God’s Tree

The gateway hummed.

Thirteen figures stepped through the flickering light into the concealed chamber beneath the Dimensional Mechanics Tower—the same hidden hall where the Twelfth Gate had first opened.

The door sealed shut behind them.

The world was… unchanged.

Same dust in the air.

Same distant ringing of the second morning bell echoing through the academy's towers.

It hadn't even tolled a third time.

"Wait—" Ren said slowly, scanning the crystalline time glyph etched above the exit door. "That can't be right."

Calla furrowed her brow. "This says we've only been gone for… five minutes."

Velka blinked. "But we were inside the Gate for at least six hours. Maybe more."

Argolaith said nothing, but the cube at his side pulsed once—quietly confirming what he already suspected.

Time in the Secret Realm did not follow the laws of outside space.

A moment later, Elder Mirith stepped into the chamber from the side antechamber, her robe trailing soft starlight and her gaze sharp.

She paused the moment she saw them—all thirteen standing there, unharmed, quiet.

"That was quick," she said. But there was a faint edge to her tone.

"Did something go wrong?"

She looked directly at Ren first, then Argolaith.

Before Argolaith could speak, Caelene stepped forward—her voice steady, her posture proud.

"Nothing went wrong. But everything changed."

Mirith's eyes narrowed.

"Explain."

Caelene took a breath.

"We completed the mission. We stabilized the Core Seal. But the Twelfth Gate was more than a fractured ruin—it was a prison. There was a being sealed beneath it, locked inside a hidden layer of the realm. Argolaith… found it. Spoke with it."

Sorien added, "He didn't just stabilize the realm. He reshaped it."

"And he created a spell from it," Myra said, her voice uncharacteristically soft.

Mirith blinked. "What?"

Argolaith finally stepped forward, his voice calm, but weighted.

"The spell is called Veilstep. It was born inside the Gate. It allowed me to enter a layer hidden beneath the temple—a place none of us were supposed to find."

The cube at his side floated upward and spun once, casting a faint glow that sent ripples of quiet magic across the room's walls.

Mirith stepped closer, studying him.

"…You spoke to the being?"

"I woke it," he said. "And asked it to fix the Secret Realm. Then I asked it to show me how to create one."

Silence.

Even the other prodigies, who had seen it all, felt the gravity in those words.

Mirith's mouth opened, but no sound came.

She looked from student to student, seeing the truth reflected in their eyes.

She looked back at Argolaith, and finally asked:

"What are you?"

Argolaith's eyes, silver-blue in the dim light, reflected the cube's slow spin.

"A fracture."

He didn't elaborate.

But he didn't need to.

Because in the span of minutes to the world outside…

He had stepped into eternity.

The Grand Round was carved from obsidian that had never cooled. The stone shimmered with threads of starlight magic, woven like veins across the floor and arcing toward the thrones that encircled the central plinth.

Thirteen thrones.

Thirteen seats of power.

Each Elder sat in silence as the account of the Twelfth Gate mission was retold—not by Argolaith, but by Caelene Vex, whose words carried precision, respect, and a thread of barely restrained disbelief.

When she finished, silence ruled the chamber.

Then Elder Mirith, her layered robes rippling like slow void, finally spoke.

"He entered a layer beneath the Gate."

Elder Kirell's eyes narrowed as his platinum scroll hovered beside him, unfurling with magical ink.

"A layer outside mapped structure. One that does not appear on any record of the Seal's fractal formation."

Elder Arvail adjusted her glimmering spectacles. "It means the Gate was never designed to contain one pocket—it was shielding a nested realm, invisible through dimensional math."

Elder Solm—his hourglass runes pulsing in rhythm—murmured without opening his hood:

"A prison behind a mirror. Seen only by the unseen."

Elder Veylan stood beside his throne rather than sitting, arms crossed, scars along his forearms catching the flicker of mana light.

"I brought him here. I thought he'd test boundaries. I didn't know he'd erase them."

Elder Dorn nodded, eyes unreadable behind his thin, glass-like pupils. "He walked beyond known thresholds and returned with knowledge tied to soulcraft. Realm-forging. These things are not taught."

"They're inherited," Lynneia added, her runic tattoos shifting along her cheekbones. "Or born into the wrong hands."

Elder Brevos leaned forward, fire and frost licking the edges of his fingers.

"He made a spell."

"Veilstep," Faeryn whispered. "The kind of magic one does not learn… but births from silence."

Elder Haelorn grinned—his face twisting slightly, as though uncertain what form to wear in this conversation. "He turned a dying realm into a bridge to something greater. I find it poetic."

Sylra remained quiet, her familiars whispering faintly around her like gusts of memory.

Maedric scribbled into a floating recipe scroll, murmuring to himself: "To walk between seams of magic, to stitch dimensions without collapse… I must adjust my potion formulas immediately."

Then Rutha finally stirred.

Eyes squinting, voice coiled like fog.

"He did not dream this magic. It dreamed him."

Elder Mirith let them speak.

Let the storm rise.

Then raised her hand, and silence obeyed.

"Is there any here who doubts the facts as reported?"

None raised a hand.

"Is there any here who believes he is a threat to the Academy?"

Another pause.

Then Haelorn chuckled. "Only to our expectations."

Brevos nodded. "He's stronger than the instructors, and most of us know it."

Mirith's silver-streaked eyes turned toward Elder Solm.

"And the future?"

The oldest among them—hood never drawn back—spoke with calm certainty.

"His path diverges from the world. But not yet. He will remain."

"As student?" asked Veylan.

"As catalyst," Solm replied.

With that, the council passed judgment without a vote.

Argolaith would remain.

Unbound, but watched.

Allowed to grow.

But from this day forward, the Thirteen would never again consider him just a student.

In his private room on the top floor of the elite dormitory tower, Argolaith stood alone.

The sun had just set beyond the transparent dome overhead, casting a final orange hue across the starlit sky. Far below, the academy's towers glowed with mana lamps, unaware that someone in their midst had gained knowledge meant for gods.

He opened a rune-etched journal—one he'd made himself.

Each page was blank until thought touched it.

Then a map appeared.

Not of Morgoth.

Not of the Void Realm.

But of a place that did not yet exist.

A space not yet born.

But he would build it.

He had seen the patterns: anchor trees, pulse veins, dimension-binders, breathstones, and the manifold lattice that kept time and magic from collapsing in on itself.

The seed of a secret realm was in his mind now.

And one day, it would grow.

He closed the book gently.

Outside his window, a star flickered once—then again.

Not a falling star.

A signal.

One he could now feel.

The realms had begun to watch him back.