Few would believe that the area they descended into had been nothing more than farmland only a few years ago. Now, it was part of the ever-expanding, sprawling metropolis that Samar Patag had become, stretching over fifty miles from the city’s original center.

  The unprecedented prosperity of Saunak’s Prana Distributor had demons flocking from across the realm, leaving their nomadic villages to settle in the new cities springing up seemingly everywhere, and the stronghold of Vir’s power drew in more than any other city in the realm. It was little wonder why.

  Part of it, undoubtedly, was borne from a desire to live near the figure the realm now universally heralded as a deity.

  It was, however, also a practical measure.

  With the sheer number of Ash Tears opening across the realms, the safest place was near those capable of dealing with them.

  And despite Vir’s best efforts to train his best and brightest Asuras, there were only two such entities across all the realms capable of the feat. Vir himself and Ashani. The Creator of Paths as she'd come to be known.

  Ashani and Maiya handled the threats in the human realm, while Vir dealt with those that plagued the demons, supported by Cirayus and the others.

  It was as efficient a system as could be, yet two beings, no matter how powerful, were scarcely enough to patrol a single country, let alone two realms.

  Vir and Maiya arrived to find a sight that had tragically become commonplace as of late.

  Dozens of demons lay dead on the ground, and no one was spared.

  For this was not an enemy that could be reasoned with. Not an enemy that felt pity or mercy.

  Prana was indiscriminate in its lethality, and everyone from battle-hardened warriors to small children lay dead before the rip in space. Only a small team of Asura, who'd destabilized the Tear with Saunak's device, remained able, tending to the wounded and ferrying them away from the area.

  Wasting not a moment, Vir rushed to the source of all the death. Cycling prana, he sucked the energy powering the Tear into his body, closing it for good.

  Or at least, until it opened again. Though shut, the scar in reality would always remain. Always weaker than its surroundings.

  “This area will need to be cordoned off,” Maiya muttered, coming up beside him.

  “How many do we have now?” Vir asked, despite not wishing to know the answer.

  “Too many to count. And it’s only going to get worse.”

  In all the years, Vir, Saunak, and Ashani had found no solution for restoring these rips in the fabric of the world to their former strength. Once wounded, reality forever stayed that way, and the one solution that might have worked—Iksana's Reality Inversion—had been lost to time.

  “At this rate, there will scarcely be a safe path for the people through the city,” Vir muttered. As every Tear further corrupted their reality, every cordon serving as a bleak reminder of the blight that assaulted their universe, Vir wondered how long the peoples’ faith in him would last.

  Vir looked around, mourning those who had fallen. The silence soon gave way to wails of despair as family and friends ran to their loved ones, only to find their lifeless forms.

  Some fell to their knees in grief, clutching the bodies of their children, while others wailed, their glares demanding answers from Vir, but too fearful to voice their complaints to their so-called deity.

  Several turned to Vir for help, pleading for him to bring their dead back. But all he could do turn his back and walk away, dying just a little more every time he did.

  He had tried, once, to explain the limits of his power to the people, to convince them that even he could not defy death. But none had believed him. Some cursed him, accusing him of withholding his strength, refusing to believe that a being like him could be bound by such mortal constraints, while most simply despaired further.

  Vir knew now that no words would soothe their suffering. Not even from the lips of someone they considered a deity.

  In time, Vir had given up on trying to console others, withdrawing into himself, instead. Outwardly, he was stoic, but inside, each death was another scar on his soul, fueling the endless nightmares that plagued him.

  He knew better now than to think he could save everyone. How many thousands—tens of thousands—of demons had died because he’d been too slow or too exhausted to close the Tears in time?

  Though his body required little rest and almost no sustenance thanks to his burgeoning prana, he could only be in one place at a time, after all. There were only so many days and weeks on end he could spend running from place to place before he succumbed to fatigue.

  And with the fabric of reality stretched so thin, with the dozens upon dozens of Ash Tears ripping it apart, he could no longer rely on Ashani to create the kind of Gates she once had. Doing so had become far too dangerous.

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  It was now beyond doubt that each new Gate weakened the fabric of reality further, allowing new Tears to open more easily. The Fateweavers knew this, and through whatever means they used to monitor the realms, they seemed to target those weak points deliberately.

  Because of that, the number of Gates they maintained had been reduced to the bare minimum, which, of course, slowed their response times drastically.

  Despite her ability to create them anywhere at any time, even Ashani could no longer risk frequent travel. Over the years, she had traversed nearly the entirety of both realms, allowing her to create Gates almost anywhere.

  Yet she now reserved her abilities only for true emergencies—for the largest Tears. The ones that could devour cities.

  Maiya hugged Vir without a word, leaning her head against his as they walked back toward the airship. There was nothing left to say. Everything that could have been said had been said many times before.

  By now, both understood that each other’s presence was their only solace. As much as these deaths weighed on Vir, they did the same for Maiya. As he was the one demons worshipped, Maiya was lauded as humanity’s savior. His counterpart in the human realm.

  She, more than anyone else alive, understood the depth of his suffering.

  “This can’t continue,” Vir muttered.

  “But you’re needed elsewhere,” Maiya said softly.

  She knew, of course, that every second he wasn’t out there sealing Tears meant more lives lost. Every moment of inaction added another name to the weight on his conscience.

  There was little either of them could do, yet unless he found a way to end this for good, unless he discovered a means to stabilize the very fabric of reality, there would be no end to this death.

  The Fateweavers had launched an all-out war upon the realm, and they would not stop until it lay in ruin.

  He was trapped in the position he hated most. Being forced to trade lives for precious hours of seclusion. Those few hours were all he could afford to spend deep within Mahādi, where time flowed fastest, seeking to unravel the mysteries of Janak’s Chambers.

  “I’m going back,” he said at last.

  Maiya nodded silently, fully understanding what this would mean for the realm.

  They returned to Samar Patag the same way they had left, landing softly upon the castle’s rooftop platform.

  Maiya kissed him and bid him farewell. “I truly wish you the best of luck, Vir,” she said softly. “I’ll do what I can on my end.”

  “I know,” Vir replied with a faint smile—one of the few he could still manage these days.

  Maiya disappeared through the gate before anyone could see her, leaving Vir to make his own journey back through the chain of Gates that led to Mahādi.

  Once there, he pushed deeper and deeper into the city’s core—an area that had once been entirely off-limits due to its lethality. Both due to the prana and the deadly creatures that roamed there.

  Yet Maiya was not the only one who’d grown these past years. Vir’s prana capacity was now so great that he could withstand the prana found even here. As for the Ash Beasts, he’d developed several strategies to deal with them, though creatures like the Prana Swarm were still beyond him.

  As beings of pure prana, he was quite certain they would always be.

  Still, Vir did not need to combat Prana Swarms to scour the city’s core for traces of Janak.

  Yet despite his efforts, he found no sign of the man. No entrance to the central spire around which the largest Prana Swarm in existence circled—the one the Children of Ash worshiped.

  Not that Vir had truly expected one. If the nightmares had taught him anything, it was that the path to Janak would not be easily undertaken. It would be neither short nor safe, even for him.

  All of this, he had gleaned from Janak’s primordial chambers. Or rather, the manifestation of the chambers within his Chakra mindscape.

  Sitting cross-legged atop a spire near the city’s center, Vir looked upward. Above him drifted the colossal Wyrm—its titanic body floating high above the central spire like some immortal guardian.

  Closing his eyes, Vir opened his Crown chakra and entered his mindscape.

  For the longest time, he had wondered what the purpose of Janak’s primordial chambers truly was. He had unearthed them all some years ago. Each ostensibly taught a particular Ultimate Bloodline Art.

  Most he had already mastered by the time he found the chambers. The others, such as Reality Inversion—the ability to rewrite causality itself, to alter the tapestry of the world itself—had been lost irrevocably to time.

  Perhaps for the best. Vir shuddered at the thought of such a powerful art existing today.

  If only it weren’t for the cryptic message Janak had left him back when he first opened the Crown.

  Do not attempt to find me until you have inscribed them all.

  Yet what choice did Vir have now? The realms were falling apart at the seams, and before long, there would be nothing left to save.

  A perfect facsimile of the three realms came to life before Vir, devoid only of people.

  For a time, he had wondered why such a place existed at all, only stumbling upon the truth when he had visited one of Janak’s chambers in his mindscape on a whim.

  It was then he discovered that the chambers that existed in the real world were nothing but shadows. Illusions of their true forms.

  Their purpose was not training or meditation, but as a veil, meant to deceive those who saw all and heard all. To blind eyes that could not be blinded, who watched every corner of existence, and felt the heartbeats of every living being in the realm.

  It was the reason why no Imperium Automatons bore any resistance to Chakras.

  For Chakras had not existed in the world prior to the fall of the Imperium.

  Janak had created it. Had seeded it into the world, and had taught the first demons how to foster it.

  All so he could convey information securely, to those who needed it most.

  The mindscape was a space detached from all planes of reality. A separate realm locked within his own consciousness, where they could neither see nor hear.

  A place for secrets of the darkest kind.

  And oh, what secrets Vir had learned there.

  How the Fateweavers were entities that existed beyond the realms. From a space vaster than any of them could ever imagine.

  There, Vir had learned of the experiments Janak carried out. Was taught a sliver of Imperium knowledge and came to know of the inconceivable power the Fateweavers wielded.

  He had uncovered countless truths… yet not the ones he needed most.

  The Lost Arts were nowhere to be found, which baffled Vir to no end. Why convey other information, but not this? That which Janak himself called crucial?

  Or had they been lost to time? Faded from memory with each passing incarnation?

  Vir desperately hoped not.

  But the Arts weren't all that was missing. The entrance to the journey that would take him to Janak, and whatever destiny Fate had in store for him, was also hidden.

  On this, at least, there was hope to be had.

  He knew where the issue lay, of course. Because he had not obtained the Ultimate Arts lost to the ages, he could not access the memory Janak had hidden away for him. The vision that would reveal the path once he was ready.

  Vir had respected the god even before the revelations. That admiration had only grown as he learned more of Janak’s brilliance over the years, and as such, he was loath to override the guardrails the old god had put in place.

  But time was no longer a luxury he could afford.

  It was an inelegant, desperate solution.

  It was, also, the only path left.

  Summoning all his will, Vir cracked open his Chakra world, shattering the cohesion of his mindscape. Something few even knew was possible, and fewer still believed was sane. It was Janak himself who had taught him, right here in this mindscape.

  Vir did it not for power or personal gain, but to grasp, he hoped, the key to salvation.

  For all the realms, and for himself as well.