Into the stars.

Lindon’s eyes couldn’t widen enough to take it all in. The land curved away from him…endlessly. He couldn’t even see the city below him anymore. He could barely make out what he thought was the country.

The world spread out in front of him, blue and green and yellow. There were so many clouds! And so much ocean…how much of the world was covered in water?

He almost didn’t notice the curve. The world was…bent?

They continued to drift into the stars until Lindon could see the whole thing. It was a ball. He’d read his natural history before, and more than one natural philosopher claimed that the world was a ball, but it had never caught his thoughts before.

How did the people on the bottom stay on?

“It’s an overwhelming sight,” Ozriel said softly. “This is the central planet of the world we call Cradle. Iteration 110. It is larger than average for an inhabited planet, with vital aura making it both harder and easier for humanity to spread. At the moment of this recording, over six hundred billion souls call this place home.”

He spread his hands. “And this planet is but the central fragment of the world called Cradle. Your moon, your sun, each of the stars…they exist only here.

“There are thousands of realities just like yours,” Ozriel said, tearing open another rift in reality. An instant later, they had popped into another Iteration. This planet was also blue and green, but the shapes of the land were all different. It didn’t seem much smaller than Cradle had, but Lindon’s mind was still twisting to try and comprehend the scale involved.

“Each of them with their own population,” Ozriel said, popping into another. This world was a series of jagged chunks floating in darkness, as though the planet had been torn to pieces and left to drift. But Lindon could see city lights on each of them. Even some in the ground beneath the surface, as though humans had made those islands into their own personal molehills.

The world went blue again. “I belong to an organization called the Abidan,” he said, and now new figures appeared in the blue. Rank upon rank of white-armored figures, drifting in color. Arranged in regiments, some of them had symbols on their armor, and still others carried strange tools.

Eagerly, Lindon watched for Suriel. He didn’t see her, but it was hard to pick any individual out from the crowd.

The Abidan were formed into seven distinct ranks. Above each of them now hovered a single individual.

This time, Lindon finally saw Suriel.

She stood over the sixth division, purple eyes staring forward, her hair drifting emerald as though underwater.

Tears welled up as he saw her, though he couldn’t quite explain why. He swept them away as though Ozriel might see him and laugh.

The sole black-armored Abidan stared out over the ranks of thousands of Abidan, and Lindon thought he seemed…lost. Though who could read the expression of immortals?

“We draw our power from the Way,” he said. “This is what you see all around you now. It is the power of order that runs through all Iterations. With that power, we defend you all. Without us, all would fall to chaos.”

Suddenly, without Ozriel making a gesture or tearing open another gateway, the scene changed.

The Abidan were gone. The blue light of the Way had vanished, and now Lindon stood on a vast, dusty plain.

All around him, people were dying.

They had once been an army, with armor and swords and shields, but now they were on the ground, writhing and choking. Their bodies grayed and dried by the second, as though they were aging decades before his eyes.

Every time one of them died, he could pick them out, though he couldn’t tell how. It pierced him through the heart, as though each was a friend.

Tears streamed down his face now, and he averted his eyes, but there was no escaping from the pain.

“Like all power, ours has rules,” Ozriel said sadly. “This is a necessary truth. One of those rules restricts our interference. For centuries, I have watched worlds die…and the pain you now feel, I feel with each death. Over and over again, in worlds without end.”

Now they were in another world, as people were run down by monsters. Another, where the air had become too toxic to breathe. Another, where men and women starved or died of thirst. A world where great rocks fell from the sky and devastated cities. A world where great beasts rampaged. A world on fire.

Over and over again, time blurring in Lindon’s head. Each death speared him as though he had personally caused it.

Finally, when Lindon was on his knees, they returned to the calm of the Way. Ozriel met his eyes. “This is one part of my plan,” he said softly. “Only one seed planted of many, in the hopes that some might one day bear fruit. I need you to join me.”

He raised black-armored fingers to his head, and Lindon could see endless weariness written there. “Not as Abidan. I want to raise you outside their rules. I want you to go where we can’t: into dying worlds, to save those we have abandoned.”

Now a mantle of darkness billowed from the back of Ozriel’s armor. Suddenly, he loomed like the end of all things. “You are one of my children,” he said. “You have inherited my sight. To you, the world is open.

“You can step out of the Cradle. You can grow up.

“And join me.”

***

Eithan had touched Yerin with the marble as well. It would be awkward for Mercy, sitting around watching the other two sit motionless and stare into space, but she would adapt.

If he accepted her early, he would seem too eager. Best to reel her in.

He knew what Lindon and Yerin were seeing—the message’s contents never changed—and he could imagine how overwhelmed they felt. He had felt the same way, once.

Speaking of messages…

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out an envelope that had been sealed with wax. It was a foreign way of sending messages, from the Arelius homeland. And indeed, this wax was marked with the Arelius family’s crescent symbol, alongside two ancient characters indicating power.

The mark of the head family. Cassias’ father had appropriated it without cause. How would he feel if he knew Eithan had a marble containing a vision from their family’s First Patriarch?

Although, if the real head family had been wiped out, Gaien Arelius had as much claim to the seal as anyone. Eithan would have to wait another three years to find out.

Eithan, Cassias had written.

The family elders are not pleased with the way you have handled recent matters. Lindon’s lost duel, they meant, although they had seen the benefits of that. And the orders he’d given Cassias before the Bleeding Phoenix rose, though Cassias had never had a chance to carry those out.

In reality, they just didn’t like his way of doing things. They wanted him to consult them before every single decision. He understood. This stemmed from his own, old failing: he kept too much control. It made him difficult to work with.

But the sun would burn cold before he let himself be ordered about by men like this.

It personally gives me great pain to deliver you this message with my own hand, but the family elders would like you to temporarily step down as Patriarch. You will still hold all the rights and privileges of a family elder, and of course our only Underlord.

I am here with my father, who provides his stamp at the bottom. He concurs, and we have received imperial approval. If you are unsatisfied, I urge you to appeal to the elders. I believe you are the one to lead this family into the future, when you settle down and put the family’s needs above your own.