I watched them for a long moment after the impartation ended.
They sat in a loose circle before me upon the scarred earth, six reflections of myself, now quieter than when they had first awakened. The green flames still licked at distant fractures in the land, but they no longer spread. Even chaos, it seemed, understood when something greater was unfolding.
"Begin,"
I simply lifted my hand, and the elements answered.
Fire rose first, coiling upward in a controlled spiral instead of the wild towers it had formed before. I compressed it with a slight closing of my fingers, forcing it to calm down.
Above us, the sky reacted. Red spread through the firmament in slow currents, like veins opening across a living body. Heat rolled outward but did not burn. The air shimmered, bending light until the horizon wavered.
"Refinement is not domination," I said. "It is persuasion, power responds best when it believes it has chosen obedience."
Happiness tilted its head, blue light flickering brighter.
"It feels like singing," it said, watching the flame narrow into a thin, radiant thread. "I love singing"
As it reached outward, clouds gathered without warning. Rain began as a mist, then thickened into a steady fall that washed the scorched earth clean. Each drop struck the ground with a soft glow before sinking in, leaving behind the scent of renewal.
"Do not listen to it," I replied. "Guide it and channel it"
Anger snorted, red aura flaring as it thrust its palm forward.
The sky split.
Lightning erupted across the heavens, branching endlessly like the roots of some colossal inverted tree. The bolts did not fall at random, they crawled, weaving luminous paths from horizon to horizon. Thunder followed, not as a single roar but as a continuous rolling growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Too much assertion too, destabilizes the core," I said calmly.
The flame around Anger sputtered, then shrank under my unseen correction. The lightning above reorganized itself, the chaotic branching smoothing into deliberate channels of power.
Anger clicked its tongue but adjusted, his state. His body's goow deepened, sharpening from a hazy burn into something defined.
Fear approached its element differently. The yellow figure barely extended its hand, as if expecting the air itself to bite.
The world answered immediately as the ground trembled, then cracked.
Great slabs of earth lifted slowly before settling again. A ridge forced itself upward in the distance, stone grinding against stone with a deep, patient sound. Dust rolled outward in heavy curtains.
"I don't like how it moves, everything in this damn world is scary." Fear whispered.
"It moves as a way of acknowledging your connection" I said.
Fear swallowed, then tried again.
The trembling eased, and the land settled into a quiet hush.
A faint hum spread through the space as the elements aligned with their bearers.
Love stepped forward next, and at first, nothing seemed to happen.
Then light appeared. Not from above, not from any source, but from everywhere at once. Soft radiance poured into the world, turning every edge gentle. The fractures in the land gleamed faintly as if they just woke up from a slumber.
Love pressed a hand to its chest and warmth spread through the air. Even Anger's lightning softened, its brightness losing its violence.
Sadness lifted its gaze.
It's pale blue aura expanded, and a cool hush followed. The rain slowed into drifting strands, almost suspended. Sound dulled. Even thunder seemed reluctant to disturb the quiet. The world did not feel empty, only reflective, like a held breath that might never fully release.
Desire smiled.
And for it, Darkness answered.
It did not descend like night. It grew.
Shadows lengthened despite the surrounding light, stretching in impossible directions. Patches of black gathered in the air itself and on the ground. They were deep enough that the eye could not measure them.
"So much closer now," it said. "So much more to reach."
"Oh how many secrets can I gleam from within the shadows" it added
One by one, the auras around the fragments intensified, climbing steadily until each radiated with the unmistakable pressure of mid class, low tier power.
The change did not stop there as their outlines thickened. Their lights condensed into texture, and the texture gave way to form.
Happiness looked down first and gasped.
"Oh! I have weight now!"
It stamped a foot experimentally, leaving a shallow print in the blackened soil now darkened further by rain.
Sadness flexed its fingers slowly, pale blue mist clinging to skin that no longer seemed made purely of light.
"So this is what it feels like to be substance," it murmured.
Love pressed a hand against its chest, eyes soft with quiet wonder.
"I can feel the world touching back."
Love reached for Anger's face but it swatted love's hand away, then gave love a glare that shook the bone.
Desire watched its shadow stretch and curl with clear satisfaction.
Anger fell silent after fighting off love's hands, then moved on to staring at its newly solid fists before clenching them once, testing the strength within as lightning whispered far above.
I observed without comment.
Time passed.
There was no sun to cross the sky, no shadows to stretch and withdraw, yet I felt it unmistakably, the slow accumulation of moments layering atop one another.
"We require a fixed point," I said.
I lowered my gaze toward the vast earth stretching in every direction.
"I am lost," I continued, irritation threading faintly through my otherwise even tone. "And the Void is far too much of an asshole to show me the way back."
Before another word could form, the sky detonated.
Blue.
Not merely light, but a violent bloom of it, bursting outward as if reality itself had cracked open to let color bleed through. The brilliance washed over us in a single breath.
Something rushed toward me.
Faith.
I knew it instantly.
It poured into me, warm and overwhelming, carrying fragments of reverence, memory, desperate hope. When it reached my heart, a faint ache pulsed through my chest.
So brief it was almost imagined.
Then it vanished. Then in that moment my power boiled and doubled in quantity from before. No doubt a promotion. The emotions well specifically happiness, desire and love marvelled at my climbing aura.
Seeing the phenomenon happening to me, I frowned slightly but did not dwell on it, something more important had came up.
"Come," I said, eyes already narrowing toward the horizon. "We are going to the source."
We rose together.
The sky tore around our ascent as we zipped across it, distance folding beneath our speed. Land blurred into abstraction until, at last, a city emerged.
The city of the fallen gods.
And above it— A portal. Massive, suspended like an unmoving storm.
I slowed, squinting as my perception sharpened.
Below the portal stood figures whose presence pressed outward even from that height.
They looked up, directly at me. Krussal, lifted an arm and beckoned.
I descended slightly.
"Where have you been?" Krussal demanded, voice carrying effortlessly through the open air.
I parted my lips to answer— but the portal pulsed.
Every gaze snapped upward.
Zelroth moved first.
He shot into the air and stopped before the enormous threshold, and without hesitation, he extended a hand.
It slipped through.
The space rippled around his arm. Zelroth withdrew it slowly, a smile spreading across his face.
Then he flew forward and vanished inside.
Krussal did not wait. With a powerful beat of motion, he followed, excitement evident on his face.
I watched only a fraction longer before angling myself toward the opening. The fragments trailed me without needing instruction.
Crossing the threshold felt like reading minds of multiple humans at once as voices reached me immediately.
Not conversations but chanting. Measured, and hythmic, it's intent clear. These were words being spoken by people deep within ritual.
I emerged into another world. Blue sky stretched overhead, startling in its familiarity. Beneath it lay land humming with traces I recognized at once.
My followers, Or what remained of them. I felt their signatures scattered across the expanse. Then the number decreased as my perception focused.
Thirteen.
"Only thirteen?"
From the north came one presence vastly stronger than the rest, burning like a solitary star.
"I need answers"
I leaned forward to move, but a pressure pressed in all around me. It was the world's rejection.
The same force that had once expelled me returned without mercy, slamming into my existence and driving me backward, out of the lower part of the world. Resistance was useless; the world itself refused my footing.
I was hurled upward, thrown into a vast spread of white clouds that gleamed with impossible softness before the distant city of the gods.
Far in the distance I could see the figures of Zelroth, Krussal, a man in grey tattered robes, the unmistakable figure of Tenebre in his leather armour and others I didn't recognise.
The city was already stirring and light was erupting from within, I reacted instantly.
A tear opened in space at my command, revealing the entrance to my divine kingdom.
I pointed once.
"Inside."
The fragments obeyed at once, streaking through the opening. I cast one final glance toward the city, toward the streaking of divine energies accross the sky.
Then I stepped through, the portal sealing behind me.