God’s Tree

The air around the Core Seal was thicker than gravity.

Light refracted from every surface, bending inward toward the massive suspended rune at the heart of the chamber. The rune spun lazily, incomplete—its final line missing, as if waiting for someone to draw it and finish the spell that kept the entire temple alive… or barely standing.

The others stood back, instinctively aware that they'd reached something important.

Something alive.

Argolaith stepped forward.

The cube hovered beside him, now fully transformed—no longer a simple shape, but a living construct of interwoven planes, rings and runes spinning in harmony like a galaxy bound within itself. Lines of pale gold and spectral blue traced its edges.

Each breath it took pulsed with mana.

Each turn of its structure whispered something older than language.

"It's ready," he murmured.

The chamber responded.

The walls shivered with light.

The glyph above the pedestal pulsed once, then again—stronger—as if sensing the presence of something compatible. Not opposed to it. Not afraid.

Argolaith lifted his hand.

And the cube floated from his side, moving upward—toward the heart of the Seal.

A thread of mana extended from the cube's core, reaching toward the final line of the great spinning glyph.

And then—

It completed it.

The spell activated.

But it didn't explode.

It unfolded.

Light bent in upon itself, creating rings of space within space. The floor dissolved beneath their feet, replaced by a layer of reflective air, holding them aloft. Every wall vanished, replaced with swirling windows to other realms—miniature worlds trapped in orbs of motion and memory.

They were standing inside a fracture of reality, held together by a new law.

One written by Argolaith.

And the cube… was now the anchor.

The others stared, unmoving, speechless.

Then the magic condensed into Argolaith's chest like a breath drawn inward. The cube returned to him, shrinking slightly, now humming with a deeper tone.

And in his mind, he knew the name of the spell.

Not because he chose it.

But because the secret realm had offered it to him.

"Veilstep."

A spell born of the Gate's nature.

It allowed the user to slip between the seams of reality—to phase between realms, dimensions, and mirror-formed echoes. Not teleportation, not illusion.

True traversal of fractured spaces.

A spell that only made sense in a place like this.

Caelene stepped forward, stunned. "You… made that here?"

Argolaith didn't answer.

He looked to the swirling realm around them—each window still open, showing hints of stars, broken timelines, and half-formed planes.

Then his eyes returned to the Core Seal.

It was fully formed now.

The chamber around them had quieted.

The spinning glyph that had once been wild and fragmented now rotated slowly above the restored pedestal—its light soft, stable. The temple no longer shivered with instability. For the first time since they entered the Twelfth Gate, the world felt… still.

But Argolaith's instincts whispered otherwise.

The cube floated silently near his shoulder, humming a low, steady tone.

It was waiting.

And so was something else.

He stepped forward to the Core Seal, eyes narrowing. The others watched in silence—no one dared speak.

He placed his hand on the pedestal.

The moment his fingers touched the crystalline surface, something shifted. Not in the chamber, not in the air—but beneath reality itself.

The cube pulsed.

The glyph above flickered.

And then, like it had always been part of him, the new spell activated.

Veilstep.

Argolaith didn't chant.

He didn't raise his hand.

He simply stepped—forward and inward.

And the world folded around him.

It felt like walking through a thought that wasn't his.

Colors smeared.

Sound pulled like gravity.

The air turned weightless, then heavier than stone, then gone.

And then—

He emerged into silence.

A hidden layer.

A space beneath the Twelfth Gate.

Not a physical basement, but a veiled realm tucked between the mana threads that held the entire gate-pocket together. It was gray. Cold. Still.

A spiral staircase made of memory led downward into a room with no source of light—but everything could be seen.

In the center of the chamber was a statue.

No—not a statue.

A body.

Encased in shimmering crystal, floating just above the ground, limbs curled inward.

It was humanoid.

But its skin shimmered like polished glass, veins glowing with golden thread. Eyes closed.

And etched into the crystal casing was a message written in ancient runes:

"For the one who bears no origin."

"Only a fracture can open what has been sealed."

"The Gate was built to imprison… not to protect."

Argolaith didn't move.

The cube floated beside him, trembling with suppressed resonance.

Whatever this thing was—it had been here long before the academy. Before the Gate. Before Morgoth, maybe.

And now he was here.

Drawn not by curiosity…

But by design.

Behind him, the air shimmered.

The others had followed.

Caelene was first, her eyes sharp. Ren next, his stance cautious but composed.

Sorien whispered, "This isn't part of the temple."

"No," Argolaith replied. "This is what the temple was built to hide."

Kier stepped forward slowly. "Do you think it's alive?"

Argolaith didn't answer.

He stared at the sleeping figure in the crystal.

Then, quietly:

"No."

"I think it's waiting."

And the spell that had brought him here—Veilstep—trembled like a key in a lock that had not yet been turned.

The sealed chamber was silent but pregnant with presence.

The crystalline cocoon that held the sleeping figure shimmered with delicate lines of golden runes, ancient and unfamiliar, as if even the script itself had forgotten how to be spoken. The being inside—neither man nor god, but something rooted in design itself—remained still, timeless.

Behind Argolaith, the others waited with bated breath.

No one spoke.

No one moved.

And still, he stepped forward.

His cube hovered in front of the cocoon, softly pulsing—reacting to the being like a tuning fork resonating to its original pitch.

Argolaith knelt beside the pedestal-like structure at the base of the crystal shell, placing one palm against it. He reached into his storage ring and retrieved a single etching chisel, forged from voidstone and imbued with his own runic signature.

Across the smooth platform, he began inscribing runes.

But not standard language.

This was a fusion—his own system, built from fractured languages he had learned in the Void Realm, from the memory trees he'd touched, and from the runic flows of the cube itself.

The runes glowed blue, then violet, then silver.

Each one pulsed with intention.

Each one whispered: Awaken. Remember. Bind again.

The final rune he etched was a single word, composed of glyphs drawn from no known tongue:

"Rehla'taen"

Breath of the Architect.

The cube trembled.

So did the world.

And then the being opened its eyes.

The chamber dimmed as the crystal cocoon vaporized silently, leaving the being floating just above the platform.

They couldn't tell if it breathed.

Its form was humanoid, but not quite mortal—veins of soft gold pulsed through transparent skin like energy lines in a circuit. Its eyes were hollow stars, spinning with galaxies too distant to be named.

It looked at Argolaith.

Then it spoke, not in voice but in shape—its words forming symbols that passed through their minds like living runes.

"A soul of fracture… and yet not fallen."

"You bear the signature of originless creation."

Argolaith bowed slightly—not in submission, but in respect.

"I am Argolaith. I ask three things."

The others behind him stood in stunned silence.

The being tilted its head—not confused, but inviting.

Argolaith's voice remained calm.

"First, restore the Secret Realm. Stabilize what the Gate has lost."

The being raised a hand.

All around them, the fractured walls of the temple began to smooth. The flickering mirror lights stilled. A pulse rippled outward—quiet, profound. Space itself sighed with relief.

"Done."

Argolaith nodded.

"Second," he said, "show me the path to build a Secret Realm of my own."

A long pause followed.

The being studied him—not with eyes, but with presence. It looked through him, into the thousands of years of memory he had gained, the trials, the realms, the steps.

Then it reached forward and touched Argolaith's chest with a single glowing fingertip.

The cube flared.

Argolaith's mind expanded—visions of seed-worlds, of star-threaded nexuses, of realm anchors, mana pillars, dimensional lattices, and core sigil arrays poured into him. Not instructions. Not diagrams.

But understanding.

The way a god might dream a world into shape.

"You are now a pathwalker," the being whispered into his mind.

"Not a wielder of power… but a forger of truths."

Behind him, Caelene whispered, "…What is he becoming?"

And Sorien murmured, "Something the world isn't ready for."

Argolaith turned back to the being.

"My third question can wait."

The being smiled—or its version of it—and slowly dispersed into fragments of gold and starlight, merging with the ceiling of the realm and vanishing like a breath exhaled by creation itself.

The cube spun once in place, slower now.

And Argolaith turned to his companions.

"Now then let's go home my fellow prodigy's."