"When you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."
The 9th century Chinese Chan Buddhist master, Shinji.
The smoke from the blast hadn't even cleared when a figure descended through it—floating with poise, arms crossed, eyes gleaming with celestial malice. She looked exactly like Hermes. Same stature. Same radiant features. Same sharp, blazing eyes. Except… her teeth. Fangs and she had white hair instead of black like Hermes had now, Hermes of course previously had white hair as well and so she had the same natural hair color. And her aura? Not divine. Demonic. "Who—" Lupus muttered, turning just in time to take a devastating strike to the gut. He hit the ground hard, forming a crater, his armor around his stomach was completely shattered. The figure hovered above him, her white hair swaying like silk in a storm. "You're loud," she said flatly, "but fragile."
Hermes gasped. "Who are you?!" Ungar looked up: "This energy its clear, this is demonic energy, I should know, I am a demon king after all," said Ungar. The figure turned to her—smiling. "I'm Xeres," she said, voice calm, cold. "The Demon King and God of Time. And… your older sister." Silence. Even the waves stilled. "What?" Hermes whispered. "You were created by Ebisu using energy from beyond the veil," Xeres said. "So was I. Your other half. The one built to break the rules. Or at least that's what I like to believe." Kazan looked stunned. "But she looks exactly—" "Exactly like Hermes," Xeres finished, nodding. "Because I am her. Twisted through a different fate. Forged not to protect the realm, but to test it."
Lupus growled, rising to his feet. "I don't care who you are! You'll die all the same! Do you know who you're looking at?" Lupus smiled and pointed his thumb towards himself: "I'm the supreme God of this world, the one who shatters the egos like idols of all others, King Lupus." Without showing any emotion Xeres replied: "I really don't give a damn who you are. You mean nothing to me." Lupus exploded with rage: "HOW DARE YOU?!" He lunged—but Xeres moved once. Just once. A pulse of time-magic shattered the air. Lupus froze mid-strike. Then his body convulsed—bones cracking, armor snapping. Xeres gripped his wrist and squeezed. CRUNCH. He collapsed, howling in agony, not dead—but broken. Not just physically. Pride shattered. The so-called strongest in the cosmos now on his knees, unable to comprehend what just happened. "No," Xeres said, tilting her head. "You don't get to be the strongest. Not anymore. That myth ends here. I hope it was fun while it lasted." The group was stunned. Even Hermes couldn't speak. Xeres stepped past Lupus, eyes locked on Hermes. "I didn't come to kill you. I came to warn you. Train. Evolve. Survive." Her smile grew cruel. "Because one day—whether it's in two years or two thousand—I will fight you to the death."
"Why?" Hermes demanded, breath still ragged. Xeres turned, her expression softening just a bit. "Because I've seen the Prophet's power. The real one. I've seen what you're meant to become." Her gaze sharpened. "And I need to know if I can destroy that fate. Whether I win or lose, live or die, it's the thrill of the fight I seek. So live won't you for your big sister. I'll fight you when the time comes. And if you refuse to fight me when the day comes, I'll just give everyone of your little friends one by one." Hermes grew angry and began to shake. "Save that energy, sister. You'll need it. But I'll give you a quick sample." She unleashed a wave of power that felt like the entire Universe, not the entire Universe, was compressing on itself; it was clear facing off against this woman, Xeres, was like a mortal man facing off against God or like an ant taking on a man. The power was all encompassing; it was onimopenet, it was no different than fighting God in battle. Her eyes and her power were everywhere and you could feel it everywhere. Everyone including Ungar felt like they were being crushed and they all fell to their knees and then everyone including Ungar except for Hermes and Xerxes were frozen in time. "That was less than one percent of my power," said Xeres. Hermes gasped and began to shake. "Get stronger little sister, I'll see you soon enough." Then, in a blink, she vanished—like a glitch in time. All that remained was a strange pressure in the air. And a question none of them could answer. Time was unfrozen and Lupus was knocked out, the others had a lot of questions. Hermes looked towards the gate, "We'll figure all of that later, for now we have to keep moving."
Back on the Planet Helios, Lior, Scott, Gordo, Nightblade, Doctor Anton Volker, Nova, the Green Wisp, the Iron Sikh, Krampus, Sir Rhyme, Mozi, Guan-Fu, Khidr, Dreadmarch, Uvia, Zaiyal, and Qayyim among a few others, we're fighting one of the crystalline creatures sent by the Waters, in one of the smaller cities in the Qatari Imperium. Lior adjusted his bracers, eyes narrowed. "How the hell do you break something made of unbreakable crystal?" Gordo spat, steam hissing off his molten bee skin. "Same way you break a mountain. One punch at a time." Scott raised his energy level, trying to steady his breathing, he was an incredibly highly respected warrior after all. "Yeah? Then let's find its damn fault line." A crackling scream shattered the air, a piercing chorus of fractal soundwaves as the Crystalline Titan moved. With every step, glass burst from buildings and pavement. The Green Wisp who was a devout Ismaili' Shi'a Muslim uttered a single prayer from the Quran and then with confidence lunged forward, phased through a collapsing wall, his aura dancing as he fought, "It's connected to the planet. It's pulling power from the tectonics. We have to sever that link."
Doctor Anton Volker, eyes glowing behind a cracked visor, tapped into his gauntlet. "I'll create a field disruption. Just need thirty seconds." The evil demon began to attempt this to defeat this next warrior. Krampus grinned wide, fangs gleaming. "You've got ten. I'm going in." With a roar, Krampus charged first, blades scraping against the beast's leg. It turned—a kaleidoscope of living crystal—and unleashed a pulse wave that bent gravity, sending Krampus hurtling into a skyscraper. Nightblade vanished into shadows, reappearing on the creature's back. He drove twin swords into its shoulders—no effect. The beast didn't even flinch. It turned its head—a featureless mask of angles—and spoke in a voice that wasn't sound but feeling. "YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH." Sir Rhyme chanted a binding verse, his voice laced with rhythm-magic: "With meter and rhyme, I freeze your climb, In binding lines, halt space and time!" Ribbons of force coiled around the beast's arms, but the Titan shattered them with a flex, the backlash tossing Rhyme into a crater.
Nova dropped in from orbit—literally. A sonic boom followed his descent. He slammed into the creature with a meteor punch, the impact rippling the ground in a five-block radius. It staggered. The first real damage. Guan-Fu and Khidr stepped forward, their fists glowing with cosmic light. "The balance must be restored." For Khidr's part he drove his weapon into the earth, causing a surge of anti-resonance energy. The Titan reeled, shrieking as fractures spidered up its legs. Volker shouted: "NOW! The link is severed!" Lior, Gordo, and Qayyim leapt in unison—Lior with his plasma chains, Gordo superheating his fists to white fire, and Qayyim with her sword. They hit in unison. Boom. Boom. Boom. A massive crack shot through the creature's torso. But it didn't fall. Instead, it exploded outward, its body reforming into hundreds of smaller crystal shards—each now a sentient drone with bladed wings. Zaiyal cursed. "It multiplies when wounded?!" The Iron Sikh, calm and unmoved, planted his halberd. "Then we burn it all. No half-measures." The Green Wisp turned to Nova. "You still have that flare?" Nova nodded grimly. "Yeah. One left." She activated the Coreflare Beacon—a condensed neutron star in a bottle. "Everyone get clear." As the flare ignited, it pulled gravity inward. The shards swarmed, screeching, diving to kill them all. Then— White. Blinding white. Silence. When the light faded, the city was half gone. The crystalline swarm was melted into slag. The team stood, barely—burned, bleeding, breathless. Scott dropped to one knee. "That… that wasn't even their main force, was it?" Lior looked to the horizon. "No. That was a scout." Nightblade added, "We're not ready for what's coming."
On another version of earth in a completely separate cosmos there was a boy who would make contact with Hermes and the others much like the demons from the wound. The boy's name was Kanji Morioka 盛岡, and he lived in an Earth so familiar you could trace its wars and wonders straight from your own history books—Napoleon rose and fell, the internet boomed, the Beatles changed music forever—but with one major difference: Humans were never alone. From the dawn of recorded time, other beings had walked among them. Some hidden. Some ruling entire provinces. Others are just neighbors. Elves from the forests of Scandinavia filed taxes in Oslo and served in the UN Peacekeepers. Orions—tall, insect-eyed visitors from the Vega system—taught astrophysics at MIT. Dryads whispered to trees in Tokyo parks. Djinn ran night markets in Morocco. Vampires hosted reality shows. Oni were CEOs. The College of Summoned Law in Kyoto had rewritten the Japanese Constitution to account for extradimensional litigants.
And through it all, the world developed along nearly identical lines as our own. Hiroshima still happened. So did 9/11, so did the Mongol conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors across Europe and Asia in the 13th century, so did the rise of Muhammad, Islam and the Muslim conquests, the rise of Christianity, Christedom and the Crusades, the Age of Colonialism, the world wars and the rise of Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, and so on. Except after the towers fell, so did a sky-snake the size of a blimp—a rogue entity feeding on grief that was torn apart by Ma'at Judges of the Hidden Order. No camera caught it. Most people never knew.
In this world, magic didn't replace reality. It coexisted. Subtly. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes not. Kanji Morioka didn't think much about any of that. He was seventeen, the son of a court translator and a retired Spirit Knight. His dream was ordinary: to get into Osaka University, pass the bar, and become a lawyer who specialized in interdimensional treaties—a high-paying, high-stress job. He didn't want to save the world. Just pay off his mom's debts. That changed the night he stumbled on the Gate to Umi and another gate to the Planet Helios. It was deep in the forest, past the shrine no one maintained anymore, through a cave filled with old runes and empty cans of Boss Coffee. The air shimmered like it was underwater. His phone went dead. His breath turned cold. Then a voice echoed—female, ancient, amused: "Ah. You're early." Then the sky cracked. A bolt of light tore open the trees, and the world blurred. Kanji was sucked through—no transition, no warning. One second, he was in the forest. The next— He was standing on the floating isles of Umi, staring at an ocean suspended in the sky. He was informed by a small glowing light that, "You can return to your world and go back and forth at any time at will." Blue-black water spiraled up, down, and sideways. Coral palaces spun like gears. Massive, glowing jellyfish drifted through the clouds. Towers of salt and bone stretched like needles across impossible distances. Fish leapt through gravity like birds. Ships with no sails hovered along aquamarine rails.
And there—rising from the center of this surreal realm—was a second portal. A darker one. It pulsed like a wound in time. It led to Helios. The same world where Hermes fought Lupus the first time long before their recent quarrel. And somehow—Kanji knew—this portal wasn't just one-way. It was an anchor. A tether. His crossing had connected Earth to Helios in a way no one had ever intended. Because Kanji wasn't supposed to be a lawyer. Not anymore. Something was coming. Something ancient and cunning had rewritten his path, and now Earth's quiet coexistence with magic was over. No more secrets. No more hidden Orders or veiled courts. The age of quiet diplomacy was ending. And Kanji Morioka—the almost-lawyer from Nara—had just become the among the first to join Earth's Hero-Class in the year 2092 C.E. Earth's Hero Class had existed since at least the 12th century AD. He looked at the ocean sky. He looked at the stars bleeding light through the rift. And behind him, unseen, the black monolith of the Dread Lunar Palace pulsed again. Kanji thought to himself: "I thought I saw everything living on Earth, but this feels like something entirely new."
Report from the Prophet: The chain or Isnad or 链 Lian reported by Ungar⟶ Talus ⟶ Zaiyal ⟶ Hashim ibn Muwatta⟶ Kafari Zordof⟶ Qayyim⟶ Unknown person ⟶ Scott Greer ⟶ Gradari the Apostle ⟶ the Prophet (may God bless her). Gradari the Apostle (may the supreme God have mercy on his soul) said: The Prophet told of when she traveled across the desert after crossing the great ocean she said; "God revealed to me a message. The supreme god the Lord of the Worlds and creator of all things - may his name be sanctified - has declared: "When one of My ['His'] (My being God) Servants wishes to obtain Paradise they must not seek godhood. It is better to seek eternal life than god-hood for seeking Godhead is an oppression upon me you are certainly not allowed to do this for I am not allowed to do this to myself." - From the collections of the reports of the Prophet.
Back on Umi, Hermes stood motionless at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sky-ocean. The others had already moved on, chasing leads, recovering, organizing the resistance. But she couldn't move. Not yet. Not after what Xeres said. Not after that power. Her breath slowed. She stared into the churning, star-flecked water below. For the first time in centuries, maybe longer, she felt doubt. Real, cold, mortal doubt. The kind that eats gods from the inside out. The kind that once buried Titans. Then she felt it. A ripple. She turned. A gate shimmered open just beyond the coral shrine—an irregular ellipse of energy crackling inwards, not outwards. A pull, not a push. And from it, a figure stepped through. A boy. Seventeen, maybe. Disoriented. Wearing a school uniform, scuffed shoes, a battered satchel slung across his shoulder. His eyes were wide, like someone who had just walked out of history and into legend.
He was looking at her. Hermes stiffened. "Who the hell are you?" The boy blinked. Bowed instinctively. "Kanji. Kanji Morioka. I think… I think I followed the wrong portal. I'm pretty new to this honestly." Hermes narrowed her eyes. His aura was off. Not magical. Not divine. But… threaded. Interlaced with threads she couldn't trace. Threads that moved. She stepped forward slowly. "You came from Earth?" He nodded. "But not this one, I think. I was in the forest near Nara. Then I saw a gate, and then…" Hermes raised her hand. "Stop. You crossed into two mythic planes without any resistance?" Kanji frowned. "There was resistance. My phone is fried." Hermes stared, then—against all sense—laughed. It was sharp and short and edged with too much stress. "Your phone died. That's the resistance." Kanji shrugged helplessly. "It was expensive." Before Hermes could respond, the sky behind her pulsed again—darker this time. The portal to Helios was trembling. And from it… came a sound. Not thunder. Not wind. Words. But they weren't in any language Hermes knew. Not a divine tongue. Not demonic dialect. Not even the cursed whisper-speech of the Old Ones.
Kanji tilted his head. "That's… Japanese," he said, confused. "Old Japanese. From the Yamato period." Hermes blinked. "How would you—?" Kanji stepped toward the portal, and as he did, something reacted. A sigil—a mark—lit up on the back of his hand. Red and gold and burning. It wasn't his skin anymore. It was something older. An inheritance. Or maybe a curse. Hermes didn't move. Kanji didn't either. Because through the gate, stepping into the air like it was solid, came another figure. A woman in robes of black starlight and bone-thread. Her hair was braided from strands of dusk. Her eyes were pale suns. And in her hand, she carried a book with no cover, only pages that turned themselves—ink bleeding as she spoke. She looked at Kanji, and then Ungar and then Talus. She looked at Hermes. And then she said the words that would change everything: "The pact is broken. The Veil is bleeding. And Earth… is waking up." Hermes drew her blade. "Name yourself." The woman did not. She simply looked down at the book and read aloud:
"From the Dread Palace to the Sea of Stars, the ones who were sealed shall walk once more.
The Hero, the Twin, and the Betrayer shall meet at the edge of fate.
And when Time splits, it shall not be by war—
But by the hand of the child who never asked to fight."
Kanji whispered: "What… what are you talking about?" The woman looked at him, truly looked at him, and something in her expression flickered. No pity. Not warmth. Recognition. "You are the hinge," she said quietly. "You are the keyhole the cosmos forgot. And now…" She looked past him—toward Earth, toward Helios, toward every world that had ever known sleep. "…everything will be remembered." The woman then disappeared. In that moment Hermes fell into a trance and her eyes rolled behind her head.
It was a region or a particular desert known as the Ashen Dunes which aligned with the year 2092 C.E., following the Holy Prophet's revelation. The desert wind howled like a living memory. Qayyim stood at the edge of the broken stone gate—the one said to mark the boundary between the Wastes of Sarruum and the unknowable lands called Al-Fanaʾ, the Domain of Erasure. Dust coated her face like ash. Her blade, the Word-forged Sword, hung silently at her hip. She was not alone. Behind her, the remnants of the Sevenfold Caravan—pilgrims, warriors, mystics, and fools—gathered around the smoldering remains of their last camp. Three had died crossing the glass dunes. Two more were half-mad from drinking the wrong water. And the sky had not shown a single star for six nights. Ungar with his arms crossed thought to himself: "Its interesting, I've never seen Hermes preach so much before. She's attracted many followers. She seems to finally be taking her role as a Prophet seriously." But it was that morning, before the sun rose, that the Prophet's words echoed across the void.
She wasn't there in person. She had spoken through fire. A pillar of flame had burst from the sand, forming a mouth and speaking in a thousand tongues all at once. The voice of the Prophet—ageless, full of command, yet cracked with compassion.
And this is what she had said:
"Let the seekers hear this: you are not gods. Not even the most exalted among you may cross that line. Godhood is not a reward—it is a burden only God can carry. You seek eternity? Good. Seek it humbly. Do not climb thrones meant for no one. Even I was warned."
"I saw a throne in the desert, sculpted from bone and salt. The name on it was mine. And God said: 'I did not put this here. You must not sit on what I did not place.'"
Talus remembered the exact shape of the voice. It pressed against her heart like gravity. Now, he turned back to the others. "We're not going forward to become gods," he said. "We're going forward to survive. To endure. The Prophet made it clear—paradise is not stolen by power. It is earned by restraint." Ebisu laughed: "Yes but some of us have convinced themselves that they are a God." He leaned over indicating he was talking about Lupus. One of the mystics, known as the Sufis, draped in red, whispered: "But the Bone Chair is real. I've seen it in dreams." "And that's exactly why we must destroy it," said Yadala. "Before someone tries to sit in it again." At that moment, the dunes shifted. From beneath the sands, a low tremor pulsed out like a heartbeat. The sky dimmed further. Something massive was approaching—not with fury, but with intent. And then they saw it. A figure, tall as a watchtower, made entirely of prayer-scrolls and living stone. Its face bore a thousand names—all of them scratched out. It spoke with no mouth:
"WHO SEEKS TO SIT?"
No one answered. But it began to walk toward them. Behind it, dunes turned to ash. Ahead of it, time buckled. Yadala stepped forward, planting her magic sword into the sand. "We're not here to ascend," she said to the air, to God, to herself. "We're here to remember why we shouldn't." In that moment the clouds in the sky, and the sun, and the palm trees of the desert opened their mouths and they began to speak and they said: "Woe be to those who affirm themselves as a God. For them their abode will be the fire." It had been several weeks since then and Hermes' new followers the Bedouins began to form rival states, chieftainates, tribes or Taifas and kingdoms that followed the Monotheistic religion of the prophet spreading the religion and message either by preaching or by the sword. Which greatly distressed Narcis Martreya, one of the Prophet's companions, Narcis was of course a Buddhist, and the Martreya Buddha. But the Prophet didn't sanction holy war and Narcis never blamed Hermes for these wars, still he was distressed by the carnage which was repulsive to him in light of his Buddhist religion. Narcis was actually surprised that Hermes had forgiven Lupus, it spoke well of her character. Eventually they had come close to the abode of the dragon.
Back in the Riftlands, Seregrin, Farabius and Zelanius continued their journey in this strange world. Seregrin told them: "Watching out for the Gargomires." Zelanius replied: "What are those?" Seregrin pointed in the distance, there were on some of the sky islands there were large slug like eyes that came from the ground and then returned back into them. "Those are them, and beware they are dangerous." As they continued to walk a beam of light flew towards Seregrin. A woman leaped through the air with a man following behind her and she landed before the three demons. "Who the hell are you?" Seregrin explained the entire situation. "Renegades huh, well good for you, I'd honestly like to help out with this Prophecy. I've wished the demon elite would be destroyed for years. There's about 10 other elites among 10 other races I feel that way about but I feel the universe is merciful if he allows us to take down one of them." The girl put her large sword over her shoulder: "the name is Alestria, and this is Basel. We're explorers who travel throughout the different worlds and merchants by trade." Alestria's massive sword gleamed as it caught the fractured sunlight of the Riftlands. Basel cracked his knuckles. Seregrin raised one clawed brow. Seregrin replied gruffly: "Explorers? Or bounty hunters?" Alestria grinned: "A little column A, a little column B." Farabius narrowed his eyes, but before he could speak, the sky split—not cracked, not thundered—split. The entire world stuttered like it had skipped a frame. Zelanius stumbled. "What was that?!" Farabius (terrified): "No. No, it can't be—" A crimson spiral tore through the clouds, spinning open a vortex that churned with forgotten names and lost wars. Through it, a voice echoed. A voice that had not been heard since the First Fall. "The Third Seal… is BROKEN."
Back in the Realm of Umi, Hermes snapped out of her trance, her eyes glowing gold as the Book of Veils levitated beside her. Kanji was still frozen, the mark on his hand flaring with new intensity. Kanji said: "Why do I feel like I'm being… uploaded?" Hermes turned sharply, her voice thunderous now. "Because the Prophecy didn't just name you… it programmed you." Behind them, another figure stepped through the Helios gate—a woman, lean and war-worn, with a crooked crown of meteoric glass. She wore the black of a mourning world. Hermes (shocked): "Queen Rava… Wait? How do I know that name?..." Rava explained: "There's no time for greetings. The Demons have begun to move. The Dragon is gathering them—he's not forgiven. He's repenting… the wrong way." Kanji gritted his teeth. "Then we stop them." Rava smirked: "With what army? You're seventeen and your best weapon is sarcasm." Kanji stated quite seriously: "No. My best weapon… is that I still think this can be fixed." A beat. Even Hermes paused. Rava blinked. Then Hermes gave a grin—not mockery, but recognition. Hermes said: "Well said, Hero-Class. Welcome to the war."
Hours later outside in the Ashen Dunes in the nearby settlement the other heroes were waiting for when they could travel again there was reported to be a sand storm that would arrive soon according to the local mystics. The prayer-scroll titan knelt in the distance. Its head slowly turned toward the Bone Chair, now partially unearthed from the sand. Around it, the Prophet's followers had gathered: mystics, Bedouins, warriors bearing the Mark of the Veil. Suddenly, a scream rang out. Not human. Not beast. A tear appeared in the air—horizontal like a scar, opening into blackness—and out of it stepped Lupus. But not as he once was. His form was fractured, stitched by cosmic flame and divine regret. A halo of broken swords orbited his back like wings. The fire of repentance had not cleansed him—it had reforged him. The demon roared in anger. Narcis Martreya stepped forward, his robes flowing like liquid wind. Narcis said calmly: "You do not walk the Prophet's path. Nor do you follow the Dharma path." Lupus, Ungar and Talus soon arrived and they were ready to fight this bizarre creature.