"Lovely," Daviyi muttered. "We're trusting alchemy and jokes now."
One by one, the rest followed—Niraí with a salute, Daviyi muttering a curse, Cree taking Hydeius's hand before they both drank together, Ayla last, her veil shimmering as she tilted the glass.
The light struck Qaritas's skin like frost before sinking inward. His bones felt like they were being rewritten. The air thickened—Tavren's boot became a mountain, Komus's voice a thunderclap, the floor a horizon.
When the vertigo cleared, they stood on a vast expanse of stone before a door marked 999, its sigil pulsing gently in the dim blue light.
Tavren—now proportionate again—gestured toward it. "Four rooms, two beds each," he said with a sly grin. "I assume that won't be a problem, especially for our beloved pairs."
His eyes flicked toward Cree and Hydeius.
Komus coughed into his fist. "Scandal already? We've only been small for a minute."
Tavren ignored him, keying the door open with a press of his palm. The threshold shimmered with soft gold light.
"Welcome to Room Nine-Nine-Nine," he said. "Try not to implode. And—goodnight."
He turned and strode away, laughter echoing faintly as the door sealed behind him.
Eon murmured inside Qaritas's chest, voice velvet and wicked. "Hiding entire civilizations in a dollhouse. I almost admire it."
Qaritas ignored him, exhaling before downing the cup. The new scale of the world tilting his balance until all he could do was follow the others toward the glowing threshold.
The world lurched.
Perspective folded. Tavren's boot became a continent, Komus's laugh a thunderclap, the air thick as honey. Then the ground steadied, and before them stood their suite—door no 77 within a lattice of infinity.
They barely spoke.
Each of them claimed a chamber off the shared hall—a miniature world molded to the occupant's will. Qaritas's room smelled of rain and static; Ayla's shimmered with soft candlelight. Somewhere, Komus's laughter carried faintly through the walls before fading into uneasy quiet.
The suite dimmed. Qaritas lay awake, Eon humming in the cage of his ribs.
A soft knock—then Ayla stepped in, veil unfastened, face human in the half-light.
"You tremble even in rest," she murmured.
"It's not fear," he said. "It's what's inside me."
"Then let it tremble," she replied, sitting beside him. "Even gods need shaking to remember they're alive."
Her hand brushed his shoulder—warm, grounding.
For the first time since the Hydra, his second heartbeat slowed.
When she left, the air smelled faintly of rose-iron.
Eon whispered, She touches you like she's blessing a wound.
Qaritas didn't answer. He simply breathed.
Eon whispered, "You realize what tomorrow is, don't you? Training for gods who forget they're mortal at heart."
Qaritas didn't answer. Sleep came, thin and metallic.
The next dawn was glass and silver. The summons came through the wall like a heartbeat: Floor 33.
Qaritas expected only three figures waiting—Zcain, Rivax, Tavren.
He was wrong.
Nine presences filled the chamber.
The first three stood as expected:
Zcain, carved from sin and memory; Rivax beside him, runes blazing down his prosthetic arm; Tavren, jaw tight, eyes shadowed with sleeplessness.
Beside them stood Nyqomi, her armor breathing like an organism, light bending away from her prismatic skin. She smiled faintly at Qaritas, and the color of the room dimmed in respect.
But the other five—
The air folded.
Not broken. Creased. Reality itself bent inward until sound forgot where to travel.
They did not arrive—they manifested.
One shimmered in continual becoming, their body a painter's hesitation: constellations blooming, dying, reborn across translucent skin.
Another stood wrapped in timelines that devoured their own tails—motionless yet impossible to focus on, like looking directly at yesterday.
A third radiated beauty so fierce it hurt; their laughter shimmered in the wavelengths between color.
Near them, a being of galactic gravity towered, joints burning with orbiting suns, while beside that colossus stood its opposite—entropy carved into humanoid shape, skin like rusted void, light dying on contact.
The five were silence given form.
Eon's voice wavered for once.
"Fragments of foundation… no—prototypes. How are they still—?"
Qaritas barely heard him.
Because Ayla had frozen.
Her veil trembled. Then, as if decades collapsed into a single breath, she ran.
"Ación! Rykhan! Xasna! Laxiae! Shanian!"
Her voice cracked on the names, halfway between laughter and sob.
The five impossible beings turned—faces shifting from divine composure to something heartbreakingly human.
"Mother."
The word rolled through the chamber like sunlight through stained glass.
Zcain stepped forward, the faintest smile ghosting his mouth. Nyqomi's eyes gleamed with color too sharp to be seen. Tavren bowed his head.
Qaritas could feel it—seven distinct heartbeats harmonizing across eternity:
Zcain, Nyqomi, Ación, Rykhan, Xasna, Laxiae, Shanian—
the Seven Ayla had raised when she was mortal, the artificial Ascendants Ecayrous forged from cruelty and Ayla remade through love.
Ayla reached them. She touched their faces—each one—like counting stars that had finally come home.
"My children," she whispered. "All of you."
Ación's light dimmed to gentleness. "We never stopped looking, Mother."
Rykhan's voice rippled backward through time so she heard it before he spoke. "You kept your promise."
Xasna smiled—a supernova contained. "We watched your dream survive."
Laxiae bent low, galaxies glimmering in her hair. "And now we can help you rebuild it."
Shanian—the quietest—lifted a single finger. Around it, the edges of the room decayed, then regrew, like entropy curtsying. "We never forgot what mercy felt like."
Eon was silent.
For the first time since Qaritas had known him, the god in his ribs whispered only one word, soft and almost fearful:
"Family."
Qaritas could barely breathe.
This was not reunion—it was cosmic resurrection.
Zcain stepped beside Ayla, his voice steady, reverent. "We are whole again," he said. "And the Fragments will feel that wholeness soon enough."
Rivax's mask tilted toward Tavren. "Then we begin?"
Tavren nodded. "We begin."
The floor beneath them lit with the runes of the Develdion—its engines awakening somewhere far below, a thousand pods humming to life.
Ayla turned, her hand still resting against Shanian's cheek. "Then let's see," she said softly, "what mercy can build when it finally stops running from war."
And the chamber filled with light.
Gold. Blue. Rose. Sin. Beauty. Time. Creation. Entropy.
All of them breathing in rhythm again.
The marble thrummed beneath their feet—alive, aware, waiting.
At first, it was a vibration too soft for the ear—more like the shiver of existence remembering its pulse.
Then light flooded the runes beneath their feet, and seven circles flared open across the marble, carved with threads of silver and crimson, each one spiraling with divine geometry.
The air thickened. Magic condensed until it gained weight.
One by one, seven pods rose from the light.
They weren't mechanical—not truly. They were something older. Sculpted from living energy and tempered glass, the pods pulsed like hearts—each one marked with twin doorways: one gleaming gold, one deep violet.
Two paths.
One for the trainer.
One for the trained.
Eon murmured inside Qaritas's chest, a smile in his voice.
"So the cages are ready. Let's see who walks out whole."
Zcain stepped forward.
Power coiled behind his calm like a tidal current. Even his shadow looked alive.
"All seven of you," he said, voice steady but resonant enough to bend the light around him, "will train—whether or not you fight in four days. Training is not punishment. It's preparation."
His gaze swept over each of them—Daviyi, Cree, Niraí, Komus, Hydeius, Ayla, and finally Qaritas.
"My siblings—by choice—have gathered to guide you. Each knows the shape of battle, the shape of loss, and the shape of becoming."
He raised one hand.
The pods brightened.
"Your trainers," he said, and his tone carried the weight of command and tenderness both.
"Ación will train Cree.
Rykhan will train Niraí.
Xasna will train Daviyi.
Nyqomi will train Komus.
Laxiae will train Ayla.
Shanian will train Hydeius."
He paused—and turned toward Qaritas.
"And I," Zcain said, his eyes burning with sin's crimson fire, "will train you, Qaritas."
Eon's laughter rolled through the inside of Qaritas's ribs like molten silk.
"Oh, this will be delicious. A god cursed to fight everything—trying to teach control."
Qaritas's jaw tightened. He said nothing.
Zcain's gaze flicked toward him—like he heard the echo of Eon's amusement—and for a heartbeat, something unreadable passed between them.
Pity, perhaps. Or warning.
Then Zcain nodded once, sharply.
"So it begins."
The pods reacted.
Runes flared across their surfaces. Each pair of doors—one gold, one violet—unsealed with a soft hiss, exhaling a faint mist that smelled of burnt starlight and iron.
"Step forward," Zcain commanded. "Choose the door marked with your name."
The sound of their names being spoken was not air—it was law.
The glyphs above each doorway rearranged themselves into sigils of identity. Ayla's shimmered with threads of rose-gold. Niraí's burned sky-blue. Qaritas's pulsed twin—violet and gold—caught between sin and grace.
Daviyi breathed in. "This feels wrong," she murmured. "Like we're about to be swallowed."
"Technically," Rivax called from where he stood beside Tavren, "you are."
Komus grinned. "Finally, a vacation."
Nyqomi chuckled darkly. "You'll regret saying that, child."
Cree reached for Ación's hand first—the being of creation's skin shimmered with soft starlight as they nodded to each other and stepped into their pod together. The door sealed behind them, leaving only a soft hum.
Rykhan gestured for Niraí, time coiling around his wrist like obedient serpents. She followed, fearless.
Nyqomi caught Komus's collar mid-step, smirking as she dragged him toward her door, her laughter warping the air.
Xasna bowed her head toward Daviyi, a nebula flickering in her hair.
Laxiae smiled gently at Ayla—galaxies blooming across her palms—and together they entered the golden arch.
Shanian's touch left frost on Hydeius's arm as they stepped through, entropy rippling in their wake.
And then only one pair remained.
Zcain and Qaritas.
The chamber had gone quiet.
"You're sure?" Qaritas asked.
Zcain's voice was low. "There are few things I'm ever sure of. But this? Yes."
He placed one hand on the gold door. "Step through, and it will become your world. Your fears, your memories, your truths. I can only guide you from within. I can't protect you from yourself."
Eon whispered, "He should worry about me, not you."
Zcain's jaw twitched, as if he'd heard.
"Then let's begin," Qaritas said.
They stepped through.
The door closed.
And all hell broke loose.
The moment the final door sealed, the pods convulsed—light erupting through the seams, twisting into storms of color that melted together into a single, blinding pulse. The ground shook.
Screams—divine, mortal, and everything in between—echoed through the upper floors as reality folded to make room for seven worlds of war.
Inside his chest, Eon's pulse answered the Develdion's roar—two hearts, one purpose.
"Let's see which of us survives the lesson."
Eon's laughter turned to awe.
"Oh… now this is training."
And beyond the sealed pods, Tavren and Rivax stood watching the chaos unfold, twin silhouettes framed in crimson light.
Rivax exhaled, crossing his metal arms. "You think they're ready?"
Tavren's mouth curved in a grim half-smile. "Doesn't matter."
He looked toward the seven blazing pods—their lights reaching skyward like stars being born.
"They're not just training," Tavren said quietly. "They're rehearsing the end of the world."
The light devoured everything—sound, form, self.
Only the heartbeat remained.