I was frozen in place, eyes locked on the doors as figures began to slowly exit. My grandfather was staring at them grimly, his face more severe than I’d ever seen it. “Sasha. Watch the kids.” He stalked forward, and I saw the other seven S-rankers walk out to join him. They stood in the center of the empty dance floor, waiting for the group of outsiders.

Thirty of them. Five from each door. “Mom.” I said quietly. She held up a finger, then glanced at Zeke. He reached into his coat, pulling out a glass mask, and then flicked it. The crystalline structure shattered, and the glass shards swirled around us, forming a series of runes.

“That should keep us from being noticed.” He said grimly. “I custom made it for a situation like this.” He shot me a grim smile. “Thanks for the idea Shane. Came to me after our talk. It should work even better than my normal Path masking.” He turned to my mother. “I can’t say much, but you should fill them in.”

She nodded. “They’re S-rankers.” She said to me bluntly. “All of them.”

I flinched. “Wait…what?” I was horrified. “But there are thirty of them. That would mean almost a third of the S-rankers in the universe are here.”

“No.” She cut me off. “These aren’t anyone we would recognize. They’re from…elsewhere.”

I just stared at her. “What else is there? The universe is pretty much everything, right? They can’t just conjure people out of nothing.”

She sighed heavily. “It’s too early for this. But fine. Do you know why there are only six gods? Why the six hunted down and killed the others?” Her eyes were scanning the room worriedly, and I saw the thirty figures come to a stop across from our S-rankers and begin talking.

“Not really.” I admitted. “In fact, it seems kind of shitty. What happened to Suvaya was messed up.”

She nodded solemnly. “It was. But it was also necessary. See, just like I mentioned to you, forming a Domain is a late step in cultivation. In fact, it’s properly done at the Demigod level. Once you reach five hundred Impact, you form your Domain, and using your Saga as a base you fill it with power. In order to reach the god ranks your Saga has to be a certain level of power.”

I didn't think I'd heard the term Saga before, but I assumed from context it was what came after a Chronicle. “Ok, but what does that have to do with any of this?”

She acted like she hadn’t heard me. “Once your Domain has been fully actualized, it sublimates, and you become a god. Your domain becomes a world, and you become a deity within that space. But much like a normal planet, the universe has a rank. The more worlds connected to it the higher it climbs.”

My eyes narrowed at the doors. “What happens when a god dies.” I asked, getting a very bad feeling.

“Their world disconnects from the universe, floating in the void like a soap bubble.” My mother said worriedly. “But it isn’t destroyed. I believe that Hallow was a sort of divine sacrificial ashes. They used it to connect the worlds of the six vanished gods to this universe. I suspect these aren’t the main connection points though, because they don’t seem very stable.”

I glanced at the doors and realized she was right. They were starting to warp, signs of instability and damage appearing on the glowing frames. But the damage was done, there were thirty S-rankers here.

“So this is bad, right?” I asked quickly. “Because the six wouldn’t kill other gods if they didn’t have a good reason. What’s so bad about the universe being elevated?”

She grimaced. “If the universe we live in breaks through, it will break through the void into a higher dimension. That’s where some of the gods go when they Ascend, it’s one of the choices you can make, using your world to drag yourself up into a higher realm. If it happens to the universe though, everyone goes up. In the higher realms, godhood is just the beginning. People like the six are common, and safety is much harder to find.”

“So do the vanished gods want to make that happen? Is that what the war is about?” I asked anxiously. What she was talking about might not sound bad on the face of it, but I knew enough about Ascendants that a whole universe worth of weak cultivators would be a big flashing target for some of the assholes out there. I understood why they were holding us back.

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“We don’t know.” She admitted. “Possibly? Or they might just be planning to butcher the Six and cannibalize their worlds. You can do that, use another gods world to empower your own. These worlds they’re connecting have clearly been growing and preparing during their deaths. Five S-rankers each…and that might not even be the end.”

I threw my hands up angrily. “So what? We’re fucked now? There’s nothing we can do but die?”

“Hardly.” She said with a hard smile. “They made a big mistake coming here. We invited Lark. None of the vanished gods were alive when the Vampire first came on the scene. I imagine they’re assuming his reputation is hot air. But he’s basically invincible below god rank. I don’t know how many of them he can reasonably take on at once though, being able to overpower someone is fine, but S-rankers have quite a bit of range. Plus we have backup coming.”

I glanced around. “Where are they anyway? Shouldn’t they be here already? We need help.”

“They’re trying to recruit our people under threat of death.” My mother said with a shake of her head. “The backup will be waiting for the doors to collapse. If they see more show up they might try to force through another few S-rankers. Better to let the entrances disperse.” her eyes narrowed. “Ezekial, give us sound, I need to know what’s happening, they’re getting agitated.”

Zeke snapped his fingers, and suddenly I could hear a room full of noise. Breathing, muttering, teeth grinding, all the sounds I would expect.

“You think you can just come here and demand we bow to you?” Snarled Harrison, looking as angry as I’d ever seen him. “We’re not toys for you to play with. Just because you have a few S-rankers with you doesn’t mean you’re a match for us. We have Demigods among our number.”

The man in the lead, a ghoulishly pale man with blood red eyes, hair, and armor, grinned nastily. “Do you think we would be making this offer if you didn’t? But a Demigod is still an S-ranker. We have some of our own, and you have far fewer people. You can bend the knee to our masters or you can die, trash, it makes no difference to us.”

The woman next to him, a dark eyed lady with bronze skin and pitch black hair, scowled at him. At closer inspection, I realized she didn’t have hair at all, but a waterfall of feathers falling down her back. “We were instructed to extend a courteous invitation, Roald.”

“I’m getting sick of their arrogance.” he snorted. “To imagine themselves a threat under these conditions. Just because one or two of them seems impressive by the standards of this decadent modern age. Back during the era of the gods this band of rabble would have been nothing but a guard division.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re twenty thousand, Roald. You weren’t alive during the era of the gods. You weren’t even alive during the Aetherbright Empire. You spend too much time listening to Lord Hatescream’s stories. The consensus was that we would offer them a chance.”

Sneering, he turned back to the S-ranker on our side. “Fine. I apologize for my rudeness. We offer you sanctuary and fair treatment. To reach the S-rank, your talent can’t be complete garbage. We’ll even allow you to select a few subordinates to live through this. We’ll need to slaughter most of these rabble to send a message, but you can save some of your descendants and students.”

“What!?” Snapped another familiar voice. Pret came stalking out of the crowd. “That wasn’t the deal! You promised me I’d become a core disciple of one of the gods. How am I supposed to rest easy knowing one of the S-rankers I betrayed is right down the hall?”

Roalds red eyes shifted. I’d have said they pinned Pret down, but they had no iris, nor sclera. They were just oceans of blood. It was hard to see where he was looking from his eyeballs, but easy to tell where his attention was settled by the pressure in the room. “I’m sorry.” He said, softly. “Do you think garbage like you is worthy to demand answers of us? Who was your deal with, trash?”

Pret swallowed, his face paling as he gestured to one of the thirty. “It was Master Demonvein, he said-”

Roald’s arm flashed out lazily, moving so quick I couldn’t process it properly, and the man Pret had indicated fucking EXPLODED. The crowd screamed as blood and viscera pelted the surrounding bystanders, even fifty feet or so away. “Seems like he won’t be able to make good on his deal." he said slyly.

The woman snarled in frustration. “Damn it Roald! You’re not supposed to kill anyone on the invasion force. You were warned.”

“Oops.” He said with a shrug. “I forgot. Besides, it was just Demonvein. Lady Claydria doesn’t even like him. She only tolerated him because his brother is one of her guard captains. I did her a favor.”

I noted that despite her annoyance, she wasn’t actually upset. This guy had just wasted an S-ranker with a casual blow and nobody batted an eye.

Behind the S-rankers, other forms resolved. A-rankers. I recognized the feeling of their Impact, same as Zeke and mom. Roald, the leader, seemed to get bored defending himself and started ignoring the woman, turning to the representatives. “Time is up trash, make your choice, or die.” When they didn’t answer, he grinned again. “Death it is. I’ll handle you then. Sarris, take the others and cleanse this continent. Make it messy.”

She sighed sadly. “I suppose I’ll have to. A shame. You should have accepted the offer.” Roald stepped forward slowly, approaching them as the other S-rankers menacingly turned and started to leave. He took three steps faster than I could blink, but was stopped by a fist that smashed into his chest, the arm caving in as he was sent flying across the room.

As I watched, black grass sprouted under our feet, and a blood red moon lit the sky above us. Morgan Lark, the Vampire, stared impassively at the downed form of the red armored man. “Your arrogance is as pathetic as it is amusing.” He said coldly. This would be the formal scary mode Bethy had mentioned.

Roald rose to his feet, eyes darkening as wisps of bloody smoke came off the armor on his hands. “What are you waiting for.” He roared. “I said go.”

“They can’t.” Said Lark calmly. “They’re being suppressed.” His gaze flicked to the other representatives. “I’ll keep them pinned down, but it’ll take me a bit of effort. I’ll need help cleaning up the majority. I can only take about ten of them myself when I’m keeping them penned in.”

My grandfather grinned, smashing his fists together as ivory flame blazed up around him. “I can deal with a few. Can the reinforcements get in?”

Lark snapped his fingers, and there was an explosion as the doorways shattered. Dozens of A-rankers still filing in were shredded by the shards, exploding into blood mist, but none of it touched us.

There was a flicker, and another seven S-rankers blurred into existence on our side. Roald was glaring at Morgan, lips peeled back in a snarl of pure hate. “You’re dead.” He flicked his hand out and a storm of blood colored lightning smashed into the Vampire’s steady form.

“Daddy!” Screamed Bethy, trying to run forward. My mom caught her, holding her still. The smoke cleared and Morgan stood there, unharmed and unconcerned, but as I watched he reached up and licked a couple sparks of bloody lightning from his fingers. And then it was on. And all I saw was violence.