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Chapter 136:
The Board of Gods and Broken Dreams
In the boundless dark between stars—where sound was swallowed, and time moved like breath caught in a dying god's chest—the board was set.
Not a board of wood or stone, but a formation etched into the fabric of reality itself.
Each node pulsed with a different hue.
Each thread was forged from the fate of worlds.
And around it, they gathered.
The Ancient Factions.
Those who ruled not with armies, but with principles. Not with declarations, but with symbols and shadows that whispered through dimensions.
And they had all turned toward one event:
The birth of the Valley Child.
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1. The Locus Consortium – Keepers of the Inverted Hourglass
In the Grand Vault of Sands—hidden in a starless realm where memory eroded like stone—ten Timelords bent over the map of diverging destinies. They wore no faces, only shifting masks of possibility, each changing with every thought.
One among them—the Seer of Unending Patterns—tapped the node labeled An'narel.
> "His thread touches 77,000 potential outcomes," she said. "And in 93% of them, he collapses the future."
The others did not speak. They instead rerouted sands through hourglasses, attempting to weigh the cost of interference.
A choice was made:
Delay. Observe. If necessary—unravel.
The Locus did not kill.
They erased potential.
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2. The Choir of Thorns – Sacred Betrayers of the 6th Heaven
In a chasm carved from dead stars, a cathedral of glass and blood rang with soundless hymns. Thirteen Seraphic Apostates—those who had once sung praises but now composed rebellion—stood beneath a cracked celestial throne.
The leader, Terasel the Unrepentant, held a scroll inscribed with An'narel's name—except it kept changing, slipping from tongue to soul and back again.
> "A child born of fracture," Terasel said. "He will tear open the Veil and sing truths that should remain unspoken."
One angel wept black ichor.
Another began sharpening its wings.
> "He must be tempted. Corrupted. Crowned."
The Choir believed not in destruction—but in conversion.
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3. The Ashen Spiral – Lords of the Eternal Return
In a place where death recycled life and memory, the Spiral Lords meditated in absolute entropy. Cloaked in ashes, their forms flickered like half-remembered dreams.
An elder spoke from within the ashes:
> "The child has no tether to karma. His soul reincarnates nowhere."
They considered this a threat and a gift.
For in the Ashen Spiral's doctrine, every being was trapped in a cycle. To be free of it was either a sin—or salvation.
A decree was written in ember:
> "Send the Ash-Bearer. Let the child face that which comes before all beginnings."
Their piece was an unmade god, once a creator, now only hunger.
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4. The Guild of Silent Architects
They spoke not in words, but symbols carved into reality's skeleton.
One by one, they replaced their avatars on the board.
An'narel's node flashed with a glyph that meant:
> He who exists outside equations.
The Architects hated unknown variables. And An'narel—born of contradiction and sealed in prophecy unrecorded—was the first true variable in 300,000 eons.
Their response was clinical:
Build a trap of logic. Construct a prison of truths.
Their piece would be a Heavenly Scholar—a being who could collapse paradoxes into laws.
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5. The Hollow Kings of the Wound Between Worlds
And in the deepest forgotten crevice between Realms, where reality bled and stitched itself endlessly, the Hollow Kings awoke.
They were not gods, not demons, not even remnants of something once divine.
They were echoes of forgotten plans, leftover intent, the cruel sigh of a plan that never bore fruit.
And they smiled.
For An'narel, the child who had shattered divine vessels and awakened the Valley's ancient heart, was unclaimed.
No faction, not even the highest heavens, could claim ownership of him.
> "He is unanchored," whispered the Hollow Queen, her crown woven of unborn children's dreams. "Let us offer him a name."
The Hollow Kings' gambit was dangerous:
Make him one of their own. Not by force—but by offering what no one else had.
Belonging.
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Across the Cosmic Board… the Valley trembled.
Not from fear.
But from pressure.
Like a new star born too bright, too fast. An'narel's presence had cracked the quiet neutrality of ancient power structures.
Some factions believed he would bring ruin.
Others believed he was the reset.
And a few—those few ancient enough to remember the first light—wondered if he was the Question the cosmos itself once whispered before time learned to walk.
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The pieces were in motion.
A corrupted angel.
A logical prison.
A godless devourer.
A tempter queen.
A scholar of paradox.
And unseen still—
The child himself.
What would he choose?
Would he ascend?
Break?
Or remake everything?
No faction had certainty.
No plan was complete.
Because this time, for the first time in endless cosmic cycles...
The game board could talk back.
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Shall i follow the Scholar's trap next—or step into An'narel's first trial within the heart of one of these factions?