Damian’s Mana moved out from his beast form and pressed downward through the cloud layer. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

It found stone in the Threshold Lands below and went to work. Broad flat steps rose from the ground in sections, each one locking into the one beneath it, dark rock climbing through the clouds in a spiral that wound upward toward the underside of the floating Cradle!

It felt like a long process...and also short, and yet it was working rapidly as stones overlapped ln each other!

Wide enough for a Noble Simba in full Sovereign Transformation. It reached the Cradle’s edge in under a minute and connected.

HUUM!

Masamuk stared at it.

Uncle Adam stood beside him and also stared at it.

"He..." Masamuk said.

"He made stairs!" Uncle Adam confirmed.

Grandmother Essun walked to the edge of the Cradle and looked down. She turned back. She gestured at the World Trees and the Spring of First Waters and the thousands of people behind her as she truly had no words!

The beast delegation gathered at the stairway’s edge. Their golden eyes moved from the stone steps to the floating landmass to Damian’s burning form and back.

Mafube looked down through the clouds toward the ground where more delegations should arrive in the next frw hours

"The Ancestor is grand!"

Mafube bellowed out!

---

<THE Covenant>

In the Sacred Hall of Truth, the Hallowed Voice stood in the center of the room and the room had trouble containing him.

A ring of white-gold Mana floated above his head, rotating in a slow continuous pulse. It didn’t flicker or strain. It simply turned, steady, announcing what he had become. His hair had darkened from white into something deep and lustrous. The lines on his face belonged to experience now rather than age. He stood several inches taller than he had that morning, placing him just below the heights of Damian and Serala.

He looked at his hands.

He looked at the ring above his head.

He looked at Damian.

Nothing came out.

The Saint of Stone stood against the far wall. Her eyes moved between the Hallowed Voice and Damian and the ring and the Hallowed Voice again. She said nothing either.

Damian observed him. A Ninth Circle existence now stood in the Sacred Hall, its power dense and real. He waited for the sensation of danger the Hallowed Voice had produced before his transformation.

He barely felt it.

His own position had been moving.

The Amadlozi tier system described his refinement in five ascending stages: Mvelo, the origin. Sithunzi, presence beginning to hold weight. Nkanyezi, a being whose light reached across distances. Nyanga, a being whose influence shaped lesser existences. Langa, a being whose presence reshaped the conditions of everything around it.

He had been at Mvelo during the flight to the Covenant. He had been speaking Exelissomai on himself continuously since, each utterance adding to the last.

He was now at Sithunzi. He was nearing Nkanyezi.

And for the first time, he felt a slight strain at the edges of his Existence. Something that suggested the next utterances would cost more than the last.

He noted it and set it aside.

The Hallowed Voice finally found his voice.

"I...have no words," he said, which was perhaps the most honest thing Damian had heard him say all day.

The Saint of Stone nodded with shock and incredulity!

Damian looked at both of them, then at the ring of Ninth Circle Mana still turning above the Hallowed Voice’s head with the patience of something that intended to stay permanently.

There was still too much to do..

Damian looked at the Saint of Stone.

"You can rest easy," he said. "I’m more than capable of taking care of Serala. And with the knowledge I’ve obtained here, I’ll be heading to the Dominion of Crimson Stone first."

The Saint of Stone went still.

Her eyes moved to Serala. Then to Damian. Then back to Serala, and whatever she found in Serala’s expression answered several questions she hadn’t finished asking. She exhaled, a deep sigh that carried the weight of a teacher recognizing that her student had already left, the formality of the departure simply hadn’t been completed yet.

Then her eyes sharpened.

"I have to be recognized as a teacher," she said, and her voice had the precision of a woman placing terms on a table. "If you could do for me what you did for this ugly old man here."

She tilted her head toward the Hallowed Voice without looking at him. "You have my permission."

...!

Damian nodded once at the Saint of Stone.

The Hallowed Voice’s eyes had been moving during this exchange, and they had the brightness of a man who had discovered something he wanted very badly and was calculating how quickly he could return to it. He straightened, and the ring of white-gold Mana above his head pulsed once as he gathered himself into something that looked like dignity.

"Before today," he said, and his voice carried into the Sacred Hall with the new resonance of a Ninth Circle existence making a declaration it had clearly been building toward for some time, "I did not declare war against the Dominion of Crimson Stone. I chose restraint. I chose the preservation of lives on both sides. I chose the longer road."

He paused. "Today, I will change that! The Covenant of the First Stone will declare war on every human colluding with demons. On every power that has opened its doors to the corruption beyond the River!"

He let that land.

"The Covenant stands against them. Formally. Completely. From this day forward! War. War! WAR!"

...!

BOOM!

The Saint of Stone had pressed her lips together in the expression of someone exercising restraint.

Damian looked at the Hallowed Voice. At the ring of Mana still turning above his head. At the new frame, the darkened hair, the Ninth Circle power radiating from a man who had spent decades at the Eighth and had now stepped beyond it in a single afternoon using someone else’s ability.

The declaration was real. The war commitment was real.

Within a day of arriving in The Covenant, Damian had made its leaders seek war of Empires!