Welcome, Inheritor.

The doors ground open, dust raining from the ceiling-floor as ancient machinery kicked to life. It took an entire minute before they stopped, not fully open but wide enough to allow passage. Their gilded fronts gleamed now beneath the mess of roots and grime that had been shaken loose.

Felix stepped through into the Empyrean Hall.

He wasn't sure what he expected when he entered, but before him was a vast chamber spread wide over thousands of square feet. Largely empty, it contained only a massive trio of statues and three sets of stairs that swept upward toward walls cut by silver doors. The floors far above bore the same hypnotic pattern interlaid with opalescent stars, while the ceilings he trod upon were vaulted into intricate pockets. It was a pattern that, when seen from the floor, no doubt resembled yet another star shape. The Nym were nothing if not predictable in their choices of style.

Pillars surrounded the room, hexagonal all, covered in gilding and deep carvings. Walls were similarly decorated, their sides shaped to resemble forests. Each distant panel was etched with scenes so lifelike that in the flickering magelight Felix could almost see the leaves move.

The real feature of the entrance chamber, however, were the statues. Situated in the exact center of the room, they featured a Nymean woman, clad in their iconic magi armor and robes. One hand was thrust outward into the room, facing the doorway Felix had entered, while the other was held aloft beneath an enormous Belais crystal. Though giant in proportion, the statue was unnervingly lifelike. Watching the Nymean woman in the unsteady magelight was eerie, the statue’s look of serene amusement enough to set off warning bells. His hand didn’t leave his sword.

Beside her, standing atop a hexagonal pillar so that they were the same height, was a Geist. Having only met a few, Felix wasn’t all that good at spotting differences between their people, but this one had a look that was distinct from the rest. A scar marred its face, trailing across one eye and down to its mouth—the stone was so detailed he could pick up where the fur no longer grew. Like the Nymean, it had one hand pressed outward and the other supported the purple crystal.

Felix rotated around the room, carefully crossing over beams to get a better look at the statues. When he spotted the last of the trio, his breath caught.

“Castarius?”

It looked so similar to the creature he’d killed in Aja Nadir that Felix drew his Inheritor’s Will outright. Like the others, the statue was upsettingly lifelike, and its sharp features were haunting. Once the shock faded, however, Felix spotted differences. A twist of the lips, an angle of the nose—its features were not quite the same as Castarius. No doubt this was not that same creature, but it seemed of a kind.

Whatever kind that might be…

Unseen Beholder.

Name: The Triumvirate

Type: Statuary (enchanted)

Lore: Shaped by seventeen Grand Magi, behold the Triumvirate of the Golden Empire—on display for all who enter the Empyrean Halls. Othiim, the Thinker. Lascalium, the Progenitor. She Of A Thousand Faces, The Herald. Behold their visages, and recall that all greatness is rooted in Harmony.

The Lore entry for the statue raised more questions than it answered. Had these three worked together? Ruled the Empire? As far as Felix had been told, the only ruler was the Herald…yet she didn’t even have a name listed.

Lascalium. What’s a Progenitor? The Geist and Nym were known to work together. He had evidence of that in ancient memories and testimony from the few that lived through that era. Who—and what—was Lascalium? Castarius had been a Primordial Urge, a thing that should have been impossible, but he claimed he hadn’t started that way.

There were no answers to be had, not there in the entryway at least. Felix focused on the rest of the statue. The Belais crystal the figures held up was massive, at least twenty feet in diameter, and more than large enough to have a function besides illumination. While the statues did not reach all the way to the ceiling, they were more than three-quarters of the way.

Not impossible to reach.

He flexed his legs, leaping upward in a graceful vault between the upthrust stone hands. He landed with a dull tap against the lower plane of the crystal, and the thing immediately reacted. Where his feet met purple facets, the crystal glowed with an increasingly bright radiance. Much as he had before, Felix pressed his Will against it and something inside the deep amethyst roused. It wasn’t much, and he could see why.

It needed Mana. So he gave it some.

Mana poured from him, a solid chunk at first, but the light inside didn’t change in the slightest. He pumped out more, and then some more after that. It kept taking, drinking him dry until he was gasping in discomfort, but even then the Belais crystal merely flickered with a faint life.

"Thirsty, huh? Okay." He put his hand out again. His Mana recovered fast, so it only took a minute or so to regain his vast reserves. The crystal took it all, draining him four times before the spark inside ignited.

Distant music swelled as the roar of an inferno rolled beneath his feet, and the Belais crystal—finally—responded to his Authority.

Welcome, Inheritor, To The Empyrean Hall!

ERROR!

Spatial Orientation Has Been Disturbed.

Do You Wish To Rectify?

Curious, Felix poked at the crystal again. "Sure."

Orientation In Progress.

Bonds Discovered.

New Alignment Set.

Brace For Adjustment.

"Brace myself for what—?" He barely finished the sentence before gravity changed direction entirely. Felix gave a yelp as he fell, not towards the vaulted ceilings he'd been walking on, but toward the distant, patterned floor. He crashed at the base of the triumvirate statues, his back bouncing off the hard ground as blue-white lightning skittered across the floor in all directions. He sat up quickly, eyeing the lightning as it moved, swiftly defining the floor and before sizzling up the walls. It left no mark behind, but Felix could not mistake what it was.

“This thing just used Bonds.” He stared back up at the crystal. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

"Are you okay?" Pit called, and he sounded a lot more distant than expected.

For the first time since entering, Felix realized he was alone. "Hey! I thought you'd come in."

"No way! That statue thing freaked me out.”

Felix looked up and over his shoulder at the Triumvirate. “Fair.”

“Glad I didn't! Otherwise I’d have fallen on my butt like you." True enough, Pit was still standing on the ceiling, just outside the door. He was completely upside down from Felix's perspective. "How did you get up there anyway?" 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"The Belais crystal. I think it activated a connection to the floor, one that should exist, but because we're flipped, doesn't…because of gravity."

Pit squeezed his eyes shut. "That's confusing."

"Just come in here."

"Alright, fine." Pit jumped forward, only to have himself immediately fall, by his perspective, straight upward. "Gah! Ouranic Dominion!" Air mana marshalled beneath the tenku's wings as he righted himself, flipping back over before soaring to an ungainly stop at Felix's side.

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“You good?”

Pit was panting. "That's so freaky. It's like the moment I stepped in here, up and down switched."

"Cool, right?"

Pit gave a worried chirrup. "No."

Felix reached out his Will to the Belais crystal again. "Let's see if this thing has anything else for us."

Pit growled, bracing himself against the smooth floor tiles.

The crystal flared, light and Mana spinning up against Felix’s Will. Immediately, a slew of notifications assaulted them both.

The Empyrean Halls Recognizes Emperor Felix Nevarre, First Of His Name!

Inheritor’s Authority Recognized!

ERROR.

The notification flickered, cut through with static. It blinked away as quickly as it had shown up, replaced by a new screen.

Navigation Is Challenging Within The Halls.

In Acknowledgement Of Your Outside Authority, We Offer Guidance.

A series of translucent maps blipped into existence before Felix and he felt his Authority latch onto them. They tucked away into his own collection of maps and shuffled to the side.

“That’s useful,” Pit said hopefully. “Maybe the surprises are done?”

ERROR.

Red and black messages flashed across their vision, scattering in all directions as a jagged Dissonance cut through them.

ERROR!

Catastrophic Damage Detected In The Empyrean Halls.

Bonds Are Severed.

Truncated Roots Detected.

Spirit Grove—

The message flickered, glitching out.

"I am sorry."

The last was not a notification at all, but words that echoed from the Belais crystal. A woman's, as beautiful as it was grave, spoke to them.

"Hold your loved ones close. The Ruin comes. I have failed."

All at once the notifications flickered away, leaving Felix with only the maps of the Empyrean Halls before him. Those glitched along the edges, but they held true.

“That was the Herald?” Pit asked.

“I think so.”

"She sounded scared.”

Felix looked at the statue at the front. Backlit now by the crystal, the Herald’s expression looked far less serene. "Yeah."

Pit swallowed. "Let's get moving. The sooner we find what we need, the sooner we can... You know."

"Yeah, buddy. I know."

Between the three sets of stairs along the back half of the entry hall, there were thirty silver doors and approximately zero signage pointing the way. Felix and Pit walked around the room several times, inspecting everything from the frames to the carvings of different creatures across the silver. In the end, they chose one at random and left.

They found themselves in the midst of a kitchen.

It wasn’t like any kitchen Felix had seen before, but the essence of the thing was still present. Large expanses of metal were laid out into stone countertops, sigils etched into their sides in circular patterns that called out things like heating and cooling. The walls were covered in tools, tined objects and flat spatulas beside deep ladles and odd looking brushes. Wide tables were there too, places filled with stacks of platters and bowls, enough to feed an army and then some. Open archways in the back indicated similar spaces to this, though Felix spied a number of features including a massive washbasin that looked a lot like an industrial sized dish washing area.

“Wrong door,” Felix muttered.

“Good, because this place is not made for me.” Pit grunted as he backed up, his tenku bulk hitting several pots and pans from the walls.

For some reason, Felix picked them all up. He replaced them on their hooks, taking his time, until everything was back as it was. As they stepped clear of the door and back into the entry hall, Pit quirked his head at him.

“Why bother?”

Felix shrugged and shut the silver door with a metallic click. “It felt right.”

Something clattered, just on the other side.

“I guess I didn’t hang that one properly.” He opened the door again. “One sec.”

Not two steps in and Felix froze. “What the hell?”

It was a different room.

Inside of the same door, one that Felix never properly took his hand off the knob, was an entirely separate space. Instead of a big kitchen, he was in a well-appointed parlor. A massive fireplace sat at the far end of the chamber, carved into the likeness of a roaring harnoq. Before it was a fleet of high-backed leather chairs and low tables. Plush rugs laid atop polished stone floors, each one woven with interlocking chains in thread of gold and silver. Empty bookshelves soared upward at least thirty feet toward a ceiling of honeycombed stone.

Pit blinked. “Uh, how the heck did that happen?”

They consulted the maps, but they were only somewhat useful. Now that Felix looked closer, he realized that the information seemed corrupted, or at least broken, in many ways. Little was labeled, and the silver doors all had dozens of options that seemed to change sporadically.

“So the place is a maze,” Pit said at last. “Everything keeps changing.”

“Not everything.” Felix pointed out several chambers that stayed fairly static. “We can go to one of these rooms. Maybe they don’t move because they’re important.”

Pit nodded. “Important enough to hold the Bell?”

“Hopefully.”

They knew the Herald had held all three of the Empyrean Regalia during her lifetime. If the Exalted Bell was going to be anywhere, it would be here, where the Golden Empire fell.

They started taking doors. Like Pit said, it was a maze and the map was of little help, perhaps due to the “catastrophic damage” the System mentioned. Hallways connected in strange patterns that defied his perfect recall and the laws of physics. More than once he backtracked down a corridor only to find it put him somewhere that the map indicated was thousands of feet away in another section completely. Doorways were trickiest, opening up to his Authority but depositing him in new places at random, unpredictable intervals. If there was a pattern to the madness, neither of them could figure it out.

Still, it wasn’t an endless parade of hallways. He found rooms, often in places close to where the map suggested they should be, but they were empty of anything worthwhile. Chambers with empty floors, tables that grew from stone but were devoid of even dust, and rows of cabinetry hidden among hexagonal pillars. Everything was cleared out, however—most drawers and doors were left hanging open or unhinged. Occasionally, claw marks marred the floors and walls, deep and sagging, as if whatever did it had melted the stone itself. Yet for all the desolation, it seemed at times as if the people who'd lived there had only just stepped away. Called into another room, perhaps—due back any minute.

Deadend after deadend filled his path, forcing them to doubleback into the maze, annoyed a little bit more each time.

Worst of all, the confusing passages stank. Felix noticed that early on, but attributed it to…well, being inside a giant monster corpse. But after an hour of frustrating walking, his distracted Mind finally made a connection. It wasn’t an actual smell, but a sensation that crawled up his nose, and in his ears, and across his tongue. An oil-slick sensation he recognized from his Abyssal Skein.

“I know this feeling.” Felix ran his hands across the threshold of a door. It was carved from stone into leaves and branches framed around upthrust mountains. The craftsmanship was impeccable and likely shaped—he didn’t see a single tool mark—but that wasn’t what caught his attention.

Each time the doors misled them, he could feel it flush against his flesh. A touch of the Void. Somehow, the doors were accessing liminal spaces in order to twist space around them.

“Is it a defensive feature?”

Pit cocked his head. “But the place welcomed you. Why would it be defending against us?”

Felix didn’t have an answer for that. “The more we walk around this place the more I keep thinking…”

Pit stopped beside an empty pot, sniffing at it. “What?”

“I think this place is like a Domain.”

“But we didn’t enter one of those goopy doors. We just fell into the side of a monster.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s what’s hanging me up. But how else do you fit a city inside of a living creature, even one as strange as Etrionn clearly was?” Felix looked around with new eyes, the revelation clearing up his frustration of the past few hours.

“I dunno. Seems like a stretch. Plus you saw all those weird Roots. That was part of Etrionn.”

“Maybe both are true. We’re inside Etrionn but it’s also accessing a Domain—one that was custom built by the Nym into this sprawling city.”

Pit whistled. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah.” Felix felt along another doorway, feeling a flash of oily cold. “Let’s keep going. The shift just happened and—” He stopped just through the threshold and brought up his map. “Pit, look!”

One of the stationary rooms was right before them. It was at the end of a short corridor that was wide enough to fit six Pits at once, and fronted by a double door so big Felix wouldn’t hesitate to call it a gate. At the top, written in gleaming gold, were ancient sigils that Felix couldn’t read.

The map flashed, the sigils translating themselves.

The Skills Library.