After what felt like half an eternity, I finally finished cutting deals with the Mystical Principalities and snapped back into my body. The moment I opened my eyes, a wave of dizziness hit me like a truck while my head tried to catch up with all that new cosmic juice.
Once I stopped swaying, Luxion flew right in front of my face, his lens clicking as he scanned me over.
[How did it go? I hope they did not give you too hard of a time for our past mistakes.]
I shook my head, rubbing the back of my neck. “Nah, nobody blamed you or me for what happened. Their anger was pointed straight at the Maker for messing with the timeline. His changes basically crippled how magic was supposed to grow in this world. Honestly, almost every pact I made came with a clause to beat him into paste if he is still alive out there.”
Luxion bobbed in the air, clearly relieved, before drifting ahead down the hall.
I trailed behind him at an easy pace, grabbing the Book of the Vishanti, the Brighthold, and the Darkhold out of their display cases as we passed them. Just as I caught up with the little guy, something totally out of place caught my eye, sitting right alongside the other displays.
“Whoa, hold on a second, Luxion…” I stopped in front of the glass, staring at two high-tech, geometric cubes sitting on a velvet cushion. “Do you know what these are?”
Luxion floated closer to get a better look, his eye blinking as he checked his memory banks.
[Inan and I picked those up from a dungeon rift a long time ago. We held onto them because they were packed with magic power, but the type of energy completely threw us off. Based on what we’ve learned, they must have drifted in from another universe entirely.]
“Yeah, that is putting it lightly…” I slid the glass case open and picked up the Mother Box and Father Box with a grin. “These are crazy advanced pieces of magi-tech made by the New Gods from a completely different universe. Both of them have ridiculous computing power, and they are going to make rebuilding my Legion so much easier.”
Luxion tilted sideways in confusion. [Another magic system entirely? Well, that explains why Inan and I could never get half of these foreign relics to turn on.]
The magic system over in the DC universe was pretty picky, usually needing specific Homo Magi genes to use properly. But items like these were a mix of living tech and cosmic energy. If they had stayed quiet for Inan and Luxion, they were probably just asleep or waiting for the right power to wake them up.
‘I can feel a faint, warm hum coming from the metal. The fact that DC magic is in play here is a huge win. Based on everything that has happened up to this point, I almost certainly possess the Homo Magi genes, thanks to my wonderful benefactors. All those contracts I signed today definitely level the playing field against Davoth, but Valeria was likely forced to divulge all her magical knowledge to him. Picking up an entirely different magic book is going to catch him completely off guard—and that might be the exact edge I need to put him in the ground for good.’
Not wanting to delay my father-in-law any more than I already had, I stowed the relics into my Item Box and gestured for us to press on. Luxion resumed his flight, and I fell into step right behind him.
Leaving the relic gallery behind, we entered a sprawling white chamber filled with rows of heavy fabrication bays, while fleets of assembly drones hovered on silent standby above. As I took in the spotless, sterile space, my breath caught. Thousands of Doombots lined the walls from floor to ceiling, standing in silent, slumbering ranks.
[As you have likely deduced, this is my personal laboratory and the staging ground for my Doombot reserves,] Victor’s voice chimed through the chamber’s audio channels. [Your battle armor was being reforged within this very bay when it translocated to your body upon your Father unlocking your dormant strength. The green mantle adorning your shoulders is the very cloak I wore when we first crossed paths, tailored to match your stature.]
I blinked, glancing down at my attire before looking toward the ceiling monitors in bewilderment. “How did you recover my shattered plate? I thought you never learned what truly happened to us.”
[When your surviving Marines refused to disclose our coordinates and committed themselves to cryo-stasis, I reverse-engineered an Imperial Warp drive and deployed my legions into the void to find you both,] A heavy sorrow threaded his words. [My scouts uncovered numerous relics left in your wake, eventually locating the site of your final stand. Yet across that vast field of drifting debris, not a single body remained. There was only shattered ceramite and dried blood.]
Unable to lay his daughter or his son-in-law to rest, Doom had gathered the broken fragments of their war gear and interred the metal in their stead. Centuries later, when Leon began receiving prophetic visions of the past, Victor had unearthed Aremus’s fragmented battle plate to begin its restoration. Lacking the original Martian alloys required for a complete rebuild, he had forged his own enchanted armor into the plates—a quiet penance for what he deemed his greatest failure.
[Leon… I am so deeply sorry.]
A full-sized holographic projection of Victor materialized before me, his masked visage lowered.
[For ten thousand years, I bore the suffocating conviction that my pride was directly responsible for your deaths. While learning the truth has eased that torment, it does not erase the reality that you might have survived had I stood beside you. Nothing I offer can ever truly make amends, but placing everything I have built into your hands is where I must begin.]
With a sweep of his hand, dozens of holographic displays flickered into existence around us.
Windows flashed with detailed schematics of orbital and deep-space infrastructure stationed across the outer edges of the star system. Counter-Warp networks, automated planetary defense grids, long-range sensor arrays, and several massive, dormant dry docks floated within the projections.
[We constructed this perimeter in the belief that your brothers, your father, or the fleets of your Imperium would eventually mount a search. None ever came. Patrols over the centuries came close, but never more than three systems out. All of these facilities, save for the passive Counter-Warp arrays, were placed into cold sleep generations before the Magic Awakening triggered the Great War. The Old Humans never detected them, largely due to the frantic panic with which they abandoned this sector.]
I stared at the sprawling tactical displays in genuine disbelief. A massive portion of the defensive infrastructure that had been keeping me awake at night was already constructed, fortified, and waiting on standby. These installations did not require decades of grueling manufacturing—they simply needed to be powered up and dusted off.
“Victor… you know you do not have to shut down and erase your consciousness. If you wished, you could stand beside me, help me set things right, and watch our reality return to what it was meant to be.” I looked toward the digitized form of my father-in-law.
[I appreciate the sentiment, Leon, but I am tired.] Victor’s holographic shoulders slumped with an exhaustion no machine code could disguise. [Ten thousand years of watching this world regress, bleed, and crawl out of the ashes has hollowed out whatever resolve I had left. All I desire now is to let the dark take me, leaving this nightmare in your capable hands. It is a selfish indulgence, but I cannot carry this vigil any longer.]
I dipped my head in quiet reverence, honoring his wish. Losing both my father-in-law and a peerless mind tore at me, yet the decision belonged to him alone. The least I could offer was a peaceful departure and a parting smile.
[There is one final place I must show you. Come with me.]
Victor guided us toward a concealed lift at the far boundary of the laboratory, and Luxion keyed the controls to carry us to the surface level.
When the pneumatic doors hissed open, the sterile laboratory gave way to an expanse of untouched wilderness. A vibrant meadow of tall grass and multicolored wildflowers stretched outward beneath the open sky, swaying gently in the clean mountain breeze. I stepped forward onto the soft loam, caught completely off guard by the quiet serenity of the plateau.
[Up here, Leon.]
Victor’s shimmering projection glided toward a gentle rise at the center of the plateau.
Unlike the sprawling, wild fields around it, this hill had been tended with meticulous devotion. Orderly rows of unadorned stone markers crowned the crest, parted by narrow, gravel-lined footpaths that allowed one to walk among them.
I climbed the slope with measured steps, pausing before the nearest headstone. Chiseled cleanly into the aged granite, a single name caught the sunlight: Sarah Fou Aremus.
My breath hitched. “…Victor… are… are these… our descendants?”
I raised my eyes to survey the quiet terraces. Etched across row after row of weathered stone, the surnames Aremus, Bartfort, and Damme stared back at me in solemn silence.
A tremor ran through my hands as the crushing, suffocating reality of ten thousand lost years crashed down upon my shoulders.
[They are. I laid every single one of them to rest here, right up until the outbreak of the Great War.] Victor placed a flickering, translucent hand atop one of the four prominent headstones crowning the peak. [This is where we were all buried… by my own hands.]
I forced my trembling legs to carry me up the final incline.
When my eyes found the names engraved into the four summit stones, the dam holding back ten thousand years of grief shattered completely. Tears tracked freely down my cheeks before I could raise a hand to stop them. My knees buckled beneath me, dropping me hard onto the damp earth before Valeria’s grave marker.
‘Let it all out, Aremus. Mourn what you lost while there is still time to grieve.’
I stopped fighting the agony my past self had kept locked behind iron walls. My vision blurred as I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around the cold stone, pressing my forehead against the weathered granite as her name tore from my throat.
“My love… I… I am so sorry… I was not strong enough to keep you safe.” My fingers clawed into the soft grass. “Our boy went to his grave believing his grandfather murdered us, but the blame rests on me. I should have trusted my instincts and kept you far away from that slaughter. Instead, I led us straight into the dark…”
As my broken sobs echoed across the hilltop, the ambient air grew still, a profoundly familiar presence coalescing behind me. A solemn, grief-laden aura settled over the plateau. The entity moved with slow, deliberate steps, each weathered headstone he passed seeming to carve another fissure into his soul.
Wiping the tears from my eyes, I turned to confront the towering, golden presence of my father, the Emperor of Mankind.
“Why have you come here?” My voice rasped, raw and hollow. “This is hallowed ground—a sanctuary where my family and descendants rest in peace.”
“My… Aremus, I… I didn’t know…”
The Emperor choked on the word son. After everything his own hands had wrought across the stars, he had surrendered the right to speak that word to Leon’s face millennia ago.
“This… I never wanted any of you to sacrifice this much for the Imperium of Man. For my dream… that damn, wretched dream…”
Moving with quiet grace, he stepped forward and looked upon Valeria’s headstone. His hand trembled as his fingers brushed the weathered granite.
“This woman… Valeria Aremus… she was my daughter-in-law.” A deeply pained grimace broke across his features.
“Yes, she was.” I nodded, my voice thick with unshed tears. “If Erda and you had met her… I believe you would have loved her. I know Malcador would have.”
For a fleeting second, a faint, bittersweet smile passed across his lips. He quickly subdued it as he lowered himself onto one knee beside Leon in the damp grass. Placing a firm, steadying hand upon his shoulder, the Emperor remained silent.
“She was the most extraordinary woman I ever met. Brilliant, haughty, and the light of my entire world.” A soft chuckle escaped my lips despite the ache in my chest. “When I first met her, the very first words out of her mouth were a critique of how horribly inefficient my armor’s fusion core was. She called me a semi-intelligent caveman who had a great deal to learn.”
For the next two hours, I sat in the meadow, pouring out stories of my past life. Both men listened in absolute stillness, offering no interruptions or grand speeches, simply letting me unburden the grief and memories my soul had carried in silence for ten thousand years.
Somewhere during that time, though I could not say exactly when, Victor’s holographic presence quietly dissolved into the breeze. In his place, Luxion’s spherical drone floated down, coming to a gentle rest upon the grass beside my knee.
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