With the order to prepare to draw the ritual circles, Uncle turned to face Eiden.

"Argh…"

Eiden cried of a little pain and more of surprise when Uncle slapped hard his back. Then he realized as he was cleaned for the ritual, Uncle couldn't use magic to punish him. He stood shaking with both fright and anger, watching Uncle ordered the master to write the runes in blood they brought.

Eiden felt cold stabbing pain with every rune, written with the blood of his people, the people he himself asked for help, people who loyally agreed to side with him, and protected and cared for his family. He thought he was going to throw up when they started writing an inner circle with blood from his father, watching his mother's horrified face and tearful eyes.

The first round of the inner circle was finished. Mother and Papa were ordered to take their specified positions in the inner circle. Then, Uncle sliced Mother's right palm and started writing runes around her in another smaller circle.

Eiden tried to struggle this time physically, but without magic to strengthen his body, he was no match for the guards. Renin, one of the high officials of the imperial league, simply wrapped a single hand around Eiden's torso and with the other one clutched a fistful of his curls, making Eiden teary-eyed with pain and frustration, and told him not to try anything.

He wanted to look away when Uncle opened Mother's robe and wrote seven runes over the heart, and another seven along the left hand to the palm, but he stood there frozen in Renin's forceful grip. Uncle repeated the same with Papa. Eiden guessed having no magical food that revitalized him, Papa can not fight with the magical restrictions.

But what struck him with ultimate terror was after two circles finished, Uncle powered up the inner circle, and then shackles disappeared, yet his mother and papa who were sitting there cross-legged according to Uncle's orders, couldn't get up. They were bound to the circle, to the tree.

But Uncle was not done yet. When he started to create one final small circle facing them in front of the tree, Eiden knew it was for him.

"Cousin, please, please not my child, please," Mother begged, gasping as her strength slowly zapped to the glowing runes.

"Hush, Enya, there's a possibility after this you might still be alive. Eiden is a big boy." Uncle connected them together and then extended the connection to the head of the inner circle where the tree stood.

"Renin," Uncle called the guard.

Eiden was lifted from the ground and placed in the inner circle, but he was not released until his uncle created the bond to the circle, by slicing his palm and writing an array of runes along the branch which connected the tree.

Eiden immediately felt the bond snap into place like a clawing hand clutching his heart.

He felt weak, as his magic still blocked, the bond holding into his physical strength. Renin removed his hands, with shackles weighing him down, Eiden staggered struggling to stay on his feet. Eiden felt Renin's hands remove his robe. Uncle started to write runes over his heart and both his hands. Then they all left the circle.

His shackles disappeared and warm magic flooded through him, and a fiery orange glow with branched blue-edged white streaks of light-infused aura surrounded his body. A bright pulsating red thread shot from it connecting him to his mother and papa who started to glow in bluish-white and fiery orange, respectively.

And Eiden felt the tree, ancient magic, like looking into deep and bottomless, still waters of a lake in an ancient dark and quiet forest. Eiden stood on his feet with threads holding him upright as a marionette.

Eiden was trapped in a pool of magic, submerged up to his chest, his hands were uselessly hanging as he battled with the feeling of calm transcendence overcoming him. He saw horror in Mother's eyes. She was trying to get up but failed. Papa called Uncle and he shook his head, but everything around him was slowly getting blurred.

"Argh," red blood spilled on Uncle's white robe and a scream escaped from his mouth as his body fell to the ground. Esmeralda bent down to extract the dagger which pierced her father's heart.

The guards looked dazed, yet did nothing. Eiden couldn't comprehend what was happening as he simply stared at his cousin who took a bowl and collected the blood gushing from Uncle's chest. Then, she turned to the master, Eiden tried to say no, he thought his mother did, but he didn't hear, as the voices around him felt distorted. The dagger pierced another heart, and Esme entered the circle with a large bowl full of blood.

She touched the tree, and Eiden felt the tree shiver and flinched by the touch. Then, a rustling magical wind began to blow around her, as she shifted to a black dragon. A roar shook the ground beneath them, the black dragon slurped the blood like a tasty drink and shifted back to Esme, but..but..she was different.

Eiden's foggy mind tried to sort it out, Esme was different. Esme shed her robe, and there were runes on her body, glowing. She took Eiden's bleeding palm and put that in her chest, as she sent a beam to the outer circle activating a magical barrier all around them.

Eiden woke up from the trance when she touched, and the fog disappeared. The magical flow had slowed. Because it was now connected from Eiden to the tree and then to Esme.

"Esmeralda, what are you doing?" Mother also must have felt that the draining of her magic was slowed and was strong enough to talk, asked Esme, who giggled for an answer. She summoned some objects from her fallen robe. Eiden immediately recognized them.

Esme walked to Mother touched her bleeding palm on the rim of a silver goblet and set it at the root of the branch that connected the circle around her to Eiden. And walked up to Papa smeared his blood on a golden trident and placed it accordingly. Then, walked back to Eiden and touched his palm on the halves of a crystal statuette, beautifully carved from moonstone, and set it in front of them.

"You're not Esmeralda," Papa spoke quietly.

"I recognized your dragon form, Nexus."

Esme giggled again.

"Oh, my love, Names are such trivial things. I was named Athera before that, then I was Nexus and I am now Esmeralda." She caressed Eiden's hair. Eiden was speechless, something was posing as Esme and had already killed people.

"Who are you? What are you doing?" Mother asked, sending a death glare at her.

"Oh, that's a long story." Esme smiled at them and touched the tree again. She had a faraway look in her eyes like she was reminiscing about some beautiful memories.

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"Are you from Cora too?" Eiden finally recovered enough to talk, asked her. Eiden felt Papa struggling, Mother too, but the magic of the circle was stronger than the strongest of shackles Eiden had ever worn before.

"Yes, sweetheart," she replied and looked at others.

"Don't bother. I took a good amount of time to perfect the circle." She giggled and continued.

"How good my father is a runemaster."

“You killed Uncle." Eiden tried to get away from her touch. However, the thick magical field that enveloped him didn't give him much room to move around.

"It's easy to corrupt ambitious people. He had a thirst for knowledge and power. He was already corrupted by dark magic before I came along." Esme laughed.

"Why are you doing this? Nexus, please stop this madness. You're taking the magic away from the tree, this whole world will lose the magic." Papa's struggles were as useless as Eiden's. He sagged to the floor giving up.

"Told you it's a long story, I'm Esmeralda, now. I have a longer history with the tree than you, any Corish, or incompetent humans." Esme's words were like red hot thin needles drawing to skin. Her anger was physically painful to them.

"Oh, my darling brother is going to join the party." Esme walked to the edge of the protective circle.

"Renin, defend the gate, kill everyone, except Evan," she commanded like she didn't hear Eiden and his mother scream 'No'. She came back and stood beside Eiden and touched his cheek.

"You're not Esme, don't touch me," Eiden cried in rage.

"Oh, sweetheart, you can't tell that. You freed me, and I'm now Esme thanks to you." Esme giggled and kissed his cheek making Eiden flinch.

"What do you mean Eiden freed you?" Mother looked horrified. Well, not more than Eiden himself.

"Hmm, I think we have enough time for bit of a storytelling." Esme seemed to think.

"My name was Athera, I was born from the First tree of life." Esme touched the tree and laughed.

Suddenly, the surroundings changed. They were still magically bound to the First tree, with Esme beside them, and saw Corish people walk in front of them. There was a gorgeous young Zenai woman, Eiden thought that was Athera, laughing and walking along a road with a very handsome Quazi man. They stopped and kissed each other goodbye and Athera waved at him when he disappeared with a breeze and a shower of snowflakes.

Eiden felt her anger, and hatred for someone.

"I loved my life, I wanted the happiness to last forever. I found a way, yet they called me selfish, and accused me of trying to play god." Esme's face was blackened with hate. It was a powerful emotion, Eiden felt everyone gasping in pain that came through the connection.

Esme kept talking.

"Selfish? Why is it selfish to be happy and powerful? Why is it selfish to search for a way to go beyond the stars? Why is it selfish to plant a life-giving tree and want to have our race thrive in different worlds?" Her voice almost rose to screech. Then she waved her hand again. The scenery changed.

"No, they betrayed me. People I thought who loved me, betrayed me," she whispered.

Eiden watched Athera talk to her lover. They were sitting amid a grove of lush green hedges of tangled vines. The red bleeding heart flowers were dancing in the wind.

"Tree gave us power, which it took from the elements. If we can absorb its power among us, we will be able not only to control elements but also to draw power from the elements.

It's not that complex, Sol. Imagine how much power is there to dispose of. Look at the sky, how many other worlds like Cora? Time wouldn't matter anymore, nothing could stop us." Athera dipped a finger in a funnel of a nectar-filled flower brushed it along her lips and chastely kissed her lover. However, he looked disturbed.

"But, but love, we are already powerful. Athera, it's a gift. Life is a gift from the gods, my love, we should accept our leave when our time comes to the end." He tried to explain, but she scoffed and silenced him.

"Why should we? Are you going to talk about children again? Children can live here. It's only us, the first generation can absorb such power, we can have other worlds, and there will be more life.

Gods gave us life first, it's our chance now to take it to other worlds. Oh, Sol, you don't want to live with me forever?" The scene froze. Athera laughed. It was a painful and bitter laugh.

"Know what they did instead of being powerful like gods, they chose to live and die. They were scared of me, and of my knowledge, all of them. They stripped me of my physical body and cast me into dark nothingness." Esme walked to Papa and knelt in front of him. And held his head by clutching his long hair.

"You knew it was her idea, to expand the boundaries of the known world, and you said no, because of old laws. Old laws, the made-up stories to keep me away. They told stories." She dropped Papa who fell like a sack to the ground. And stood up.

"They went even farther. They divided the first tree, and divided the immense power it held." Her eyes glowed. So much power. Eiden couldn't take his eyes away from her. Esme looked like a goddess.

The scenery changed again.

It was a laboratory with very sophisticated machinery unknown to Eiden. What caught his eye first was the large mostly empty room in the middle of the laboratory. Its front side was built with translucent gray glass-like material and many scientists, clad in light blue safety suits and dark goggles, who were stationed in front of the room, were busy walking around and checking the equipment.

A few feet long rectangular screens with glittering green, red, and white numbers and words were placed over the gleaming white walls of two opposite sides of the room. They were connected to the thinner ends of the two strange cone-shaped large metallic instruments, which were placed facing each other in the middle of the spacious room. Eiden guessed that this must be the moon research centre in Cora.

A man who appeared to be the leader of the group gave a sign to start. A whirring sound began to be emitted by some of the machines and from the six white-colored marked places at the round edges of the large metallic cones, bright purple lightning-like power rays started to emit at a regular pace. The hypnotic looking power emission seemed to synchronize with a beeping sound coming from an unknown machine which suddenly came to a halt by a sharp command by the leader.

For a moment, nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen as the experiment seemed to have simply finished. Then, the bright white lights of the spacious room were turned off, plunging it into complete darkness and Eiden looked at the scientists who were excitedly whispering to each other and back at the dark space, wondering if there was anything he hadn't noticed.

Suddenly, a soft low bluish light filled the lab and together with others, he couldn't help but gasp in surprise. Inside the thin white net of confinement wards, a large black circular space outlined by a thin gleaming orange line had formed between the metallic cones.

"They, Nexus, and others opened the door to the darkness where I was. They succeeded in their mission. A door to the world beyond. Finally, I was free.”

Esme's gaze was transfixed on the illusionary images, and she whispered the words again.

“I was free.”

The scientists broke out into excited squeals and happy chatter at once and one laughing young woman rushed to hug the leader. The door to the room was opened, and a few people rushed inside and started taking observations. Looking at the red numbered back calculations of a large screen, Eiden guessed the portal would only last two minutes.

Eiden was startled by the high-pitched scream of a scientist and turned back to see the portal. A shadow, in the form of a woman, slowly emerged from the portal and vanished only to appear near the ward net. Shocked and scared scientists clambered to get out of the room piling up at the door when the spidery net was parted slightly with a light touch of the shadow as the young woman at the back of the group turned around.

Other's loud pleas to get her out fell on deaf ears and after a split second of hesitation, the leader slammed the door shut. The loud beeping started together with the back calculation, ten, nine, eight…The shadow was slowly approaching the woman who had stopped dead on the tracks. In his mind, Eiden was screaming at her to leave, as he watched the horrifying scene unveiling in front of him, and seeing the shadow didn't waver even when the zero was announced followed by the collapsing of the portal, like the terrified scientists, he knew the worst had happened.

As the shadow suddenly embraced the young scientist, with a terrifyingly loud boom the illusion dissolved and Esme made a dissatisfied ‘tut tut’ noise, continuing her story.

“If it wasn't that foolish man, Felix, who tried to stop me by blowing up everything, it would be the invention of a lifetime. Nexus and I, We were the same, we were both great thinkers, I showed her the truth, and we merged. Nexus saved me.

I learned to thrive in darkness for millions of years after they abandoned me. I found loyalty among the lost souls."

She turned to Papa.

"People said no to me, to Nexus, and did the same. You brought the first tree, gave this world magic, and played God."