Adrian and Aurelia drifted through the void, their destination was one of the twenty-three star systems now under the banner of the Origin Clan.
Out of the twenty-three systems they controlled, only a handful of planets were habitable worlds. Others were just fragile celestial bodies floating around.
Their plan was clear. Move the habitable worlds and rare resource important celestial bodies.
Varik had compiled the list before they departed. Thirty-two planets worth saving, worth bringing together.
Their first destination was a planet with oceans tinted sapphire blue and green. From orbit, it looked peaceful.
Millions of lives thrived after the Origin Clan took over the planet, but the beings had no idea that the very ground beneath their feet was about to be moved through the stars.
Aurelia glanced at Adrian, her essence flaring faintly around her. "Are you sure?"
"If we fail, millions will die."
"We won't fail," Adrian said simply.
He closed his eyes, his Source Eyes activating. The world unfolded before him in layers of mana.
Veins of energy ran through its crust, the pulse of its core glowing like a heart of molten silver.
He could see it all, the rivers of ley energy, the fragile shield of atmosphere, the lives that clung to its surface.
They extended their essence, two waves of space energy wrapping around the planet, threading through the world's structure.
Slowly, the planet began to move.
The stars around it distorted, the light bending as gravity itself was rewritten. The surface trembled, oceans roiled, but held.
Adrian adjusted the compression fields instantly, tightening his control.
They were moving a world.
And every second, the scale of it sank in, the sheer immensity of what they were attempting.
Aurelia's breathing steadied into rhythm. Her essence pulsed in perfect synchronization with his.
They moved carefully, calculating the pull and counter-pull of cosmic forces, stabilizing what could not be allowed to break.
Even the smallest error could tear the world apart, scattering it into ash and silence.
Hours turned into days. They could not travel fast, too much speed would unravel the planet's balance.
But as time passed, their movements grew smoother.
Adrian's essence adapted faster than Aurelia's.
He learned the pulse of the void, the rhythm of planetary flow.
By the third day, he was already moving faster than she could follow while still maintaining full control.
She grit her teeth but said nothing.
His Source seed refined the spatial concepts with every passing hour, absorbing patterns she had taken centuries to master.
By the fourth day, Aurelia could only watch him, his body outlined by a faint radiance, his essence coursing through the planet like an invisible heartbeat.
"You're already faster than me," she admitted quietly.
Adrian didn't answer.
A week later, they crossed the Orion Arm border and arrived at the coordinates Adrian had chosen.
From a distance, the first thing they saw was the primitive human world, the one Adrian had saved when he first entered the galaxy.
He guided the planet he had carried to rest in a gentle orbit nearby. The movement stirred no storms, caused no quakes.
The transition was perfect.
Through their space domains, they could see the state of the primitive world now, the small settlements, the smoke from cooking fires, the women and children moving through the forests, brimming with life.
Aurelia smiled faintly. "They're thriving."
Adrian's gaze softened. "They deserve peace."
Then, turning to her, he said, "Go back to the hub. I'll handle the rest."
"The speed I'll move at next will be too much for you to sustain while holding essence."
She hesitated, wanting to argue, but she finally nodded. "Don't overextend."
Adrian smiled faintly. "When do I ever?"
She gave him a look that said always, then vanished through space, leaving him alone among the stars.
The next few weeks blurred into a rhythm of impossible labor.
Adrian traveled from one Origin Clan star system to another, wrapping entire planets in his essence and dragging them across light years of void.
He moved them like pieces on a galactic chessboard, aligning them according to a pattern he had designed, a system built for balance and beauty.
Each journey refined his control. Each planet taught him something new.
By the time he reached his tenth planet, he could move them in less than a few days each.
His Source Eyes mapped every gravitational pull, every atmospheric layer, every fragile ecosystem clinging to survival.
Each time, he returned and placed them perfectly.
Planets with oceans, planets with forests, planets thick with mana, each one found its place. Moons orbited in perfect harmony.
Suns were positioned to illuminate every world.
And at the center, Adrian placed a massive, barren world of stone.
This would become the Origin Construct, a world forged, not born, the heart of the future capital.
By the time he finished gathering the worlds, he had moved thirty-two inhabited planets, creating a new star system by his own hands.
This included the human planet that Kaelith showed him.
He floated in the void, gazing at what he had built.
Thirty-two worlds orbited in synchronized patterns around the central barren planet. Two suns burned at calculated distances, bathing every world in light.
The primitive human world rested safely in the outer ring, protected by the others.
But he wasn't done.
He turned his gaze toward the unclaimed prize, the star systems once owned by the Emerald Serpent Clan.
The empire still hadn't transferred ownership to the Origin Clan. Bureaucratic delay, they called it. But Adrian no longer cared for their excuses.
Those worlds belonged to him by blood and victory.
He entered the first of the Serpent star systems. What he found churned his gut.
The planets were scarred. Many were nothing but vast mines hollowed out for mana crystals.
Others… were worse.
Worlds filled with enslaved alien women, used as offerings for rituals Veythar and his clan members had conducted. Their essence signatures still tainted the atmosphere, soaked into the ground like poison.
Adrian stood above one such planet, silent. The air itself seemed to weep, thick with lingering despair.
Then he extended his hand and began to cleanse it. His essence flowed downward, burning away the residual corruption.
The screams of what once was faded into silence.
"These worlds will change," he said softly. "I'll make sure of it."
And so he began to move them too, one by one, adding each cleansed world to his growing star system.
The Emerald Serpent Clan owned thirty-six star systems, with countless worlds. The process took weeks, but he moved through the void, tireless and resolute.
Each planet he touched, he cleansed. Each world he moved, he positioned with care.
Finally, he reached the last of the Emerald Serpent star systems.
One planet remained, dark green, veiled in mist.
He approached it, wrapping his essence around it.
But the moment his essence touched it, something lashed out.
A green blade of corrosive essence burst from the planet's surface, tearing through the void toward him. It slashed through his essence field like acid through silk.
Adrian reacted instantly, warping space and slipping aside. The blade carved a hole in the void where he'd stood.
His eyes narrowed. "That essence… Veythar's corrosion?"
Before he could investigate further, a voice thundered from the planet's surface, so loud it shook the nearby moons from orbit.
"DAMN YOU, VEYTHAR!"
The roar bellowed. "YOU DARE BREAK OUR PACT?! WE AGREED, NO INTERFERENCE WITH MY WORLD!"
The void seemed to vibrate with fury.
"YOU PROMISED, SNAKE! I SHOULD NOT HAVE BELIEVED YOU!"
Adrian froze mid-space. That wasn't Veythar.
Someone else was on this planet, unmistakably Stellar.
And whoever it was… had seemed to have once made a pact with the mad serpent.