The experiments continued.
Kyren learned what existed deeper in their facilities.
He wished he had not.
Chambers containing bodies acquired from other societies.
Adults.
Children.
Some preserved alive because living tissue produced better results.
Some had been sacrificed during failed rituals.
Blood was collected, catalogued and consumed in controlled ceremonies when particular biological traits were needed.
The horror was not chaotic.
That made it worse.
Everything had labels.
Measurements.
Justifications.
Forms.
Every atrocity had become procedure.
Nobody inside called themselves cruel.
They called themselves necessary.
Kyren remembered everything.
That mattered.
If he survived, he would never allow distance, authority or a sufficiently complicated explanation to make suffering invisible.
On the final day, ten Argatass entered the chamber.
“The compatibility threshold has been reached.” Kyren looked at the apparatus surrounding him.
“Meaning?” “We combine your blood with the accumulated strains.” Aiko was placed behind reinforced glass.
Kyren looked at her.
She shook her head desperately.
“Don’t.” One researcher activated the system.
Blue liquid from dozens of reservoirs entered a central structure.
Kyren felt every consumed ability inside him react.
Vampiric principles.
Jorogumo memory structures.
Kitsune spatial folding.
Delasai’s ancient accumulation.
Hatred magic from the human reality.
All of it collided with Argatass reality manipulation.
The laboratory trembled.
“Pressure rising.” “Continue.” “The dimensional membrane is destabilising.” “Continue.” Kyren opened his eyes.
“You don’t know what you’re doing.” The elder Argatass smiled.
“That is why experiments exist.” The world became blue-white.
Glass exploded.
Reality folded inward.
Every Argatass in the main chamber died.
Some vanished completely.
Others were thrown against walls with enough force to become unrecognisable.
Kyren woke beneath rubble.
His restraints were gone.
Aiko crawled toward him.
Blood ran from her forehead.
“Kyren.” He looked at the dead.
His body knew before his mind admitted it.
The power was there.
Waiting in their flesh.
Aiko followed his gaze.
“You can take it.” “I don’t know what happens.” “Neither do they anymore.” “It could kill me.” “If we stay here, something else will.” Kyren crawled toward the first corpse.
“Aiko.” “What?” “If I stop being me—” “Then I’ll tell you.” He looked at her.
“How?” “I’ll annoy you until you remember.” Despite everything, the corner of his mouth moved.
Then he ate.
The first Argatass changed the meaning of distance.
He could see realities layered beside one another like translucent sheets.
The second carried world-copy architecture.
It stacked with the first.
The third carried biological self-sufficiency.
Hunger ceased to be a requirement his body understood.
The fourth carried temporal anchoring.
The fifth carried dimensional transit.
Already possessed in weaker form through teleportation and portals, it stacked violently, becoming something greater than movement.
Kyren could now choose not merely where in space, but through which adjacent reality he emerged.
Sixth.
Seventh.
Eighth.
Duplicate abilities compounded.
Twice the same world-copying principle did not create two copies.
It increased resolution.
Stability.
Scale.
What had required ten Argatass in a coordinated ritual began becoming possible inside one organism.
Ninth.
Kyren screamed as entire mathematical structures appeared inside his awareness without numbers.
A universe was not incomprehensible anymore.
It was rules.
Constants.
Relationships.
Information.
The tenth Argatass carried a fragment of Arg’si itself.
The ritual principle that united incompatible racial powers into a single act of creation.
Kyren swallowed.
The laboratory disappeared.
Not physically.
In relevance.
He could see beyond it.
Alternate realities.
Galaxies.
Worlds.
Millions of them.
Maybe far more.
Some almost identical.
Some governed by different rules.
Some dead.
Some crowded with conscious beings.
Some created by entities whose presence distorted the laws around them.
Gods.
Kyren understood what he had become capable of.
Not omnipotent.
Not yet.
But the barrier between being something inside creation and something capable of altering creation had broken.
Aiko touched his shoulder.
“What do you see?” Kyren stared through walls that no longer obstructed his perception.
“Mistakes.” “What?” “Worlds.” He saw one where sentient beings spent almost their entire lives working because another group controlled food.
Another where reproduction had become ownership.
Another where a god had deliberately created disease and then demanded worship in exchange for occasional cures.
Another where species slaughtered one another over which interpretation of their creator was correct while the creator never answered.
Another where fear of death governed every institution.
Another where creatures accumulated more resources than they could use while others starved beside them.
“Why?” Kyren whispered.
“Why what?” “Why create them with this?” “With what?” “Ego.” His hand curled.
“The need to be above someone.” Memories returned.
Riss.
Tyron.
Devin.
Priests.
Argatass.
Vampires collecting blood.
Jorogumo turning minds into property.
“Desire.” Not desire as simple movement toward water when thirsty.
The consuming need to possess, dominate, take, accumulate, use another being as an object because one’s own wanting mattered more.
“Fear of death.” The oldest lever he had seen.
Promise heaven.
Promise immortality.
Promise legacy.
Threaten extinction.
People surrendered themselves to anything that claimed it could defeat an ending.
Kyren’s hatred did not cool when he gained power.
Power gave it scale.
The old world remained inside him with perfect clarity.
That was important.
He did not want transcendence if transcendence meant forgetting why he had wanted change.
“I could make another one,” he said.
Aiko stared.
“Another what?” Kyren raised his hand.
Space opened above his palm.
Not a portal.
A tiny closed reality.
Empty at first.
Then light.
Matter.
A star.
Aiko stopped breathing.
Kyren watched it.
“A world without ego.” The light expanded.
“Without lust that turns another body into property.” Matter organised.
“Without greed.” Planets formed.
“Without the fear of death.” Aiko whispered, “Kyren…” “No one should be born into a world where suffering is the main thing waiting for them.” He closed his hand.
The experimental universe disappeared.
“And no creator gets to make lives, abandon responsibility for what he built, then demand gratitude because existence itself is supposed to be enough.” He saw the gods.
One world.
One creator.
Another world.
Another.
Some were weak.
Some terrifying.
Some genuinely cared for what they had created.
Kyren was not interested in worship.
He was interested in responsibility.
He found the first god who had knowingly made a world built around suffering and entered it.
The transition tore him from Aiko.
“KYREN!” Her hand passed through light.
He reached for her.
Space collapsed.