In the sea of fire, years had blown away like ash; no one knew how many had gone.

Nothing here ever shifted; Eli and the others were moths beating a glass bell, unable to stir a ripple.

“I’m done… where is it?” Liqianyu’s face went chalk pale, like paper in the heat, her hand sagging onto Eli’s shoulder.

Her gaze unfocused like misted glass, and she only just managed to shadow Eli’s steps.

Eli panted, a bellows in a furnace, and shook his head. “Don’t know… but the direction’s right. Something out there is tugging on this sapling.”

Liqianyu drew a long breath, and heat-laced wind slapped her face like an oven door.

Eli watched her, tension pricking like needles. “Hey, don’t. This isn’t air. You gulp that, you’ll get yourself killed.”

“Mm. Just testing.” Liqianyu scratched her head, awkward as a cat caught stealing.

They leaned into each other, two reeds in a blaze, and pushed toward the center.

To Eli’s surprise, the heat here had loosened, like coals cooling from red to dull.

He frowned and glanced around, wary as a wolf. “Did I… just get used to it?” He turned. “Liqianyu, doesn’t it feel less scorching than when we came in?”

“Huh? Where?” She rolled her eyes, a dying spark in a gale. “I’m about to keel over…”

Eli lowered his head, thoughts circling like crows over snow, weighing every possibility.

They floated in that hollow space, their inner power bleeding away like water from a cracked jar to hold back the flames.

In that endless fire-sea, only the World Tree sapling’s bough and crown in Eli’s grip pointed a way, a single needle in a storm.

They had no idea how long they drifted, like driftwood in a burning tide.

Seconds sifted like sand; the flames never faltered.

The ghost-blue fire still breathed around them, and the two of them were a lone skiff on an ocean, small as a leaf in flood.

Time… time… did time even mean anything here, where light burned without shadow?

At last, Liqianyu couldn’t hold on. She half-knelt in midair, a flower wilting, pupils losing focus grain by grain.

Eli sat cross-legged, an anchor in the blaze, drew her into his arms, and held his face still, expression stripped bare.

She lifted her head with effort, a smile thin as paper. “Don’t… don’t split your power for me. I’m done. Sorry… for dragging you down.”

“At a time like this? Why say that?” Pain creased Eli’s features like a blade-line. He laid a hand on her cheek, light as falling ash.

“I… can’t promise you anything. I’m sorry.” Eli ground the words out, like stones in his mouth.

“I know, of course.” Liqianyu tilted her head at him, a crescent of rue. “Your choice was clear from the start.”

“Yeah…” Eli swallowed, the taste bitter as iron.

“Hey. We’ve been walking like this a long while, right? I’m only a little sad. If only I’d met you before Edlyn.”

“…”

“Do you know how long we’ve stayed here?” Liqianyu tilted her head again, a sparrow asking the sky.

Puzzled, Eli fixed his gaze on her. Liqianyu smiled. “Eight years. We’ve been here eight years.”

Eli’s eyes dimmed, like embers under ash.

Did she count it out, second by second?

He couldn’t fathom that kind of grit, a blade that never rusts.

“Go change the future. They’re all waiting for you.” Liqianyu smiled, then sprang from his arms. Like a candle’s last flare, she burst, a blaze of astral light that hurled Eli away.

Eli’s eyes flew wide. He gathered himself to drag her back, but the well was dry; his power barely held the shell around him and no more.

“Let it go, boy. I know. You found the place, and you kept trying to take me with you.” Liqianyu’s smile was sunrise on frost. “Don’t. Really. Go finish your task. I can’t be your weight.”

Eli sighed, a gust through a dead forest. “You want me to shove you into the fire? You think I’m that kind of man?”

“Of course not.” Liqianyu paused, then gave a crooked smile, bitter as tea dregs.

“So what do you think I’m about to do?” Eli hurled everything he had, like a dam bursting, against the flame and against her push, and strode toward her. Fire chewed his flesh like wolves, and kept chewing.

He moved as if numb, feet finding her like a river finding the sea. “Be good and listen. No one by my side gets left behind.”

“Classic scumbag line.” Liqianyu spat, teeth clenched, a spark of mockery in the blaze.

Eli smiled and kept going, a man walking into rain.

Liqianyu shook her head, mischief returning like sunlight through fog. “Sorry. I’ve been ready a long time. You can’t stop this.”

“You—” Eli’s eyes widened as power surged into him like a flood cresting a bank.

It poured from Liqianyu, a river parting its bed.

He clenched his jaw, already past resisting; he was a cup being filled.

That force replaced his leaking origin, spring water into a cracked well, and mended flesh the flames had seared black.

“Goodbye.” Liqianyu smiled, sweet as ripe fruit.

In the heartbeat her power vanished, blue fire rose and swallowed her. She scattered like smoke on wind.

Her gift shoved Eli into the blinding, searing-white firefield he could never enter before, a threshold turned to gate.

Light stretched across the Heart of the Universe like a drawn bow, flinging Eli toward the very center.

.................................................................

Zero dangled one leg, watching three lives condense like dew into pearls.

Something tugged at him from beyond the veil; his gaze pierced the universe’s curtain like a needle through silk, and he seemed to witness the two of them.

He lifted his tea, sipped the warmth like a quiet stream, and smiled. “Without her, you’d never master that thing. Only with her power in you, and in the World Tree, can you own that weapon. Thank me, boy.”

Crack.

A sound fine as a hair split the hush.

Zero looked at his three primordial lives, eyes bright as stars.

The first light-sphere opened.

A girl, no bigger than his palm, appeared at Zero’s side, a new moon in the dark.

She opened her mouth, but no words came; instinct drifted her toward Zero like a moth to a lantern.

Zero smiled, and with a flick dressed her, clothing like clouds on a doll. He set her on his shoulder, a sparrow perched.

She stared at the fabric on her skin, stunned, like a fawn in snow.

Zero gave her a curious glance, then let it pass like a wave.

Another soft crack answered the silence.

The next light-cluster unfolded slow as a bud.

The instant the boy was born, Zero felt the air cool, a frost creeping under a door.

“Interesting,” he said, smiling as if at a riddle. “A pulse close to soul. As expected… well… he’ll be something fierce.”

Just then, the girl conjured a matching outfit out of thin air and let it fall like a leaf, dressing the newborn boy.

Zero’s surprise flicked back to the girl. She beamed at him, and divinity thickened around her like honeyed light.

“Good,” Zero said, pleased, nodding like a craftsman at a blade. “The first batch came out fine. Children who can share a part of me. Except…”

His gaze returned to the unopened black energy mass, a moon without face.

He frowned, set the newborn boy on his right shoulder, and stepped up to the dark cluster.

He laid his hand on it, a palm on still water.

“What’s missing?” he murmured to the light, puzzled as a scholar over a knot.

A notion bloomed, wild as a weed. He laughed. “That could be fun.”

He slit his wrist, and a strand of near-void liquid—like night made syrup—threaded into the black sphere.

“If it carries my own factor, will it quicken him?” He spoke lightly, a breeze over reeds.

Under the gaze of three supernal lives, the black cluster drank the blood.

Crack.

Endless darkness flooded out, braided with every emotion, like a storm uncorked.

Zero watched the two infants meet their little brother’s night like waves meeting rock.

The girl only blinked; light cloaked her like dawn, and the dark washed past her, powerless.

The other boy took it head-on, a mountain in rain; some of it melted into him, and the rest passed through as if he were air.

The dark that struck Zero vanished like mist on sun.

Zero nodded, a wild grin unfurling like a banner. “Good. Good. Hahahaha.”

.................................................................

Eli’s face went stone, winter-cold. In his right hand he gripped the World Tree’s crown, and in his left he held a lock of Liqianyu’s blue hair, bright as glacier ice.

He stared with hollow eyes at the oncoming white blaze, a net of fire stretched like wire.

He shut his eyes, and his body slid through the mesh in the same breath, a fish through reeds.

Liqianyu’s power sheathed him like a second skin, kept the hunger away, and sent him cleanly into the second world.

Eli still sat there, heavy as a rock in a river, and said nothing.

A mechanical woman’s voice slipped into his ear like cold rain. “A mere template fulfilled her function. Why are you this sad?”

It was flat, emotionless as steel.

But it was Liqianyu’s voice.

Eli’s face went dark as stormwater. He raised his head, eyes hunting the source like a hawk in wind.