“The Mythic Five,” Thoth repeated, the words hanging in the cinnamon-scented air like a guillotine blade waiting to drop. He floated back down to his cushion, the playful eccentricity drained from his posture, replaced by the weight of eons. “It is neither beast nor glitch, Flameborn. It is a classification. A designation for a specific kind of terrifying potential.” He swirled his galaxy-tea, watching the miniature nebulas dissolve. “Tell me, Eren. You have the Eternal Flame. You also, I assume based on your cognitive resonance, hold an affinity for Time. These are Primordial Truths. Fundamental source codes of the universe. In the grand cosmic casino, you didn’t just win the lottery; you walked out with the vault.”

  “I got lucky,” I said, a little defensively. “But I also worked for it.”

  “Work?” Thoth scoffed gently. “Do you think effort alone earns you the right to rewrite thermodynamics? No. Luck is a factor, yes. But lineage... lineage is key.”

  He gestured, and the air filled with illusions. Massive, towering figures made of starlight and shadow appeared, bestriding galaxies like colossi.

  “Primordial Scions,” Thoth narrated. “Entities who embody a Concept from Birth. The Lords of Time. The Monarchs of Entropy. The Weavers of Fate. The Emperors of the Void. The Gods of Creation. These beings... they dominate sectors. Entire clusters bow to their whims. They have grown so large that for them to learn a new trick is like trying to teach a mountain to tap dance. Their Souls are calcified in their perfection. So, they looked for a workaround. A way to extend their reach without risking their own Essence.”

  The illusion shifted. I saw smaller figures, groomed in palaces of light, fed nectars that looked suspiciously like the Void-Root I bought for Anna.

  “Children,” I whispered.

  “Creations,” Thoth corrected coldly. “Legacy Offspring. They realized that the elasticity of a Soul is highest at the lower Tiers. So, they Create. And the moment their progeny takes a first breath, the indoctrination begins. Centuries of training. Resources that could bankrupt civilizations poured into a single toddler. Their goal? To craft a Soul so geometrically perfect, so densely packed with Mythic Authority, that it transcends the system’s curve before it even hits Tier 5.”

  Thoth leaned forward, his porcelain mask gleaming. “That is the threshold. Five. The maximum number of Mythic-grade skills a pre-Sovereign soul — anything below Tier 5 — can conceptually contain without detonating. Most powerful beings are lucky to glimpse one Mythic skill in a lifetime of Tier 7 wandering. These children? They are engineered to hold five before the Threshold.”

  My mouth went dry. Five Mythic skills. I looked at my own status. I had two. [Domain of the Ashen Phoenix] and [Prime Axiom’s Nullifying Veil]. And I was already Tier 6. I had technically “failed” the cutoff for the pre-Sovereign bracket, but the designation apparently still applied to the collection itself.

  “What happens when they get five?” I asked.

  “A Bell tolls,” Thoth whispered. “Not a physical one. A System-wide Edict. The ‘Accord of the Ascendant’. Eons ago, the Great Powers realized that if these perfect children were allowed to run rampant unchecked, they would shatter the balance of power before they even grew up. So, a Law was written into the Records.”

  The illusion changed to show a colossal arena, floating in a void of pure white.

  “The Convocation of Crowns,” Thoth announced. “Whenever a soul achieves the mark of the Mythic Five, they are summoned. Immediately. Irrevocably. It is a type of tournament as you would call it, yes, but not for a prize of gold. It is a tournament of Proving. They are pitted against the others of their Tier. To prove that their perfection is earned, not just bought. The challenges differ with every summoning cycle, and the prizes are unimaginable each time — for them and their Sponsors.”

  He looked at me. “It changed the meta-game of the universe. Some Scions intentionally delay their Tier evolution, stagnating at Tier 4 for a thousand years, enhanced by elixirs and essence infusion to increase their lifespans, just to farm skills and resources, hoping to enter the Convocation with an advantage. Some rush it. Most burn out. The absurdity of the training drives them mad. But some... some Ascend.”

  Thoth paused, letting the silence stretch. “And then there is you.”

  “Me?”

  “You,” Thoth chuckled, a dry sound. “An anomaly. A feral child running in the woods. You have no Primordial spoon-feeding you Ambrosia. You have no library of forgotten tomes guiding your build. You are stumbling in the dark, stubbing your toes onto unimaginable power.”

  He pointed at my chest. “You have two Mythic skills now. Your Domain and your Veil. You just unlocked a Legendary authority over Mana — [Apex Mana Authority]. Given your trajectory... given the sheer, laughable speed at which your Soul is devouring power... you will inevitably upgrade that to Mythic. Your [Phoenix Rebirth]? It’s itching to evolve. And that Leap of yours? The Truth of the Void is just waiting to yield.”

  He leaned back. “You are on track to achieve the Mythic Five naturally. In forty million years of cataloging... I have not seen that happen. A wild-born Five Mythic is a statistical impossibility. It suggests…”

  He stopped, the painted eyes narrowing.

  “Suggests what?” I pressed, unease coiling in my gut.

  “It suggests your blood isn’t just lucky, Flameborn,” Thoth said quietly. “Primordial lineage usually manifests one strong trait. Creation. Time. Ending. Space. And so on. But you... you wield the Flame. You are radiating Concepts of Beginning and Ending. You warp Space with your Veil while influencing the river of Time. And you commanded Mana with an Authority that felt innate. It suggests hybridization.”

  The air in the room grew cold.

  “Two Primordials?” I asked. “Mixing bloodlines?”

  “A Union of Truths,” Thoth corrected. “And it is forbidden. Strictly. Across every known universe. If Creation and Time mix... if Fate and Void conceive... the resulting child has the potential to wield contradictory Laws. To exist outside the narrative constraints. Such creations — and their creators — are... Redacted. Hunted down by other Primordials and their Courts. Snuffed out in the cradle because they are not just powerful; they are Chaotic variables that the Equation cannot account for.”

  My mind reeled. Two Primordials? Who were my ancestors? I knew of Enki, the mythological figure connected to my Bloodline. Was there another? And this “hunting”... was that why their world was purged? Was that why we were hidden?

  “So,” I said, forcing my voice to be steady. “If I get three more Mythic skills... I get summoned? To this Convocation?”

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  “Inevitably,” Thoth confirmed. “The System does not care how you got the skills. Only that you hold the cards. If you complete the set, the invitation will arrive. It won’t be an envelope. It will be a wormhole.”

  “Can I refuse?”

  Thoth laughed, loud and sharp. “Refuse? Oh, you are funny, Wildborn. Can stellar gravity refuse to pull? It is a Law! If you ignore the summons, the First Ones assume you are a rogue variable — a glitch — and you will be deleted, to preserve stability. You answer the Call. Or you perish.”

  I sat back, absorbing the crushing weight of the news. I had been worried about Vayne. About the Kyorian Empire. Now I learned there was a cosmic league of god-children waiting to kill me if I got too strong and showed on their radars. The ladder kept getting taller.

  “Why tell me?” I asked, meeting his painted gaze. “If I’m an aberration... a forbidden hybrid... Why not erase me yourself? You serve the same narrative, don’t you?”

  Thoth picked up his quill. He spun it adeptly. “I serve the Library. I preserve knowledge. And do you know what the most valuable thing in a library is, Flameborn?”

  “Silence?”

  “Surprise!” Thoth corrected, a grin practically radiating from him. “The stories... They always rhyme. The ‘Chosen One’ cycles. The ‘Avenging Scions’, eternally suffering for the miniscule possibility their Creator glimpses a Concept. I have read them all, trillions of times. They are boring. Predictable. Repetitive.”

  He stood up and floated over to me, poking me in the chest with the feather.

  “But you? A feral hybrid stumbling into the throne room with muddy boots and no idea how the court works? On this Grand of a scale, that... that is a twist. That is a story I want to write. I want to see you End their Heavens. I want to witness their Perfected faces when a human from a backwater sets their precious Eternal Law on fire.”

  He cackled, a gleeful, mischievous sound.

  “I am helping you because I am bored, Wild One! And you are sheer entertainment!”

  “Glad to be of service,” I muttered dryly. “So, lesson plan: Don’t get deleted. Learn to be powerful and extremely efficient before I get five Mythic skills and end up going to the cosmic death match.”

  “Precisely!” Thoth beamed. “Simple.”

  “Right. Simple.”

  “But before you rush off to accidentally conquer a sector,” Thoth said, growing serious again. “You still wield that Mana like a caveman with a club. You passed the test of fluid dynamics, barely. But you lack finesse in application.”

  He floated back to his desk and pulled a specific, thin slate from a hidden compartment.

  “Your next challenge is not power. It is subtlety. You are loud. Your Fire screams. Your Veil is a shout of silence. I want you to learn to Whisper. Lest a threat overhears your constant declarations.”

  He tossed the slate to me. It hovered before my face. On it was etched a complex, shifting fractal pattern of blue light.

  “This is a Weave-Lock,” Thoth explained. “It secures the next section of the Library. Inside lies a tome on the application of [Ember’s Leap] into offensive combat geometry — something I believe you wished to learn? Teleporting strikes?”

  My eyes widened. That was exactly where I wanted my Leap to evolve into.

  “To open the lock,” Thoth continued, “You must channel mana into the grooves. But here is the catch: If you use more than a kleptocron unit of Mana pressure... it explodes. If you use less... it resets. You must maintain a continuous, perfect, microscopic flow of energy while tracing the pattern in reverse. While reciting the prime number sequence. Backwards.”

  I stared at the slate. It was the mana equivalent of disarming a nuclear bomb with a toothpick while shakingly singing opera, using a measuring unit I did not know.

  “You’re a sadist,” I noted.

  “I’m an Editor,” Thoth corrected cheerfully. “We’re worse. We cut the fluff until only perfection remains. Now, get to work. I have tea to brew.”

  The days that followed were a torture of microscopic precision.

  I sat cross-legged in the center of the golden library, the Weave-Lock hovering before me. It wasn’t physical; it was a construct of pure magical theory.

  My first attempt ended in 0.4 seconds. I touched the first groove, and a shockwave of mana slapped me in the face like a wet towel, throwing me backward ten feet.

  “Too heavy!” Thoth called out without looking up from his writing. “You treated it like a door handle. It’s a nerve ending! Treat it gently!”

  On the tenth attempt, I traced the first curve. Sweat beaded on my lip. My [Apex Mana Authority] whirred in my mind, the newly legendary skill giving me unprecedented sensitivity. I could feel the ‘grain’ of the mana in the slate. I pushed, and again it popped.

  “Inconsistent flow!” Thoth chided. “You sneezed mentally.”

  Fifty attempts later, I held my breath. I dimmed my core to a pilot light. I wasn’t Eren the Conqueror. I wasn’t the Ashen Sovereign. I was a trickle of water. A gentle breeze.

  I traced the curve. Then the angle. Then the loop.

  My mind began the chant. Ninety-seven... Eighty-nine... Eighty-three…

  It required splitting my consciousness perfectly. One part focusing on the math, the other on the flow. It was the groundwork for the Clone ability I wanted. Multi-threading.

  Hours bled into days. Thoth periodically drifted by to place a fresh cup of tea near me or to make an unhelpful comment about my posture.

  But slowly... I felt the shift.

  My relationship with Mana changed. I stopped seeing it as fuel in a tank. I saw it as a medium I lived in. Like a fish in water. I didn’t need to grab the water to move; I just needed to flick a fin. The water wanted to move around me.

  My proficiency with the new Legendary skill was climbing.

  Finally, on what felt like the fifth day of staring at the fractal, I fell into a trance.

  The world faded. The hum of the library faded.

  There was only the line of blue light and my will.

  I traced the final inverse loop. The mana flow didn’t waver. It was a perfect, silken thread of energy, unbroken, consistent to the equivalent of a micromillimeter.

  A sound, softer than a heartbeat, echoed from the slate.

  The blue fractal turned gold. The slate dissolved into light, revealing a single, floating scroll.

  I slumped back, gasping, my mind feeling strange.

  “Not bad,” Thoth’s voice came from directly behind me. I didn’t jump. I didn’t have the energy.

  “Open it,” he commanded.

  I grabbed the scroll. It unrolled in my hands.

  Technique: The Flicker-Strike

  Classification: Spatial/Combative Required

  Premise: Do not teleport to the target. Teleport the target’s vital points onto your blade. Bring the mountain to the prophet, then stab the mountain.

  My eyes widened as I read the theory. It wasn’t just hopping around. It was micro-portals. Integrating it by using [Ember’s Leap] to create tiny, momentary wormholes directly in front of my fists or weapons, allowing me to strike from hundreds of meters away without my body moving a muscle. Or to redirect an enemy’s attack back into them.

  “This…” I breathed. “This is incredible.”

  “It is foundational,” Thoth sniffed, unimpressed. “The first step toward true Spatial Authority. Learn it. Then we can discuss your cloning.”

  He floated back up to his high perch.

  “Oh, and Flameborn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do not tell anyone about our ‘Hybrid’ theory,” he said, his voice deadly serious for the first time in days. “If any Primordial Scions, or any of their Creators, learn of it... they will not await the Summoning. They will come. Systems are not infallible.”

  A chill went down my spine. The Mythic Five. The Convocation. The Hybrid Curse. The world just got a lot bigger, and infinitely more dangerous.

  “Understood,” I said.

  I looked down at the scroll. Flicker-Strike.

  “Let’s get to work,” I whispered. I had a lot of catching up to do.