Achilles opened his eyes to an unfathomably vast domain filled with brilliance and power.
It looked like a primeval epochal forest.
Trees rose around him in every direction, thousands of miles tall, trunks wider than star systems, bark threaded with veins of gold that pulsed in slow heartbeat rhythms from root to canopy. Their leaves were not leaves. They were discs of light, suspended in the upper reaches, catching a brilliance that did not come from any single sun. Below, a floor of moss and root-system stretched outward for distances his Architect's Perception couldn't finish reading.
Rivers ran through it.
Not rivers of water. Rivers of blue Infinity. They flowed between the tree-trunks in wide slow currents, deep sapphire shot through with paler threads of something older than color, and every time Achilles glanced at them the edges of his foundation warmed in quiet warning.
