The forge's glow dimmed. The storm of molten sap and divine energy settled into silence.
Hephaestus stood before the flickering soul of his descendant — trembling, translucent, and frayed at the edges.
For a long while, the Primordial of Creation said nothing.
Then he turned toward the living veins of Yggdrasil winding through the chamber, pulsing like arteries of the universe itself.
"If his body is gone," Hephaestus murmured, "then I shall grow him a new one."
He gestured to the great tree's roots. They responded like a living entity — coiling and stretching toward him, whispering in a thousand forgotten tongues.
The golden sap inside them shimmered with embryonic potential — the raw code of life.
Hephaestus extended a hand, and Karl's faint soul hovered closer, its glow weak but steady.
"Rest now, my blood," he whispered. "Let the roots cradle what remains of you."
The roots of Yggdrasil parted, revealing a hollow chamber — a divine cocoon filled with liquid light. Slowly, Karl's soul descended into it, sinking into the glowing substance like a seed returning to the soil. The moment it touched the sap, the entire Cradle trembled. The tree recognized him.
Light cascaded upward, wrapping the chamber in living vines and sigils.
Hephaestus placed both hands on the glowing surface, closing his eyes.
But as he reached inward — forging mental blueprints, sculpting shapes and systems for a new body — he hesitated.
"No," he muttered under his breath. "This isn't enough."
Kaiser tilted his head. "What's wrong?"
"The body I make is a shell," Hephaestus said grimly. "A construct. A weapon. But it is not him. I can mold muscle and steel, but I cannot shape a man's reflection of himself — his image, his desire, his purpose."
He looked up toward the silent figures surrounding him, and his voice hardened with reluctant humility.
"I need help."
The chamber fell quiet.
Then, from the far side of the Cradle, a soft glow stirred.
Mist coalesced into a silhouette draped in pale veils of spectral silk. Eyes like dying stars opened — gentle, knowing, yet unbearably distant.
Thanamira, Primordial of Spirits, stepped forward.
Her voice flowed like a requiem.
"You seek to remake the body without the will that defines it."
Hephaestus bowed his head slightly.
"Yes. I can reforge his form, but I cannot know what he would have wanted to be. His soul is too faint to speak clearly, and I dare not tamper with its memory core."
Thanamira's expression softened as she approached the glowing root cocoon, her fingers brushing against its luminous surface.
"Then let me separate the layers of his being. The soul holds his essence, but the consciousness — the dreamer within — can be drawn out."
Moara frowned. "You'd risk shattering him."
"Only if I tear them apart," Thanamira replied calmly. "But if I guide the threads carefully… the consciousness can be freed long enough to converse — to choose."
Hephaestus nodded. "Do it."
Thanamira knelt before the cocoon, pressing her palm against its glow.
A pulse of ethereal energy rippled outward, and the forge's molten heart dimmed to silence.
The air thickened — as if the universe itself had paused to listen.
Whispers filled the space — not speech, but emotion: sorrow, confusion, longing. The sap surrounding Karl's soul shimmered, thinning into translucent layers until faint motes of light — thoughts — began to drift free.
Then, slowly, a figure emerged within the light.
Not flesh, not spirit, but memory.
Everything was silent.
Not quiet — silent.
The kind of silence that didn't come from the absence of sound, but from the absence of existence itself.
Karl's consciousness drifted inside it, unanchored. He tried to breathe, but remembered he had no lungs. Tried to speak, but there was no mouth.
Only thought — raw, unfiltered, echoing infinitely in the dark.
"Am I… alive?"
No answer. Only the distant hum of something colossal, like a star breathing beneath the void.
Then a voice broke through, not from outside, but from everywhere.
"His soul is secured within the root. You may proceed, Hephaestus."
Karl recognized it vaguely — the one who had taken something from him. The voice that had said "separation." Thanamira.
Then came another voice, deep and metallic, reverberating like hammers striking stone.
"Good. His essence remains stable. Now, we begin reconstruction."
Karl's awareness twitched. Reconstruction?
He tried to focus, to orient himself, but the space around him distorted — flashes of molten metal, rotating rings of glyphs, blueprints made of light hovering in the dark.
He saw them — two figures standing before what looked like an inverted sun. One wreathed in golden flame, the other in spectral pale glow.
They spoke like surgeons preparing for a divine autopsy.
"His soul is still human," said Thanamira. "Fragile. It cannot bear a vessel of your design unassisted."
"Then it shall be reforged, not replaced," replied Hephaestus. "The mind knows how to adapt. Even now, it clings to logic in a place without meaning."
Karl's vision returned as fragmented blurs of white and gold, each flicker pulsing with a hum that resonated deep within his thoughts. He was… floating.
Not falling, not standing — just suspended in a slow drift, as though gravity itself had forgotten him.
The last thing he remembered was the feeling of Thanamira's spectral fingers brushing through his chest, her voice whispering words that didn't belong to any human tongue. Then the sensation of being peeled apart — every memory, every instinct, every fragment of himself stripped free from something deeper.
Karl's thoughts spiked with panic.
"Who the hell are you?! What are you doing to me?!"