The Water Pentarch sat alone on the throne he had made at the top of the Obsidian Runic Spire on the fiftieth floor that he now called the Throne Room of Spire.
It still felt strange sometimes, even after all this time, how a place that had once been his suffering point had become something he could point at and say was his. He had made this floor himself as the Towermaster,
It was the ninety-ninth day since the Second Epoch Cycle began.
It was so little time and yet somehow it felt like an entire life had already been packed into it. The world kept moving whether anyone was ready or not and tomorrow was coming like a blade. He had known it would, of course. He just had not wanted it to arrive so fast.
A portal split open beside the throne without any fuss. Natas stepped through. He always seemed to arrive looking like he had already seen the room several seconds before anyone else even knew he was there, which, knowing Natas, was probably true. The man's eyes settled on him immediately.
"You ready for tomorrow?"
The Water Pentarch leaned back slightly against the throne, then gave the simplest answer in the world.
"Yes."
"Oh?"
"Who knew it would arrive so fast? Either way, it has to be done. The Time Trial is waiting for me and this is the only solution."
"And after?"
The Water Pentarch let out a small breath and gave a crooked, dry smile that had no real humor in it.
"After, I'm going to be hated."
That was the truth of it. There was no point pretending otherwise. Once the Time Trial was done once the world got the result it had been marching towards, people would understand. But understanding and forgiveness were never the same thing. He knew that better than most. Sometimes doing the only thing left meant becoming the villain in everyone else's story. He had long since made peace with that kind of ending, even if peace did not mean he liked it.
He raised his hand and Calimostria appeared in it with a familiar flash of sapphire brilliance. The glaive's shape always hit differently when summoned like this. He held it across his lap and looked at it for a while. His fingers traced the shaft and the blade. It looked completely different this time.
"The Protection Pentarch stayed for one hundred and sixty years in Regnum Musicae. The effects are showing now."
That was the thing people did not always get. Time was not just time when it came to beings like them. It changed the shape of the soul, the texture of power and the way Divinity sat inside the body. One hundred and sixty years in Regnum Musicae was the kind of long, brutal period that turned a mere shard of capability into a real understanding.
And now, after all that, when he had broken through to the First Stellar Rank, he had partial access to all Divinities. It had felt like a lock snapping open across every part of him at once.
"When he broke through, he could use all his Divinities. It was like he could finally use our full capabilities and they all got improved at once."
The Protection Pentarch had spent decades understanding the Divinities for his other Pentarchs, too. That was another thing time had done to him. It had made him patient enough to go deep instead of just fast. Most people wanted power. Once understood a Divinity, really understood it, then it stopped being a mystery and became a doctrine inside him.
Now all the other Pentarchs needed was a Codex and the break through to the Seventh Enlightenment.
Once they got that and reached the Fifth Enlightenment, they would not stop there. They would keep going all the way to the Seventh because the foundation had already been built for them long before they ever got there. The Protection Pentarch had done the brutal part first so they would not have to go through it later.
The Pentarch Technique was one of the best training techniques ever made and he knew that because he had lived inside its consequences. It split the body into five parts, each one tied to a Divinity. If it had been three, then it would have been the Triarch Technique instead, simple as that.
A Fifth Enlightenment Divine required one hundred years for understanding and one hundred years for an Overwrite for each Divinity. That meant one thousand years total if he did it the slow, honest way. He would take one thousand years just to fully understand all five and that was before even talking about how much effort it took to get the Overwrites to actually mean something.
But the Protection Pentarch had cheated time in the only way that mattered.
He spent his entire stay in Regnum Musicae making sure he understood all his Divinities deeply enough that when the others eventually received their Codex and broke through to the Fifth Enlightenment, they would already be on track to hit the Seventh. That had been the whole point of the long prison stay.
The years there were not wasted. Every quiet stretch, every grind and every internal battle had been for this which was not for him alone, but for the other four versions of him that would need to rise later without stumbling around in the dark.
And the weirdest part was that they all shared the same World Overwrite.
That detail still messed with the logic of it all if he stared at it too long. He had different bodies and manifestations of the same self and yet one Overwrite. Even in his system profile, that part had black glitches on it like the system itself was trying and failing to decide what he was.
Turns out he never needed five Overwrites based on his Divinity at all. He only needed one Overwrite with five versions of it. Who knew that an Overwrite would have sections like Elyonari's?
He gave Calimostria a slow turn in his hand, watching the glint of sapphire light reflect off the black stone.
"I still don't know why my development is this fast. Maybe it's probably because of the Stellar Mage Constitution. It's the pinnacle body for Magecraft, after all."
That was not ego.
A body built at that level was not normal and pretending otherwise would have been stupid.
Natas had fed him pieces of information about what he knew over time, same as always. Every now and then he would drop some detail about the Stellar Mage Constitution and about the Protection Pentarch like he was tossing a bone to a dog that already knew how to hunt. It had helped, though.
Vastarael knew that he, by himself, was a genius. There was no point denying that either. It was the plain, simple fact that understanding a Divinity was not hard if one was able to know them. Most people wandered around trying to discover what their power even was. He had always known. Ever since he was seven, he had always known what his Divinities were.
Back in Erna Isles, hid Divinities had been inactive, at least some of them. Others had been active in pieces, like Protection, lurking under the surface even when the rest were dormant. But ever since he was seven, his understanding of the Divinities had been broad enough to recognize them well.
He understood Protection through sacrifice. Specifically, through his own self-sacrifice when he saved Narisva and his companions. That was the moment it stopped being a vague idea. Protection was not just shielding someone from harm. It was choosing harm for yourself when there was no one else to take it. It was bearing the damage on purpose because someone else could not. That understanding had burned into him hard enough that it never left.
That was how he got his self sacrificial personality and was intensified.
He understood Justice by challenging the Primordials after his death and genocidal act. That was not some clean, noble lesson either. Justice was not just being right or wrong. Sometimes it was a refusal to let atrocity go unanswered. He knew that now because he had lived it in his past life.
He understood love through Adela, Nari, Ely, and Phae across his entire life up to the end of the First Epoch Cycle. That one was messier than the others, because love was always messier than the rest. They had all shaped that Divinity in him differently until it became something vast enough to carry an entire personality inside it.
Water had come to him through the Plenituse Technique and his fight with Stephos. That made sense in hindsight.
Water was never just water in the way people liked to simplify it. The Plenituse Technique had taught him how Water could fill every space and still remain itself and Stephos had forced him to understand the way water could be calm one second and catastrophic the next. That fight taught him what Water really meant when it was his to wield. Also, the Plenituse Technique required someone with the Water Divinity do him understanding the Path of the Maiden increased his understanding.
Time, meanwhile, had been learned the hard way by the Time Pentarch after spending two hundred years in stasis following Sirithiele's Forced Ascension. That one was almost cruel in its elegance. He spent two hundred years trapped in stillness, forced to live outside the normal rhythm of life and from that came a better understanding of Time.
That was why his early access to his Divinities at such a young age had accelerated everything. He had not started from zero. He had started from recognition, instinct and awareness that had followed him since childhood and never let go. Because he knew them early, his development had gone faster. Because his understanding grew earlier, the Protection Pentarch had been able to go deeper. Because he had gone deeper, the others would not have to waste time stumbling through the same walls. It all fed into itself. Every piece had become a shortcut for the next piece.
Natas watched him in silence for a moment, then gave a small nod like he was confirming something he had already seen half a hundred times in the future.
The Water Pentarch leaned back in the throne again, Calimostria resting across his lap. Now, with the Second Epoch Cycle only ninety-nine days old, the whole thing had finally reached the edge.
Tomorrow was coming. He was ready.
"Alright, let's go. I haven't seen my daughter in a few days."