Runner drummed her fingers once against the obsidian tabletop and looked around the war room.
"All right, now that I explained the plan, no one gets to hide behind dramatic silence. We're doing this properly. I want to know exactly what each of you did for the past half century."
A collective wave of displeasure moved around the table. Shimmer immediately threw her hand up.
"That's boring."
"It won't. You will all be concise."
Shimmer stared at her. "You say that like you don't know us."
"Shimmer. Begin."
Shimmer made a face like she had been sentenced.
"Fine. I spent fifty years doing what I always do. I camped outside wars, waited for the big killing fields and took souls from the aftermath. I was very active. There were sieges, border wars, kingdom purges, node conflicts and one very ugly campaign involving three armies and a monastery that thought it was neutral. It was not neutral. It was full of idiots. I let armies tear each other apart and then took whatever was left. I have five million souls from it."
Runner nodded once.
"Accepted."
"That was too fast."
"I don't need to interrogate your habits. I already know them."
"That's just rude."
Valeria made a small sound that might have been a laugh and might have been a cough. Runner turned to her.
"Valeria."
Valeria sighed as cleared her throat.
"I spent the fifty years moving between war zones, disasters and kingdoms. Since I cannot be bothered to name it anything more glamorous than that, let's call it what it was. I used paintings. I created scenarios, I inserted Living Paintings into places where they could do the most damage and then I let the works do what they were designed to do."
Shimmer pointed at her.
"See? This is exactly why I say she is the expensive one."
Valeria did not even look at her.
"I'm the one who gets results."
"You also get a lot of blood on walls."
Runner raised a hand to silence the banter.
"Numbers."
Valeria's tone became almost smug. "Two and a half million souls this expedition."
Shimmer let out a scandalized noise.
"Only?"
"Mine had quality as Runner said."
"That is what people say when they're losing."
Valeria continued, ignoring the Frost Dragon.
"In total, about twenty million souls. And before you ask, yes, that does include the good ones."
Runner glanced at her. "Good ones?"
"The ones with enough depth to matter to the Spire."
Runner cut in before Shimmer could chip in.
"Ferris."
Ferris was not loud like Shimmer or languid like Valeria. She was technically the second oldest among them.
"I spent my fifty years in London. The NewvEnglish Kingdom kept trying to destroy me so I kept refusing to vanish. They sent hunters, soldiers, inquisitors and a few very overconfident nobles who thought they could buy my surrender with offers and titles. None of it worked so I made the resistance harder every year. I got a few million this expedition."
"Total?"
"Thirty million."
Runner's eyes moved down the table.
"Luciana."
Enchanta, who had been pretending to look bored for the last several minutes, perked up with visible delight.
"Finally, someone who appreciates my contributions."
"Make it short," Runner said.
Luciana smiled with immediate offense.
"How rude. I spent my fifty years perfecting puppetry, infiltration and replacement work across New London's upper and middle districts as usual. Nobles, officials and a few minor rulers were quietly removed and replaced with puppets that were so convincing even their families did not notice for weeks. Some of them still don't know."
"That is disturbing."
"Yes. That's the point. Ten million souls. It should have been higher though. The city was underperforming."
Vex cleared his throat.
"You say that as if there was an easy way to mass-replace aristocrats without the whole city becoming suspicious."
Luciana turned her head and smiled at him.
"There was, Dearie. You just kept turning every clean infiltration into a rooftop chase."
Vex lifted both hands a little.
"That is because rooftops are more fun to run on."
Runner let that sit for a moment, then looked back to Ferris.
"You stayed in New England the whole time?"
"Mostly. After the first few decades, I became less of a person to them and more of a problem they could not solve. That worked in my favor."
"You really held them off for four centuries."
"They gave me plenty of reasons."
Chrysanthemum, who had been quiet until now, spoke.
"We all did what the realm made easiest for us to do."
"And in your case that means four centuries of religious logistics."
Chrysanthemum did not even sound offended.
"Yes, Shimmer."
Runner looked at her.
"How did the cathedral network hold up?"
"Better than expected. The promised land doctrine spread through the poorer districts first, as anticipated. Then the message moved through their children and grandchildren. The wealthy resisted longer but I was not trying to convert them quickly. I was trying to build a structure that would survive persecution and it did. They're inside the spire as we speak."
"That is actually smart."
"I know."
"Thirty million souls this expedition?"
"Yes. Eighty million total."
Shimmer whistled softly. "That is a lot of dead believers."
"Belief scales well when people are desperate." Chrysanthemum said.
Runner let the room settle again before looking toward the back where Jack still stood.
"And you? Since Luciana already dragged you into the conversation."
Jack shrugged.
"I ran interference, moved through zones, got people and assets where they needed to go and made sure anyone trying to catch Luciana had to deal with me first."
Luciana pointed at him with a smile.
"He was excellent."
Runner leaned back and looked from one face to another. The room was full of monsters. She ignored it for the moment and tapped the table once.
"Good. That's the report portion. Shall we go to the next part? Shimmer, you once said you've got a better grasp of the Mortal Anchor than anyone else here. Give it to us properly."
"Finally. Something useful. For the last four hundred years, we've been exploring the Mortal Anchor of this Timeless Realm and we've pulled out four main facts that matter more than the rest."
Valeria rested her chin in one hand.
"You've been dying to say that all week."
"I have and now I'm going to say it without anyone interrupting me every two seconds."
She looked around the table like she was daring someone to try. Nobody did, so she continued.
"First. There are trillions of beings living in the Mortal Anchor. That's not exaggeration and it's not one of those ridiculous numbers people throw around when they're trying to sound important. They actually live here. Most of them are packed into kingdoms and those kingdoms can be made by one race or a mix of races depending on who ended up where and who managed to hold the land. Every kingdom worth anything has barriers around it. Those barriers keep out temporal sandstorms."
That got several looks around the table. Luciana frowned.
"Those are the ones that age things absurdly fast, right?"
"Yep. Random storms. They come through and age beings and objects for thousands of years in seconds. If you're caught outside without protection, you don't just get hurt. Armor rusts into dust, skin withers, stone cracks, metal becomes useless junk and if you're unlucky enough, you die before you understand what hit you."
Ferris gave a quiet exhale. "That's why the outer patrols never stay out long."
"Exactly. The kingdoms survive because the barriers hold and because the nodes of Archivist Stones keep them from falling apart to Decay. Without those stones, everything would collapse eventually anyway. The barriers buy safety from storms but the stones buy endurance from time."
"So every kingdom is basically living on borrowed time and crystal support."
"That's the short version. The long version is uglier, but that'll do for now."
Runner nodded once, encouraging her to keep going.
"Second, The Timeless Realm is infinite and completely desolate. More than two hundred years ago, we existed on Earth before the Immortal Reset teleported us to Spheraphase. A few Earth Kingdoms like England was teleported to Spheraphase too and thanks to the realm, they adapted to it like transmigrators. That's why they exist here. There's day and night, but neither of them ever feels like they're moving toward anything. Agriculture doesn't work here."
Jack was curious about this.
"So people don't farm? I mean I've been doing so much that the concept of looking if the humans eat is shocking to me."
"They can't farm much if the land won't cooperate, Jack. And most of them don't need to in the first place. The mortals here survive by feeding on time through the Archivist Stones. That's the important bit. They don't eat normally. They draw what they need from the stones and from the time-flow structures tied to them."
"Which means the stones aren't just currency. They're for survival."
Shimmer pointed at her.
"Exactly. Finally, someone gets it without making me spell it out."
Alpha II gave a faint smile.
"You're welcome."
Shimmer ignored the jab and kept going.
"Third, there are five Earth kingdoms in Spheraphase that matter the most in the Mortal Anchor of Spheraphase Planetary System. The New English Kingdom, the Cyborg Kingdom, the Horned Kingdom, the Werewolf Kingdom, and the Inquiva Kingdom. Those five have the biggest territories, the largest populations and the strongest ownership of the Archivist Stone nodes. That means they're the biggest powers not just because they've got armies but because they've got the stones that keep their people alive."
Chrysanthemum's head tilted slightly.
"And the smaller kingdoms survive by trading, hiding, or pretending they don't matter."
"Pretty much. If they're smart, they stay quiet. If they're not smart, they get swallowed. Fourth, the only way out of the Mortal Anchor is the Gateway of Reversal or Dad, who's now the ruler of the Timeless Realm."
Runner tapped one finger against the table.
"And what about the five major kingdoms?"
Shimmer spread her hands.
"Then they'll do what kingdoms always do when something useful becomes dangerous. They'll call us a threat and try to crush us before we can become a problem. We're already a threat in the New English Kingdom whether we like it or not. Luciana's puppets have been slipping through their structures for decades. Arletta's network has turned their streets into a knife pit. Peccavi's religion has half the poor people in New London praying to leave. Ferris has been fighting them long enough that they probably tell children stories about her at night. And then there's our little opera incident, which I'm sure the city has already turned into a disaster legend."
Chrysanthemum's voice was calm and very dry.
"The New English Kingdom has been hostile for centuries. I don't think this will improve their mood. What about the other kingdoms?"
"This means we need allies, or at least enough disorder to keep them from organizing immediately. They are making an allied alliance to fight us."
"Exactly."
Ferris looked at Runner.
"So what's the next move?"
Runner didn't answer right away.
"We attack the allied forces, gain their souls and use them for our deity Ascension. It can't hurt to get extra souls, right?"
Shimmer looked satisfied by that answer in the way only she ever could.
"Good. Because I'm done camping in war zones for fun and pretending that's not a retirement plan."
Valeria gave her a flat look.
"You do realize you just described your entire personality, right?"
"Yeah, and it's working great."
Ferris's gaze drifted to Runner again.
"You're taking this seriously."
"I always have. After all, Dad made me the leader before he left."
That made the room go still for a moment. Runner had inherited too much, seen too much and waited too long to reach this point for it to be anything else.