“There’s still a significant imbance between women and men—about fifteen to one,” Rey thought as he looked around. “Men are fighters; they’ll solve their problems the only way they know how… But the women—I’m not sure they’re willing to stake their lives on one person. Or maybe it’s the other way around…” He let silence fill the space while his thoughts kept moving. “If you save the life of someone who’s lost the will to live, you become responsible for them—you have to give them a reason to keep going…” Repoputing a world should be reason enough, shouldn’t it?

  Word of Rey’s pns spread far more efficiently among those present. The ones who were ashamed to speak or mingle with others, once they finally saw the future waiting for them—if they survived, of course—steeled themselves and did everything they could to please, to meet the expectations of their leaders and of the people assigned to watch over them.

  “Rey destined not to be…” Román said, like he was sharing a secret he’d decoded from the name of the person he was addressing. “I doubted your ability to lead, but once again you’ve surprised me. You’ve managed to stir something inside the people on this ship—something that makes them imitate and follow their idols… It’s a shame the trials don’t end, unlike the time we have left.”

  “Rey destined not to be?” Rey asked, remembering his father’s words. “Names mark the road to greatness—so how am I destined not to be?”

  “Looks like we’ve arrived!” announced someone who’d been watching space through one of the ship’s windows the whole time.

  “Oh—so we’re here!” Román said, making a show of steering the conversation away, leaving the white-eyed young man’s question hanging in the air.

  Deciding to ignore the old man’s provocation, Rey looked toward the hopeful eyes of those who heard the news and rushed to confirm what the pce they were meant to disembark on looked like. What intrigued him more were the expressions on the faces of each and every person who, for a moment, leaned toward the little window. So much so that even his brothers could read the answer.

  The immense orange-looking pnet was wrapped in a cloud of colorful darkness, surrounded by several moons, encircled by a dense halo made of stones, lit by three suns. It wasn’t habitable.

  “I don’t think there’s any being that could live under conditions like that,” one of them muttered. Even so, nobody lost faith in their leader, who stood firm with an unbothered face. And as soon as they finished their prayers, those who had watched the pnet swell rger and rger returned to their seats.

  “Hold tight to something—we might hit turbulence on the way down,” Román warned, as if searching for anything to do that would keep Rey from asking more questions.

  As expected, the colossal machine—after passing through the thick yer of stones and pushing through constant storms of hot gases—nded on the hostile surface.

  The ship’s readings confirmed once again that the pce could not sustain human life. Given the climate conditions, it recommended that organisms have as little contact with the environment as possible and that a special suit always be worn in order to survive. “This spacecraft does not have the necessary equipment,” the computer said.

  Again, everyone turned to look at Rey. Strictly speaking, no one had asked him what he pnned to do to solve a problem like this, but they couldn’t satisfy their burning curiosity directly—only those at the very top of the chain of command were allowed to.

  “I suppose I have a lot of work to do…” Rey said out loud. “First of all, I’ll need to consume blood…”

  “Does she have to be a virgin?” someone else asked.

  “No,” Rey replied quickly. “But she does need to be in good health, and her body has to be overflowing with energy… the more, the better, I should crify.”

  One girl threw herself forward first, unwilling to lose the chance she’d been given. Rey, on the other hand, felt a faint ache right where his beloved’s heart had once been pced inside him. Maybe it was Lía’s indirect way of showing her disapproval of the moment—or maybe not.

  Turning back to the one who walked through the crowd with little clothing on, bold and built like a fighter, it was the same girl who had once sung a beautiful lulby to put the sick to sleep. Without hesitation, she pnted her defiant presence in front of the intimidating leader and, in silence, swept her bck hair aside with a lift of her right hand.

  Tempted by the situation, Rey guided her body around until her back faced the rest of the crew. With no ceremony, he bared his fangs and pierced the delicate neck. The girl felt no pain, but she tensed every part of herself to keep from showing how startled she was.

  Focused on taking what he believed was enough, the young man slipped his hands around the hips of the one offering herself, feeling an unusual bulge between her glutes, which he didn’t pay much attention to.

  Feeling touched in an inappropriate area, she jolted so hard she couldn’t tell whether the rush of euphoria flooding her was caused by his hands, his teeth, his breathing, or the press of the boy behind her.

  Once his thirst was satisfied, Rey licked the wounds he’d made on the girl and moved to leave without paying attention to her—or to the people running toward him, trying to tell him not to do what he was thinking, to stop.

  Leaving the ship without the proper protective equipment, as the computer had warned, was suicide for a human.

  Dante and Jhades approached their brother because they had no choice. The girls with them were among those who wanted to ask whatever was burning through their minds.

  “Many of the people here,” began the one walking beside Jhades, “are curious how you pn to accomplish what you’ve set out to do. I ask that you count on us. Maybe there’s a way we can help…”

  Her name was Danie, a cherub. She had pink eyes, the same shade as her hair.

  “That girl’s blood might not be enough, and you may need more,” said Marín, Dante’s partner.

  “How am I going to convince the ones who still don’t believe in me?” Rey asked. “Not believing is like not hearing, seeing, or feeling… so I’ll act as if they’re never going to hear, see, or feel my words.”

  Marín didn’t react to the remark, but Danie narrowed her eyes in visible disgust. Still, the lycanthrope, the vampire, and the older man believed in Rey—so much that they didn’t even sweat or worry about whatever he chose to do.

  Leaving words behind, Rey stepped into a chamber first. He raised his hand and, wearing a confident expression, signaled for the mechanism to activate.

  The automatic door sealed shut. At the far end of the chamber, a hatch connected to the outside began to open. As a decompression chamber, it did its job: the young man’s body started to interact with the pnet’s climate.

  In full contact with the outside world, Rey opened his eyes and tried to fill his lungs—but he couldn’t. Then an indescribable pain hit him, forcing his hands to his chest as his skin began to burn, wrapped in fmes that seemed to surge from his pores. Like a living torch, he started walking, pushing toward the exit under the gazes of those who prayed for the best while bracing themselves for the worst.

  Once outside the ship—leaving the hatch’s metal behind and setting his feet on the ground—Rey felt the pnet’s environment trying to devour him with every passing second.

  Holding his breath and facing an enemy millions of times rger and older than he was, the young man imposed his presence against furious storm-bsts of dust and stone that struck him with rage. And though his body remained firm like an unmoving statue, his clothes came apart while his flesh began to tear, as if it were time-worn fabric being ripped by unseen hands.

  From inside the ship, the scene was horrific—so much so that many people cpped hands over their mouths. With nothing to do but watch their leader in dread, the onlookers couldn’t stop swearing that Rey was completely insane, or that he didn’t know what he was doing. Maybe he preferred suicide over continuing to deal with them. Or maybe he’d miscalcuted. Or maybe he was too proud to believe what the computer had said. And who knows what other pessimistic reasons their minds produced. To make it worse, he—already at a considerable distance—stopped moving and colpsed to his knees.

  “Can someone go save him?!” someone cried in desperation among the crew.

  “Of course,” Dante answered with a confident smile, ready to steal the scene once again and end up being recognized as someone ‘fascinating.’

  “No,” Román said. Scratching his chin, the older man still held faith in the one he’d been avoiding during the voyage through space. “Have faith in him. After all, he will be the god of this world…”

  Having gone far enough, Rey knelt on the ground, cut his wrists, and began letting his blood be carried off by the wind—along with pieces of his skin. Staring up at the sky with eyes already nearly scorched, the moment he finally felt his own death closing in, he unleashed the sorcery he had kept stored until the end. With words, the young hybrid without a surname summoned all the entities from the Grimoire known as the “Sanctuary of Athens,” the very book his former master carried everywhere.

  “Ancient Antiblicals,” Rey announced, making the new core he had created appear. “To you I procim once more. Sovereign lords of the world of the procimed, I stand before you with the purpose of paying my debt—the same debt that will satisfy the needs of everyone present…”

  Darkness arrived. The sounds of lightning forced their way through, along with countless events that accompanied the words that followed. A first line of twelve elemental lords. Behind them, innumerable creatures who had clearly reduced their size, and farther back—wrapping around them all—a gigantic serpent with draconic traits, so vast it could bite its own tail.

  “Nearly dead and empty-handed…?” one of the elemental lords said, furious at what he was seeing. “With nothing—and you call us like this?”

  Cursed in the minds of those watching, Rey lifted his gaze with a convinced smile, the kind that could face any situation.

  “You—condemned to exist only when you are procimed… I offer you my sorcerer’s core to guarantee you a permanent stay in this world. A perpetual liberation from your condemnations, from the book that stores you—that is my offer, to satisfy you and to pay for the favor that was done for me: keeping a vampire alive inside my body…”

  The creatures seemed to weigh an offer too tempting to be true. After all, sorcerers were famous for being clever—for lying, betraying, and swindling their victims just to keep them trapped for eternity in the pages of a book. Each of the hundreds of thousands of objects, along with the endless creatures, gave a silent opinion on it. So much so that even demons, angels, elves, and the superhuman ones seemed unmoved by the proposition.

  Then—manifesting as a colossal body cd in bzing armor, wearing a beard on fire, a crown of fme, and a massive fming sword over his shoulder—the Antiblical and lord of fire took form, who until then had been only a voice in the air. And not only him: the other Antiblicals and lords presented themselves before Rey as well, taking different shapes and sizes as if to say—

  “Very big words you dare to speak when you possess nothing but childish thoughts. You inspire no trust whatsoever, inexperienced sorcerer… We reject your offering, and now that we are present, we will collect our debt…” said the lord of fire, who also spoke on behalf of the others.

  The immense sword rose and dropped without mercy toward the kneeling young man, whose face stayed lifted. But the fmes of such a weapon couldn’t touch Rey’s face no matter how hard that Antiblical tried. Meanwhile, the white-eyed youth shrugged and stood, forcing every presence around him to bow and kneel against their will.

  “Inexperienced sorcerer, you say,” Rey said with arrogance and pride, arms folding as he began to look over all his summoned servants. “A curse is nothing but power you can’t control. The strength you have is directly linked to the energy I decide to give you. Your obedience is reflected in the respect you have for me—or in the fear you may come to have of me. You will never be able to curse someone like me, because I am the first and the only. Far from showing you my superiority with this behavior, I want to make you recognize how worthy I am of you—and my capacity to uphold my words.”

  A pyful smile rose from the crowd. It belonged to the only presence who did not bend under the control of the white-eyed young man—who met his gaze with defiance.

  “You call yourself Rey…” said the feminine voice, the same one that ced her joy into a warm, pleasant sound. “Don’t be so cruel to my precious friends here. Even if we can be as powerful as our sorcerer decides we will be, right now we are simple beings, desperate in search of ambition. Leaving that world of darkness has always been the reason that fed our greed—and for you to propose such an offer is too good to be true. In the name of everyone here present, I accept your proposition.”

  Releasing the presences he had been repressing, Rey rexed and, watching the feminine presence draw closer, added—

  “You’re the paper flower… the key to this book… the true one…”

  “You noticed,” she replied. “The curiosity in your eyes brings me memories. You’re right. In antiquity, I was the most powerful sorceress—and the most devoted. The first to document the existence of each and every procimed presence, and to fight for their liberation. Though I can be procimed, I am the only entity that does not depend on whatever energy the one who invokes me can offer, because I ended up becoming responsible for making these hundreds of millions of presences coexist in harmony. In that time, my power wasn’t enough. Trying what you now want to do, I lost the course of my life and became trapped within that same world of darkness that contains these entities… I am what you could become if you don’t have enough control to make your words real…”

  The woman with long hair and white robes raised her hand in an offering gesture, revealing something that looked like a seed. When Rey accepted it, she continued—

  “Inside this seed are two daughters of mine. Better than I, they will fulfill the purpose of correctly bancing the coexistence of these entities so they can be able to live equally. The rest depends on you…”

  In a hurried motion, as Rey stared into the palm of his hand, the presence of the condemned goddess vanished. Before the countless kneeling entities, the young man looked around, realizing they all sought freedom—and that their eyes reflected that hunger.

  Convinced, Rey closed his fist, cradling the seed between his fingers, and began to fuse it with his sorcerer’s core. It sprouted—awakening, in a way—into a dark stem crowned with bck petals.

  “On this deserted pnet,” Rey’s voice boomed, and on his shoulders he felt the goddess’s hand resting—she who had revealed herself as the most powerful sorceress of all time. “The only suns you will see will be moons inhabited by one of the lords. The new dwellings of the Antiblicals—the bearers of light—will travel through every corner of this slow-rotating world, making the days so long that to human perception they seem like they never end. There will be no nights. Only the shadows of those dimmed residences will exist. The sky will be no more; it will become an extension of the sea, to prevent the heat and brilliance of the stars around us from continuing their torture against this pnet. The atmosphere where the stones float around the world will be invaded by life-sustaining liquids, together with the rocks that will provide a starting point. Temperatures and winds will cease to be uncontrolled, for their respective lords will be in command. The earth will manifest independently of the other elements, which will exist only within it, not mixed. The lords are free to choose a pce to belong to—or to belong to all at once—and the creatures will also have the right to choose…”

  Those named by the sorcerer’s commanding words moved first, ready to serve a specific purpose. They marched ahead, swelling their energies until they could accomplish their tasks, while the rest watched Rey and waited for his orders.

  With the first part of the process underway, the young man felt his energy being demanded as if it were being mercilessly devoured by those who had begun their functions. The moment the air became breathable, the white-eyed youth pulled as much oxygen into his lungs as he could—he needed it to stay upright and not lose control.

  At the edges of the ritual, the pnet began to awaken, revealing more and more beauty and variety. Clouds carved paths between sea and nd while the Antiblical of water demanded its freedom, refusing to belong to any fixed pce. And so, for the first time, rain fell, exploring the surface of the earth with its life-giving touch. Gold, bronze, iron, and the other metals—like restless dead—rose from the ground and walked until they found the proper pce to bury themselves, or simply colpsed, returning to stillness.

  The lord of fire, the lord of thunder, the lord of light, the lord of darkness, and the others who chose to take refuge in the moons began their bors as well. Meanwhile, many animals opened their eyes for the first time—some emerging from earth and mud, others from the sea, and some from the darkest depths of the underworld. Despite all this movement, Rey knew that barely two percent of all procimed entities had managed to join the world. The process was exhausting.

  The poison of human radiation accelerated inside his body, weakening his core. The energy he used to control with skill now grew scarce, beginning to dip and falter. He was yielding too much power, and he could no longer keep consuming his own liver, blood, flesh, and bones.

  Withering like a flower without water, Rey understood that soon he would have no more energy left to give. No matter how expert he was at controlling sorcery, the projections of his ritual pointed toward an inevitable failure. And when that happened, he would be cursed to live inside the book of the procimed for all eternity.

  “Impressive,” Román said, letting out a whistle as soon as the instant changes became visible in the world beyond the ship’s window.

  Admiring Rey’s power, Román was distracted for a moment. The transformation around him was astonishing, and as if that weren’t enough, he felt a change inside himself. It wasn’t painful—if anything, it was relieving. With every second he spent breathing the air of the new world, he noticed the curse loosening its grip. Almost—on the verge of running and being free—Román felt the burning return to his chest, his breathing growing heavy again. Unable to let anyone see him like that, he smiled, exhaled, and pretended everything was fine while, behind him, the shadow of the entity consuming him took shape.

  Unlike the older man, the other spectators remained spellbound, tasting for the first time in a long while that sensation felt by those who build unbreakable faith in a god who holds their situation—and their lives—in his hands. It was like the ancient scriptures where someone said, “Let there be light,” and then the light came.

  Jhades and Dante, however, were uneasy at what their eyes were witnessing. To them it was as if everything their hybrid brother had lived through had served one absolute purpose: to arrive at that moment and create a world through the power of his words and the command of his abilities.

  “Come with me!” Román called as he reached the ship’s door. “All of you. Follow my steps and don’t fall behind—we need to connect with him.”

  At the call of someone recognized, Jhades, Dante, Danie, Marín, Heliúk, Max, and the rest of the ship’s crew moved to exit in a single file through the only way out. At first, some hesitated, convinced they would die, but the moment they felt the arms of a pnet welcoming them, those who had once been sves kept moving toward freedom.

  At nearly the st second, when the white-eyed young man was on the verge of dropping to his knees, he felt the support not of just a few but of every crew member from the ship. They wasted no time forming a pyramidal chain led by Román.

  Right behind the older man stood the brothers, their women, and their companions. Then the other leaders positioned themselves behind the seven closest to Rey, and the organized line continued until it reached into the ship itself, including even those who couldn’t rise from the floor.

  In that meaningful chain—hands csped, one to the next—those who considered themselves mere mortals were allowed to feel the hammering blows of a god forging with his own hands a world that had once been uninhabitable. In that moment, differences didn’t matter; they were possessed by a frantic desire to live on that promising pnet of freedoms.

  Rey felt Román squeeze his shoulder as if it were a warning. One that meant: “You owe me again. See? If I were your enemy, I would’ve let you die cursed.” He was at his tricks even then, using his abilities to transfer a fraction of the energy of those present without them noticing, so he wouldn’t have to use his own. But Rey had to focus more than ever, because combining incompatible energies was prone to sparking reactions between them.

  From person to person, an avanche-like effect spread, and Rey became the target of an overflowing torrent of energies that nearly destroyed his sorcerer’s core. The power multiplied exponentially and reached the limit of what his core could endure before colpsing. With no room for waste, he was forced to change the priority of his invocations.

  Creatures not essential to an ecosystem’s survival—but powerful enough to destroy it with a single motion—appeared, scattering in every direction. The water of a million seas burst forth, the fire of a thousand suns broke loose, the cold of countless winters wrapped the air, infinite darkness expanded, and an endless forest rose from nothing. Lightning and thunder roared while structures, tombs, altars, temples, and mists surged up like an unstoppable avanche.

  By invoking elements in excess—along with other essential existences—Rey managed to contain the vast amount of energy pouring into him. With monumental effort, he banced the torrent of power, and soon he knew he would be able to complete the procmation without fear of failing his word.

  Under warm wind spattered with rain, over earth and sky, the ship’s people witnessed the rebirth of different realms. They could recognize an innumerable number of objects, pnts, animals, and ghosts. Creatures such as: mirrors, swords, shields, bows, spears, staffs, jewels, whips, knives, armor, garments, shoes, wings, hats, cloaks, watches, ornaments, headstones, trees of different sizes, meadows, shrubs, leaves, succubi, vampires, lycanthropes, fairies, nymphs, cherubim, elementals, elves, orcs, ogres, bestialized ones, humanized ones, dulhans, cyclopes, trolls, dwarves, gnomes, giants, minotaurs, changelings, goblins, fauns, satyrs, amazons, golems, ghouls, harpies, hannyas, wolves, felines, dragons, elephants, monkeys, whales, white specters, and many other entities—unrecognized or too small to be seen—abandoned the pages of a bck-leafed book that was left without red ink.

  As soon as what had been promised was fulfilled for the entities condemned to live inside a book, Rey—smiling—let out a breath of relief, satisfying the spectators. Despite enduring the test Román had imposed on him, he didn’t feel proud at all. Not at that price. Turning, he looked at all those who had inevitably earned his respect—those who had indirectly contributed to the creation of a world and now y on the ground, stretched out, their eyes bright with hope.

  Román was the only one still standing, while everyone else closed their eyes to feel the rain rub across their faces in a new world. They felt freedom and happiness, a dizzying euphoria of struggle and conquest, but they didn’t realize they were missing a considerable amount of vital strength. So much so that those already near death—who couldn’t walk and remained on the ship’s floor, their hands intertwined with the others—passed into a better life. That was why Rey fought not to let the grimace rising to his mouth escape.

  “The procimed can’t feed a person,” Román muttered through clenched teeth, in a low, almost imperceptible tone, as if justifying the deaths of the sick—who would only have become unnecessary burdens for the rest. “An entity made of energy doesn’t fill the belly of someone who’s hungry. A necessary sacrifice, if you want to call it that.”

  “But they can help us reach our purposes,” Rey shot back, fists tightening.

  “Indeed,” said the sorceress, descending from the sky with the rain until the weight of her body settled onto her delicate feet. “Pnt the seed in your hand. It will help you by giving you the means to sustain life.”

  Following the advice to the letter—and stopping himself from dwelling on the unavoidable deaths of the wounded—Rey dropped to his right knee, then pced his left hand on the pnet’s surface. Patiently, he opened a small hole in the ground, let the seed fall, and returned the soil to its pce. With his hands pressed together over the earth, Rey resolved to yield the st of the energy left in his core.

  The bck-leafed book floating above the ground broke apart into thousands of pages at the condemned goddess’s command. The cloud of sheets shot outward until it disappeared into the horizon, while at the same time the dampened soil seemed to show its gratitude—invaded by the vitality of hundreds of thousands of roots branching across the ground.

  Far away, those bck pages fused with the sprouting of an immense tree with a bck trunk, rising from the pnet’s entrails and seeming to touch the sky. Then four small trees appeared nearby. Eight more. Sixteen. Sixty. A hundred. Three hundred. A thousand. Millions. Billions. Trillions—and more.

  Rey could feel the trees doubling until they covered the pnet in a sealed network, while the eyes of those present could only see a few—and the rgest of all, whose branches blotted out the sky.

  Behind the great ones, under constant rain and fertile mineral-rich soil, every kind of moss, fungus, and pnt appeared—from the smallest to the rgest, and so on, until the globe was covered in a pleasant mantle of bck, green, red, and countless other colors.

  At st, Rey thrust one hand into the ground. He made the earth tremble, part, and grow restless before something being born within it—violent as an erupting volcano. The instant Rey pulled his hand out, another great tree burst from that small hole like an explosion, exactly like the one that covered the sky, though not as massive. Lush and exuberant, the medium-sized giant spread wide enough to cover the exposed terrain, including the ship, and it had something different: unlike the others with red leaves, this one’s leaves were will-o’-the-wisps.

  “My beloved… won’t you even look at me?” Román whispered into the wind, his eyes fixed on the goddess with her back to him.

  Rey was too busy to pay attention to the older man’s comments and antics. He was tired of trying to decipher such an existence; every time he asked a question or probed for answers, Román resigned himself to giving half a reply.

  “The past can be distant, Román Temper De-Agracia… but I haven’t forgotten it—much less buried it. You, once a god, once a demon of my people… master of the martial arts of the soul, still survive by a thread beneath the curse that stalks you, wandering in search of a ‘capable sorcerer’… isn’t that so?”

  “Yes. Who would’ve guessed this boy would be able to do what I set out to do—surpass his master and find you?” Román said, taking a step forward.

  “You. Who else? Life is a circle—you just have to live long enough to see it,” the sorceress said, and she vanished into the leaves and the wind, dancing like a freed bird that didn’t want to be found.

  “Aaah! So this is what it comes to?” Román said, having lived imagining a prettier reunion. After all, the goddess who had revealed herself was the one he fought for—and the one he was cursed for, fighting against a sorcerer who used dishonorable means in battle. “Time humiliates me once again, doesn’t it? It’s made me look old… but something will never change: my love will never be returned—just like yours. Athena Pals De-Grecia, you always knew Herocdes would never be able to give himself to you in full and in wholeness the way I was willing to.”

  The white-eyed young man heard his master’s name on Román’s lips and the pieces snapped into pce.

  “I tried everything, only to learn that it’s impossible to make someone love you,” Román continued, his tragic monologue soon making his tears indistinguishable from the raindrops that had caressed that long-lived, broken face. “It’s completely selfish to force someone to return your feelings—to assume solutions for others when you’re not in their position. And cowardly is the one who gives up and decides to leave without first asking forgiveness for all the chaos he created. Athens, don’t go and leave me behind once again… I still have so much to learn, and I still can’t let my guard down…”

  Of those present who knew Román as Gilgamesh’s right hand, none had ever seen the old man crying and shouting at the sky. An old man exposing his tears was not something that should happen—unless there was a reason beyond the spectators’ understanding.

  The god of the new world rose to his feet while Román wept on his knees over his loss. As the rain grew heavier by the moment, Rey urged the others to return to the ship and take shelter in the refuge the vessel offered.

  In the middle of it, Dante and Jhades asked the question no one else seemed to have in mind.

  “What are we going to eat?” Jhades asked, the vampire’s tone indifferent.

  “Better yet—who are we going to eat?” Dante added, swallowing the saliva that had pooled in his mouth. In his eyes, the lycanthrope saw the rest of the popution as simple cattle—lesser and irrelevant. “I’m willing to accept sacrifices.”

  Danie, Max, Heliúk, and Marín opened their eyes in shock at how naturally the two predators said it. Their gazes snapped immediately to Rey, who—of them all—was the god of this pce.

  As such, Rey carried moral weight and a significant influence over justice within their society. To those present, he was supposed to be the example of virtue, goodness, and fairness. Acting by those principles was his duty as leader. And indirectly, his role wasn’t only to keep order, but also to guide the world’s destiny toward prosperity.

  Rey, aware of that responsibility, let an intimidating silence take over before he spoke.

  “I warned you, in the coliseum, that I would treat everyone who followed me equally,” he said, his voice deep and firm. “To do otherwise would be to break my word, and I’m not willing to do that for anything or anyone.”

  “Are you insane? I’m not dying of hunger,” Dante said, confronting his white-eyed brother.

  “It’s not just you—everyone on the ship too,” Marín added. Being one-third lycanthrope and Dante’s partner, she could speak to him without fearing retaliation.

  The question was valid, but Rey stood there—who could do anything as the god he was. So, searching for answers, they all looked to the young man.

  Extending his hand, Rey caught something that fell from the sky—or rather, from the tree’s branches. It was a kind of worm that writhed and squirmed, a creature that darkened the faces of those present, because it wasn’t hard to imagine what came next.

  “Inside the ship, several people died,” Rey said as he brought the creature to his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “From those bodies, extract blood and meat for whoever needs it. Put the remains into holes and help these endemic creatures reproduce. That will buy us time. Dante, Jhades—there are certain things that must be done in secret… do I make myself clear?”

  The two brothers nodded silently, understanding the discretion they were obligated to keep in order to do something as natural as breathing and sleeping.

  “Heliúk—and you,” Rey said to Max, “collect as much water as possible. Search through the vegetation for mushrooms, pnts, and moss that are edible. We need to buy time for the pnet’s native pnts to develop and produce fruit.”

  With everyone now moving to their assigned work, Rey looked at Román, who wandered as if trying to calm his shocked heart. With heaviness in his limbs, the young man didn’t even speak to the older man. Ignoring him completely, he leaned his back against the immense tree to recover and keep the others from worrying. If someone looked at him and he noticed, he smiled readily, as if nothing were happening. But inside it was the opposite, because one of his guiding principles was still the mantra of appearing strong whenever he wasn’t.

  “Along with my core, I lost all my powers as a sorcerer,” Rey thought, his gaze lost on the horizon. “I still have control of aura and the different martial arts I know, but what good are they with a sick body? It looks like I’m alive by a miracle—or because this world wants it. After all, the energy my body creates leaves the instant it spills out. I’m being drained every second by this world that doesn’t even have a trace of the energy needed for the different existences to recover their full capabilities. I suppose this is a debt I’ll never be able to recover from, because right now, with this rain, the energy I give is being consumed… Huh? What am I going to do? At least I’m not at risk of coughing blood or losing consciousness like before. Without energy I can use, the illness won’t keep advancing, and maybe with time I can heal…”

  Deep in his thoughts, Rey noticed something curious. It was the perfect opportunity for one particur girl to approach him. Her wet bck hair clung to her, and the clothes she wore had turned translucent, outlining her body as if she were wearing nothing at all. Keeping an unconcerned smile, she seemed to be searching for words to start a conversation, but couldn’t bring herself to.

  “Are you here to ask me something without first consulting the one responsible for you?” Rey asked, his gaze intimidating.

  Rey’s sharp white eyes tracked the body coming toward him as if it were a target to strike—an entity with only seconds left to live. The girl felt the killing intent of that world’s god. It was as if her throat had been cut by a single thrust, her arms flung away, her body dropping to the ground without legs, and darkness wrapping her in illusions conjured by Rey’s oppressive aura.

  “I have a personal problem and… you’re the only one who can solve it,” the girl said, her yellowish eyes not entirely matching the race she seemed to belong to.

  Rey’s distrust was at its highest. Anyone who approached him while he was unable to use his powers was a threat. And it wasn’t as if he could do anything to solve other people’s problems in the state he was in—that was why he had created the chain of command in the first pce, so no one would depend on him. And yet there she was: the same one who had offered him her blood on the ship, brave enough to come close despite the murderous signals he was giving off, like a beast meaning to kill and devour without conscience.

  “All men get obsessed with feeling a woman’s body when they feel good—especially the moment they win something… it’s impossible someone like him wouldn’t show even the slightest interest in a body like mine.”