Don Beigon watched the horizon as the climax of this private universe seeped closer. In the next few ways, the inevitable future would clog their throats and strangle those who weren’t ready to seize the opportunity.

Every second made the hairs along the Don’s spine twitch. His senses for Nether were frustratingly blunt, but he had honed his instincts as a businessman for most of his life. Ever since his wife had been killed, he had been polishing his edge.

Now he sniffed and smiled— he smelled a chance.

However, despite all the preparations that he had made for the future, for this moment where he would reach the Pinnacle and finally seize the capability to rein furious judgment down upon those who had betrayed him, he narrowed his eyes. A murkiness had crept up on him, stemming from a new celestial phenomenon that warped its surroundings. A star seemed to be forming in the area above the Nexus, where the Sonara had once hung. Every minute, its light grew more clear and startlingly.

That star cackled and swelled, refusing to be ignored. The radiation it released influenced the future. It nudged it toward a different path.

With the assistance of the Upper Sonara Society, Randidly Ghosthound arranged for his own rapid ascent to prominence in the Nexus. The young upstart might not have much going for him, yet apparently enough had accumulated that the universe reacted to his presence and intentions. In the coming clash between the rebel and Elhume, the result was no longer as clear-cut as the Don would like.

Because the Don had been aware of Randidly Ghosthound’s movements, he had made some preparations. But his hands had been mostly tied, due to the debt between them. Even now, the fact that the Don owed the Ghosthound rankled. It was an itch his image urged him to scratch, every day. Yet he withheld himself. He waited.

He endured his torture, as he had so many other things. The future oozed closer. Probably, some weaker individuals had already been entirely submerged. They were at the mercy of fate. The outcomes of their lives were no longer under their control.

Pathetic.

The Don pivoted away from the window, rolling to the next room. Incense lay heavy on the air. He had lined the walls with candles; with a wave of the hand they snapped to light. On the floor he had drawn an elaborate diagram in chalk lines. He understood the base Engraving System of the Nexus, but this had been writ in his own private language of scales, balance, and inevitability. Creating general Engravings had very decreased effectiveness, but in the area of debts, none could rival the heights he could reach.

Soon, high enough to brush the Pinnacle. The Don’s eyes flashed.

“I miss you. Every day, I miss you,” The Don said, as he had done every dawn since his wife had died. His heart stirred at her memory, but just barely. For that, he hated himself. In the beginning his emotions had been a tumultuous storm, barely able to be contained within his body. Now it felt more like rubbing a thumb along an amputated elbow, receiving only a tingle for the body’s downtrodden recognition of what was missing.

Still, it was around this feeling he had built his whole life. It was for that reason he strengthened himself, sharpened his image, forced his body into motion. That, and his daughter, of course. But he had done all he could for Claudette; she had chosen to refuse his protection for the coming war.

“Diane. This was your invention. And I always cautioned you against using it. It weakens the fabric of our image, just by existing. You… you always laughed at me. Told me that exceptions prove the rule,” The Don mumbled. Around him, the lines of his Engraving began to glow. “One last time, I will trust you. Even if your recklessness is likely what brought down Elhume’s wrath… you didn’t place me in any danger, did you? And you never would have. You were too smart for that.

“So… let’s prepare a Reversal of Fortunes.” The Don raised his head and glared at the distant star. “Randidly Ghosthound, have you ever suffered, like I have suffered?”

*****

Pillars of color churned around Randidly’s body as he channeled his Skill, A World’s Regrets Beget Serrated Insurrection. In total, he conjured five different pillars: A piercing azure blue that made his heart ache. A vivid emerald that matched his eyes. A searing pink-orange, practically sparking at the edges. A deep maroon that felt a bit too close to madness. Finally, a grey lavender, an almost dead color that made his shoulders slump just from looking.

DiOrtho’s hatchets sat in front of him, on a spot of ground already charred and smoking from the previous weapons he had enhanced.

Randidly tried not to think too deeply about what would happen to this random asteroid when he had finished with it. The weight of his steps and the ripples he created just left him exhausted. But he felt the reverberations, the cascading future possibilities as the threat in front of him forced him to squeeze as much potential as he possessed into the effort.

Instead, he just felt. His body ached with it. The Skill trilled in pleasure.

Congratulations! Your Skill A World’s Regrets Begets Serrated Insurrection (T) has grown to Level 1105!

Congratulations! Your Skill Echoes of a Living Myth (M) has grown to Level 1043!

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The colorful pillars began to spin around him. Randidly breathed in and then out, his body naturally producing undulating waves of steam. His chest prickled with the emotions surging there; he felt less like he was forging and more like he dredged up all the settled emotions along the bottom of his soul. The sensation was uncomfortable. Even just sitting and channeling his attention through the Skill made him feel violent and out of control.

He narrowed his eyes. He focused on the hatchets. The pillars accelerated through their motions. As they moved, the pulsing undulations of their colors became increasingly even. Randidly’s emotions tightened into an incendiary spiral as they prepared to pour out of him.

A small tremor rippled through his shoulders, but Randidly refused to acknowledge the yawning weakness in his body. A bead of sweat popped into existence on his brow and inexplicably resisted the waves of heat coming off of him. It was sweat forged by his body, incomparably dense and stubborn— it refused to be carried along by the heat.

It rolled down around his eyesocket, across the cheekbone, down to tremble on his lip. His emotional sea ignited, exploding in his chest. Waves of raw Aether leaked out of his skin, most vanishing into the wide void around him, with some settling into the forging place he had chosen, baptizing it in his feral emotions.

Randidly breathed out and with the breath came a ghost.

Congratulations! Your Skill A World’s Regrets Begets Serrated Insurrection (T) has grown to Level 1110!

…

Congratulations! Your Skill A World’s Regrets Begets Serrated Insurrection (T) has grown to Level 1123!

The ghost floated about the hatchets, its edges bulging and receding as its form shifted. Energy crackled around its form, an aspect of nearly raw Aether. The emotional pillars pulsed with light, now completely in unison. Thin tendrils of energy stretched out from the pillars- azure, emerald, pink-orange, maroon, grey lavender- and attached themselves to the ghost. The various emotions began to pump into this spirit, which Randidly would then feed into the weapons.

Now, all that I need is the proper taste, Randidly closed his eyes and thought about DiOrtho Vant and his ancient machine god image.

This was already the fourth of his creations, so Randidly had enough experience to properly consider the emotional flavor he needed to convey. He touched each pillar in turn, feeling its call and judging how well each matched this project. As with his previous attempts, the responses from the pillars varied.

He had started earlier with Charlotte Wick, as he had promised. He had hammered into her weapons with raw emotional force, overwhelmed by the emotional wave that his Skill conjured in him. Obviously, he mobilized his own emotions to emphasize his image, practicing over and over again how to perfectly achieve a resonating note with his image activations (especially in triplicate), but this was different.

The process of activating an image with his emotional sea was like possessing those powerful emotions fed into him by the subconscious of the Alpha Cosmos. Somewhat burdensome, yet in the end a private struggle.

Private struggles were Randidly Ghosthound’s bread and butter.

Meanwhile, activating A World’s Regrets Begets Serrated Insurrection unveiled these emotions. Randidly bared himself to the world. He felt vulnerable.

To his surprise, he flinched back during the first try for his Knight. Which caused a split second of hesitation, and then he hammered back with all the emotional force that he could muster. Especially drawing from the emerald and maroon pillars, Randidly created a ghost of primal impulses and unexplored wilderness.

Which actually fit quite well with Charlotte’s Primal Force. But from a purely execution perspective, it was an ugly working. Made all the more frustrating when Charlotte had thanked Randidly profusely as she beamed and waved her new toy around.

Next came Raymund Ballast. For him, Randidly began with azure, with notes of pink and grey lavender. The horrible, vulnerable, ripping emotional ghost Randidly crafted was one of consideration and sudden action. A sort of vigilante, a self-righteous individual that burned with stubbornness.

Third, Randidly had made a weapon for Alana Donal. He placed his hands upon her spear, already beginning to feel his body made feeble by the constant production of emotions, feeding almost entirely pink-orange into her ghost, with some ancillary notes from the emerald pillar. What came out was an emotion close to awe, an emotion resembling satisfaction, a pure grasping feeling of a journey about to start.

And now, above these hatchets, Randidly’s eyes opened again. He pulled from the grey-lavender pillar, with equal parts also from azure and pink-orange. Randidly watched the ghost as its personality developed right before his eyes.

He channeled all his current woes, all his worries about the later consequences of his current actions, into this ghost. Because an ancient machine god would leave a long wake in its path. That’s what Randidly grasped. The sense of time’s passage, the flow of years, the accumulation of small choices that became the pressures of history, steering toward a certain end. The casual movement or bricks that eventually constructed a Ghasthund.

Randidly released a breath as he finished feeding the violent emotions into the ghost. Relief swept through him as he allowed those orbiting pillars to fade. Unlike the others, it paused before it sank into Vant’s weapons. It pivoted and looked at Randidly with pure black eyes.

Then it vanished, all at once and air began to churn above the hatchets.

Another tremor racked Randidly’s body, but Neveah appeared next to him to steady him. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Probably,” Randidly snorted. His internal organs felt slightly fried from containing all those emotions. He wondered how effective they would be in adding some extra power to his subordinate’s weapons. He wondered what his subordinates would think, feeling the emotions he had poured into them. He shook his head, to dislodge those thoughts. “Any updates?”

“The Vulpis Squad is ready to move. There was a bit of squabbling in the Upper Sonara Society… but they have split off a chunk that will proceed with us, when we approach the mountain of crystalized Aether.” Neveah reported.

“And Lyra?” Randidly pressed a hand to his chest.

Neveah grimaced. “...she’s been getting pale for the past ten minutes. Still seems able to suppress the feeling, with the addition of the barrier, but-”

“Looks like the Actus Suprem is even more monstrous than we thought.” Randidly sighed. “Alright. I have one last thing… and then we head to face Elhume.”

“You also need to rest.” Neveah squeezed his shoulder. “I had no idea that Skill would hollow you out like that.”

Randidly raised his head and met her eyes. “There have been so many times you’ve been right about needing to rest. But this time… I can’t, Neveah. We don’t have any margin for error any longer.”

In the end, Neveah looked away first. Randidly turned his attention inward and found the grey bubbles and the drops of liquid Aether. He began to build his personal trump card, truly weaving the two energies together.