[The Primordial Forge - The Celestial Anvil]
The Primordial Forge was a dimension of blinding heat and deafening noise. Rivers of liquid starlight flowed through massive channels of white-hot mythril. This was the factory of the Elder Gods, where the fundamental building blocks of magic and matter were manufactured.
Clinging to the shadows of the massive rafters was Silas, the scarred leader of the Silent Seraphs.
Silas was no longer working for the Holy Kingdom. He was wearing a high-vis stealth suit featuring the Pantheon Group logo. He was currently working off his 200,000 Gold commercial leasing debt as an indentured corporate spy.
"I am in position over the Central Anvil, Principal Thorne," Silas whispered into a magical earpiece, the oppressive heat singing his eyebrows.
Back in the Principal's Office of the Abyssal Academy, Victor Thorne sat behind his mahogany desk, watching the live feed through the Tycoon's Ledger. Seraphina stood beside him, her silver clipboard ready.
"Do you have a visual on the target, Silas?" Victor asked, taking a slow sip of his black coffee.
"Affirmative," Silas adjusted the lens of his scrying monocle.
Down below, the Forgefather—an ancient, towering Elder God made of molten brass and cosmic fire—was sleeping lazily on a throne of cooled magma.
But Victor didn't care about the God. He cared about the lesser deity frantically working at the anvil. It was a four-armed celestial engineer named Valerius. Valerius was currently hammering a glowing, golden slab of pure Creation Magic, consulting a massive, floating scroll of celestial runes.
"The Elder Gods hold an absolute monopoly on Creation Magic," Victor explained to Seraphina, his Tycoon's Aura humming with calculation. "They use those proprietary runic formulas to build worlds. If we steal their blueprints, we can manufacture our own digital dimensions without paying their exorbitant licensing fees."
"Corporate espionage, Sir?" Seraphina smirked.
"Reverse engineering," Victor corrected her smoothly. "Silas. Photograph the blueprints."
Up in the rafters, Silas tapped his monocle, capturing high-resolution images of the floating celestial runes.
CLICK.
The faint sound of the magical shutter echoed over the magma rivers.
Instantly, the Forgefather's molten eyes snapped open. "MORTAL THIEF!" the Elder God roared, a sound that threatened to shatter Silas's eardrums. "YOU DARE STEAL THE SECRETS OF CREATION?!"
A massive pillar of cosmic fire erupted toward the rafters, incinerating the stealth ward and sending Silas plummeting toward the blazing anvil below.