Chapter 153: The World Sets Their Eyes On Me
Oizys’s violet halo steadied, her black feather wings folding tighter against her back as she leaned forward, her gaze locking onto Kivas with a mix of awe and unease. "If you’re that pivotal—if your existence, your deaths, your apotheoses ripple out to reshape all of Fathomi—then what does that even make you? The linchpin? The accident that the world wasn’t built for?"
In a way, it was a question that was pointed to herself, considering that she was still, in a way or another, Kivas from a different timeline.
The question hung in the air, sharpening the temple’s quiet into something taut, like a thread pulled too thin.
Fymnhendyr’s eyes, sharp and ancient, flicked between them all before settling on Kivas. "To confirm it, I’ll ask directly. Something that would make my hypothesis ring true—and Oizys, you’d know this too, since you’re Kivas from one timeline reset ago." She paused, her voice a low, resonant hum that seemed to vibrate through the stone floor. "Kivas... do you know of Fathomi’s maker?"
Samael’s draconic wings twitched, her black-and-crimson hair whipping as she shot upright, horns jutting forward like accusations. "Hold on. You’re not even from Fathomi originally, Fymnhendyr. Do you grasp what it means to pry into that? To comprehend the maker’s concept, it’s not some idle curiosity—it’s unraveling the weave that holds this chaos together!
"Information and comprehension is a vital part of Fathomi. One wrong thread, and we all unravel with it."
Fymnhendyr’s lips curved into a serene smile, unperturbed, her form radiating that effortless poise of something forged beyond mortal scales. "Before I lured you all—and you especially, Kivas—into my prison realm through the Grimoire of Chaotic Learning, I probed Fathomi’s surface and core. I sifted for any semblance of truth before making my move. It was... thorough." Her gaze slid back to Kivas, playful yet piercing. "It would be foolish of me to ask that without knowing anything beforehand."
"So, tell us. Do you know who—or what—makes this world?"
Kivas’s golden eyes narrowed, her expression serious but laced with a wry edge that kept the room’s tension from freezing solid.
She crossed her arms over her old regenerating white dress, the fabric that had been on her skin the moment she started this bizarre journey. "I know of them... I even wished for something right before I ended up here. A selfish little plea, born from eons of watching my old universe die in isolation.
"They heard it, twisted it, and spat me out into Fathomi as... this." She gestured vaguely at herself, halo flickering like a hesitant star. "I suppose that this answer is safe enough and complete enough to fulfill your question."
Fymnhendyr’s enthusiasm sparked, her voice lifting with the thrill of alignment. "And that wish—does it have even an inkling of relation to your ability to imbue Genesis Cores onto others? To rewrite souls and vessels like Samael’s, or mine?"
Kivas paused, her brow furrowing as she traced the invisible lines of memory, the weight of that empty void-space pressing in like an old ache.
"It might. Indirectly."
Fymnhendyr leaned in, her dual horns catching the light as she pointed a finger toward Kivas, triumph gleaming in her eyes. "By that alone—yes! The Genesis Cores aren’t random artifacts or curable existence—they’re personally handled by Fathomi’s makers.
"They’re the spark, the deliberate insertion. Which means you, Kivas, by existing here, by arriving with that wish—they’re using you.
"You’re the catalyst for the shift, for the development of a new rule since you touched down in Vaingall. The timeline reset, the Apotheosis, it’s all rippling from your presence the moment you’re handed something that possesses the same privilege as the maker itself."
Samael’s face paled beneath her draconic features, her wings half-unfurling in agitation as she glanced toward the temple’s sealed doors. "This... this is dangerous. If word of this spreads—if any faction, Yellow Order or Nightsilk Order, or even our so-called allies catches wind—we’re painting a target on all of us. Especially you, Kivas.
"You will be the center of everything, from the war, from the unwinding conflict that might involve foreign cosmic forces. You will be the instrument of that movement, orchestrating a fate of unfathomable scale."
Kivas’s chuckle was light, a deliberate thaw against Samael’s rising anxiety, though her golden eyes held a shadow of their own. "I’ve got it covered, at least this very meeting and its realization.
"Numerous miracles are woven into the air, the stone, the souls here—seals that fray tongues before they form those words. No leaks will be seen or touched, no whispers can be probed or felt. But..." She trailed off, her voice dipping softer, "I’m afraid of the omniscient kinds. Entities that could pry into the past, sift timelines like sand. Impossibilities that make miracles look like parlor tricks, all that jazz."
Oizys shifted uncomfortably, her black feathers rustling as she forced a grin, though it didn’t quite reach her violet eyes. "Paranoid much? Next you’ll say the makers are peeking over our shoulders right now, grading your apotheosis like some cosmic exam."
Samael’s gaze hardened, her voice a low growl that brooked no dismissal. "It’s not paranoia if it’s possible. I’ve seen fractures in fate before—leaks from higher planes that drown worlds.... I’ll work on countermeasures. Seals within seals, distortions to blind the all-seeing. Well, somehow."
Oizys nodded, her halo steadying as she turned back to Kivas, the group’s anchor in the swelling uncertainty. "Speaking of which—you called this meeting, Kivas. Inquisitive as ever. So, do you have any plans yet? I myself am currently making one, but it might be neater if we start from your ideas."
Samael interjected swiftly, her tone edged with the memory of past chaos. "The second one nearly cracked Vaingall’s foundations for days. The third Apotheosis might even be more drastic and dangerous."
Kivas’s face clouded, anxiousless uncertainty etching lines around her golden eyes as she paused, weighing the words like fragile glass. "I’ve got two plans. One’s... milder. The others are very drastic in comparison" She exhaled, steadying herself. "Which one to start?"
Oizys’s wings twitched in agreement. "Yeah. Lay out the sane option first. We can escalate from there."
Kivas obliged, her voice measured, threading the plan like a spell. "The first plan goes like this. I venture out. Leave Vaingall for a few days, let the apotheosis build in the wilds until it breaks out.
"I’d draw every faction like moths, even opportunistic individuals sniffing for opportunity. They’d come for me, turn it into a havoc-storm, and I’d gamble on one of them—or a future echo of Vaingall’s forces—subduing me mid-cycle.
"Pin me down long enough to contain the blast." She leaned forward, her halo pulsing brighter, illuminating the faint strain in her features. "I’ve tampered more with the Fateline since the second one. In that time, I’ve found a strong loophole that allow myself to stay conscious, aware, and halt the full cycle.
"I will be able to trap myself in indefinite ascension—forever climbing, never cresting and achieving my destination. This prowess is viable thanks to the Untyped Cosmic Soul’s height."
Oizys’s eyes widened, her voice sharpening with a mix of hurt and challenge. "Wait—you’re saying you don’t trust us? Vaingall’s strength? Me, Samael, Fymnhendyr, Yoiglah, and others who would risk everything to pull you back?
"The Renenutet’s Judgments cloaked across the bastion, Samael’s constant evolution with her Constructs, the diviners’ barriers, Yoiglah’s miracles... We’ve beaten you before. Why exile yourself to some faction’s mercy? Instead of relying on the very foundation you’ve built?"
Kivas’s gaze softened, but her words carried the steel of conviction, honed by too simulation of what’s coming, all brewing inside her head. "Before the Cosmic Soul? Yeah, I’d bet on us. On you all dragging me down like last time, tricking the conjuration of the Fateline and snapping me back to sense. But now..." She pressed a hand to her chest, where the regenerating dress clung like a second skin, feeling the dual pulse of mortality and divinity warring beneath. "I’ve got so much of both crammed into one existence—mortal frailty laced with god-forged fire. The intensity? It’s beyond prediction. I might not just lose anxiety or edge of my temper, I might’ve lost more than half of my individuality even if we succeed..."
The words settled heavy, pulling the group’s breath into sync with hers.
In that suspended quiet, Kivas’s mind drifted unbidden to Yevdi—the fleeting envoy from a sacrificed future, her form dissolving like mist after delivering that desperate warning.
Yevdi, born from a timeline’s pyre, existing only to ensure Kivas retained enough of herself for some pivotal event ahead.
An event that, in this mounting dread, felt inescapably, and possibly be the third apotheosis itself.
What if her future self who had gone through all of it, losing her sense of self—pushed her to harsher acts? Not calculated, but something colder, unmoored.
The fact that very Kivas even planned an erasure on a scale that devoured allies without remorse, or worse, rewrote Fathomi’s flaws into something unrecognizably cruel, all in the name of progress toward that one paradise she dreamed of.
Yevdi origins and the timeline she became a Divine Hive gnawed deeper.
That future might not even align with this reset—could be leagues ahead, after countless loops where Kivas had already crested apotheoses and fallen again, each cycle scarring the world further.
A reality with a Kivas so unhinged, commanding hives not of Constructs but of shattered souls, and her wish for love metastasized into dominion.
The thought coiled in Kivas’s gut, a shadow of what she might become: not savior, but the entropy Fathomi already teetered on.
Samael broke the reverie, her voice pulling Kivas back with gentle insistence, though her eyes betrayed the calculations already spinning. "The second plan, then. The drastic one. Lay it out—we’re in this weave together."
Kivas drew a bated breath, the air tasting of ozone and unspoken fractures, her golden eyes meeting each of theirs in turn—Samael’s fierce loyalty, Oizys’s mirrored vulnerability, Fymnhendyr’s cosmic curiosity.
"The second... it means killing me, before the apotheosis ignites.
"But not just any death—but also a precise severance, maintaining the timeline’s continuity even without this current vessel of mine."