Chapter 11: The Heart Relic
Iskander
The grey stone bench was cold beneath Sevren's limp form, a stark contrast to the feverish heat radiating from his skin.
The circular chamber offered sanctuary—white marble pillars soaring to a distant, pearlescent dome, the gentle murmur of a central fountain the only sound in the oppressive stillness.
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at my throat as I fumbled with the crude bandages from Sevren's pack, my fingers slick with his blood and the cool water I splashed on his ashen face. The wound across his torso was a grim, dark mouth, still weeping life onto the pristine marble floor.
"Iskander…" Sylvia's voice was a fragile thread in my mind, frayed with shared helplessness. "You're doing all you can."
"All I can isn't enough!" The words snapped out, harsh and brittle, echoing too loudly in the vast chamber. I saw the spectral flinch, the lavender eyes clouding with hurt.
Guilt, immediate and sour, flooded me. She was my anchor, my guide, and I'd lashed out at the only one who understood this impossible existence.
"I'm sorry, Sylvia," I rasped, the anger collapsing into despair. "He's… he's fading. My aether… it just sits there!" I slammed a fist onto the bench beside Sevren, the violet sparks fizzling uselessly against the stone. "Vivum! Life! It's in the name! Why won't it obey?!"
The obsidian heart relic laid heavy in my other hand, cold and enigmatic. My last, desperate gamble. I'd channeled raw aether into it, pleaded with it, commanded it. Nothing. Just inert stone radiating ancient, indifferent power.
"You are trying to use a key without understanding the lock, Child," Sylvia murmured, her voice regaining its gentle firmness. "Perhaps… perhaps you need to understand the key itself first."
"Understand it? How?" Exasperation warred with a flicker of desperate hope. "By staring harder? By begging?" Sevren's breath hitched, a wet, shallow rattle that sent fresh terror spiking through me.
A grim resolve settled over me, colder than the marble bench. If understanding was the price, I would pay it. Even if it meant momentarily turning my back on Sevren's struggle.
This relic, this black heart made by an Ancient Mage, had to hold the answer.
It pulsed with the edict of Vivum—life, creation, but also destruction and death. Everything Sevren was bleeding out onto the stone.
Closing my eyes, I shut out the chamber, the fountain's murmur, the terrifying sound of Sevren's labored breathing. I focused everything—my fear, my guilt, my burgeoning power, my desperate love for this reckless, sarcastic friend who had thrown himself into the teeth of a nightmare with me—onto the cold, dense weight in my palm.
I poured my consciousness into the obsidian heart, not with force, but with a desperate, yielding plea: Show me.
The Relictombs dissolved.
———————————————————
It was... The Weight of a Crown I Never Wanted
"Master Iskander, the impeachment against King Grey has been ratified. Unanimously."
Alfred's voice, steady and familiar, cut through the sterile silence of my office. Not a hospital room anymore. My office. High atop a Hyperion skyscraper in Arcastead, the capital of a fractured Etharia.
The wall was a single, vast pane of glass, offering a god's-eye view of the city I nominally ruled.
Trains snaked through canyons of steel and glass, ferrying faceless thousands through lives untouched by the shadow of the bedridden boy I had been. House Hyperion—public safety, infrastructure, the quiet, vital hum of civilization.
And I, Iskander Hyperion, its Lord, forged not in battle, but in the crucible of a miracle cure and ruthless political maneuvering. Cassian, my true brother, was safe. The others… their ambitions had crumbled like dust before the sheer, unexpected force of my survival and the public's desperate hope for change.
They lived. I didn't care if they thrived.
Below, the city pulsed, a complex organism. But the view felt hollow. King Grey, the Warmonger, the Tyrant Gladiator, still breathed. His shadow stretched long over Trayden, over Etharia, over Earth. He had plunged us into war the moment he seized the throne years ago, silencing dissent with terrifying efficiency and he didn't seem to be stopping with just Trayden.
He was a monster forged in violence, ruling through the absolute power of his Ki, a power terrifyingly focused despite its modest quantity. He understood strategy, history… but the soul of a nation? The delicate art of building? He was a destroyer cloaked in royal garments.
"And the inhibitors?" My voice sounded strange to my own ears—colder, harder than I remembered. The voice of a Lord, not a patient.
"Grey's Ki mastery is… unnatural. He's the apex predator on this planet, Alfred. Unless a mythical Legacy walks among us again…"
The thought trailed off. Rumours whispered of a Legacy who could have challenged Grey, but Grey himself had reportedly extinguished that spark.
"Mr. Sever delivered the prototypes this morning, Master Iskander. The Parliament was… impressed, albeit wary."
Alfred's bow was precise, respectful, yet the warmth in his eyes when he looked at me was the only anchor to the man who had been my father in everything but blood.
Nico Sever. Brilliant, unhinged, burning with a hatred for Grey that eclipsed even the noble Houses' pragmatic desire for peace and my own disgust for that dictator.
A former friend turned executioner. His motives were a dark mystery, but his genius was undeniable. As long as his devices worked and his vendetta aligned with saving Etharia, his madness was a tool I would wield.
"Wary is irrelevant. Effective is paramount. And the loyalist factions?"
"Neutralization protocols are in place, Master. Containment, not carnage, as you stipulated. Treason trials will follow."
A cold satisfaction settled in my gut, foreign and unsettling. This was necessary. Grey's reign of blood had to end. Arcastead, Etharia, the world needed to breathe free.
"Inform our allies. Execute the contumacy order. By nightfall, Arcastead belongs to its people again."
The words felt heavy, momentous. Yet, beneath the resolve, a sliver of ice pierced my thoughts: I died on that operating table. Didn't I? This power… this life… is it real? I shook my head, dismissing the bizarre notion. Exhaustion. The weight of the crown I'd never sought.
"Dismissed, Alfred."
He bowed again, the door sighing shut behind him. The silence returned, vast and echoing. The city glittered below, a promise I felt utterly unprepared to keep.
Destruction was imminent.
Creation felt impossibly distant.
———————————————————
But what followed... It was The Hollow Echo of Justice
The roar of the crowd was a physical force, a tidal wave of hatred crashing against the reinforced glass of the tribunal chamber. King Grey stood in the dock, stripped of his royal insignia, clad in simple grey prison fatigues.
The Ki inhibitors—Sever's mad brilliance made manifest—glowed faintly at his temples and wrists, leashing the beast. He looked diminished, yet his eyes… those cold, assessing eyes scanned the room with detached curiosity, as if observing an experiment. Not fear. Never fear.
"For crimes against the sovereign nations of Etharia, Trayden, Eserav and New California for the instigation of global conflicts, for crimes against humanity, for breaking the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, for the murder of elected representatives and the subjugation of your people... for the usage of nuclear weapons and other means of war banned by all governments on Earth… you are sentenced to death. Execution to be carried out publicly, at dawn."
The judge's gavel cracked like a gunshot. The crowd's roar intensified, a frenzy of bloodlust. Sever, seated prominently in the gallery, vibrated with manic glee, his shouts lost in the cacophony but his ecstatic face a grotesque mask.
Public execution. The method Grey himself favored. The irony was thick and nauseating. We were tearing down a tyrant only to wield his own brutal tools.
Was this justice?
Or merely the next act in an endless cycle of violence doomed to repeat itself again and again until our extinction?
I followed the grim procession to the scaffold erected in Liberty Plaza. A relic of barbarism in the heart of a city yearning for peace. The early dawn light felt sickly, illuminating the eager faces in the crowd, hungry for spectacle.
Grey ascended the steps, his movements steady, almost dignified.
I expected vindication. Relief. The sweet taste of hard-won peace. Instead, a profound emptiness opened within me, a yawning chasm.
Destruction is easy, the thought echoed, cold and clear. It leaves only rubble.
Creation… that's the impossible task. As the trapdoor sprung, a fleeting image shimmered at the edge of my vision: a woman of ethereal beauty, tears streaming from eyes the color of twilight lavender, her lips forming a silent cry.
It was the only face that didn't rejoice as King Grey died.
Sylvia? The name surfaced from nowhere, accompanied by a pang of inexplicable grief. I blinked, and she was gone. Grey's body jerked, then hung still. The crowd cheered. The emptiness deepened.
Destruction loomed on the horizon.
Creation felt further away than ever.
———————————————————
In the end... Victory is a Synonym of Ash.
"Brother! They offered me the chair of Modern Philosophy at Arcastead University!" Cassian's smile was bright, genuine, a beacon in the gloom of my presidential office.
President of the Trayden-Etharia Union. A figurehead for an oligarchy masquerading as a republic. The hero who slew the tyrant, now a puppet dancing to the strings of the very Houses I'd outmaneuvered to reach Grey. Etharia and Trayden were united, yes.
Freed from Grey's war machine. But the world beyond? With the Paragon Duels gone, the fragile peace outside of Trayden Grey's terrifying strength had enforced shattered.
Conventional wars raged anew across fractured continents of Earth. Nothing had truly changed. Only the scale of the suffering.
"Cassian, I'm so—" The office door burst open, cutting me off. My secretary stood pale, trembling.
"Mr. President… it's Alfred. He… he collapsed. In the gardens. They said… a heart attack. He's gone."
The world didn't freeze. It shattered. The carefully constructed facade of the President, the Lord, the Tyrant-Slayer—it vaporized. Alfred. Who believed in me when my own body betrayed me. Who stood by me through the political labyrinth. My father.
Gone. Just… gone.
I stood numbly at his graveside, the cold earth a mockery of the warmth he'd embodied. The God of Misfortune hadn't been defeated with Grey. He'd merely shifted his gaze. He'd taken the one constant, the one pure thing in my tumultuous life.
And Sever… Nico Sever. The architect of Grey's downfall alongside me. He'd thanked me the day after the execution, tears streaming down his face, calling me an avatar of vengeance.
That joy lasted less than twenty four hours.
Then, he'd put a bullet through his own temple, he was found dead just the morning after. Another life extinguished, another void created.
Lately, strange dreams plagued me. Visions of impossible tombs, violet energy, horns curling from my temples, a spectral woman with lavender eyes… and a friend named Sevren, bleeding out on cold stone. Delusions. Symptoms of a mind buckling under the weight of futile creation.
The presidency was a gilded cage. The Union was a hollow shell. I'd destroyed a monster and inherited his broken kingdom, utterly powerless to build anything better.
The God of Misfortune wasn't winning, he was laughing.
———————————————————
Nothing is real... The Epiphany in the Comic Store
The hum wasn't the drone of fluorescent lights in some sterile office. It was subtler, softer: the rustle of pages, the murmur of voices, the shuffle of cardboard sleeves and plastic covers.
I stood in one of those old comic stores that were still quite famous in the 25th century, a cathedral of bright colors and bold lines, surrounded by shelves stacked high with universes.
Before me, entire worlds unfolded panel by panel.
Heroes, gods, outcasts—all moving with purpose across ink and paper, their stories drawn cell by perfect cell. Each box, each speech bubble, a testament to relentless, collaborative creation.
Here was Superman lifting the weight of worlds, not because he was invincible, but because he refused to let them fall.
Here was Spider-Man, battered and bloodied, still dragging himself from the gutter to protect an Old New York.
In another corner, Batman, stitched by shadows, rebuilt himself night after night, strand by silken strand. His victories were temporary, fragile. Yet he fought. Always.
And beyond the capes and masks, I saw creators—names scrawled on spines and covers—who had lived, struggled, and still poured their will into fragile paper. Termites of imagination, maligned by cynics, but architects of towers of myth that stood taller than stone.
I ran a hand across a row of old issues sealed in plastic. Heroes and villains, triumphs and failures. Stories built not alone, but through relentless collaboration—writer, artist, editor, reader.
A collective fight against the entropy of forgetting.
I pressed my palm against a glass case that displayed a first edition. The reflection of my face stared back, pale and tired. Humanity, for all its genius, fractured more than it built. We created voids as often as we created stories.
I achieved nothing. The thought curdled. I destroyed a king and inherited a broken world. I lost Alfred. Cassian thrives despite me, not because of me.
I Created nothing. Only absences.
The stale air of the shop thickened. The colors on the covers blurred, shifting, overlapping with flashes of white marble pillars, a fountain, Sevren's blood on pale stone, Sylvia's spectral tears… King Grey's execution… Sylvia crying…
This wasn't a memory. This wasn't delusion. The details… too sharp, too intimate. The Relictombs couldn't know the failures of Iskander Hyperion.
Agrona crafted this body, but the memories, the soul—they were mine. This was the Heart Relic screaming a truth I had been too blind, too broken, to see.
"Creation!" The word tore out of me, raw and triumphant, echoing through the aisles of longboxes and posters. Heads turned. I didn't care. "That's it! This is what it's trying to show me!"
It wasn't divine favor. It wasn't chance. It was defiance. Creation wasn't conjured from the void; it was fought for, panel by bloody panel, retcon by retcon, reboot by reboot.
It demanded persistence, collaboration, the constant repairing of broken continuity, the reclaiming of fallen heroes, the rewriting of shattered timelines.
It demanded fighting. Fighting against the inertia of cancellation, against the randomness of decay, against the God of Misfortune who thrived on despair and endings.
King Grey hadn't been lucky. He became entropy incarnate, a weapon of misfortune. He destroyed, and in the end, he left only emptiness.
I, cursed with frailty despite immense Ki, had clawed from my hospital bed with the stubbornness of a protagonist refusing the editor's red pen. I fought Grey. I fought for Etharia. I tried to create. And failed.
But failure itself was part of the story.
Because Creation is not the victory splash-page—it is the struggle across every panel. The bees had their hive, the ants their colony. Heroes had their issues. And still, they all fought against the darkness that sought to unmake them.
I laughed. A sharp, startled laugh, the kind heroes sometimes give after realizing the fight isn't over, but just beginning. A group of kids browsing action figures looked up, confused. I didn't care. The weight of my failures didn't vanish, but transformed. They weren't proof of inadequacy; they were brutal lessons inked across two lifetimes.
This was just a vision, it meant I could do whatever I wanted... ignoring common sense, I punched the glass and retrieved the first edition contained within.
Action Comics #1, June 1938—more than five-hundred years ago.
I grinned and as people around me were shocked seeing their president doing such an act, I took a pen.
"Aetherman: The Origins."
I wrote on the cover and the comic itself changed. Superman became me, he became the Iskander in the Relictombs. The car he was lifting became the Being from the Fog. The man beneath it, Sevren.
I didn't know if Cassian and Alfred found peace, if Etharia survived the fires I couldn't quench. But here, now, in this impossible world of aether and dictator-gods, I had a chance.
A friend bleeding out. A God of Misfortune breathing down my neck. And a will forged in pulp and ink, fire and sorrow.
"I see it," I whispered, my voice fierce with certainty. "Fighting the God of Misfortune is Creation. The act itself. Panel after panel. Story after story."
I looked at the covers one last time, heroes locked in perpetual struggle.
"I will Create something that would make you proud, Alfred. Something that honors Cassian. Starting now."
———————————————————
The cool marble of the bench beneath my knees. The soft splash of the fountain. The ragged, too-shallow rasp of Sevren's breath. Reality snapped back with the sharpness of a knife.
The obsidian heart relic in my hand was no longer cold stone. It pulsed with a warm, golden light, reshaping itself as I watched.
The hard edges softened, the dark surface becoming translucent, swirling with intricate patterns of liquid light—a living golden heart, resonating with the profound insight of vivum: Creation.
"Child! What happened?!" Sylvia's voice trembled, awed and frightened. Her spectral form flickered violently. Had she seen the echoes? Felt the seismic shift within me?
"I am okay, Sylvia," I said, my voice calm, imbued with a newfound certainty that silenced the panicked tremor. "More than okay. I understand it now. This Heart Relic… it's not just an artifact. It's Creation. The philosophy. The act. The defiance."
I held the transformed crystal aloft. It hummed, not with power, but with understanding.
"Your core…" Sylvia breathed.
I felt it. A fundamental shift, not in the aether around me, but in my perception of it. The chaotic, potent violet energy I commanded… I saw it now through the lens of Creation.
Not just raw force, but the potential for growth, for healing, for building. My core, the humming violet sun within my chest, shimmered. The color deepened, then shifted, transforming from violent purple into a radiant, steady and nurturing pale gold.
Warmth, profound and vital, flooded my channels, replacing the frantic energy with a potent, focused calm.
And on my back, between my shoulder blades, heat bloomed. Not pain, but ignition. Power concentrated, shaped, inscribed by my newfound comprehension. A rune, far more complex and potent than Sevren's, burned into existence—not etched by Agrona's hand, but manifested by the sheer force of my will and understanding.
A rune fueled by golden aether, a rune of vivum—the Goldrune of Creation.
I stood. Power thrummed through me, not the desperate surge of combat, but the deep, resonant pulse of life asserting itself. I approached Sevren, the golden light from my core and the relic casting warm, hopeful light on his pallid face.
The gash across his torso seemed less like a mortal wound and more like… a tear in fabric. Something that could be mended. Something I could fight to mend.
The philosophy was crystalline: Creation and fighting the God of Misfortune were one and the same. Passive hope was surrender. True Creation demanded active, relentless defiance against entropy, against decay, against despair.
It was Captain America, bracing his shield against the impossible weight of a crumbling world, holding the line.
It was Wonder Woman, carrying the fallen from the battlefield with solemn grace, honoring them not as casualties but as sacred burdens.
It was Booster Gold, mocked and dismissed, yet still showing up, still patching the broken timeline one absurd, thankless act at a time.
It was me, here, now, wielding the golden light of understanding not just to destroy a monster, but to save my friend.
The Heart Relic shattered in my hand as the insight flooded my head.
This was the first, true act of Creation in my new life. The fight was the making.
I placed my hands, glowing with warm, golden aether, over Sevren's wound. This time, I didn't command. I understood. I channeled not energy, but the essence of the edict of vivum—the relentless, defiant act of life asserting itself against the void.
The golden light flowed into him seeking, knitting, renewing.