The Axial Verge lay stretched across the void like a wound in the fabric of reality—a place where the light of stars dimmed and silence pressed against the soul. It was not a line but a vast and shifting realm, a domain where galaxies held their breath. Mist shimmered across the boundary, silver and silent, coiling in ever-changing shapes. This was no ordinary fog. It swallowed sound, dispersed light, and stripped even divinity of its footing. Here, Aether—the energy that powered divine essence—vanished entirely.
To mortals, it would be death. To the demi-gods, it was a passage of trials.
The Riftwalker had arrived first. Long before the others, he had anchored a tear in space—a rift carved and sealed by his special affinity to fold the edges of reality. Now, the tear shimmered like a mirror held between thoughts, warping as the other demi-gods emerged through it.
They came in silence.
The Story Seeker, robed in flowing dusk and flickering light. Veilmother, veiled in shadow, her breath fogging in the Aetherless chill. The Gilded Maw, in a golden robe- his golden overcoat flowing in space. Seraphina, the Sanctis Radiant—wings folded, eyes glowing with silent grace. Baraxion — Lord of Embers and Infernals. The Dreamweaver, wrapped in drifting veils of slumber. Lady Nymera, still and unreadable. The Watcher, who blinked from frame to frame, as though memory itself struggled to hold her. Lady Solcraven, the Concordant Warden, wearing pure white armour and Her long, straight black hair is tightly braided down her back, and her silver-gray eyes flicker like molten steel held just before the forge. And lastly, the Geartouched Father—Gearfather—who strode into the verge not for conquest, but knowledge.
"We move fast," Riftwalker said, his voice tinged with dry amusement. "The rift won't hold long beyond this. No shortcuts into the Second Node, after all."
Beyond the silver mists loomed the seal.
It shimmered faintly, visible only to those who knew where to look: a vast lattice of golden runes and threads of logic. It wasn't just a barrier; it was purpose. A line drawn in divine law, denying entry to the uninvited. The Mist of Realms swirled endlessly around it, vapor that peeled divine flesh and unraveled the essence of the weak. Already, lesser souls had tried to cross in centuries past. Their fragments floated in the mist, screaming silently.
The demi-gods, without Aether, were certainly more vulnerable—but not helpless. Each of them carried vast reserves of Aether within their cores, enough to endure and fight even in places where the surroundings offered none.
Gearfather stepped forward and unslung a black, cubic container, etched in runes that shifted when not watched. He placed it gently onto a floating shard of stone, and with a soft click, opened it.
From within emerged Entropy.
It didn't shine or pulse. It absorbed. Light dimmed around it. The air grew still. It looked like a shifting fragment of black crystal suspended in motionless flame, wrapped in a language not meant to be spoken. Entropy pulsed like a held breath, and the Verge seemed to recoil slightly.
Gearfather began the activation.
He drew out sigils in the air, not with his fingers, but with thought. Symbols burned and folded into one another. Aetherion, already stored within the artifact, ignited the process.
While he worked, the others prepared.
The Story Seeker unwrapped six books from starlight and thought, their covers each etched with a different emblem: flame, wind, ice, stone, water, and lightning. The books pulsed in resonance, awaiting the breach.
Veilmother floated five black marbles in her palm, each one absorbing light like miniature black holes.
The Gilded Maw rolled four golden coins across his knuckles, each coin engraved with a screaming face locked in ecstasy.
Seraphina, the Sanctis Radiant, held aloft nine spheres of light, each one glowing with faint hymns of unborn lives.
The Lord of Embers and Infernals conjured seven volcanic stones veined with molten magma, each one pulsing with restrained fury.
The Riftwalker retrieved two necklaces, one shaped like a crescent moon, the other a twisted helix.
"Quality over quantity," he said with a smirk, glancing at Seraphina and Baraxion.
Seraphina simply snorted, her light brightening slightly.
Standing apart from the banter, Solcraven, the Concordant Warden, opened her palm. Four slender metal rods, polished obsidian with glowing runes, rotated in flawless unison above her hand — each holding a soul in perfect stasis. The rods emitted no heat, no aura, only the unsettling feeling of witnessing pure balance.
Her sharp gray eyes didn't shift from the Mist of Realms, where the entropy artifact's energy had begun to subtly distort space.
She spoke — curt, precise, devoid of tone.
"The artifact is disrupting latent symmetry. I sense a polarization spike thirty clicks outward."
The others paused. Even Riftwalker frowned.
Solcraven's eyes flared as a glowing grid of vectors and axis-lines unfolded around her, mapping not just space, but causal balance. She moved a single rod through the grid. It hummed, then stilled.
"No retaliation from Omniscript yet. But it's… watching," she said. "As if it's measuring us."
Gearfather, still assembling runes along the entropy container's black frame, merely nodded.
"Then it means we've not yet crossed the threshold," he muttered. "Good. But when we do, it will remember."
"Balance must be kept," Solcraven said softly. "Even if we must tip it for a moment."
______
The Watcher blinked in and out of visibility, then revealed five spherical objects that flickered between existence and absence, time refusing to define them.
The Dreamweaver released six pink-hued rubies, each surrounded by wisps of silent dreams.
Lady Nymera held only one item: a pure white gem. No one asked why. None dared.
Only Gearfather remained apart, his hands still weaving The Core of Entropy into function.
These were the containers of souls—unmarked, abducted from the Milky Way galaxy, held in stasis to survive the crossing. Each soul was housed in a vessel designed to deceive, protect, and deliver.
______
From the black cubic container, the Entropy Core pulsed. The stored Aetherion surged outward in an uncontrollable cascade, lashing the surrounding void with blinding radiance and screaming silence. Even the demi-gods, lords of galaxies and titans of power, instinctively raised their barriers — some out of caution, others out of awe.
The Gearfather, eyes narrowing beneath his mechanical helm, took a step back.
Then the Entropy began to vibrate.
Not physically — but in concept, in truth. As if reality itself struggled to contain its meaning. Symbols of forgotten ages ignited across its surface, runes flickering between ancient logic and cosmic rebellion. A deep hum rippled through the Mist of Realms, shaking the very boundary between galaxies.
Suddenly, everything went still.
No sound. No breath. No pulse of Aether.
Then—
SHRIIIP!!
A tear—
Not of matter,
but of law itself.
Even in the silence of space, a sound—like fabric being unraveled by a god—seemed to echo across the veil. The mist recoiled, whether in reverence or fear. Before the Core of Entropy, the golden web of the Seal shimmered, its surface etched with runes older than Time itself.
And then, impossibly…
A crack.
Thin as a hairline. Yet deeper than infinity.
The breach had formed.
The threads of divine law had loosened—if only for a moment.
Entropy had made its plea.
One by one, the containers drifted forward into the breach, glowing or dark, humming with purpose. They passed through the lattice unseen, guided by anchors, runes, and fate.
Once beyond the Seal, they would navigate to specific planets—hidden waypoints charted by each demi-god's designs. They would descend quietly, each aiming for a womb where a body had not yet received a soul. For in the Second Galaxy, the Omniscript allowed only one path:
Rebirth.
No soul from outside could overwrite a marked one.
Once a lifeform dies, neither its body nor its soul can be repurposed. The moment of death severs the bond irrevocably — and Omniscript ensures that no foreign soul may inhabit what once belonged to another. Even a recently deceased vessel becomes inert to outside influence. Only those with specific abilities — such as possession, necromancy, or high-tier soulcraft — can bypass this rule, and even then, they operate on borrowed time and broken laws.
In a system-bound galaxy, true transmigration is impossible unless the soul binds before the native mark is applied.
But within the unformed fetus, they could merge. The foreign soul would be accepted, marked by the Omniscript as native before it realized the difference.
Thus, each soul would be born anew, cloaked by time, power sleeping deep until age twelve.
Arkin Zel's soul—held within the sixth book of the Story Seeker—glowed faintly as it slipped past the boundary. It descended not toward stars, but toward the waves of a distant world. A storm waited there, and in its heart, a child yet unborn.
In silence, the books vanished into the cosmos.
One by one, the soul-containers vanished into the breach, streaking across the Second Node in blinding arcs of color and force — like comets carrying secrets. Each took its own path, slicing through space in light-years, untraceable, unstoppable. And when the last of them passed through, the entropy dimmed. The golden runes of the Seal flared… then stitched shut once more. The breach healed — seamless, as if it had never been torn open.
The demi-gods watched in silence. Not as mentors.
But as gamblers.
Was it really that easy? Could fate be so obedient?
The players were in place. The proxies had been sent.
Yet proxies do not always remain pawns.
For once someone tastes true power… they never stop at a sip.
And as for the boy who followed the lightning and storm?
He was never meant to play by the book—
He was born to burn it and write his own.