God’s Tree

The weeks after the Twelfth Gate incident passed like pages turned too quickly.

The academy returned to its rhythm—lectures echoing through spell-fortified halls, duels flaring in open arenas, cauldrons bubbling in apothecary towers. But beneath that surface of order, rumors swirled.

Some whispered of a realm that almost collapsed.

Others of a student who reformed it.

But Argolaith didn't answer questions.

He was searching for answers of his own.

From the moment he had returned from the sealed layer of the Twelfth Gate, his mind had burned with one purpose: to understand what he had been shown.

The being—neither god nor mortal—had granted him visions of reality's infrastructure: of anchors and sigil-roots, of planes suspended like veins in a cosmic organ. It wasn't a spell. It wasn't theory.

It was a blueprint.

But blueprints required study.

And so, for weeks, Argolaith could be found in the most obscure corners of the academy's grand library—deep beneath the archives, behind runes that shifted when looked at too long. He moved past dusty tomes etched in languages no longer spoken, past scrolls sealed in whisperglass, through the restricted wing of planar construction texts.

And he read.

Volumes on Realm Weaving, etched by mages long dead—names that even the professors didn't cite anymore.

Essays on Dimensional Anchoring, written by theorists whose work was banned after attempting to bind entire pocket realms to themselves.

Fragmented records of failed Secret Realms, each one destroyed by either entropy, flawed seals, or collapse under conflicting time loops.

He memorized them all.

And still… it was not enough.

After the third week, he began asking questions.

Not directly—not revealing his intentions.

Just enough to gauge what the instructors knew… and what they feared.

He approached Elder Arvail first—head of Dimensional Mechanics. She watched him through rune-etched spectacles as he posed his question.

"How many stable secret realms are currently known to exist within Morgoth's boundaries?"

She tilted her head, considering.

"Seven, officially. Twelve, if you believe the archived whispers. But none have been made in the last thousand years."

Argolaith nodded. "Because the knowledge was lost?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"No. Because the last three who tried died screaming."

He thanked her. Asked nothing more.

That evening, he etched what she said into his private realm-codex, a grimoire made of blank spellcloth pages that revealed knowledge only to him.

The next day, he asked Elder Faeryn.

"What keeps a realm from unraveling once it's created?"

Faeryn's starlit eyes twinkled with curiosity, and her voice rang like a soft bell.

"Purpose," she answered. "Even a realm must know why it exists. Or it will forget itself."

He added that too.

A realm with no purpose is a realm with no soul.

A few days later, he visited Elder Lynneia, asking about rune structures capable of layering over astral ley-lines without disrupting cross-dimensional weave stability.

She gave him no answers.

But she stared at him long after the question, her tattoos flickering like a ward unraveling.

"You're not studying enchantments," she said quietly. "You're studying how to build gods."

Argolaith said nothing.

He left with ten books on living runes and dimensional circuit design.

By the end of the second week, he had filled six volumes of his private codex. He now understood what most considered forbidden:

How to link realm anchors to living mana pools. How to siphon spatial threads from collapsed dimensions. How to embed temporal resilience nodes into a realm's core—so time would move, but never rot.

And still, the visions from the being in the Gate stirred in the back of his mind.

Not yet complete.

The cube at his side spun more slowly now—not weak, but reserved. Waiting for a world it could be bound to.

Waiting to become something more than a conduit.

On the final night of the fourth week, Argolaith stood at the edge of the Grand Library's western observatory balcony.

The sky above the academy shimmered faintly—the pocket realm's boundaries glowing just enough to remind its residents they weren't standing in the real world.

Not yet.

He looked to the stars above. Beyond them.

And he whispered to himself:

"A realm must have a name before it can live."

And for the first time, he allowed himself to dream of it.

Of the shape.

The gravity.

The breath.

A secret realm of his own.

Built not from power… but from memory.

The chamber Argolaith had claimed beneath the Grand Library wasn't listed on any student maps.

He'd found it two weeks ago, veiled behind three forgotten illusion glyphs and a collapsed teleport node buried under centuries of dust. It was nothing more than an old planar resonance chamber—once used for simulating spellfields in miniature—but to him, it was perfect.

Here, he could test his designs.

A single table stood in the center of the room, surrounded by rotating glyph-discs, books suspended midair by mana threads, and schematic arrays drawn on layered parchment and floating light-ribbons.

Projected in the air above the table was a shimmering lattice: a realm-core construct.

It wasn't large.

No bigger than a coin.

But within its recursive mana loops and layered pulse runes, it held the theoretical shape of a realm seed—the primordial "core breath" that would sustain its reality.

Argolaith studied it carefully.

His notes whispered around him:

Primary anchors: 3 minimum. Preferably tied to ley-crossings or living constructs. Lovethisstory?ShowyoursupportonM9VLEMPYR.

Temporal contouring: must synchronize with inner-loop delay to avoid echo-crashes.

Naming principle: must match the realm's first stabilized heartbeat.

The cube floated beside him, observing silently.

It wasn't pulsing.

Not resisting.

Waiting.

He called upon Veilstep, but did not step.

Instead, he used the spell's energy to part the local fabric of mana—exposing the bare thread beneath the academy's protective weave.

With delicate precision, he layered a spark of raw ether into the core.

The lattice shimmered.

Twisted.

Held.

Then—

Collapsed.

He sighed and reset the frame.

That was the twelfth attempt.

Each one closer.

Each one missing something vital.

Not power. Not structure.

But identity.

He needed a soul.

Not a consciousness.

Not an artificial intelligence or a summoned spirit.

But a seed of reason. The why.

The purpose.

Just like Elder Faeryn had said weeks ago.

Even a realm must know why it exists. Or it will forget itself.

He rubbed his fingers together, summoning a new mana strand—this time tinged with memory pulled from the cube. A fragment of the moment he'd stood before the Galaxy Maker Tree. The soundless weight of 10,000 rebirths.

He weaved that memory into the new lattice.

The construct trembled.

And for a moment… it pulsed.

Just once.

Like a heartbeat.

Then it faded.

Not failed—resting.

Getting closer.

Unbeknownst to Argolaith, three floors above, behind the tempered glass of the faculty observatory, Elder Arvail stood in silence, watching the fluctuating mana levels under the library.

She'd been tracking the energy signature for days—watching it shift from experimentation to early stabilization.

She adjusted her spectacles.

"He's not studying anymore," she murmured. "He's building."

Next to her, Elder Solm emerged from the shadows.

"It is not yet time," he said. "But the roots have reached the stone."

Arvail didn't turn.

"Do we intervene?"

Solm gave no answer.

He simply turned… and vanished.

Below, Argolaith reset the lattice one more time.

This time, he spoke aloud.

Not a spell.

Not a command.

A name.

"Elyrion."

The pulse returned.

Stronger.

Held.

And somewhere in the broken weave of air, a light shimmered—like a dream not yet formed, stirring for the first time.