The many faces and names that were mov­ing on the oth­er side of the wall were un­fa­mil­iar to Sobon, save only two--Djang Ban Fei and Djang Ban Dai--at least un­til the fig­ure next to him passed through the door­way. Sobon sim­ply stood and watched for now, the aching in his body mut­ed by the mi­nor im­prove­ments to his frame--but also, now, made sharp­er by the el­e­vat­ed am­bi­ent qi.

"Di­a­mond Lord!" There were many salutes and many signs of re­lief through­out the room, even from what Sobon could tell with­out ac­tu­al­ly look­ing in. The Founder, in his oblig­a­to­ry dis­guise, moved to the throne, the one prop­er seat in the room and the cen­ter of mark­ings and ar­rays of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent mean­ings and styles--some only vi­su­al, oth­ers based in qi, still oth­ers in aether, and some in the Founders' own style. That had been a sur­prise, when Sobon first learned about it, but the more he un­der­stood of what had come be­fore this par­tic­u­lar Founder messed every­thing up, the less sur­prised he was to find signs of med­dling all around.

"Fi­nal­ly, we can dis­cuss--" one of the Djang fam­i­ly lead­ers, clear­ly used to act­ing as the Di­a­mond Lord's sec­ond, turned to the rest of the room in re­lief, but he was cut off im­me­di­ate­ly.

[ We be­gin when I say we be­gin, ] the Di­a­mond Lord said, mo­ments be­fore he sat down. [ There are mat­ters at hand more im­por­tant than the Ren fam­i­ly and the in­sult they have made to my­self and the Em­pire. ] He al­lowed a pause, his in­tent flick­er­ing a word­less mes­sage to the rest to know that he would not find it in­sult­ing if their at­ten­tion wa­vered or they spoke qui­et­ly.

Nonethe­less, none did, and Sobon would have been as­ton­ished if any­one there could have named a sin­gle thing more im­por­tant than lis­ten­ing to what­ev­er the Di­a­mond Lord said next. When He did not speak, how­ev­er, Djang Ban Fei--the fa­vored grand­daugh­ter, Princess, and lead­ing prodi­gy of the gen­er­a­tion just now reach­ing adult­hood--spoke up.

"You re­al­ly are dy­ing, aren't you, grand­fa­ther?"

In that mo­ment, the tense si­lence was fi­nal­ly shat­tered by sev­er­al scoffs and mut­tered words. There were sev­er­al sharp glances at her, di­rect­ed waves of in­tent, and even whis­pers to the ef­fect of, "Qui­et!" that were far too loud for an oth­er­wise silent room. But, there were also wor­ried glances be­tween peo­ple who were think­ing the same thing, but too afraid to voice it.

[ I am not dy­ing. I am al­ready dead. ] As a be­ing that spoke with in­tent alone, there was no way to ques­tion or deny the truth or the Di­a­mond Lord's mes­sage, no room for mis­un­der­stand­ing. The shock­wave of aether that spilled out in re­sponse, Sobon not­ed, ex­tend­ed far be­yond the reach of the room, as sev­er­al lines of fate were pulled taught, words fi­nal­ly spo­ken and wit­nessed that could nev­er be ful­ly con­cealed again, not even by the ac­tions of a Founder, not even if every last wit­ness to those words was killed. In­tu­ition, not knowl­edge, so­lid­i­fied in the wills of thou­sands world­wide, and peo­ple sen­si­tive to the flows of time, fate, and con­se­quence un­der­stood only that things that once were im­mov­able had be­gun to shift.

Sobon's mind, wire­less­ly linked to an ar­ray with­in the palace that the Founder had made for him, tracked some parts of those flows of en­er­gy, but his mind was too ad­dled to be as pre­cise as it had been, es­pe­cial­ly with this body be­ing only shod­di­ly re­paired. It would serve its pur­pose to the end--but only as long as the Founder could main­tain and im­prove it. And the Founder had promised that ea­ger­ly, even though they both doubt­ed that it would be free to act in such a way for as long as might be need­ed.

When no one dared speak the ques­tions on their tongues, the Di­a­mond Lord con­tin­ued. [ I died be­liev­ing that I was pro­tect­ing this world from a pow­er­ful threat. I died be­liev­ing that I was aveng­ing a friend and men­tor. And yet, though I died in com­bat, none of you even knew. [Such a thing] now pre­sides over the dy­ing days of the Em­pire. ]

Again, the im­pli­ca­tion of the words could not be con­cealed, not so long as the Founder spoke with in­tent, and Sobon not­ed the in­tense fear and rage that be­gan to bub­ble up in those pre­sent. Sobon not­ed that the phras­ing matched a prophe­cy that he had been told of, by Djang Ban Fen her­self: I have al­ready seen it; [such a thing] will pre­side over the fall of the Em­pire. And clear­ly, most or all of the peo­ple in­vit­ed to this meet­ing were aware of that prophe­cy, not­ed the phras­ing and the in­tent.

Sobon was sur­prised, but not too sur­prised, when two of the high fam­i­ly lead­ers pre­sent flared their qi in anger, in­tend­ing to con­test the will of the man, but the Founder had no more dif­fi­cul­ty sup­press­ing them than he would have had sup­press­ing Sobon. De­spite the im­mense pow­er at their dis­pos­al, their per­spec­tive was too lim­it­ed, their ed­u­ca­tion to lit­tle. Even so, the shock­wave of their qi be­ing un­leashed even for a mo­ment made the walls slight­ly char and the floor and ceil­ing buck­le.

[ I trust that you un­der­stand that if [that be­ing] had wished to harm or end the em­pire, it would have suc­ceed­ed, ] the Di­a­mond Lord con­tin­ued, his men­tal voice show­ing no sign of strain de­spite op­press­ing two of the most pow­er­ful qi users in the world. Sobon could ac­knowl­edge that it was like­ly the most non­cha­lant dis­play of im­mense pow­er that he had ever wit­nessed. [ The dy­ing days of the Em­pire are not an end to the world it­self. [ All that lives must die], and an Em­pire is noth­ing if not a liv­ing be­ing. It is the task of liv­ing be­ings not to live for­ev­er, but to re­pro­duce, and then to make way for those that fol­low. ]

Sobon, de­spite lay­ers of shield­ing cre­at­ed and main­tained by the Founder it­self, shiv­ered at the ab­solute fi­nal­i­ty in the spir­i­tu­al truth of those few words. It car­ried with it echoes, as though they were per­son­al mem­o­ries, of the death of world, star sys­tems, galax­ies. But... there was also a sub­tler truth there, one that Sobon was like like­ly the only one pre­sent who had the ed­u­ca­tion to un­der­stand: that the death of stars was a nec­es­sary step for the birth of plan­ets... and had been nec­es­sary for the birth of mankind.

Still... this tac­tic, of em­brac­ing the idea of the Em­pire end­ing and tran­si­tion­ing to some­thing else, was some­thing that the two of them had only be­grudg­ing­ly set­tled on af­ter con­sid­er­ing sev­er­al plans to ma­nip­u­late the fu­ture of the world, with the Founder study­ing the tan­gled fates at the heart of the Em­pire. Nei­ther was hap­py with it, or with the in­cred­i­ble vi­o­lence they both knew would fol­low, but when the plan was fi­nal­ly laid out, he had to ad­mit that it both stood a chance of suc­ceed­ing--and it seemed to line up with his own 'prophe­cy', the fu­ture he had seen af­ter cre­at­ing the two Crestan Crowns.

"And what if we do not con­sent to be­ing ruled over by [such a thing]?" One of the Fam­i­ly Lord's voic­es rose, and Sobon only not­ed when his mind cleared a few mo­ments lat­er that it was one of the peo­ple who had been di­rect­ly op­pressed--and that his voice and car­riage had al­ready re­cov­ered from the Di­a­mond Lord's own spir­i­tu­al pres­sure. "Do you in­tend to re­place us as well?"

There was a great ten­sion in the room, but it was bro­ken by the Di­a­mond Lord chuck­ling, the rare sound of his voice echo­ing a lit­tle odd­ly in the room. [ I would be dis­ap­point­ed if you will­ing­ly ac­cept­ed such a thing, ] he an­swered. [ No [ be­ings from be­yond this world ] will rule in the next age of mankind, whether as en­e­my or ally. That is both an oath, and a prophe­cy. ]

"Can­not those be­ings be [of any face]?" An­oth­er fam­i­ly leader, one of the rar­er women in the room, spoke with great doubt and con­cern in her voice.

[ The oath and prophe­cy are spo­ken, and the stars shall not see them bro­ken, ] was all the Di­a­mond Lord an­swered her, and as of­ten hap­pened in this world, Sobon thought that the phras­ing was some­how too spe­cif­ic to be lit­er­al, though he lacked the con­text to grasp it all.

"If We un­der­stand what you are say­ing, Grand­fa­ther," Prince Djang Ban Dai spoke up, draw­ing glances from the adults, "you do not in­tend to pro­tect the Em­pire? De­spite the strength you still have re­main­ing?"

The wave of in­tent that rolled off of the Lord con­tained a sense of ap­proval, rather than ir­ri­ta­tion. [ This sem­blance that re­mains be­fore you does not have the strength to de­fend the Em­pire. But there is a more im­por­tant task. ]

"See­ing to what comes next," said an­oth­er Fam­i­ly Leader, and the Di­a­mond Lord nod­ded at him.

[ En­ter, ] the Di­a­mond Lord said, and Sobon moved for­ward smooth­ly, as though he'd been ex­pect­ing the cue, though he hadn't, or not at that mo­ment. The mo­ment he crossed through the door, he felt more in­tense­ly the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure of an en­tire room full of be­ings in the Flame phase of qi fo­cus­ing on him--of which Djang Ban Fen and Djang Ban Dai, whose spir­its he had felt pre­vi­ous­ly, were the low­est. Al­though he had no sense of the stages of Qi, he was sure that many of these peo­ple were whole tiers ahead of those two young ones. Still... the dif­fer­ence in pres­sure was not much dif­fer­ent than be­ing forced to act un­der the watch­ful eye of com­mand­ing of­fi­cers. What mat­tered was per­form­ing his role, an he in­tend­ed to do just that.

"Ugh," a voice that could not be quite iden­ti­fied said, in dis­gust, though Sobon was sure the voice was male. "What is that hor­rid thing?"

"That," Sobon said, his voice and the aether wave be­hind it pinched, pained, and qui­et com­pared to the oth­ers in the room, though he didn't let that stop him or even slow him down. He did have to add a bit of ex­tra punch to trans­mit the ir­ri­ta­tion in his voice well enough to be heard, "is a who, not a what, thank you very much."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

There was a col­lec­tive sense of dread and ir­ri­ta­tion, mixed into a con­fused mess, but the Di­a­mond Lord sim­ply re­spond­ed with amuse­ment. [ This be­ing you only need to iden­ti­fy as [An­gel] for now. ] That word, Sobon not­ed, con­tained a com­pli­cat­ed twist of qi, and he was sure that to those who need­ed to know, it con­firmed that Sobon was--or had been--Shi­va Alas­si, and per­haps even hint­ed as his true iden­ti­ty. [ [An­gel] has agreed to over­see a com­pe­ti­tion, one that I hope will help de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the world. It will be an­nounced as a com­pe­ti­tion to suc­ceed the Di­a­mond Lord--but the com­pe­ti­tion will not have that ef­fect. That prophe­cy shall not be shared out­side of this room. ] Though the Di­a­mond Lord didn't spec­i­fy a penal­ty, Sobon could feel a pow­er­ful fate bind­ing fall across every­one in the room.

Those bind­ings couldn't stop the vi­brat­ing fate strings from re­lay­ing in­tu­ition across the world, but that was nev­er the in­ten­tion.

"You in­tend to raise a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers?" One of the fam­i­ly lead­ers glanced side­long at the two young prodi­gies in the room, and even Sobon could sense the hang­ing im­pli­ca­tion, like an iron­clad con­dem­na­tion. They have been found un­wor­thy.

In­stead of an­swer­ing, the Di­a­mond Lord sim­ply shift­ed so that he could ac­tu­al­ly look at Sobon, which was cue enough for every­one else to si­lence.

"I was asked to use my knowl­edge and wis­dom to cre­ate a se­ries of tasks, or tests, if you pre­fer." Sobon stepped for­ward, as brazen­ly as if he were sim­ply giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion in front of a re­view board, and he paid no at­ten­tion to the peo­ple who bris­tled at the ac­tion. "Some in this room are al­ready fa­mil­iar with the [Crestan Crown]. It is an ar­ti­fact that both trains a per­son to pu­ri­fy their qi, and tests their lev­el of achieve­ment. That ar­ti­fact was only a rough first at­tempt, and once giv­en the re­sources, I will cre­ate a fi­nal ver­sion, one suit­ed for peo­ple strong enough to be con­sid­ered can­di­dates to re­place the Di­a­mond Lord."

The 'I will' in that sen­tence was as­sum­ing a lot, and gloss­ing over a lot of is­sues, but with the help of the Em­pire's re­sources and the Ri'lef en­gi­neers, Sobon was cer­tain it could be done.

"Pu­ri­fied qi? Why?" Some­one, who Sobon thought was only an at­ten­dant or gen­er­al of the fam­i­ly lead­ers, giv­en how he stood aside, mut­tered the ques­tion as though he ex­pect­ed it to be over­looked, but he also didn't crum­ble or re­spond when the room's at­ten­tion shift­ed to him.

"A fool­ish ques­tion," Sobon an­swered, tired­ly. "If you are un­able to cre­ate pu­ri­fied qi, then you don't un­der­stand qi it­self. You will nev­er be wor­thy of great pow­er if you can­not un­der­stand that pow­er. At best, you can be wor­thi­er than oth­ers." He put enough aether be­hind his emo­tion that he felt even the least sen­si­tive in the room could feel his gen­uine scorn for that con­cept. It was a per­for­mance, of course, but an hon­est one.

Again, many in the room bris­tled, but no one dared ob­ject, not when the Di­a­mond Lord did not.

"The sec­ond ar­ti­fact is also known to you all, though I won­der how many of you un­der­stand it. The [Di­a­mond Throne] in this very room is a pow­er not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, and any who dare to stand at the pin­na­cle of the world will need to test their wis­dom against it. I think that few if any of the peo­ple in this room could suc­cess­ful­ly use that pow­er, al­though most could at least sur­vive it. I will craft a num­ber of less­er ver­sions, again suit­able for train­ing."

The Throne it­self was two things--first, a bea­con that served to am­pli­fy the Di­a­mond Lord's Bless­ing, and which had helped main­tain it since the Di­a­mond Lord had died. But... it was also a mas­sive aether ar­ray tied to sev­er­al oth­er seals across the world, each of which ex­tend­ed the Em­pire's pow­er and sup­pressed oth­ers, pro­vid­ing the abil­i­ty to view and com­mand the Di­a­mond Lord's do­main from afar. If peo­ple tru­ly came to un­der­stand the less­er Thrones he pro­vid­ed, they could do the same--and the world would be di­vid­ed, per­haps for good... but very like­ly for evil.

Even so, Sobon sus­pect­ed that most peo­ple who tried wouldn't have the abil­i­ty, even af­ter train­ing with the Crown. The aether-based con­trols, when he had tried to ma­nip­u­late them, were very del­i­cate and re­spond­ed bad­ly to spir­i­tu­al in­tent, lash­ing back against the user. Since the peo­ple of this world learned to cre­ate in­tent first, and would most­ly only learn to ma­nip­u­late en­er­gy with­out in­tent in the process of learn­ing with the Crown... most would have great dif­fi­cul­ty with that.

Sobon paused his in­tro­spec­tion to note the var­i­ous faces in the room. Many seemed ful­ly aware of the fact that the Throne it­self was a pow­er­ful ar­ti­fact, but if Sobon were to guess, many were not; odd­ly, the young Prince seemed aware, but the more fa­vored Princess un­aware. Per­haps it had sim­ply been re­vealed in some dis­cus­sion that only he was pre­sent in? Sobon had no rea­son to think Djang Ban Fen had been snubbed.

"The third ar­ti­fact is the [Fairy Orb]. Al­though it is not yet cre­at­ed, it is one I am per­son­al­ly quite fa­mil­iar with. It is a trans­port ar­ti­fact, and will be nec­es­sary when threats--and vis­i­tors--from be­yond the world ap­pear. I would also po­lite­ly sug­gest that they be used to moves bat­tles be­tween great pow­ers away from the world, to places where us­ing one's full pow­er will not dev­as­tate the spir­it of the world. Whether you are all aware of it or not... this has al­ready be­come a se­ri­ous prob­lem." Sobon scowled, re­mem­ber­ing the ter­ri­ble scars he'd seen in the world's spir­it from the be­yond, scars that came from un­re­pen­tant use of pow­er lev­els that, in a more civ­i­lized world, would gen­er­al­ly be re­strict­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al treaty. There were... oth­er scars, too, but this was one that Sobon hoped he could triv­ial­ly pre­vent... if giv­ing peo­ple pock­etable star­ships could be con­sid­ered triv­ial.

"The spir­it of the world?" One of the fam­i­ly lead­ers spoke up, his voice du­bi­ous. "Is that re­al­ly--"

"Don't ask stu­pid ques­tions," an­oth­er snapped at him. "Be­sides, we've all seen it, even if we don't want to call it that. The world takes far longer to re­cov­er af­ter bat­tles over a cer­tain lev­el. Too long. If some­one the Di­a­mond Lord says is an An­gel from an­oth­er world says that's be­cause the world spir­it is dam­aged, have the pres­ence of mind to ac­cept that wis­dom. Id­iot."

Sobon could sense from the var­i­ous in­ter­ac­tions around the room that that per­son's opin­ion wasn't uni­ver­sal­ly shared, but chose to ig­nore it.

"The last ar­ti­fact is some­what dif­fer­ent," Sobon said, adding a cer­tain per­for­ma­tive doubt to his voice as he did, though again, that per­for­mance mir­rored his feel­ings be­neath--but those feel­ings wouldn't be vis­i­ble un­der all of this spir­i­tu­al pres­sure. "I orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed it on a whim, I would not have done it if I had un­der­stood, though the Di­a­mond Lord's read­ing of the world's fate sug­gests that it was a wis­er choice than I could have known. Al­though I will cre­ate a greater, and sev­er­al less­er, ver­sions, I ex­pect that it will be the most and least fa­mil­iar to those who rise to the lev­el of the Di­a­mond Lord." Sobon paused only a mo­ment, not be­cause he wished to add grav­i­tas to the words, but to spare a mo­ment for Ki'el, and to the trou­ble he had caused her, and would cause her in the fu­ture. He made a men­tal note to let her know, the next time they talked. "The [Aether Sword]. A blade that con­tains a pu­ri­fied pow­er, which can be what it is--or which can be more, or less, or noth­ing at all. Un­yield­ing and im­mune to de­cay, at once a triv­ial item and too great for any mor­tal ar­ti­san to repli­cate. There ex­ists only one in this world at pre­sent... in the hands of my ap­pren­tice."

The sud­den in­crease in pres­sure on Sobon in re­sponse to those words ir­ri­tat­ed him, but he did catch the Prince and Princess ex­chang­ing looks, and he didn't dis­like what he thought he saw in their ex­pres­sions. Pleas­ant sur­prise, like they were hear­ing a friend be­ing men­tioned.

[ Crown and throne, orb and blade. Greater and less­er ver­sions of these four ar­ti­facts will be dis­trib­uted to the win­ners and wor­thies of twelve tour­na­ments, none to the death, with each tour­na­ment hav­ing di­vi­sions by strength, ] the Di­a­mond Lord de­creed, and Sobon un­der­stood that even with the Di­a­mond Lord hav­ing de­clared his own death, these words would be heed­ed to the let­ter. [ The low­est di­vi­sion shall be those not yet reach­ing Heav­en­ly Gem. The mid­dle di­vi­sion shall be those not yet reach­ing Mor­tal Flame. And the high­est di­vi­sion will ex­clude any­one who should hap­pen to have al­ready reached Tran­scen­dent Flame. Five years af­ter the last of these twelve tour­na­ments, [An­gel] shall reap­pear to judge those who have ob­tained the ar­ti­facts and reached at least Im­mor­tal Flame, and the wor­thi­est user of each shall re­ceive the true ver­sion of each ar­ti­fact. It will like­ly not be the most pow­er­ful per­son in pos­ses­sion of such an ar­ti­fact who will be found the wor­thi­est. ]

There was ac­tu­al­ly mur­mured dis­cus­sion at that, and Sobon took the time to re­view the men­tal list of Qi Phas­es. The tiers cho­sen for the tour­na­ment were not ar­bi­trary--each of them added a lay­er of aether. To the oth­ers, though, it prob­a­bly did seem ar­bi­trary; Heav­en­ly Gem was the fourth tier, and Mor­tal Flame the sixth. Tran­scen­dant Flame was the high­est rank that the Founder was com­fort­able re­veal­ing the ex­is­tence of, though the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, not the great­est achiev­able--but the Di­a­mond Lord was prob­a­bly also the only one who could achieve it, un­less Sobon's ar­ti­facts changed things, which... they like­ly would.

The tour­na­ment idea was... not Sobon's idea, and not the Founder's, but had come from the rem­nant mem­o­ries of the Di­a­mond Lord him­self. Nei­ther of them were par­tic­u­lar­ly com­fort­able with the idea of giv­ing out ar­ti­facts to the great­est war­riors, but there were no great users of aether who were not also dead­ly com­bat­ants, and it was worth bring­ing them all to­geth­er in "friend­ly" com­pe­ti­tion, if that would let them dis­trib­ute the ar­ti­facts fair­ly across the world.

And that was the in­tent. The win­ners of the tour­na­ment would re­ceive them, but... the Di­a­mond Lord, though per­haps the oth­ers may not have un­der­stood, had phrased it as 'win­ners and wor­thies'. And Sobon ful­ly in­tend­ed to find peo­ple wor­thy who would nev­er have a chance of win­ning the tour­na­ment.

"What about the ex­ist­ing crowns, and the ex­ist­ing sword?" A Fam­i­ly Leader asked. "Are they cheat­ing?"

The Founder looked again at Sobon, as though de­fer­ring the top­ic to him, al­though they had al­ready dis­cussed it.

"If we con­sid­ered that un­fair, then all ar­ti­facts would need to be dis­trib­uted at the same time," he said. "The tour­na­ments will not all be held at once, but will be scat­tered across the world and spaced across years. Those who are un­wor­thy to wield or bear them will not be­come more wor­thy sim­ply be­cause they are giv­en time. And while there may be some ad­van­tage in the fi­nal com­pe­ti­tions, those wor­thies who reach that lev­el will be judged know­ing how long they have pos­sessed each item."

There was more dis­cus­sion af­ter that, but for the most part, Sobon's part was fin­ished for to­day. And that was good--this body was ir­ri­tat­ing him. The en­gi­neer­ing of the ar­ti­facts, and their build­ing, would take time and ef­fort... but with all the re­sources of the Di­a­mond Lord avail­able to him, it would be em­bar­rass­ing if he couldn't do this much, even crip­pled and on a world with­out prop­er fab­ri­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties.

He just hoped that Ki'el, and Lui, and Mian and the rest would get through all this trou­ble al­right. The thought that they might not cre­at­ed an ache in his spir­it very dif­fer­ent from the ones his wounds gave him.