Maling Snow Baskerville had not simply fled the capital.
The official story claimed bankruptcy and debt. The truth was older, darker, and far more deliberate.
The Baskerville name had been bound to demon hunting since before the current kingdom existed. Generation after generation, branches of the family had served the Church, forged weapons capable of wounding the unclean, and accumulated holy artifacts whose power could scar even the oldest of demonic bloodlines. Some Baskervilles became priests. Others became hunters. A few became the quiet craftsmen who turned prayer and rare metal into instruments of purification.
Maling had taken what remained of one bankrupt branch.
He had stripped the vaults in secret—gold, weapons, and the holy artifacts no outsider was ever meant to see—then erased every record of their existence. To complete the theft he set fire to the church storage hall that had once held them. The official account became simple: robbers had attacked, the fire had destroyed everything of value, and the artifacts were lost forever. No one looked toward a minor Baskerville who claimed he was merely relocating to the border to "defend the realm."
He had chosen the Snow Mountains for a reason.
The barbarians who lived beyond the great wall fought demonic creatures every day. That much was common knowledge. What most of the kingdom did not know—and what a family like the Baskervilles understood intimately—was that the mountains hid things older and hungrier than ordinary demons. One ancient branch of the Baskervilles had even intermarried with a mountain tribe generations earlier. The records of that union ended in silence. The people themselves had vanished.
Maling had come to the border carrying stolen holy power because he feared what lived on the other side of the snow.
Rudra understood that now.
He also understood something far more dangerous.
Across the low table, Bikram Koli—simply Koli to those who knew him—tore roasted meat from a bone with the unselfconscious appetite of a young man who had never gone hungry in the high country. The wolf-skin cloak hung over the back of his chair. Gold ornaments caught the light each time he moved. Tattoos climbed the cords of his forearms.
Rudra ate slowly, watching him.
In the game he had once played, Koli of the Sukra Tribe became one of the strongest non-player characters in the entire world. A top-ranked power whose name would eventually be spoken with caution across continents. The recognition had settled into Rudra's bones the moment the young barbarian confirmed his tribe. The geography, the timeline, the political fractures, the coming World Evolution—everything matched.
He was inside the game.
One month remained before the solar system itself would be drawn into the roots of the Great World Tree. Time would stutter. The sky would change. Players would arrive, each assigned a starting settlement, and the age of relative quiet would end. Somewhere in that future a figure the game only ever called the Devil would rise, and in the end that Devil would become something close to a god.
Rudra set his cup down with care.
He needed power. He needed people. He needed the holy artifacts his father had stolen. And he needed the nine mountain tribes bound to him before the world tore itself open.
Koli finished the last of the meat, wiped his fingers on a cloth, and leaned back with a satisfied sigh.
"Young Lord is generous," he said. "I looked at your territory on the way in. Your people look poor. You, though…" His gaze traveled over the polished wood, the heavy curtains, the quiet luxury of the hall. "You live well enough."
"I take no taxes from them," Rudra answered. "They live as they can. I live on what my father left. But not for much longer. We do not have much time. That is why I want a treaty—not only with the Sukra, but with all nine tribes."
Koli's hand stilled.
"Nine."
The word left his mouth flat.
"The smallest two have not come down from the high snows in living memory. They barely speak to the other tribes. No one in the kingdom should know they exist."
Rudra met his eyes and offered the only explanation that would not sound like madness.
"Think of it as a divine blessing. A god spoke of your people and of the nine. That same god wants them gathered. I am only the servant carrying the message."
For a moment Koli simply stared. Then he threw his head back and laughed—loud, sharp, and genuinely amused.
"A god's servant on the border. Very well. I am full. I will return." He stood, rolling his shoulders. "You have one week. Come to our territory and speak with my father. If you do not appear before the next Sunday, we will sacrifice you before the Forest God. You, and as many of your people as we can reach. I give my word on that."
The guards along the walls tensed. Rudra lifted one hand. They stayed where they were.
Koli left without looking back.
When the outer doors closed, Rudra turned to Gaya.
"Do you know where my father kept the holy artifacts?"
Her eyes widened a fraction. Then she bowed.
"Yes, Young Master."
---
Maling's bedroom looked ordinary until Gaya pressed a particular volume on the tall bookshelf. A soft click answered. The shelf swung inward, revealing a narrow passage that smelled of old metal and beeswax.
The hidden chamber beyond was crowded with treasure.
Golden and silver artifacts filled every surface. Gauntlets. Crosses. Maces. Hammers. Shields. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, pendants. Even an ancient-looking firearm whose design belonged to no kingdom Rudra recognized. He stared at the gun for a long moment, then decided some questions could wait.
Three items drew his attention above all others.
The first was a massive golden vessel shaped like the traditional water pots he remembered from another life—a *joler kolshi*, though far larger and heavier than any household object. Its body was set with small glowing stones of red, blue, yellow, and green. The mouth was sealed with something that looked like paper yet felt cooler and denser than any paper should. When Rudra touched the seal, the weight of the vessel nearly pulled his arm down.
The second was a pendant. At its center lay a cross, but surrounding the cross were other symbols: an Om, a rudraksha bead, a swastika, a trident, a chakra, and a single open eye. Five traditions wrought into one piece of metal.
The third was a golden disc, razor-edged, with two holes near the center sized for a man's fingers. A throwing chakra. The moment Rudra lifted it he felt the holy power coiled inside—vast, pure, and steadily leaking toward the other two artifacts.
He looked at Gaya.
"Leave."
She hesitated only a heartbeat, then stepped out and closed the door.
Rudra focused.
The gate to his personal dimension appeared in the air before him, no larger than his palm. He began feeding artifacts into it one by one. The process was painfully slow. After the third piece he frowned, stared at the dark aperture, and willed it larger.
The gate obeyed.
It expanded until it filled half the chamber, a silent black mouth that hung without support. Then it began to move. Artifacts rose from their places as though gravity had reversed. Weapons, jewelry, gold, silver—everything drifted toward the opening and vanished. The golden vessel, the multi-symbol pendant, and the light chakra followed last.
When the room stood empty, Rudra closed the gate and stepped back into the corridor.
Gaya looked at him once. Something in his presence had changed again—subtler than the transformation on the training ground, yet unmistakable. She said nothing.
Rudra's body felt heavy, as though the artifacts themselves still pressed against his bones. He returned to his chambers, collapsed onto the bed, and let exhaustion take him.
---
He woke standing in the endless forest of his personal dimension.
Artifacts lay scattered among the roots and trunks like the spoils of a forgotten war. At the center of the clearing rested the golden vessel.
Rudra approached it, gripped the strange seal, and pulled.
The seal came away with a soft sound like tearing silk.
Inside the vessel waited a thick, luminous liquid. It was red—deep and living—yet shot through with threads of pure gold that moved slowly, as though the light itself were swimming.
The Om on his chest ignited.
Golden radiance flooded the forest. Rudra's vision whitened, then cleared into a sequence of images that were not his own.
A throne room awash in blood.
A crown lying on its side.
A man in royal robes drinking from a golden cup while poison blackened his veins.
A child holding a sword too large for his hands.
A queen motionless on cold stone.
And beyond them all, rising into an impossible sky, a golden tree whose roots pierced worlds.
A voice, neither male nor female, whispered inside his mind.
*The inheritance remembers.*
The vision shifted. A golden river. A kingdom burning. Nine tribal banners beneath a blackened sky. The same man again, lifting the poisoned cup to his lips with deliberate calm.
One word burned itself across the final image.
**POISON.**
Rudra staggered.
The liquid in the vessel was not merely a treasure. It was bound to the same inheritance that had awakened the Multidimensional Lord System inside him. Whatever ancient king had once drunk from a golden cup, whatever curse or covenant had followed that act, it now reached across time and death to touch the man who stood in a forest that existed only inside his own soul.
The Om pulsed once more, steady and inexorable.
The inheritance was no longer content to remain a memory.
It had begun to claim him.