Nine people walked over to the huge round table, situated in the middle of the Great Divide. Back then, Gemini had been examining the place through his divine sense, and then later through the eyes of Pur-Sandai, but now that he had an aerial view of things, he couldn’t help but feel some incongruity.

To him, the posh, intricate table in his eyes should have been placed in a sparkling mansion, on marble tiles as smooth as silk. The landbridge, however, was in no way comparable to the finely crafted floorings he had in mind, which was probably a source of distress to him.

“The closer you are to sublimity, the greater the effect of imperfection,” Hereward murmured. “Be careful to not linger on dissatisfaction. The Boundless One accepts all — only at that state can you view imperfection as perfection.”

“Are we talking philosophy now?” Gemini asked.

“Maybe.” Hereward chuckled, before turning to Lila. “Do you mind if I hold Aria for a moment?”

“Aria?” Lila glanced at her shiny-eyed baby. “Is there something wrong?”

“With me, yes.” Hereward smiled sheepishly. “Seeing a baby has stirred up some paternalistic sentiments in my heart. Maybe I should run an orphanage or something. There should be a few here and there on Orb, after all.”

“Go ahead, Lila.” Gemini, who had turned his attention to Aria the moment Hereward made that request, winked at the Stabiliser. “He just wants to hold a baby.”

“Auh!”

Aria jiggled on Hereward’s knee happily a few seconds later, and the latter’s smile took on a shade of relaxation. Clearly, she liked the great god’s kneecap, and before long, she settled down on it.

“Can you feel it?” Hereward abruptly asked. “The tension that permeates Orb. Something huge is happening, and I’m not talking about this peace conference. An odd power is exalting the very planet. Change, on a scale I have never seen before, is sweeping out from parts unknown. Destiny has been torn from its original route, converging into a spot I cannot see.”

“Converging?” Gemini frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Hmm. You have grasped a rudimentary understanding of Divine Will, no? Immerse your mind into it. Search for the countless possibilities that should be open and available to you.”

Gemini closed his eyes and called forth his Divine Will. Within his Divine Kingdom, a myriad of possibilities appeared once more, each of them capable of manifesting as reality with a single thought. The same sensation also extended outwards of his Divine Kingdom, and—

“Huh?”

Gemini cast out his senses even further, and began to frown. Sometime ago, when he and the other Demigods were devising plans to deal with the invasion, he had been able to see countless futures in the Wildlands itself. These futures extended on and on, without a discernible end, but now, everything was just a pitch-black.

A shiver ran down his spine. His hackles rose at the same time, as an incredible sense of danger swept through his mind. It was a familiar sensation, both the danger and his innate fear, but there was something…alive about it.

He had felt such a sensation before.

“What is going on?” Gemini asked, turning his eyes to the Stabiliser. “What is happening? Why are all the futures ending here?”

“They’re not ending here,” Hereward replied. “Not in the conventional sense. No, the futures you see are all converging into a singularity. Your Divine Will can only create what your senses perceive — the fact that me, the others and even you cannot see anything shows that a convergence is happening in our blind spot.”

“Cannot see?” Gemini frowned. “What do you mean? I can see.”

“You can see? What do you mean? What do you see?”

Aria looked up at him. “Auh?”

“Oh, auh.” Hereward turned back to Gemini. “What is it that you see, then?”

“A…vast swath of darkness,” Gemini replied. “A never-ending expanse of black.”

“Black?” Hereward stared at Gemini. “That’s the Demon God’s symbolic colour. Do you feel any familiarity with it? Something that might stir up a memory or two?”

Gemini focused on the myriad futures once more, but as he did that, one of those futures came apart. “No, and…one of those futures just vanished. It’s no longer…there. Just gone.”

“Gone.” The atmosphere tightened at those words. “Yes. Natural. If it’s a convergence, futures are aligning with one another. Therefore, they will vanish, piece by piece. However, this convergence happens beyond the scope of my knowledge. As such, I cannot perceive destiny.”

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Hereward stared at Gemini. “You, however, can perceive it. This means that at some point of time, you must have come across such a darkness before. Think, Gemini…no, Asteria. Think. What is this darkness? Where have you seen it before? It has to be related to the Demon God.”

“The Demon God…” Gemini racked his brains.

“Gemini,” Lila held his arm. “Do you still remember the place you went to a few days ago? The black tower in the continent centre.”

The Demon Sovereign let out a small hiss. “Yes. That might be it.”

“Remember. What did you encounter there? What did you see?” Hereward pressed on. What legacy of the Demon God laid there?”

“No.” Gemini shook his head. “The legacy had a distinctly different feeling from the darkness I see now. It’s different. The Demon God’s legacy was one of enlightenment — it was meant to teach me and nothing else.”

“Then?”

“This…black darkness. I felt it once before. No, not just once.” Gemini’s vision flickered. “In a dream. Long ago. And in a cavern, deep beneath the structure that maintains the black dome.”

“Cavern…explain it to me. What did you do there? Or rather, what was that cavern all about?”

Gemini called forth his memories and projected it out from his body, creating a screen very much like Hereward’s own. On it played the scene of his exploration, as he entered the tower built by the Demon God.

The Sentinel of Space watched on in silence, but his face, which was expressionless, warped into one of profound shock as the video moved on to Gemini’s encounter with the cavern.

Lila’s hand tightened around Gemini’s own as the lightning bolts played out once more, confirming the Demon Sovereign’s guess. Fortunately, back then, Gemini had the sense to flee and never come back, which was why Lila hadn’t strangled his arm to death yet.

The memory cut out a moment later.

“So, this darkness…you claim that it shares the same source with that cavern in your memory earlier?” Hereward asked, a solemn expression on his face. “Do you know what this cavern is, and where it leads to?”

“No.” Gemini tilted his head. “But you do?”

The Sentinel of Space thought for a moment, his eyes full of a contemplative light. “Yes. And no. I recognise this place, in a sense, but I have never seen it before.”

“In that case, what is this place?” Gemini asked.

“This cavern was created at the end of the First Extermination, if I did not get it wrongly.” Hereward narrowed his eyes. “The Demon God, with the remaining bits of his divinity back then, created an enormous continent, but he couldn’t have done it by himself. Instead, he copied the entire Five Lands at that time, and then recreated it for the demons.”

“Okay, but this cavern…”

“This cavern,” said Hereward, “is a mirror of a huge underground tunnel in the Five Lands, a place the Five Lands call Machia.”

“Machia?” Gemini asked.

“Yes. It is the bridge across the surface Orb, the Intersection, Heritage and even my Orb. It leads into the root of the world. The lightning of creation scours the place and smites all in its depths. The Five Lands have tried to explore the place, but they could make no headway due to the snowpyres present.” Hereward frowned. “Therein lies the problem. Even the likes of you and me are unable to venture within safely.”

“Is there any way one might be able to enter such a place?” Gemini asked. “A means to defend against the lightning, or to prevent it from striking.”

“In my previous incarnation, this would have been possible. At that time, I was Orb’s God of Creation. Such lightning would not harm me, as well as the other gods of the true Orb. However, none of my direct children are alive right now.” Hereward shook his head and let out a small moan.

“Is there something wrong?” Gemini asked.

“My memories are jumbled up. The original gods simultaneously exist and don’t exist in my memory,” Hereward replied. “But other than me, only someone like them could be in such a place and stay entirely fine. Therefore…”

Hereward grimaced. “It’s hard to tell for certain what’s going on and why. But if it’s really at the root of Orb, whoever’s trying to change the world would naturally see the highest rates of success there.”

“Change the world…” Gemini narrowed his eyes. The phrase was so familiar that it had fished up a memory of sorts, a memory of him, fighting against a teenager. “No, impossible. But…”

Lila touched his arm. “What happened?”

“Lila,” said Gemini, “do you still remember what you told me? The things you learned about in the Five Lands, regarding the Demon Sovereign? How the original gods of Orb killed themselves to change the past? How did this…Phantom Blade phrase it?”

He couldn’t help but glance at Hereward. Shortly after the fall of Ars, he had been killed and turned into mush by the Phantom Blade, who proceeded to do the same to just about every other Constellation. If the Sentinel of Space hadn’t intervened to save him back then…

“What do you mean by that?” Hereward asked, curious.

“The Demon God left me an inheritance, a true inheritance, at the moment of his death,” Gemini replied. “Is it not possible that the original gods of Orb did something similar? That someone might have inherited their power?”

“You’re driving at something.”

“Yes.” Gemini took a deep breath. His mind had rejected hundreds of possibilities, but there was just this one possibility that he could not disprove whatsoever. “I suspect that there is an inheritor of the original gods of Orb. And this inheritor is the very person who is doing something in the depths of Orb.”

“Who?”

“Some time ago, I encountered an odd Demigod, who was intent on breaking down the black dome from inside. He wielded two Zeroth Armaments and had a combat ability that was far superior to me.” Gemini closed his eyes for a moment.

“What proof do you have? You should know that save for Divine Will, some Demigods can indeed put up a good fight against the great gods,” said Hereward. “Just because he’s abnormally powerful doesn’t mean anything.”

For some reason, the Demon Sovereign felt that Hereward was hiding something from him, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Gemini clicked his teeth. “It’s just that…I don’t know. I was talking to him, trying to persuade him to exit the war. I succeeded, but I think I broke him somewhere. He was talking about changing the world when he left.”

“Changing the world?” Hereward chuckled. “How ambitious.”

“So we’re at a dead end,” Gemini concluded.

“Our best choice is to just sit and wait it out. Whoever the person behind all this is, we’re going to find out soon.” The Sentinel of Space narrowed his eyes. “After all, such huge changes will disable Machia’s defences. When the world changes…no, I cannot tell what will happen either.”

Hereward shook his head. Strength seemed to drain out of his body, and a bone-deep fatigue lined his eyes. “I’m tired.”

Gemini nodded. The great god had, by his own admission a year or so ago, stated that he had done everything in the hopes of reviving the original inhabitants of Orb, his own creations. However, destiny itself had turned on him. Hereward could no longer see the future he had worked so hard for.

As destiny continued to gather in the heart of Orb, Gemini turned back to the peace conference.

For some reason, he had a feeling that he would have to fight once more.

Him, along with the rest of the world.