Resil Petranova arrived in Petrah with Balor to face an army of source wielders. The king on a throne, Mithil Petravolta, wasn’t going to hand the seat over without a fight.

  He deployed the Petrahn elite guard to deal with Resil swiftly, only to find out how much he’d been training himself. As a selectively bred monarch bloodline, both Petranova and Petravolta had more affinity to the Source than the rest of the population.

  Resil had poured years of resentment into a peculiar sort of magics that Balor found highly impressive. He could emit Source from his skin at a rate no one else could. This essentially gives him the natural ability to deflect both other magics and physical attacks.

  Combined with years of training his body to be nimble and strong, he wove through the first few elite guards without using his newly acquired god sword. He manipulated the source layer around him dynamically, using it to increase the kinetic impact of the hits.

  Flattening his hand, he fashioned the Source layer to a razor-sharp edge.

  The first few elite guards didn’t know what hit them before Resil’s hand dismembered them into several pieces each. He charged into the rest while dragging the god sword by the chain, emitting enough Source to crater the ground beneath his feet.

  The elite guard poked and prodded him systematically, trying to find a weakness as they got sliced and cleaved. Their deaths informed their peers, and the last one retreated with everything they had seen.

  The bodies around him dispersed the source energy that they contained, bursting out of their orifices and wounds. They coalesced into tiny glowing balls hovering above the fallen corpses like small stars.

  Balor’s magics relied on Source being concentrated through a specialized organ at the brainstem. These balls were the core energy that the dead individual cultivated for themselves. It contained their genetic information in Source form, a Core that could be harvested and recycled by others.

  The living beings of Veilthorn were only born with one core, whether they cultivated the Source or not. This made each core the equivalent of one life. It didn’t mean they couldn’t exceed it. Absorbing and assimilating with other cores allowed an individual to be more powerful while gaining a second life.

  The rules were simple. One needed a core that was equal to or greater than one’s own. Assimilating a lesser core simply converted it back to Source, the individual information lost like dust in the wind.

  Resil had killed people before. He ignored the elite guard’s cores. A monarch's bloodline could simply override all others. He’d just be wasting his time on Source that he already has a lot of access to.

  Petrahn civilians fled as Resil walked through the main gate while maintaining a Source layer several layers deep. Source-fueled spears and arrows flew at him from all directions, deflecting off the topmost layer in other directions. Resil didn’t bother with fighting the Petrahn city guard.

  If ranged attacks were any indication, they didn’t intend to fight a monarch either.

  Resil only met true resistance when he met a group of old Source masters with another Petravolta, wielding them as perfect soldiers. It was Gormul Petravolta, brother of the King. A man twice Resil’s age and size.

  Their battle raged at once, both of them trying to bend each other’s wills with their eyes as the Source masters attacked Resil from all directions.

  Their Source attacks were powerful enough to make it halfway through the layer, and with twenty-three of them to deal with, Resil found himself quickly overwhelmed.

  He decided to use his God sword right then.

  The problem was that Balor didn’t know what he was supposed to do. Resil thought about the world in terms of cutting and slashing things. This sword was just an allegory that he was using to visualize his powers.

  Balor could slice and cleave anyone or anything a million different ways. He didn’t know what Resil wanted, and he doubted if the boy knew it either.

  He yanked the chain of the sword, pulling it closer. Wrapping the chain tightly around his hand, he swung it in an arc, dragging it across in a circle.

  He intends to slice things. How far?

  He saw the hint of worry on Resil’s face as he realized the swing wasn’t doing what he wanted. Balor knew this was his chance to prove that he had overwhelming power.

  He acted right away. In a split second, a razor-thin thread of Source slashed across the area, slicing everything along its path. The Source masters collapsed in pieces, as well as Gormul, who got slashed across the thighs.

  Resil let go of the god sword, staring wide-eyed at the destruction he’d caused. Buildings fell around him, distant screams filling the air. The slash had hit a few unfortunate souls, mostly from the city guard.

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  He stared up at the God sword with reverence and fear. Gathering himself, he walked over to Gormul and stabbed him through the forehead, abruptly ending his screams.

  Gormul’s Source collapsed, dispersing from him as a significantly larger core emerged from his open mouth and nostrils.

  This was the first core that Resil could assimilate into himself. Another monarch core. It had never been attempted with a powerful bloodline before.

  Resil shoved the energy ball in his mouth and swallowed. His body warped and fractured, his identity shifting between Gormul and Resil. It settled in the form of something halfway between, Resil standing tall with Gormul’s height and muscles. The assimilation would settle into a more stable equilibrium after a while, but the boy had just become a man.

  Resil Petranova took the throne of Petrah after walking alone from the gate to the palace. He was the first of his kind in history. Along the way, he killed two more Petravoltas who tried to bend his will in a combined attack. One was a woman older than him and a child younger than him.

  Using the god sword, they collapsed a quarter of the palace, killing hundreds both directly and indirectly. He took the two fallen cores and ate them, intending to keep the monarch cores with him. The child didn’t assimilate. It only turned into a massive amount of Source energy that made him twice as powerful.

  Surprisingly, the woman did. She had been sufficiently stronger than his original core. Her core became Resil’s third life, and his assimilation kept him mostly male with some fading feminine traits.

  Seeing the carnage unfolding before him during the final stretch of Resil’s walk, the King of Petrah escaped through a portal right when Resil used the God sword a third time to collapse the king’s chamber of the palace.

  Resil sat upon the ruins, declaring himself King.

  No one was convinced.

  Balor intervened with a miracle, emerging from the God Sword in the form of a being made of light that perfectly fit the Petrahn image of Source God.

  From then on, Resil became known as the emperor of God. A true prophet with monarch blood fit to rule.

  Veilthorn’s first God King.

  Resil was just as surprised as everyone else when Balor performed the miracle. He stared wide-eyed at the spectacle, and he only regained his composure when everyone fell on their knees before him.

  That night of history’s fastest invasion, Resil found a secluded spot in a Petrahn Sky Stone cave, which he now owned.

  “I know I didn’t tame you, God of Veilthorn,” Resil said, letting go of the chain of the God sword. “Perhaps we should talk about the future.”

  Balor freed himself from the Source construct of the sword just as easily as before. Resil jolted when he emerged, nothing like the God of white light that people fell on their knees for. He was a shadow looming above the future emperor, wanting to talk about the future of the world.

  “You could never tame me, Resil,” Balor said, standing before him. The boy was stronger than he ever was. Three lives. Enough Source energy to blow up a mountain. Sitting before Balor, he was doing his best to hide the shudders. “I let you tame me because I saw your potential. Be at ease, child.”

  “H-how far is the gap between us?” the boy asked. “W-what made you a God?”

  If Balor had a human face, he would’ve smiled. The boy was ambition incarnate even when his limbs were shaking in fear. Now that he was God King, he wanted more.

  “I made myself your God. There is no gap between us, Resil. We are different things altogether. You may understand it one day.”

  If his rule turns me into a Dragon within his lifetime, he might see.

  “What would you do now?”

  “Our time together was short, yet most impactful. I should return to being a God now that you know I’m not a sword.”

  “T-then what is my claim to power, without you?!”

  Balor unfurled his fingers at the shell of the hovering sword that he’d come out of. It mended itself back into its true form.

  “Would you like for it to have the same destructive potential or more?” Balor asked, pausing before doing anything.

  “What?” Resil asked, gulping.

  “You don’t need me in it to do what I did for you today. I’m offering to bestow it with the power you used.”

  “You can do that?” Resil asked, before he realized how stupid he sounded. “Of course you can,” he mumbled.

  “The same or more?” Balor asked again.

  “The same,” Resil said. “It was destructive enough as is.”

  Balor poured a small amount of soul matter into the sword to function as a mechanism to repeat the same attack that he performed for the boy during the invasion.

  “There. Your sword is a more reliable tool now,” Balor said, nudging the hovering weapon over to Resil. “Use it to shape the world.”

  “Will I see you again?” Resil asked, his shudders worsening.

  “Depends if you attempt to trap me again or not. I must know. How did you manage that?”

  “T-that’s what I studied for many years. How I found out about you in Farrador’s archives.”

  “You studied traversal?”

  It seems the child is more brain than brawn. Maybe he is wasted as an emperor.

  “I-I did. With some help.”

  Balor was pleased to know this. Advancement in portal traversal would certainly globalize Veilthorn in a few decades. It could accelerate everything.

  “I want you to continue it until you have something useful.”

  “I mean, isn’t it already useful? We can travel places—”

  Indeed, the Petravolta king had escaped through one. Likely a prototype built for his safety by the latest advancement.

  “Think further. Longer.” Balor said.

  “W-what does that mean?”

  “You will figure it out within your lifetime, Resil,” Balor said, turning invisible. Resil’s orange eyes glowed as he desperately tried to see him with his Monarch eyes.

  “Wait, tell me what to do!”

  Balor turned into soul matter and exited the cave like an invisible smoke trail, leaving the God King of Veilthorn confused behind him. Telling them what and how to do was the wrong approach. Balor was done with miracles for a while. He didn’t want them to rely on their God.

  He entered an idling position above Petrah, far above in the atmosphere, where he could observe its growth. His forest experiment running in the background, and his manipulations of Petrah dealt with, Balor went into a sort of hibernation.

  He wanted to skip decades ahead at a time. If everything worked out with Resil Petranova, this would be the end of his time as a serpent.

  He stood a much better chance against that corrupted Seedmaker if he were a Dragon. He wondered what Resil would’ve thought if he knew the full story.

  The things I cannot ever tell him sleep right beneath his feet.

  Balor scoped out his sense of time. Letting the years slip by.