THE GENERAL'S DISGRACED HEIR

Time ceased to flow.

David felt it first as resistance, as if the air around him had transformed into thick honey. His limbs moved with agonizing slowness, each attempted motion requiring impossible effort against the weight of suspended reality. The world around him shifted into a tableau of frozen moments—Elara's fireball hanging in mid-creation, flames blooming outward like a deadly flower opening in slow motion. Luna's shadows extended at a glacial pace, obsidian tendrils that seemed painted against the laboratory walls rather than actively moving.

What... is... happening? David's thoughts felt sluggish, as if each one had to push through the same temporal molasses that gripped his body.

Only his eyes seemed capable of normal movement. They darted from the suspended fireball to the creeping shadows, then to the center of the containment array where light coalesced within the dimensional tear. Unlike the surrounding stasis, the light at the medium's core moved with unsettling fluidity, gathering itself with purposeful intensity.

David had expected to see the same malevolent entity that had plagued his nightmares since the coming-of-age ceremony incident—the cosmic horror whose bloodlust had nearly broken his sanity. But the presence forming before him now carried a different signature entirely. No psychic malice radiated from this light. No murderous intent pressed against his consciousness.

Instead, the atmosphere hummed with something he could only describe as... majesty.

The light condensed, taking shape with deliberate grace. A silhouette emerged—unmistakably feminine yet unlike any woman David had ever encountered in either of his lives. She formed from pure radiance, her outline shimmering with power that existed beyond the boundaries of conventional reality. Her hair flowed like liquid gold interwoven with strands of white silk, moving as if underwater despite the still air. The tresses seemed to extend beyond physical space, occasionally blending with the surrounding light before reforming with subtle variations.

Where a face should have been, only a smooth canvas of pure light existed—featureless yet somehow expressive, conveying emotions that transcended mundane communication. David found himself unable to look directly at this absence of features for more than moments at a time, his mind struggling to process the contradiction of presence and absence simultaneously.

Her garments defied categorization, shifting between states with each subtle movement. One moment, she appeared draped in flowing robes that rippled with celestial patterns; the next, segments of ornate armor materialized only to dissolve back into ethereal fabric. Occasionally, portions of her form became pure energy, revealing glimpses of constellations and cosmic structures contained within her being.

The air around David vibrated with divine pressure, making each breath a conscious effort. He felt the weight of ancient power pressing against his ribcage, squeezing his lungs with the casual indifference of a titan acknowledging an insect.

Not malevolence, David realized as he struggled to breathe, but the indifference of scale. Like a human careful not to step on ants yet incapable of truly comprehending their existence.

The entity moved toward him with impossible grace, her motion simultaneously fluid and fragmented, as if she existed in multiple positions at once before settling on a single approach. Distance seemed meaningless to her—one moment she remained at the center of the array, the next she stood before David, close enough that the light emanating from her form cast his shadow against the laboratory wall in stark relief.

"Time grows short," she said, though no lips moved to form the words. The voice resonated directly in David's mind, bypassing his ears entirely. It carried harmonics that no human vocal cords could produce—layers of sound that existed beyond the spectrum of mortal hearing yet registered with perfect clarity in his consciousness.

David tried to respond, but his voice remained trapped within the temporal stasis. Only his thoughts moved freely, and even those felt sluggish against the weight of her presence.

The entity tilted her featureless face, regarding him with what felt like curiosity. She raised a hand composed of condensed light, her fingers elongating slightly as they approached his face. The motion carried both menace and tenderness, like a parent considering how best to correct a beloved child.

Her ethereal fingertips brushed against David's lips with feather-light pressure. Despite the gentleness, pain blossomed where she touched—not the crude agony of physical damage but something more fundamental, as if she were rewriting the very concept of his existence through that single point of contact.

A thin line appeared on his lower lip, though no blood flowed from the wound. Instead, light spilled from the cut—not escaping from him but pouring into him, a foreign presence that felt simultaneously intrusive and strangely familiar. The sensation crawled through his veins like liquid fire, spreading from his lips to his throat, then outward to his chest, limbs, and finally his mind.

"The fractures in the cosmic design grow more numerous," the entity continued, her voice gaining urgency despite its ethereal quality. "The boundaries thin. What should remain separate bleeds together."

David's mind raced to understand her cryptic statements, struggling to form coherent thoughts against the increasing pressure of her presence and the foreign essence now spreading through his system.

"Seek the scorned seer," she instructed, her featureless face inclining toward him. "The one cast out for seeing truth. She will guide you to what you seek—Terranon, the dead god whose slumber must not be disturbed."

The name Terranon resonated unnaturally in David's consciousness, triggering immediate recognition from his memories of the Trials of Valor. In those stories, Ternion had been portrayed as a powerful and benevolent deity who oversaw the fertility, stability, and bounty of the world itself, revered by all inhabitants of the land.

Yet this entity spoke of Terranon as a "dead god," a discrepancy that sent confusion spiralling through David's mind. This contradiction, combined with fragments of knowledge from Solomon's Legacy that now stirred in response to the name, suggested a truth far more complex than fiction had portrayed.

"Only then can we speak properly, child of two worlds," the entity said, her voice softening with what might have been compassion. "Only then will you understand your true purpose in this reality."

The light flowing from the cut on David's lip intensified, no longer a trickle but a flood that threatened to overwhelm his senses.

Divine mysteries poured into him like liquid sunlight, concepts too vast for human comprehension forcing themselves into the limited vessel of his mortal mind.

Each fragment of divine knowledge carried weight and presence, restructuring his very essence on a fundamental level.

David's sense of self—his dignity, his identity, his very soul—amplified with each passing moment. The essence that made him David intensified a thousandfold, like a dim star suddenly igniting into supernova brilliance. Yet with this amplification came agonizing pressure, as if his consciousness might shatter under the weight of its own expansion.

Too much, he thought desperately. It's too much!

Whether the entity heard his silent plea or simply completed her task, the flow of divine mysteries finally ceased. She withdrew her fingertips from his lip, though the cut continued to glow with inner light.

"Remember," she said, her voice already growing distant. "The scorned seer. Terranon. The boundaries must hold."

With those final words, David felt his consciousness begin to separate from his physical form. The laboratory around him—the frozen tableau of Elara's fireball, Luna's shadows, Yue's alarmed expression—began to dissolve like paint washing away in heavy rain. Reality itself seemed to melt around him, colours bleeding into one another, solid objects becoming translucent then transparent.

His last glimpse of the physical world showed Yue crying out in alarm, her mouth forming words he couldn't hear, her voice distorted and impossibly distant.

Then David was falling—not physically, but metaphysically. His consciousness plummeted through layers of existence, passing through veils of reality that flickered past too quickly to comprehend. Each layer revealed glimpses of alternate possibilities, parallel worlds, divergent timelines that might have been or might yet be.

The sensation of falling intensified, his sense of self stretching thinner with each passing moment. Just as he feared his consciousness might dissolve entirely, the descent slowed, then stopped. The universe reassembled itself around him, forming a landscape both familiar and alien.

David had entered his own mindscape—a realm shaped by his memories, fears, desires, and the accumulated weight of two lifetimes of experiences. Here, in this private reality constructed from the architecture of his soul, he would face what the entity had placed within him.

Here, alone with the divine mysteries now burning through his essence, David would either transcend his limitations—or be consumed by forces beyond mortal comprehension.