In the deepest breath of the Poor Time Chamber, where light could not live and seconds stretched across seasons, Vanila slept.
But time, though slowed, could not be denied forever.
His body aged within the stillness. What had been a boy—soft-featured, uncertain—became something else. Muscles carved in silence. Skin flushed with dormant divinity. His black crest, once cracked, had now healed into a full seal, glowing with threads of ancient Core script. His face matured—sharper jaw, stronger shoulders, eyes still closed, but flickering with stormlight behind the lids.
He did not stir, but he dreamed.
He saw Serra, standing in firelight, eyes burning like broken stars.He saw Kael, cloaked in silence, watching the world with wounds he didn't speak of.And sometimes, he heard screams—distant, but real—echoing through the glass of his prison, like echoes from another timeline clawing at the edge of his memory.
The Descent Begins
Outside, in the waking world, Serra and Kael had changed too.
Serra now carried herself like a storm wrapped in elegance. Her body was tall, strong, lean—her curves sculpted like a blade designed to cut both enemies and admiration alike. Her Glassblood veins ran brighter now, pulsing with light beneath her dark combat garb. But it was her eyes—sharp, knowing, unflinching—that had changed most. She had become both beautiful and lethal. Fierce. Controlled. Unforgiving.
Kael had grown quiet, but not small. He was tall now, broad-shouldered, his once-playful voice turned to calm steel. His eyes rarely betrayed emotion—but his ink told stories still. His art now carried weight: blood-ink that summoned beasts, illusions, and walls of binding truths. He did not speak unless it mattered. But when he drew, the world changed.
And together—with Caldreth, who walked like the last soldier of a forgotten war—they approached the ancient catacombs beneath the Solarion observatory, following the whispers of their captive.
The Maw of the Deep
The catacombs reeked of death and poison.
Toxic spores danced in the air like powdered glass. The walls pulsed with mold that hissed when touched. The first few tunnels were littered with corpses half-eaten, armor shredded like paper.
Then came the orcs—feral and mutated from centuries of dark enchantments, skin pale from underground breeding, eyes red with soul-rot. Behind them, trolls with iron skin and bone-moss growing from their shoulders. And deeper still, worse things—beasts whose names had never touched sunlight.
Caldreth fought like a machine—blades dancing in silence.Serra's glass magic sliced, refracted, and redirected everything, carving through troll-flesh like mirrored death.Kael's ink summoned phantasms of fear—constructs made of old pain, forcing orcs to see themselves die before they were struck.
But the cost was blood.
They were clawed. Bitten. Burned. Poisoned.
By the time they reached the ancient underground laboratory, they were staggering.
The Mage Battle
In the laboratory stood Velmire, the court mage who had locked Vanila away—older now, his body half-fused with time-warping spells. He wore a robe woven from enchanted hourglasses and chains of crystallized moments. His skin glowed with Stolen Seconds, and his mouth leaked arcane decay.
"You came to break the god-boy's prison?" Velmire snarled. "You'll join him instead."
He attacked with chronobolts—time-warp magic that melted steel, slowed thought, reversed wounds. Serra was thrown across the wall. Kael collapsed, ink bleeding from his arms in whips of tortured illusion.
Caldreth stabbed him through the side—but Velmire turned the pain backward, healing himself and aging Caldreth's wound into near-death.
Serra rose last, bloodied, bones cracked, and unleashed all her stored Glassblood in a full-body burst—a prism storm of mirrored rage that pierced Velmire's chest like a thousand silent blades.
Kael, in one final surge, drew Serra's fury in ink, and forced it into Velmire's soul.
Velmire screamed—his body collapsed into sand and glass, as time finally claimed what had been borrowed.
The Chamber Breaks
They limped to the back of the lab.
There it stood.
A sealed time chamber, rotating slowly between fractured reality—its surface wrapped in glowing sigils, a heartbeat audible within.
Serra placed her palm on the glass.Kael reached into his ink, drew the symbol of Vanila's soul.
The chamber began to crack.
Caldreth, barely breathing, slammed the stolen timekey into the control socket.
"Wake him," he coughed. "The world needs him now."
The chamber exploded in a pulse of cosmic force—a shockwave that stopped time for one heartbeat.
When the light faded, the air fell still.
And there he stood.
Vanila, naked, steam rising from his skin, black crest burning bright across his chest.
His body was lean, strong—grown, divine threads of Core energy softly orbiting beneath his skin like veins of starlight. His hair drifted upward, as if remembering space.
His eyes opened slowly.
They were no longer just stars.
They were cosmic command.
And he spoke, voice low but eternal:
"...You found me."