Published at 21st of September 2026 8:43 am

Chapter 327 Visions I

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Mirian brought herself to a halt just above the leyline device. Her spellbooks pages flipped rapidly. Quickly, she sent out pulses of divination spells, first checking for any more bombs below the device, then checking the flows of arcane energy. The eastern portion of the device was still functioning, the redundant systems having taken up an increased load. If only a single one of the tower-sized main conduit crystals had shattered, she would just be able to let the device continue its work. But two was too many. Divir was accelerating.

Her auric mana was low from the journey and the fight, but she had one last contingencya vast aura to draw on that had been accumulating mana nonstop, drawing it even from the leylines through the Gate, ever since her defense of Uxalak.

Ceiba Yan! she sent. Buried beneath the center of the leyline regulator was her last contingency. Like her fathers ring and its connection to Meu, it used the special Elder substance from the Labyrinth to lengthen the distance of an enchantment.

Like a gathering storm, she felt Ceiba Yan respond, the ancient trees soul moving through the device to link with hers. As she had against the Akanan fleet, Mirian forged a spirit-construct with the Sacred Tree, then let her mind guide his overwhelming power.

Auric mana swirled through the device like a hurricane as she fought to bring the western leylines back into a controlled pattern. She needed to contain their power to stabilize Divirand she needed Divir to slow its fall.

The leylines beneath Tlaxhuaco had been relatively calm. The ones below her raged, full of so much energy they couldnt help but try to break free. Ceiba Yans roots were in contact with the Gate network and the Labyrinth, and through him, she knew the Labyrinth below was twisting and distortinginsufficiently. Pieces of it were rupturing. The leylines were breaking free.

All our power, she told the Sacred Tree. Stop the flood. Let there be a tomorrow!

This, the ancient tree could understand. It knew that soothing rains were fine, but too much water drowned the roots and killed the saplings. It knew the feel of good soil, and of poison. It knew when the heat was too much for the leaves, and when the chill would freeze trunks to bursting. In all things, there needed to be balance, and so it brought its power to bear.

This was unlike most of her spells. There were few glyphs neededonly the ones that would control arcane force. She pushed both her and Ceiba Yans mana through those, using her leyline repulsors to try and tame the leylines into some semblance of order. They slipped from her graspit was too much power.

More! she called to Ceiba Yan, and the great tree answered, feeding her all that he could. His aura spun out from the central device. Still, there was too much power flowing from the west. Even with the Gates spreading it out and redirecting it, the flood of arcane energy moving from Akana Praediar to the east all was directed through this area. Briefly, she considered if she could mend the giant conduit crystals, but they were too badly shattered, and gouts of arcane energy pouring through the area would impede her ability to regrow the crystal. There simply wasnt time.

For the first time in a long, long time, Mirian felt fear.

If she couldnt stabilize the leylines, she needed to focus on slowing the fall of Divir. It was coming down faster and faster, purple and orange flames spreading out from the jagged bottom. The intact part of the regulator was preventing it from reaching free-fall, but the impact if it was allowed to continue accelerating would still kill them all.

The spell she needed was simple, and she poured all of her power into the simple glyphs for it: lift object. Together with Ceiba Yan, she siphoned all the arcane energy she could skyward. Torrents of arcane force ran through her, and the automated energy transmutation systems of Equinox were overwhelmed. Excess energy streamed out of the vents on her armor in both directions as she grit her teeth and wrestled with the overwhelming intensity of the flows. She could feel the floods of energy scouring cuts into her soul, and even her Burning Tempest soulform wasnt giving her enough power to fully contain it.

Her every fiber trembled as she held a hand towards Divir, and her spell pushed up against the falling moon, the falling Mausoleumthe living corpse of Divitrius, the Ominian. With the entropic field fully stabilized, it didnt eat into her spell. Instead, something new touched the edge of the spirit construct. An overwhelming presence brushed her mind

***

The Ominian hovered in the void, gazing at the wall of starfire approaching Enteria. They glanced back at the planet. This place, they thought again. Their cradle of civilization. Their place of ascension. Their home; their gift to another in the hope that they might also join them in the stars.

For a century, Mirian had seen flashes of their memories and moments in the dreams. Had heard whispers of the Ominians mind in the halls of the Mausoleum. Only the gradual experiences she had built over all that time prevented her mind from being overwhelmed and shattered. Only the knowledge she had built from connecting and interpreting the thoughts and ideas of so many other minds let her interpret what she was seeing with some semblance of understanding.

Mirians presence was as an ant riding on a shoulderand she was not alone. Even here, in the void, the Ominian was connected to Enteria. Pieces of them touched the surface all over: touched the life, the oceans, the mountains, the skyeven now, they wandered the fields. Even now, they strode through great forests. Even now, their gaze fell across distant places, and a feeling of contentment spread through them, not just there, but everywhere they were, and everywhen they were.

Then they turned their attention back to the growing wall of fire, brightening in the void.

This was the moment Celen had felt connected to: the moment of despair. The knowledge that the future was doomed. It was the moment where one looked around and saw no hope, only that which would be lost.

And there was so much that would be lost. Enteria stood at the brink, and Mirian knew with absolute certainty that this was the Ominian standing before the Cataclysm. Not the moment they had protected Enteria. The moment they were now protecting Enteria. She felt the resolve building.

Divitrius might fail. Doom seemed inevitable, across a thousand futures, but they would fight. What good was all their power for if they couldnt protect Enteria?

The wall of fire rushed forward, and now, having traveled the void, Mirian realized just how fast it was moving. Faster than the chunks of Luamin shed hurled at the dreadnoughts. Faster than her maximum speed in the journey across the void. The wall of fire was impossible, but now she understood where it came from: a great star somewhere had been destroyed in the Gods War, and in its death, it burned. The stars were winking out in the void above because that was the scale with which the ascended fought.

Below, red light flickered in points across the surface of Enteria. The Elder Gates, letting out torrents of fireand yet, even as they melted entire cities, they were nothing compared to the inferno that was about to hit them.

The Ominian brought every part of themself to bearfrom every place and every time, they rushed into the void above Enteria. The humanoid figure that seemed so comprehensible was naught but a mask worn by something far greater. It was as if Mirian had painted the shape of an insect head onto her smallest finger so that when she presented it to an ant hive, they understood what they saw better. Now, Divitriuss full form was revealed.

As the Ominian opened their arms wide, great wings of flesh spread across the space. Endless rows of feather and swirling whorls that looked like eyes streamed in. Mountains and mountains of stone-like flesh spread across the void above Enteria in a protective shell, and Mirians mind swam. She was more than just a witnessshe was bound in the spirit-construct with the Ominian. Even as their mausoleum fell to Enteria and her consciousness was there, casting to stabilize Divir, she was also here, soul touching the Elder God, feeling as they came together from across time and space into one moment. Layers of wings the size of continents unfurled. Soul energy and mana gathered before them, mixing in impossible currents. The Ominians form coalesced not just in three dimensions, but in fourand for a momentjust a momentMirian perceived the world differently.

She saw how the twisted mazes of flesh formed a beautiful symmetry, saw why the tens of thousands of eyes were needed, and what they saw. There were other worlds, thousands of them, millions of them, spread across the void. The Ominian had walked them too, but now, they withdrew, and from all of them, one mass formed: one half-shell around the planet.

Then the twisted perception was gone, and she felt an emptiness. Shed touched something beyond her comprehension, then it had gone. The way arcane and celestial forces mixed, the way they way the Ominian shaped them with ease. But she needed it. For decades, her magic power had plateaued. What she had felt when she touched the great doors of Luamin was only the first step on a greater path, and for a moment, she had seen the faintest hint of where that path led. The wall she pushed again was not her limit, but another step to that she could overcome.

The Ominians light grew as they assembled. Below on Enteria, the entire sky would have turned black. Closer and closer, the wall of starfire rushed, and the Ominian built barriers of force and resistance unlike anything shed ever seen, twisting the arcane forces with such grace that she needed to weep, assembling spells with such beauty that it made her heart elate. If glyphs and runes were a language, then Divitrius was singing it out as a vast choir, not simply casting magic, but creating art.

Then the wall of fire hit.

Through the construct, Mirian felt the Ominians pain. The wall of fire was more than just a thin shellit was an endless ocean, except no thing she had ever seen or felt could come close to describing its size or power. It was more than just a conflagrationsoul energy and mana were woven into it, and as they slammed into the Ominian, their magic cracked, and their flesh burned. From every angle across all four dimensions, the fire crept into them. Chunks of them the size of mountain ranges were blackened and sheared away. Burn marks the size of Luamin scoured their surfaceand yet still they fought. Their flesh screamed at them to move, to yield, to run so that they might survive, but they ignored that instinct and pushed more of themselves before the flames. They gathered their vast seas of mana, moving it all into a screen that might resist the death the wall of fire promised their world.

As they burned, they searched for the future path that would save Enteria.

And realized, alone, they could not.

Their desperation mirrored Mirians as, in a different time and place, she fought to slow Divirs descent. All the power she had was not enough.

The Ominian sent out spiraling pieces of themself into the fields of time, desperately searching for a path forward. The searing fire was separating their soul from their body, so as they searched, they drew from the emergency reactor on Luamin, that ancient, primitive relic, calling forth the needles there to anchor flesh and soul together. Fifty needles rushed into their body, holding them together for just a few more seconds so that they might find the future where Enteria lived. At first, they saw one. A path, twisted across the fields of time, but achieved simply enough.

Then they looked further, and saw they were only delaying Enterias death.

The humans below would live, but their civilization of abundance was devastated. The Ominian didnt understand the why of it, only that the destruction brought fighting and instability. Ant hills rising and falling. To them it had no fathomable reason to itbut Mirian could interpret pieces of it. Scarcity and death came to haunt humanity, and in a world of myrvite predators stalking their every step, people were forced into fortified enclaves, where generations worked themselves to the bone to support warrior and mage castes that might protect them.

Those same castes looked to expand their domains, their securityand their wealth. Amidst the ruins of the old cities, magelords rode into battle atop great eximontar. They scavenged the ruins for what pieces they could find, and turned them to battle. There were those who tried to preserve the Viaterrian society. Old knowledge, passed down generator after generation. Old laws and customs, practiced long after the reason why was lost. Pieces of it survived: a word here, a concept there, a bit of wisdom, a fragment of understanding.

Some bastions lasted longer than others. The grand city of Torrviol, long before it was called that, stood tall for centuries. Its Gate had been shut down before the Cataclysm. But little by little, the traditions and culture eroded. Mirian could only see glimpses of it. It fell into ruin slowly, so slowly entire generations came and went, not realizing that a century before the city had stood a little taller, not knowing what wisdom had been lost, until one day, all that remained was Torrian Tower amidst the ruins of a buried city.

As war traveled across the continents of Enteria, more and more was lost. War demanded destruction, and destruction consumed the remnants of Viaterria until the old civilization was little more than a myth. Eventually, inevitably, a discovery was made: fossilized myrvite could be exhumed, and leveraged. There was a simple process of selection: the armies that used it were more successful. The armies that didnt, fell. The more they could use, the more they could build up grand forces. It appeared in every timeline.

Eventually, the leylines wrath came. It was nothing like Divirs fall. Instead, it was a slow collapse. Little by little, the leylines lashed out, destroying part of a city here, part of a countryside there. Then the Labyrinth could take no more; it broke apart, and with it, the mana-cycle of the planet was irrevocably broken. More than humanity died out; she felt the Ominians pain as great titans resembling Apophagorga starved and withered in strange lands. The Elder Gods might have fixed itbut they were busy fighting their own war. Mirian didnt understand it, but it was much like the Ominian needing to concentrate themselves in one moment. When they did that, the Gods gave up access to certain places and times, and thus, in order to save Enteria, they abandoned Enteria.

And while they fought, humanity brought itself to ruin.

The Ominian continued to burn, keeping the starfire that would spell Enterias doom at bay. They had no power to spareall of it was being put to this one task of keeping their world from being turned to black glass.

Humanity needed to save itself.

The possibility had to exist. They were complicated creatures, but they fell into patterns. They were primitive, but capable. They just needed to see. If they could only peer into the future, surely they could save themselvesso the Ominian searched for those paths, the paths where humanity was given limited gifts of chronomancy. Their thousands of minds whirred as they sought to calculate, predict, and divine a path forward.

If there could be prophets that could glimpse these futures, perhaps they could deliver salvation.

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