The floor was made of pure white marble, slightly infected by narrow black stripes that did nothing but enhance its beauty. In the middle of the marble room a black obsidian table was surrounded by four black slate thrones.

In one of them sat a young man of no more than 20 years. His white hair was slightly long and a slight glow of mana lightened his white jacket. But nobody paid attention to those details, not after they saw his white eyes.

“Do you know why Kai called us here? Bel.” The man asked.

“How would I know? That man’s motivations are something that escapes my grasp.” The purple haired woman, who sat in one of the other thrones answered. “But I doubt it has anything to do with the elves, so don’t even bother trying.”

“But he ki-” The man couldn’t finish his sentence, as a column of scarlet flames just lit up on one of the empty thrones. The fire rapidly turned into the shape of a woman. In the blink of an eye, the wildfire turned into flesh. Her scarlet hair matched with the colour of her outer eyes, but its centre was a lighter shade of orange, proof of her status as a true dragon.

“As discreet as always Rouge…” Bel pointed out once the sound of the flames stopped.

“Teleportation spells are much more inconvenient than fire manipulation.” The dragon queen explained. “Besides, it's quite hard to know the coordinates of this place if you keep moving it around every milenia.”

“I only move it every 5 thousand years.” Bel defended herself. “And I always send Lorcan to tell you its new coordinates, right Lorcan?”

“Yes master Bel.” Lorcan, who stood behind her, responded without even moving his head.

“Rouge, are you saying my servant is failing to perform such an easy task?” She asked, a couple of drops of blood started to fall from Lorcan’s neck.

“I just forget about them, you know I don’t have good memory in regards to such trivialities.” Rouge responded, completely unbothered by the blood that fell from Lorcan’s neek.

“I see.” Bel said as she stopped her spell. “Lorcan, you can use healing magic. And please, clean the floor, you made it dirty.”

Lorcan didn’t say a word. He just disintegrated the blood stains and healed his wounds using magic.

“I see you are having fun without me.” A woman with long black hair said as she sat on the fourth throne. She wore a black jacket with blue mana threads and a white mask that covered everything but her eyes.

At first, the white haired man was confused, but when he saw the blue crosses in her red eyes he understood who she was. “Long time no see Kai.”

“Let's skip the formalities Elex.” Kai answered. “Before any of you ask. Yes, I kidnaped the elven children two nights ago. But this topic isn’t important right now.”

“You have pushed an entire species to the brink of extinction and you say it's not important!?” Elex screamed at him.

“First of all, the elves are immortal, even if they only have a dozen of elves in their reproductive age, they should be able to restore their population in a couple hundred thousand years.” Kai said. “But most importantly, we are facing a threat much bigger than the strongest behemoth.”

“Don’t-” Elex tried to talk back, but he was interrupted.

“Shut up kid.” Rouge yelled. “You might be too young to remember but behemoths used to be a threat much larger than what they are today.”

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“Don’t call me kid you old dinosaur.” Elex said, an instant later a black fireball exploded just behind his back. “Don’t call me that again, ever.” The dragon warned.

“You want to fight?” The man said as his hand was coated in darkness.

A loud sound filled the room. “Behave like the immortals you are supposed to be.” Kai said, as he lifted his hand from the table. “Especially you Rouge, you are 6 times older than Elex.”

The two immortals dispelled their magic and stayed quiet, they both knew it wasn’t a good idea to provoke him. ”Loki.” Kai called.

A girl appeared just behind his back. She appeared young, not older than 14 human years. She was wearing a black and white maid dress that matched the colour of her hair.

“Start the projection.” Kai ordered. Loki stood up and casted the spell. As mana was channelled through her body her heterochromic red and blue eyes glowed. A 3D image appeared in the centre of the table. It was a real model of the black hole that swallowed Liz almost 200 years ago.

“I assume you remember that Liz jumped inside the black hole and never came back.” Kai started.

“It has only been 200 years, Kai, that's nothing.” Elex pointed out.

“Precisely, she should have come back in less than 20, Elex.” Bel said. “But she is completely missing, not even my angels can find any trace of her.”

“It would be wise to assume that her soul was destroyed inside the black hole, especially taking into account what I found inside.” Kai said.

“What you found? Don't tell me that you have jumped inside that thing.” Rouge scolded him.

“That's precisely what I did.” Kai began.

“You are telling me that Liz, who is a master of space-time magic, couldn’t make it out alive, and you followed her!?!?!” Rouge screamed.

“I have the situation under control, even in the worst case scenario, my soul wouldn’t have suffered any damage.” Kai explained. “And before you ask, no, my change of body didn’t happen inside it.”

“Ok, let's pretend we believe you. What did you find inside the black hole?” Bel asked.

“The black hole is a singularity formed by its virtually infinite mass. It creates a massive gravitational field that can bend space and stop time.” Kai started.

“We already knew that.” Elex interrupted him.

“The thing is that once you pass the event horizon there isn’t a physical spell that can pull you out of there, the pull is just that intense.” Kai ignored Elex's comment. “After that point the space is so twisted that any kind of spacial magic is more dangerous than viable.”

The projection on top of the table was changing to represent what Kai described. “Inside this region I found a rift in the fabric of space itself. It was a gate between what exists and what doesn’t, I tried to throw some mana into it, but it simply vanished.”

“A rift? You mean like the cuts that spells like spatial slice or infinite separation make?” Rouge asked.

“No, those cuts are small and self repair almost instantly.” He explained. “Those cuts are like using sharp scissors, while this rift was the equivalent of throwing something so hard it just passes all the way through.”

“I assume if you are telling us this it's because the rift is not as “friendly” with our world as spatial slices are.” Elex, who started to understand the magnitude of the threat, asked.

“You are correct, not only is the rift quite literally “eating” everything that exists near it, but it's also growing.” Kai said. “If it was under normal time laws, I assume it would double its size every week.”

A cold shiver ran through everyone’s spine, if that was true, the rift could quite literally eat the world in less than a year. “If it was?” Bel, who was silent the whole time asked.

“Luckily for us, the rift is inside the black hole, which means that the time in that region has almost stopped.” Kai said, letting everyone sigh in relief. “The problem is that the rift is eating the black hole…”

“And if the black hole gets small enough time will return to normal.” Rouge finished his sentence.

“Can’t we seal the rift or something?” Elex asked.

“It's far beyond my capacity, and that includes Loki’s.” Kai said.

“If the second best space mage can close it, then I assume none of us can.” Bel said. “Do you have a plan?”

“My idea was to cast a time bubble to confine the black hole in a region where time is already frozen.”

“I don’t want to take you out of your fantasy, but Liz was the only mage with enough knowledge on time bubbles to cast one that completely froze time, and that’s without taking into account the scale of this one.” Elex pointed out.

“I had her teach me the spell some time ago, with enough mana I should be able to cast it.” Kai said. “But will have to create a golem capable of monitoring and repairing the double.”

“Can’t Loki do that?” Rouge asked.

“Loki’s purpose is to be my personal servant, besides, the golem would have to be able to survive eternity inside the time double and the black hole, and that beyond anything Loki can do.”

“So, you are suggesting that we prepare enough mana for you to cast the spell while you create this golem” Bel asked.

“Exactly, that's why I changed my body, I had to die to upgrade my soul.” Kai stopped for a moment. “That's also why I had to kidnap one thousand young elves, I’m going to spend many resources to improve my core, so I’m not willing to live less than 30 thousand years.”

Elex tried to reply, but Bel spoke before him. “I understand, then I’ll send Lorcan and 5 seraphines to collect abyssal behemoth cores.”

“That would be helpful, thank you.” Kai said as he stood up and started to walk away. “I’m going to confine myself in my lab for the next decade or so, tell Lorcan to give the cores to Loki.”

Once her presence wasn’t needed, Loki simply vanished as suddenly as she appeared. But before Kai left the room, he turned towards Elex. “And remember that just because the elves and you are friends now, it doesn’t mean that they are anything special for the rest of us.”

“You…” Elex stood up, but he shut up as Kai’s hand was covered in black flames.

“Remember your place, celestial, you might be unkillable to most of the beings in this world, but you are the weakest in this room.” Kai said calmly. “What are the only two laws of this world?”

“The strong have the power to subjugate the weak.” He responded. “But they must obey those who are stronger… Or be willing to face their wrath.”