God’s Tree

The days passed.

Argolaith did not attend his classes.

He did not train.

He did not sleep much, either.

Instead, he searched.

Through every tower. Every archive. Every whisper-soaked hallway of the Grand Magic Academy.

He needed one thing:

A way to isolate Elyrion.

To keep his realm from touching the world that had become his second beginning.

But the academy—it didn't want to help.

Not intentionally.

The place was filled with knowledge, yes—but also locked doors, sealed texts, and libraries that moved when no one was looking.

Magic had a mind here.

And it liked its secrets.

He started in the main archive, beneath the Rune Weaving Department.

There, he read through dozens of codices on dimensional harmony, searching for even a line about severing resonance between forming realms.

Nothing.

Most books only covered what could be done—never what shouldn't.

Those were the books hidden deeper.

He left when the candles dimmed on their own and the shelves began to whisper to each other.

Next, he explored the upper observatories, where star mages mapped paths across invisible skies.

He asked no questions.

He listened.

And he followed a trail of rumor—about a hidden room called the Spindle, where dimensional drift was once studied before it was shut down for being "too erratic."

It took three nights, a stolen chalk thread, and a mirror shard to find it.

It wasn't a room.

It was a hole in the floor of the observatory dome, lined with starlight glass. It pulsed like it remembered being important.

But it offered no answers.

Only more silence.

He continued.

Down into the alchemy caverns, where steam never stopped rising.

He bribed old potionmasters for access to their storage logs—looking for references to "realm-binders," "void brackets," "spatial anchors."

Most were fiction. The rest were failures.

He read them anyway.

Every page.

He memorized even the smudged diagrams.

Because maybe—just maybe—the answer wouldn't be in a spell.

Maybe it would be hidden in the intention.

One night, just past midnight, he stood alone in the Shadow Garden—a black grove of silent trees that only grew under the academy's crescent moons.

It was said they grew along the ley-fractures—fault lines in magic no one liked to admit were real.

And as he stood there, watching the silver leaves twitch in a wind that never touched his skin, he whispered:

"If there's anything left from those who've tried before me… show me."

The leaves trembled.

And one branch—just one—bowed downward.

At the base of its trunk, buried beneath the moss, he saw the faintest glimmer of ink on stone.

A sigil.

It was old. Faded.

But it was a realm anchor. A design from another age.

One meant to tether a realm… and then cut it free.

His heart pounded.

He copied the sigil carefully, tracing every line, every slash of the unknown rune.

Who left it here?

Why was it buried in the garden of forgotten magic?

And why did the shape of the sigil feel like it had been waiting to be remembered?

Back in his chamber, he laid the sketch before Elyrion's floating core.

The cube hovered close, and for the first time in days—it pulsed in agreement.

This sigil—this forgotten thread—might be the key.

Not a spell.

Not a weapon.

A sacrifice.

Not of blood.

But of connection.

The sigil glowed faintly now.

Not from Argolaith's cube. Not from his hand.

It pulsed on its own.

He stared at it, laid bare across the smooth stone slab he'd conjured as a base for Elyrion's construction array. Its curves were imperfect—aged and slightly wrong by modern standards. But that was the point.

It wasn't meant for this age.

Argolaith traced one of the outer loops with a fingertip, his mana gently humming in his skin.

The cube drifted beside him, unusually quiet.

Then something happened.

The lights in the chamber dimmed.

Not from the glyphs.

Not from the spells.

From memory.

A presence rippled through the sigil like a tremor, and the world around Argolaith shifted—colors stretching, textures melting. His feet were no longer touching the floor.

He was stepping into a memory.

Not his.

Not the cube's.

The sigil's.

He blinked.

And found himself in a courtyard, lit by a pale orange sky. The trees here weren't the black-veined shadows of the academy—they were older. Towering. Each one lined with glowing runes that pulsed as if alive.

He couldn't move.

He could only watch.

A tall woman stood at the center of the clearing, carving the very sigil he had just uncovered—carving it into a black, jagged stone with a chisel that glowed white-hot.

Her robes were dark green, long, woven with a filament of gold threading that shimmered with each breath. Her hair was cut short, her eyes sharp and gray. She looked tired.

Worn.

But not broken.

Around her floated an orb of light, slightly cracked and flickering. FirstpublishedonM|V|L!EMPYR.

Argolaith could feel it instantly:

A realm-core.

She spoke.

Her voice echoed in the memory like wind speaking through leaves.

"You don't deserve to be broken for what I failed to protect."

The orb pulsed once—faintly, sadly.

She paused in her carving.

"You wanted to live."

"You still do."

She pressed her hand against the stone, over the incomplete sigil.

"But if they find you tethered to this world again, they'll pull you apart strand by strand. I'm not going to let that happen."

She drew the final line.

The moment it connected, the realm-core flared and vanished.

Gone.

Severed.

And with it, the light in the sky above began to fade.

She fell to her knees beside the stone and whispered something.

Argolaith couldn't hear it.

The memory was pulling away.

The world unwound.

He woke with a start, breath sharp, the sigil before him once more.

The cube spun slowly, silent.

But now he understood something more.

The sigil didn't just isolate a realm.

It hid it.

Protected it.

Even if it meant tearing it from everything.

Even if it meant the world forgetting it ever existed.

And someone—long ago—had paid the price for that decision.

The memory did not end.

It shifted.

Time folded again, like a page turning without hands.

Argolaith found himself in a cold room now—stone walls, empty shelves, and a cracked archway that opened to a black sky filled with stars that refused to blink.

The woman knelt beside a floating shard of light.

A fragment.

All that remained of the realm-core she had hidden.

Her robes were tattered now.

Her eyes dull.

She wasn't crying—but grief clung to her like a second skin.

She spoke softly, to no one.

"They said realms are reflections of will."

"But they never said what happens when your will breaks."

The shard pulsed dimly, as if answering.

"I see you in dreams," she whispered. "Not alive, but not gone."

She stood slowly.

Her left arm was gone, replaced with a wrap of glowing thread magic—stitched into her shoulder like a wound trying to rewrite itself.

"If anyone finds this sigil… I hope they finish what I couldn't."

She took the shard.

Pressed it into a scroll case etched in blood and ash.

And stepped into the wind.

As she walked into the darkness, the stars above her shifted—

Not fading.

Watching.

Like they remembered her.

Even if no one else would.

The memory ended.

Argolaith exhaled hard, knees slightly buckling as he returned to his chamber.

The sigil still glowed.

The cube hovered, pulsing slowly—syncing with his heartbeat.

The woman had done what he was trying to do.

But she had done it in desperation.

In loss.

Argolaith had the chance to do it by choice—with clarity.

Not to destroy. Not to hide. But to protect.

He stepped toward the suspended lattice of Elyrion's realm-core.

The light inside it flickered like a candle held in the cupped hands of fate.

He took out a smooth obsidian slate, etched the ancient sigil into it by hand, and held it between his palms.

The cube floated higher, aligning its runes in a spiral.

Elyrion pulsed.

Not in pain.

Not in protest.

In trust.

Argolaith closed his eyes.

He whispered:

"I'm not cutting you away. I'm giving you space to grow."

He pressed the slate into the outer ring of Elyrion's spellframe.

The moment it touched—

The room darkened.

A soft ring of light pulsed outward from the core.

The floating cube blinked once.

And Elyrion's resonance—

Stopped.

Not broken.

Contained.

The spectral island in the academy's sky dimmed—still there, but sleeping again.

And Argolaith felt something anchor deep inside his soul.

Not pride.

Not power.

Alignment.

He sat down slowly beside the glowing lattice and placed a hand over it.

No more ripples.

No more danger.

Elyrion had been quieted, not silenced.

Isolated.

And for the first time since it had begun…

The realm was his alone.