Chapter 779: 779

Ikem turned fully toward his father, the memory still fresh in his eyes.

"It all began with a desperate desire to heal my people... my children."

There was no grandeur in that confession. Only desperation and love. Ikenga nodded slowly.

"When you spoke of your divinity," he said, "and the professions that practice it, I was struck by something."

He glanced sideways at his son.

"You did not mention healers."

Ikem stilled.

"Do you know how many mortals succumb to ailments they do not understand?" Ikenga continued, his voice neither accusing "Some are fortunate and survive by chance. Others meet their end without ever knowing what afflicted them."

"Your divinity," Ikenga went on, gesturing toward the horned tiger nearby, "is uniquely suited to breach that ignorance. Among all the kingdoms in this world, the medical knowledge of your people, the Apelings stands unmatched. Their understanding has advanced so far under your influence that they can now merge traits, guide biological harmony, and birth creatures like this."

The tiger-deer hybrid prowled through crimson grass, its existence a testament to mastery over life’s building blocks.

"You have deciphered the microcosm," Ikenga said. "You have seen the unseen. You have touched the smallest engines of life."

He turned fully to Ikem.

"Do you understand where I am going with this?"

Ikem did not answer immediately.

His thoughts moved rapidly, connecting threads he had kept separate for too long.

Healing, disease. The microscopic world. The terror mortals felt when facing illness they could not comprehend.

The countless prayers whispered in desperation for relief. For survival.

He had been looking at mages, druids, scholars, those capable of grasping the depth of Verdant Communion.

But the foundation had never been scholars. It had been the sick, the grieving.

The desperate parent watching a child fade.

He had been sitting atop a mountain of gold without recognizing its value.

His divinity was not too complex for mortals. It simply needed an entry point, healing was that doorway.

If he guided healers, not merely with restorative divine spells, but with knowledge of the microcosm... if he revealed the unseen causes of illness... if he elevated medicine across kingdoms...

Faith would not come from abstract doctrine. It would come from gratitude, from lives saved, from understanding granted and from suffering reduced.

Ikem exhaled slowly, the realization settling into him "I have been presenting them with the forest," he murmured, "when all they needed was the seed."

Ikenga smiled faintly.

"Fundamentals," he reminded him.

Ikem looked once more at the hybrid creature, then toward the distant settlements within his realm.

It felt... simple, heal them. Teach them why they are healed and through that understanding, let them glimpse the greater communion. The microcosm would lead them to the macrocosm, one life at a time.

Looking at his father, Ikem let out a quiet breath before speaking.

"You really are a cruel man, Father." Ikenga raised a brow slightly, but he did not react defensively. There was no venom in Ikem’s tone. Only pain layered over understanding.

"I understand Mother’s pain even more now," Ikem continued.

He lowered himself to the crimson earth, lying back as he stared into the red sky of his realm. The shifting clouds above reflected the pulse of his thoughts.

"You make people want to keep you," he said softly. "To claim you. To hold you close because of the safety and strength that comes with you."

His voice tightened just slightly.

"And then you remind us, coldly that we can never truly own you."

The words hung between them.

"I apologize for my childish outburst earlier," Ikem added after a moment. "I understand your difficulties now. The weight of what you face. But understanding is easy..."

He closed his eyes.

"Acceptance is harder."

Ikenga said nothing. Instead, he lowered himself to sit beside his son, the ground yielding gently beneath divine presence. He listened.

"It was hard, you know," Ikem went on. "At the beginning of my journey. I had grown used to the comfort of your realm. Its safety. Its certainty."

He let out a small breath of laughter "And then it was gone. I was aloneleft to defend myself."

"I knew you could see my steps," Ikem admitted. "That you were aware of everything. But that made it worse in some ways. You were so close... yet impossibly far. I could not call for your help. I could not ask for advice."

His lips curved faintly at the memory. "That reality truly set in when I was swallowed by a snake."

Ikenga’s eyes flickered with recognition.

"It was the third day after I left your realm," Ikem said. "A massive serpent. Thought it had claimed an easy meal."

He chuckled.

"Bara saved me." For a moment, father and son shared that quiet memory of early chaos and survival.

Then Ikem turned his head slightly.

"Welcome back, Father," he said again, this time more emotion behind each word.

Ikenga remained silent for a long moment before replying.

"You have stepped fully into divinity," he said at last. "We now stand upon the same plane of existence. No longer separated by mortal boundaries."

His voice was softer than before when he was teaching "Those days of distant observation are behind us."

Ikem felt something settle in his chest at those words.

"My realm will always be open to you," Ikenga continued. "When you need me."

Then his tone shifted, almost casually "And I am hoping you will help me take care of your to be sibling... whose life I have not been permitted to be part of."

Ikem blinked.

"Huh?" The word slipped from him unconsciously.

But there was no further explanation, he sat up quickly. Ikenga was gone.

The space beside him held only the faint residual warmth of divine presence.

Ikem rose to his feet, his voice expanding through the entirety of his realm, through crimson forests, across the plains, into the very fabric of its sky.

"What the hell do you mean by that, old man?!"

His words rippled outward, extending beyond his realm. Far away, in a new and unfamiliar surrounding, Ikenga stood beneath a different sky. A faint smile curved his lips as he took in the atmosphere of this new domain.

He had heard and he did not answer.

"What have you done to my brother this time?" a voice asked, threaded with suppressed amusement that did little to hide its curiosity.

Ikenga turned, arms already spread wide as though he had been waiting for the question.

"Maul," he said warmly, pulling his son into a firm embrace. Frost crept faintly along Ikenga’s arms where Maul’s aura touched him, but he paid it no mind. After a moment, they separated. Ikenga drew back with exaggerated heaviness, placing a hand over his chest as if wounded.

"Your brother has been quite the bully to me," he lamented dramatically. "No respect for his father at all."

Maul shook his head, unfazed by the performance. "Welcome back, Father," he said evenly, though the faint upward twitch of his lips betrayed him.

Ikenga’s playful expression softened into something more thoughtful.

"Hmm."

His awareness unfurled, rolling outward across the vastness of Maul’s realm.

It was different from his Ikem’s where everything was crimson, Maul’s stretched wide in pale stillness. An expanse of white upon white. Jagged glaciers rose like frozen mountains. Snow drifted in eternal spirals, the air itself seemed crystalline, sharp enough to cut the unprepared.

Ice elemental lifeforms roamed freely, towering colossi with bodies of compacted frost, serpentine constructs slithering beneath the snow, delicate humanoid figures sculpted from translucent blue crystal. They paused in their movements as Ikenga’s presence brushed over them, some bowing instinctively, others bristling in territorial defiance before recognizing the bond between ruler and heir.

Then Ikenga paused.

His awareness sharpened, narrowing.

There, near the distant frost fields where auroras shimmered in the sky like frozen fire.

Small figures, not elemental. They moved among the crystalline outgrowths, leaving faint trails of stardust in their wake.

Ikenga’s gaze deepened.

"Curious."

He stepped forward, boots pressing into snow that did not dare melt beneath him. "You’ve been busy."

Maul followed his father’s line of sight. "You noticed."

"They carry stellar residue," Ikenga said. "Strong fluctuations of it."

The small beings shimmered faintly, their forms composed of condensed light encased in fragile bodies of frost. Constellation-like markings pulsed beneath their translucent skin, dimming and brightening in uneven rhythms.

"Fragments," Ikenga murmured. "Or refugees." He asked as they felt foreign to this realm,

Maul’s voice came from beside "They one day drifted to the doorstep of my realm."

Ikenga glanced at him.

"From a dying star I think," Maul continued. "Its collapse tore through the outer veil. They would have dissipated in the void. My realm held great attraction to them due my familiarity with stellar constellation"

"So you caught them," Ikenga concluded, amusement returning faintly. "Your brother bullies me, and you gather strays from collapsing stars. I see how it is."

"They are not strays," Maul replied, mild but firm. "They are displaced. Their core is unstable. The cold stabilizes their stellar essence."