Kaya thought about his offer. For a few seconds she squinted at him.

“I know you,” she said.

“Yes,” said Jez.

“You have the gold light too, don’t you?”

Jez smiled. “I am the gold light. I am joy. I am life. I am hope, eternal and everlasting. I am peace upon the Multiverse. And I am the one who shall grant you your deepest wish. You need only say yes.”

She didn’t yet, which surprised him. She should’ve felt a bond to him. Even a subconscious nudge. But as the snow drizzled down upon them both she merely stared.

“Why?” she said.

“Why?” Jez blinked. “Well. I wish for everyone to be happy. Forever. You are one of everyone.”

“But I hurt people.” She frowned. “That makes them sad. So… why are you helping me?”

This time he didn’t blink. “Sometimes,” he said, “To love someone is to hurt them. Sometimes hurting is necessary. I…”

He sighed. “You shall soon consider this absurd, I think. But killing is my least favorite thing to do in all the world. And yet it is the most important thing. It is, in a way, the virtue of the forest fire. We must clear out the old, overgrown trees that block out all the sunlight and stifle the rest of the forest. Only then can new life grow. Even if it means burning things.”

Kaya scrunched her nose. “Stop that—no more of these… no more saying things and meaning other things! Tell it to me straight.”

“Okay,” said Jez slowly. “I’m helping you because you are fire.”

For a while she simply stared at him. Then she grinned. “I accept.”

“Lovely,” said Jez, sighing happily.

Then he paused.

“One moment. I have some business of minor importance to attend to.”

He closed his eyes.

***

Zenith Realm, Upper Realms

When he opened them again he was in another body. Not an avatar. His true form. He floated mid-air, gazing out upon a ruined world.

Before his eyes, the Heavens burned.

Since the dawn of time the Zenith Realm sat above a vast expanse of cottonball clouds. Now those clouds were choked with smoke and stained red with the blood of gods.

Crimson lightning crackled through the gloom, the only lights beside the raging flames. Fire Laws ruled the land. Great boughs of the Tree of Eternity, poking up through the center of the Realm, were ablaze with the fiercest fires of the First Circles of Hell.

The Zenith Realm was made chiefly of mountains, mountains which had once teemed with gardens with the finest godly crop. Mountains that the strongest gods of the realm—the Godkings—called home! Now as Jez gazed out upon the realm all he saw were broken husks of rock. Mountains cleaved in two, sagging into the smoke. Mountains which had stood for millennia, mountains of myth, struck down by a slash of a sword.

His sword.

Phoenixes had once drifted among the clouds. They’d all since gone into hiding. So had most of the Godkings, in fact. It was nearly disappointing, the lack of resistance he’d found as he stormed this so-called Godly stronghold. Two or three Godkings had come up, offered him token resistance. Down they went. The rest had duly fled, hiding in their holes, wrapped themselves so tight in Laws that it’d taken an eternity to root them all out.

Jez sighed. He did not blame them. If there was one thing a Godking was a paramount expert in, it was survival. It was the only way any of them lived this long. They followed their natures.

The sad thing was that their deaths were the most necessary of all. The godkings upheld this world. They were emblems of the cruelty and exploitation that was the poisoned lifeblood of this Multiverse. To install a new Kingdom one needed to first kill the old kings; that was the way.

But they would not offer themselves up to him. So be it.

He stepped across air almost leisurely, striding towards the Tree of Eternity. The sacred flora that upheld the very structure of the Upper Realms—that formed the core of Zenith itself, that upheld all its parts, including the Unstuck Space. A place so deeply enmeshed in the inner workings of the Multiverse that it could surely never fall—never!

What he was about to do would seem so absurd, so impossible, as to be unthinkable.

Sometimes it is necessary to cut down old trees.

New life must grow.

***

Edge of the Multiverse, Houyi’s Island

“He can’t.” Horror was horrified. This was not unusual.

What was unusual was the rest of the emotions felt it too. They looked to one another in a huddle at the base of Houyi’s hill. None of them knew what to say. Even Joy—a creature incapable of feeling fear—bit his lip.

“He’s insane!” Anger pounded the ground with a fist.

“Ow,” said Loneliness. Anger paid him no heed.

“The Tree of Eternity is synonymous with Time itself,” snapped Anxiousness. His blue eyes darted to and fro. “What does cutting it down even mean? It’s a logical quagmire! The Multiverse will not permit it! …Right?”

“And let us keep in mind,” said Compassion, “That some of the most gruesome Godbeasts in the Multiverse have tried to damage it. None could so much as scratch the bark. Its leaves may burn, but its roots stay ever-strong.”

“Pray tell,” snarled Anger. “Were any of these Godbeasts half as strong as that—that thing?!”

Compassion paused. He opened his mouth. Anger wouldn’t let him get a word out.

“He absorbed—cleanly absorbed—the powers of Godkings! Ate them! Like that!”

His eyes bulged. “We do not know what he’s capable of!”

“Well…” hedged Compassion. He cringed. “…Perhaps.”

“Get your head out of your ass!” Anger was frothing. “The Fate of the Multiverse is on the line! Will we stand here and debate? And do nothing?!”

Then a calm, still voice cut through the mess.

“Please,” said Houyi, looking distinctly tired. “Cease your bickering.”

The rest of his emotions gaped at him. It was the first time in ten thousand years he had come down from his hill. Now he stood there, not ten strides from them, resolution in the hard lines of his face. A quiver was on his back. His Overbow was clenched in one hand.

“Jez has gone too far. He moves to disturb the nature of the Multiverse. This, Justice cannot tolerate.”

He turned his eyes to them in turn. “Return.”

Anger dissolved in motes of red qi. Compassion went yellow. A flood of lights intertwined and arched to Houyi, settling into him; he closed his eyes, letting them in. Then the ground beneath his feet went, too. A blizzard of blue engulfed him, smothered him.

And then it was gone, and he was Houyi once more.

He gasped, blinking. Tears welled up in his eyes. He let one—just one—trickle down his cheek, this small concession to feeling. He was nearly relieved to find that after all this time he could still feel. Perhaps he was still human after all.

Then he wiped the tears from his eyes. He blinked, closed his eyes, let out one deep, heavy breath. When he opened his eyes again they were nearly as they had been before. Calm, cold, every atom of his being at the ready to do what had to be done. In this form—this complete form—Houyi had held the title of the Multiverse’s most powerful being for so long that the very concept of the apex had become inextricably intwined with his name.

Now it seemed there was a challenger. Houyi smirked.

The stronger he got, the weaker he seemed. Right now he’d feel to the ordinary cultivator no different from a mere mortal. He might have no presence at all. His dress was plain, muted leathers, as though he were some simple huntsman plucked straight out of an obscure, forgotten wood.

He reached out a finger and gave the air a little poke.

The sky split all the way open. It tore like paper all up-and-down its length. A canyon, yawning and endless, ran from horizon to horizon; air screeched around it. Below the black waters trembled violently and thousands horrible godbeasts within scurried away, frightened.

Houyi cocked his head. It had been so long. He forgot his own strength.

He stepped into the void and was gone.