The air was dry and still in the chamber where gods, demons, and angels gathered.
The stone building sat at the edge of a dying realm, its walls cracked and brittle, leached of all color. A gray sky hung motionless beyond the shattered archways, and the only sound within was the occasional drip of moisture leaking from the ceiling. The room smelled faintly of ash and rusted metal.
It was here that the high-ranking leaders of the alliance met or what passed for an alliance.
"This is unacceptable," snarled Baron Kaelgrith, his charred gauntlet scraping across the stone table. "We sent elite forces. A god. A legion. And for what? To be driven back by one old man and a handful of human wizards?"
"Don't speak to me of failure," hissed Archon Damaris, feathers singed, jaw tight. "It was your squib agents that collapsed before they could do anything. If they'd disabled the shrine defenses—"
"They never even got close," said Kaelgrith. "They were hunted. And burned. Publicly."
A silence followed. No one wanted to speak of the projection. Of Morpheus. Of what he'd shown them all.
Then, from the far end of the chamber, a voice cut through the tension.
"Blame won't change what's happened."
It was Zeus of the Olympus court, one of the higher gods gaunt, tired-looking, his white robes stained from travel between realms. "We're not here to cry over one setback. We're here to choose what comes next."
"Next?" Damaris scoffed. "We throw everything at the shrine. All our forces. End this before it drags out."
"That would be a mistake," said Nihzara, arms crossed, eyes cold. "You think he's shown us all his tricks already? If we commit everything to the shrine, we're handing him the chance to annihilate our armies in one strike."
"What then? More waiting? Another half-measure?" barked Kaelgrith.
"No," Nihzara replied. "We divide him."
All eyes turned.
She leaned forward. "Morpheus cannot be in two places at once. If we strike both the shrine and England, simultaneously, he'll have to split his forces, his attention, his commanders. He's dangerous, yes. But not omnipresent."
A pause.
Then Damaris, frowning, muttered, "And you think he'll go to England?"
"He'll go where he's weakest," said Nihzara. "That's the point. We hit both. Whichever side he chooses to defend, the other falls."
Theon folded his hands in thought. "It stretches us thin as well."
"Better thin than dead," she said simply.
Arguments rose again, voices overlapping, until finally a grim vote was called.
Each representative pressed a hand to the worn stone at their seat, sending a faint echo through the chamber.
When the count was tallied, the decision was made.
Two attacks.
Two fronts.
And a war that would pull Morpheus across the world.
***
The shrine was a scarred battlefield.
Ash still clung to the earth. Smoke curled in thin tendrils from blackened grass and shattered stone. Blood had soaked into the soil in patches, and the scent of scorched flesh lingered faintly beneath the clean mountain air.
But it hadn't fallen.
Now, it was being rebuilt.
Teams of transfiguration wizards worked with quiet urgency, moving in coordinated lines along the broken perimeter. Hands raised, eyes focused, they turned rubble into stone blocks, charred wood into polished beams. Debris vanished into mist as conjured supports slid into place with practiced ease. Along the outer edge of the shrine, sections of wall rose anew — smooth, fresh, and glowing with faint runes beneath their surfaces.
Beside them, wardmasters crouched in silence, chisels and ink-dipped wands in hand, carefully inscribing glyphs into the foundations. Ancient wards — layered protections meant to repel intrusion, dampen hostile magic, and hold the structure in place against explosive force — were being re-laid stone by stone. The lines glowed red-gold, then cooled to a subtle silver sheen as they sealed.
The shrine itself remained half-shrouded in protective veils. Its torii gates had been snapped during the assault, and the main prayer hall was blackened and cracked — but it stood. Barely.
In front of it, silent and unmoving, the Terracotta Army waited.
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Lined shoulder to shoulder, their expressionless faces turned to the horizon, each one holding a weapon sculpted from magic-hardened clay. They were frozen mid-stance, mid-breath, like time had simply stopped around them.
Not a sound came from them. Not a breath.
But they radiated tension — the sense that the moment anything approached, they would shatter into motion again.
Scattered around the shrine, medics worked frantically over the wounded. Makeshift triage zones had been set up beneath charmed tarps and ruined tents. Groaning bodies lay in rows, many still unconscious. Wizards with burned limbs, collapsed lungs, missing eyes. Some were being mended slowly by glowing green light, while others were simply being kept alive until more help could arrive.
Covered bodies lay beneath white sheets nearby.
A group of teenagers — likely students from various magical academies who had volunteered or been caught in the chaos — stood in stunned silence, watching the cleanup.
A crater still marred the far eastern slope where Kazuki's last stand had been made. That patch of land glimmered faintly — leftover traces of anti-magic residue flickering like oil over stone. No one dared walk near it.
Overhead, magical wards flickered faintly in the air, expanding and shifting as the shrine's internal defenses were slowly recalibrated. A gentle hum coursed through the earth beneath every step, the faint heartbeat of an ancient sanctuary still clinging to survival.
And at the center of it all, even through the chaos and grief… there was a sense of brotherhood.
**
The chamber was dimly lit by floating candles suspended in midair like fireflies caught mid-prayer. The walls were stone, cracked in places, but covered in draping silks and maps scrawled with ink that shifted when one wasn't looking directly at them.
Morpheus stood at a low stone table. Strewn across its surface were items not meant for casual use the desiccated tongue of a mountain goat, the still-beating bladder of some eyeless thing from the deepest reaches of the world, powdered crow bone, a tooth from a drowned man, and a vial of venom extracted from a gecko bred in unnatural silence.
He worked with a slow, surgical rhythm.
Each item was ground, folded, or sliced into the others. The mixture turned thick and dark, pungent like tar laced with ozone and rot. He added three drops of his own blood, then stirred the concoction with his ring finger. It sizzled on contact.
With deliberate, controlled movements, Morpheus began painting the paste across his bare chest and arms. Symbols older than any modern tongue bloomed under his fingertips — curling spirals, open eyes, a broken hourglass dripping backward.
He knelt.
A whisper crawled from his lips.
Then a chant. Quiet. Wrong-sounding. Like time was bending around the syllables.
His eyes rolled back.
A tremor ran through the stones beneath him.
For a moment, the world seemed to lose focus.
Futures peeled open like pages in a book — not one story, but hundreds. Thousands. Most ended in fire and blood. A few in silence. One or two shimmered with the faintest trace of hope — fragile, complex, contingent upon a dozen impossible turns.
He chased that thread with his mind.
The symbols on his body pulsed.
Then, like a blade slicing through haze snap, his eyes cleared.
He stood, gasping. The room steadied.
No time to waste.
He moved to a desk tucked in the corner, ink already laid out. With practiced strokes, he began to write the first letter.