The corridor of impossible architecture was not a void, but a regulated transition space. The air was sterile, temperature-controlled, and carried a faint scent of ozone and old paper. The shifting vistas of floating libraries and galactic parks were visible through crystalline walls, but they felt distant, untouchable, like exhibits in a cosmic museum.
The corridor deposited them, with a soft chime, into a vast, circular chamber: the Processing Atrium of the Admissions Spire. The scale was humbling. The ceiling soared kilometers above, lost in a soft, artificial glow. The floor was a mosaic of shifting sigils from a million worlds. And they were not alone.
Dozens of other beings stood in scattered groups or solitary silence, awaiting processing. A being of living magma slowly cooled in a dedicated containment circle. A trio of winged humanoids with feathers of sharpened light whispered in a language of chiming notes. A hulking creature of animated stone and moss stood perfectly still, its deep-set crystals observing everything. The diversity was staggering, but a common thread ran through them all: power. Raw, unique, and tightly leashed.
They were all Potentates—beings who had altered or defined reality on their home turfs, now summoned for assessment.
A sleek, floating platform of white alloy glided to a stop before them. On it stood a Facilitator. It was humanoid, genderless, with a smooth porcelain face and robes of simple grey. Its eyes were pools of softly shifting data.
"Designation: Sovereign's Circle. Primary: Echo. Follow for biometric imprinting, threat-assessment scanning, and preliminary aptitude evaluation." Its voice was the same neutral tone from the portal.
They followed the platform across the vast floor, feeling the weight of countless alien gazes. Whispers followed them, not in any language they knew, but picked up by their enhanced senses and translated by the very air of the Nexus.
"...Primal signatures... unusually cohesive..."
"...low Stage 4 readings, but the resonance depth is anomalous..."
"...the Sanguis Imperator? I thought that line was theoretical..."
"...they smell of recent, high-order reality trauma..."
The Facilitator led them to a row of sleek, transparent columns. "One per chamber. Stand within the light. The process is non-invasive."
Exchanging a look, they separated. Echo stepped into a column. A beam of soft white light scanned him from head to toe. It didn't just scan his body; he felt it pass through his spirit, his bloodline, his connection to the Bond. It was intensely intrusive, yet conducted with clinical detachment.
Data scrolled in the air before him.
> Species: Baseline Human (Anomalous Variant)
> Reality of Origin: Cradle-787 (Tier: Post-Chaotic Adaptation)
> Primary Power Designation: Primal Bloodline - Sanguis Imperator.
> Current Stage: 4 (Sanguine Lord). Progression Rate: Catastrophically Accelerated. Note: Evolution catalyzed by Conceptual Collision Event.
> Anomaly Rating: Class 9 (Reality-Warping Catalyst/Synthesizer).
> Associated Bonds: 4 (Deep-Sync). Bond-Type: Sovereign's Circle (Quint-Bond). Unique.
> Threat Assessment: Potential (High). Current Behavioral Profile: Constructive/Defensive.
> Preliminary Aptitude: Administration (Reality-Stabilization), Diplomacy (Interspecies Cohesion), Advanced Combat (Theoretical).
The scan concluded. The column opened. The others emerged, each looking slightly unsettled. Ryn's face was a mask of cold annoyance. "It mapped my entire cyber-biological interface. Root access. I have never felt so... filed."
Next, they were directed to a wide, circular platform. "Passive power demonstration. Do not target other applicants. Manifest your core abilities to their fullest stable extent."
This was the test. Not of destruction, but of control and concept.
They stepped onto the platform. As one, they released their power.
Echo didn't summon a wave of force. He simply stood, and his Sanguine Lord aura unfolded. A dome of calming, kaleidoscopic light spread fifty meters, its edge sharp and defined. Within it, the sterile Nexus air seemed to grow richer, more real. A crack that had been forming in the platform's base from a previous applicant's heat stopped propagating and subtly smoothed over. He demonstrated stability.
Leyla became a theorem of motion. She didn't phase in and out; she existed in multiple states simultaneously. Three afterimages, each solid to a different spectrum of energy, performed a flawless, lethal combat kata while her true body stood still, observing. She demonstrated selective law.
Mira plucked at the space before her. A complex, beautiful, and stable Möbius garden unfolded from her fingertips—a small, walking path that looped back on itself in an impossible knot, containing a self-sustaining ecosystem of light and gentle gravity. She demonstrated architectural control.
Ryn closed her eyes. The very hum of the Nexus's background systems in their sector harmonized. Fluctuations smoothed. Redundant systems aligned for peak efficiency. A flickering light-strip on a distant wall steadied. She didn't command; she orchestrated. She demonstrated systemic synergy.
Kiera looked at the Facilitator. She didn't cast an illusion. She gently adjusted perception. For a moment, the Facilitator—and every watching being—didn't see a grey-robed bureaucrat. They saw the being it might have been before joining the Authority: a weary scholar of a lost world, a hint of forgotten sorrow in its data-pool eyes. It was a glimpse of universal truth. Kiera demonstrated empathic revelation.
The display lasted thirty seconds. When they pulled their power back, the platform was pristine. There was no collateral damage, only evidence of profound mastery.
The atrium was silent. The molten being had stopped bubbling. The stone creature had tilted its head.
The Facilitator's data-pool eyes swirled rapidly. "Aptitude Demonstration: Rated Exceptional. Cohesion: Unprecedented. Methodology: Non-standard. Processing..."
A new, larger platform descended from the ceiling—a disc of dark, polished stone etched with a star map. A different Facilitator, this one with a single blue sigil glowing on its forehead, stood upon it.
"Sovereign's Circle. Your preliminary assessment is complete. Your cohesion negates standard individual placement algorithms. You will be processed as a unit. Follow me to the Divination Chamber for Path-Projection and final House placement."
As they followed the new Facilitator up towards the Spire's higher levels, Echo looked down at the atrium shrinking below. They had passed the first test. They were not to be quarantined or contained. They were being... sorted.
The real challenge was about to begin. They weren't just being registered. They were being placed on the game board of the multiverse.