"Oh, dear goddess Nethera. What am I witnessing?" Loudbark looked into the distance and could not help but pray to his deity, breath tight in his chest and voice barely more than a rasp.

The others were no different. Even the cold-eyed Gorathim stood wide-eyed, their composure stripped away, unable to grasp what kind of existence was descending into their mortal world. A hush spread over them, heavy and absolute.

In their sight, 2 structures appeared: 2 massive gates opening opposite each other in the darkness of the void, each many times larger than the Rank 4 Sszhar.

One gate seemed to burn with eternal fire. They could not see its interior from where they stood, yet the very sight of it sent heatless waves rolling over their skin and set a tremor in their bones.

Simply looking at that threshold dragged every sin before their eyes, as if a voice rose from within and whispered from inside their own chests, ’Kneel and ask forgiveness.’

The other gate was its opposite, a construction of light that refreshed and soothed. Its glow washed outward like calm water, easing mind and soul the moment it touched them and loosening a breath none of them knew they were holding.

The gates were not the only things that made them feel small and insignificant. From each threshold, 2 enormous heads began to emerge, and the void itself seemed to hold still, as if it had lost the authority to exist at all.

From the firelit gate came a head so black it drank the light around it, darker than the void itself, a shade none of them had believed could exist until that moment.

From the gate of light came a head, radiant and merciful, suffused with grace like the gate that birthed it, its contours gentle yet overwhelming to behold.

Whether it was seconds, minutes, or days, no one could say; their sense of time was shattered as they watched the figures come forth.

Only the heads emerged, and both fixed their gaze on a point before them, unwavering and absolute.

No one could see what these gods were watching; the distance hid it. Yet one certainty settled over them with a clarity that silenced thought: whatever drew that gaze was enough to make even gods pause.

They also understood that whatever had summoned these 2 existences must be worthy of a personal descent, something the gods would come to claim for themselves.

Awe and dread braided in their chests until it was hard to breathe.

Just then, as if that were not enough, the 2 beings spoke. The sound felt older than fire, a slow gravity that taught bones to listen and stilled the blood.

In that instant, every watching Practitioner’s vision went dark; whatever consciousness remained broke, and they collapsed to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.

—

Two vast wings unfurled and hovered between the 2 titanic heads, holding their full, unblinking attention.

The left wing, aimed at the burning gate, was wrought from pitch-black feathers—matte, lightless, the kind of black that seemed to drink the world. A thin seam of smoke bled from the vanes, the drift so faint it felt like a thought escaping. That single wing looked like a body could wear Malice the way armor is worn: a visible shape of intent, a cruelty given plumage.

The right wing was its inverse, as white as the gate it pointed toward. A pall of cold vapor slid from it in slow curtains, not smoke but breath turned to frost, the air itself resigning its warmth. It moved like winter made visible, as if it existed to flash-freeze anything tied to evil, gloom, or sorrow and leave behind only the still eternity of an untroubled life.

The one who bore those ethereal wings stood motionless—an outline wrong for this world and too perfect for the eye.

The skin appeared to have been made of ash, the byproduct of burning a sacred wood. It was simultaneously light and dark. It appeared to be both oppressive and a sign of the good. The entire concept, such as the idea of rebirth, seemed to be represented by the ash-gray color.

The musculature beneath that unnatural skin was exact and then excessive. Every human line existed, and then there were lines beyond that—edits to a sculpture, as if the artisan had mocked the creator by improving the draft and refusing to apologize.

I thought white suited me. The thought moved through Adyr as his dark-ash hair rippled—like a monochrome sun without heat—lifting and settling above eyes the color of new flame.

Up close, those crimson eyes appeared to hold countless figures, human and non-human, living inside them, as if they were leading thriving lives and at the same time screaming in endless agony. The illusion was strong enough to make anyone who looked feel dizzy and question what they were witnessing.

Adyr stilled, savoring the last minor shifts in his body. He waited for every gear to seat, the final clicks of a mechanism completing: his final transformation, his final evolution. He closed his eyes, drew a slow breath to test the new lungs, opened them, and regarded the 2 massive gates standing open at his sides.

"And who might you be?" He gave the heads, now pushed out from their gates, a sufficient glance and asked calmly, as if addressing a stranger he had bumped into on an empty road.

It was not naivety, being calm before figures that looked like real gods. It was understanding.

He knew, he could feel, that even with his new body, he was smaller than an ant before them, and this realization came with a rational mind. There was no need to fear, because everything would run its course. If these 2 beings wished to harm him, they would already have done it. There was nothing to do except wait for them to decide what they wished.

There was also another reason for his calmness. The gates felt familiar.

He could almost hear faint sounds from the white gate, like an orchestra, children laughing and playing, and adults telling lively tales and singing, while from the burning gate came the screaming of countless voices and the endless begging of sinners, a choir of ruin.

It clicked for him then that this familiarity came from the time he tried to ask Malrik what Primora is. There had been no gates at that time, but the feeling and the sounds he had heard were almost the same, only now more vivid.

It suggested that he had now gained enough power to see and feel more of that phenomenal experience, so he waited for the answer to his question.

"We be..." The first to speak was the titan from the burning gate. His voice came like molten lava, powerful enough to make even the void, that nothingness, melt under its force.

"We be..." The angelic figure’s answer, Her voice, spread like the finest silk laid over bare skin; the simple contact implied mending, as if a world with cracked edges might knit.

Apart from the voices, what caught Adyr’s attention was the language. It was not a language he had ever heard, but somehow he could understand it, at least from that 1 word, or so he thought.