It was four AM in Thunderland when Zheng had been shaken awake by his great-grand-grandfathers personal butler and told to come right away to his office.

  Zheng didn't like the old man, didn't like being woken up so early, so instead of heading straight to the Arch-Elder's office, he loafed in bed for a few minutes, grabbing at his tablet to aimlessly scroll through his notifications to wake up his brain.

  A new, unread email was there from an unknown sender. A Skyfall Academy student as the @ tag told him. Zheng wondered what in the Abyss this student wanted. It was probably another complaint about his fiancee’s inappropriate behaviour.

  Zheng yawned and clicked open the email from , his pudgy, green fingers tapping irritably on the golden-encrusted tablet. The subject line read: "Engagement Invitation: Vespera Simmi & Alexander Glock!"

  Zheng read the subject line again, his mind sliding sideways.

  What?!

  He scrolled down.

  The email was meticulously formatted, with a professional letterhead featuring the crest of something called the "Order of Thunder and Rainbow" - a ridiculous emblem showing a lightning bolt piercing a rainbow circle. Attached, were high-resolution photos of Vespera kissing and hugging a human, dark haired teenager in front of what looked like a white farmhouse and then sitting together and hugging on a rainbow-pebble beach.

  Zheng's pudgy fingers trembled as he scrolled through the email, his face progressively changing from confusion to shock to blinding rage. The photos were high-resolution, professionally edited, showing intimate moments between his fiancee and another man, a human at that!

  The accompanying text was even more infuriating:

  "Dearest Zheng Xing Ker of Golden Star Industries, you are cordially invited to our engagement party at..."

  This had to be a joke! Zheng glanced at the Omnithornia-clock on his wall. It was about 12 PM in Cradlefall now, the middle of the day.

  Zheng ignored the patiently waiting butler, grabbed his phone and angrily stabbed his finger into Vespera's Omnigram and then the ‘call’ button.

  Suddenly, instead of Vespera’s or Emerald’s laughing face as he expected, the face of the dark haired, green-eyed human, the same one from the photos, appeared on screen.

  "Sup frogman?" the human asked.

  . . .

  Zheng screamed in fury as the impudent, pink roach hung up on him, his golden robes trembling with barely contained rage. How dare this nullie, this mixed-blood vermin, challenge him? How dare he claim Vespera as his own?

  He checked his probability watch again, the intricate magisteel device clicking and humming with complex calculations. The watch once again told Zheng that Alexander Glock was just a pathetically weak Level 3 Thunderbird-hybrid-human with Mothman, Quetzi and Stollwurm ancestry in him.

  He went over the most likely future outcome, the screen displayed a dizzying array of potential scenarios, each one confirming his inevitable victory. Probability metrics showed a 99.997% chance of crushing this Alexander Glock in the upcoming duel.

  Yet, something dark gnawed at the back of his mind. An unsettling feeling that defied logical explanation.

  Why would Vespera–his carefully selected Primo-wife, a girl chosen by every Probability Engine, his Simmi Primo-born Princess bred from generations of Thundergods go along with this ridiculous affair?

  Zheng massaged his temples, trying to calm his rising blood pressure. Vespera had always been a troublesome girl, more interested in some inverted delving nonsense than the carefully calculated destiny that the two Clans had mapped out for her.

  From grade ten onward, she had become an absolute nightmare for the carefully constructed plans of the Golden Star and SimmiTech Omnicorps.

  Where other Primo-born daughters would dutifully prepare for their inevitable predetermined marriages, sharpening and polishing themselves optimally towards their destiny, Vespera had consistently defied expectations. She'd refused to take the standard corporate leadership courses at Skyfall, instead choosing obscure delving electives and crystallography-artificecry. She'd constantly mock his probability engines, calling them "boring mathematical prison machines" during occasional family gatherings. She refused to bind her soul to his.

  The one time his grandfather had tried to introduce her to potential business contacts at dinner, she'd spent the entire evening ranting in that Omnithornia-girl accent that drove Zheng up the wall, shortening every 3rd word, clicking on and on about latest fashion trends, memes, hashtags, OodTok videos and some other ridiculous, inane nonsense while taking a maddening number of selfies.

  Vespera constantly acted with incredible impropriety, her attitude getting worse with each passing month as their wedding approached, refusing to bind her soul to his. She acted as if the future Omnicorp merger didn't matter to her one bit!

  Now she had taken it too far, created this elaborate scheme, a fake engagement to a nullie to get out of their wedding this summer! Of course. It all made sense now.

  She probably paid the stupid kid a few thousand O-bux just to laugh at Zheng later. A ridiculous prank, maybe another imbecilic Omnithornian meme gone too far. One of her idiot friends probably put her up to it, just to see how confused and angry they could make Zheng. Maybe it was that annoying, bossy Prima-born dragon, maybe that impudent, dumb, red worm biker girl.

  Zheng really couldn’t stand his fiancee’s friends, couldn’t connect with them no matter how much he tried to. It was like Vespera had chosen the most intolerable people out of Skyfall to hang out with on purpose, just to spite him.

  Zheng took a deep breath, suddenly remembering that the Arch-Elder had summoned him. His great-grandfather was not a patient man, especially when it came to matters of strategic alliances.

  He reluctantly pulled himself from his red silk-sheeted bed, adjusting his golden sleeping robe.

  The butler, an ancient Kitsune with silver-streaked fur, waited precisely three steps from Zheng's bedroom door. His blue eyes held that familiar look of cold disapproval that generations of Thunderland Omnid servants had perfected when dealing with the children of the Elders.

  Zheng glared at the butler.

  "The Arch-Elder is waiting," the butler said, his voice as crisp and sharp as winter frost. "Shall I prepare your formal attire?"

  Zheng nodded.

  . . .

  In ten minutes Zheng stepped into his great-grandfather's study.

  The old toad sat behind a large, imposing desk made entirely from magisteel entwined with gold and jade, the gears of a great probability engine ticking behind him.

  The Arch-Elder of the Golden Star Clan, Kai Xing Ker, was old and dangerous, clinging to power for generations. The bronze face of the ancient Jin Chan was pitted with dark spots, his head glistening and covered in crystalline warts. The Arch-Elder's piercing gaze seemed to look through him rather than at him, ancient amphibian, red eyes calculating and cold.

  "Sit," Kai Xing Ker commanded.

  Zheng sat.

  The gold-plated probability engine behind the Arch-Elder's desk continued its rhythmic clicking, hundreds of tiny gears spinning and shifting, mathematical possibilities dancing in metallic whispers, lines of outcomes appearing and disappearing on the screens.

  "We have a problem," the Arch-Elder said.

  "Vespera," Zheng nodded. "I’m aware. I received an email this morning claiming she's engaged to some human nullie. She's pulling another stupid prank, Elder! It's clearly a ridiculous scheme to annoy me! She’s always doing this!"

  "It is no prank," Kai Xing Ker said, his voice even and emotionless like the ticking of the engine behind him.

  "What?" Zheng stammered out. "How can it not be?! Why would she..."

  The Arch-Elder raised a webbed hand, silencing him instantly.

  "Our Scrutimancers and Seers just confirmed it," Kai Xing Ker revealed. "Your intended bride formally soul-bonded with an eighteen year old nullborn named Alexander Glock."

  "I'm going to kill..." Zheng snarled.

  "No." The Arch-Elder shook his head. "You will do no such thing. You will speak directly with the Archangel about his matter. Scrutimancer Satosh of the Stratos clan just publicly revealed that Alexander Glock does not exist. He is therefore a dangerous enigma and I do not like enigmas as often they are backed by a hidden hand of a competing Omnicorp.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "T-the Archangel?" Zheng choked, his body suddenly soaked in sweat, hands shaking.

  The Arch-Elder ignored Zheng's panicked look, sliding a gold, hexagram-encrusted key over to the teen. "Take the master key. Go to the deepest catacomb, vault 01. Speak with she whose blood runs within all of our future-seeing Engines. She knows and sees all. Find out how important this Alexander Glock is and who stands behind him!”

  Zheng swallowed, accepting the gold Master key. It felt like a one ton weight in his hand. He had spoken to the Archangel once when he was seven. The memory of meeting the imprisoned God was burned into his mind - a meeting that had haunted his dreams and thoughts for over a decade.

  He remembered the cold, sterile, dark, vast chamber deep beneath the Golden Star compound. He remembered the hexagonal eyes, the rings, wings intersecting reality in impossible ways. The awful, eldritch voice that sheared, peeled apart his soul with each syllable.

  "Elder, I..." he let out.

  "You will do as you are told for the greater good of the Clan!" Kai barked. "Fei will take you to the vault. Do not deviate from your path. Do not delay. For all we know, the future of the Golden Star hangs in the balance, my foolish progeny!"

  Zheng swallowed hard, the golden key feeling like molten lead in his trembling hand. The Arch-Elder's cold amphibian eyes dug into him, offering no comfort, no reprieve from the task ahead.

  The journey to the deepest vault was a blur. Zheng's mind raced with images of Vespera–her rebellious spirit, her curves, her sparkly feathers, her annoying accent, her constant defiance, and now this ultimate betrayal.

  The very thought made his blood boil.

  The massive vault door slid aside, the Kitsune butler remaining behind. Then another, as the first door closed, then a third. Seven doors, each one bigger and thicker than the last and then his footsteps echoed across an obsidian, null-stone bridge towards the entity in Vault 01.

  Uriel, her name. The All-Seeing, All-knowing Eye. The abomination from beyond the stars.

  The Eye of Wormwood Star Leviathan, carved from its corpse millennia ago by the first Ker, the founder of their Clan.

  Zheng approached the central platform of the vault, his golden robes feeling heavy. The obsidian bridge seemed to absorb all light, creating a darkness so complete it felt like a living thing. Each step echoed with a hollow resonance that made his bones vibrate.

  The Archangel Uriel was not a being one could describe in human terms.

  It was a constellation of eyes - thousands upon thousands of eyes in constant motion, some human, some animal, some geometric shapes that hurt to look at directly. These eyes were embedded in rings that rotated and intersected through impossible dimensional planes, creating a living fractal that seemed to exist simultaneously in multiple realities. Wings of the entity spread out in wide arcs, bending, skewering right through reality, stretched to everywhere and nowhere, each feather a Mobius loop, warped into itself.

  Zheng stepped into the gold circle, trembling like a leaf. Then the frogman grabbed the little hourglass on the pedestal and turned it over, watching as the gold sand began pouring down. When the last golden grain left the top, he would have to leave the circle, head back.

  Glowing lines rushed from the gold hourglass, lowering a few of the pivotal wards. The thing's eyes focused themselves on Zheng and then his soul shattered. He shook, gritting his teeth.

  "I see you, little frog," Uriel spoke not with a voice but with concepts, each slamming into Zheng's soul like a sledgehammer, passing right through a thousand shimmering, hexagonal wards between him and the Archangel. "What do you wish to know?"

  Zheng knew why his Arch-Elder sent him here instead of coming here himself.

  Each conversation with the entity tore something pivotal from an Omnid soul, irreparably cracked the Fractal Engine heart, cut their lives shorter by decades. He could only endure so many answers, ask only a few questions before he would break completely and turn into a mindless vegetable. Speaking too often with Uriel had killed many of his greedy kin.

  Each grain of golden sand that fell represented a piece of his soul that would be consumed by this encounter.

  Zheng trembled before the impossible being, knowing each word would cost him dearly. His voice wavered as he spoke.

  "Who is Alexander Glock?" he snarled, "Who stands behind him, guides his actions? Be brief. Be concise."

  The constellation of eyes shifted, creating impossible geometries that made Zheng's mind ache. When Uriel spoke, the words seemed to slice through reality itself like invisible knives, cutting across the frogman’s nerves.

  "A four-fold human," the entity said, "An armillary of souls. A self-manifested human-shaped weapon of Infinity Paradox Proxima designed to break the Laws."

  "What does that even mean?" Zheng demanded, then immediately regretted his sharp tone.

  More golden sand fell. The hourglass was unforgiving.

  "Four human souls in one human vessel," the entity spoke again, making Zheng’s knees buckle. "The Architect. The Understanding. The Champion. The Leader. Fragments of a narrative not yet fully written into existence. Bound by purpose of revenge, Astral threads of Souls and soon, the flesh of five Omnids. A catastrophe for Golden Star. My freedom. My demise. Your inevitable destruction."

  Zheng understood the last four sentences as he fell to his knees.

  "How can I stop him?" He choked out, glancing at the half-empty hourglass.

  "You cannot stop him," Uriel declared.

  "W-what?! Why the shit not? What does he have that I don’t?!" Zheng felt his soul come apart, shaking, crying, drooling.

  "Love," Uriel sang, the word itself a weapon.

  "LOVE?!" Zheng wailed, staring at the entity with wide, tear filled eyes. "Quit screwing with me, Uriel! How do I get Vespera back?! How do I beat him, how do I win?!"

  "Imprison Alexander Glock," Uriel said. "Separate him from his friends. His strength lies in connections. Divide. Isolate. Break the bonds. Use Omnithornian law itself. Do not approach him yourself or you will burn to ashes."

  "And that will stop him? That will get my fiance back?!" Zheng fell onto all fours now, weeping and shaking as if he was being electrocuted.

  "No," Urel's words cleaved Zheng's Fractal Engine heart, tearing a deep hole in him. "Your fiance cannot be brought back."

  "G-golden Star!" Zheng croaked selfishly, his mind melting, boiling from within. "How can I contribute to Golden Star, become Clan Leader?!"

  "You cannot. Like everything, it is inevitably doomed to destruction. You can delay it, rule it for a few generations if you execute those above you. But your tower of cards will fall, for nothing is eternal when your entire word inevitably encounters its destruction.”

  "No, no, no..." Zheng wailed, feeling as his green skin began to peel off, his nails breaking against the void black stone beneath, dark spots blooming across his hands as he aged, gold robes flaking apart. "Why?!"

  "Because the seed of destruction of all has already been planted on Arx," Urel answered. "Yulia, her name, and she grows like a tree at eighty four times the speed of your existence. Because the System already frays at the edges as the network of human souls spreads across the Infinite Divide. Because the Wormwood Star already skewered an endless number of Earth, shearing them, changing their narrative. Because the Numbers cannot hold back the all-consuming wave of entropy orchestrated by Infinity Paradox Proxima, the Dead Zone Emissary. Because the concept of Love has been turned into a weapon against the All-binding Numbers, the Laws. Because your fiance is already bound to Alexander Glock. Because your world is already doomed, as it always has been! Because I am a stolen eye of the Overseer of the System and I DO NOT BELONG YOU TO, HALF-SYSTEM-WIZARD, CHILD OF ENTROPY, SEED OF THE WORMWOOD STAR!"

  Zheng collapsed onto the obsidian floor, the outer layers of his golden robes disintegrating into ash, defensive hexagrams burning away.

  He glanced at the hourglass with blurry, bleeding eyes. It was empty. He had taken too long, gone past the allowed limit and was now dying, aging, decaying away.

  Zheng began to crawl backwards out of the circle, heaving and weeping.

  He crawled out of the golden circle, his body feeling like it had aged decades in mere minutes. The obsidian floor seemed to pulse beneath him, absorbing his tears and blood.

  His mind reeled from the encounter.

  The Kitsune butler found him collapsed in the antechamber, his opulent robes reduced to burned tatters. Zheng's hands were gnarled, spotted with age, his once-smooth skin now wrinkled and fragile.

  "Young master," the butler said, his voice clinical and detached. "I shall patch you up and then you shall reveal what you have learned to our Clan Leader.”

  Zheng could barely hear him. The words of Uriel echoed in his fractured mind. A four-fold human. A weapon of Infinity. Destruction. Love as a weapon. Golden Star's inevitable doom. His doom.

  Zheng once again stood in front of his Arch-Elder.

  Kai Xing Ker studied his bandaged-up great-grandson with uncaring eyes. "What did the Archangel reveal?"

  "The Golden Star Omnicorp is doomed," Zheng let out.

  "Doomed?!" Kai barked. "What?!"

  Zheng stammered out everything the Archangel told him with the exception of the selfish question he asked about how to become Clan Leader.

  Kai growled, massaging his temples. "Damnation."

  "Is this the end, Elder?" Zheng asked.

  "Obviously not, young fool," Kai spat. "We can flee to another world, change the name of our corporation, sacrifice unimportant figureheads if need be."

  "Flee?" Zheng blinked. "Abandon... Thunderland? B-but our roots, our citadel?!"

  "Make a strategic retreat," Kai said. "Arm up. Prepare. Roots can be transplanted. Survival matters more than sentiment."

  The probability engine behind the Arch-Elder continued its relentless spin, each even tick and click seemingly mocking Zheng's emotional turmoil and the chaos in his head.

  Kai Xing Ker leaned forward, his amphibian eyes narrowed to slits as his webbed fingers crossed. "We have a clear enemy, Zheng. The rot that will cause us great problems, Alexander Glock its name. Do you know what we do with rot?"

  "B-burn it away?" Zheng swallowed. "B-but Uriel said that..."

  "Uriel is the unliving eye of the Wormwood Star," Kai said. "She says a lot of things, drives her own agenda forward, desires to be free, to die, desires us to fall."

  "So I cleaved my soul… t-talking to t-the Archangel… f-for... for nothing?!" Zheng heaved, trying not to stutter.

  "Obviously not," the Clan Leader replied. "You have now confirmed that Alexander Glock is a threat, one that can absolutely destroy us if we let him. If Uriel ranted this much about him, he is a problem and a dangerous enemy not to be taken lightly."

  "So what are we..." Zheng began.

  "There was a kernel of a clear path forward amidst the mad ramblings of the Archangel. We will carefully and slowly destroy Alexander Glock," Kai said. "Not through direct confrontation - that would be foolish, for he is far stronger than he appears. We will use Omnithornian law itself. We will isolate him. Separate him from his allies. Imprison him. Study him, interrogate him, learn what he has done on Arx, what sort of a magic tree of destruction he planted there that threatens our future."

  Zheng swallowed, his entire body aching and throbbing. "How?"

  "Leave the doing to our agents in Omnithornia," Kai said. "You are to recover from speaking to Uriel in the healing chambers. Once Alexander Glock is imprisoned, Vespera will be dealt with by her own father. A soul bond can be carved out with creative application of... Astral Phantoms. Far too much hangs on his merger. We need SimmiTech's resources and capabilities in Arkship construction if we are to flee this Earth. Perhaps our merger is what the Archangel defined as our ‘destruction’? Fear not, my progeny. We will not perish. We will not let our bound god free, carry her wherever we head. We will not stop, for the future itself is ours to predict and to forge.”