Above the small lake crowning the island’s mountain, a stone structure hovered quietly in the air.
It had been built entirely from rough-cut ashlar blocks. Its gates stood tall and plain, without ornament or decoration, yet something about the place felt ancient.
Primal.
"Hobgoblin Hall."
Caelum landed before it and simply stood there.
For a while, he said nothing.
He reached out slowly, his fingers trembling just slightly as his palm came to rest against one of the massive stone pillars.
Hobgoblin Hall had once been where his Hobgoblins gathered to pray.
Calling it a hall was generous. It was little more than a simple stone building, unremarkable by any architectural standard.
But to Caelum, it carried more weight than anything else remaining in the domain.
He could still picture them.
Crowded inside.
Tearing into meat with their bare hands. Laughing too loudly. Arguing over the smallest things. Shouting at one another before inevitably sitting down together again.
For eighteen years, those creatures had been his people.
His responsibility.
His first attempt at building something that belonged entirely to him.
"I promise you," he said softly.
His voice carried through the empty hall.
"One day, I’ll bring every one of you back."
He remained there for another moment, robes shifting gently in the wind.
Then he let out a breath, withdrew his hand, and turned away.
At the foot of the mountain, Caelum finally stopped to properly examine the lake.
Green mountains surrounded it on every side, their slopes descending toward deep blue water. Sunlight scattered across the surface in countless golden fragments.
Every now and then, a fish broke through the water.
Before it could fall back beneath the surface, a waiting bird swooped down and snatched it from the air.
Despite everything that had happened, the sight was peaceful.
Beautiful, even.
"From today," Caelum murmured, gazing across the water, "I’ll call you Wyrmspring."
He took a slow breath.
His fists tightened briefly before relaxing again.
Then his attention returned to the two Divine Cards still held in his hand.
The Environment Card came first.
"I can’t actually use you."
He turned it over between his fingers.
"But I want to know what triggered the Pearl in the first place."
His divine power spread outward.
His consciousness sank into the card.
He searched methodically through everything sealed inside it, examining one creature after another until his awareness finally settled on a single snow-white fox.
The Creation Pearl pulsed.
Caelum froze.
’A fox?’
He stared at the tiny creature inside the card.
What could possibly be special about an ordinary fox?
The problem was extracting it.
If he removed the fox normally, the card would count as used, consuming his second card slot.
He hesitated.
Then something unexpected happened.
Droplets of blue liquid began gathering above his open palm.
They condensed into a small floating sphere, light rippling across its surface.
The sphere solidified.
And from within it, the Creation Pearl emerged.
The Pearl pulsed again.
Stronger.
A thread of incomprehensible energy shot directly into the Divine Card.
Caelum’s eyes widened.
The fox was pulled free.
The card remained completely intact.
No damage.
No consumption.
The fox had simply been taken.
Caelum stared at the Pearl in disbelief.
He’d expected it to cause another disaster.
Instead, it had done something he hadn’t even considered possible.
"I underestimated you."
He slowly turned the Pearl over in his hand.
"Extracting something from a sealed Divine Card without damaging the card itself..."
His expression became increasingly serious.
"Even a True God couldn’t casually do that."
He stared at the object.
"Are you really just a high-grade treasure? Or is that classification not even close?"
The Pearl offered no response.
It simply rested in his palm, faint light drifting across its surface.
Nearby, the fox began to move.
Its frozen posture melted away as it looked around the unfamiliar environment.
Then its eyes landed on Caelum.
The little creature froze.
Every instinct in its body screamed at it to run.
One paw lifted.
Caelum reached out.
His fingers closed around the fox before it could escape.
It struggled violently.
He barely noticed.
Instead, he took a slow breath and pushed his consciousness directly into the Creation Pearl.
The world inverted.
A pale blue wisp of power appeared before his vision.
Reality folded.
The world he knew disappeared beneath an endless white expanse.
And yet, somehow, it was still the same world.
Only now, everything had been stripped down to its essence.
The outlines of the surrounding creatures appeared against the blank space.
The Murloc card glowed with a dull pale yellow.
The fox was mostly white.
But at the very tip of its tail, something caught Caelum’s attention.
Gold.
His expression changed.
The color was faint.
Barely more than a trace.
But unlike everything else around him, that tiny fragment of gold carried an incredible density.
A weight that felt almost sacred.
It reminded him of the sensation of accidentally looking directly at something that mortals were never meant to see.
Understanding slowly followed.
In this state, color represented bloodline quality.
The same hierarchy appeared in the cloud patterns surrounding Divine Cards.
Yellow.
Low-grade.
Purple.
Mid-grade.
Black.
High-grade.
But gold?
Caelum stared at the tiny mark.
’What does gold mean?’
He had no answer.
Something beyond high-grade?
That was the only possibility he could think of.
The trace was so faint that he had nearly missed it himself.
No wonder the creator of the card had overlooked it.
To them, this fox was simply another ordinary creature included within an Environment Card.
Divine Cards worked by sealing fragments of a domain or portions of its population.
True Gods frequently used them to store surplus followers they no longer needed.
Which meant this golden bloodline hadn’t appeared from nowhere.
At some point in the past, a True God powerful enough to possess such a bloodline must have allowed this fox to come into contact with it.
Perhaps through proximity.
Perhaps through inheritance.
Perhaps through something Caelum couldn’t yet understand.
His scholarly curiosity immediately surged.
Then he pushed it aside.
There would be time for questions later.
Right now, there was something more important.
If the Creation Pearl could react to a bloodline this faint, then perhaps the amount of bloodline present wasn’t the true limitation.
Caelum focused.
He directed a thread of the Pearl’s power toward the golden mark.
The thread grew.
Immediately.
His eyes widened.
"It’s actually working."
Excitement surged through him.
He pushed harder.
More of the Pearl’s power poured into the golden trace.
Blue light swirled around the gold, wrapping it like water around a stone.
The thread thickened.
First into a line.
Then into something resembling a strand.
Caelum watched the Pearl’s reserves drain.
His excitement slowly gave way to tension.
He understood exactly how expensive this power was.
The Pearl had required the deaths of his entire original retinue to replenish itself once.
And now, more than half of that energy had already been consumed.
All to transform a barely visible trace into something no larger than a strand of hair.
’Keep going.’
He watched without blinking.
The Pearl continued to weaken.
The golden strand grew.
Then the remaining energy rapidly dwindled.
Finally, the process stopped.
The strand curled inward.
It twisted.
And slowly settled into the shape of a small golden crescent.
Caelum stared.
"A bloodline seed?"
He raised his hand.
The crescent floated gently into the air before him.
"What in the world does this belong to?"
Power radiated from it.
There was no mistaking it.
This was a genuine bloodline seed.
The kind used to create entirely new followers within a divine domain.
Most bloodline seeds took the form of simple spheres of blood, their colors corresponding to their quality.
Yellow.
Purple.
Black.
The original Hobgoblin bloodline seed had been a sphere of deep purple, thick with violent energy and bloodlust.
The Sun Elves and Moon Elves had followed the same basic principle.
But this one was different.
It had a shape.
A defined form.
A crescent.
Caelum had never heard of anything like it.
Not in any record.
Not in any ancient text.
Not in any story passed between deities.
The crescent radiated an aura that felt almost holy.
Magnificent.
Weighty.
Reverent.
Even Caelum, a deity himself, felt a strange tightness in his chest simply looking at it.
Then the Sanctuary trembled.
Only slightly.
But Caelum noticed.
His eyes narrowed.
The Sanctuary seemed to instinctively recognize the object floating before him.
And whatever that recognition meant, one thing was clear.
The Sanctuary in its current state couldn’t contain this bloodline.
Runes began crawling across the surface of the crescent.
They shifted constantly, forming and reforming in patterns Caelum couldn’t decipher.
The aura surrounding it grew stronger.
There was something mysterious about the seed.
Something alive.
And at its center, engraved with impossible precision, was a single symbol.
Nine tails.
They spread outward like the feathers of a peacock displaying its full splendor.
Elegant.
Regal.
Impossible to ignore.
Caelum stared at the symbol.
For some reason, he felt as though it was staring back.