The integration was precise and controlled.

  The Majesty of Space reshaped itself from within, its core definition expanding without destabilizing the rest of my abilities. I felt new parameters settle into place with breathtaking clarity. Space became something I could encourage. Connections could be planted, nurtured, and eventually harvested for travel, communication, or influence, depending on the environment and my intent.

  The final designation resolved with quiet certainty.

  The Majesty of Space—Seed-Bearer of the Ways (Legendary 88%): This ability has been enhanced with extra system resources. Authority to move through the Ways has been granted. This will translate into many different forms, including an ability to move through the Void.

  You are infused with power from the Ways. As a result, you have become more. Unexpected results have been identified. Quantification continues.

  You may now create and plant a Seed of the Ways, which carries within it the potential to draw from ambient mana and connect to the greater Ways. This can only be done a maximum of once every seven days, or the effects will be highly deleterious to you.

  Unexpected results have been quantified.

  Draconic Dust has processed to 13%.

  The Seal on your Primordial Aspect has weakened to 62%.

  Your ability to create Pioneers has increased, and is not only intuitive but may be triggered at will for the right individuals. Not everyone is compatible. This includes Heart Pioneers.

  Your body has been made more powerful, one partial step closer to ascension. This is something you must experience, but may not initially recognize.

  Race: Heretical Trailblazer of the Fused Path (Legendary 71%) >> 86%.

  The influx of power receded as cleanly as it had arrived, but I continued to feel different. There were no two ways about it—I had been altered. Only experience would tell me the full details. On its face, the ability had shot almost all the way up to ascendant tier. That alone should have made the process worth it.

  There was no backlash, no lingering instability, no sense of being overfilled. Instead, I felt more balanced than I ever had, as though a long-standing asymmetry had finally been corrected. My perception of space was sharper, deeper, and more nuanced than before. I could sense where connections wanted to form and where they would fail, not because of lack of strength, but because of incompatibility.

  I stood there for a long moment, breathing slowly, letting the changes finish integrating. I had not become something else. I had not been transformed into a herald or an avatar. I had been improved, given a role that matched how I already moved through the multiverse. Connection over domination. Growth over control. The Ways had extended a degree of trust to me that I only now fully understood. They’d granted a portion of themselves, not for me to consume, but for me to caretake. It was a massive risk for the ancient being.

  An old quote came to mind. “What if you were really old, and really kind and lonely, your whole race dead. What couldn’t you do then?” And then, adding to it, “If you were that old, and that kind, you couldn’t stand there and watch children cry.” That was what I felt from the bit of the Ways that was inside me, even if my connection to the greater being had receded.

  Violet let out a breath, wide eyes looking up at me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “More than okay. Got a couple things I need to figure out, but we can still leave this place.”

  Just as we were about to go, a small treasure chest appeared near the doorway. Of course, I had to open it.

  Inside, I found another of the Stat Boon potions, upgraded from the previous ones.

  Enhanced Stat Boon (Artifact): An individual may only consume one of these potions during their mortal life. Each potion will grant a boost of +2000 to any stat chosen by the user. Most individuals could not survive consuming such a potion, but your progress toward ascension will serve you well in this regard.

  Note: this will translate into 2858 stat points under the Heavens System.

  Please transfer the Potion of Ascension to Tad. He won’t be able to use it as you could have to become a herald, but he will know other ways to make use of it.

  I nodded in understanding and took the huge gift. My mind was already racing as I tried to decide which stat to give the boost to. There was an inherent inclination, with the kinds of numbers I was dealing with now, to feel like the stats didn’t matter, but that was never how I felt. I knew very well how a ten-percent boost could represent the difference between victory and defeat on the battlefield.

  With the Stat Boon secured into Save for Winter, I grasped Violet’s arm so we wouldn’t be separated, then stepped through the exit, anxious to find out what was waiting for us on the other side.

  Chapter Seventy: Introductions

  We stepped out of the dungeon and onto the flat stone in front of the entrance. As expected, there were a number of members of the Order mingling about. I didn’t even bother gauging what their classes or levels were. Instead, I reached out with a more refined touch than I’d ever had before and warped space around us.

  In an attempt to make it harder for them to track us, I encased Violet in a force bubble and teleported us one hundred miles above the surface of the planet. An instant later, I warped us around the planet’s atmosphere multiple times, then split our presence so that it seemed we were in two different places, before finally ending up inside the warehouse.

  As we materialized, all the adventurers I’d seen come in with Clay got to their feet, brandishing their weapons. Their movements were a little sluggish, but Selena wasn’t. She was standing in front of me in a fraction of a second, holding up her hand to call off the adventurers. “It’s just Silas. And company?”

  She locked eyes with me. “Pick up another girlfriend while you were out? You probably should have told me if you had a tiny person fetish.”

  Before I could say a word, Violet stepped up and pushed her armor against Selena. Needless to say, the latter didn’t move even an inch. Violet seemed surprised but quickly recovered. “I’ll have you know I’m big enough in all the right spots.” Then she shook her head. “Hmm. Not sure if that came out right. It sounded better in my head.”

  Rather than let it get any worse, I stepped in. “Selena, this is Violet. She’s not from around here, either. I found her on the 397th floor of the dungeon, captured by some undead. Violet, this is Selena, my fiancée.”

  The two women stared at each other for a long moment before Violet finally spoke. “You know what? Anyone that Silas chose must be a pretty amazing woman, and dang if you aren’t strong. I practically bounced off of you.”

  Selena was a bit slower to cool down. Eventually, the expression on her face softened. “Sorry. Jealousy’s a new sensation to me, and I’m still learning to adapt. I’ll look forward to hearing about your story, but right now we have some pressing issues.”

  I swept my gaze across all of Tad’s people, including Oliver and Clay, and a bunch of adventurers who had just hit level 150. Then there were the elves, and even the gnome, Geminus. And Fara looked more concerned than ever before.

  “Okay, judging from everyone’s expressions, I’m going to assume that something happened I’m not yet aware of. I was hoping Tad and Samvek would be done with their training by now.”

  “You’re the one who put them in that time trap,” Fara snapped.

  Rather than respond, I looked at my status sheet timer. While a high Mind stat didn’t make me smarter, and there was plenty of evidence to prove that, it did have some great benefits. One of them being that I instantly realized that, based upon the reported time dilation, it should only be a matter of moments till they were out.

  That made me wonder if the dungeon had delayed me not just for my own growth, but to bring me out at a time when Tad would be available. It made sense. Here, he was the main character, so to speak. While the Ways were happy to use me in a mutually agreeable manner, they were bound to Tad through ancient pacts and more modern commitments.

  “Less than five minutes remaining if my math is correct. Why don’t I let all of you introduce yourselves to Violet. No reason for you to explain what I’ve missed only to have to do it all over again once Tad is here.”

  Surprisingly, everyone seemed more willing to do that than I’d expected. Perhaps it was her being a gnome, or maybe it was her strange armor, but the elves and Geminus took to her immediately. Oliver displayed the curiosity I’d initially noted in him and started peppering her with questions. That brought Clay to her rescue, which had the other adventurers all laughing.

  For me, all of that meant I had a couple of minutes I could steal away with Selena. I put my hand around her, and we moved to the far side of the warehouse. The kiss we shared made the absence almost worthwhile.

  As our lips parted, she looked up at me. “You feel different. What happened?”

  I nodded. “A lot, and yes, I got some upgrades. But can we talk about that later, with Samvek? Right now, I just want to breathe. I want to hold you in my arms and forget about all of it, if only for two minutes.”

  Her wordless agreement came as she pressed her head against my chest, and we just stood there, holding one another. We had a long way to go, and sometimes it felt like everything in the multiverse was conspiring against us, but I’d made my choice and so had she. We were in this together for the long haul. We’d have time to learn all the little details about one another later.

  As all such moments seemed to, this one passed all too quickly. I felt the time distortion a second before the bubble came down, and we found Tad and Samvek. Rather than looking ragged, they were actually relatively presentable, at least until the smell reached my nose.

  A quick casting of Clean resolved that issue and caused both of them to sigh. There really was little else like it, aside from Tad’s magical pressure wash shower, which in all honesty didn’t sound too bad right about now. My eyes went to Tad, but they were quickly pulled back to Samvek as he fell to a knee. A low groan escaped his lips, and I was beside him in a second. Both of the healers and Selena were just behind me.

  I couldn’t feel anything wrong with him. In fact, if I was reading Samvek right, this was a moment of ecstasy, not pain or weakness. I put my hand on his shoulder and he looked up. “She’s here. I can feel her. I don’t know how, but Azuria’s here.”

  My head spun at that revelation. Had everything just changed? If Azuria was here, didn’t that mean that Nico would have had to bring her? Suddenly, Arbiter Kalix wasn’t looking like much of a threat at all. I was confident that either Nico or Cami could deal with him with ease. For that matter, even the Lawgiver didn’t feel nearly so threatening.

  Samvek took my hand and stood up. “She’s waking up. Apparently getting here was difficult. Give me a moment. I have to go to her.”

  Space warped around him and he was gone. I realized a moment later that I could feel where he’d gone to. Making him one of my Horsemen had created a closer bond, so even hundreds of miles away, I could pinpoint him. That was when I noticed that I was feeling another, weaker connection coming from the same spot, resonating with my primordial aspect.

  One of my Pioneers was here. No, a Heart Pioneer, and not just any. Talia was here. I couldn’t sense any other dragons, and Cece wasn’t in my chat channels. I couldn’t imagine her staying behind if Nico had brought a force to find me. Then again, as I thought about it, I didn’t feel like Nico was the kind of ally who was going to come chasing after me, so maybe there was another explanation.

  I took a few minutes to fill everyone else in on what was happening. The responses ran the gauntlet from thrilled and curious to disbelief. Apparently, here, as in most of the rest of the multiverse, dragons were nonexistent but known about in legend. Fara seemed to take the news the hardest.

  The waiting seemed to drag on, until about five minutes later, I felt space warp again. My awareness of it was at an entirely different level now, and I instantly recognized Samvek’s signature.

  Three figures appeared—Samvek, Talia, and Azuria, in a humanoid form. Even if I hadn’t previously seen her like this, I would have recognized her. There was something so fierce about her eyes and the aura of danger that exuded from her. She was more powerful than the last time I’d seen her.

  One of the adventurers blurted out, “Ah man, I thought we were gonna get to see a dragon.”

  Fara hissed at him and dropped to both knees in front of Azuria. “Great One, I am humbled to be in the presence of one of the ancestors.”

  Azuria seemed to do a double-take, and I expected her to say something rude and dismissive to Fara, but then the expression on her face softened in a way I hadn’t seen before. “Child, I don’t know you, but blood calls to blood. It appears this world holds more of interest than my bonded.”

  Selena looked over at the adventurers. “She can transform into a human form, and just be glad that she did. Otherwise, she’d barely fit into the warehouse.”

  “I’ve grown, thanks to Samvek’s advancement. While I’m still nothing compared to the emperor, I certainly would no longer fit in this structure, at least not comfortably.”

  I took a moment to use Identify then, and sure enough, she was a great wyrm now, but more. There was something raw inside of her. I wondered if dragons moved from great wyrm to a form that mirrored more of their primordial streak. As I had that thought, I noticed that her hair, which had previously been a blue so dark that it appeared to be black, now had a lighter strand in it, made up of a rich purple. I had no idea what that meant, but they would tell me when the time was right.

  I hadn’t realized it until now, but Tad was having his own reaction to Azuria, a mixture of fear and respect that could only be termed caution. He stepped forward. “Welcome to our world, and welcome to the Fey System. I don’t know what it is that I’m sensing about you, but I get the feeling that while you’re fearsome, I should also feel protected by you.”

  She pursed her lips. “Hmm… Fey System. That tickles something deep within me, buried within the dragon dream. I’m not sure why, but I find myself positively inclined toward you. You aren’t human, are you?” Then she answered her own question, “Oh, no. Now I see it. You are a fey, another of the races to have escaped the primordial soup with individual identities, like dragons. I know very little of the history there, only what the emperor has revealed.”

  Tad and Samvek looked toward Fara and Oliver, who both nodded. Selena slid over by Talia, and the two women spoke in low tones. I should have been able to hear their words, but Selena warped reality around them so that the sound waves didn’t travel anywhere but their ears. I figured it was fine. Talia was a friend, and if she and Selena got along, all the better.

  In the meantime, Fara raised her voice to address the room. “Now that everybody knows everybody, we should all sit down. We have some decisions to make, and we have to make them now.”

  Chapter Seventy-One: Preparation

  Fara didn’t waste time easing into it. She laid out what the Order had done in Basetown with the blunt efficiency of someone who had seen it up close and failed to stop it. Non-humans were being dragged from homes, workshops, inns, and guild halls, not quietly or discreetly, but openly, as an example. They were being herded into a single holding area near the merchant quarter, bound, guarded, and displayed as leverage, their fear turned into a public message.

  Oliver picked up where she left off, his voice tight with controlled anger. The Order wasn’t hiding behind law or procedure anymore, at least not any of the local ones. The rumor was that the mayor had been slain when he protested their actions. Apparently, the threat of intervention from the empire no longer bothered them. They had posted notices, issued proclamations, and made it clear that the executions would begin in short order if Tad did not present himself. It wasn’t about justice or purity, not really. “They have a blindness to how people see their Order. Religious zealots are the hardest to deal with. So far, the Order has been tolerated by the people of Basetown because they helped maintain order, but now, the Order have shown their absolute disdain for anyone who wasn’t human.”

  Clay shifted his weight as he spoke next, hands clenched at his sides. “Sadly, they have the power to enforce that view.” He explained how the patrols had tightened, how even veteran adventurers were being watched, challenged, and sometimes detained if they weren’t human. The adventurers’ guild was under pressure, boxed in by politics and threat, unable to move without risking a massacre. Every option they’d considered ended the same way, with bodies in the street.

  Fara met Tad’s eyes when he finished, and that was when the weight of it truly landed. She explained that even with her stealth at its peak, she couldn’t get close enough to the captives to extract anyone. The ascendant was there now, not observing from a distance as he usually did, but camped near the prisoners like a warden, daring someone to test him. Every approach ended with her instincts screaming retreat, and to her credit, she had listened.

  Selena confirmed it with a quiet nod that chilled the room. She described trying to reach out with reality mana, only to feel it seize and fold back on itself like paper crushed in a fist. Whatever Kalix was doing, it suppressed her influence so completely that even probing the edge of it felt dangerous. They had withdrawn because staying would have meant escalation on his terms, and he would have welcomed it.

  Tad’s reaction was immediate, and painful to watch. He went pale, hands tightening in his lap as guilt and fear tangled together, the air behind him shimmering as if his wings wanted to unfurl and shield the entire city. He opened his mouth more than once, only to close it, clearly fighting the urge to run headlong into the trap being set for him. I could feel the pressure rolling off him, the weight of responsibility settling hard on someone who had never wanted it.

  I felt something colder take hold of me. Anger rose, but it wasn’t the reckless kind that made you rush into bad decisions. It was focused, sharp, and steady, the kind that made plans instead of mistakes. Kalix wasn’t just threatening Tad anymore. “I’m so sick of bullies. Everywhere I go, I find them. It’s one thing for systems to try to use me. I get it. They aren’t even people, and what happens to me… well, I can deal with that. But what’s the point in having power if I can’t use it to protect the innocent?”