"They’re creatures that are very much alive... just infected to carry a hunger I never understood."
He paused, not from uncertainty, but from mory. His silver eyes tracked the curve of the black screen behind Elias, not looking at the present—rembering sothing buried far deeper.
"It isn’t decay," he went on. "It’s subtraction. The virus hollows things out. Leaves the surface. Deletes the context. All that remains is the instinct to consu. Not food. Not life. Just motion and replication."
The red veins along his arms lit brighter, glowing faintly beneath his pale skin.
"It would be catastrophic if one of us—one of the Twelve—were ever infected by it," he said, slower now.
"The results aren’t sothing I’ve ever wanted to see. So I’ve stayed away. All of us did."
He turned slightly, his eyes flicking toward the distant hallway they’d co from.
"I didn’t always fight the others," he admitted. "There was a ti we built together. Shaped systems. Ford the scaffold of what the multiverse runs on now. But once they began stitching power from fragnts of collapsing souls... once they used entire races as test beds for shard refinent..."
He stopped speaking.
He didn’t need to finish it.
Elias’s glow pulsed again, steadier than before. It didn’t brighten—but it stabilized. Even beneath the weight of Kikaru’s absence and Dot’s capture, the resolve in him had taken shape. He wasn’t floating anymore.
"If you want to get you that gemstone..." he said, his voice clear despite the fray in his form.
"I understand that’ll be a huge favor to you."
The room held still. Even the whispers paused, just for a mont.
The crucifix tilted his head.
His silver eyes narrowed again. That sa faint smile—half acknowledgnt, half calculation—returned to the corners of his mouth as he regarded Elias’s soul.
"Yes," he said.
The word rang through the Expanse like a silent bell—deep, clean, permanent.
"And my favor to you is assisting you by getting you back to your body."
Even though Elias no longer had a body, he felt it—cold, tight, like pressure closing in around his edges. Not pain, exactly. Just compression. A sensation that pressed inward from all directions, threatening to fold him in on himself. His glow flickered under the weight, barely holding shape. The ache of Kikaru’s absence and the silence around Dot hadn’t loosened—if anything, they felt closer now.
His voice stuttered through the hum of the room, barely more than a whisper.
"How will I even know if my... body is still in good condition?"
The words hovered, stretched thin in the void. A thread of fear crept under them—quiet, but present.
The godless crucifix’s smile shifted. Not mocking. Not amused. Just slightly softened. His silver eyes reflected a flicker of curiosity as he raised the translucent orb in his right hand, Dot’s sleeping form still nestled within.
Her light was faint, but stable—each pulse still linked to Elias, synchronized like breath and heartbeat.
"Ask your friend ’Dot’s,’" he said.
His tone was level. Clear. The crystalline walls gave a subtle tremble behind him, and the red veins beneath his skin pulsed brighter as his voice moved through the air.
Inside the orb, Dot stirred.
Her glow shimred, then flared, her tiny Ikona form blinking into full visibility. She hovered above the orb’s surface, wings flickering unevenly—one side brighter than the other, her fra unstable, like soone trying to wake up while still dreaming.
She blinked rapidly, looking down, then up, then sideways.
"I... oh. Uh. This is weird."
Her voice cracked slightly—still faint, but carrying just enough buzz to push through the room’s pressure. She rotated mid-air once, trying to orient herself, then stopped moving entirely.
"I feel like I’m talking to two people at once."
She focused suddenly—brightening.
"Hi."
The next sentence ca fast.
"Yes. Your body is... encased? In a massive... shard? It’s big. Really big. I don’t know why it’s that size. Maybe a defense thing? Or... dramatic flair?"
She drifted slightly upward, wings jittering behind her.
"Kikaru and Oliver are there. They’re arguing, I think. Or talking seriously. One of those. Either way—super slow. Like, I don’t get why they’re not doing anything yet. I’ve seen snails make decisions faster than this."
She looked up again, her glow pulsing in rhythm with Elias’s soul.
"And I have two heads now. I think. This is kind of aweso. And awful."The godless crucifix tilted his head, silver eyes narrowing as he studied Dot. The faint smile remained at the corners of his mouth—curious, not mocking. His gaze stayed on her as she hovered above the orb, wings twitching erratically, still adjusting to her fractured sense of self.
His voice erged low and calm, resonating through the room like a current bending the air around them.
"That would be the ti dilation, my little friend," he said.
Each word pushed outward—asured, certain. The crimson mist curled tighter at his feet, responding to the shift in his tone. The crystalline walls gave a soft tremble in return, their pulse syncing faintly with Dot’s confused glow.
"You’re perceiving two separate events... simultaneously," he continued.
"One here. One tied to the body back in your original plane. It’s not dual consciousness—it’s dual observation. You’re split, but still joined."
He paused for a breath, not because he needed to, but to let the weight of it sink.
"Since I’m the one speaking with you, this realm has beco the dictating point. This version of space determines ti for your awareness. I anchor it here."
He shifted slightly, and the red lining of his cloak caught the fractured starlight from the spires outside, casting a sar of color along the crystalline bone walls. It didn’t shimr. It bled—soft, slow, and deliberate.
"When you return to the surface with Elias," he said, "the planet will have moved forward without you. It may have been a decade since the alien conflict reached its peak."
He didn’t need to explain more than that. The implication hung there, already growing larger in Elias’s mind.
"There’s no telling what shape the world is in now... or how the survivors handled the fallout. But the master gem still lies beneath the capital. You’ll have to gain power. Live as one of them. And when the ti cos—descend."
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