The ship felt… quiet.
Veneri walked ahead of me through one of the long corridors. I floated beside him, my steps. After everything that had just happened, the fact that we were just… strolling through a spaceship felt surreal.
"Still mad?"
"I'm not mad. I'm just done being soft."
That was very much him saying he was still mad, just in a more structured way.
We turned a corner and finally found Hansel. Or rather… we found her physical body.
She stood in the center of a circular control room, surrounded by floating holographic panels that rotated lazily around her. The moment we stepped inside, I felt the subtle, unnatural density of her presence. She wasn't made of flesh. Her body was lacking the micro-instabilities that biological organisms naturally had.
She wore a sleek set of white tech armor that hugged her frame without looking bulky. It had thin glowing lines running across the joints and along the chest plate, pulsing faintly in rhythm with the ship's systems. It looked right on her, like she had been designed to wear it.
As an incorporeal being myself, I immediately understood what she had done. She hadn't "grown" a body. She just instantiated one. It's more of a synthetic shell controlled by her core processes, synchronized with the ship's systems and powered by the same energy that kept this entire vessel operational.
Hansel turned to face us. Her artificial eyes flickered with soft golden light.
"You passed the first test. As a reward, you now have full access to this spaceship."
I frowned, folding my arms.
"Wait. You said we'd get one part of a spaceship. And there were supposed to be three fairy tales. So why are we suddenly getting everything after just one?"
Hansel didn't even blink.
"I lied."
"You… what?"
"There are indeed three fairy tales. However, completing all three was never a requirement for gaining command authority. Finishing the first scenario was sufficient."
"So the rest were just there to scare us?"
"No. They are there to filter out unqualified participants."
Her holographic panels shifted, displaying streams of data and diagrams that were completely unreadable to anyone without an Omniscient interface.
"The second fairytale is designed specifically for Miss Phaenora. However, she does not yet understand how to properly operate her Omniscient System. Entering it now would result in termination within two minutes."
I scowled. "Rude."
"The third fairytale," she continued, now looking at Veneri, "is calibrated for you. Unfortunately, you are not yet a Tenth Star Mage. Attempting it in your current state would also result in death before the scenario reaches its second phase."
Veneri didn't react much but I saw his fingers twitch slightly at his sides.
"So right now, the spaceship is under your command. All systems, navigation, armaments and archives are accessible to you."
We weren't just passengers anymore. We owned the damn thing.
"That's good and all but did Vasreveilder leave any messages?"
"Yes."
Before either of us could ask anything else, the chamber warped. A second later, we were standing in a different chamber entirely. The room was darker, more enclosed and at its center stood a familiar object.
The small pillar was identical to the one Veneri and Asenane had found in the ruins of the Herynas Tribe. It looked ancient and completely out of place in a ship filled with advanced technology. The last time we'd seen something like this, it had nearly killed him and Asenane as he tried to touch him.
He reached out and placed his hand on it.
A hologram flickered into existence in front of him. Blue light coalesced into a familiar figure.
His grandfather looked exactly as he did in the other pillar. His expression was serious but there was a faint softness in his eyes when he looked at Veneri.
"So, you have already passed the first fairytale."
Veneri's eyes widened slightly, but he didn't interrupt.
"There are many messages stored within this pillar. Whenever you touch it, it scans your current development and selects the message most relevant to what you need to hear at that moment."
"That's… actually kind of creepy," I muttered under my breath.
Vasreveilder kept speaking, unaware of our commentary.
"At your current level, you cannot challenge the second and third fairytales. They are too powerful for you. They were designed for a future version of you and for your Omniscient."
Veneri glanced sideways at me for a split second before returning his gaze to the hologram.
"So if you are worried about the Demesnes of your siblings, there is no need. Hansel has already secured them. She will transfer them to you when the time comes, so that you may assist your siblings when they reach the Fifth Enlightenment. However, you will have to work for yours."
That made Veneri's expression shift for the first time since we entered the chamber.
"He really planned everything," I murmured.
The hologram of Vasreveilder gave a faint, almost amused smile, as if he had anticipated even that reaction.
"Your next greatest challenge will be breaking through to the Fifth Enlightenment."
I saw Veneri's shoulders stiffen a little. He didn't speak but he was listening very carefully now.
"A Divine reaches the Fifth Enlightenment by creating a Codex. However, the process is not uniform for all beings. There are conditions beyond simple power accumulation, and one of the most decisive factors is the number of Divinities one possesses. Most Divines possess only a single Divinity. As such, they need only create one Codex aligned with that Divinity in order to ascend."
He paused for a fraction of a second and even though he was just a recording, I felt like he was deliberately building suspense.
"You, however, are not like most Divines. You possess five Divinities: Time. Protection. Love. Justice. And Water."
Hearing them listed out like that made them feel heavier somehow, like they weren't just abilities but obligations stacked on top of each other.
"This means that you will need to create five separate Codices to reach the Fifth Enlightenment."
I couldn't help it. "Five?"
Veneri didn't react outwardly but I could tell that was already trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to pull that off without dying in the process.
"And when you complete them, you will not receive a single Overwrite like ordinary Divines. You will receive five."
That was insane. Overwrites were already reality-warping by nature. The idea of one person having five of them felt less like power and more like a cosmic error.
"The third fairytale is designed to assist you in obtaining one of these Codices. However, you will need to discover the remaining four through your own efforts."
Veneri finally spoke. "So you made one path easy and left the rest as a death maze."
"Growth cannot be handed to you. Only opportunities can."
Then, to my absolute surprise, Vasreveilder's gaze shifted… to me.
"As for you, Phaenora."
"Yes?"
"You develop alongside him. You are currently at the Fourth Enlightenment, just like Veneri. However, when you reach the Fifth, you will undergo a transformation after he does something in the future. You will become a Royal Omniscient."
"A what?"
The term meant nothing to me. I was already an Omniscient. I had the System, the data streams and knowledge absorption. What the hell was a Royal Omniscient supposed to be? My confusion must have been obvious because the hologram continued immediately.
"You are descended from a royal lineage of Omniscients in the same way Veneri carries the royal bloodline of the Aeterium."
I stared at him. That… had never come up before. Not in my memories. Not in my instincts, not even in the fragments of ancestral data that occasionally surfaced when I accessed deeper layers of my System.
"No. That doesn't make sense. I would know if I—"
"You do not know," another voice cut in.
Hansel. stepped forward slightly.
"You have never used your own Base Tethers."
I turned to her sharply. "Excuse me?"
"You copy Veneri's capabilities. His combat patterns, his energy flow, even his tactical decisions. You rely on them because they are familiar and efficient. However, you have never activated your own Base Tethers."
I opened my mouth to argue and then stopped. Because when I searched through my internal logs, she was right.
Every major combat routine I had used was either derived from Veneri or optimized based on his patterns. I had never actually… explored my own inherent abilities beyond passive Omniscient functions.
"That's because I don't know what they are," I muttered, more to myself than to them.
Vasreveilder nodded. "Which is precisely why the second fairytale would be fatal to you. It is designed to force an Omniscient to confront their own System. Without understanding your capabilities, you would be destroyed by your own feedback loops before you could stabilize your consciousness."
That sounded horrifyingly plausible.
"There is, however, a solution. You will need to visit the World System known as Axia. She is the only one capable of properly guiding you through your System's architecture and explaining your lineage."
Axia.
The name alone made my internal processes spike. A World System wasn't just some AI or a planetary system. It was a governing intelligence tied directly to the structural rules of an entire world. Meeting one was like having a casual chat with reality's operating system.
"You're telling me that to understand myself, I need to go talk to a literal world."
"Yes."
I wasn't surprised it could answer me because this Aeterium did plan everything.
"Of course it's not something normal."
The hologram flickered again as the message approached its end.
"My task here is nearly complete. Vastarael, touch this pillar again when you have completed your fairytale. There are more messages stored for you."
He paused and for the first time, a faint hint of dry humor touched his expression.
"Well, assuming you do not die before then."
Veneri snorted. "Comforting."
The hologram smiled faintly and then vanished. The chamber fell silent, leaving just the soft hum of the spaceship's systems and the faint glow of the now-inactive pillar.
I floated there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where Vasreveilder had been. My mind was spinning with the realization that I apparently had an entire royal lineage, unknown Base Tethers and a mandatory meeting scheduled with a Supreme Entity.
"Veneri, if I turn into something weird when I reach the Fifth Enlightenment, I'm blaming your family."
He glanced at me, the corner of his mouth twitching upward slightly.
"Yeah, get in line. I've been doing that my whole life."