{The Seam}

A sun burned inside Sagan. Her Progeny blood sang with it. Bright and alive, everything smelled of sandy beach and cotton candy. Rayne’s life revived her.

So she was cautious of risking herself again.

“To save the Atheneum from Inanis.”

In the amethyst splendor of Monarch Hall, Sagan spread her wings wide. The three pitches of her voice carried into the stained glass ceilings. “No riddles. No lies. Tell me. How do I save the Atheneum?”

“You do.”

“You are.”

“But Inanis hungers, and it will consume the library in its rage. In its greed.”

Their voices rang clear without echo. Female and male. All ghostly. All lost.

The deeper voice returned. “Walk with me, Seamswalker. We are no danger to you.”

A vapor manifested in the archway. The height of a regular Tritan, but the shape of a human or an Icarus. Amber in color, it took on form. A man made of nacre glass, and he waited for her.

Even after Rayne’s blood healed her, Sagan couldn’t forget the sear from her own scorched axes. The smell of burning skin. The sincerity in Razor’s voice as he condemned her to a nightmare.

Shaking her head, Sagan took a step back. She hated the break in her voice as she confessed, “I can’t. Not without assurance.”

The glass ghost clinked and cracked on his way down the quartz lane. The fractures healed instantly. In a face carved of amber, someone forgot his eyes. Despite that, she sensed him examining her. After a heartbeat, he formed an expression of understanding. In a voice filled with sorrow, he observed, “My son betrayed you. We are both casualties of the same criminal. Of Inanis.”

Slow blink. Another. On high voltage, her brain unpacked this new information as if lightning stopped her heart. “Razor… is your son and the person behind Inanis?”

One curt nod.

“Then how am I saving the Atheneum?”

The Aegis held out his hand. Faith. Trust. Something in him asked this of her. Sagan placed her hand in his. With the other hand, he pressed two fingers to the pulse point on her wrist. All this time, she believed when Razor performed this gesture that it was a greeting. But the empty man nodded for her to mimic him. She did.

The entire history of the Exalted in this Probability poured into Sagan’s nacre.

The Seam teemed with color and people. People ashen of complexion, eyes, and hair. All the spectrum of color and light seeped into the otherwise lifeless structures within the void. Zero constructed each of them to catch and filter the prismatic proof of existence. And the people rejoiced. Especially his sons. All three hundred and twenty-three dallied at the same game of design and architecture with the light.

Galactic years passed in harmony. But Zero required a new challenge. Universes existed around them. Multiples of the single. They enticed him with aspirations to the new. He and the three hundred and twenty-three sons gathered on the edge of Monarch Hall. Uniting their constructive talents, they sought the world beyond the Seam and formed a conduit.

Crackling in electric zaps, it tested their courage. Zero entered first and stepped onto a massive rock. The howling wind blew water from the condensation in the sky across his face. Behind them, the conduit closed. In its wake spilled a light devoid of color. Shining within, the potential universes ignited and blazed. This black flame cascaded from the entry and spread across the barren stone.

It inspired new designs for constructs. And in his joy, Zero wanted to share this with his people. Together, they applied their abilities on this plane. Nothing came. Most of their talents couldn’t affect this reality.

Zero smirked.

A true challenge.

In his bones, he knew his people would flourish. The planet thrived with their efforts and the promise of Cascading Light. Long they lived there on the world eventually known as Thailea. For his innovations, the Aegis assigned Zero the rare gift of a name.

The Exalted.

While they did indeed flourish, some met fate’s end on their exploration of wondrous things. For the first time, Aegis could perish. To celebrate the lives of those passed, they forged caves around Cascading Light. Their tombs welcomed the flames around the unbreakable bones.

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Galactic years passed with the Aegis manually establishing constructs across the universe. Beautiful, inspiring, and purposeful. Enki among them. Via transport of harnessed, naturally occurring conduits, Zero’s sons built it opposite the galaxy from Thailea. The sons desired to understand the Seam’s relation to the realities around. They wanted to walk to the other universes. He cautioned against straining the delicate balance of the worlds. So they created a compromise. If they couldn’t visit the universes themselves, they at least wanted to see them.

The Probability Matrix.

To experiment with the new technology, Zero reproduced once more. The birth of three hundred and twenty-four splintered the Matrix tenfold. And conduits formed at random, connecting to other planets in the galaxy. It fascinated the Aegis, and they continued to experiment with the new baby. He was the first child born in exploration of this universe.

As new Probabilities formed, the discarded ones decayed. The universes recycled this energy for later use. This was normal. But following the birth of Three Two Four, there was never any lingering energy to recycle. It vanished. The sons especially toiled over this. Why would another Aegis offspring affect reality so drastically?

Other oddities developed, and Three Two Four’s behavior concerned Zero. Upon reaching an age to which he spoke his first words, with them he demanded a name. The Aegis were numbered. They rarely assigned names.

The last-born son also experimented on his own, away from the others. To celebrate what he designated a success, Three Two Four called an audience to observe his results. The preteen peeled off the skin from his wrist to his fingertips with a crude knife, ambivalent to the bright yellow gore. Then he chipped off the bone of his finger. It healed quickly, but the spectacle left them astonished. To their further horror, Three Two Four force-fed the amber bone chip to a small avian creature. Thereafter, he broke the animal’s leg.

Before this display, Zero never experienced so many anxieties and revolted against the thrill of exhilaration at the sight. How could a son of the Exalted be so warped? What punishment could Zero invent to rival this travesty—

Hop.

The bird hopped on a limb that straightened before their eyes. The creature chirped its joy as its feathers lay smoother with a shinier pallor. Three Two Four treated the audience to an excited grin. His brothers rejoiced at this breakthrough.

In his bones, Zero dreaded the consequences of this discovery. He sought solace and guidance in the Seam. But it wasn’t the world he remembered. Neglect drained away the saturation of color from the constructs within. Once vibrant golds, violets, azures, and greens—all now gray and white. Dust and bone.

It was here that he encountered the light for the first time. Blinding, baffling, it encompassed the whole of the Seam. Zero scoured for the painful epicenter to discover its source. The light receded in Monarch Hall. And to his horror, Three Two Four stood at its core.

“Father, please. I cannot explain it. Why can we not think of it as another gift?”

“You devour the potential of fallen Probabilities. You steal these necessary energies and fuel the light in your bones with it. Can you not see how wrong you are? Never harness this again.”

“Are you jealous of the nacre, father?”

Zero recoiled and glared at his youngest son. “What am I jealous of?”

“That we can affect other beings, and that I discovered it and not you. Are. You. Jealous?”

For his punishment, all three hundred and twenty-three sons held down Three Two Four. Zero assured, “This is the lesson brought onto yourself. Do not let us resort to exile from our home.” With a crude surgical tool and no anesthesia, he plied apart and unseated every one of his youngest son’s fingernails.

The son who never screamed.

In his bones, Zero feared this was a mistake.

Not long after, the Tritans came seeking their aid. When war broke out within Enki, Zero tried to broach talks of peace with Primary Tumu. All the while, Three Two Four negotiated a secret treatise with Primary Rem. It seemed the right time for the Exalted to reach out to his youngest son and share his reservations of mistreatment and misunderstanding.

For there was never a son like Three Two Four. And only in the aftermath could Zero see in honesty his history of placing his pride above his sons.

But it was too late.

Three Two Four brokered an alliance before the Tritans and Aegis agreed to terms. And he unmade his own people in his wrath. All the females swallowed by Inanis, and the potential of their lives consumed by Zero’s youngest son.

The Aegis fled. Retreated to the Seam with plans to hide there and survive their opponents. Then try different means of creation through light to restore the female population—Whatever it took. They would try.

But the Seam died. No one tended to the light. All bone and ash.

Only one refuge remained. But even to Thailea, the Tritans and Three Two Four followed them, where Cascading Light protected the last of the Aegis. Tombs fortified with their bones shielded them as Tritan test subjects attacked in ferocious droves. Three Two Four called more and more soldiers pulled across the Probabilities. He created chaos and reveled in it.

Under siege, Zero committed a most desperate act to preserve the remaining Aegis.

The Atheneum.

With it, he upcycled the light of his people into the library’s bones. All the knowledge and lives encapsulated within a small vessel, yet dawned.

The three hundred and twenty-fifth son.

He bore the future of their race. Karter knew, but Three Two Four forbade her from remembering. He left her with the sense of imminence and denied her any details which might betray the significance of the child. Including the name Zero gave him.

Sagan backed away. Shaken to her core, a tremor manifested and seized her. A symptom of the rocked foundation constructing her understanding of the worlds. A glass ghost, once a great a man, Zero—the Exalted—gazed at her with sorrow tremendous enough to crack his bones. In the reflection of the splintered shards, a hundred Sagans completed the puzzle.

When she closed her eyes, she imagined him alive. White silvery hair plaited down his temples and pulled back, accentuating his sharp bone structure. Colorless eyes with a hollow black ring for a pupil. A complexion so pale it rivaled his eyes and emphasized the contours in his face. Handsome, kind, and wise. Zero smirked for her, and Sagan’s heart broke.

Like father, like son.

“Korac.”