In the heart of the earth, Amon sat upon his throne of carved stone and tar. The chamber hummed. It was not a sound he heard with ears, but a vibration felt in the marrow of his Preserved bones, a resonance of pure, unfiltered power.

  He was ready.

  Mist swirled around him, no longer just damp air, but a tangible current of intent. It carried the whispers of the Belugmah, the pride of the Preserverant, and the sheer, overwhelming weight of the Mana that flooded into the room.

  His Soul Core, currently a Tier 2 Advanced Core, thrummed against his ribs. It was hungry, had been since the day it fully formed from Belugmah’s initial gift for service, but this was different. This was not the gnawing emptiness of a starving man; this was the demand of a vessel seeking to become a deluge.

  The Third Seal, the Mist whispered, a caress against his mind. The barrier of the Elite.

  Amon looked down at his hands. The black, tar armor that encased him shifted, rippling like a disturbed pond. Crystals, harvested from the deepest veins of the realm by tireless Caregivers, were pressed into the substance of his form. They glowed with sullen, waiting light.

  To advance, a Soul needed more than just raw power. Once the first seals were shattered, the Core became discerning. It demanded variety. It demanded complexity. For the Third Tier, five distinct essences were required.

  He had two by birthright and binding: Earth, from the soil he had tilled all his life, and Death, the cold gift of his new existence.

  The crystals would provide the rest.

  “Spirit,” Amon murmured, feeling the white-hot pulse of a quartz-like gem embedded in his pauldron.

  “Chaos,” he named the second, a jagged, violet shard that seemed to vibrate with erratic malice near his heart.

  And the last. The hardest to find.

  “Astral.”

  A smooth, darkly transparent stone, like solidified night sky, rested against his brow. Kerown had found the veins, a hidden grotto of star-touched rock deep beneath an underwater shelf. Without the Golser’s memories of ancient currents, Amon would still be searching. Instead, they had found so many, and large, that they were able to fill his chamber with them.

  The moment stretched. The air crackled. The pressure in the room rose until the stone walls seemed to groan in protest.

  Begin, the Mist guided. Not with words, but with a release of the dam.

  Amon opened himself.

  It was not a gentle stream, instead a landslide.

  The energy hit him with the force of a physical blow. The crystals sang, a high, piercing note that shattered the silence of the deeps. Liquid light poured from them, dissolving into the tar, racing through the mystic arteries of his armor, and slamming into his Core.

  Pain flared—white, blinding, absolute—and then vanished, replaced by a sensation of expansion so profound it stole his breath. He felt the Seal within him, a metaphysical wall of glass that held back his potential.

  The five energies swirled together—Earth, Death, Spirit, Chaos, Astral—mixing into a slurry of impossible power. They struck the wall.

  Crack.

  The sound was internal, a thunderclap in his soul.

  The Seal shattered.

  A rush of wind exploded outward from his body, scattering loose stones and sending the Mist into a frenzy. His vision went white, then gold, then a deep, resonant black. He felt his Core expand, unfolding like a blooming flower, hungry and vast.

  He was Tier 3. An Elite.

  The flow did not stop. The crystals were still giving, their light undimmed. He gorged on it. Drank the power like a man dying of thirst, feeling it knit into his essence, strengthening the tar, hardening the bone, sharpening the mind.

  For a minute, he was a god.

  Then, silence.

  The crystals dimmed, their light spent, turning to dull, gray rocks. The hum faded, and the pressure lifted.

  Amon sat there, chest heaving, even though he needed no air. He looked at his hands. They trembled, not with weakness, but with the containment of too much strength.

  He stood. The movement was fluid, effortless. He felt… substantial. Heavy with purpose.

  Arbah was there, standing by the throne, her onyx eyes wide. Amon reached down, his movements careful, terrifyingly precise. He lifted the tar-child, spinning her in the air. She made no sound, but the joy that radiated from her was a sunbeam in the dark.

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  “I could crush a boulder,” he whispered to her, setting her down gently. The thought was intoxicating. “I could tear the steel off a tank.”

  Arbah patted his hand. Patience, the gesture said. Control.

  Amon sat back down, forcing the euphoria to settle. The rush of ascension was dangerous. It made one feel invincible. It made one forget that above, in the light, there were things that ate Elites.

  Mist caressed his helm. “More trouble?” he asked, his voice deeper, more resonant than before.

  A Caregiver, a silent construct of bone and mud, shuffled forward with a fresh slab of stone. Amon took his chisel, the work grounding him.

  He closed his eyes, letting the Mist bring him the world.

  Kerown was far, drifting through submerged tunnels that no lung-breather had seen in a thousand years. The Golser was happy, or as happy as he could be. He sent images of bioluminescent caverns, of vast underground lakes where blind fish swam in schools of millions.

  And settlements.

  Many tribes of Curtlers and Golsers had been saved, thanks to Kerown’s efforts, and their meager Cores put to a higher use, aiding the Preserverant's mission.

  From those tides of claimed Souls, others had awakened from the dream, seeing through the pleasantries. Yet, no matter his words, or the comforts the Preserverant tried to give. The awakened would not listen, all held Sharlone’s view, demanding release, and uninterested in the dangers Creation had planned for them.

  So blind, and entitled were the Souls, that they wouldn’t even take up the offer Kerown had been blest with.

  Instead, they suffered Sharlone’s self-imposed punishment, alone, crying out into the darkness, with none coming to free them. They fell back into the dream, leaving the work of keeping everyone safe, to the Caregivers, and himself.

  ‘Life,’ Kerown whispered through the bond. ‘Anchored to the heat.’

  Tribes of Curtlers, who’d built their homes around volcanic vents. Golsers, tending to farming tasks, and serving their hard-shelled masters. The mortals clueless to the turmoil claiming the surface realm.

  Roots of Preserverant began their approach.

  “Perhaps some will be reasonable.”

  Thicker streams of mist swirled around him, just as hopeful, as the visions it offered shifted. Amon welcomed news of the turmoil laced surface, which had lost all sense of tranquility.

  Claimed from a burgeoning amount of Kobold hosts, who were digging deeper into the realm, Mist painted a clear order of events. Tales of an ever-increasing number of artificial rifts. Each bringing forth armies the Dragons lacked the means to counter.

  There was no way for them to tell the number of factions in play. Only that the realm was known to those with the means to act, and everyone was extracting what resources they could.

  That interest had turned the invaders attention downward.

  It didn’t help that the greedy and mineral crazed Dwarves had arrived in full. As such, the past three years had been one of many mortals tunneling into the realm.

  Minor surveyings at first, but these days, it was monstrous excavations.

  The realm burrowed into without care. Hence the ever-rising number of Kobolds, and their deeper tunnelings. The Protectors were hungry, and desperate, to claim resources before the invaders got to them.

  Everyone heading to the depths, and their once peaceful refuge from the carnage above, rapidly coming to an end.

  The furthest offshoots of Tar roots felt the rumblings, each caused by drills, and pulverizing explosions. Their volumes steadily rising, as armies neared the lowest points of the realm.

  Clink. Whir. Stomp.

  The Gnomes servants, their Automatons.

  The hum of mechanical noise filled Amon's consciousness. A tunneling tide of brass and gears that eroded everything in their path. Consuming soil, stone, and life, leaving nothing, not even Souls. The Gnomes had engines that sucked the very essence from the air, harvesting the dead before they could even scream. The surroundings were still, and silent, save for the ominous clinking of their gears.

  They are coming, the Mist informed.

  The Gnomes were not hunting blindly. They were following the veins of magic. They were tracking the pulse of the Tar. Every retreat, every movement Preserverant made to avoid conflict, only drew the noose tighter.

  They knew.

  The wicked children—with their oversized heads and cold, calculating eyes—wanted the Garden. They sought the Dragon Cores held within the Preserverant, and they would peel the realm apart layer by layer until they found the Garden, and erased from the realm.

  Amon stopped carving, the chisel rested against the stone.

  The Preserverant understood the trap, and the Gnomes hate. the predictable pattern of their own actions.

  A reminder that Belugmah’s offerings were not sentient, did not have freewill. Orders were clear, and they would follow them to their doom. The point after—the mantle laid upon his shoulders—was up to him. The Gnomes armies were bringing about that moment faster than expected.

  The Gnomes agents would come, their machines boring through his ceiling.

  He cradled Arbah, gently combing her soft fur. His vow echoed within him, to preserve what was left. More and more it felt as though existence was testing that, mocking it.

  “Would there be anything left?”

  Yes, the mist answered. But almost nothing.

  He would have to be content with that, with memories alone being all that remained, after the claiming war washed away all semblance of his old realm.

  Crystals began to gleam again, their light rising, and casting the chamber in multiple hues.

  The illumination broke his melancholy. He had no right to be dissatisfied with the way affairs were going. Granted divine gifts, aware of the goings on, and turned into a growing source of power.

  He had so much to be grateful for, and the tools to continue trying.

  “My mind is ready.”

  The Mist answered, and libraries worth of academic knowledge flowed into his etheric brain.

  The study, and mastery of lexemes, runes, the Gnomes Glyphoses. It seeped into him, granting him the means to use his power to its fullest. A final gift from his lord that he was slowly incorporating into his being.

  So much knowledge. Secrets many coveted, and sought for themselves.

  All gifted to him freely. A cosmic joke, the conniving seeking out what could be given, if only they chose to serve.

  He lightly laughed as his awareness dimmed, mind strained, and exhausted. But it was done, he knew all he needed to know, now was the race to ascend his Soul.