Vastarael walked with one hand hovering in the air. His fingers kept flicking through layers of translucent blue light as the holographic map unfolded and refolded itself again and again. They were projections copied directly from his mother's diary and fed into the system. There were routes, markers and ancient annotations. After days of following it, cross-referencing corridors that spiraled into other corridors and bridges that led to bridges stacked upon bridges, he finally stopped, stared at the hovering diagram, and let out a slow, tired breath.
"It's useless."
It was not because the data was wrong—his mother never made mistakes like that—but because millennia had passed since her footsteps had last echoed here. Some districts were intact yes, some were frozen in impossible preservation but others had shifted, folded or simply expanded.
Vastarael was an ant wandering a continent made of corridors.
Even moving faster wouldn't help. He knew that instinctively. Speed was meaningless when distance itself was close to limitless. Biolumine was still recovering. Her body was scorched by the crimson beam and forcing her out would do more harm than good. Flight Circles were an option in theory, but theory didn't account for balance, and balance required two arms. With his bionic right arm gone, flying in an open space was just asking to tumble into the Dafes.
So he walked step after step across a bridge that looked identical to the last ten bridges. He couldn't sense Shimmer or Runner either. Whatever had trapped them had wrapped them in silence so complete it mocked even his Mystic Eyes. And Phaenora and Asenane…
For the first time since waking, that thought carried weight. He was stranded.
Vastarael stopped again, resting his remaining hand against the cold surface of the bridge, and scoffed softly under his breath as another realization followed right on its heels.
It had been a long time since he'd been alone.
The last time was the Obsidian Runic Tower, back when he was seventeen. He remembered that boy clearly now. He was reckless stitched together with desperation. Also his power was earned through suffering rather than mastery. He was weak by his current standards yet here he was, years later as a Monarch, an Aeterium, a bearer of multiple Divinities and missing one arm had reduced him to careful steps and contingency plans.
"Pathetic," he said quietly, though there was no real rage in it.
At least he was ambidextrous. At least he was a mage. Weapons were optional. He could still fight but pretending it didn't matter would be a lie.
A roar tore through the silence.
Vastarael's head snapped up instantly just as a massive white shape descended through the clouds. Its wings were vast enough to eclipse the now emerging sunrise,
The white dragon landed on the bridge as displaced air howled outward. The dragon's head lowered slightly and in a cascade of light and shifting form, the colossal body folded morphed until Asenane stood there instead.
Before he could even speak, another figure slid down from where the dragon's back had been. Phaenora landed lightly and faced the Monarch.
"Asenane—"
Phaenora hugged him first. Her arms wrapped around his torso with surprising strength while Asenane followed immediately after. They held him too hard.
Vastarael stiffened for exactly half a second before exhaling and letting himself lean into it, his remaining arm coming up to hold them back.
"I'm fine. I'm just missing an arm, not my head."
Neither of them laughed. Phaenora pulled back just enough to look up at him, looking at injuries even he hadn't fully acknowledged yet, while Asenane's grip tightened as if daring reality to try again.
"You disappeared," Phaenora said quietly.
"So did you."
Asenane huffed softly. "We thought you'd say something stupid like that."
"I won't lie, walking alone for days in a place like this gets old fast."
Phaenora smiled faintly, still not letting go.
"Good. Because you don't get to do that anymore."
Vastarael's eyes widened as he noticed he faint discoloration beneath Phaenora's clothes. He didn't say anything at first. He simply reached out his palm over her abdomen and let Body Reconstruction flow.
Phaenora inhaled sharply, then exhaled as the pain vanished, replaced by that familiar, grounding warmth that only his reconstruction ever had.
"You didn't have to," she said quietly, though her shoulders relaxed immediately.
"I did. You were injured. Also, how come you didn't heal it?"
"I couldn't. I can't access any of your Divinities or Tethers. Sapphire Materialization still works and my Omniscient functions are intact, but everything tied to him is gone."
Asenane folded her arms with gaze drifting toward the endless bridges stretching into the distance.
"The Hidden Citadel is… wrong. I tried sensing Shimmer earlier. I can't anymore."
"She's still in stasis. Runner too. I can tell you that much. But the coordinates keep shifting. They're being moved randomly."
"Then we've been wrong from the start."
Both of them turned to him.
"The Hidden Citadel was never the home of the First Generation Deities. At least… not in the way we assumed."
Asenane exhaled slowly. "I thought that too. When I flew here, I didn't see a city. There are no districts or dwellings. It's just bridges and pillars stretching. The inverted city in the distance was so far away it felt decorative."
Phaenora frowned. "Why would gods build roads without destinations?"
"Exactly. They look like roads, not a dwelling city."
He lifted his gaze at the bridge beneath their feet.
"Roads imply movement. Transit. Measurement."
Asenane blinked. "Measurement?"
"There are runes,. Phaenora translated earlier about distances and temperature. Scales. This place isn't a city. It's a framework. Asenane, when you were flying, even at your full dragon size, did you ever see the end of a bridge?"
"No. Never."
Vastarael nodded slowly. "I thought so. The Obsidian Runic Spire, huh..."
"What about it?"
"Did you create every floor of the ORS?"
"I created the tower, yes. But… the only floor I consciously made was the highest one which was my room. The rest just… appeared."
Phaenora turned sharply. "You didn't create the other floors?"
"I assumed my Phantasm powers did. A defense mechanism."
"That's not how powers work," Phaenora said immediately. "They don't fill in architectural gaps you didn't conceptualize."
Vastarael nodded. "Exactly. And there's more. The Forgery floor. Everything there was massive. Tools, furnaces, constructs, everything. And when I explored it, I grew physically."
"I'm not a blacksmith. I didn't even understand that floor. I thought my powers shaped it to suit you."
"They wouldn't," Phaenora said again. "They don't work like that."
"What if the Obsidian Runic Tower was never your creation?"
Asenane shook her head immediately.
"Darling, that is impossible. When I escaped from the Krepsuna world with Shimmer, I landed in Erna. I was hunted and killed by the Frozen God. In soul form, I created the tower."
Vastarael didn't argue. He just asked one question.
"How did you create something that complex in soul form?"
She opened her mouth and froze. Her lips parted. Her eyes narrowed, searching for memory and finding nothing.
"I… I don't know."
"I've avoided thinking too deeply about the First Epoch Cycle because it's a Hidden Truth. Too much knowledge corrodes sanity but now? The inconsistencies line up. One, the people of the Erna Isles. Where did they come from? Erna is mostly water. Indigenous life should have been aquatic yet they lived on islands."
"Two. The Krepsunas. We assumed they arrived with Asenane but if that were true, why weren't they with her in the ORS?"
"Three. The Frozen God. If he could leave Erna after killing you, why didn't he? Why stay?"
"And four, Insignia. When I found them, they didn't know who made them. They didn't know their purpose. Ferris told me years ago they were given a mission by a Nexus."
"Who built the Obsidian Runic Tower? And who built the Hidden Citadel?"