It was beautiful and it was terrifying.

There was ash everywhere. Black misshapen forms were lumped about the sands. The walls of the Sinkhole were glazed with a fine layer of soot. It all seemed to pulse with a dangerous gentleness, like hot coals, and what steamed off of them were not smoke but vestiges of Law—tiny translucent flecks visible only to those well-versed in Fire. The Sinkhole had in a stroke gone from holy font—the crux of all life in the Oasis—to a cursed land; if a mortal touched a finger to it the skin would burn like paper.

He’d managed to inadvertently make the place inhospitable! Oops? Meh. It was a rather moot point given the disaster trembling on the horizon. He waited idly for some backlash from his soul contract, the Multiverse striking him down for voiding its terms to protect, not destroy, the Oasis.

…really? Nothing?

He shrugged. He supposed there was reason to let him off easy. It was unintentional, after all, and done in order to protect the Oasis. Perhaps—

The world warbled about him as though under a blistering heat wave.

…FU—

He doubled over, gasping, feeling a spike of nausea drive through his skull. His soul felt very light, anchored to his physical form by flimsy strings—strings that felt like they were struggling to keep him attached. His vision grew hazy; his body’s sensations reached him from far away.

HRNGGGGG—FUCK!

He gasped, hacking out air, and waited for the feeling to pass.

And then—after an eternity—he snapped back to his skin. He gulped in lungfuls of air, hacking mightily.

Alright! Get yourself together. It’s just a warning. A Multiversal finger-wag; it let him know he’d come dangerously close to voiding his soul contract’s terms. Soul contracts were strange that way. It was widely theorized that, like the System, they were not native to the Multiverse but rather coded into its Laws by some ancient Godking—something only possible in the Multiverse’s early aughts. The precise mechanism by which contracts worked was a matter of heated speculation. Most thought they manipulated strings of Fate. A few believed there was some semi-sentient judge embedded in the Multiverse thats presided over them. Whatever the case, transgressing them—as Dorian had learned from lots of hard experience in other runs—was sadly impossible. Even considering it, or nearly doing so by accident, had painful consequences.

There were no loopholes out of this predicament, to his chagrin! Coughing, he got to his feet and stumbled over to the Sinkhole’s charred lip. He peered down at his own handiwork with morbid satisfaction.

Would it be enough? This was no mere water he’d wiped from existence. This was spirit water, water so rich in qi it sustained a civilization of cultivators! He squinted at the slag. Nothing could take this strike defenseless. Of that he was sure. Not the avatar of a god, not a fallen god like the Dweller. This would even threaten full-fledged Demigods in higher planes. If he timed it right and unleashed it with Jez’s avatar in its blast radius, the god would have no choice but to counter or block. He was a Godking, and he could bring forth a great deal of his Laws unto this plane. That, paired with his unusual gold qi, made for a uniquely finicky problem. Still…

The utter blackness gaped at him. The spirit water had been charred to slag, and that slag had been charred to lesser slag, and then superheated so horribly it’d burst into a fine particulate matter.

He nodded. If this doesn’t do it, nothing I can muster will!

As far as he was concerned the matter was done. All the preparations were made. He turned back, steadying himself for the finale.

Then he paused.

He whirled back to the Sinkhole and squinted at the Darkness.

He felt something there. A faint prickling at the back of his mind. In any other circumstances he would’ve brushed it off—but it came from a place where nothing, not even slag, should have survived!

What…?

He hesitated. Jez’s forces hadn’t yet come. Surely there was time for one very brief jaunt. He stepped in and was quickly swallowed by the dark.

Now that he’d so thoroughly woven Darkness Laws into the fabric of his being darkness felt more welcoming than daylight. In daylight he could perceive with eyes; but sight could be blocked, distorted, blinded. It was imprecise. In the darkness he mapped the world through a feel which extended far beyond any vision—he felt the darkness like a vast drape of his own skin, molding to the shapes about it. And so he knew that this Sinkhole went surprisingly deep. Almost twice as deep as the farthest he’d explored.

And then it stopped abruptly. He landed in a crouch on fuming hot rock.

Before him was a familiar sight. A tunnel, stretching far into the distance; he saw a few hundred spans before the rest was swallowed up by smoke and dust. And it was a sight, for it was tinged faintly red along its length; its walls were molten rock. He had the impression he stood at the artery of some fathomless organism. And he knew where it led.

This is an underground tunnel. Exactly like the ones at the volcano. A tunnel liking Sinkhole to Sinkhole—and perhaps volcano to volcano…?

And then he knew what he sensed. The prickling had blossomed into the faint glow of a distant Resonance. He knew, too, who he was Resonating with.

There was an electric shock, a starburst of recognition. His soul felt like it’d been stung. He frowned. He knew a third thing with certainty, then.

Phantom eyes peered out from the gloom. Right this instant at the far, far end of this tunnel, at a volcano he’d left not a day before, the Dweller peered into this same gloom. He felt its direction, its mindscape churning like slow lava flows. It was not on the verge of eruption anymore; it would not come for him. But they shared in that moment an implicit understanding.

The moment passed. It turned away, heavy eylids sealing shut.

This tunnel, hollowed out and drenched in shadows, was nearly a direct route to the creature. To that portal to Hell. It would take but a few minutes of straight line shadow-jumping and he’d be in the volcanic heart.

Alas he’d likely find no use for it. He was stuck firmly here. Contracts were contracts.

He, too, turned back. No more delays. It was time. Still, he filed this discovery away. Who knew? Maybe it’d come in handy.

***

Jez waited for the final battle, emptied of thought and feeling. The time for feeling was done. He’d cried. He’d knelt. He’d made graves. He’d sought forgiveness. And with a heavy heart he’d forgiven himself what he was about to do.

Now all that was left was to execute. He stood mid-air, hovering high over a vast and empty stretch of desert. His armies were arrayed behind him, one thick dark line of horrible beasts and beast-riders, of shamans and tribes and followers stretching from horizon to horizon. All simmered in quiet preparation. They were but an hour out from the final Oasis in the desert. Once this last desert holdout fell his armies would sweep out across the plane and stain it gold with his powers. It, too, would fall under his dominion.

One girl would not sit still. Kaya, Io’s sister, was a natural vessel for his energies. She could not sit still. This was no lull for her—he watched her far below, a tiny dot hunting down the wretched forms of a pack of wyrms. Where she passed blots of red pricked amid their brown squiggles. He felt her mind: a boiling cauldron of feral instinct. She’d given herself over to it freely, easily.

It was an enviable life. To be able to escape one’s troubles by reducing oneself to one’s basest instincts. In a way it was what he’d done. He’d turned to a radical love, early on. But sincere feeling, alas, was not enough to change the world. It was but a spark. Reason would serve as the kindling.

He smiled kindly upon her. Sometimes he, too, wished he could descend to a level such as hers. Make of himself a dumb brute, marinate in ignorant bliss! But then the Multiverse would return, once more, to its base inhumanities. Someone had to love the world more than it loved itself. Someone had to serve as its

He supposed his self-conception was similar to his opponent’s. Fitting, then, that they would meet at the end of things.

He sighed. It was time. He closed his eyes.

When he opened him again he was in a different plane. A much, much, higher one; a once awesome, holy place, now ripped open, scarred forever, its mountains sliced open, its gods slain, its clouds stained brooding black. Zenith, the fallen home of countless Godkings.

He stood now, mid-air, gazing upon its heart. The peak of the Tree of Eternity loomed. Its boughs, so vast each of them could support its own little realm, burned before his eyes with fires drawn from the cruelest depths of the Nine Hells. But the tree itself still stood, mighty as ever.

It would not fall. Not without a final touch.

His hand closed around the hilt of a sword.

Then, at last, the man he was waiting for arrived.

The realm tore open before him, jagged and screeching. It looked like the opening of a great black eye with no pupil. Then a pupil emerged. A simple man stood there, motionless at the center of the tear. He stepped out; the world sealed up behind him.

The man was plain, dressed in plain clothes. And yet there was no mistaking him. His gaze was utterly flat. It was a gaze a dragon might wear as it gazed down upon some feckless human knight.

He went by many names. The Sentinel at the Edge of the Multiverse. He Who Plucks the Stars from the Sky. And yet perhaps the most awe-inspiring of them all was his name itself; it startled the hearts of gods and mortals alike. It had come to mean the infinite, the absolute, the ultimate, the end. It meant the one above all.

“Greetings, great Houyi,” said Jez with a soft smile. “It is an honor to meet you at last. Shall we begin?”