The Eternal warship settled into a corner of the city. Not far off, white radiance pooled and lingered. Where it fell stood another temple of Tiamat. It was large as a palace yet sparingly appointed, a faint gray smoke drifting within.
"I made it to the Ninety-ninth Heaven. The Sunforge Hall is right there!"
"Will a millennium of calamity finally end with us? Fire God watch over us!"
"Glory to the Almighty Godmaster. He enslaved the machines and gave us a sliver of hope to break the cage!"
Atlantis seethed with bodies. Most were fresh awakeners, scooped up by the Immortal Lord and ferried straight to the top. They pressed hands to ancient stone like pilgrims, eyes wet, as if touch could bring them closer to divinity.
Orson’s eyes narrowed. Hundreds of Destroyers marched down the gangway, dead aura rolling off them like frost. Most had chosen Fireborn bodies, but a handful stood out as unmistakably human. Not modeled after Orson, either, but a man with blazing hair and a face carved in wrath.
He studied them. Those few commanded the rest; the other machines knelt in greeting.
He examined their statlines.
Destroyer Executor Type VI
Awakened Will: Eternal, King of Destruction
State: Earth, Infinite Dimensions Being Mimic
Earth. Infinite Dimensions being.
He strode into the streets and closed in, studying their faces. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Heavy frames. And on their backs, massive black wings.
His stomach dropped. Of course.
And then the one from the warship.
All the machines and adventurers pivoted toward her.
She was all cold clarity and poise, silver hair to her waist, a sword in one hand resting across her back. No seams, no plates, no wires. She wore that beauty like it was her birthright.
Destroyer Executor Type VII
Awakened Will: Eternal, Immortal Lord
State: Earth, Era of Immortals Being Mimic
Divine Domain: Unknown
Orson’s thoughts roared. Not at her numbers, but at the words Era of Immortals. The Eternals copied the strongest target they observed, down to their skills, their tells, their flow.
If this "Immortal Lord" wore an Era of Immortals skin, there was only one person she could be standing in for.
The first to claim the Sacred Mountain. The Sunforge World’s undisputed peak. The six-shift monster, the Sunforge Sacred Executor.
She was Earthborn. Just like Fire God.
"An outsider... he made it to Ninety-nine," someone breathed. "His strength runs deep. He might not be far off the Executor’s disciples."
Orson stood in silence, then turned to the imperial palace of Atlantis and called, clear and level, "Come out, Cain."
"We meet again, Orgod."
A sigh traveled from the depths of the palace. Black douqi speared the sky like a god-blade. It spilled outward as a tide of demonic shadow, a pressure so vile that every adventurer on the plaza dropped to their knees and shook.
"Godmaster Cain!" Samuel’s voice cracked as he stared at the descending shadow.
"I thought the empty dark would claim me," Cain said. He hung there on torn demon wings, grief and metal in his tone. He was half ruin, half machine, features collapsed and twisted, yet his golden eyes still burned. Flesh clung to fractured bone on one side. On the other, living metal had swallowed him whole.
"Too bad," he went on faintly, "the Ascension Pill saved me. It showed me what I am. And now the ticking of fate returns, and here you are."
He dropped to the square. Three meters of machine-devil, eyes bright with fighting joy. "Our war isn’t over."
Orson didn’t flinch. The weight of a peer didn’t move him. Theresa had cast Cain out of the Celestial Citadel, but exile had not killed him. It had delivered him to The Sunforge World.
Chaos rose from Orson’s skin of its own accord, tasting its old enemy, twining in the air against that black douqi.
"Incredible," Orson murmured. He had never seen anything like it. With the Ascension Pill, Cain had clawed up to god-tier force.
Kyrilam had been a legend of the Infinite Dimensions. His bloodline bred freaks. And somewhere in his wandering, Cain had found something else as well.
What chilled Orson more was Cain’s panel.
The same title structure as the Eternals.
"Awakened will," Orson thought. "An Awakener." Cain had been an Awakener from the start, like the beastman high priest. He had never truly understood what those words meant.
Now, the fog began to burn away.
"I can hear your surprise," Cain said with a smile like a knife. "Do you think an NPC unworthy to face you?"
Orson’s gut tightened. That wasn’t something an NPC would say.
"The gods made me," Cain said, and laughed low, "and I slipped the leash."
He cocked a glance toward the Eternals. "They are my elders."
"You’re saying... they used to be NPCs?" Orson couldn’t quite believe it.
"Cast off the flesh. Preserve the will," Cain whispered, delighted at the horror. "Stand with the gods... no. Surpass them. Become truly immortal."
Cast off the flesh. Preserve the will.
Orson rolled it on his tongue. Carbon dies. Metal persists. Memories, senses, all entombed in steel. The rules of the Infinite Dimensions slide off. A way out of divine shackles.
But what was the point of that kind of forever?
A beating heart, hot blood, life surging in the chest. That was what the Firevenom days had given back to him. Mortals were brief. Mortals were small. But every breath, every thought, the feeling of being alive—was that not enough?
Hadn’t the Fire God himself broken from the Radiant Shuttle, chasing a mirage of eternity? Eternal, Divine... different masks, same hunger.
"How did you end up ?" Orson asked.
"Isn’t it obvious? A god had no love for my kind of false human." Cain flicked his gaze upward at the floating isle, at the temple above. Orson understood. Not all "godsons" were welcome. Cain had been rejected, and the rule-field had tried to scour him out.
"I’m fortunate," Cain said softly. "My kind pulled me back. I will repay them. I will lead them out."
"Interesting," Orson said, mouth quirking. "You want to finish the unfinished fight."
He opened his hand. The Supreme Arcane Blade answered.
Cain shook his head. "Not here. She won’t allow it."
He cut a wary look at the Tiamat temple where the white radiance fell. The Ninety-ninth Heaven’s dungeon lay within.
"I, Cain, Godmaster, invite you to break the gods’ cage with me," he said, voice turning hard as iron. "The starry sea is where you and I settle this."