Dante stood with Oria at the heart of his yet-unfinished Heaven, high above the Bright Peninsula, upon the empty span of the Mirror-that-was-not-yet-a-Mirror.
Below them, the River of Duality wound its way through silver and indigo land, its currents still settling into stable law. The Sea of Chaos lapped at the peninsula's edge with quiet, luminous waves. The waterfall that would one day cradle a city still flowed upward as a simple, majestic column of light.
Up here, though, it was just the two of them.
No mentors.
No observers.
Just a god and the first of his children.
Oria stood beside him, twenty wings half-folded, their feathers shifting in layered gradients of moonlight and unseen colors. Her eyes—not merely bright, but deep—studied the empty span of luminous crystal beneath their feet.
"This place," she said softly, "will remember whatever we do first."
Dante exhaled. "Then let's give it something worth remembering."
She smiled, faint but warm. "Agreed."
He reached out and took her hand.
Her fingers were cool and solid, yet carried the subtle hum of a whole species waiting to exist.
"How do we start?" he asked.
"You already know," she replied.
She didn't mean knowledge in the intellectual sense. Something in his divine core—Dreaming Moon, Duality, Oblivion, Psionics—had been quietly whispering the answer ever since he formed the basic structure of his kingdom.
Dante closed his eyes.
First, he sank his awareness down—past the Mirror's surface, into the very laws he had written here without words:
Dreams shall have weight.
Hope and Despair shall be balanced.
Endings will lead to beginnings.
Light will not exist without shadow.
No soul is judged without being seen.
Those truths echoed back inside him.
Oria's presence entered that echo, her essence coiling around his like a second song. Where his law was Duality—reflection, balance, threshold—hers was Emergence: the ability for structure, hierarchy, and form to grow from a single seed.
Her voice brushed his mind. "You are the lawgiver of this realm. I am the pattern-bearer. Together, we draw out what your kingdom needs first."
His third eye opened without his bidding, a vertical flare of violet-silver above his brows. For an instant, the Mirror responded—smooth surface rippling like water.
Dante drew in a breath of moonlight.
"Let's start with the ones closest to you," he murmured. "Your peers. Your anchors."
Oria's wings spread wider, their tips grazing starlight that hadn't yet fully crystallized. "Very well. First, we give form to the ones who will stand nearest your will."
He let his essence unfurl.
Moonlight poured from him in slow, concentric waves. Dream-stuff rose like mist. Duality set the rhythm—push and pull, light and dark, flow and stillness. Oblivion traced outlines of absence where things were not yet shaped, promising to erase what failed and refine what remained.
Oria added her own.
From her heart surged a core of radiant structure—hierarchy, order, lineage, and command. Not the rigid law of tyrants, but the living order of a body: organs, limbs, nerves, systems, all working together toward a whole.
Their powers overlapped, mingled, braided.
The Mirror beneath them brightened, then deepened, showing not their reflections, but possible futures: an endless host of winged figures moving in formation, shielding souls, marching into the Chaos Void, kneeling in reverence, burning in righteous fury.
Dante focused on the first shape.
"This one," he whispered, "has to bridge us. You and me. The dreams I weave, and the spirits you govern."
Oria nodded. "Then shape the intent. I will provide the body."
He reached into his own core—the Dreaming Moon—and willed an aspect of it outward:
Dreams not as escape, but as judgment.
Visions not as fantasies, but as truth made bearable.
Light that enters minds and shows them who they are.
The Mirror pulsed.
A rising swell of luminous mist coalesced before them, condensing into an enormous, oval cocoon of crystallized light.
Its surface shimmered with quiet currents of moon-silver and awake-gold. Two patterns interlaced there: the calm of sleep and the clarity of revelation.
Dante felt the new being's concept settle.
"This one…" he breathed. "Dream Angel."
"Name her," Oria said.
He tasted the name before speaking it.
"Arenriel."
The egg brightened in response, faint lines of wing imprints appearing on its shell—eighteen folded pairs, waiting.
Beside it, the Mirror darkened.
Not with malice, but with depth: the kind of shadow that reveals what daylight hides. Dante reached again, this time pulling from Oblivion—not the erasure, but the boundary; the line that says enough and no further.
Nightmares not as torment, but as confrontation.
Fear not as cruelty, but as a blade cutting away rot.
Darkness that forces the soul to see what it has buried.
Oria's essence wrapped that intention in a stable matrix, preventing it from tipping into cruelty.
A second egg formed—this one a deep indigo-black with veins of silver fire. Its surface glowed faintly from within, like an eclipse frozen mid-burn.
Dante smiled, though his chest felt heavy with the weight of what this one would eventually do.
"And this one," he said quietly, "Nightmare Angel."
He knew her name as soon as he recognized her role.
"Anariel."
The shell flickered, a faint echo of a scream and a prayer overlapping inside. Then it stilled.
Two Primordial Angels—equal, opposite, bound.
Arenriel and Anariel.
Dream and Nightmare.
Light Inquisition and Dark.
Oria watched the eggs for a long moment, then turned back to him.
"Now," she said, "your armies."
Dante exhaled slowly.
He could feel it now—what his kingdom's future demanded. Lines of Sacred Soldiers, Ascendant Lords, countless souls and spirits who would fight under his banner. They would need generals—pillars who each embodied a doctrine of war so strongly that entire regiments could be grown from their example.
Primal Angels.
"Twenty-one," Oria murmured, as if hearing him think. "That's how many patterns your kingdom is gesturing toward. I can see the branches in your realm's future—twenty-one distinct war-systems that want to exist."
He didn't question it.
He simply let the visions come.
A dragon wreathed in lunar flame, leading assault lines across blazing skies.
A pack of armored wolf-knights, tearing through enemy formations with close-quarters precision.
A fox of living fire, medics and pyromancers dancing in her wake.
A silent forest commander, terrain itself bending to his will.
A vampiric shadow, unseen regiments cutting throats in the dark.
A snowy owl general, raining down arrows and spells with surgical calm.
A gleaming construct-mind, forging weapons and soldiers in synchronized rhythm.
A chaos bear berserker, turning battlefields into storms of unpredictable violence.
A falcon that was also eclipse, harrying the enemy with impossible speed.
A Nemean liger, all tactics and logistics and calculated slaughter.
A four-armed simian of might, siege lines shattering under his blows.
A walking fortress-turtle, armies sheltered behind his impenetrable shell.
A black-feathered crow of transcendent sorcery, bending strange laws to his side.
A storm eagle, commanding hurricanes and thunder legions in the upper sky.
Fourteen.
The images kept coming.
A void serpent, coiling through dead space, strangling enemy fleets and void beasts alike.
A psionic manta, wings of mindlight, turning entire armies' thoughts into fragile glass.
A crystalline spider, weaving webs across reality, catching information and magic and turning them both into weapons.
An astral stag, carving safe paths through twisted realms, guiding invasions and retreats alike.
A time-cat—lion, panther, something in between—slipping through instants, slowing enemy strikes, accelerating his own lines.
A mirror-eyed lynx, reflecting enemy miracles back upon them, undoing spellwork and adaptation in real time.
A star-whale, vast and solemn, carrying supplies, armies, and even small worlds within his cosmic bulk.
Twenty-one.
They formed in his mind like constellations.
Oria's hands glowed.
"Hold those impressions," she said softly. "Do not try to name them yet. Just let the branch take root."
Dante nodded, heart pounding.
He drew up power—not the wild tide of his full authority, but a carefully modulated stream, the kind he'd been training so hard to maintain. Moonlight rose from his feet. Dreams unfurled from his core, not as scattered clouds, but as intricate tactical designs: marching formations, supply chains, overlapping fields of fire, flexible doctrine trees.
Oria wrapped that in her own structure—lineage, rank, hierarchy, chains of command, subconscious behavioral patterns.
For a moment, it was almost too much.
The Mirror shook. Cracks of raw possibility flashed across its surface.
Dante gritted his teeth. "Easy. Don't… overdo it."
"I won't," Oria assured him. "Just enough to give them shape. The rest, they'll grow into with time."
Light surged up around them.
One by one, enormous ovular forms pulled themselves out of the Mirror's surface, rising in a wide arc around the two central eggs of Arenriel and Anariel.
Each new egg was immense, towering far above Dante's head, tall enough that even Oria seemed small beside them.
Some glowed red-gold with dragon-fire sigils.
Others brushed with silver fur patterns like etched wolf pelts.
One bore the faint imprint of fox tails in curling flame.
Another, subtle green lines shifting like leaves in wind.
One was nearly invisible, its surface drinking in surrounding light like a shadow.
Others held feathermarks, claw sigils, armor etchings, fractured geometries, and strange constellations.
The last seven, the newest war-doctrines, were especially strange.
One bore serpentine curves and tiny stars clustered along its shell like scales.
Another seemed to ripple, as though the surface were made of thought instead of matter.
A third displayed delicate lattice-lines like a cosmic web.
A fourth held what looked like paths—lines of light leading in and out in complex patterns.
Another had faint temporal rings, bands that seemed older at the bottom and newer at the top.
A sixth reflected everything around it in distorted miniature—a mirror-egg.
The seventh was vast and serene, shell patterned like a nebula swirling around some unseen core.
Dante realized he was holding his breath.
"Twenty-one," Oria confirmed. "Each one a war-doctrine made flesh. All equal. All yours."
"Not just mine," he said quietly. "Theirs. One day they'll be more than what we imagine right now."
Oria smiled. "That is the point of children."
He looked over the semicircle of eggs.
He could already sense rough archetypes—the dragon general, the wolf commander, the engineer, the void serpent, the psionic manta… but he resisted the urge to label them fully. Names carried weight. They deserved time.
"Let them sleep," he decided. "Until their world needs them awake."
"As you wish," Oria said.
The Mirror stilled.
For a moment, there was only quiet.
Then a new feeling brushed his senses—not fire, not discipline, but something between shield and blade. Chaos and order in equal measure.
Oria tilted her head, eyes sharpening.
"Your palace needs guardians," she said. "Not generals. Not inquisitors. Those who stand between you and anything that would breach this place uninvited."
"Twilight," Dante murmured. "Not just my Domain. A role."
He let his awareness drift upward.
The Divine Palace above the Mirror was still unfurnished—its halls empty, its balconies bare. But he could feel the potential perimeter: corridors of light and shadow, defensive wards, gateway nodes.
Around that mental image, he shaped a different kind of angel:
Not mass commanders. Not hunters.
Bulwarks.
They had to move fast enough to intercept threats, flexible enough to fight gods, disciplined enough to hold lines even when the Sea of Chaos itself screamed.
He reached into his Duality—his sense of balance between creation and destruction—and willed:
Guardians who move where I cannot.
Shields where my attention does not reach.
Hands that intercept blades meant for my people.
Oria wrapped that intent in a more focused structure than the Primal war host—a branch, not a net.
"Not twenty-one," she murmured. "Not three. A century. Enough for rotational defense, layered postings, and redundancy."
"Hundred," Dante agreed.
Light poured upward this time, not from the Mirror but from the Palace foundations above. It arced down in streaks like falling comets, embedding themselves into the boundary where Mirror met Palace.
Instead of a handful of enormous eggs, a constellation of smaller, uniform ones appeared—each still massive by mortal standards, but dwarfed by the Primal shells.
Their wings were written into their shells as gradients of grey-gold, silver-black, and faint violet.
Dante could feel their shared function clearly.
"Twilight Angels," he said. "Royal Guard. One hundred."
Oria watched them with a strange softness. "They will be the first to die for you, should the day come."
He didn't flinch, but his throat tightened.
"Then we make sure they have every advantage," he replied. "And that I never treat their lives as cheap."
Oria nodded once, approval quietly radiating from her.
The Mirror realm quieted.
One massive egg holding Arenriel's dream-light.
One massive egg holding Anariel's nightmare-dark.
Twenty-one immense war-eggs in an arc, each humming with a different battle-song.
One hundred smaller, uniform eggs forming a ring of future guardians.
All slumbering.
All waiting.
Dante felt… strangely empty afterward. Not drained, exactly, but hollowed in a way that said a piece of his essence now lived outside him.
"You did well," Oria murmured. "You didn't lose control once."
He snorted softly. "I almost did."
"Almost is not the same as did."
He let his shoulders relax, gaze roaming the rows one more time.
"Now what?" he asked. "We just… wait?"
"For a little while," Oria said. "Let them gestate. Let your kingdom's laws seep into them. They were just formed—they need time to anchor."
He nodded, but something tugged at his senses.
A faint… tapping.
He frowned. "Did you hear—?"
The sound came again.
A tiny, crystalline crack.
Dante and Oria both turned toward its source at the same time.
One of the eggs—he couldn't immediately tell which doctrine it held—had developed a thin, glowing fracture down its side. A second crack forked from the first. A shard of shell shifted, just barely.
"Already?" he whispered.
Oria's lips curved, eyes bright with something like pride.
"Looks like someone is impatient."
Another crack. This time louder.
A shard the size of Dante's hand broke loose and floated away in a slow, shimmering arc, revealing the faintest hint of movement inside the egg—light, shadow, feathers, something far beyond either.
Dante's heart climbed somewhere into his throat.
Oria's hand found his again, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"Then watch closely," she said. "Your first child is about to open their eyes."
The shell shifted again.
Light spilled out.