Akasha paused for a moment, the soft ambient glow of the underground healing chambers casting shifting patterns across his luminous brown skin as he tried to figure out why Amber kept summoning him so often.
Notifications continued to appear, yet he dismissed them once more with a single thought, deciding that whatever troubled her could wait until he had finished speaking with the Ancestors.
’I doubt she’s in trouble... that’s very unlikely, unless she’s being truly careless,’ he thought, the corners of his lips twitching faintly at the notion while his gaze drifted for a heartbeat toward the cavern wall.
He had not really taken the time to study the evolved stars of Amber and Liliana in detail, but knowing they were God-ranked Stars alone was telling enough.
The rank did not necessarily mean they were more powerful, yet it certainly made them far more difficult to restrain or manage.
His eyes, swirling with purple infinity symbols, lifted toward the two figures reclining in their healing tubs.
With the same easy smile, he turned to the male Ancestor first, his voice calm and unhurried.
"Well, the future of Kalpa," he said, the water in the tubs answering his words with the faintest ripple, "is in good hands. There should be no worry for any other faction... other than the one I myself created."
The male Ancestor’s fingers, which had been resting loosely along the stone rim of his tub, tightened by a fraction.
His brown eyes narrowed—not in challenge, but in the careful calculation of a man weighing every possible implication of those words.
Beside him, the female Ancestor’s breathing slowed almost imperceptibly, her gaze fixed on Akasha’s face as though she might read the truth of his claim in the shifting infinity of his eyes.
And in that moment, it felt as though the air around Akasha had grown even more mysterious, as the shadows themselves leaned in to listen.
The Ancestors who remained on Kalpa knew enough about the Pantheons to understand that such a faction was far beyond anything an Academy could hope to challenge alone.
Even as doubt had begun to take root in their minds, Akasha’s smile remained steady, unshaken.
He let the silence linger just long enough for their unspoken questions to gather weight and substance, before speaking again.
His posture was relaxed, with one hand resting lightly on the arm of the chair, the other drawing a slow, almost tender circle in the air, as though shaping thoughts that only he could see.
"I do indeed have my own pantheon," he said as he continued.
"And the biggest changes for you all... will soon come from that."
He went on to share more about his plans with them.
Now that the Academy of Veils had become the Academy of Dreams, Akasha had no intention of letting the current inhabitants remain in Kalpa.
In fact, his goal was to remove anyone who wasn’t part of his faction, as he believed no world in the Star System should be populated by beings he hadn’t personally chosen or approved.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the quiet lap of water against stone.
Both Ancestors froze... not dramatically, but with the stillness of people whose understanding of their own legacy had just been rewritten without their consent.
The male Ancestor’s knuckles whitened against the rim; the female Ancestor’s lips parted slightly, a single bead of condensation sliding down her temple unnoticed.
Their thoughts moved in tandem yet separately...
’Our... history...’
’It’s all... gone.’
The male Ancestor found his voice first, the question emerging low and careful, almost as if speaking too loudly might make the change irreversible.
"Did you... truly change our Academy?"
-----
Hours later, the same soft sound of water dripping still marked the passage of time within the chamber, yet the atmosphere had settled into a heavier, more resigned quiet.
Akasha rose from the Dream-woven chair with fluid ease, the ethereal material dissolving behind him in a faint vanishing light.
He looked upon the two Ancestors still resting in their tubs, their faces now completely unreadable, and offered them a small, almost gentle smile.
"It was nice meeting you," he said.
Though he was being amiable... the Ancestors did not answer.
Their expressions remained carefully blank, yet behind those carefully controlled features, both calculated the same cold truth: this being had never intended to remain among them for long.
He had arrived with the sole purpose of revealing something... a little unsettling.
The worst part was knowing there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
His message was simple yet chilling—he was orchestrating the removal of every living being from Kalpa, and that mission was already complete.
Akasha felt the heavy weight of their shared, unspoken realization, and without another word or gesture, disappeared.
[Ineffable Affinity]
----
In the next instant, he stood high in the skies above the central continents.
Below him, the Academy of Dreams—once the Academy of Veils—completed the final stages of its conquest.
The continent-wide barrier had already been shattered; what remained was pure war, and it was, as expected, entirely one-sided.
Akasha watched the unfolding victory with a quiet smile, the upper-air wind stirring the purple-and-white strands of his hair.
"This is good," he murmured to the empty sky.
"Once this is finished, Kalpa will have been secured in eleven years... nearly twelve from the moment I set the plan in motion."
He had given himself a twenty-one-year deadline; the margin remaining felt almost generous.
He turned his attention toward the stream of notifications concerning his members.
[Melvin Blackwood has killed over two million barbarians.]
[Melvin Blackwood has nearly killed Krax Von’El.]
[Melvin Blackwood has begun evolving towards his peak potential.]
[Liliana Salvatore has arrived on the world of Cylas.]
[Liliana Salvatore has begun expansion of the Dark Hold.]
[Amber Salvatore has arrived on the world of Loreua.]
---
Scanning the somewhat outdated information, Akasha raised an eyebrow.
He’d sensed the faint ripples of Melvin’s earlier battle, but learning that Melvin had only come close to killing Krax Von’El left a quiet question hanging in the air.
"How could he possibly not get the job done?" he wondered, not in a way that was meant to bash him, but simply because he couldn’t imagine anyone in the world being able to stop Melvin.
"Wait... isn’t he supposed to be the fourth of my generation?" he mused to himself. "Von’El..."
And just like that, everything fell into place.
A new idea sparked, vivid and undeniable.
Once again, the ineffable Affinity curled around him, and the skies of Kalpa faded away.
He reemerged in the void that embraced Dream Land, finding himself at the base of the Golden Apple Tree.
Inside the treehouse, seated cross-legged on either side of his zafu beneath the large flat-screen television mounted on the wall, Yume and Luna were already waiting.
They turned toward him as one. Luna’s voice carried its usual light, teasing warmth. "Now that the ends are being tied on Kalpa... where are you going to send them?"
Yume’s tone was quieter, edged with that characteristic mischief.
"I think you should wait until we leave the Minor Existence to send them away...’
Akasha settled onto the zafu between them, the soft creak of the wooden floor the only sound for a moment.
"Well, I don’t have an idea yet," he admitted, gaze drifting toward the blank screen on the wall. "I still don’t know if I want to leave the conquering of this universe in their hands."
Both women nodded, understanding settling between them without further words.
HUMMM!!!!
Akasha lifted one hand and gave a single wave.
The flatscreen television mounted on the wall disappeared...
In the next moment, it appeared in front of them, replaced by a shimmering, translucent surface that seemed to pulse with dream essence.
A slow smile spread across his face, the infinity symbols in his eyes rotating lazily.
"This," he said, "will now connect to the activity of my members. It will give us a visual of what they are doing... so I can better understand."
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