The beginning after the end

Arthur Leywin

My channels ruptured and my skin wept blood. My bones fractured and blood boiled. And still, I kept my mind focused entirely on the task, held safely outside of myself. I knew the pain was there, but this moment was too important to lose myself to something so small as the agony of my physical body's collapse. A single thread of my consciousness held all that pain at a safe distance, while my mind hovered above, watching the tsunami of aether spill out into the atmosphere.

My three-layered core, shining and weak like an overexerted limb, struggled to control the flood of aether released by the breaking of my fourth core layer. The gates inset into the core, connecting it to my channels, fluttered impotently, and the channels were completely ravaged. It took the entirety of my King's Gambit-enhanced consciousness, except for that one single thread, to hold so much power in my sway. With it, I reached both downward and up, all of my godrunes working in concert together.

Information began streaming into my head from Ji-ae through the newly forged connection with Tessia. I saw the shape of Epheotus and the Relictombs, understood the necessary physics, thermodynamics, spatial expansion and contraction, the weave of time, and warm thrumming of life that were all necessary. Above, the wound widened rapidly, and the pace of Epheotus's descent increased significantly.

The portal below began unfolding, spilling out the contents of the connected Relictombs as the first zone was dragged into the physical world from where it floated inside the void. The portal trembled with the stress of two opposing forces: the flood of aether released by my sacrifice of a core layer and the aetheric river threatening to overrun its banks on the other side. A courtyard, part of the Relictombs' first zone, crumbled and broke as the weight of gravity pulled down on it, then turned and fused back together, folding itself into new shapes.

Destruction lit up along with the rest of my godrunes as Regis linked his control of the rune itself into my insight. Streams of violet flame danced along the aetheric pathways and within the shifting space.

The spatium godrune opened Taegrin Caelum like a child's dollhouse while the newly forming structures from the Relictombs settled into the open cavities. Any unnecessary material was burned away to nothing by Destruction. Space contracted and expanded as necessary. Aetheric pathways knit new and old together. Time shivered in halting jumps as the Relictombs adjusted to the passage of real time.

Streets ribboned out of the portal, unwinding and restructuring. Buildings collapsed and reformed under the opposing pressures of the spatium godrune and Aroa's Requiem. Destruction constantly pruned what I could not use, while I held the shape of it all in my mind like a four-dimensional blueprint.

Inside the chaos of the Relictombs being unfolded and reshaped like a papercraft row boat, people screamed-all those who'd been sequestered in the Relictombs. Dozens at first, then hundreds, clutching to whatever solid objects they could hold, each one wrapped protectively in a blanket of space and time.

King's Gambit strained against the required levels of concentration. Still looking down from above, I saw myself cough up blood. My tattered body was stained crimson, Tessia's hands slick with the blood that seeped through my skin. Her tears mingled with the blood running freely from her own nose.

I hardened my focus, drawing the branches together as I struggled to reabsorb my own aether to further empower the godrune.

It would have been easier if we'd had time to clear the Relcitombs entirely, shut down all ascensions, and remove people from the first two levels. Instead, the Relictombs were packed with refugees escaping Agrona's final assault.

Like every other stage of this process, I was forced to consider the highest chance of success. Saving the people of the Relictombs would be like threading peas through the whirling blades of a thresher. The time, patience, and energy required were a sacrifice I didn't yet know the price of, just like Epheotus.

Attempting to save everyone at once could be the very reason I saved no one at all... There was a thunderous cracking from above. Too much of Epheotus had pushed too quickly through the wound without support while I was focused on the Relictombs.

King's Gambit isolated me from both the pain and fear. New insight bloomed in the blood, growing like flowers along the expanding branches. This was it, the godrune's purpose. A true sacrifice. The godrune had, so far, been held in check by my desire to retain as much of myself as possible. But I couldn't do that here, now. The price of saving the Relictombs, Epheotus, the asurans, and the Alacryans, could only be myself.

I'd already started.

My body was being eviscerated from within. My mind was pulled free of the shell. My core was shining and raw, down to three layers around the broken organic mana core. I had to go farther. Separate myself more completely.

As understanding unfolded in my brain like the Relictombs unfolding out of the portal, each branch of King's Gambit split off into a second, then each new branch grew another, and all the pain and worry, already offset, faded into meaningless background noise. My mind expanded out along the branches, holding in itself the entirety of the aetheric paths connecting every point to every other, both those already fixed within the fabric of this world and all those that were just now forming like neurons across the falling continent above.

The world itself seemed to take a breath, and within that warm wind, I saw the golden threads that tied it all together. I was at the center, uncountable threads winding around me and stretching off into the distance, to every elf, dwarf, human, Alacryan, and asura in either world. My body was lost within a humanoid shape of tightly wound, glowing golden threads.

The breath passed, and the threads flickered out of view.

In the sky above, Epheotus was no longer crumbling, now supported on a ring of pure aether. The land, like the Relictombs, condensed and reshaped as I molded it like so much clay.

Destruction danced within the aetheric pathways, racing across its surface and consuming with exacting precision.

Mile after mile of Epheotus fell through the wound as the pocket of expanded space in which it had so long existed collapsed. I had only seconds to get used to the process before it had to change again, and each step forward would make the process more complex.

"Let us help," Sylvie said firmly, sensing my tension. Like Tessia, her hands were stained

crimson with my blood.

I opened my mouth to speak, but had no voice. I just need...a bit more time.

Sylvie nodded. Her eyes shut tight. And power and aether, in the form of her aevum arts, reached out across the face of the world, slowing time to a trickle.

An opposing force pushed back. Sylvie gasped as she lost her spell, which shattered, sending a

sickening shiver up my spine. "What?" she asked, breathless.

Something was coming. A thunderstorm of a mana and aether, barely contained. Descending from Epheotus.

"Myre," I said, the name rough in my throat.

Almost all of my aether was outside my body, forming the metaphysical hands I used to mold Epheotus above and the Relictombs below. It's why I wasn't healing. Regis drew in what he needed to activate Destruction and allow me to channel it, but I otherwise held only enough to keep my ravaged body alive. Now, I struggled to claw enough back to defend us.

If Myre attacked...

"Arthur Leywin," her voice boomed through the atmosphere, deep and resonant and full of pain. "I have felt Kezess's death, but I must know... How did he die? Was it Agrona?" Her words carried a sharp but pleading edge.

I looked into the bonfire raging behind her eyes, incapable of fear. "I killed him."

There was a long, indrawn breath, like the leading edge of a storm, before she responded, voice trembling. "We brought you among us. Treated you as if you were one of us. Trained you and raised you up. Invited you into our most sacred places. Made you one of us. And you repay us-me-by killing the man who has so long kept this world safe?" Notably, I thought, she did not ask why.

Myre completed her descent, fluttering down like a leaf in the wind. Her face was a thunderhead, her eyes two points of lightning.

"Grandmother!" Sylvie shouted, flying between Myre and me. "You know he didn't have a choice. You know better than anyone else the decisions Kezess had made, and would have made again. But if you don't let us work, then everyone still here will die. Including all of your people. Kezess's death would mean nothing!"

The closer Myre approached, the smaller she seemed to become. She wasn't the young, gleaming queen who stood beside Kezess in the throne room, but she wasn't quite the wizened elder whom I had first met either. She looked old-ancient-but untamed. Like some forgotten deity. It was in that moment, perhaps for the first time, that I truly understood why we'd once thought of the asuras as gods.

Despite the moment resting on the edge of a knife, I couldn't stop what I was doing. The entire first level of the Relictombs had unspooled through the now two-hundred-foot-tall portal. Using aether to manipulate the abundance of earth-attribute mana, I drew up stone from the mountains themselves, wrapping around and filling in the open side of Taegrin Caelum, forming the base of the edifice. Very distantly, I could hear the cries and pleading of those people I'd just displaced.

Epheotus was harder. I needed Sylvie to slow down its push into this world, as the formation was exact. Ji-ae's calculations specified a strip of land exactly one hundred and forty-four miles wide. Already, the edge had gone well past the Basilisk Fang Mountains and was approaching

the eastern shores of Alacrya, and I had only moments to make the complex split into the second of three such formations that would be required to salvage Epheotus.

'Feeling awfully...thin, man,' Regis thought. He and Sylvie had no choice to coexist within the web of King's Gambit, although they had to keep their mental distance or risk their minds breaking as they attempted to follow along with all my thoughts at once.

Myre was directly in front of us now, though I hadn't noticed her move. Her eyes lingered on my state-the blood, the shaking flight, the little aether supporting my physical form. This was the moment I would learn who she truly was, in the end. Who she would choose to be.

"You're killing yourself," she said hoarsely.

Is that regret or relief in her tone? I couldn't tell. "Wouldn't...be the first time," I choked out flatly.

Her eyes flicked to Tessia, then settled on Sylvie. "I'm sorry, daughter of my daughter. I know." Her eyes closed, and she let out a weak breath. "I know."

Sylvie, eyes hard and shining, gave her grandmother a small nod, then her power was reaching out again, and this time Myre didn't move to stop her. Sylvie strained against the surging storm of aether I had just unleashed, and I held the link between us firmly in my mind, not sharing my thoughts but including her in my awareness, my link to the aetheric pathways through God Step and the formations of Epheotus and the Relictombs through the spatium godrune. Through me, her power reached the farthest corners of either world, and although she did not stop time, she eased the pressure of its passing, giving me time to work raw information and calculation into physical reality.

As the first strip of land passed over the coastline, I searched for the seam marking the

transition point I needed. "My family?" I asked Myre as I concentrated.

"Secure," she said, a rough edge to the word beneath the weight of her exhaustion. I waited for more, wanted to ask more, to demand that she explain, but her one-word answer took up all the time I had before I found what I was looking for, and all my focus returned to Epheotus. The land occluding the sky divided as Epheotus became not one but two ribbons, the second forming at a precise thirty-six degree angle as it headed in a southeasterly direction now.

A second ring required another layer of supporting aether, a new flow of Destruction and Aroa's Requiem. The tangled web that was now King's Gambit tightened as the pressure pulled it in every direction.

Sylvie's brief constriction of time slipped away again as she took a moment to rest.

Beside me, Tessia, still clinging to my arm, sagged. Her head landed on my armored shoulder too hard, cutting her above the brow. Her eyes were unfocused; she didn't seem to even notice. I pulled her more tightly to my side, unsure if she could support herself. Tess. Tessia...? 'I'm...okay.' Her thoughts were oozing and sluggish.

'The strain on her physical systems is tremendous,' Ji-ae cut in. 'This structure-what I am now-was not meant to be held in an organic housing. The amount of information is burning her up from within.'

'I said I'm fine,' Tessia shot back, lifting her head off my shoulder and pushing away from me, although not quite releasing my arm entirely. Her side was now stained with my blood-and her own.

'I'm fine, too, thanks for asking,' Regis said sarcastically with the mental equivalent of coughing

up blood.

Myre floated around to look at both of us, her brows pinched with worry. "Let me help." She held up a hand to forestall any argument. "I understand. This isn't about alliance or forgiveness but survival. The greatest price of all has been paid to buy my people a future. I won't throw it away."

She didn't wait for any further response. Mana whirled around her raised hand, bright and

potent. A dusting of aether responded, and our wounds slowly knitted.

Myre's brows fell even further, her lips turning down into a deep frown of concentration. The mana swelled, but the aether barely reacted. I could tell it was taking all of her concentration just to heal our smallest injuries.

"Focus on Tess," I ground out.

She hesitated, then turned her entire attention to Tessia. The blood trickling from Tess's nose

eased, and her expression softened somewhat.

But as the gentle healing pressure suddenly left me, I found myself choking. Looking down from above, I watched my own eyes roll back into their sockets from above. The pressure from the aether realm suddenly doubled, then tripled. The first sections of the Relictombs' second level were just beginning to come through the portal, and the building-a two-story inn that had rested on the edge of the entrance courtyard-exploded into rubble. I only just managed to shield the dozens of people who'd been crammed inside from the collapse, wrapping them in aether.

The ground beneath them cracked as huge, emerald-green vines snaked up to pluck them out of the air. Tessia shook with the effort of the conjuring, her beast will seething within her. In one corner of the web of woven thought-strands, I recognized that, as I pulled from the Relictombs, it allowed the aetheric river more leeway to twist and turn, digging away the metaphorical edges like the burrowing of animals degrading the shore of a real river. I leaned into the unexpected weight, getting it back in check. The calculations rushing to me from Ji-ae adjusted mid-stream to accommodate the increase in pressure.

There was an abundance of aether coming through now, pouring from the portal and around the edges of Epheotus, but like the aetheric river, it had its own pull, too strong for me to utilize.

There had to be some way to neutralize it, but I was at the end of my ability to concentrate and consider new information.

"Arthur."

I looked around in confusion. Grandma Sylvia? But no, of course not. I met Myre's eyes, briefly

having forgotten her presence as my mind was stretched to the breaking point.

"You're starving me out," she said, calm but forceful. "The aether is barely reacting to me. You're holding it all in your sway. You and...whatever else is here, with us. The power trying to come through with Epheotus."

I understood. What little atmospheric aether had existed here had been absorbed and utilized in the first seconds of this event, before I'd even broken the outer layer of my core to expend its reserved aether. The only aether remaining was my own, channeled through the godrunes to act on the Relictombs and Epheotus. Of course, Myre was no more capable of accessing the aether lapping around the world's edges than I was.

"But I can still help you, Arthur." Her eyes shone, despair and regret mingling with a sense of

loss and acceptance.

Then the eyes began to grow, and the face around it, widening and elongating. Her neck lengthened, her body rapidly expanding, flowing robes becoming broad, bright white scales. Wings extended out behind her, beating slowly and swirling air-attribute mana. Golden runes gleamed down her draconic face, down her long neck, and over her broad wings.

I stared into her now purple eyes. The gold markings around them blazed, then grew dim and finally disappeared entirely. Her tongue flicked out, piercing my armor, flesh, and bone. Unlike Sylvia, she wasn't able to pierce my core by herself. Instead, I had to let her in. Frozen in a moment of remembered terror, I almost rejected her.

Then...I again reached a fist of aether around my core. As the aetheric realm threatened to burst and my body threatened to fail, I needed more aether. There was less of it in the third layer than the fourth, but...

I clenched down, and the outer layer of the core shattered. The wounds of last time hadn't healed, so the aether didn't need to follow my channels, but rather, it followed the ruptured wounds riddling my body.

Myre's tongue finally pierced my core, as Sylvia's had so long ago. Wisps of golden smoke rose from my chest, crackling with amethyst sparks. When she withdrew, the blood of the wound was lost in the sea of red clinging to me and oozing between the scales of my relic armor. While Sylvia had appeared pained and weak in the aftermath of transferring her will, Myre somehow looked even more majestic. The golden runes had faded, as had the shining purple coloration of her irises, but the ancient white dragon that now hovered in front of me was no less wild and powerful looking.

"May you have the wisdom to use this insight better than I have in my many millennia of life, Arthur Leywin."

I felt the golden orb of her will resting inside the two remaining layers of my aether core, warm and comforting.

"Grandmother..."

The words, this time, weren't mine but Sylvie's. And yet, in this moment, they carried the same desperate energy that a four-year-old me had felt watching but not understanding as Sylvia sacrificed herself to save me from Cadell.

There were no other words. Myre banked away and flew down into the still-forming base of the Relictombs. I knew without a doubt that she was searching for Kezess. Reaching for the golden glow of her will, I activated it.

A rush of energy passed through me, and golden runes appeared across my armor and up my neck, interlacing with those of Realmheart.

I sensed the life forces of my companions, Myre herself, and the few thousand people who'd already been brought through from the Relictombs, packed like wogarts into the newly formed layer of the physical Relictombs. With a twist of space, I opened the way down to what had once been Agrona's reliquary.

Much of the released energy of my third core layer was lingering in and around me, although the bulk had flowed through the aetheric pathways to support my godrunes high above and far below. I drew that energy into myself, setting it to healing me.

Tessia's lifeforce was weak, her pulse sluggish, even though her mana was strong. With Myre's will active, I could feel the distance between us, the heat of her life force, and when I pushed out with aether, it flowed into Tessia. Her injuries lit up as if they'd been drawn in fire behind my

eyes. I directed aether to them-to her nerves and synapses, and the tissue of her mind full of microtears.

She immediately breathed easier.

Buildings and streets were rushing out of the portal now. With the spatium godrune, I rebuilt the city-like zone inside and around the remains of Taegrin Caelum. Aether manipulated mana to conjure and shape stone, Destruction carved away the unnecessary or unusable, Aroa's Requiem rebuilt what was left behind, and spatium reshaped the very physical reality of the zone.

Sensing the approach of the next point of demarcation in Epheotus, I prepared to stretch my webbed mind even farther. Sylvie reached out with her aevum art, against slowing time and allowing me a moment to ready myself. A third strip of land would be peeled away from the others, this one extending from the wound at a thirty-six degree angle northward of the first. My power extended across the globe now as the first ribbon of land approached Dicathen. With

my mind so entrenched into the aetheric pathways via God Step, I again felt as if I was seeing the entirety of both continents.

I saw Seth and Mayla among the crowds in Maerin town, no longer being bombarded by rubble from Epheotus and instead watching in awe as the land extended through the sky overhead; the Glayders surrounded by their council on a balcony of Etistin Palace, all watching fearfully as Epheotus cast the city into shadow; Evascir, the towering titan who had guarded the Hearth, slaughtering an Epheotan mana beast as Vincent, Tabitha, and Lilia Helstea watched in horror, their home half collapsed behind them; Helen and Durden leading the charge against a towering horned beast of fire and dark stone that approached Blackbend; the Wall, fallen, buried under the mountain; Anakasha of Clan Matali dragging her senseless father, Ankor, away from a demolished structure; and the great asuran lords, each standing within the heart of their own domains.

But I did not see my mother or sister. I could only trust that Myre had been truthful, and that they were really safe.

Nearly the entire second level of the Relictombs had been brought out of the aetheric realm, which now served as a sort of village ringing the base of the new structure that was slowly beginning to appear. A map of the Relictombs as Ji-ae saw it had already spread out through my mind, along with a blueprint that would allow us to save the important part of every zone, ensuring the aetheric knowledge that went into its creation was not lost.

And, even more importantly, creating the foundations on which everything I hoped to accomplish would soon rest.

The very last structure to come through from the second level was the Grahnbel's estate, now crowded with what I could only assume were refugees in hiding. With Myre's will still active, I felt every life within it intimately, as if I had my fingers on their pulse. I was still folding the estate into the city when the collapse of the space that had contained the second level shook the portal. The aetheric river, winding through the aetheric void on the other side of the portal, surged again, and reality itself quaked.

As the tremor shook through me, golden threads appeared in my vision again. My senses followed them to where they converged, a silhouette made entirely of the tightly wound threads of Fate hidden in the circumference of the sun, visible between two of the constantly expanding strips of land above.

As if sensing my attention, Fate's voice sounded in my head. 'Grey. Arthur Leywin. I have come to thank you. Your performance has met all practical expectations.'

I felt myself separating yet further from the center of myself, my vision-still looking down from above-floating away from my body and the presence of my companions. It's you. The river. You're pushing from the other side. I felt my anger as a distant, cold thing through the layers of King's Gambit. Why? We had an agreement.

'Your vision of the future was a wonderful thing, but it could only ever end this way. Though Agrona started the process, you've completed the act of puncturing the barrier fully, and now the aether may once again go out into the world to spread and settle, releasing the long-forced pressure. The necessity of entropy.'

At the cost of this entire world. I wanted to shout the words, but the necessary emotion wasn't

there.

'All worlds die. All stars burn out.' A scraping hum ran through the golden threads. 'You can let go now, Arthur. You have done everything required of you. If your mortal inclinations require it, consider that you have perhaps saved the entirety of the known and unknown universe at the cost of one small world.'

Aether tore through the edges of the portal, ripping it open even further, and flooded around the borders of Epheotus, shaking it like an earthquake.

One small world? I gaped at the form of golden strings. But you're from this world. All those minds and voices that combine to make you, they're from this world. Everyone that's ever existed to become a part of you. Surely some desire to protect it remains?

There was no pause. No hint that my words had sparked some consideration within the

inhuman entity. Only... 'No.'