The Crystalglow Temple was a place where all peoples shared one roof, a still lake where grudges had to lie like stones at the bottom.

Around the temple, settlements ringed it like a halo, and time pressed them together until a city grew like moss on a pillar.

There were no nations here; cities were patchwork quilts where races mixed. Humans, dwarves, and orcs were the iron nails, the strongest three. No long-lived elves, no world-breaking dragons—this world’s blade was soft, more clay than steel.

The Holy City rose because of the temple, a heart-brazier with the Crystalglow Temple burning at its center, and both city and temple were steered by humans, dwarves, and orcs like three pillars holding a roof.

Ache first, then breath—Alfred stood atop the temple and looked down on the Holy City, cold moonlight like a knife washing the streets pale; when the expeditionary army fell like a storm, all this glass would shatter. He loved this world’s quiet rivers not only because he’d ruled it eight years, but because it held a woman he loved and brothers who had bled beside him.

Failure had scattered those leaves; they had turned to another camp like birds changing winter trees. He understood—back then his life dangled like a thread, and if they hadn’t shifted, the scythe would’ve taken them. Their defection pricked like thorns—call it betrayal—but in the deep well of him, he still couldn’t cast them away.

The moon climbed to the zenith like a silver clock, and the hour chimed.

Alfred broke into a flock of bats, black petals on a wind, slipped through a window, skimmed a lintel; creatures who met that night-surge dropped like felled wheat.

So he slid through the temple like shadow-water and stepped into the council chamber, the cauldron where races boiled their plans.

“Who?” A shout cracked like thunder against cold stone.

The Tri-Race Joint Council was the mountain’s peak of meetings: not every race could step onto that ridge, but the three strongest together could net the world, and their council sat like a high altar.

Now a stranger’s gaze brushed the altar, and shock rippled the room like a storm across a lake; anger sparked like flint—someone dared treat the three race-reps as dust.

Under their stares, the bats swirled like ink and knit into a man shaped from night.

Gold hair like dawn, wine-red eyes like spilled merlot, a long black coat like twilight. Elegant, noble; mysterious, wicked—frost and flame in one figure.

“The First of the Blood Kin—Alfred!” The title rang like a bell in a vaulted hall.

On the Crystalglow World, and even next door in Koramor, the Blood Kin did not exist; his arrival was a first footstep on fresh snow, so the name stuck like seal-wax.

Alfred’s gaze was winter light; once when he ravaged this world, its sharpest edge held no Demigods. Now, the council wore a single color—quasi-gods in iron masks.

A quasi-god, in the Origin World’s old measure, stood beyond a Demigod, holding river-deep divine power, yet still short of the sea of true gods; you climb under the starry sky to ascend, slip on the icy ridge and fail, but land stronger than a Demigod—there lies the quasi-god.

Another path was to swallow a divine spark, a star-seed lodged like ember in bone.

God-tier beings condense such sparks, and in the Rift Wasteland of the Origin World, sparks lay scattered like fireflies on broken glass; mortals who seize one glow as quasi-gods.

These folk were clearly of the second kind, lit by given sparks. From what he knew of them, they couldn’t ascend in a handful of years—truth be told, they lacked even the right to climb—so the first guess fell like a dull blade.

He wasn’t sneering at them, nor singling out anyone from Crystalglow; in his eyes, Crystalglow or Koramor alike were saplings of a civilization where mass failed ascensions were like snow in midsummer.

The odds were too thin; at this level, one self-made ascendant under the stars might not appear in ten thousand tides, let alone a flock of them.

“Heh. So it’s you, the wanted rat running through empty fields. Perfect—we join hands, we take you, we haul you to the God-King and claim our reward. Using you to buy our audience—feel honored.” The voice slid like a blade, and Alfred knew that face; once, they’d called each other “brother.” He could understand the pivot—refuse, and the scythe takes you—but a flip that clean, eyes cold at the first sight, still bit like frost.

Grief pooled like rain, yet laughter tapped at the ice.

To curry favor with an upper-god-tier God-King, his old “brother” would sell him like a lamb. What’s a God-King? The expeditionary army had them like stones by the river; on the Eternal Sleep Continent, Creator Gods were as common as stray dogs. Alfred’s casual friends were supreme-god comets; an upper-god crowing “I’m number one” was a rooster on a dung heap.

“Heh… never thought you’d be so heartless. We were storm-mates once. Now I lack use, and you flip at the door? Back then I really was blind, dust in my eyes.”

At his tone, not every heart went hard; a few embers stirred under ash.

A woman rose, breath trembling like a reed in wind. “Alfred, you… you need to leave. Koramor has watchers in the Holy City—hawks on the rooftops. If they spot you, it’s bad!”

“Enough!” The man slammed the table; wood boomed like a drum. He glared, jealousy burning green in his eyes. “Kaya, did you think of us? He’s wanted by the God-King and the Underworld King. If we let him go and a whisper slips, how do we bear their wrath?”

“We keep quiet. Who would know?” Kaya’s words flew like arrows; Alfred had treated them well, and turning coat now tasted like bitter tea.

Whatever else, they had weathered storms together; not helping him now was a path she could understand—big tides had turned and Alfred couldn’t sweep back—but grabbing him like a prize stag to trade for coin was a knife in the back.

“Who would know? What if? What if a mouth leaks? Then we’re finished. And His Majesty the God-King and His Majesty the Underworld King—what beings are they? Can fog hide us from twin suns?”

His speech set the crowd stirring like reeds in a sudden wind. Divine power was mist over water; the God-King and Underworld King were riddles wrapped in thunder. Maybe, from another world, their gaze already saw Alfred in the temple; their stillness might be a test—to see if temple folk would tuck a wanted criminal under their cloak.

To most here, the God-King and Underworld King were all-knowing, all-powerful twin suns; every deed lay in their sky. This could be a loyalty scale, and a wrong pebble meant the cliff.

Alfred felt their thoughts like currents; it was a crossroads under the moon, a choice set like stones.

Stand with the “omniscient, omnipotent” God-King and Underworld King, or help Alfred, the old boss who once held their rope? He had meant to speak of the expeditionary army, but saw their faces like shuttered windows and chose to sheath that blade.

He wanted to see who would walk with him across thin ice with no mountain at his back. Maybe none—choosing him meant naming the twin suns as foes, a board marked checkmate.

“Everyone, let’s take him. We have numbers like a net. Tie him and deliver him to His Majesty the God-King—our rank will rise.” The same man spoke, knuckles pale as stones; for him, this was a hooked chance to haul Alfred down.

He had been granted a divine spark by a Koramor god and wore that borrowed lantern to call himself a god; Alfred had ascended ages ago like a mountain rising. He wasn’t sure he could fell Alfred alone; with many hands, stir the room and we can net him.

The plan looked pretty as sunrise, but one voice rasped across it like a crow at dawn.

“Ymir, shut up!” Kaya’s face darkened like brewing storm. When Alfred led them into Koramor, they were one team; Ymir’s wanting was a briar-vine, and she disliked his jealousy and grip.

Any man close to Kaya had been quietly “handled” like weeds, and Kaya’s heart leaned toward Alfred; Ymir marked Alfred for resentment. Back then, when the sky fell, Alfred drew the armies of the Divine Realm and the Underworld away like tides, buying them time with his burning lamp of a life. Ymir, because Kaya liked Alfred, knotted hate; Alfred’s kindness had fed a thankless wolf.

“Ymir—and all of you—ask your hearts like mirrors: did Alfred wrong us? Did he shortchange you? Without him, we might have drifted through fog our whole lives and died in the dark.”

Kaya stood for Alfred, steady as a pine; he had led them beyond their world, opened a new field like dawn over hills. If following him now feels like walking a cliff-edge with no victory ahead, then don’t—each person has a path, and no one seeks to live with a hawk over the shoulder. But to sell him for a glittering reward is bait-and-hook betrayal.

Alfred watched, eyes cold as frost; laughter tapped the glass in his chest.

“You really think I’m easy prey? A lamb for the knife? You’re just quasi-gods—think your wings have hardened beyond brittle glass?”

He did want to laugh. The gap between a god and quasi-gods was a river in fog; a flock of quasi-gods might knock a god to his knees. But if he chose to leave, how would reeds stop the wind?

“Last chance… who will leave with me?” His words tolled like a midnight bell over a narrow bridge hung above an abyss.