It's been two days —fifty days since the Second Epoch Cycle began—since we uncovered Emperor Liang Zhenyu's diary. And in those two days, Veneri hasn't slept, hasn't eaten properly and barely even left the throne room.
He's been translating nonstop.
I knew because I followed Narisva everywhere and she had been checking on him constantly. She never said it out loud, but the way she kept glancing toward the palace wing that held the throne room made it obvious she was worried.
I was too. Veneri had warned us that deciphering Hidden Truths came with a cost. I just didn't expect the cost to look like that.
It happened on the second night.
Narisva was reviewing patrol reports when she suddenly froze mid-sentence. Her head snapped toward the corridor leading to the throne room.
It wasn't the kind of scream someone let out when they were startled or angry. It was the kind of sound one can only make when their body was being destroyed.
Narisva didn't hesitate. I followed right behind her, even though she couldn't see me. My holographic form flickered as I phased through the walls to keep up. By the time we reached the throne room doors, the screaming had turned into wet, choking gasps. Narisva shoved the doors open and froze.
Veneri was lying on the floor in front of the throne, surrounded by a pool of blood. It spread beneath him, soaking into the cracks of the tiles and reflecting the torch light.
"Veneri!"
Narisva's voice broke as she rushed forward and dropped to her knees beside him. He looked up at her but his eyes were blood-red, as if the whites had been flooded with blood. Thin streams of it leaked from the corners, running down his cheeks. He tried to speak but instead, he coughed.
A spray of blood burst from his mouth, splattering across his chest and Narisva's hands.
"Your Body Reconstruction—why isn't it healing you?!"
It was healing him. I could see it.
His torn muscles and bones were knitting back together but every time one injury closed, another one opened somewhere else. His body was being ripped apart faster than it could repair itself. It was like watching someone drown in their own blood while their body kept trying—and failing—to keep them alive.
"Hidden… Truth…"
Another spasm wracked his body and more blood poured from his nose and mouth, splashing into the pool beneath him. Narisva grabbed his shoulders, pulling his head into her lap to keep him from smashing it against the floor.
"I can't heal you. I can't… I can't even take your pain…"
She looked completely helpless.
I floated closer, kneeling beside them even though she couldn't see me. My hands hovered uselessly over his chest, glitching as they passed straight through him.
"Veneri, stop! You're killing yourself!"
His gaze flickered toward me for a split second—just long enough to show that he heard me. Then his body seized again and he screamed. The sound echoed off the stone walls, turning the throne room into a chamber of pure horror.
This went on for hours.
His Body Reconstruction eventually managed to close the worst of the wounds, but it couldn't restore what he was losing. Every time he calmed down, another wave of backlash from the Hidden Truth would hit him and his body would start breaking apart all over again. By the time dawn filtered weakly through the high windows, the pool of blood around him had spread into a wide, sticky circle.
He finally went still.
His breathing came in shallow, uneven gasps. His skin was and his clothes were completely soaked through with dried and fresh blood alike. His Body Reconstruction slowly sealed the last of the open wounds but it didn't give him his strength back. It couldn't fix the fatigue.
After a long, painful silence, he tried to sit up. His legs shook violently and he nearly collapsed again before Narisva caught him and forced him to lean against the throne.
"You idiot! What were you thinking?!"
He gave a weak, crooked smile.
"It took… days, but I did it."
She stared at him in disbelief.
"You nearly died! If your Body Reconstruction had failed even once, if your soul had rejected the Hidden Truth, you would have bled out right in front of me!"
Her hands were still stained with his blood as she shook him.
"I don't ever want to see that again. Do you understand me? I don't want to watch you die like that again."
He winced slightly, not from pain but from guilt.
"I'm sorry. I'm fine-"
"Sorry doesn't cut it. And I thought we warned you to never say you're fine."
He glanced at me.
"But it was worth it."
"What?"
"For the first time Nari, I got information that was actually worth all that pain. Zhenyu wrote everything. About Dimensium, about the origin of the Krepsunas, it's all here."
Her expression shifted from fear to anger.
"That doesn't matter! What's the point of information if you're dead?!"
He opened his mouth but she cut him off.
"You were screaming for hours, Vastarael. I thought… I thought you were dying right in front of me. Do you know what that feels like to sit there and not be able to do anything while someone you—while someone important to you is tearing themselves apart?"
Eventually, her shoulders sagged, and she pulled him into a tight hug despite the dried blood still clinging to him.
"Don't ever do that again without telling me."
He hesitated and slowly nodded.
"I'll try."
°°°°°
Even after his wounds had closed, the stone floor was stained in dark patches where his blood had soaked in. The sight made my stomach twist every time I looked at it. Narisva was the first to break the silence after he was better.
"What did you find out?"
She was sitting beside him on the steps leading up to the throne. Veneri glanced down at the mess around him and grimaced.
"Let's clean this up first."
He lifted his hand and summoned Soul Energy. The dried and fresh blood alike dissolved into fine motes of light and vanished, leaving the stone spotless. His clothes were fine too.
"You nearly bled out and you're worried about the floor."
He gave a tired chuckle as he talked telepathically to me.
[A record keeper should at least leave a clean workspace.]
"What did you learn, Veneri?" Narisva repeated and more firmly this time. "You said it was worth it so what could possibly justify all of that?"
He leaned back against the throne, exhaling slowly. His Body Reconstruction had healed his flesh but the fatigue in his eyes hadn't gone anywhere.
"More than I expected. Liang Zhenyu didn't just leave random diary entries. He documented everything like he was writing an archive for an entire civilization."
"You mean like a historian?"
He shook his head.
"No. Not just a historian. Liang Zhenyu wasn't only the Emperor of Vienshternhein. He was the official record keeper of the Hidden Citadel."
"The Emperor was a scribe?"
"In a way yes, but not a normal one. According to what we know, when Vasreveilder created the Hidden Citadel, he didn't just dump Transmigrators into a random space and leave them there. He designed a structured system."
He lifted a hand and began counting off on his fingers.
"First, he created the Hidden Citadel as a sanctuary for Transmigrators, who are people pulled from Earth who couldn't return to it. Then, to give them space to grow and develop, he created eight separate realms inside it. Each realm has its own environment and culture. And for each realm, Vasreveilder appointed a ruler known as a Reniatsus."
Narisva's eyes narrowed. "Reniatsus… that's not a term used anywhere in current records."
"That's because it was erased. Most of the official structure of the Hidden Citadel has been intentionally scrubbed from Spheraphasian history. Anyway, for Convergence, the realm where Vienshternhein exists, the Reniatsus didn't govern directly. Instead, they divided their authority into four portions and assigned each portion to a different being. Each of those four ruled a major region of Convergence. Liang Zhenyu was one of those four. He was one of the highest authorities in the entire realm."
"Then why was he also keeping records?"
Veneri hesitated for a second before answering.
"Because Vasreveilder gave the Reniatsus of Convergence something… unusual. He granted them knowledge about the universe outside Spheraphase."
The air seemed to grow heavier at that statement.
"Why would he do that?"
"That's the problem, Nari. Not even Liang Zhenyu could explain why he did that. The records state that the knowledge was given without explanation."
"So he handed them forbidden cosmic knowledge and just… walked away?"
"Pretty much. Zhenyu speculated that Vasreveilder expected Convergence to eventually face threats from beyond Spheraphase. The knowledge was meant to prepare them."
He ran his hand through his hair.
"And after fighting the Krepsunas for nearly thirty years, Zhenyu started to connect the dots. The more he studied their biology and their origin, the more he realized that they didn't fit into Spheraphase's natural dimensional structure at all."
"Dimensium."
Veneri nodded.
"Yes. According to Zhenyu's research, Dimensium exists outside the layered system that Spheraphase is part of. The Krepsunas are basically invasive lifeforms that evolved in a space where the laws of energy and matter are different."
"So they were never meant to exist here in the first place."
"Exactly. And their ability to infect and mutate hosts is tied directly to that. Their virus is partially dimensional. That's why normal healing and purification techniques don't work on it."
Veneri exhaled and leaned his head back against the throne.
"For now, there's… a lot more I need to explain. This is just the beginning. Zhenyu recorded details about the structure of the Hidden Citadel, the roles of the other three rulers, and even early hypotheses about why Dimensium's Passageway opened in Convergence specifically."
Narisva stared at him for a long moment before speaking.
"You absorbed the backlash, didn't you?"
He gave a weak smile.
"Yeah. I forced my soul to process the Hidden Truth directly so I could relay it to you without triggering the same reaction."
Her eyes widened in alarm.
"Veneri, Hidden Truths are as dangerous as Letian Diamond. You saw what that dagger did to Liang Zhenyu. You shouldn't be gambling your life just to act as a translator."
He raised his hands in surrender.
"I know. I know. I'll… try not to do it again."
"You will not do it again."
"I'll try."
"That's the worst promise I've ever heard."
He ignored me and stood up a bit.
"I'm going to explain everything to you but we need to start with the Krepsunas. Understanding them is the most urgent part."
Narisva nodded slowly.
"Then start from the beginning."