Asenane went quiet for a long moment in thought. This was the first time she ever questioned her own memory after her own death.
"Fine. Let's put it in order. I escaped Dimensium, the Krepsunas' home world. I was already on the brink of death. I used a forced teleport and landed on one of Spheraphase's three moons. I didn't choose it. It was the only location that would accept me without tearing my soul apart. Then my ex-husband found me and killed me."
"I didn't reincarnate or resurrect. I didn't flee either. I anchored myself and used my soul to create the Obsidian Runic Spire not as a fortress but as a container. It was more like a coffin that could think."
Phaenora nodded slowly. "A soul vault."
"Yes. And it worked. But when I stabilized, the Spire had floors. They were layers of reality. I assumed because I had no reason not to that my Phantasm powers had manifested them subconsciously. I wasn't awake. I was dormant since I made it. The Spire had a guardian which was the one-eyed octopus construct that froze anything that approached. That I remember creating. That was intentional."
"You would have woken up if someone entered."
"Yes. When Darling entered the Spire, that's when my awareness returned. Before that, my adopted children—the Amorphous Souls—took Shimmer and placed her into deep sleep. They knew they couldn't win. They challenged the Frozen God anyway and they died. Their souls… somehow entered the Spire. I didn't call them. I didn't guide them. They arrived on their own. I didn't even know until much later."
She glanced at Vastarael again. "When Darling got inside, I was glad. I needed a body. I used his heart and eyes and my Phantasm Creation to build myself a new vessel."
Phaenora winced reflexively, though this was old history.
"And instead of hating you," Phaenora said quietly, "he forgave you."
"Because it awakened his Mystic Eyes. The Amorphous Souls who were already dead, used the last remnants of their existence to give him pseudo-cores. They were gone after that. Then he left to the Fallen Bridge with Shimmer and Runner and Insignia, who had also been trapped in the Spire. That's the chain of events."
Phaenora rubbed her temples. "And yet it makes less sense the more you say it."
Asenane didn't argue.
"You had the power of Creation," Phaenora continued. "You made the Spire as a soul container. But detailed, specialized floors? Forgery. Measurement distortion. Environmental scaling. Autonomous logic? That's not something you accidentally generate, even with Creation."
Vastarael nodded. "Creation still follows intent."
Phaenora looked back at Asenane. "Were you awake while the floors were made?"
"No. I wasn't even aware of time passing. If someone had entered the Spire while I was dormant, I would've woken up, just like I did with Darling. Which means either no one entered or whoever did wasn't registered as an intrusion."
"The First Epoch Cycle has holes. Too many in fact."
Both of them turned to him.
"When Phaenora and I met EPOCH in the tunnel in the Fallen Bridge, she said her purpose was to ensure the continuation of the world's time. Sentina Erideae were supposed to come in Erna Isles. That alone is suspicious. Erna isn't the world. It's a moon. Also we were sent three hundred years after the Destras Cataclysm, which was after the First Generation Deities were already dead."
Phaenora agreed. "We were removed from the world so they wouldn't affect history."
"Exactly. So tell me, why place them somewhere at all? If their existence was meant to be neutral, why anchor them to a location with so many anomalies?"
Phaenora frowned. "But how does that tie into the Hidden Citadel?"
Vastarael stopped pacing.
"Because when Asenane gave me ownership of the Obsidian Runic Spire, I became the Towermaster. When that happened, I felt two surges of energy. One was hers. The other wasn't. And I feel that same energy here in the Hidden Citadel, woven into the bridges and the pillars."
"You're saying—"
"Whoever built the floors of the Obsidian Runic Spire also built this place. But why?"
A delicate, crystalline chime rang out behind them. All three of them turned at the same time before the bridge shook. Stone—if it even was stone—shuddered beneath their feet. A sound like thunder being folded into itself tore across the bridge. In a split second, something moved.
A shape elongated across the bridge faster than perception could properly track. For a fraction of a second Vastarael's mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing, because nothing that massive should have been capable of motion that fast without annihilating everything around it. The thing then came to a flawless stop.
In front of them was a train.
A black bullet train, colossal beyond sanity, was covering the entire width of the bridge and extending so far upward that its upper structure vanished into the Citadel's vertical infinity. The door alone was the literal height of a skyscraper. It slid open with a sound so deep it felt like it passed through bone rather than air.
"Welcome," said a calm modulated feminine voice.
"Route 8373-A registered. Three passengers detected."
Asenane blinked hard.
"That's… that's a Praesit, right? It's a Spheraphasian magnetic transit system. They create or follow tracks through—"
"That," Phaenora cut in flatly, staring up at the impossible machine, "is a bullet train, Asenane."
Vastarael didn't respond. His mind was already tearing itself apart trying to believe what he was seeing. Before any of them could say another word, the voice spoke again, this time with a faint tone… curiosity?
"Passengers classified as substandard scale. Initiating enlargement."
"What—"
Vastarael felt his center of mass shift, The Citadel shrank... no, they grew.
Bridges that had once felt endless snapped into proportion. Pillars that vanished into infinity resolved into comprehensible structures. Within seconds, the bullet train in front of them was suddenly normal-sized. It was imposing yes, but no longer incomprehensible.
Vastarael exhaled sharply.
"It's the same as the Forgery floor. The enlargement was us becoming bigger."
Phaenora stared down at her hands, flexing her fingers.
"So the Citadel was never built for our size to begin with. These… aren't roads."
Her eyes widened.
"They're train tracks. What the fuck?"
Vastarael looked at the open door and the softly glowing interior beyond it.
"And if this thing is running some track called Route 8373-A, then staying outside is the stupid option."
Asenane snorted. "When you put it like that..."
The three of them stepped forward.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the doors slid shut behind them with, sealing them inside as the train hummed to life. A deep vibration coursed through the floor.
"Departure confirmed," the voice announced.
"Next destination, not decided."
The train moved forward with such sudden velocity that shockwaves came out of it. The inverted Citadel blurred past the windows in a blue. Phaenora grabbed a railing, laughing breathlessly.
"You know, I think we just boarded something that used to transport gods."