Adrian and Hestia returned to the head chamber and sat beside the table. He raised one hand, drawing the golden essence of his Fate-based Divine Concept from his Source Seed. It spread between his fingers, forming narrow lines of runes that joined above the tabletop.
"First, let us see what happens if I stay," he said. Hestia nodded and moved closer as the center of the circle flattened into a smooth surface. Adrian held the intention of remaining at home and continuing his training, and an image slowly formed within the golden light.
He saw himself seated inside one of Origin's training chambers. Golden threads extended from his hands, dividing into smaller groups before joining again in different patterns. The image shifted to another session, where several objects moved around him while layers of willforce took shape above his palm.
Other fragments showed him leaving the chamber, speaking with disciples, and sitting beside Hestia in their residence. Between those moments, he returned to his training. The structures he maintained became more complicated, though the brief images revealed little of what he understood while forming them.
Life continued around him. Starships travelled through the folded routes connecting Origin's headquarters worlds, Crimson Vital's disciples continued carrying out their responsibilities throughout Andromeda, and nothing within the fragments suggested that the sect had been forced into another emergency.
As the Fate reading extended farther into the future, however, the images gradually became less distinct. Details blurred, individual scenes shortened, and the golden surface finally showed Adrian entering another training chamber before clearing completely.
The divine spell had reached the furthest point it could presently follow.
That limitation did not surprise Adrian. Every Arcane Concept possessed rules that governed what could be accomplished through it, and those rules imposed boundaries for the concept.
Forming a Divine Concept pushed those boundaries considerably farther, allowing combinations of rules to accomplish things an individual Arcane Concept could not, but even a Divine Concept did not become something without limits. Authority techniques existed partly because of that restriction, modifying the governing rules and forcing a spell beyond what its ordinary structure should have been capable of reaching.
With the Fate spell in its current form, Adrian could follow possible futures only several standard months into the outside universe. Pushing the reading farther caused the connection to weaken until the spell could no longer produce reliable images.
Even so, several external months represented an enormous amount of subjective time within Origin. With the headquarters now maintaining eight internal years for every external day, the period covered by the Fate reading could contain hundreds of years of cultivation and development. Nothing Adrian or Hestia had seen suggested that an attack upon their people occurred before the spell reached its limit.
"We may have more time than we thought," Hestia said, looking from the empty surface to him. "You were still able to train, and nothing disturbed the sect."
"As far as the spell could show us," Adrian replied. He considered the images for a moment before adjusting the runes. "Now I will look at what happens if I go to the war region. Let us see how everyone here lives while I am away."
The golden surface filled again. A broad cultivation hall appeared, its floor divided into spaces where Origin disciples practiced beneath the guidance of their instructors. One young man lost control of his spell and turned toward the woman beside him. She pointed to the fading structure, and he began again while the image moved on.
Adrian's parents appeared next, seated across from one another beside an open window. Thomas was speaking with one hand resting upon the table, while Elara reached across to move a cup away from his elbow. He caught the movement and said something that made her smile before the scene gave way to a training ground.
Several of the Celestials stood around a group of disciples, watching them practice. Elsewhere, Torvain walked between rows of cultivators and stopped a young woman before she could repeat her attack. He adjusted the position of her arm, stepped back, and watched her try again.
Lara and Maelis appeared beside a large alchemical vessel. Maelis slowly poured a prepared liquid into its opening while Lara watched the reaction and adjusted the formation beneath it. Steam rose between them, briefly hiding Maelis's face. When it cleared, she was speaking to Lara with a pleased expression, and Lara leaned forward to examine the contents.
Adrian's gaze lingered on Maelis until the image passed. The earlier reading had shown a future in which she and Torvain were dead. Here, both were alive and busy with familiar work, and Hestia rested her hand over his as they watched.
More fragments followed from Crimson Vital and the worlds within Origin headquarters. Disciples cultivated, families moved through settled districts, and workers guided materials into waiting formations. New buildings stood beside places Adrian recognized, though the images passed too quickly for him to examine them closely.
One day outside headquarters meant eight years within it. A short journey could still allow their people to spend decades studying, working, and living together. The spell gave him only scattered moments from those lives, without showing how long he had been away when each one occurred.
The next image formed above a barren world, and Adrian leaned forward. Aerin stood in the void near its surface, wearing a close-fitting suit of silver-grey armor. Smooth sections covered her limbs and torso, joining through narrow flexible seams, while fine lines of light ran from her shoulders toward her hands.
She raised one arm, gathering Chaos essence around her fingers. The light along the armor brightened as she drew her hand back and swept it toward the world below. A blade of unstable energy struck the surface and cut deep through it, opening a widening split that crossed beyond the planet's visible curve.
Great masses of rock broke away along the opening. Mountains came apart, and fragments of the crust flew into the void as the two sides of the ruined world began to separate. Aerin remained above it with her arm extended, watching the destruction spread beneath her.
Adrian studied the armor as its lights dimmed. Aerin had always struggled with the strain of using Chaos, yet she remained steady after that attack. The armour artifact seemed to be helping her, though the brief image showed him little of how it worked.
Far from the debris, several figures stood within a transparent barrier. Adrian recognized Alice beside Lysandra and Selena, all three watching Aerin before turning toward a smaller projection between them. Hestia stood nearby, and beside her was a man whose face made the present Hestia straighten.
It was Adrian. Something about his appearance was slightly different, but neither his face nor the white-grey robes left any doubt. He said something to the women, and Selena's mouth moved in reply before the image broke into golden streaks.
"I thought you were looking at what happens here while you are away," Hestia said, turning toward him. "Did you change the reading? How are you standing there with us?"
Adrian glanced at the fading image, then looked back at her. "I did not change it," he replied. A golden current emerged from his body and gathered beside his chair, taking the shape of a standing man. The light settled into familiar features, and another Adrian looked toward Hestia.
She glanced between them, her hand still resting over the seated Adrian's. "You finally made one? But we never found a cloning concept that suited what you wanted."
"Look more closely," Adrian said. Hestia focused her perception on the figure, following the energy beneath its familiar appearance. The shape that had seemed solid resolved into countless fine strands of willforce. There was no flesh within it, and the entire form was held together by Adrian's intent.
"You made a clone from your willforce?" she asked, studying the face again. Her gaze returned to him, and he nodded while the figure remained beside them.
"I worked on it during the years we spent inside headquarters," Adrian replied. "Once I could maintain several complicated actions at the same time, I began trying to give part of my willforce a form I could use like this. It took much longer to keep it stable than it did to make it look like me."
Hestia looked again at the likeness. She had known Adrian wanted some form of clone for a long time. After returning from Kaalatva, he had spoken more than once about how much life continued without him whenever he travelled into ordinary external time. His other cultivation training and research had never made him abandon that search.
Many cultivators accepted separation as an unavoidable part of seeking greater strength. They left their families behind when they entered distant sects, departed for inheritances that might take centuries to reach, and returned after generations had passed for everyone they once knew.
But Adrian had always hated that. He wanted the people he loved to grow alongside him. He wanted to travel with them, share what he discovered, listen to what they experienced, and remain part of their lives rather than becoming someone who returned only after the important moments had already passed.
Yet he could not bring everyone whenever something demanded his attention elsewhere in the universe. His search for the missing knowledge of Destruction alone might eventually require another long journey, and even a single external week spent away from headquarters would represent decades for the people living inside its accelerated formations.
"I do not want to come back from every journey and hear about all the years I missed," Adrian said. "My parents will have things they want to tell me. Aerin will want to show me what she learned. I want to be there with all of you when those things happen."
Hestia's fingers tightened around his hand. For a moment, she watched him instead of the likeness, then moved closer until her shoulder rested against his. "You should have told me you were this close," she said. "I would have liked to see you make it work."
"You are seeing it now," Adrian replied with a small smile. Hestia glanced at the likeness again before turning back toward the projection. Golden light was already gathering into another image, and they watched it together while the willforce clone remained beside his chair.
The later fragments showed more of the same steady life. His likeness appeared with his parents in one image and beside Hestia in another, but the conversations were less clear. Several times, the image broke apart just as he began speaking, shifting to another scene before either of them could hear what followed.
Those gaps might have concerned news from the war. Adrian could see the people around his likeness clearly enough until the conversation changed, but the missing words gave him no way to be sure. He let the reading continue until it reached the same limit as before.
No attack had appeared in the home fragments. Torvain and Maelis continued their work, Hestia remained well, and the people within Origin were building upon what they already had. The images could not account for every danger, but Adrian's shoulders slowly eased as he watched the last one fade.
He still wanted to see what happened to him. Keeping the decision to leave at the center of the spell, Adrian turned its focus toward his journey into the war region. The golden surface stirred, but the first image broke before a single figure became clear.
The next showed starships firing across a field of wreckage. A group of sky-blue cultivators fought near the broken hull of a larger vessel, their opponents carrying horns, scales, and other features he had seen among the demons in the recovered memories. An attack crossed between them, and the scene vanished before he could follow it.
Other fragments appeared and failed just as quickly. He saw figures retreating through a damaged formation, a stretch of burning ground, and a blue-skinned man turning toward something beyond the image. None of the glimpses showed Adrian himself, and he could identify neither the combatants nor the places where they fought.
Hestia leaned closer as a new image formed. An unfamiliar man stood against a dark background, holding a node near his face. His eyes kept moving away from the small projection above it, and his fingers shook as he brought it closer to his mouth.
"Don't…" His voice faltered, and the image tore across his face. More words seemed to follow, but the spell carried only a broken sound before his voice returned, strained and urgent. "…mess with Origin."
The man's mouth moved again. Cracks spread across the golden surface before the next word reached them, and the whole projection burst apart. Adrian kept his hand raised for a moment, watching the scattered essence fade above the table, but no further image formed.
The Source might let him force his way deeper, but doing so could alert powerful people connected to what he was trying to see. They knew little about Bloodfang's sect leader, and the elder protecting his son might be only one of several people whose attention such an attempt could draw. Adrian lowered his hand without trying again.
Hestia continued looking at the empty space above the table before turning toward him. "Are you going there only to reach Weave," she asked, "or have you already decided to do something else?"
From everything Adrian had told her, Hestia had expected him to enter the war under an unfamiliar identity. He could observe stronger cultivators, participate in smaller conflicts if necessary, and search for whatever understanding allowed Weave cultivators to interfere directly with another being's intent. None of that required revealing Crimson Vital or Origin.
Yet the frightened man in the Fate vision had known the name Origin. More importantly, he had been warning someone not to interfere with it.
An unexpected event could have caused that future, but Hestia knew Adrian well enough to notice the small smile beginning to form upon his lips.
He had already been thinking beyond what he told her.
Reaching Weave was still his first priority. Without it, he could not properly use his strength against the elder's Will. But killing that man alone would leave the power behind him untouched, able to send someone else toward their home. Adrian wanted to remove the problem at its root, so his people would no longer have to keep preparing for the next person Bloodfang might send.
He turned fully toward Hestia, his fingers closing around hers as the last trace of the Fate spell disappeared. The slight smile remained when he answered.
"This war will be the Origin Sect's first official appearance before the universe."