The alleys were quiet this time of night, too quiet for Evolto City. My cane clicked against the cobblestone as I walked, and behind me trailed Vidarath limping, eyes sunken.
We stopped at the dead end, a wall scarred with cracks and faintly glowing moss. I reached into my coat, pulling free my Multiversal Transition Device. The coin-shaped object hummed against my palm as I pressed it to the stone.
Reality split like glass. A rift spread wide, light spilling through. With a grunt, I stepped forward, and Vidarath followed without hesitation.
We entered the meeting place.
Dust hung in the air, disturbed by our arrival. My eyes moved first to the bar in the corner, its shelves stacked with bottles that hadn't been touched in years. The kitchen beside it was dark, the steel counters once polished by constant use now dull with neglect.
And then I saw them the two stools. One was mine, still angled slightly outward from when I last left it. The other… his. My friend. My brother in all but blood. A mechanical genius to my biology. The one who designed the Traversal Pylon, who drew the first schematics for Exo-Guard armor with fire in his eyes. We used to sit there, trading ideas over half-empty glasses, arguing until dawn.
Now only silence remained.
My chest tightened, grief pressing like a hand around my heart. I looked away, forcing my gaze elsewhere.
◇◇◇
The rift snapped shut behind us with a faint crackle, leaving only the stillness of the meeting place.
I stood there, leaning on the edge of the round table. Dust covered everything the galaxy chandelier, the shelves of books stretching into infinity, The marked empty chairs ringing the table like forgotten ghosts. The 15 now 16 seats, though they looked hollow without their occupants. I looked at the marked from the Number 1 to 15 with one not marked the place where Zalthorion would sit.
My eyes drifted to the walls. The pictures still hung there, faded but alive with memory. Celebrations. Missions gone wrong. Chaos that only we could have called "fun."
There one photo of me, arm slung around an unconscious fish-human hybrid diplomat I'd "accidentally" kidnapped after too many drinks. The others laughed so hard we nearly got arrested by Evolto security.
My gaze moved to the round table itself. For a moment, I swore I saw shadows flicker across it agents leaning over maps, dice clattering, laughter shaking the rafters. Our game… Legends of the Fractured Realms, Evolto's own version of D&D. Nights of madness and camaraderie, where saving the multiverse could wait until after we'd rolled to see who got eaten by a gelatinous cube.
I turned toward the kitchen, and for an instant I smelled spices, oil, roasting meat. No.1, the first of us, sweating as he cooked meal after meal, always grumbling but never refusing.
Back then, during the Prosperity Years, this place was alive. A sanctuary. Our sanctuary.
Now it was only dust and memory.
And yet… with the return of the Vale sisters, a flicker of hope stirred in my chest. Maybe just maybe the laughter, the chaos, the warmth could return. My throat tightened, and I felt wetness at the corners of my eyes. I didn't wipe it away.
"VIDARATH!"
The voice cracked through my thoughts like a lightning strike. Loud, brash, dripping with manic joy.
I turned, heart jumping, and there she was Lyssara Vale. My teacher. My tormentor. My mad, pyromaniac mentor. She stood in the doorway, arms spread wide as though she owned the entire room, her grin sharp enough to split stone.
Behind her, like a shadow given form, walked Sevrina. Silent. Eyes cold, sharp as razors. Her presence alone cut the air to silence.
"Teacher…" I whispered, half in disbelief, half in awe.
Lyssara laughed, the sound wild, unchained, echoing off the dust-caked walls. "Oh, how I've missed this place! And look at you, my little chaos seed, all grown up and still alive! Hah! Didn't think you'd make it this far."
Sevrina said nothing. Her gaze swept the room, pausing briefly on Wagner, then the bar, then finally the round table. Her lips barely moved, a whisper I almost imagined: "Back again."
The meeting place, long abandoned, suddenly didn't feel so empty.
◇◇◇
We decided to clean the room even though we could've just activated the self-cleaning protocols. The fact there was dust even with those safeguards in place worried me meant something wasn't right so we cleaned by hand.
I worked the kitchen and the bar, wiping down every counter and shelf. Virdarath went over the pictures, his expression unreadable but his movements precise, like each frame meant more than he wanted to admit. Sevrina kept at the chairs, every stroke of her cloth sharp and purposeful. Lyssara handled the round table. Strangely, she stayed quiet the whole time, her usual edge dulled.
We worked in silence until the place was spotless. Only then did I allow myself to exhale. I grabbed a glass from the rack, poured some whiskey, and let the burn calm my nerves. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Lyssara sliding onto one of the bar stools.
I hesitated just for a moment. Even if I despised her, she was still a teammate. With a small sigh, I grabbed another glass, filled it, and slid it across to her. She nodded in acknowledgment, nothing more, nothing less.
Virdarath lingered by a picture. I didn't need to ask which one it was probably the one from his tenth birthday. That day had meant something to all of us, in ways none of us liked admitting out loud.
Meanwhile, Sevrina had taken to Zalthorion's chair, scrubbing it with a kind of vigor that looked almost ritualistic. She wiped and wiped, as if by polishing it enough, she could keep his presence from fading.
The silence pressed down, heavy as the whiskey in my throat.
Virdarath finally broke the silence. His voice was low, almost fragile.
"I miss them."
The words hung in the air like dust motes caught in a shaft of light. Everything stopped. Sevrina froze mid-motion, her cloth clutched tight in her fist. Lyssara leaned back against the bar stool, her expression shifting into something I couldn't quite place.
I set my glass down. "Ja… I do too," I admitted, my voice rougher than I intended.
Sevrina gave a short nod, her eyes downcast. "Same," she whispered, the cloth trembling in her hands before she forced herself to keep wiping, as though movement would keep her steady.
Lyssara, though she smiled. No, not just a smile. A massive grin spread across her face, sharp and knowing. For a heartbeat, I wasn't sure if it was mockery or something else entirely.
Lyssara's grin lingered, sharp and unreadable, but no one dared press her on it. The room seemed to hold its breath. Then—
The air shifted. A ripple of authority swept through the chamber as the rift at the far end widened. Shadows bent, the faint hum of power pressing down as Zalthorion Veilstryx stepped into the hall.
No words were needed. Instinct, respect, habit whatever you wanted to call it moved us all at once.
I slipped into my old place without hesitation, the No. 4 seat, still carrying the faint scratches I'd carved there during long nights of arguing designs and theories with a brother long gone.
Virdarath drifted to the No. 14 seat, his expression unreadable now, though his eyes still shone with the weight of old memories.
Sevrina folded herself into the No. 8 seat, posture stiff, shoulders squared, but her hands still trembled faintly against the polished wood.
Lyssara slid into the No. 9 seat, that damned grin never leaving her face, as though she knew something the rest of us didn't.
Zalthorion didn't take one of the sixteen. He lowered himself into the unmarked chair, the one none of us had ever dared sit on, as if the table itself acknowledged his place above it. His presence filled the chamber like a storm held behind glass.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"It seems," he exhaled, almost weary, "we might be getting the group back together."
A sigh, one I'd never thought I'd hear from him. And then the knife's edge:
"In approximately two months, during the Seeding Ceremony, Evolto City will drift into the domain of an Omniversal God."
The words sank like lead. My chest tightened, the implications weighing heavier than steel.
Across from me, Lyssara groaned, tipping back in her chair, boot thunking onto the polished surface of the round table with insolent ease.
"Well," she drawled, "there go my chances of eating the Dendrite fruit."
I snapped my head toward her, the revulsion instinctive. "You disgust me, you damn freak."
Her laughter split the silence like shattered glass, wild and loud, uncaring.
But Zalthorion's voice cut through even that. Calm. Absolute.
"And Xytheron is planning something big. I don't know when. A century, a millennium but it's coming. We must prepare."
His eyes moved across each of us in turn, burning into the marrow of bone.
"Lyssara. Sevrina. Restart your training.
Vidarath you will join them again.
Wagner continue your experiments in any way you must. Once he returns, he will improve the defenses."
I swallowed hard. He didn't need to say who it was.
"The Xerathian situation has shown me we have grown too comfortable. I've already ordered Titan and Jaeger production increased. Mobile suit production reinstated. Mining expanded. Weapon experiments accelerated."
He rose, cloak brushing the floor, and without another word without a backward glance Zalthorion left the hall.
Silence followed. Heavy. Suffocating.
Until Lyssara broke it, loud and brash as ever, exhaling like a woman who had been holding her laughter in just long enough.
"Boss Zal really is becoming paranoid," she said with a grin that made my skin crawl. Then her gaze snapped sidelong, predatory, toward Sevrina. "But hey, Sevvy—" she waggled her brows up and down, voice dripping with mockery "that dominant streak of his really does get you hot and bothered, doesn't it, sis?"
Sevrina froze. A flush crept up her pale face, red blooming against her cold exterior. Her jaw tightened, but she said nothing.
I couldn't stand to look at them anymore. My body moved before I thought, carrying me to the bar. I grabbed a bottle didn't bother with a glass this time and drank straight from it.
Virdarath, though… he stayed still, his hands curling into fists on the arms of his chair. His eyes darted to the sisters, then down to the table. Nervous. Uneasy. Because we both knew what training with the Vale sisters meant.
Torture.