Six months passed in the dark.

  Amon sat entombed in tar, a fly in amber, a thought trapped in stone. The Preserverant that had once whispered to him, that had moved at his suggestions, was silent. It did not answer his questions, nor acknowledged his presence.

  Even Arbah was still, the little fox-construct sat frozen in his lap, its tar-body hardened into a sculpture.

  He was alone with his mind.

  At first, it was maddening. The urge to move, to do, gnawed at him like a phantom hunger. But the tar held him, and the hunger faded. It always did. That was the blessing of undeath, emotions dulled, appetites died.

  So, he turned inward.

  Belugmah had given him a gift before the silence. Lexemes, the words of power, and the syntax of miracles. They were etched into his mind, not memorized but known, the way a man knows the shape of his own hand in the dark.

  Amon could not practice them, not safely, trapped in a cocoon miles below the surface. But he could study them. He turned the symbols over in his thoughts, tracing their geometries. Fire. Motion. Shield. Each Lexeme was a seed, simple on its own, but capable of branching into infinite complexity. Stack them, weave them, and one could reshape the world.

  Or, so his lord had hinted.

  Unless it breaks a law of creation, Belugmah had whispered. Then, nothing happens. Or worse.

  Amon wondered what worse meant. He didn't test it.

  Instead, he refined his Core.? Half his mana poured into the surrounding Preserverant, feeding the dormant blessing, the other half he cycled back into himself. In, spin, compress, and devour.

  It was slow work. Painfully slow. But his memory—sharp, almost perfect since his resurrection—let him track the progress. Each cycle added a fraction of a drop to his reservoir. Each drop pushed him closer to the next threshold.

  ‘The strong dictate, the weak obey.’

  The old maxim echoed in his mind. He had learned it young, under dragon rule. He had accepted it when he died, and he accepted it still.?

  But now, he was climbing. Slowly, yes. But climbing, and the work kept him sane.

  He did not rage, or weep. The blessing dulled those edges, smoothed them into something manageable. Grief for Magda and the children was still there, a quiet ache in the background, but it did not blind him.

  ‘I see clearly,’ he thought. ‘That is the gift.’

  Thicketon was ash. The kingdom that his lineage had served for generations, was likely gone. Lavia the Demanding was dead, his Core harvested, his city burned.

  The Fearless Maws had won.

  Or at least, they were winning.

  ‘But I am still here.’

  Then, the tar stirred. It was a small movement at first, a ripple in the substance around him. Then Arbah's head lifted. Its tar-eyes blinked open, glowing faintly in the absolute dark.

  Amon felt the blessing wake.

  ‘Finally.’

  He reached out with his mind, hungry for information.

  ‘What happened? How long? What is the state of the surface?’

  The blessing answered, but not with images. With orders.

  Spread. Hunt. Burrow.

  The tar roots began to move, coiling through the rock, searching for life.

  ‘And the surface?’ Amon pressed.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Forbidden, the mist whispered. Three years minimum.

  Amon blinked, he tried to process the words.

  Three years.

  No sunlight, no sky, no forests.

  He had been yearning for those things. The hunger for color, for motion, for the warmth of the sun had been gnawing at him in the dark. He wanted to see green again.

  But Belugmah had commanded it.

  ‘Then it must be so,’ Amon thought, forcing down the frustration.?

  He asked why.

  The mist elaborated. Even if the Tharnells were gone—unlikely—and even if the surface was ripe for claiming, they would wait. And if, after three years, the realm was too dangerous, they would wait longer.

  We are weak, the blessing admitted. We must grow.

  Amon pressed for more, and in turn the mist gave him nightmares.

  Other armies were coming. Not just Tharnells, there would be Gnomes, Dwarves, and some disgusting boar race calling themselves the Potores. Once the fresh realms were exhausted, the feeding frenzy would intensify. Every faction wanted dragons, and every faction needed those Cores.?

  And then, there were the others.

  Celestials.

  Forces like Belugmah, but stronger. Older. Fed by the desires of trillions.

  Arknur, the mist whispered. The Harbinger of Conquest, War, Dominance, and Combat.? If Arknur manifested, and focused on taking the realm, the Garden would be crushed, not captured, not converted, erased.

  And then there was Muta.

  The blessing hated Muta. The whisper was venomous, bitter.

  Muta, the Celestial of Change, Adaptation, and Mutation, the antithesis of preservation.? If Muta arrived, the entity would come for them, and everything Amon had saved, would be taken, and warped into what it believed to be the correct way to exist.

  We were unlucky, the mist admitted. The rift opened too close.

  Belugmah's appearance near the Tharnells had been bad luck. Random. A consequence of using a personal rift instead of a stable one.

  But stable rifts were guarded by dragons, and their armies, all of which were perfectly tuned to removing foreign influences from the realm.

  So we hide, the mist concluded. Let the strong fight above, we will claim the realm below.

  The tar began to dig.

  Amon felt the blessing tunnel downward, away from the contested surface, toward the bedrock where no artillery could reach. It would be slow. The underworld of a young realm held only stunted life, insects, fungi, small creatures with weak Cores. No grand civilizations and their treasure troves of souls.

  But they had time.

  And we have you. The thought came from the mist, wrapped in a strange affection.

  You are the key.

  Amon raised an eyebrow in the dark.

  ‘I am nothing,’ he thought. ‘A farmer, and corpse.’

  The mist disagreed.

  You are mortal. You grow. You ascend.?

  Dragons were fixed; Scales were tools. Even gods, once forged, hit limits that made further growth difficult, something he would learn.

  ‘What?’ he thought back to mist.

  Given he had been a sentient mortal, it meant he was an Evolving Soul, one that could, and would, climb the Core tiers, climb forever; if they survived long enough.

  And Amon was eternal.

  He was insignificant now, not worth a god's notice. But Celestials understood infinity, they saw what he could become.?

  A prize, a weapon, a power source to be chained into a soul-engine, or furnace, and drained forever.?

  The vision flashed through his mind. The massive Tharnell mechs, the god-constructs. All of them powered by consenting or captive souls, siphoned endlessly, never allowed to move onto their next incarnation.

  You need to grow, the mist insisted. Become too strong to take. Too valuable to lose.

  Amon held Arbah tighter.

  "I will serve," he murmured. His voice was soft, but steady. "Faithfully."

  The mist rippled with approval.

  But Amon felt a pang of loneliness, he wanted others like him. Awake, aware, and helping.

  ‘If all the saved were like me,’ he thought. ‘We could win.’

  But he was alone.

  Others exist, the mist whispered. But not here. Not yet.

  It offered comfort. One will wake. Eventually.

  And when they did, the Caregivers would be ready. Because not all who woke were grateful. Some were hostile, tried to flee, to throw themselves back into the chaos.

  ‘I will reason with them,’ Amon sent. ’Or try to.’

  He had never been good at persuasion. In life, part of a farming community, everyone had known their place. The elders handled disputes, and the Scales enforced order.?

  The mist clung to him.

  Your presence is enough. You will calm them, console them, they will not fight you.

  "We need more," Amon whispered, stroking Arbah's ears.

  The mist agreed.

  The tar surged deeper, hunting, claiming, and building. Three years of blindness stretched ahead. Three years of uncertainty. But also, three years of safety. No artillery, no mechs, and no weapons that could reach them.

  Only stone, simple creatures, and the slow, patient work of preservation.

  And maybe—just maybe—someone else would wake.

  Someone who would see reason.