The Eidolon Reach had grown into a country beneath an unchanging night.
Its oldest inhabitants no longer remembered bodies made of flesh. Abundant spiritual energy had refined them into living concentrations of power, yet most of their descendants never awakened comparable abilities.
Houses and roads covered only a fraction of the territory. Beyond them, darkness remained undeveloped and silent.
Lance governed through four captains. Kraken directed construction. Modoc made weapons capable of awakening useful traits. Rowan guarded passage between the Eidolon Reach and the living world. Blaine oversaw medicine and research.
Lance had inherited leadership from Victor, not Victor's weapon. His own blade was called Wordblade. Its first form resembled a single-edged sword; released, it became a vast brush able to alter a property or strike a fact from what the world accepted as true.
For years, Lance had tried to use that power to solve the separation of the three domains. The living world, the Eidolon Reach, and the Hollow remained divided by barriers no ordinary force could break. He wanted to clear the Hollow, give mortal civilization time to stabilize, and restrict travel to controlled gates.
Every version of the plan demanded a sacrifice large enough to make the plan suspect.
Blaine found him studying the boundaries again.
"Our strength has stopped increasing," Blaine said. His white uniform remained immaculate despite the dark landscape. "We improve technique, but our spiritual capacity does not grow. Have you asked why?"
Lance had. He had blamed the limit on age, on the world, and on the loss of Victor. None of those answers had produced a remedy.
"You have one," he said.
"Spiritual energy is finite," Blaine said. "Years ago, I placed enabling weapons in the living world. Their wielders destroy hostile spirits instead of returning them to the cycle. Every destruction costs us energy. Even purification here has a cost, small each time, but repeated across generations."
"As that energy goes," Blaine said, "the domains draw closer."
Lance looked toward the darkness as if distance might already be failing beyond his sight. "Then isolation treats the symptom."
"Unless we create a structure that restores the cycle."
Blaine called his spatial release Worldbreak. It could open a private space within an existing reality, but the surrounding world rejected the intrusion. Wordblade could make the world recognize that space. This chapter was copied from NovelPing without permission.
A preserved corpse from the previous age carried an ability tied to stopped time. Revived briefly, the Voyager could stabilize the construction.
Blaine described gates, filtration, and a boundary through which only purified souls would pass. The elegance of it made Lance distrust his own relief.
"What powers the new space?" he asked.
Blaine leaned close enough that Lance saw his smile before he understood it.
"You do."
***
For years, Blaine had shown Lance the loyal physician he expected to see.
Veil did more than alter sight. It could govern all five senses and, when a mind yielded, reach the will behind them.
Blaine was not strong enough to defeat Lance openly. He had therefore made patience into a weapon and kindness into camouflage.
Lance had listened to the explanation long enough for the influence to settle.
The new world required three sources, not one. Lance represented the Eidolon Reach. The preserved Voyager represented the living world that had survived the previous age. The Hollow king represented the domain of the dead.
Modoc delivered the last of them alive and unresisting. The Hollow king held immense energy but no intelligence capable of resisting capture. Blaine placed him beside the Voyager's corpse and the leader who had believed they were partners.
"Let go," Blaine told Lance. "We are going to repair the cycle."
Lance raised Wordblade. Its released brush cut a statement into reality, recognizing the space Worldbreak was about to open. The effort bent him forward, breath ragged, but the change held.
Blaine released Worldbreak. A private domain unfolded where none had existed. Reality pressed against it and then accepted the fact Lance had written.
Blaine had promised to build an additional boundary. He did not. A border would have limited what he meant to possess.
Lance used Wordblade again. He removed the fact of the Voyager's death long enough for the old king to return. The revived being opened his eyes without freedom. Veil caught his senses before awareness could become resistance. Visit novelping(.)com for the full chapter.
Then Blaine brought the three sources together.
The Voyager's temporal power sealed Lance, the Voyager, and the Hollow king inside the private domain. Lance remained alive, sustaining the recognition he had written.
The other two supplied their distinct affinities. Spiritual force began to gather around all three.
It did not restore the cycle Blaine had described. The space drew lonely spirits from beyond its boundary, while the barriers separating the established domains weakened.
Blaine felt the new domain answer him and mistook control for legitimacy.
If the three old realms merged around his creation, Wordblade would force reality to recognize the result. The merged power would pass through him. He would not merely govern it. He would become its god.
***
Michael watched from outside the private domain.
The experiment had produced exactly the kind of convergence his system rewarded: distinct energies forced into one environment, subjected to pressure severe enough to provoke a new stable trait. It had also required deception, enslavement, and three captive bodies.
He could intervene. He did not.
Blaine's claim to divinity interested him less than the possible gene. The title had no measurable value.
The transformation did. If the combined power of three domains could not produce something the system could preserve, then this branch of the sandbox had reached a dead end.
The convergence might still fail for lack of energy. Michael possessed two of Tony's arc reactors. Introducing one could feed Blaine's structure without exposing Michael himself.
The reactor would feed the process draining spirits and eroding the barriers. Lance was alive inside the seal, and the Voyager's return depended on suppressing him. The Hollow king would be drawn into the same experiment.
Michael studied the arc reactors, looking for a way to deliver their charge.
For now, Michael held the reactors back. The three sources continued to radiate inside Blaine's pocket realm, and the walls between realms continued to thin.