Damien appeared inside a cavern, Keilan and Gray fortunately included. The place wasn't like any cave he was used to. It had the telltale signs of something that had been artificially made, judging from the smooth, unpockmarked walls and the soft glow coming from the walls even though nothing seemed to be generating it. The uncountable number of runes inscribed on the dome like room made true to his assumption.

"This place must be like a thousand feet wide and twice that in height..."blindinglyistled.

[Yup...] Gray answered absentmindedly.

"Where are we?"

[Hold on,] Gray said, again, absentmindedly.

"Gray?" Damien called.

[Celestial's ball! ] Gray immediately swore, and Damien turned at the emotion laced with it. Gray was truly angry.

"What?" Damien asked. "Isn't this our destination?"

[No.] Gray huffed. [It is not.]

Damien silently swore. It seemis luck was turning back nowadays. "Then where are we?"

[I'm still trying to figure that out.]

"Uhhh, Dame?" Damien turned toward Keilan.

"What's the matter?"

Instead of answering, Keilan simply pointed towards the center of the cave, where something... Some sort of visible wind element, swirled calmly in a stationary position.

Damien frownedat leastfusion. He should have noticed it the moment they arrived.

"What's that?"

"I don't know," Keilan whispered. "But whatever it is, its beautiful."

Damien stared at Keilan for a few seconds before the other man took notice. "What?"

Damien narrowed his eyes. "Are you alright, Kei?"

"Yes, I'm fine" Keilan nodded, and then paused. "You can't hear it, can you?"

"No, Kei. I don't hear anything."

"Maybe because of your distance..." He trailed off, a longing look on his face. "Come, join me, let's move closer."

"Uhhh," Damien said slowly. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, Kei."

"Come on," the blood haired man pleaded. "I'm sure it won't bite. Look at its. Can something as beautiful as this be harmful?"

Damien stared at his brother. "Are you sure you're alright, Kei?"

Keilan ignored the question. "Look, if you won't come, I'll just go alone. And then you'll be too late to help me should something bad happen."

"I thought you said the thing was harmless?" Damien raised his eyes at Keilan, but the person in question didn't reply, already moving.

Damien grumbled but followed, All the while murmuring at how stupid it'd be if they ended up dying to some sort of abnormal wind elemental after all they'd just recently survived.

The thing in question didn't look like anything special, other than its visible characteristics and how it seemed to swirl mesmerizingly in a pattern Damien wasn't sure he could ever predict, while still being stationary. Other than that, it didn't emit anything Damien could feel. No aura. No deep instinctive feeling. It didn't even affect the wind Damien could feel in the room. It was simply just... There.

"Can you hear it?" Keilan whispered.

A dry answer. "No."

"Maybe you aren't close enough... Move closer."

Damien did. "I still can't hear anything, Kei."

"Are you sure?"

"I am certain, Kei. However, I could ask you the same question. Are you sure you're okay? Maybe your injury had some adverse effects on your... Senses?" But Keilan ignored him.

"Maybe you should touch it, Dame." He suggested.

"I'm not touching that thing."

"Why?" His brother looked at him with confusion.

"Why? What sort of question is that? Keilan, I don't know what exactly this thing is, and neither do you. I shouldn't need to tell you not to touch things you don't know." He looked at Keilan, hoping he'd finally gotten through, but the response was still the same. Keilan ignored his words entirely.

"This thing is harmless. See." And he plunged his right hand into the swirling thing just as Gray screamed.

[STOP!]

Instantly, they both fonze. Damien with his hands stretched towards Keilan, while the other with his hand into the swirling thing.

"See?" Keilan smiled when after a few seconds nothing happened. "I said it was harmless."

The thing melted into his arms.

Everyone stared with horror as they waited for something to happen, some screaming and maybe clawing, but when after a few seconds nothing seemed to happen, Keilan gave a big, relieved smile.

"Like I said, harmless." And then his eyes rolled into his head, and he collapsed.

"KEILAN!" Damien rushed towards him, catching him just before he hit the ground. "Please, save him." He said to Gray.

[He'll be fine.] Gray said with certainty, staring at Keilan with a very intrigued expression. [He'll wake soon enough.]

"How do you know?"

Just then, Keilan took a deep, shuddering breath, jolting upwards from Damien's arms. His green eyes glowed blondingly for a moment before it settled, and when it did, its color took on a deeper hue. True emerald.

[How're you feeling?] Gray alighted on his shoulder.

Keilan looked confused for a moment before his mouth widened into a big smile. "Fine. I'm very, very fine. Magnificent, even."

"Are you sure," Damien asked with skepticism. "I mean, you just fainted."

Keilan pushed of off him and stood up. The smile was still on his face as he raised it to the dome's high ceiling. "I feel like I could fly." And that sentence, the way he said it, scared Damien.

He was just about to argue against it, warning Keilan about his injury when Gray interrupted.

[Stop worrying about him, Damien,] Gray said. [He's as fine as he could be, atleast for now.]

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"What?" Both Keilan and Damien looked at Gray.

[Do you know what you just took in?] Gray expression twisted in a way Damien found hard to discern. [You just took in a fragment.]

"A what?"

[A fragment.] Gray repeated, and when he saw their confused look, he sighed. [I can't even blame you for your ignorance. After all, you shouldn't even be aware of this, talk less of getting anywhere near it.

[The thing you just took in is, for all intent and purposes, is the key to becoming a Celestial Aspect.]

Damien snorted, and from the corner of his eyes, he saw Keilan give an indulging smile. That was absurd.

Gray saw their look. [Laugh all you want, until you start getting hunted for that thing in your soul.]

That quickly sobered them up. "Gray, are you sure?" Keilan said. "I didn't feel anything... Celestial coming from it."

[And what would you expect a Celestial to feel like?]

Keilan shrugged. "Well... Celestial, right? Isn't that a definition on its own?"

"You said Keilan was going to be hunted," Damien interrupted.

Gray sighed. [Keilan, you just took in a fragment... A fragment that was placed in a,] he waved around at the layers and layers of uncountable runes filling the entire cavern from top to bottom — except the ground. [Vault. As you can now see. That tells us that this thing belongs to somebody, and that someone is going to want their prize back.]

Damien froze, and so did Keilan. He looked around at the cavern again, finding no entrance whatsoever on the walls. It was like the only way to enter was through portation. But if that were true, then...

[Yes, the only way to enter is through teleportation,] Gray answered when he asked. [And no, you can't do the same. You see these runes on the ceiling? About twenty percent of them are locks keyed in to specific people, and only those people can enter or leave this vault.]

Damien had never studied runescripts nor did he know jack shit about it. He'd known few people who dabbled in the art, and fewer still who were experts. From what he'd heard, the stuff was ridiculously hard to learn. Though he'd learned that, however much runes were rigid, they could still be tweaked, adjusted to fit a different purpose than was originally intended. He suggested the same to Gray.

[Yes, I could certainly adjust some of them to key you both in,] Gray nodded. [But not before whoever they're connected to is made, aware.]

Damien's first thought was to suggest Gray do it. He and Keilan could hbegun whoever came. But that thought quickly died out the moment he remembered he wasn't back in his home planet anymore. He couldn't expect the same rules that

"How do we get out then? We just blast through the walls?" He stared at the wa calculating how much force he should put in to completely break through it.

[Don't even try it,] Gray warned. [Those walls are so powerful I doubt even your image-enforced strength would be capable of making a single impression. And if I didn't count that, there's the remaining seventy percent runes that are meant for security. One step close to those walls and you'd be dead before you can blink.]

Damien froze.

Gray tiny hands pointed at the rune layers around the sides of the huge upside-down bowl.

[Those runes running around the walls... They're imbued with so much technique that you could trigger one and find yourself ninety-nine percent younger. Or you could trigger another and find yourself in another room, stuck there till your thousand years of remaining life are wasted. Another rune there will see you dead so fast that the only thing you'd feel is a fraction of a second of heat. And then there's th—"

"Okay! Okay, we get it!" Keilan raised his hands. "Though if there's no way out, how did we get in?"

[That's what I'm still figuring about. Merak's portal was supposed to drop us in one of the Lese outer territories. Something must have happened to divert our transfer to this place.]

Damien didn't know how, but he was suThey're could hear the sounds of laughter. He looked at the others, seeing their ignorance, and then he kept his mouth shut.

"Wait, can that happen?" Keilan looked up from where he was examining one of thos runes.

[Oh, definitely. But that can only be accomplished by a few beings, and I'm prettyin fronthat kind of thing is very bad.]

"Why?" Damien asked.

Gray stopped from the dozen things he was probably doing that they weren't aware of, and then he snapped his fingers, manifesting a dark wall of absolute black in mid-air. Damien compared the color to that of Merak's hair... a color beyond black. And running and twisting along the black wall in a pattern Damien didn't understand were lines of purple... and they were many... Like thousands and millions many. Oh, and they softly glowed.

[This is, for easier understanding, the dimension of space—obviously, it's a far lesser version of what it truly is—which falls under the sole dominion of the Throne of Space, Space, or as it is commonly known, The Gatekeeper. This black wall is space as we know it. An endless, evertiny grayafigurehomable dimension that still fills even the most powerful Ascendant with awe whenever they cross through it.

[Running along this dimension, in a deeper layer invisible to all but a few, are what are called, gateways. Those gateways are what people use when they teleport or portal out. They're not the same gateways you know, just so you don't misunderstand. And at any given moment, there are an unimaginable —even for me— amount of beings passing through them... Unimaginable.

[To be able to find someone in those gateways, even though you've managed to identify which areas of space theleadtraveling past, is all but impossible. It would require a mind capable of scanning through entire galaxies... And those are the kinds of beings you don't want finding you.]

Keilan frowned. "Are they the people searching for Damien?"

[No,] Gray snorted. [They're the people who'll use him as a means to curry favor towards those who are.]

At this, Damien slowly sat on the ground. He wasn't afraid of dust since there seemed not to be any. Not that he should be surprised. To say he was overwhelmed was an understatement, Damien was contemplating if it'd be easier to simply give up and just walk through those runes on the walls. Look at him, he could barely handle a few Spirit lords and a King in a dumbblond-haired he called an avatar. He couldn't handle beings like that. All the time Gray had been warning of his inherited enemyour, Damien had been imagining beings like Spirit Kings or Ascendants. A Sot Ambitious? Yeah he knew. But when no clue was found on the earth after years of searching, he'd began looking to the skies. After all, anybody that could threaten Ra—The World Spirit — not to kill him or blast an inanimate Gray into the sky was someone extremely powerful, right? But his mind struggled to conceptualize Thengs who could who scan entire galaxies with their minds. Damien didn't know how large a galaxy was, but he imagined it must be extremely large, right? Heck, he couldn't even scan the entirety of Camlen, talk less of an entire Galaxy. Damien gave up and stood. He couldn't do anything if those people found him, no matter how much planning was done. All he could hope for was that he was never found. Other than that, he was simply going to live his life.

"Let's get back on topic. How do we get out of here?"

[We can't. I mean, it's not impossible, but the only way to get out of this vault is to simply shatter through those runes from a distance.]

"Why didn't you suggest it earlier?"

Gray sighed. [Because it's the same as tweaking those runes: We'd be loudly announcing ourselves, and worse, it wouldn't be one person that'll come. You do not want to draw the attention of the person who owns this vault.]

Might as well get it over with. "Who's it?"

Absently, Gray answered. [A Divine King.]

Uhhh, Damien scratched the back of his head. "I know what a Spirit King is, Gray. What's a Divine King?"

Gray signed. [This is the reason why we didn't want you wallowing in that backwater you call a planet. A Divine King is a Spirit King on the verge of Ascendency. Their on their last Domain tier before becoming Ascendants.]

Damien jumped. "Great! They're still Spirit Kings, so the World Spirit of this planet will fight them if they try to get in. Let's go." He said, and then began heading towards the walls, his mind contemplating how to shatter the walls Infront of him without collapsing the entire thing.

[Damien,] Gray called. [The World Spirit's dead.]

Damien stopped.

"What?" He said as he turned around, Keilan also looking to Gray with wide, confused eyes.

[The World Spirit of this planet is dead.]

"Is that even possible?"

[Ha! World Spirits can be killed, Damien. They're just really, really had to take down. It all comes down to precision.]

"How's the planet still standing, then?" Damien asked. Now that he really paid attention, he noticed how off the atmosphere was. Everything just seemed so... Monochrome.

[Like I said: Precision.]

"Gray, if we can't break through the walls to get out of this place, how do we escape?" Keilan interjected, his hands raised to stop Damien from spewing out another question.

The gray tiny figuring smirked.

[We're not going out, we're going in.]

Damien looked around at the bare round cavern. "Where?"

In answer, a ripple spread out from Gray, so subtle Damien only saw but couldn't feel the effects. And from the middle, where the fragment once hung, a single crack formed in space, tearing its way down in one smooth line until it was almost seven feet long.

Out of nowhere, a gong sounded, making Damien cringed at the horrible sound.

[Behold!] Gray wriggled his hands in a dramatic gesture. [My solution!]

Nobody was amused.

"Your solution?" Keilan eyed the line. "Where does it leads?"

Damien didn't need to ask what Keilan meant, he could already feel the spatial energy spewing out from it.

At Keilan's question, Gray's features immediately went from smug to chagrin.

[Ahhh, I don't know,] he said. [I didn't check.]

"Why am I not surprised," Damien palmed his face. "We have no choice though. Might as well take the risk and see where it leads."

Keilan answered with a shrug.

Damien wasn't going to be stupid about it though. Risky it might be, but he wasn't going in unarmed. He stretched out his hands, "I'm definitely not dying without you in my hands," He said, to the grumbling of Gray, who disappeared to wrap around him as a coat and in his hands as a weapon.

For Keilan, the blond haired man mimicked Damien, stretching out his hands and then frowning when nothing appeared.

"Keilan, you can't summon your weapon," Damien reminded him, to which the other man simply sighed, "so much for the great and mighty Stormshredder."

"Don't worry, Merak said it's not permanent." Damien consoled.

Together, they approached the spatial tear. Damien studied the thing, finding nothing of note. With a deep breath, he punched the line, his hand disappearing up to his elbow, and like a curtain, Damien parted the line, dividing it until a hole was formed.

Still getting nothing, they jumped inside, Gray cackling all the way.