The night over Dallis was unnaturally quiet. The moon hung low, rippling faintly as if reflected on water—though no clouds passed. The village, once a sanctuary, now slept in a tense hush. Something in the air hummed.
Something… tore.
A crackling noise split the wind near the outer fields, where ancient ley-lines slept beneath grass and dust. The world groaned as reality folded, and from a shimmer of distorted air stepped a boy—half-staggering, half-falling.
His coat was smoking.His boots were glowing with residual arc-light.And his portal caster—a sleek, rune-threaded device strapped to his left wrist—hung in ruin, sparking like it had just devoured a star.
He hit the ground hard.
"Dammit," he groaned, brushing ash-grey hair out of his prismarine eyes. "That jump was not calibrated…"
He stood—wobbling, panting—his fingers immediately going to the leather satchel slung across his back. The runes on it flickered weakly. He tapped them. Nothing.
"Satchel's gone silent. Great. Welcome to wherever-the-hell this is."
Then he turned—and froze.
A statue stood at the edge of the village, carved from celestial stone. Eyes closed, arms outstretched. Familiar. Too familiar. His own spiral birthmark pulsed on the back of his neck in response.
"No," he whispered. "That can't be coincidence. Not again."
Vanila Appears
He wasn't alone for long.
Within minutes, a presence approached. He felt it before he saw it—gravity folded inward, like the world held its breath.
Then he heard the voice.
"You tore through a sealed dimensional seam," said a calm, strong tone. "Either you're very lost... or very dangerous."
Firsk looked up.
There stood Vanila, cloaked in black, crest glowing faintly beneath his chest, eyes like twin galaxies in focus. He was slightly taller, sharper in the jaw, power radiating from every breath.
Firsk blinked.
"You're him," he said quietly. "You're the one the stories don't do justice."
Vanila stepped forward, gaze scanning Firsk's broken caster, his pulse, the unstable ripple around his arrival.
"Portal caster's damaged beyond recalibration," Vanila muttered. "But the alloy... Aetherium. You crossed realms that aren't even mapped anymore."
"Yeah," Firsk said, slumping to one knee. "And it landed me here. Right before the damn thing burned through my anchor sigils. I'm grounded."
"Good," Vanila said.
Firsk blinked, confused. "...Good?"
Vanila extended a hand. "Because if you landed here, then the Veil wants you here. And I can help you."
The Crest Responds
The moment Vanila touched Firsk's wrist, the black crest flared, and Firsk's spiral birthmark shimmered with matching light.
Their skin glowed with a pulse not of magic—but of recognition.
The cracked portal caster briefly lit back to life, its interface blinking symbols long dead to most scholars.
"That resonance," Firsk whispered. "That's not just Core magic. That's... tether-logic. Dimensional law."
Vanila narrowed his eyes. "You're not from this world, are you?"
"Not sure if I'm from any world. I was born during a portal storm. My birthmark matches a gate sigil found in a collapsed reality. And now it's humming next to you." Firsk looked up, suddenly serious. "I don't think this is an accident. I think I'm tied to your Cores."
Vanila stared, silent. Then gave a small, tired smile.
"Welcome to Dallis, Firsk Virelin. You're not the first mystery that fell out of the sky here."
At the Village
That night, Firsk stayed in the old stone guesthouse. Kael inspected his satchel, murmuring in trade-tongue. Serra eyed him warily, noting the faint shimmer in his irises. Caldreth said nothing—but sharpened his sword by the door.
Firsk ate, slept, and dreamed of a silver gate with twelve locks—and only one key.
When he woke, Vanila was already waiting at the forge with tools and runes, ready to help rebuild the caster.
"We've got gods watching. Elves whispering. And you just walked through the wrong hole in space," Vanila said. "Let's fix your caster. Before something else comes through after you."
Firsk smirked. "Not the worst welcome I've had."
It started as a joke.
Firsk and Vanila were in the village square, near the old fountain where traveling merchants now gathered. Kael sat on the wall, watching quietly. Serra leaned against a post, amused as the two compared magical artifacts, each one more absurd or dangerous than the last.
"This one?" Firsk grinned, holding up a tiny marble wrapped in silver runes. "Cursed god-core fragment from a shattered lunar realm. Don't ask how I got it."
"Please don't activate it," Kael murmured.
"No promises."
Vanila smirked and unhooked a leather-bound charm from his wrist—an obsidian cube etched with divine circuit lines.
"Found this in the Solarion Vault. Took three chosen to drag it out of its stasis ward."
The two leaned closer, comparing resonance.
"What happens if they—" Firsk began.
Click.
"—touch…"
The sky ruptured.
A shriek pierced the wind, not from above, but from inside the folded world behind the Veil. Space distorted above the fountain, and a tear opened—a vertical gash dripping with nebulae and black flame.
From it stepped a figure cloaked in starlight and shadow, its form indistinct, its face a blur of galaxies. It didn't walk—it flowed, like thought turned into shape.
A Galactical Demon. One of the Echoed—creatures born in the dead spaces between universes.
"I—am—unbound," it whispered. "And I—am—hungry."
Firsk raised his hands immediately. "Wait—I'm warded."
He was. A light spell woven into his satchel activated at once, forming a shimmering dome around him.
The demon hissed, recoiling.
Then it turned—and struck Vanila.
Possession
The demon didn't consume Vanila.It wore him.
It didn't extinguish the Cores inside him—just twisted them, like heat warping glass.
His body lit up.
Hair turned white-gold, sparking like lightning bolts that snapped and danced across his shoulders.
His eyes widened, pupils gone, now twin spheres of stormlight and chaos.
His voice deepened, doubled—his laugh erratic.
And then… he ran.
Faster than light. Faster than thought.
The Rampage
For three days, Dallis was chaos.
Walls were shattered by raw speed.
The river boiled as he dashed through it, leaving glowing footprints in the stone.
He leapt over buildings, startled livestock into stampeding, painted the town square with runes in seconds that no one could decipher.
He hugged villagers at speeds that dislocated their arms and threw off entire conversations.
He wasn't malicious—but uncontrolled, high-energy, volatile, and seductively manic.
The Fight
The four tried everything.
Kael laid trap runes to slow him—Vanila danced through them.
Caldreth tried divine blade counters—Vanila disarmed him with a grin.
Serra tried direct combat—mirrored herself ten times—Vanila appeared in all reflections, laughing through them like lightning.
They fought.Over and over.But Vanila never tired.Until he did.
The Breaking Point
On the fourth night, his energy dipped.Only slightly—but enough.
They cornered him at the statue.
Serra stepped forward—exhausted, chest heaving, arm bleeding from a ricocheted arc of his stray energy. Her voice broke:
"Vanila—if you're still in there, you need to stop. You need to feel again. Not just burn."
The demon, wearing Vanila's skin, tilted its head.
Then—it smiled.
Not cruelly.Not violently.Seductively.
The Last Temptation
Serra should have run.
But the demon whispered in Vanila's voice—all breath and hunger.
"Let me show you what the divine truly feels like."
In that moment, Serra stepped too close. Whether drawn by curiosity, exhaustion, or a whisper of something else—she didn't step back.
What followed wasn't kind. Or soft. It was storm and fire.
Inside the secluded ruins of the old guild hall, he took her—not like Vanila did, but like the energy inside him needed release, physical and chaotic. The floor cracked beneath them. Magic surged with every gasp. Serra held on, overwhelmed by power, unable to distinguish love from divine madness.
Vanila, buried deep inside, barely conscious—felt it.
He screamed.
Not out loud.
But within.
"Stop. Please… Stop."
And then—his body collapsed.
Freedom
At sunrise, Vanila lay naked, unconscious, draped across broken tiles.
His crest flickered weakly.
The demon—gone.
It had used what it wanted. And left.
Serra knelt beside him, shaking, bruised, sobbing softly into her bloodied palms.
Vanila awoke to silence.Not peace. Not warmth.Just silence—too complete, too wrong.
He sat up, breath ragged.The wind didn't whisper.The air didn't hum.Even his Cores—once pulsing inside him like a symphony of divine breath—were mute.
And his body… hurt.
A dull soreness in his limbs, scorched tendons, aching muscle—like he'd run through the bones of the world and back.Then he noticed the smell: ozone and smoke.
He looked around.
He was still in the ruins of the old guild hall, the floor fractured beneath him in lightning-shaped scars. Ash drifted lazily from broken rafters. Charred runes flickered weakly on the walls, residual demonfire soaked into stone.
His skin was bare. His clothes gone. A blanket—thick, woolen, and familiar—covered his lower half.
He looked down at his hands.
They were clean, but trembling.
"What… did I do?"
The Group's Reaction
He didn't need to wonder for long.
The door creaked.
Kael stood there first.No weapon. No glyphs. Just him, arms folded, eyes unreadable.
"You're awake."
Vanila didn't answer.
Caldreth entered behind him, face older than usual, bandages visible on one shoulder. He didn't speak at first.
Then, finally:
"The demon's gone. You're still here. That's what matters."
Vanila's gaze dropped.
"Is it? I remember… flashes. Electricity. Laughter. Serra—" His voice cracked. "I wasn't in control. But I felt it all. I—I couldn't stop it."
Kael walked forward, slow, deliberate.He knelt beside Vanila and pulled the blanket tighter around him.
"We know. You fought it. Every second."
"But I still—"
"You didn't invite it," Kael interrupted, quietly. "You endured it."
Vanila looked up, tears brimming.Kael just rested a hand on his shoulder.
"We're not afraid of you."
Serra didn't come.Not yet.
What the Demon Left Behind
Though the possession had ended, the demon's residue had not.
The town of Dallis had changed.
Mages wandering the streets began reporting strange pulses beneath the earth—arcane rhythms that didn't match any leyline known. The statue at the gate now wept silver tears on moonless nights. Children saw shadows where there were none, and reflected versions of themselves that didn't move.
Kael traced the runes carved across the square—still smoldering weeks later. He brought the sketches to Firsk.
Firsk paled.
"These aren't just scorches. These are coordinates."
"To where?" Caldreth asked.
Firsk looked out at the horizon, lips dry.
"To the next demon. To where it escaped."
Vanila's possession wasn't the end.
It was an opening.
Serra's Silence
Vanila stood alone outside her forge later that evening, wrapped in a clean shirt and cloak.
He hadn't spoken to her since the night he fell.
She stepped out slowly, her face unreadable.
"Serra, I—"
"Stop."
She walked to him. Her movements were stiff. Guarded.
"You weren't yourself. I know that."
"But I still—"
"You don't need to apologize," she said flatly. "But you do need to understand something."
She stepped closer. Not touching him. Just close enough to be real.
"Next time, if you start to break… tell me. I don't want to learn you're dying after the demon takes your body."
Her voice cracked just once.
Then she turned and walked back into the forge, leaving Vanila alone beneath the new stars.
Dallis had survived.
But beneath its stones, something had been awakened.
And something else had been invited through.
The fire in Dallis no longer burned for Vanila.
In the days following the demon's possession, a silence took root—not the sacred kind that speaks of peace, but the kind that blooms from distance, distrust, and disgust.
At first, it was subtle.
Serra didn't meet his eyes.Kael stopped leaving notes.Caldreth trained in the canyons without him.Even Firsk—normally curious, never judging—turned cold, his conversations reduced to clipped nods and passive avoidance.
Vanila tried to speak.
But their gazes held something worse than anger.They held restraint.As if every one of them had things they wanted to scream—but didn't.
As if mercy was wearing thin.
So Vanila stopped trying.
He shut his door.He didn't train.Didn't walk the streets.Didn't eat.
The once-mythic boy with twelve Cores now sat in the dark of his room, the only light the faint pulse of his still-beating crest.
He pressed his hand against it, night after night, whispering:
"You let it in.You let me become that."
He starved himself until his cheeks hollowed.He didn't sleep—only drifted in visions.Visions of Serra's eyes filled with hatred.Of Kael's silence like a tomb.Of his own body used as a weapon, laughing in voices not his own.
The Others Move On
Without Vanila, the others grew stronger.
They hardened.
Caldreth led the strategy. Firsk mapped the demonic coordinates using astral overlays. Kael forged sigils into iron. Serra trained in silence, alone in the shattered halls of the old guild, every punch and strike echoing like thunder.
Her Glassblood veins flared hotter than ever—no longer just light, but rage given shape.
"I don't care what part of Vanila's soul was left in that thing," she told Kael."I just know that thing ruined us."
No one argued.
They planned to track the Galactical Demon—now fleeing through shattered rift lines—before it could recover its full strength.
They wouldn't wait for Vanila.
They didn't trust him to stand beside them.
The Demon Hunt
The four—Serra, Kael, Firsk, and Caldreth—descended into the Rift Ruins of Caer'Fal, where reality thinned, and stars screamed underground.
They hunted the demon through nightmare echoes and dimensional fractures. Firsk's portal knowledge guided them. Kael's runes sealed its escape. Caldreth took every blow the demon landed. And Serra…
Serra fought like fury reborn.
The demon, still wearing shreds of Vanila's aura, mocked her with his voice.
"You miss me, don't you, Serra?"
She didn't respond.
She stabbed it through the throat with a blade of refracted glass, her veins glowing like fire.
"No.I only missed the chance to kill you sooner."
And as the demon shrieked—wounded, unraveling—Serra pulled her weapon free, reversed it, and drove it through the Core of its soul.
The demon collapsed into ash and echoes.
Back in Dallis
The group returned, silent.Bloodied. Exhausted.
Triumphant.
They did not visit Vanila.
They didn't speak his name.
Serra passed his door once in the night.She hesitated.Then kept walking.
Inside, Vanila lay on the floor—bones tight against his skin, eyes sunken, hand weakly glowing over his crest.
And for the first time since he awakened his Cores…
He felt truly alone.
Vanila didn't die in that room.He shed.
The version of himself that had begged for forgiveness, that had wept in corners and clung to the memory of what he'd lost—that boy faded quietly.
What remained sat in the dark, unmoving.Eyes closed.Back straight.Heart still.
And the Cores, buried deep within the crest on his chest, began to stir.
They didn't heal him all at once.They watched.
For days.
Not one pulse. Not one command.
Then, when they saw he hadn't broken—only emptied himself—they began.
One by one.
A flicker from the Core of Life, tracing vines of green through his bloodstream.The Core of Flame reignited the furnace behind his heart, burning away weakness and guilt.Stone, Time, Shadow, Light, Memory—all pulsed in sequence, like a divine rhythm echoing from the marrow out.
His body mended.
His spirit didn't shatter.It hardened.
He grew still as the stars that birthed him.His breathing slowed.His thoughts sharpened.
"I do not need to be forgiven," he told the dark, quietly. "I only need to understand."
The Meditation
Days became weeks.
Vanila entered trance after trance. Not sleep. Not silence. Confrontation.Each Core appeared to him not as voices, but visions—entities of will, shape, and riddle.
They didn't resist.They didn't lecture.
They listened.
And one by one, he bent them—not through force, not with dominance—but with clarity.
"You are not gods," he whispered in one trance. "You are pieces of the divine. But I am whole."
They responded not with fury.
But love.
The New Vanila
When he opened his eyes again, he didn't rise with trembling limbs.He stood, effortlessly, like a sword unsheathed.
His posture was composed, not proud.His eyes glowed with the stillness of knowing.His voice, if spoken, would be quiet. Not weak—just unnecessary unless required.
The Cores hovered behind his shoulders now—not orbiting like moons, but arrayed like wings, each one responding to his moods in subtle flickers.
He wore no armor.He didn't need it.He had let go of pain. Let go of their judgment. Let go of her silence.
And in that emptiness, he found something truer.
Will.
Vanila did not open his door.
He didn't need to.
The world would come to him when it was ready.
But when it did, they wouldn't find the same Vanila.
They would find a man who carried gods not on his shoulders… but in his shadow.
Vanila slept, still and dreamless, breath calm as the stars. After weeks of meditation and mastery, the room had become a sanctum—a place of quiet divinity, heavy with invisible force. Even the dust refused to settle where he lay.
But the Cores inside his chest began to hum in unison.
And then…
The gods stepped through.
They did not knock.They appeared.
All twelve.
Towering, immense, cramped unnaturally within the small chamber, their forms compressed by mortal scale but still oppressive—barely contained power wrapped in flesh, starlight, shadows, and breath older than language.
Some had no faces. Others had too many.One wore robes that bled rivers. Another stood wreathed in fire so hot it froze the space around it.The God of Time flickered between centuries with every breath, and the God of Flame ignited tiny supernovas with his sighs.
One—the God of Memory—stood hunched in the corner, blindfolded, dripping ink from eyes it no longer had.
The room—Vanila's modest meditation space—had become a cosmic prison of shoulders pressed to walls, wings curling around corners, claws tapping ceiling beams.
And all of them stared at him.
Sleeping.
Waiting.
Studying.
Then his eyes opened.
And still, he did not panic.Did not gasp.Did not recoil.
He blinked once.
"So," Vanila whispered, voice husky from rest. "You finally came."
One of them spoke—its voice layered in chords of thunder and flute:
"You called us."
"No," Vanila said. He sat up, eyes glowing softly. "I accepted you. There's a difference."
They stared.
"You've bent us."
"No," he said again, standing now. Unshaken. His presence, smaller than theirs in size, was suddenly equal in gravity. "You chose me. I didn't ask to bear you. But I made room. And you stayed."
Another god, wreathed in flowing sand, tilted its horned head:
"Do you know what that means?"
Vanila walked to the center of the room, bare feet brushing against stone that now glowed faintly beneath him. The air shimmered, realities overlapping from the pressure of divinity.
"It means this body is no longer just a vessel."
He placed a hand on his chest.
"It's a sanctuary."
The gods shuddered, and for the first time—knelt.
Not in worship.But in acknowledgment.
They did not see a boy anymore.
They saw the first mortal to house the complete Divine Constellation without losing his mind, or soul.
They saw something new.
And as they faded, one by one, retreating from the room they had already outgrown, the last to leave—the God of Will—paused at the door.
Its hand brushed Vanila's shoulder, gently.
"They will not forget this.The heavens will not ignore you any longer."
Vanila nodded.
"Good."
And then he was alone again.
But not empty.
He wore no crest-sash, no cape of glory.Just a dark, simple coat. His sleeves rolled up. His eyes steady, calm—dim galaxies now reduced to quiet stars.
The people of Dallis gasped when they saw him.
He did not speak.He did not linger.He simply walked into the ruins of the town square, still scorched from demonfire and shattered walls, and began to rebuild.
No one asked him to.He just saw what was broken—and worked.
Lifting beams. Reinforcing arches. Touching burnt crops with fingertips until green returned. Whispering to broken enchantments until they lit again.
He labored like a mortal, hands cracked and calloused.
Not like a god.Not a hero.Just a man who had endured.
The Four
The others saw him, of course.
Kael passed him on the steps of the old council house, the air thick with unspoken guilt. Vanila nodded once. Kael didn't respond.
Caldreth watched from the training ring. Their eyes met for a flicker. No words exchanged. Only history.Caldreth looked away first.
Even Serra, once the pulse that moved his heart, passed him in the market. Their shoulders nearly brushed. She paused.
But he didn't.
He kept walking.
Not cold.Just… unburdened.
Firsk and Serra
In the evenings, people noticed Serra and Firsk spending time together.
What began as reluctant partnership during the demon hunt had grown—slowly, steadily. Firsk never pushed. He offered quiet company. Space. Kindness, worn and world-wise.
And Serra—finally breathing freely—let him in.
She smiled again. Not often, but when she did, it was real.
And one dusk, by the old statue, she took his hand. No declarations. No show.
Just presence.
Vanila saw them from afar.
His heart didn't clench.It exhaled.
He watched them for a moment—two people who had found something steady where once there had only been ruin.
And he smiled.
Not out of loss.Not out of longing.
Out of relief.
"Finally," he thought, "someone loyal. Someone who will truly love her the way I couldn't anymore. The way she deserves—beyond gods, beyond scars."
He turned from them and returned to his work.
Vanila no longer needed to be loved.No longer needed to be followed.He only needed to be useful—and be free.
The gods within him whispered nothing.
Because even they knew—
He had become more than divine.He had become whole.