Location: Container Ship — Captain's Quarters — Night
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The amber liquid burned less with each sip.
Elijah sat across from Erickson, the cracked phone in his pocket, the mask still pressed to his face. The cabin was small—metal walls, a single table bolted to the floor, a porthole that showed nothing but darkness and the occasional whitecap. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, casting everything in shades of yellow and shadow.
Wilder sat on the bench against the wall.
His coverall was still torn. His glasses were still cracked. But his phone was in his hand—he had retrieved it from somewhere, and his thumb scrolled through Vidflash with the vacant absorption of someone who had checked out of the conversation before it began.
Erickson stared at the porthole.
When he spoke, his voice was different. Softer. Older. The voice of someone who had carried a story for a long time and was only now setting it down.
"There was a time," he said, "when man was enlightened into the study and mysticism of the spheres."
He raised one hand. His fingers traced a circle in the air—slow, deliberate.
"Above the surface world, there is a barrier. Not sky. Not space. Something older. The ancients called it the Vault. Beyond it, seven planets moved in layers—each one closer to the Vault than the last."
Wilder snorted at his phone.
Erickson ignored him.
"Each planet provided man with a specific gift. Not magic. Not in the way you think. Something deeper. The tribes of the surface world—seven of them, each aligned with one of the planets—received these gifts as a birthright. They called them... the Seven Threads."
Elijah's brow furrowed behind the mask.
"Threads?"
"Weaving. Tapestry. The idea that the world was a fabric, and each tribe held a different strand. One tribe could feel the earth beneath their feet—its weight, its memory, its wounds. Another could taste the wind—its direction, its intentions, its secrets. Another could hear the silence between sounds."
He paused.
"It was the most fruitful of times. The tribes grew. They built. They traded. They warred, sometimes, but always came back to the understanding that they were pieces of a whole."
Erickson's expression shifted.
The softness remained, but something else crept in around the edges. Something sad.
Elijah noticed.
"What's wrong?"
Erickson did not answer immediately. His eyes moved to Wilder.
Wilder was scrolling. His thumb paused on a video. The sound was low, but Elijah could hear it—a distorted voice, a crash, and then laughter.
The video showed Nico Morrecca. The Ferrano enforcer. He was dressed in something ridiculous—bright colors, a dress, lipstick smeared across his face. He was chasing a gorilla. The gorilla had his phone. The gorilla was taking a selfie, the screen showing Nico's furious expression behind it.
Wilder laughed.
"This is gold," he muttered. "Absolute gold."
Erickson stared at him.
The stare was flat. Patient. The stare of a man who had learned long ago that his stepbrother would never change.
Wilder looked up.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're giving me the look."
"I'm not giving you the look."
"You're totally giving me the look. The 'I'm disappointed but I've accepted it' look."
"I don't have a look."
"Everyone has a look. Yours is just more judgmental than most."
Erickson's jaw tightened.
Then, deliberately, he turned back to Elijah.
---
"The tribes saw what they had been given as blessings," Erickson continued. "But it was far from the truth."
His voice dropped.
"A calamity was approaching. From beyond the Vault. From a place that had no name because no one had ever returned from it. An interdimensional race—not of this world, not of any world the tribes knew—had set its sights on the surface realm."
"Invaders," Elijah said.
"Worse than invaders. Predators."
Erickson's hands folded on the table.
"The earth itself sensed the danger. It was a living thing, in those days—aware, breathing, connected to the tribes through the Threads. It tried to protect them. It gave them warnings. Visions. Nightmares that drove some mad."
"Did it work?"
"No. The invaders came anyway."
He paused.
"They arrived in vessels that blotted out the sun. Not ships of wood and metal—something else. Something that moved like living things. They descended through the Vault and spread across the sky, and the tribes looked up and saw their doom written in the stars."
"The Skywars," Elijah said.
Erickson's eyes flicked to him.
"You've heard of them."
"Only the name. Nothing more."
"That's all most people know. The name. The shadow of the name. The truth has been buried so deep that even the scholars at Dankweb and the Whitemere Gallery can't find it. It's as though someone—something—is ensuring it never comes to light."
Elijah filed that away.
"The invaders had technology that lowered the vibrational state of man," Erickson continued. "Made them weaker. Slower. More susceptible to fear. The tribes, who had lived for centuries with the Threads, suddenly found themselves cut off—not from the planets, but from themselves. Their gifts became curses."
"And then?"
"And then the invaders created the Proto Aerva."
Erickson's voice hardened.
"They took the tribes—the strongest, the most resilient—and they... changed them. Forced them to breed with something. With themselves. With the void. The results were abominations."
His hands unclenched.
"Half-breeds. They called them Abyssals. Beings that were neither human nor invader—something in between, something wrong. They were used as shock troops. As enforcers. As tools to turn the tribes against each other."
Elijah's stomach turned.
"And the Spectrals?"
"The Spectrals came later. When an Abyssal died, its soul—if you could call it that—did not leave. It lingered. It searched for something to inhabit. Animals, mostly. Sometimes plants. Sometimes... other things."
He looked at the porthole.
"The result was always the same. The host became twisted. Wrong. Animals grew extra limbs. Their eyes changed. Their behavior became erratic, violent. They were not alive, not dead. Just... trapped."
"The tribes became slaves," Elijah said.
"Yes. And livestock. The invaders fed on their fear, their despair, their pain. The Threads withered. The planets dimmed. The surface world became a charnel house."
Erickson's expression was grave.
"The loss of tribal members was catastrophic. Entire bloodlines erased. Gifts that had taken millennia to cultivate vanished in a single generation. Those who survived were scattered, broken, hiding in the ruins of their own civilization."
He paused.
"Then came the intervention."
---
"Who?" Elijah asked.
Erickson shook his head.
"I don't know. No one knows. The records are silent on that point—deliberately so, I suspect. But something descended from the planets. Beings of immense power. Not gods—something else. Something that had been watching from the Vault and had finally decided to act."
"What did they look like?"
"Like light given form. Like the Threads made flesh. They descended in pillars of radiance that blinded those who looked too long. The invaders tried to stop them. They couldn't."
Erickson's voice grew quieter.
"These beings—the Seven, they were called—broke the invaders' hold on the tribes. Not completely. Not permanently. But enough. Enough for the survivors to breathe. To regroup. To remember who they were."
"And then?"
"And then they left. Or died. Or returned to the planets. No one knows. But before they departed, they left something behind."
"What?"
"Children."
Elijah's breath caught.
"Descendants. Half-human, half-something else. The tribes called them the Asurim. They were not gods—but they were close. Their bodies could withstand the invaders' vibrational weapons. Their minds could resist the fear. Their Threads—their gifts—burned brighter than any tribe member in centuries."
"They fought," Elijah said.
"They fought. For generations. They pushed the invaders back, sealed the breaches, hunted the Abyssals and the Spectrals to near-extinction. It was a slow war—centuries long—but the Asurim never tired. Never surrendered. Never stopped."
Erickson looked at Elijah.
"Two of them were the most famous. Their names still echo, even now, thousands of years later. You know one of them."
"Gilgamesh," Elijah said.
"Yes."
"But I thought the Gilgamesh were the bad guys. The ones who collaborate with the invaders."
Erickson's expression flickered.
"That is... complicated. The Gilgamesh clan was founded by Gilgamesh himself. He was a hero. He saved millions. But his descendants... something changed. I don't know why. The records are fragmented. Contradictory. Some say the clan was corrupted from within. Others say they made a pact with the enemy to survive. The truth is buried."
"And the other?"
Erickson was silent for a long moment.
"No one knows much about the other. Their name has been erased from most records. Their gender is uncertain. Even the Whitemere Gallery—with its vaults and its scholars and its endless archives—has almost nothing."
"Almost?"
"Elena took me to a place once. A ruin, deep beneath the Portside. There was a mural there—ancient, faded, barely visible. It showed a figure surrounded by... diagrams. Five of them. Each one representing a different power. A different stage of..."
He trailed off.
"Of what?"
"Of the Mandate."
Elijah's blood went cold.
"One of the diagrams," Erickson continued, "looked like the rings you manifested tonight. The seven circles. The symbols. The spear-point at the center."
He leaned forward.
"Whoever that figure was—the second Asurim—their power was called the Mandate. And from what Elena told me, it was the rarest of all the gifts. It appeared once every few millennia. In someone who was not born to it, but who... earned it. Or was chosen by it. Or stumbled into it."
Elijah's internal thoughts churned.
The Mandate. That's what Azaqor called it. That's what he said I had. Not a gift. Not a curse. The Mandate.
Outwardly, he said nothing.
Erickson studied him.
"You didn't know," he said. "Did you?"
Elijah's expression—behind the mask—was unreadable.
But his voice, when it came, was quiet.
"I'm still learning."
Erickson leaned back.
His hands folded on the table. His eyes moved to the porthole, to the darkness, to the stars that were beginning to emerge.
"Then we have much to discuss," he said. "Because the Mandate—whatever it is, wherever it came from—is the key. To everything. To the invaders. To the tribes. To the war that never ended."
He looked at Elijah.
"To Elena's disappearance."
The cabin fell silent.
Wilder, still scrolling, looked up.
"Did I miss something?" he asked.
No one answered.
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