Day Eighteen
Goro felt the change immediately.
Xheavend had been attacking without rhythm.
Without judgment.
Without mercy.
Now she stopped.
Her head lifted.
Her eyes focused.
For a moment, Goro saw the child he knew.
"Xheavend?"
She looked at him.
"Goro."
He exhaled.
"About time."
Her lips trembled.
"I'm sorry."
He tilted his enormous head.
"Yes, well. You have been an exceptionally troublesome student."
She almost smiled.
Then her body convulsed.
Blood burst from her mouth.
Her skin split along her arms.
The voices returned.
But this time they were not fighting over control.
They were answering her.
The armies behind her raised their weapons.
Xheavend raised hers.
And Goro understood.
She had regained enough of herself to direct them.
But her body was still dying.
Worse—
Now the power was moving through her with purpose.
"Little one," he warned, "you must stop."
She shook her head.
"If I stop, he'll take me."
"Then I shall stop him."
"You can't protect me forever."
Goro went still.
The words were not hers.
Yzer's voice had slipped through.
Xheavend's face twisted.
"Goro, please—"
Her body lunged.
Goro moved.
Their collision destroyed the eighteenth floor.
Day Twenty-One
The First Division Commander revealed why the Fragments feared him.
Xheavend struck with the force of an army whose soldiers had once fought across a thousand galaxies.
Goro met her head-on.
His jaws opened.
A violet blade emerged from his mouth.
Not metal.
A crystallized fang.
He caught it in his humanoid hand as his enormous serpent body contracted, scales folding into skin, twenty eyes briefly burning across his face.
He stood eight feet tall.
Blood dripped from his torn waistcoat.
His black sclera surrounded molten-gold irises.
The purple sash at his waist had been shredded.
His left arm hung at an unnatural angle.
He smiled.
"Now then."
Xheavend charged.
Goro stepped aside.
His fang-blade flashed.
One cut.
Not across her throat.
Not through her heart.
Across the air surrounding her.
The invisible connection between her body and a thousand invading spirits ruptured.
They screamed.
Goro twisted the blade.
A second cut.
A third.
A fourth.
Every strike released a different poison.
One paralyzed the orders compelling the armies.
Another consumed the energy sustaining their manifestations.
A third infected the very idea of regeneration, forcing injuries to remember that they had once been wounds.
A fourth turned hostile intent into weakness.
The armies began collapsing.
Xheavend screamed.
Goro's expression darkened.
He watched the armies collapse around her.
Thousands of soldiers fell to their knees, their weapons dissolving between their fingers. Ancient war beasts crumbled into clouds of ash. Generals who had commanded campaigns across galaxies found themselves unable to issue another order.
And yet, behind the collapsing ranks, more continued to emerge.
There was no end to them.
Goro slowly lowered his sword.
"How very troublesome."
Xheavend screamed.
The sound carried a thousand different languages, each one demanding that the others be heard.
Xheavend staggered.
Her eyes shifted between Goro and the armies surrounding her.
Something had gone wrong with her perception.
The commander stood before her.
Yet she could also see him standing behind her.
Then beside her.
Then kneeling within the ruins of a city that had ceased to exist thousands of years ago.
A dead soldier's memory had become entangled with her own.
She reached toward the nearest image.
"Goro?"
Her hand passed through it.
The real Goro watched her expression change.
She was no longer certain which world she occupied.
And somewhere within the confusion, the armies continued fighting.
"Little one," he murmured, "you are going to make me do something exceptionally unpleasant."
She lunged.
Goro did not move.
Her fist struck his chest.
The impact shattered the floor beneath his feet and sent fractures racing through the surrounding walls.
But the commander remained standing.
His boots sank several inches into the stone.
He looked down at her small hand.
Then at her face.
"That will be quite enough."
Xheavend's expression twisted.
A hundred voices screamed through her throat.
Goro sighed.
"Yes, yes. I understand. You are all terribly angry."
He caught her wrist.
"Unfortunately, so am I."
Something changed.
Not in his posture.
Not in his expression.
In the universe.
The cracks beneath Goro's boots stopped spreading.
Dust hung motionless in the air.
The enormous armies surrounding him faltered.
Even the labyrinth's constant grinding ceased.
For several heartbeats, the Third Universe seemed to forget how to move.
Goro released Xheavend's wrist.
She stumbled backward.
The commander raised his crystallized fang.
A single drop of violet liquid gathered at its tip.
It was remarkably small.
No larger than a tear.
Yet the instant it formed, the stone beneath him began turning black.
Not from contact.
The venom had not touched the ground.
The stone was reacting to its existence.
Far beneath the battlefield, Yzer rose from his chair.
His expression changed.
The amusement disappeared.
The curiosity vanished.
And something considerably older took their place.
Recognition.
"No."
The image before him trembled.
Yzer stepped closer.
Goro lifted his sword.
The drop of venom remained suspended upon its point.
"No," Yzer repeated.
He recognized the substance.
Not because he had encountered it personally.
Because the Fragments possessed records of what it had done.
Civilizations had disappeared beneath that venom.
Immortal sovereigns had begged for death.
Entire regions of existence had been abandoned because their governing laws had become incapable of sustaining life.
And at the center of those accounts stood the same name.
Goro.
First Division Commander.
The Sovereign's Fang.
The one whose venom could make even eternity rot.
Yzer slammed his hand against the image.
"SEAL THE FLOORS!"
The labyrinth responded.
Across the Third Universe, enormous doors slammed shut.
The Drowned Archives sealed themselves behind walls of compressed stone.
The Bone Elevators descended into inaccessible depths.
The Furnace Mile extinguished its ancient fires.
The Hollow Choir folded its corridors inward.
Twenty floors separated themselves from the chamber in which Yzer stood.
Then thirty.
Then forty.
Yzer raised both hands.
"Withdraw the governing authorities from the surrounding levels!"
The labyrinth shuddered.
The laws maintaining those floors began retreating toward the Heart Engine.
Gravity changed.
Distance stretched.
Several corridors ceased to exist.
Yzer was not trying to trap Goro.
He was trying to keep the commander's venom from finding him.
Above, Goro watched the labyrinth rearrange itself.
His lips curved.
"Ah."
A distant wall disappeared.
Another rose in its place.
The ceiling folded into itself, exposing a brief glimpse of the dark machinery sustaining the labyrinth's impossible architecture.
Goro chuckled.
"So you do remember."
Xheavend charged.
He stepped aside, caught her by the back of her clothing, and redirected her through a collapsing archway.
The archway shattered.
She disappeared beneath the debris.
Goro did not pursue.
Instead, he turned toward the nearest wall.
"Yzer."
His voice was quiet.
But the labyrinth carried it.
Far below, Yzer went still.
Goro smiled.
"How many floors have you placed between us?"
Yzer said nothing.
"Forty?"
The commander tilted his head.
"Fifty?"
A faint purple line appeared across the wall.
Yzer's eyes widened.
Goro had not touched it.
The venom remained upon his blade.
And yet the wall was beginning to decay.
Not physically.
Its existence was becoming uncertain.
The stone flickered between its present form and the memory of what it had been before the labyrinth constructed it.
Goro raised the fang.
"Do you remember what my venom does to immortality?"
Yzer clenched his jaw.
The purple line widened.
"An immortal poisoned by my authority does not simply die."
Goro examined the suspended droplet.
"Death becomes part of the condition sustaining their existence."
The wall trembled.
"They die."
A second fracture appeared.
"They regenerate."
A third.
"And the venom ensures that the regenerated body inherits the death that preceded it."
The fractures spread.
"Again."
Stone crumbled.
"And again."
A section of the wall vanished.
"And again."
Goro's smile widened.
"An eternity of dying without ever being permitted to finish."
Yzer's fingers tightened around the arm of his chair.
He knew the accounts.
He knew what happened when a Fragment's immortality became the very mechanism through which the poison reproduced.
The venom did not need to overcome immortality.
It made immortality its accomplice.
Goro continued.
"Regeneration is equally amusing."
He rotated his sword.
"Imagine reconstructing your body, only to discover that the venom has poisoned the instructions determining what that body should be."
A thin violet thread extended from the droplet.
The wall briefly regenerated with its stones arranged backward.
Its foundation appeared above its ceiling.
Its doorway opened into solid rock.
Then the structure collapsed.
"One might grow a second heart where the brain belongs."
Goro watched the destruction.
"Or lungs that remember being bones."
The wall attempted to rebuild.
It failed.
"Or an entirely healthy body that has forgotten how to remain alive."
He sighed.
"Quite inconvenient."
Yzer thrust his hand forward.
"REINFORCE THE BOUNDARIES!"
More walls rose.
Goro laughed softly.
"Oh, that is a dreadful mistake."
The new walls began developing the same violet fractures.
Yzer froze.
Goro lowered his sword.
"Reality manipulation creates new laws, Fragment."
The cracks spread into the ceiling.
"And new laws are simply new things for my venom to infect."
Yzer immediately stopped the reconstruction.
Too late.
The poison had begun following the commands used to create the walls.
Each command connected to the authority sustaining the labyrinth.
And every connection led toward its master.
Yzer.
The Fragment looked down at his hand.
A tiny violet mark had appeared beneath the skin of his index finger.
His breathing stopped.
He severed the finger.
It fell to the floor.
Before it landed, the severed flesh dissolved into black dust.
Yzer stared at the stump.
The finger regenerated.
For one terrible heartbeat, it grew backward.
Then he tore it off again.
"ISOLATE THE AUTHORITY!"
The Heart Engine thundered.
Entire sections of the labyrinth disconnected from one another.
The violet mark vanished.
Yzer staggered backward.
He stared at his restored hand.
Then toward the image of Goro.
The commander was smiling.
Not triumphantly.
Not cruelly.
Almost fondly.
As though he had recognized an old acquaintance.
"There you are," Goro murmured.
Yzer's face twisted.
"MONSTER."
Goro tilted his head.
"Coming from you, I shall consider that a compliment."
The commander raised his sword again.
"First Division Authority."
The twenty golden eyes upon his face opened wider.
The violet droplet darkened.
The air surrounding it began to unravel.
"The Sovereign Venom."
For an instant, the Third Universe trembled.
Its governing laws recoiled from the substance.
Gravity weakened.
Distance became inconsistent.
The labyrinth's regeneration stopped.
And far beneath the battlefield, Yzer understood something that made his blood run cold.
Goro had not been trying to reach him.
He had merely allowed the venom to recognize the Fragment's authority.
Had the commander released the droplet completely, the labyrinth's attempts to repair itself would have spread the poison through its own foundations.
Every reconstructed wall would have carried it farther.
Every altered law would have multiplied it.
Every projection Yzer sent into the battlefield would have offered Goro another path toward his soul.
There would have been nowhere to hide.
Not within the labyrinth.
Not within another dimension.
Not even within the authority that made Yzer a Fragment.
Because the poison would have followed him through all of them.
Yzer slowly lowered himself into his chair.
His hand trembled.
"He's going to destroy her."
Above, Goro heard Xheavend moving beneath the rubble.
He turned.
The child emerged from the shattered archway.
Her arms hung crookedly.
Blood dripped from her chin.
Behind her, the armies of countless dead universes began reforming.
Goro looked at them.
Then at the venom suspended upon his blade.
His smile faded.
He could release it.
He could poison the laws allowing the armies to manifest.
He could force their connections to collapse.
He could even infect the authority sustaining Xheavend's apocalyptic power.
But the dead were not merely manifestations.
They were memories.
Souls.
Histories.
The final remnants of civilizations that had already been destroyed.
And the Sovereign Venom did not distinguish between an enemy's authority and the lives bound to it.
If he released it without restraint, the poison would travel through every connection.
Into the armies.
Into their memories.
Into the fragments of existence they carried.
Into Xheavend herself.
He might silence the battlefield.
He might even save the Third Universe.
But he could erase the very people she was struggling to preserve.
Goro stared at the child.
Her lips moved.
A small voice escaped the chorus.
"Don't."
He went still.
Xheavend's eyes filled with tears.
"Please."
For one heartbeat, the armies fell silent.
"Don't hurt them."
Goro looked at the endless ranks behind her.
Then at the tiny droplet resting upon his blade.
He understood.
Even while her body was collapsing, even while the dead were tearing her apart from within, Xheavend was still trying to protect them.
The commander closed his eyes.
"Of course you are."
The violet droplet trembled.
He tightened his grip upon the sword.
"Stubborn little creature."
Then he lowered the blade.
The droplet vanished.
The pressure upon the universe disappeared.
Gravity returned.
The labyrinth resumed breathing.
Far beneath them, Yzer collapsed against his chair.
For several seconds, he did not move.
Then he began laughing.
A thin, shaken laugh.
"He stopped."
He stared at the image.
"He actually stopped."
Goro had possessed the means to threaten the authority sustaining the labyrinth.
And he had withdrawn it.
For the child.
Yzer slowly smiled.
"How fascinating."
His eyes settled upon Xheavend.
"So that's your weakness, Commander."
Above, Goro watched the armies reform.
His twenty golden eyes narrowed.
"No."
He turned the fang in his hand.
"Not a weakness."
Violet mist began gathering around his feet.
Unlike the Sovereign Venom, this poison did not spread through the laws of existence.
Its targets could be chosen.
Its effects could be controlled.
And its purpose was not to destroy the dead.
It was to make them release their grip upon the living.
Goro lowered the blade toward the ground.
"Forgive me, little one."
Xheavend screamed.
He drove the crystallized fang into the stone.
First Division Art — The Funeral of Ten Thousand Venoms.
Violet fractures spread through the labyrinth.
They climbed the walls.
Crossed the ceiling.
Burrowed through the floors.
Then erupted.
Thousands of serpentine shapes rose from the cracks, each composed of a different poison.
Some were liquid.
Some were smoke.
Some were crystalline.
Others possessed no visible form at all.
They struck the armies.
Not Xheavend.
The dead soldiers dissolved into light.
Their memories returned to the space surrounding her soul.
Goro's technique was not destroying them.
It was forcing them to release their grip.
For a moment, it worked.
Then Xheavend screamed.
A wave of apocalyptic power burst outward.
The venom-serpents shattered.
Goro's right arm tore apart beneath the backlash.
Bone pierced his shoulder.
Blood splashed across his face.
He staggered.
Xheavend appeared before him.
Her fist drove through his abdomen.
The sound was wet.
A spray of violet blood struck the wall behind him.
Goro looked down.
Her small arm had passed through his body.
He coughed.
Then smiled faintly.
"Very impressive."
Xheavend's eyes widened.
"Goro—"
He caught her wrist.
"But your stance is dreadful."
He twisted.
Her arm broke.
He threw her through a wall.
Then dropped to one knee.
Blood pooled beneath him.
His torn abdomen began knitting itself together.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
He looked toward the ceiling.
"Old friend," he murmured.
For a heartbeat, he remembered Eon's laughter.
You always were impossible to kill.
Goro spat blood.
"And you always were impossible to impress."
He stood.
Day Twenty-Three
The Price of Being Remembered
On the twenty-third day, Goro discovered that Xheavend had learned how to poison him.
Not through her blood.
Not through her claws.
Not through any of the countless weapons carried by the dead civilizations fighting inside her.
She had learned something considerably worse.
She had learned how to make his own venom betray him.
The discovery began with a soldier.
An ordinary soldier.
At least, ordinary by the standards of a universe that no longer existed.
He wore bronze armor beneath a cloak of faded blue. His helmet was decorated with the feathers of a bird whose species had vanished alongside the stars that once illuminated its home.
He carried a spear.
Its shaft was cracked.
Its blade was dull.
And around his neck hung a small wooden pendant.
Goro noticed him because he was smiling.
Among the screaming armies of extinct civilizations, surrounded by creatures whose weapons could tear through dimensions, the soldier stood smiling at something in his hand.
A tiny portrait.
Three children.
A woman.
A house beneath two moons.
Then Goro's venom reached him.
The soldier stiffened.
His spear fell.
The purple mist wrapped around his legs, climbing his armor and spreading into the spiritual connections sustaining his manifestation.
Goro expected him to dissolve into light.
That was what his controlled venom was supposed to accomplish.
It would sever the command compelling the soldier to fight, allowing his memories to return to the space surrounding Xheavend's soul.
Instead, the soldier began laughing.
Not happily.
Not willingly.
His mouth opened wider.
His body convulsed.
And something inside him began burning.
Goro narrowed his eyes.
"That is not supposed to happen."
The soldier's armor turned black.
His spear shattered.
The wooden pendant crumbled between his fingers.
Then the portrait vanished.
The soldier stopped smiling.
His expression changed.
Confusion.
Fear.
Recognition.
He looked at his empty hand.
"Where—"
His voice trembled.
"Where are they?"
Goro went still.
The soldier looked around.
"Where is my wife?"
The purple mist thickened.
"Where are my children?"
He dropped to his knees.
"Someone—"
His voice cracked.
"Someone tell me their names."
The soldier's face began disappearing.
Not rotting.
Not dissolving.
Disappearing.
His features blurred as though existence itself had forgotten how to describe them.
Goro stepped forward.
"No."
He withdrew the venom.
The mist retreated.
But the soldier continued fading.
His armor vanished.
His body became translucent.
And his final words escaped into the collapsing chamber.
"I was going home."
Then he was gone.
No light remained.
No spirit.
No lingering echo.
Nothing.
Goro stared at the empty space.
Something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
He raised his hand.
A thin violet thread extended from his fingertips.
He searched for the soldier's remaining spiritual signature.
There should have been one.
Even when a manifestation was destroyed, the memory sustaining it remained within Xheavend.
That was the foundation of her inheritance.
The dead could disappear from the battlefield without being erased from existence.
Their histories endured.
Their names endured.
Their lives endured.
But this soldier—
Goro searched again.
Nothing.
His twenty golden eyes opened.
He looked beyond the battlefield.
Beyond the armies.
Into the innumerable spiritual connections converging upon Xheavend's soul.
And there he found the wound.
An absence.
A small, impossible emptiness among the histories of countless civilizations.
Goro's expression changed.
"Oh."
He understood.
The soldier had not merely died.
He had been forgotten.
Completely.
And somewhere inside Xheavend, an entire civilization had disappeared with him.
Xheavend screamed.
Her body twisted in midair.
Blood burst from her mouth as another wave of Goro's lingering venom reached the armies surrounding her.
Thousands of soldiers convulsed.
Their weapons blackened.
Their banners caught fire.
Goro immediately withdrew his authority.
"Stop."
But the poison was no longer obeying him.
Not because he had lost control.
Because something else had intercepted it.
Xheavend's Apocalypse power had begun adapting.
Every time the venom attempted to sever a spiritual connection, her power redirected the attack toward the memories sustaining that connection.
It was learning.
Studying.
Correcting.
And it had discovered a way to survive.
Sacrifice.
A dead civilization's accumulated memories contained an extraordinary amount of spiritual energy.
Enough to neutralize a poison capable of killing immortals.
Enough to rebuild damaged manifestations.
Enough to protect Xheavend's body from an attack that should have overwhelmed it.
But once consumed—
The memories could not return.
Goro looked toward the armies.
A city appeared behind them.
Not physically.
A memory.
Towering white buildings rose beneath a sky illuminated by three pale suns. Enormous bridges connected floating districts. Rivers of luminous blue water flowed through streets lined with flowering trees.
Thousands of people walked beneath the bridges.
Merchants.
Scholars.
Children.
Families.
A civilization that had once lived, loved, argued, built, and dreamed.
Then the sky cracked.
Goro watched the three suns disappear.
One.
Two.
Three.
The bridges collapsed.
The rivers evaporated.
The buildings turned transparent.
And every person in the city stopped moving.
A little girl looked toward him.
She wore a yellow dress.
In her hands rested a small clay bird.
"Do you know where my mother is?"
Goro did not answer.
The girl looked behind her.
The streets were empty.
Her dress began losing its color.
"Mother?"
Her voice echoed.
"Mother!"
The city vanished.
The girl disappeared with it.
And the memory of the civilization was gone.
Goro staggered.
Not from injury.
From understanding.
"Dear heavens."
Behind Xheavend, another army dissolved.
Then another.
Entire kingdoms vanished from the spiritual landscape.
The languages they had spoken disappeared.
Their music ceased.
Their histories unraveled.
The names of their gods were forgotten.
The memory of their oceans, mountains, forests, and cities dissolved into nothing.
And each disappearance made Xheavend stronger.
Her broken arm regenerated.
The wound across her chest closed.
Her breathing steadied.
The violet poison in her veins weakened.
Her Apocalypse power had found an answer to Goro's venom.
It was burning the dead to preserve the living.
Far beneath the battlefield, Yzer watched in fascination.
"Extraordinary."
The Fragment leaned forward.
He had expected Xheavend to develop resistance.
Her power was too vast, too unstable, too deeply connected to the foundations of existence to remain vulnerable to the same technique indefinitely.
But this?
This was something else.
"You're consuming them."
He laughed softly.
"All those precious little memories."
On the image, Xheavend's body regenerated as another civilization disappeared.
Yzer smiled.
"How wonderfully cruel."
He rested his chin upon his hand.
"You're saving yourself by destroying the very things you refuse to abandon."
His laughter echoed through the chamber.
"Does she know, I wonder?"
He looked toward Goro.
The commander stood motionless.
His twenty golden eyes were fixed upon Xheavend.
Yzer's smile widened.
"Oh."
He understood.
"She doesn't."
Goro lowered his sword.
The violet mist surrounding him disappeared.
He severed every active connection between his venom and Xheavend's armies.
The battlefield became quiet.
Not silent.
The dead were still moving.
Still screaming.
Still fighting.
But the terrible disappearance of civilizations slowed.
Goro examined the remaining spiritual threads.
His poison was gone.
Yet the adaptation remained active.
A mechanism had awakened within Xheavend's Apocalypse power.
And now it was searching for anything that threatened her.
Anything it could convert into fuel.
Anything it could sacrifice.
Goro clenched his jaw.
"Little one."
Xheavend turned toward him.
Her face was barely recognizable.
One eye had regenerated incorrectly.
Her jaw hung at an unnatural angle.
Blood ran from the cracks in her skin.
But she was looking at him.
Not through him.
At him.
"Goro?"
His chest tightened.
"Can you hear me?"
She nodded weakly.
"Good."
He approached.
"Do not use that power again."
Her expression twisted.
"I can't—"
Her body convulsed.
A thousand voices screamed.
"THEY MUST SURVIVE."
Goro stopped.
"No."
The armies surged.
"THEY MUST ENDURE."
"No."
Xheavend clutched her head.
Her fingernails broke against her skull.
"Goro—"
He reached toward her.
"Listen to me."
Her breathing became ragged.
"Something's wrong."
"I know."
She looked behind her.
At the armies.
At the empty spaces where countless soldiers had stood.
Her eyes widened.
"Where are they?"
Goro said nothing.
Xheavend turned.
"Where did they go?"
Her voice rose.
"The people—"
She looked toward the empty battlefield.
"The people who were here."
Goro's expression hardened.
"Xheavend."
"Where are they?"
He stepped closer.
She retreated.
Her breathing quickened.
"I can feel them."
She pressed both hands against her chest.
"No."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"No, no, no—"
The memories of the vanished civilizations were no longer there.
She could feel the places where they had once existed.
Empty spaces.
Holes in an inheritance that had once seemed infinite.
And somehow, despite the countless voices still screaming inside her, she recognized the loss.
"They're gone."
Goro lowered his head.
"Yes."
Her lips trembled.
"Did you kill them?"
The question struck him harder than any of her blows.
He looked at the fang in his hand.
Then at the child standing before him.
"My venom triggered the reaction."
Xheavend stared.
"What reaction?"
He hesitated.
Then answered.
"Your power has begun sacrificing their memories to protect your body."
She shook her head.
"No."
"Little one—"
"No!"
Her scream shattered the surrounding walls.
The armies surged.
Xheavend fell to her knees.
"Bring them back."
Goro stood motionless.
"Please."
She crawled toward him.
Her fingers dug into the broken stone.
"Bring them back!"
He lowered himself before her.
"I cannot."
Her expression crumpled.
"You can do anything."
Goro closed his eyes.
"No."
She grabbed his torn waistcoat.
"You're Goro!"
He said nothing.
"You're the First Division Commander!"
Her voice broke.
"You know everything!"
Goro gently caught her wrists.
"Not everything."
She stared at him.
Then whispered something so quietly that he almost failed to hear it.
"I promised."
His eyes opened.
Xheavend was crying.
"I promised I wouldn't forget them."
Goro looked at the armies.
At the gaps between their ranks.
At the places where entire civilizations had disappeared.
His expression became terribly still.
"I know."
She shook her head.
"They trusted me."
"I know."
"They had nowhere else."
Goro lowered his forehead against hers.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then he whispered:
"And neither do you."
Xheavend began sobbing.
He held her carefully.
Not tightly.
Not as a prisoner.
As a child whose body was breaking beneath a burden she had never asked to carry.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Goro's eyes closed.
"You have nothing to apologize for."
"But they're gone."
"Yes."
"I couldn't save them."
Goro's voice became quiet.
"Then we must save those who remain."
She looked up.
"How?"
He had no answer.
And that frightened him more than he cared to admit.
The armies attacked again.
Xheavend's body was torn from his grasp.
A wave of apocalyptic power erupted from her chest, hurling Goro through the nearest wall.
He struck the floor of another chamber.
Stone exploded around him.
His crystallized fang skidded across the ground.
For several seconds, he did not move.
Then he slowly pushed himself upright.
Blood ran from his mouth.
His abdomen, still recovering from the wound inflicted two days earlier, tore open again.
Goro pressed one hand against it.
He looked toward the shattered doorway.
The armies were approaching.
Millions of them.
Their weapons scraped against the stone.
Their voices echoed through the labyrinth.
And behind them, Xheavend screamed.
Goro stared at his sword.
He could end this.
The Sovereign Venom remained within him.
One unrestricted release would be enough to threaten the authority sustaining the armies.
He could poison the connection between Xheavend and the dead.
He could force the entire inheritance into silence.
But now he understood the cost.
The armies were not merely weapons.
They were the final resting place of civilizations that no longer existed.
Destroying them would not simply defeat Xheavend.
It would complete the annihilation of worlds that had already suffered their endings.
Goro slowly lowered his hand.
"No."
He looked toward the approaching armies.
"Absolutely not."
A soldier charged.
Goro caught the weapon between two fingers.
He snapped it.
Then struck the soldier with the flat of his blade.
The spirit dissolved into light.
Its memory returned safely to Xheavend.
Goro watched the process carefully.
No disappearance.
No sacrifice.
Good.
Another soldier attacked.
He disarmed it.
A third.
He knocked it aside.
A fourth.
He severed the command binding it to the battlefield without allowing his venom to enter the spiritual connection.
The process was slower.
Much slower.
And infinitely more dangerous.
But the memories remained intact.
Goro smiled faintly.
"Well."
He adjusted his torn waistcoat.
"This is going to be tedious."
The armies charged.
He met them.
Without releasing another drop of venom.
On the twenty-fourth day, Goro began creating something new.
Not a stronger poison.
Not a deadlier one.
A poison that knew when to stop.
He withdrew into a ruined chamber while the armies searched for him.
His body trembled from exhaustion.
His wounds had begun healing incorrectly.
His venom reserves were unstable.
And his twenty golden eyes could no longer remain open without causing pain.
But he continued working.
He summoned a drop of violet venom.
Then separated it into twenty smaller droplets.
Each carried a different property.
Paralysis.
Suppression.
Spiritual severance.
Regenerative interference.
Command disruption.
Immortality corrosion.
Soul-binding.
And others whose names had not been spoken since the First Universe.
He examined them.
Then began removing their destructive properties.
One by one.
He stripped away the ability to consume memories.
He removed the mechanisms that allowed the venom to reproduce through spiritual connections.
He severed its capacity to infect the laws sustaining a soul.
He isolated the components that attacked immortality.
And finally, he altered the venom's purpose.
It would no longer seek to destroy what kept Xheavend fighting.
It would seek to interrupt the commands forcing her body to continue.
Not her memories.
Not the dead.
Not the inheritance.
Only the compulsion.
Goro stared at the resulting droplet.
It was black.
Not violet.
A small bead of darkness suspended above his palm.
He watched it carefully.
The venom trembled.
Then stabilized.
Goro exhaled.
"Perhaps."
A distant explosion shook the chamber.
Xheavend was approaching.
He closed his hand around the droplet.
"Perhaps this will do."
But he knew the danger.
The venom had never been tested against a being like her.
Her curse might reject it.
Her Apocalypse power might adapt again.
Or the poison might suppress her body so completely that her heart would stop.
He had no guarantee.
Only a possibility.
Goro rose.
His knees nearly buckled.
He steadied himself against the wall.
Then looked toward the approaching destruction.
"Little one."
His voice was barely audible.
"Please forgive me if this hurts."
The chamber collapsed.