The bonfire crackled in the heart of Nepthuren's commons, flames painting the cavern roof gold. Sparks rose like fireflies, vanishing into the dark where Overwatch's eyes glowed faintly, watching without judgment.
Goblins sat shoulder-to-shoulder with humans. Kippers perched on overturned crates, tiny legs swinging. Beastkin lounged in loose circles, tails flicking. Even the Hollow Howl wolves sprawled near the heat, ears pricked, sharing strips of roasted venison. Flow's streams glimmered nearby, reflecting the fire in ripples of blue-white light.
Kai sat on a log near the edge, cloak pooled around him like spilled ink. Daniel stood closer to the flames, golden eyes catching the light, a half-smile tugging at his scar. Neo sat cross-legged beside Kai, quiet as always.
Kilo hopped onto a stump in the center, axe planted like a banner.
"Story time!" the kipper declared, voice ringing. "But first—who's got the weirdest boon?"
Laughter rippled. A goblin raised a hand. "Mine makes mushrooms grow on my enemies!"
A human snorted. "That's just gross."
Daniel grinned. "Mine makes me think faster the more I fight. Brain turns into lightning. Useful when you're about to die."
Neo leaned forward, firelight dancing across his scar. "Rift Leaper. I can open rifts anywhere. No cooldown. But every time I do…" He trailed off, eyes distant.
The crowd quieted.
Kai spoke up, voice low. "Restful Gaze. Look someone in the eye, they sleep. Indefinitely. Until I wake them."
Gasps. A kipper squeaked, "That's scary!"
Flicker, hovering as a tiny flame above Kai's shoulder, chirped, "He uses it on himself when he's too tired to sleep!"
Laughter again, warmer this time.
Then a young human boy stood, eyes wide. "I want to be a Resonant too! When can we get boons?"
A goblin girl nodded furiously. "Me too! I want to make bread rise without Kai!"
A kipper squeaked, "And tiny clouds! For kipper flights!"
Kai's chest tightened. He looked at them—goblins, humans, kippers, beastkin—all staring at him with the same hope.
"In a year," he said softly. "When the Old Realm mission ends. Sovereign will open the trial for everyone here. You'll have your chance."
The crowd erupted in cheers, louder than before.
Daniel leaned close, voice low. "You sure about that?"
Kai nodded. "They deserve it."
Neo spoke then, voice quiet but carrying. "My first days in the Old Realm… weren't like this."
The fire crackled. Everyone leaned in.
"I stepped through a rift that shouldn't have existed," Neo said. "Landed in a place where time didn't flow right. Met a devil who wore clocks for skin. He offered me a deal—serve the toad king, or loop for two hundred years."
Daniel whistled low. "And you took the deal."
"Had to." Neo's smile was bitter. "The alternative was worse."
He told them about the toad king's court, about serving a monarch who measured loyalty in centuries. About futures he saw that never came true because he changed them. About the day he looked into a mirror and saw a stranger with his face.
When he finished, the fire had burned low. No one spoke.
Then a Hollow Howl wolf asked, voice gruff, "What about vampires? They live long too. How do they do it?"
Neo shrugged. "I don't know much about them. They call Kai the fanged one. Seers are weird."
Vael stepped from the shadows, cloak trailing like smoke.
"Since you gave me my own castle," he said, voice smooth as silk, "I might as well tell you a bit about vampires. We are divine servants. When we consume human blood, we bind their soul—slave. But we have enthrallment to get around that. Many vampires have pet humans. Many humans have pet vampires. I recommend the Vampire Academy if you want to know more, my naïve friend."
The fire popped. Silence settled, heavy with possibility.
Then Kilo hopped up again, axe planted.
"Kipper culture!" he declared. "We are small but mighty! We dig tunnels, we steal shiny things, we make traps! And we have the best stories!"
The crowd laughed, the tension breaking.
Then a goblin leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "How do you build all this, Kai? The walls, the ovens, the water that flows uphill?"
Kai smiled faintly. "Equivalent exchange."
The crowd leaned in.
"I got it from an old man called Knov," Kai said. "I woke up after freezing at the peak of the world—yep, the rift spat me out on the top of the world. If I didn't have the cloud, I would be dead. Anyway, I woke up with him tattooing my arms with resonance. He barely explained it, but I can manipulate matter—like heating, shaping, more complex things. It's based on thought."
Daniel snorted. "That's pretty lame."
Kai laughed, understanding the burden's twist. "Haha, it is cool, isn't it?"
The crowd roared with laughter, the firelight dancing across their faces.
A kipper squeaked, "So you think, and stone obeys?"
"Pretty much," Kai said. "Thought, will, resonance. Equivalent exchange. You give something, you get something. No free miracles."
The elder goblin nodded slowly. "Like trading. But with the world itself."
"Exactly," Kai said. "The world listens if you speak its language."
The fire burned bright, and Nepthuren remembered why it had been built.
And somewhere beyond the walls, the Crimson Road waited.
Patient.
Hungry.
Ready.
----
There was much to learn about the world, the Old Realm, and the Underworld, and the more Kai learned, the less he understood.
The Old Realm had never been touched by Underworld rifts. Not once. Not in ten thousand years of recorded history. The Underworld bled into every other plane — Human Realm, Future Realm, even the Lawless City's gutters — but here the ground stayed clean. No black veins, no screaming shadows, no sudden nights that swallowed whole villages.
Why?
Some said the Peak of the World drank the corruption before it could spread. Others claimed the four nations had forged a pact with the mountain itself — blood for silence. The wizards muttered about resonance frequencies that simply cancelled the Underworld's song. The goblins just shrugged and said, "The mountain is picky."
Kai couldn't let it go. The question sat in his chest like a second heart. One day he would map the reason. One day he would stand on the Peak and ask the stone itself why it kept the dark out while letting every other horror walk free.
He would become a researcher — not for glory, but for answers. For Nepthuren. For the children who would never have to know what a rift screaming in the night felt like.
That was absolute.
---
They were still around the fire, embers glowing low, when hoofbeats echoed up the Crimson Road.
A squad rode out of the dark — six riders in silver-trimmed black, cloaks snapping like banners. At their head, hair streaked red and white, eyes sharp as winter steel, rode Xalith.
She reined in her mount, swung down, and walked straight to the fire like she owned the night.
Her gaze found Kai across the flames.
"Hey, StrayZero," she said, lips curling into that half-smirk he remembered from Fable's starter fields. "Small world."
Kai's heart stuttered.
Mirae.
The girl who had farmed goblins beside him for weeks, who had laughed at his terrible jokes and shared her last potion when his health bar bled red. The one who had whispered, "Let's figure it out together," like it was the easiest promise in any realm.
Here she was — real name
Kai couldn't come to terms that they were the same person but it didn't really matter.
The square of Nepthuren had never been so crowded.
Humans, goblins, beastkin, Hollow Howl wolves, and the kippers (perfect miniature humans no taller than a forearm) pressed shoulder-to-shoulder under the new glass-roofed pavilion. Torches burned low, but Flow's streams glowed brighter, painting every face in shifting blue-white light.
Kai, Neo, and Daniel sat on the central bench.
Across from them: Xalith and her squad of Americans, cloaks thrown back, eyes sharp with secrets they'd paid for in blood.
Xalith wasted no time.
"You built a city," she said, voice carrying over the hush. "We used the same weeks to learn what this world actually is. Listen."
She pressed two fingers to her sternum. Resonance flared violet-silver. A ripple passed through the air, and something small tumbled out of nothing into her waiting palm.
A kipper.
Female. Barely taller than Kai's forearm. Skin pale as moonlight, hair long and silver, features delicate and perfectly human in miniature. But where eyes should have been there was only smooth, unbroken skin.
The crowd gasped. Even the Hollow Howl wolves leaned forward.
The blind kipper tilted her head, as if she could feel every gaze.
"My name is Lira," she said, voice high and clear, like wind chimes made of glass. "I see with threads Sovereign forgot to cut."
Kai's breath caught. A seer kipper. Blind, yet seeing farther than any of them.
Lira lifted her tiny hand and began.
"Six layers hold the Underworld, and the Old Realm stands above them all—untouched, because the mountain drinks the poison before it rises.
Layer One — the Shallows. Low-level demons. Weak, mindless things born from stray resonance. They swarm like rats, devouring the newly dead who fall through weak rifts. No society. Only hunger.
Layer Two — the Crimson Cities. Demon civilization. Towers of obsidian and bone, streets paved with screaming souls. They have kings, merchants, laws written in blood contracts. They trade in memories and years of life. Ordered. Cruel. Efficient.
Layer Three to Five — the Anarchy. Powerful demons, ancient and mad, sealed long ago by the gods themselves. Layer Three is endless war—demons tearing each other apart for eternity. Layer Four is the Silence, where sound itself is devoured. Layer Five is the Fracture, where reality breaks and reforms every heartbeat. No one rules there. Only the strongest survive, and even they are prisoners of their own power.
Layer Six — the Abyss of Echoes. The deepest seal. Azourath is chained there, his heart torn out and scattered as lineages. The gods feared him most of all. He taught mortals to bind spirits—guardians. He gave humans the tools to rival divinity. For that crime, they ripped his essence into six fragments and locked him beneath the world. The Abyss is not a place. It is a scream that never ends.
And above all six layers, sealed by the Peak of the World itself, sits Nepthure—the Old Realm. The mountain drinks the corruption before it can rise. That is why no Underworld rifts have ever scarred this land. The Peak is a lock. And locks can be picked."
She paused. The square was silent enough to hear hearts beating.
"One month," she repeated. "Not a year. The barriers thin. The Peak drinks time faster now. Your arrival cracked the cup. The realms are bleeding together. One month until merge. War. Or annihilation."
Daniel's knuckles whitened. "How do you know?"
Lira turned her blind face toward him. "Because I was born the day the first rift opened. My eyes were the price for seeing what comes next."
She took a breath.
"The War Nation—Rhaegor—already marches. They believe the human realm is weak. Full of Resonants who play games instead of war. They will strike first. Earth will burn if no one stops them.
The God of Hunger—Rhaek—does not eat bread. He eats futures.
And there is another—the God of Fracture, Vyrn. He is new. Born from the moment Sovereign first touched this realm. He breaks what is whole and calls it progress. The Academy worships him in secret. They think they control the breaking. They do not.
Your world—Earth—is soft. No lineages. No true gods walking. When the merge comes, it will be devoured unless something stands in the way."
She turned her face to Kai.
"You are that something. Sloth's heir. Azourath's echo. The one who builds when others destroy. The one who feeds when others starve.
But one month is not enough to build an army.
It is only enough to build a legend."
The square was silent.
Then Kilo stood on his crate, voice small but fierce.
"We'll be ready."
The Hollow Howl alpha dipped his head. "We will bleed for this place."
Flow's voice rippled through the streams, soft and sad.
"I will light the dark. Even if it burns me out."
Kai looked at them—goblins, humans, miniature kippers, beastkin, wolves—all staring at him with fear and fire in their eyes.
"One month," he said.
The square answered with a single breath.
"Then we have work to do."
The fire burned higher than any before.
Because tomorrow, the world would remember their names.
And the gods were already listening.