As Kain stepped back into the manor's courtyard, dawn's first rays painted the sky in soft pinks and golds.
Only one night had passed, yet it felt like a lifetime since so much had happened: mastering a new spiritual skill with his family; evolving Eve, Queen, and the guards; visiting Pangea to check the dwarves' progress; introducing elves to the planet; and learning he could plant another World Tree on Earth.
'Busy night,' he thought, glancing at the tiny sapling in his hand. Its golden-green shoots, barely three inches tall, looked unremarkable among the manor's lush greenery, blending with the ferns and flowering shrubs.
He knelt in a quiet corner of the yard, near a stone bench where the Orphanage Director often sat to think. The soil was soft, enriched by the manor's high concentration of spiritual power, the elemental fairies, and the continuous 'natural fertilizer' of various spiritual creatures on the property.
