At the entrance to the Obsidian Runic Spire, Valeria had barely taken three steps past the threshold before someone on the other side of the entry platform stopped dead in place.
For a second, neither of them said anything. They just stared. Valeria's golden eyes widened a little beneath the shadow of her horns. The woman stood there with her usual confident posture cracking at the edges as if the last fifty years had all hit her at once.
Both of them moved at the same time and hugged each other so hard it almost looked like a wrestling match at first. Shimmer grabbed her around the shoulders, Valeria caught her back just as tightly.
"Oh, thank the Primordials you are still alive."
Valeria let out a shaky laugh that turned into a sniffle halfway through.
"That's rude. I was very obviously alive five seconds ago."
"You know what I mean."
"I do," Valeria said, hugging her harder for a moment. "It's been far too long."
Shimmer pulled back just enough to look at her face, then immediately looked offended by how tired she looked.
"You look terrible."
"That is the first thing you say after fifty years?"
"And yet," Shimmer said, wiping at one eye like she was irritated to be emotional in public, "you still missed me."
Valeria clicked her tongue, then ruined her own attempt at dignity by laughing again.
"Unfortunately."
They stayed like that for another moment, holding each other's arms like neither of them was willing to let go first. Shimmer took a step back and immediately got practical in the most Shimmer way possible.
"So, how many souls did you get in the last fifty years since we last separated?"
"That is an extremely rude thing to ask right after an emotional reunion."
"Answer the question, young sister."
Valeria sighed in the way of someone who already knew she was about to lose.
"Two and a half million."
Shimmer went still. She she slowly turned her head and looked at her.
"That's it?"
"Excuse me?"
"I got five million."
"You're lying."
"I'm not lying. I've been working. You, meanwhile, were probably camped outside every city you could find while acting mysterious and collecting souls like some overdramatic villain."
Valeria's eyes narrowed. "Overdramatic villain?"
"Did I stutter?"
Valeria gave her a flat look.
"I have to do the hard work of using my Living Paintings to destroy kingdoms. You know how exhausting that is? You make one city drown itself in despair and suddenly everyone acts like you are the unreasonable one."
"You say that like it makes you sympathetic."
"You are camping outside wars like a vulture with better taste."
Shimmer put a hand to her chest.
"A vulture? Not that's low, even for you."
"You literally wait for entire armies to die and then scoop up the leftovers."
"And you're saying this as if you do not also profit from war."
"I do profit from war, Shimmer. The difference is that I win."
"That is not the moral high ground you think it is."
"I never claimed moral high ground."
They were still glaring at each other in that half-hearted, affectionate way when Shimmer suddenly remembered a bet.
"Oh. I'm going to win the bet this time."
Valeria narrowed her eyes. "Do not start that nonsense again."
"Oh I'm starting it again. I have five million souls."
"You are so proud of that number."
"I should be. It's a very good number."
"It is not even close to the point of the bet."
"Still counts."
Valeria muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a curse in three languages, then waved her hand.
"Fine. We'll settle it at the War Room."
Without another word, the two of them vanished in a pulse of light and reappeared on the thirty-eighth floor, the War Room.
The War Room was exactly the sort of place that made peace feel like a rumor. It was broad, circular, and built from dark stone and crystal that glimmered across the floor. The upper levels were lined with constellations while the center of the chamber was roundtable. There was noise the moment they arrived and not the pleasant kind.
Valeria and Shimmer looked down.
Two women were already mid-fight in the center of the room and by the look of it, the odachi woman was winning in a very decisive, very humiliating way.
She had one knee planted on the other woman's back with an odachi pressed across her shoulders. Her opponent, a woman in lighter attire with a sapphire flute-staff in hand was pinned to the floor but still refusing to look remotely defeated. Her staff had slipped a little to the side, her hair was a mess and her pride was clearly holding her together more than her posture was.
"Do you yield?"
"Never."
The odachi woman pressed down harder.
"That was not a smart answer."
"I said never."
"You're making this so much harder than it needs to be."
"That is because I would rather die."
The two newcomers stood at the edge of the ring watching them for a moment in silence. Shimmer leaned toward Valeria and whispered:
"Are they lovers?"
Valeria did not even blink. "Apparently."
"Apparently?"
Valeria gave a tiny shrug.
"Their story is absurd."
As if the realm had been waiting for the cue, Ervadelle suddenly glanced up from the pinned Alpha II and spotted them. Her odachi paused. Alpha II, still on the ground, twisted her head too, saw the two of them at the edge of the room and immediately looked like she would rather fight a Deity than be seen like this.
For one long second, all four women just stared at one another. Alpha II sat up slightly, still trapped under Ervadelle's knee, and said the most useless thing possible.
"This is not what it looks like."
Shimmer burst out laughing. Valeria pressed her hand to her forehead.
"It looks exactly like what it looks like."
Ervadelle narrowed her eyes.
"You two arrived at a very specific moment."
"We did, didn't we?"
Alpha II straightened her posture with what dignity she had left and pointed her flute-staff at them like it was somehow still a threat from the floor.
"Stop smiling like that. This is just a misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding where one of you is sitting on the other?"
"She started it."
"I absolutely did not," Alpha II said.
"You did."
"I did not."
Shimmer covered her mouth as her shoulders kept shaking.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, continue. This is better than the scheduled entertainment."
"You're enjoying this too much, dear sister."
"I absolutely am."
"Can you both please stop standing there like vultures?"
"You started with the whole 'this is not what it looks like' line. You invited observation, Alpha."
Ervadelle finally pushed herself upright, then offered Alpha II her hand. Alpha II ignored the hand for a second purely out of principle then took it and stood up with an annoyed huff. The moment she was on her feet, she adjusted her clothes and fixed her posture. Ervadelle crossed her arms and looked at both of them.
"Why are you two here?"
Valeria answered first. "Meeting."
Shimmer pointed at her.
"And I'm winning our soul bet."
Ervadelle and Alpha II both paused.
"Soul bet?"
"Wait. You two do not know about our bet?"
Valeria looked at her with immediate suspicion.
"Do not tell them."
"Oh, I'm telling them. We have a little half century contest. We collect souls over fifty years and whoever gets more wins."
Ervadelle looked at Valeria.
"How many did you get?"
"Two point five million."
Alpha II looked at Shimmer. "And you?"
"Five million."
Alpha II's expression became one of pure disbelief.
"How?"
Valeria immediately pointed at her.
"She camps outside wars."
"I do not camp. I position myself strategically."
"You let me do the hard work."
Shimmer gasped.
"Hard work? You literally make kingdoms destroy themselves with paintings. You're acting like you lift boulders all day."
"That also takes skill."
"Lies."
Valeria exhaled once and gave yo on the argument.
"Fine. Keep your five million. Enjoy your little victory. I hope it makes you sleep well."
"It will, actually. Anyway, I say we settle this later. For now, I think I deserve a proper welcome after fifty years. Speaking of which, where's Runner? I need to return her Crystal Lotus after borrowing it."
-----
18th Floor, Leisure Mountain Ranges.
The floor was a vast stretch of peaks and snow-bright ridges. The air was cold but not harsh.
Runner stood at the crest of one of those peaks wrapped in a black cloak that moved only slightly in the wind. She did not look cold. She knelt in front of two graves set into the snow and stone. The first read: Here lies Ernest. The second read: Here lies Susanne. Their names gleamed softly in the mountain snow.
She held peony flowers in one hand and placed them carefully on top of the graves. For a moment, she just stayed there with head bowed. She lifted her face and smiled.
"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad. I'm your daughter, Runner."
She looked down at the graves and let her fingers rest lightly against the snow beside the stones.
"The last time I came here, I buried you myself. It was not easy finding your bodies, you know. Dad had to go with me to the Island of Peony. We searched until we found what remained of you. We brought you back here together. You were the only Raukerai who ever got a proper burial."
She could still remember that day with painful clarity. She was six then, still carrying the grief of someone who had not yet learned how to coexist with loss. Her father had been there with her, standing above this same peak after he had become the Towermaster. He had made the Leisure Mountain Ranges for the Raukerai Tribe who had made him feel at home even if only for a brief time.
She remembered crying then, though she had tried hard not to. She remembered hugging him tightly in the cold air. She remembered the way he had held her without hesitation. When she had finally started to calm down, he did something so absurdly practical that it had startled a laugh out of her through the tears.
He taught her how to snowboard right there on the mountain, as if the cure for grief was not a lecture but movement and a little speed. Apparently, it was a leisure sport on Earth. She had never forgotten how much she enjoyed it or how he had known exactly how to pull her out of the worst of her sadness.
That was how he had always been. When she was falling apart, he gave her something real to stand on.
Now it was four hundred years since she had last seen him.
The number no longer frightened her the way it would have frightened a mortal. After breaking through to the Fifth Enlightenment, the old sense of mortality had vanished from her completely. Time still passed but it never felt like a countdown. Her memory remained vivid in a way that made immortality feel both as a gift and a burden. The soul kept what the body would have lost. Names, faces, voices, seasons, storms, the feel of old snow under her boots, the sound of her father laughing when she almost fell off the board for the third time, all of it was vivid enough to remember.
A lot had happened in those four centuries.
She was not seventeen anymore. She had seen kingdoms rise and collapse. She saw alliances turn into institutions and the Timeless Realm reveal more of itself than it had any right to reveal. She had endured wars, meetings, victories, absurdities and the long administrative weight of managing the Obsidian Runic Spire.
Through all of it, she had become someone steady enough to survive the scale of her own life. Her father was gone from her world now, forced up into the Immortal Anchor before she was ready to let him go. She spent centuries learning how to live without him.
"I'm doing well managing the ORS. It's kept me busy enough. I think you would have laughed at the paperwork alone."
She rose to her feet. The peony flowers remained on the graves. For a moment she stood there with her hands at her sides, looking down at the names of the two people who had given her the shape of her life.
"It is time for the eighth meeting. We only gather once every fifty years. We collect information, plans or all the things that have to be put in order when the realm becomes too large to trust to instinct alone. I don't know when I will be back here again. Probably not soon."
She reached up and adjusted the edge of her cloak. Then she looked at the graves one last time and smiled.
"I wish you were here to see the woman I became. Goodbye mother, father."
Runner turned away from the graves and walked at the edge of the mountain. She jumped off the mountain.
Runner landed on the frozen lake without so much as a crack in the ice. The surface beneath her was so clear and still that it reflected the night sky almost perfectly, turning the whole lake into a sheet of fallen stars.
On the center of the frozen lake was a statue.
It was made entirely of sapphire. It was ten meters tall and carved with such precision that it looked real. A woman sat upon the frozen lake with her head tilted towards the night sky. Even in the statue's stillness, there was warmth in the way the sculpted face was formed. It was as though the artist had not simply copied a person but honored one. Her clothing had folds so fine they almost looked soft. The whole piece shimmered faintly against the moonlight. It was beautiful in the quietest, saddest way.
Runner bowed her head the moment she reached it.
"This is still beautiful. You really did a good job, Dad."
The statue belonged to Sirithiele.
Runner had never met her but she had known her through the way her dad spoke about her. He had always spoken of Sirithiele with a smile. Back when he was living in the Mortal Anchor for ten years with them before he was taken, he used to mention her often enough that her name had become a familiar sound long before her face ever became one. He had said she was a lovely woman and somehow when he said it, it never sounded like empty praise.
She had been the Minor Goddess of Lakes when they first met. She was swimming on a lake in the island of the Raukerai. That detail had always amused Runner a little because it made the story feel so deceptively simple. A lake goddess, a young man with too many burdens, and a meeting that somehow changed both of them forever.
Sirithiele had given him two copies of Fool's Copy and he also gained Biolumine, the Divine Creature that would go on to become one of his many absurd and terrifying accomplishments. Runner still remembered the way he had explained it to her once. He had said Sirithiele trusted him. Runner never forgot that.
Then there was the Hidden Citadel.
That meeting had changed the whole shape of the story. By then, Sirithiele was no longer a Minor Goddess. She had risen to become a Primordial Goddess, standing at the summit of what she was. Yet even then, when she had already reached such a height, she had still remembered him. She had used the last of her power to make him a Seventh Enlightenment Divine. She had also left behind two Fragments of Time, preserved for millennia, just so he could receive them when the time was right.
Runner had always found that part almost unbearably strange in the best way. A goddess held on to gifts for thousands of years because she believed in one man enough to wait.
Runner stepped closer to the statue and placed one hand against the sapphire base.
"Dad always talked about you like you were someone important. You were one of those people who only come once in someone's life and leave a mark so deep it never really fades. He said you were kind. He also said you were one of the first Divine beings who treated him with genuine warmth when he needed it most. That mattered to him a lot more than he ever said out loud."
She looked up at the statue again.
"And he made you this."
That, more than anything, was what struck her every time she came here. Vastarael had made the statue himself. Every line of the statue carried reverence. Every fold of stone clothing, every curve of the face and every subtle angle of the seated posture said that he had not only remembered Sirithiele but honored her in the only way he knew how.
She folded her hands in front of herself and bowed again.
"Thank you for helping him, even if it cost you your life. He never forgot."
Runner stayed there a while, staring at the statue and letting the memories settle in properly. That was another curse of immortality. Memories did not dull the way they did for mortals. They stayed vivid. She could remember her father in the Mortal Anchor like he had been there yesterday instead of four hundred and ten years ago. She could remember the ten years he spent with them before he was forcefully taken to the Immortal Anchor, leaving her and everyone else behind.
Now four centuries had passed since then.
Runner exhaled slowly and looked out over the empty mountain ranges. They were beautiful but there was no denying how empty they had become. The Raukerai had once been part of a lively tribe. Now the records existed, the memories existed and the space existed, but the people themselves were all gone. She was the last Raukerai.
"I should start populating this place. It's long past time to revive the Raukerai Tribe."
She had the records to restore the tribe properly, at least in the broad sense. The Obsidian Runic Spire had preserved more than enough for her to work with. The problem was the rest of the tribes in Erna Isles. That part was a mess.
"Unfortunately, I only have records of my tribe, not the others. Dad took care of that problem in a very direct way when he killed them all so Narisva could advance. Or, as he would insist, so she could reach the Primordial Deity Rank. Apparently the naming distinction mattered a great deal to him."
That nearly made her smile. It was impossible not to hear Vastarael's voice in her mind when she thought about it. He had always been absurdly precise about power levels and ranks, especially when discussing anything to do with Narisva. The whole affair had been so catastrophically overcomplicated that Runner had long ago stopped trying to explain it to anyone outside the family. If someone asked, she simply said her father had "handled it," which was technically true and morally safer.
Runner looked once more at the statue of Sirithiele, sitting proudly in the center of the frozen lake.
"I'll come back when there are more of us here. This place is going to be full of people."
Runner she vanished in a clean flash of light, leaving the sapphire statue behind under the open night sky. A moment later she appeared inside a war room.
"Did someone call my name? I'm here you know. And why is Alpha and Ervadelle a mess? Did you two fight?"