Night draped itself over Nirvana Prime, clear and cold and full of watching stars.
On the outskirts of the capital, high above the sleeping districts, the Aritzen estate burned with light. Lanterns glowed along carved stone walkways, windows shone, servants moved in hurried, anxious lines. Somewhere beyond the walls, a wolf howled once, long and low, before the sound was swallowed by the wind.
Inside the master bedchamber, Shinosawa Aritzen dug her nails into the sheets and tried not to scream.
"Breathe," the old midwife murmured, wiping sweat from her brow. "You're doing fine, my lady. One more push. The first child is nearly here."
Vulmar stood a few steps back, jaw tight, hands clasped behind his back with a discipline that did nothing to calm the thundering of his heart. His usual composed aura flickered; silver light leaked from his eyes with every exhale.
"Shino," he said softly, "I'm here."
She gave him a look that was half love, half threat.
"You'd better be," she managed between breaths.
Another contraction seized her. The midwife leaned in, checking.
"Now," she commanded. "Push."
Shinosawa did.
The world narrowed to effort and pain and a strange, rising pressure that felt like more than just flesh and blood forcing its way into the world. Something else pressed through her—a weight like starlight, like distant tides.
A crack of thunder rolled across a cloudless sky.
Far above Nirvana Prime, the moon brightened.
It had always been a gentle, muted silver. Tonight, it flared. Light poured from its surface in quiet waves, bathing the planet in a soft, shimmering glow that made shadows glow pale instead of dark. Astronomers sat up in their observatories. Night guards on walls squinted upward. Children stirred in their sleep.
In the core of the system, the star that warmed their worlds pulsed.
Solar flares shifted, curling inward like great fiery petals. For a moment, sensors on distant stations detected a spike in output—then something steadied, as if invisible hands had smoothed the sun's heartbeat into a new, stable rhythm.
Back in the chamber, the midwife's hands caught something small and slick and impossibly warm.
"There," she whispered. "There he is. First child."
Shinosawa slumped back, chest heaving. The cries she expected did not come immediately. For a heartbeat, the room went silent.
Then the infant drew breath.
He didn't wail. He exhaled first, a tiny sigh, like a man adjusting to a new room. Then he let out a sharp, clear cry that cut through every layer of the estate.
Vulmar's shoulders shook.
"Is he—"
"Healthy," the midwife said quickly, already rubbing the boy's back, clearing his lungs. "Strong. Very strong."
She turned, and Vulmar got his first look at his son.
Dark hair, already thick and slightly wild, with faint silver at the tips that caught the lantern light. Eyes squeezed shut, face scrunched in irritation at the cold air. And on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, a mark: a thin silver crescent, perfectly vertical, like a closed eye made of moonlight.
Vulmar's breath caught.
"What is that?" he asked quietly.
Shinosawa forced herself upright, sweat-damp hair plastered to her cheeks. "Give him to me."
The midwife placed the boy gently in her arms. Shinosawa pulled him close, pressing her lips to his damp hair. The moment her skin touched his, a soft pulse of energy rolled through the room—gentle, but undeniable.
Her eyes widened.
"He's… receptive," she whispered. "Do you feel it, Vulmar?"
Vulmar opened his senses fully. He'd expected the steady, clean flow of a noble child's aura. Instead, he felt something else layered beneath it: a quiet pulling, like the ocean's response to a distant moon. Lunar currents recognized the boy and leaned toward him, even here, enclosed in stone and wood.
"Lunar channels," Vulmar murmured. "Wide open from birth. And that mark…"
The silver crescent shimmered faintly, then dimmed, as if embarrassed to be noticed.
The midwife swallowed. "Is it… dangerous, my lord?"
Shinosawa shook her head slowly.
"No. Just… unusual." Her gaze softened. "Hello, Dante."
The boy's cry softened, as if accepting the name.
Outside, the moon brightened again.
Across the planet, beasts stirred in their dens and burrows. Wolves lifted their heads and listened to a sound only they could hear—a phantom howl from somewhere beyond the sky. Old bloodlines pulsed. Veins carried forgotten instincts.
In the dark between planets, something moved.
For a moment only, space itself distorted, stars bending as if seen through water. A shape formed in the distortion: massive, indistinct, more suggestion than detail. A wolf, or something like it, impossibly large, its fur made of shadow and starlight, eyes twin spirals of devouring chaos. It lowered its head toward Nirvana Prime, not in threat, but in recognition.
The mirage of the Primordial Chaos Wolf hung over the system like a ghost of origin.
Then it faded, leaving only a chill in the senses of every sufficiently sensitive being.
Back in the chamber, the midwife frowned.
"My lady," she said carefully, "the second child is not done with us yet."
Shinosawa winced as another contraction rolled through her.
"Of course she isn't," she muttered. "She never lets him do anything alone."
Vulmar blinked. "She?"
Shinosawa's lips curled faintly. "I know."
The midwife checked, then nodded, eyes widening. "The second child is nearly there."
This time Shinosawa knew how to ride the pain. She gripped Dante carefully against her chest with one arm while bracing herself with the other, refusing to let go of her son even as her body screamed for focus.
"Take him," Vulmar started.
She glared. "Touch him and I'll break your hand."
The midwife made a strangled noise between a laugh and a sob.
Another push, another bright spike of pain—
And then, slipping into the world with less resistance but no less force, the second child arrived.
"Daughter," the midwife announced, relief flooding her voice. "You were right, my lady."
Anarissa cried the moment air hit her lungs. Her voice was higher, sharper, but somehow layered—like two notes harmonizing, one sun-warm, one cool and distant.
Her hair was dark too, but when the lantern-light touched it, strands reflected a soft gold undertone, as if threads of dawn had been woven into the black. Her skin held a faint warmth. Over her small chest, just left of center, a pale golden sunburst birthmark glowed faintly for a heartbeat before fading under normal skin tone.
Vulmar reached out, hands trembling.
"Let me see her."
The midwife placed the girl in his arms. The instant his fingers touched her, something shifted.
Heat.
Not scorching, not burning—just a steady, empowering warmth that soothed old aches and sharpened his focus. Solar currents, subtle but real, hummed in response to her presence. Somewhere high above, the system's star pulsed again, flares smoothing into a near-perfect symmetry.
"Solar receptivity," Vulmar whispered. "From birth."
Shinosawa watched him, tears slipping free as her breathing slowed.
"Bring her here," she said. "They're twins. They should start together."
He moved without thinking, sinking to sit beside the bed. Shinosawa adjusted, making space even as exhaustion tried to drag her down, and soon both children lay against her: Dante on one side, Anarissa on the other, tiny fists resting almost close enough to touch.
The moment their skin brushed, both of them stilled.
The room seemed to inhale.
Dante's silver crescent mark glowed faintly.
Anarissa's hidden sunburst warmed against her chest.
A thin, invisible thread flared between them—too subtle for most, but not for their parents. Vulmar and Shinosawa both felt it: a resonance, deep and old and impossibly sure. Not just siblings. Not just twins.
Something more.
Shinosawa's voice was hoarse, but steady.
"We did it."
Vulmar looked at his family, at the twins who felt like two stars compressed into fragile flesh, and nodded once, as if sealing a pact.
"Yes," he said. "We did."
Far above, the moon and sun continued their quiet dance, both shining just a shade too bright for any astronomer's comfort.
In other parts of the system, sensors chimed warnings and confused readings. Priests scrambled to interpret omens. Old beasts stirred in forgotten forests. Faint, ancient scripts etched into ruins flared, then faded, their job done: record the moment and sleep again.
High above all of it—above stars, above the Beirut Universe itself—two gods felt the faintest echo of what had just occurred.
Dante sat cross-legged on a floating terrace of light in Gaia Paradise, overlooking the soft swirl of distant nebulae beyond the realm's barrier. The air here was quiet, touched only by the occasional passing shimmer of a wayward spirit or drifting mote of essence. He'd been trying to meditate, to steady the currents of Dreaming Moon and Oblivion that still sometimes jostled uncomfortably in his core.
Something tugged at him.
Not strongly. Not like the obvious pull of a summoning or a call across the Divine Web. More like… the ghost of a heartbeat in his own chest that didn't quite sync with his physical one.
He opened his eyes.
"Feel that?" he asked softly.
Anarissa sat a short distance away, legs dangling over the terrace edge, hair loose and rippling in the soft light. She closed her eyes for a moment, tasting the currents.
"Yes," she said slowly. "Like… a thread brushing by."
He nodded. "Far. Beyond the outer void. But—"
"We know what it is," she finished quietly.
The fragments.
Their mortal avatars would have just taken their first breaths in some distant world, in some plane separated by layers of reality and law. The Goddess of Life had warned them: the connection would be faint, especially at first. The mortal vessels would be small, overwhelmed by new senses, their divinity heavily folded and sealed.
But the tether was there.
"They're us," Anarissa murmured. "And also… not us."
Dante let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Good," he said. "As long as they're there."
Anarissa tilted her head. "You're worried already?"
"About throwing pieces of ourselves into a universe we don't control?" He snorted softly. "A little."
She smiled, tired but genuine.
"They'll manage. We did."
He thought of the Ritual, of the Oblivion Zone, of the Chaos Wolf ancestor whose echo occasionally brushed his dreams in vast, wordless approval. Then he thought of two tiny heartbeats in a distant estate under a too-bright moon.
"Yeah," he said. "We did."
Far below the Divine Realm, beyond every heaven and hell that claimed authority, on a planet that had never heard the words Trisanguine or Primordial Chaos Wolf, two newborns shifted in their sleep.
Dante's silver crescent mark pulsed once, a faint glimmer beneath the skin.
Anarissa's hidden sunburst warmed, barely noticeable.
For an instant, their breathing synced perfectly.
In the high wild places where wolves roamed, a few older beasts raised their heads to the sky, eyes reflecting a strange mix of gold and silver, and howled.
Not in fear.
Not in hunger.
In recognition.
The heirs of the Chaos Wolf had entered the world.
And somewhere in the infinite layers above, two gods—still new to eternity, still learning the weight of their own existence—sat side by side in a realm of light, listening to the echoes of their own second beginning.