The morning after the gala brought a deceptive sense of normalcy to Maxim University. The sun rose over the campus, casting long shadows across the neoclassical architecture and the manicured lawns. Students hurried to their lectures, their tablets clutched to their chests, discussing the latest news about the "Voided Millennia" and the shocking royal wedding in Great Britannia. The air was filled with the usual hum of academic ambition and youthful gossip.
But for Lizzy Maxim, the world felt like it was made of glass—thin, fragile, and ready to shatter at the slightest touch.
She moved through the corridors like a specter, her duties as Student Council President performed on autopilot. She signed forms, answered inquiries, and nodded at professors, but her mind was a whirlwind of the previous night's revelations. Every time she heard a student mention the "Prince of the Void," her heart constricted.
By mid-morning, the weight became too much to bear. Seeking sanctuary, she redirected her steps toward the far eastern edge of the campus. There lay the Garden of Whispers, a place that had once been the soul of the university.
Five years ago, Kramark Kurogami had spent his few spare hours here. He had personally imported and planted a dozen Sakura trees, claiming that the soil of Maxim needed the "pink snow" of the East to balance the heavy Western theology taught in its halls. He had nurtured them with a devotion that bordered on the spiritual.
But when Kramark left, the trees had died.
It was as if the earth itself had rejected their presence once their master was gone. For five years, the garden had been a graveyard of gnarled, blackened branches and rotting trunks. The university administration had tried to remove them, but Mario Maxim had forbidden it, leaving the dead grove as a silent monument to a fallen son. It was a restricted area now—a place of decay that most students avoided.
As Lizzy approached the iron gate of the grove, she kept her head down, lost in the memory of the last time she had seen the trees in bloom. She expected the usual sight of gray wood and skeletal limbs.
Instead, a scent hit her.
It was faint at first—a delicate, floral sweetness that cut through the humid Philippine air. It was a scent that shouldn't exist in this heat, at this time of year.
Lizzy looked up, and the world stopped.
"No..." she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth.
The dead, rotting trunks were gone. In their place stood twelve magnificent Sakura trees, their bark a healthy, shimmering silver-gray, their branches heavy with a literal explosion of pale pink blossoms. The petals were falling in a slow, rhythmic dance, carpeting the grass in a layer of soft color. It was impossible.
The trees had been dead for half a decade; they had been hollowed by rot and termites. Yet here they were, vibrant and alive, as if the last five years had been nothing but a bad dream.
"I'm hallucinating," Lizzy breathed, her knees shaking. "The stress... the wine last night... I've finally lost my mind."
She stepped into the grove, the petals crunching softly under her shoes. The temperature within the grove felt several degrees cooler, as if the trees were generating their own micro-atmosphere.
As she moved toward the center of the grove, toward the largest tree—the one Kramark had called the 'First Scribe'—she saw a figure.
Lying lazily amidst the roots of the First Scribe was a man. He didn't look like a student, and he certainly didn't look like the "trash" the rumors described. He was dressed in a traditional black kimono of exquisite silk, the fabric absorbing the light around him. His hair, which she remembered as dark as a raven's wing, was now a shocking, luminous silver, falling over his forehead in elegant disarray.
He wore a pair of pitch-black glasses that obscured his eyes, and in his right hand, he held a long-stemmed kiseru—a traditional Japanese smoking pipe. A thin trail of fragrant, bluish smoke rose from the bowl, mingling with the falling petals. Beside him sat a ceramic bottle of premium liquor and a small, shallow cup.
He looked like a deity who had descended into a world of mortals and found it lacking.
Lizzy felt a surge of protective instinct, her Student Council training kicking in to mask her sheer terror and confusion.
"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice cracking despite her best efforts. "This is a restricted area. No one is allowed in the grove without the President's personal authorization."
The man didn't move. He took a slow, deliberate pull from the pipe, the embers glowing a dull orange. He exhaled a cloud of smoke that seemed to swirl around the Sakura branches like a living thing.
"Restrictions," the man said. His voice was deeper than she remembered, smoother, like velvet dragged over gravel. It possessed a resonance that seemed to vibrate in her very bones. "Man builds walls and calls them laws. Nature grows roots and calls them home. Which one do you think has more authority, Lizzy?"
Lizzy froze. The way he said her name—the cadence, the slight tilt of the head—sent a jolt of electricity through her. The familiarity was so intense it was agonizing.
"How do you know my name?" she whispered, taking a step back.
"Who gave you permission to be here? And the trees... what did you do to the trees?"
The man finally moved. He sat up slowly, the black kimono rustling like the wings of a crow. He adjusted his dark glasses, though he didn't take them off. A small, enigmatic smile played on his lips—a smile that held none of the warmth of the boy she once knew, and all the sharpness of a razor.
"It's been a while, Lizzy," he said. He reached out, catching a falling petal between two fingers. "I don't remember you being this rude. You used to be such a sweet young woman. You used to bring me coffee and tell me I worked too hard. Now you come into my garden and demand papers?"
The world tilted. The air in Lizzy's lungs felt like lead.
"Kramark?" she gasped, her voice barely a thread. "Is it... is it really you?"
She stepped closer, her eyes searching the planes of his face. The silver hair threw her off, as did the sheer aura of power and detachment he radiated. This wasn't the tired, pressured student who had been crushed by his family. This was something else. Something ancient and dangerous.
"You're alive," she sobbed, a single tear escaping. "We thought... we didn't know... Alexander said... where have you been for five years? Why is your hair white? And the rumors... are you the one they call the Gambler? Are you Shinnox? Did you really marry—"
"Questions are like weeds, Lizzy," Kramark interrupted, his voice cool and level. He poured a small amount of liquor into his cup, the clear liquid shimmering. "If you pull them too fast, you break the soil. If you let them grow, they choke the garden."
He gestured to the grass beside him. "Sit. Drink the air. The trees have missed you more than I have."
Lizzy sat, her legs giving out more than a conscious choice to obey. She was inches away from him now. She could smell the scent of the liquor, the tobacco, and a faint, metallic tang—like the air before a lightning strike.
"Tell me everything," she begged, her eyes wide. "Please. My father, Valliant, Carmilla... they've been mourning you. We've all been waiting. Where did you go that night? How did you make the trees bloom? Everyone said they were dead."
Kramark took a sip of the liquor, his movements graceful and precise. "The trees weren't dead. They were just waiting for a reason to breathe. As for where I've been... I've been in the world, Lizzy. The real world. Not this museum of dead gods you call a university."
"Was it you?" she pushed, her voice desperate. "In Britain? Are you the Prince of the Void? Are you married to Czenovia?"
Kramark turned his head toward her. Even behind the black lenses, she felt the weight of his gaze. It was a gaze that felt like it was stripping away her thoughts, reading her heartbeat, and calculating her value in a game she didn't know she was playing.
"The world loves its titles," he said vaguely. "Prince. Trash. God. They are just labels people use when they are afraid of the silence between words. I told your father I had debts to collect. A man doesn't collect debts by telling his life story to every passing bird."
"I'm not a passing bird!" Lizzy cried, her frustration boiling over. "I'm the person who stayed! I'm the one who didn't betray you! Don't I deserve more than riddles?"
Kramark stayed silent for a long time. The only sound was the rustle of the Sakura blossoms. He reached out, his hand hovering near her cheek for a brief second before he pulled it back and picked up his pipe instead.
"You deserve a world that doesn't break you, Lizzy," he said, his voice softening just a fraction—the first hint of the old Kramark she had loved. "But that world doesn't exist yet. I'm busy building it."
"With a British Princess?" she asked, the jealousy she had tried to hide surfacing in her tone.
Kramark chuckled—a dry, mirthless sound. "Czenovia understands the price of a throne. She knows that power isn't something you have; it's something you do. But enough of that. Tell me... how is the 'Goddess' doing? I hear she's quite the icon now."
Lizzy shuddered at the mention of Alyssa. "She's powerful. She's married to Senator Carlos. They... they think they've won, Kramark. They talk about you like you're a ghost. Manfred is a billionaire. Your parents are—"
"I know what they are," Kramark said, his voice turning cold, the temperature in the grove seemingly dropping another five degrees. "I've watched every move they've made. Every stolen patent, every corrupt bill, every blood-stained garment. I've been the shadow in their peripheral vision for five years."
"Then why are you here now?" Lizzy asked. "Why show yourself to me? If you're this 'Unknown Godfather' or 'The Masked Gambler', why come back to a restricted garden in the Philippines?"
Kramark stood up in one fluid motion, the black kimono swirling around his ankles. He looked up at the Sakura blossoms, his silver hair catching the light.
"Because the foundation is finished," he said. "The 'Voided Millennia' that Carmilla and Elenita are being celebrated for... that was just the preface. The real story begins today. I didn't come back to visit, Lizzy. I came back to preside over the funeral of the world as they know it."
He looked down at her, his expression unreadable behind the glasses. "Don't tell your father I'm here. Not yet. Let them enjoy their medals for one more day."
"Kramark, wait!" Lizzy stood up as he began to walk away, his footsteps silent on the pink carpet of petals. "Are you going to leave again? Will I ever see you without the glasses?"
Kramark stopped but didn't turn around. "The glasses aren't to hide my eyes from the world, Lizzy. They're to protect the world from what I've seen. As for seeing me again... the storm is here. You won't be able to miss it."
With a sudden, inexplicable shimmer in the air—as if the light itself were bending around him—Kramark stepped behind the trunk of the First Scribe.
Lizzy ran to the tree, rounding the trunk. "Kramark!"
But there was no one there.
The ceramic bottle was gone. The cup was gone. Even the scent of the tobacco had vanished. Only the Sakura trees remained, their blossoms vibrant and defying the laws of biology, and the lingering chill in the air that told her she hadn't been dreaming.
Lizzy sank to her knees among the pink petals, her heart racing. He was back. He was different—transformed into something terrifying and majestic—but he was back.
She looked at the Sakura trees. They were blooming because he was here. They were the first sign of the reckoning.
"He's not 'trash'," she whispered to the empty grove, a fierce, protective pride swelling in her chest. "He's the one who's going to burn it all down."
She stayed in the grove for a long time, the only living person in a miracle of silver hair and pink snow. The morning bells of the university rang in the distance, calling the students to their mundane lives, completely unaware that the man they ridiculed had just returned to claim his kingdom.
The heavy mahogany doors of the President's office slammed open with a force that made the crystal decanters on the side table rattle. Mario Maxim, who had been reviewing a faculty budget with his brother Valliant, bolted upright in his chair.
Lizzy stood in the doorway, her chest heaving, her hair disheveled by the wind, and her shoes covered in the impossible pink dust of Sakura petals. Her face was a frantic mask of shock and awe.
"He's here," she gasped, her voice cracking. "Dad... Uncle Valliant... he's here. In the garden."
The silence that followed was absolute. Mario's pen slipped from his fingers, leaving a dark ink blot on a million-peso grant proposal. Valliant stood up slowly, his eyes narrowing as he took in the sight of the petals clinging to his niece's blazer.
"Lizzy," Mario whispered, his voice trembling. "Take a breath. Who is here?"
"Kramark," she said, finally finding her strength. "He's in the Sakura grove. But it's not him—not the way we remember. His hair... it's silver. Like moonlight. And he was wearing a kimono, smoking, sitting under the trees. And the trees, Dad—they're blooming. All of them. They're alive."
Valliant's face went pale. He didn't wait for further explanation. He reached for his desk phone and punched in a series of extensions. "Get Alexander Dawn. Get Carmilla and Elenita. My office. Now. Tell them it is a Code Zero academic emergency."
Twenty minutes later, the inner circle was assembled. The atmosphere in the room was electric, vibrating with a tension that felt almost physical. Carmilla and Elenita were still in their professional attire, looking bewildered, while Alexander Dawn paced the length of the room like a caged tiger, his eyes locked on the single Sakura petal Lizzy had placed on the table.
"You're certain it was him?" Alexander asked, stopping in front of Lizzy. "Not a lookalike? Not a hallucination brought on by the stress of the gala?"
"I touched the petals, Alexander," Lizzy said, her voice steadier now. "I smelled the tobacco. I spoke to him. He knew my name. He knew everything. He called me 'the girl with the coffee'—but he said it with a voice that sounded like it could command the tides. And then... he just vanished."
"Vanished?" Elenita asked, her brow furrowed. "You mean he ran away?"
"No," Lizzy said, her eyes wide with the memory. "I was looking right at him. He stepped behind the First Scribe, and when I followed a second later... he was gone. There's nowhere to hide in that grove, Elenita. The gate was locked. He didn't run. He just... ceased to be there."
Carmilla reached for the petal on the table, her fingers trembling. As she touched it, she gasped, pulling her hand back as if burned. "This... this isn't possible."
"What is it, Carmilla?" Mario asked.
"This petal," Carmilla whispered, looking at her colleagues. "It's not just blooming out of season. It's radiating a thermal signature. It's... it's charged. Elenita, do you remember the third scroll of the Gilgamesh cycle? The one we couldn't fully explain because the physics didn't make sense?"
Elenita's eyes widened. "The 'Breath of Enkidu'. The text that spoke of 'Mana'—the primordial energy that the gods used to overwrite the laws of the physical world."
"Mana," Valliant repeated, his voice hushed. "The voided energy of the millennia. We thought it was a metaphor for political power or charismatic leadership. We treated the scrolls as mythology."
"Kramark didn't," Alexander said, his voice sharp with a realization that was beginning to border on terror. "Think about it. He translated those texts five years ago. He gave us the historical data, the names, the dates... but he kept the 'syntax' for himself. He didn't just translate the words, he deciphered the instructions."
The room grew cold. The academic giants of Maxim University looked at one another, the weight of the realization sinking in.
"In the text of Gilgamesh," Alexander continued, his pacing becoming more frantic, "there is a passage about 'The Step of the Wind'. In modern terms, we would call it teleportation—the ability to move from one coordinate to another by folding the space between them using Mana as a bridge. We laughed at that part. We called it 'divine fiction'."
"But the trees," Lizzy interjected. "He said they weren't dead, they were just waiting for a reason to breathe. How do you make dead wood bloom in ten minutes?"
"Biological acceleration," Valliant said, his eyes unfocused as he calculated. "If a person could manipulate the internal energy of a living organism—the 'Mana' described in the Voided Millennia—they could force a decade of growth in a heartbeat. They could turn rot back into life. It's not magic, it's a science we simply haven't discovered yet."
"Or a science that was lost for ten thousand years," Mario added. "And Kramark found it."
"If he has mastered teleportation and biological manipulation," Carmilla said, her voice shaking, "then he isn't just a genius. He's a variable that the world's security systems cannot account for. No wall can hold him. No distance can protect his enemies."
"He told me he was building a foundation," Lizzy said, remembering his words. "He said he came back to preside over the funeral of the world as we know it."
"The funeral of the world," Elenita whispered. "He's going to use the Era of the Gods to dismantle the Era of Men."
Alexander stopped pacing and looked at the group. "This explains the three identities. Shinnox Mikado can write for three leaders at once because he can be in three places in a single night. The Masked Gambler can't be caught because he leaves no physical trail. The Unknown Godfather annihilates mafias because he can walk through locked vaults and untouchable fortresses as if they were made of air."
"And the British Princess?" Mario asked. "How does she fit into this... divine science?"
"Czenovia Britannia is a scholar of the occult," Valliant noted. "She has spent her life searching for the 'true' history of the British Isles. If Kramark walked into her palace and showed her—actually showed her—the power of the ancient world, she wouldn't just marry him. She would worship him. She would give him her crown because he represents a level of sovereignty that makes human royalty look like a farce."
"We have a god on our campus," Carmilla said, sitting down heavily. "A silver-haired god in a black kimono who spent five years in the void and came back with the keys to the universe."
"He told me not to tell you," Lizzy said, looking at her father. "He said to let you enjoy your medals for one more day."
Mario looked at the gold medal sitting on his desk. It suddenly looked like a cheap, plastic toy. "He's mocking us. Not out of malice, but because he sees how small our 'achievements' are compared to what he's become."
"He wasn't mocking," Lizzy defended him. "He was... sad. In a way. He told me the world deserves to be better, but that he has to build it himself."
"Alexander," Valliant said, turning to the young professor. "Your investigators. If Kramark is using Mana to teleport and hide his presence, they will never find him. You have to call them off. If they accidentally stumble upon a man who can overwrite biology, they won't just fail—they'll disappear."
"I've already sent the message," Alexander said, his fingers flying across his phone. "But we have a bigger problem. If we know he's here, it's only a matter of time before the Kurogamis find out. The Sakura grove is blooming. You can see the pink from the main road. The students are already taking pictures. By noon, it will be on every social media platform in the country."
"The Goddess will see it," Elenita said. "Alyssa will know. She knows those trees were his. She knows they died when he left."
"Then the 'funeral' he mentioned has already started," Mario said. He stood up, walking to the large window that overlooked the campus. From this height, he could see the distant flash of silver-gray and pink at the edge of the grounds. It was a beautiful, terrifying beacon.
"What do we do, Mario?" Valliant asked. "Do we try to find him again? Do we offer him our help?"
"We do what he told us," Mario replied, his voice gaining a sudden, hard edge. "We protect the university. We stay silent. And we prepare for the fallout. Because when Alyssa and the Senator realize that the 'trash' they buried has come back with the power of Gilgamesh, they are going to strike with everything they have. And we have to make sure Maxim University isn't caught in the crossfire."
"He won't let us be hurt," Lizzy said firmly. "He told me he left the texts to protect the university. He still cares, Dad. Under all that silver hair and the cold talk... he's still the boy who hummed to the scrolls."
"I hope you're right, Lizzy," Alexander said, looking at the glowing Sakura petal. "Because a man who can fold space and bring the dead back to life is a man who can just as easily fold a nation and turn the living into dust."
The group sat in the office as the morning turned to afternoon, discussing the mechanics of the "Mana" mentioned in the texts.
They spoke of the 'Voided Millennia' not as a historical mystery, but as a manual for a new reality. They spoke of teleportation, of energy ley lines, and of the 'Sovereign Syntax' that Kramark had mastered.