Maxi took a deep breath to compose himself, his eyes still wide from the divine spectacle he had just witnessed. The dance of snowflakes, the animated tale of Lore and Oasis, and the grace of the Earthly Gods left him shaken.
"First of all..." Maxi began, his voice tight with a cocktail of awe and frustration.
"That was beautiful. And terrifying. At the same time."
He paused, the weight of the story settling on his shoulders. Then, with a bitter exhale, he continued,
"Second of all-why is life so unfair? Why were they blessed just because they happened to believe in something that actually existed? They were lucky-just lucky. That's all."
Colen let out a quiet sound. It wasn't quite a laugh, but coming from Colen, it probably was a laugh. In his usual cold, sharp tone, he replied,
"Maxi, you've barely heard anything yet. We're still at the beginning of the New Age of Blessings. Lore and Oasis are merely the first echoes of what's to come."
He turned to face Maxi fully now. "If you think it's unfair now... you'll be deeply shaken when we reach the Journey Through the Realm of the Earthly Gods section. There, they stop feeling like mere people... and start sounding like the main characters of a novel."
Maxi sighed. He tilted his head back and ran a hand through his hair, jealousy flickering in his heart. Dumb luck, he thought bitterly. That's what they had.
"But no matter," Colen said, brushing aside Maxi's thoughts with a wave of his hand. "Let's continue."
The snowflakes surrounding the middle of the Library began to shimmer again, caught in an unseen current. They spun faster and faster, condensing into the space before Colen's pointed finger. An ice sculpture of Oasis and Lore slowly formed once more, then was crowned in a halo of swirling snowflakes. The light reflected off them made them look divine.
The scene came back to life.
The frozen forest grew again, breathless and vast. The enormous dragon, snarled silently behind a thin veil of mist. And then-movement. The mother dragon, freed it's child then, sniffed the air. With a feral snarl, she turned her head directly toward the hidden duo.
"But Oasis acted quickly," Colen narrated. "He grabbed Lore's hand, and without hesitation, teleported them away."
The library darkened, and the image shifted.
"They reappeared atop a mountain... or maybe it was a cliff. No one knows exactly. But what we do know is that they escaped."
Maxi watched as the ice sculpture of Oasis and Lore took a long breath together, standing side by side at the mountain's edge.
"And there," Colen continued, "they felt it-the gaze. The presence of every Earthly God watching them. Not just one. Not two. All of them."
Colen flicked his fingers again. A dozen snowflakes froze mid-air, shaping themselves into colossal, unrecognizable but majestic beings. Each towered over the mountain, and though their faces couldn't be seen, the weight of their attention was palpable.
Maxi nodded slowly, understanding too well what it meant to feel the gaze of a god. He instinctively glanced to the side-not at anything specific, but at somewhere and nowhere at once. In that blurred space, he felt one of his own gods-the God of Secretive Planning-smiling at him. A smile both close and impossibly far.
He then looked down at his right arm.
His "eye symbol" was still there.
The top and right eyes stared forward, unwavering, while the left eye stubbornly gazed to the side. The eerie, smiling mouth beneath them hadn't changed either.
When do the symbols come in? Maxi wondered.
Colen answered without needing to be asked. "After the gods saved them, Lore and Oasis felt an overwhelming need to repay them. They asked for the gods' names... but the gods refused."
He narrowed his eyes. "It's common belief-one built on truth-that speaking a god's name directly to their face is the same as challenging them or a form of disrespect. And gods... do not tolerate disrespect."
Despite this, the Earthly Gods granted them a small mercy. They gave them titles, not names.
"And so," Colen continued, "Lore made a request. She asked the gods to place symbols on them. Marks of their blessings. Proof that the gods not only existed-but that they chose them. Oasis added to this, suggesting it would also serve as a vow-a symbol of their devotion, now that faith had become reality."
The ice sculptures of Lore and Oasis glowed faintly. Ancient symbols-beautiful, arcane, alive-etched themselves into the ice versions of their skin. They pulsed like living stars.
Maxi leaned forward slightly, hypnotized.
Colen's voice softened. "They tried asking the gods questions: 'Why us?', 'Did you hear our song?', 'How were your multiverses created?' No one knows which questions were answered. Only that some were."
The scene changed again.
Lore and Oasis returned to where the mother dragon had been-but she was gone. They resumed their journey in their carriage. But now, at each village, they sang their song of gods-not just about longing, but of witness. They told the world the gods were real... and had saved them.
Word spread like fire.
Colen flicked his finger again. A thin man on a throne formed in the center of the library, carved from sharp-edged ice. He oozed power-The King of Power.
"He didn't like this at all," Colen said. "So he made a decree: every kingdom was to arrest Lore and Oasis on sight."
They were arrested soon after-easily, without resistance. But when they were told they were to be executed, they escaped at night, vanishing into the forest.
"Oasis led them to Festra-his homeland. And the people there welcomed them like kin."
then the God's had a request for them: Start a revolution and Liberate the world from the rsin of the king of power."
More ice formed. Dozens of figures emerged-oni of all kinds: deer oni, bear oni, moose oni, snake oni and thhe gathered 15 worries .
"So Oasis gathered warriors," Colen said. "Some were blessed temporarily by Earthly Gods. With Lore and Oasis, they formed a rebellion. A revolution."
They struck quickly, kingdom by kingdom. The indoctrination was too strong. Each royal refused to surrender, praising the King of Power as a being greater than the gods. So they fell-every one of them.
Except the Elven Kingdom. It vanished entirely before the revolution reached it-its giant white tree disappearing into another world.
Colen's tone dropped.
"When Lore and Oasis reached the King of Power... he was no longer sane. His mind shattered by the truth he had refused for so long."
The ice sculpture of the King of Power shattered, his frozen form crumbling from his throne. His lips twitched, then contorted in grotesque, unnatural ways-stretching and twisting as if pulled by unseen hands, as though they were never meant to move at all. Slowly, the frozen figure shifted, its edges warping and distorting in a grotesque mockery of life. What had once been a regal form became something far more monstrous.
From every orifice in its body, twisted, jagged arms spurted out, gnarled and pulsating with a sickening rhythm, like the grotesque limbs of a thing that should not exist. The ice that once held form now became alive, expanding and contracting as if each muscle was a living, breathing thing. It pulsed, it throbbed, as though it had a heart that beat not with blood, but with the cold, alien rhythm of something far more ancient.
Eyes-dozens, hundreds-sprang open all over its body, sharp and unnatural, each one gleaming with a chilling, malevolent intelligence. Some eyes were embedded in the layers of ice like parasites, while others floated, detached from the creature's form. In the back of its mass, an ocean of millions of small, icy eyes drifted like fragments of some unholy sea, filled with a cold, viscous liquid that resembled blood, but was far more alien-far more wrong.
The creature's mouth, now a jagged void, was lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth that seemed to grow from the very ice itself, like they were born from the very heart of the monster. It screeched, a noise that tore at the fabric of reality itself, a sound not meant for any world but this twisted, unnatural one it now inhabited.
Angelina, pale and trembling, passed out on the floor. Maxi followed moments later.
Colen sighed, then gently tapped Maxi's forehead. Snowflakes sparked-and he jolted awake, staring at the abomination in raw terror.
"With help from the gods, Lore and Oasis defeated the beast," Colen said. "But victory was not without loss. Seven warriors unconscious. Five... dead."
"And then..." Colen's voice became hollow, distant. "As the King of Power died, something unexplainable happened. All indoctrinated humans... took their own lives. Every kingdom. Every city. Blood ran like rivers. Except for those from the Forest of Festra and the missing Elves... humanity was extinct."
Maxi stared down at himself. But... I'm human...
Colen raised a hand. "Shhhhh."
The scene changed again.
Lore and Oasis searched the throne room. They heard a cry-a baby. In a side chamber, they found the queen. Dead. Her stomach crudely sliced open.
Wrapped in blood and guts, a newborn screamed.
Colen flicked his fingers, showing the baby-a boy-with red eyes and faint breathing.
"Lore lifted him," Colen whispered. "Wrapped him in a royal cloth. He was the last human alive."
Maxi's heart pounded.
"And that baby," Colen said, "was the founder of the Bloodheart Family. The father of the new human race."
The story paused. Silence fell.
Colen turned to Maxi, his eyes colder than ice.
"Now... you wanted to know what passive blessing abilities are?"
Maxi nodded silently.
Colen spoke slowly. "They are blessings that are always active. Ones you cannot turn off. They don't need activation-they become part of your existence and they grow with your body not your power.so if you are blessedby the god of fire then you will be able to be immune to fire to a certain extent but lets say you stay somewhere reallyhot for years and you grow up there then your immunity to fire will be at lets say low level sun. anther example lets say you where blessedby the god of ice like me you would have immunity to cold to certain an extent and lets say you grow up somewhere hot your immunity to cold will stay exactly the same or in rare cases will become worse. so do you understand this ability are not ment for fighting they are mainly ment to give you an advantage on a certain area which your god is good in and you can have multiple if you have multiple gods blessing you. There are only some cases where passive blessing can actually be used for combat and i am one."
And then, Colen raised his hand one last time.
More snowflakes spiraled upward, forming a final scene. Oasis and Lore standing before a crowd of oni and humans. Holding the baby high.
Lore's voice, recreated in ice, echoed through the library.
"We were once broken. Silenced. Forgotten. We lived in a world where gods were stories-myths whispered in wind. But today, we know better.
They are real. And they chose us.
We were not born to kneel. We were born to rise.
We are the children of revolution. Of truth.
And from this day forward, we vow:
We will walk not behind gods,
But beside them."
the ice of sculpture of Oasis rank out
"My people, so many lives have been lost today, but we must recognize the true cause of this suffering. It was the insatiable greed of a king-one so consumed by his hunger for power that he sacrificed his own people to secure his place in the afterlife.
But that king is dead. He is no more. And with his death, I say we must cast aside the remnants of his reign.
It is time for a new beginning-a new era, one that rises from the ashes of his tyranny.
We shall not be bound by the things he fought so desperately to control. Instead, we shall usher in an age of gods, an age of connection with those who have watched over us, not as masters, but as allies.
I say we step into a new world-a world where we know the gods, where we trust them, where we understand them.
An age where their blessings flow freely, their help becomes our strength, and their salvation is written in our hearts and our very beings and our very souls.
i say we bring a new age with gods a new age of our involvement with them a new age of use know them trusting understanding them a new age of thier blessings thier help
A NEW AGE OF BLESSINGS!"
Maxi's eyes stung.
He didn't know if it was awe... or grief.
Maybe both.