Five days before the Trials of the Gods.
The room no longer felt small.
Not because it had grown but because something inside it had decided restraint was optional.
The woman with crimson hair stood within the spatial cube, her red dress brushing against invisible boundaries that refused to bend no matter how close she stepped. Her pupils burned like embers pushed too far, and the air around her shimmered faintly with heat, though no flame had yet been released.
Behind her, the three men silent, trained, deadly remained frozen in separate cubes, hands hovering near their blades, instincts screaming uselessly against isolation.
Henry stood opposite her, relaxed.
Too relaxed.
He smiled the way people did when they knew something others didn't, hands tucked casually into his coat as if he weren't standing in the same room as a woman who could melt cities.
"As I said," Henry continued calmly, "I need your help retrieving something. I've done the research. Cross-checked the fractures. Followed the residue left behind by divine interference."
He lifted a finger.
"The second relic is in the Trial of the Shard of Tideheart."
The woman stared at him.
Then she laughed.
It wasn't light. It wasn't warm. It echoed sharply against the cube's invisible walls, edged with disbelief and something darker—something amused at the sheer audacity of the suggestion.
"You want my help," she said between laughs, "to challenge a Trial of the Gods?"
She wiped a nonexistent tear from the corner of her eye, then sighed, the sound long and weary.
"Henry," she said, voice dropping, "do you even understand what you're asking?"
She leaned forward slightly, her expression sharpening.
"Just entering that trial alone would start a war."
Then she smiled again.
And released her aura.
The room reacted instantly.
Heat slammed outward in a crushing wave, the air rippling violently as if reality itself had inhaled too sharply. Even inside the cube, the pressure surged enough to rattle its edges, space groaning faintly under the strain.
Henry blinked.
Once.
Then his smile widened.
"Oh," he said, genuine surprise finally slipping into his voice. "You're a Shaper too."
The answer came as an explosion.
The room ceased to exist.
Stone, wood, air—everything detonated outward as the building collapsed in a violent roar, debris screaming as it was hurled into the sky. The spatial cubes shattered like glass struck by a hammer, releasing their occupants in a storm of dust and broken ground.
The three assassins moved first.
They vanished in streaks of motion, blades flashing as they fled the blast radius, instincts overriding curiosity. Survival first. Questions later.
Henry and the woman emerged from the wreckage moments later, standing amid scorched earth and shattered stone.
Above them—
The sky was wrong.
A massive celestial body hung overhead—moon, sun, planet, none fit quite right. It eclipsed the true sun entirely, bathing the land in a dim, unnatural shadow. Its surface was scarred and uneven, like something half-formed, half-forgotten.
Henry stared upward, momentarily speechless.
That didn't last.
The woman dusted herself off, brushing soot and debris from her dress with casual annoyance.
"There's something I don't understand," she said, eyes narrowing as she turned back to him. "When I was inside your cube, I was isolated. Completely cut off."
She took a step closer.
"So how," she asked softly, "could I still hear your voice?"
Henry chuckled.
"Oh, that's simple."
He tapped his temple.
"I control the space," he said. "Which means I decide what enters and what leaves. Sound. Oxygen. Light. Information."
He lifted his hand and flicked his wrist.
Several small cubes shot toward her like bullets.
This time, she reacted.
Her hands flared molten orange as magma surged outward, heat exploding into the air. Steam roared as moisture evaporated instantly, the ground beneath her feet glowing red-hot as the earth itself began to melt.
Twenty meters.
That was the radius.
The soil swelled, cracked, then erupted upward in a violent blast, magma and steam colliding as the incoming cubes were flung aside, shattered by raw elemental force.
Trees nearby didn't burn.
They vanished.
Reduced to ash and vapor in the same breath.
She raised her glowing hand, eyes locked on Henry.
And fired.
A magma blast screamed through the air, dense and incandescent, warping everything around it. Henry moved without panic, space folding instantly as he trapped the attack mid-flight, sealing it inside a translucent cube.
He smiled.
Then sent it back.
The cube collapsed outward, magma detonating toward the woman in a blazing eruption. The explosion swallowed her entirely—fire, steam, molten rock tearing through the space she occupied.
When the smoke cleared, she stood unharmed.
Mostly.
Her dress was scorched, fabric burned away in places, heat curling around her skin like a living thing.
She frowned at the damage.
Then vanished.
Henry moved at the same instant.
They collided midair.
The impact detonated like thunder.
Blow after blow followed—fist against force, magma against space, steam roaring as cubes formed and shattered in rapid succession. Henry attempted to trap her again and again, only for her to repel the constructs with violent bursts of heat and pressure, magma tearing at the edges of isolation.
The land around them suffered.
A mountain in the distance split open as their clash reached it, flame erupting skyward as molten rock surged from its heart. The peak disappeared in a blinding explosion—
Then froze.
Encased.
Henry had trapped the entire mountain inside a spatial cube.
The red-haired woman answered immediately.
Her magma surged, temperature spiking beyond containment. The cube glowed, warped, then disintegrated as the mountain vaporized from within, reduced to nothing but incandescent gas.
Silence followed.
Brief.
Heavy.
This was the power of Shapers.
Not borrowed strength.
Not borrowed permission.
But absolute authority over an element complete, unrestrained, terrifying.
Henry hovered in the air, coat fluttering slightly, smile unbroken.
The woman stood opposite him, steam rolling off her body like breath from a sleeping dragon.
The gods had not been mentioned.
They didn't need to be.
Not when beings like this were already speaking.