II-115 Declarations

Haytham Winters—a boy playing an old man. A boy playing at something greater than himself. A wizard. Someone of great wisdom and power. A leader. A shaper of thoughts and beliefs. A diviner. A ruler. Something beyond the human. Something above.

But Haytham Winters is ultimately a boy. I know this because when I looked into his eyes, I saw an echo of my own weakness, with none of my strength. Everything he had was blessed to him.

He is a consul of the Inheritors—Trespassers from another world granted divine right, or so they claim, to use any class they want, to take on any spirit they want.

“Fictionals,” that’s what they call us. We sometimes get offended and say it’s because they lack a soul. Not so. It’s because they are a mold—a universal mold that can fit anything. Their world was the font of stories, and the Trespassers are the storytellers.

The Fathoms was always meant to be their wonderland. But with me, it is not so. Because of a mistake my father made in having me—in failing to kill me—it will not be so.

I will reach Earth, and I will make a wonderland of their world, but not one they will recognize—only one I will accept. Such is my will as Realm Breaker.

-Wei An Wei, The Realmbreaker

II-115

Declarations

Wei’s anger briefly reached out to touch Moonscar, but the bulk of it flared and commanded his focus—his focus that fell on Haytham Winters. The old man glared down at him; the crystal in his staff gleamed, pouring out so much Essence—enough to drown a hundred counts beneath tides of power. But Wei cared little for that. He cared little for childish shows of dominance or declarations of power. His entire life, he had been cutting down giants, bringing down those more skilled, more powerful, more experienced. He did so because he demanded perfection of himself—flawlessness.

His gaze roamed the man before him, and he saw more than power. He saw flaws. The man’s hands were soft. His posture was weak. His focus brittle. All this might, all the influence he wielded, was unearned. He was practically a child before Wei—a child.

Haytham tried to match Wei’s contempt with a deeper, more authoritative tone. “You will not touch Earth,” he said, forcing his voice lower and using his Essence to add an echo.

The young master laughed. “I will,” Wei replied, stepping forward. “And I will do as I so desire. But do not worry, Consul. I will be kinder to them and wiser when I take hold, when I shape their future. You should be happy and rejoiced that someone like me will claim it—not some other lord of hell, not some monster, not some degenerate sinner. Me. I will demand more of them. I will shape a people out of them.”

Haytham’s eyes flashed. “You will do nothing!” he shouted. He closed his eyes and, with a muttered incantation, sent a pulse of Essence bursting from his staff.

Wei was about to strike when he realized another layer of Essence had been woven around them both. It cracked apart, and Wei dismissed his scythe before it could fully appear. Moonscar caught sight of the sign of the Harvester and stood back. “Already you have that. You’ve already fed the concept core,” she observed quietly.

“As I was saying,” Wei resumed, brushing off his armored scale coat, “I’m going to make it to Earth. It doesn’t matter what you want or anyone else wants. You took my home. I will keep yours.”

“I did what I thought was necessary,” Haytham replied, voice tight.

“It is lamentable that so many died, even if they are fictional,” Wei said, his voice cold.

“Even if they are merely… storyborn,” Haytham managed.

“Storyborn? And what difference is that from being Fictional? What point is there to hear your meaningless words as drivel if you simply spit out excuse after excuse?”

“We could not let the Keter—”

“You couldn’t let it end in someone else’s hands,” Wei asked mockingly. “You couldn’t let someone else have it, someone else to decide their own fate, or perhaps someone stronger. You couldn’t let Mepheleon have it, because he would have too much influence, too dangerous to your plans, and you couldn’t control him.”

“He already has a system, you might say,” Wei sneered. “Well, I suspect Mepheleon might have a good enough slave that he would have been planted with such a thing. And you think you are not that good enough slave?”

Haytham shot back, eyes widening as if to reject that claim, but Wei shook his head. “I think I’m being played by Mepheleon. But the thing is, he’s open about playing me. He has always been dragging me from one place to another, nudging things in my favor. I have no delusion that he is some kindly saint. He deserves death a million times over. But then again, he doesn’t pretend otherwise. He simply states that his power—his wits—prevent this end from coming. That is the whole point of the Claimed Hells: to mantle your sins, is it not?”

Haytham spat, “The point of the Claimed Hells is to be a playground, a Garden of Soddom—a place of vice and debauchery controlled by one. A casino—a casino that you don’t hold. That’s why you hit it wrong. I despise it because it is the misshapen nature of every man to fall. But it is also the possibility—the potential and risk—that lets you burn the worlds where realms have never offended you, realms beneath harm, lacking in Essence to deliver any kind of threat to you and your people, simply because there is something at their core.”

“I told you. You told me nothing,” Wei said. “Now I will tell you. I will tell you that I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill everyone you love.” He looked past Haytham at the other consoles; some watched with derision, some with alert wariness, a few even with worry. “I’m going to kill all of you. But I’m going to kill you in a way that you will never return. And when I kill you, I’m going to find your families on Earth.”

Haytham clenched his jaw. “Do not do this, boy.”

“And then I’m going to rip all memory of you out of their minds,” Wei continued. Most of the consoles stood still at that. Flinching, Haytham blinked. “They will never remember you. I will murder your presence in their hearts. It will be as if you never existed. I will crush you existentially. If I cannot break you—because you are dead, soulless things—then I will do the next closest damage I can. Is that understood? That is all I need to say. Spit your words, old man. Perhaps I will still laugh.”

Haytham watched Wei for a long moment, his eyes darkening with anger, but he did not face the young master. Instead, he sneered at Moonscar. “What is this? Is this your plan? You command us to be infuriated? You drive us into conflict? What kind of host are you? What kind of diplomacy is this?”

“You broke the spell after a few moments,” Moonscar said calmly.

“Yes, it was a trifling thing,” Haytham replied, sweeping his robe. “The spell didn’t affect him, though. I see your trick of making me seem the unreasonable party.”

“Impossible,” Moonscar countered. “That was an absolute command. That was nothing to him. His hate for you was pure. The system is not guiding or goading him—he’s not some blind slave. I brought him here to make sure that he knows where he stands, with the Lodge and with you.”

She turned to Wei. “I will use you. I will lie to you. I will manipulate you. I will deceive you. I will hurt you. I will drive you however I can. Because I want to protect Earth. Because I want to prevent a merger between the Claimed Hells and the Fathoms—and Earth at all. I have crossed over from my world. I don’t want to go back, and I don’t want any more to come over. We need containment. Control.”

She faced Haytham. “He,” she said, “wants to control everything. He believes that this will bring about paradise if every man, woman, and child was allowed to descend to their little garden— their little personal Eden. But that is a delusion, isn’t it, Haytham? Or do you want to deny reality some more? People can be educated. Their hearts can be freed. And who’s to say what that is?”

Moonscar—dismissively—finished the thought. “What do you want, Wei? Besides killing them, if I gave you the keys to Earth right now, what would you do?”

Wei stared at her for a moment, then replied, “First, I would let the Hound loose. I owe them that much.”

“No! No, you will not! You will not let that creature touch our home!” Haytham screamed. “There is only one God. There is only one will, and that is the human will—that is God in the form of humanity: our desire, our strength, our urge to build, to create. You—you are just a creation. You cannot dictate terms to us.”

Wei laughed. “And yet, you are going to have to deal with me. I’m going to force you. I’m going to break your kingdoms. And then, when they kneel to me, I will not enslave them. I will take them into my sect. Slowly, I will mold them. If it takes one year, ten years, one hundred years, ten thousand years, I will mold them until they all believe as I do, until they all dream as I do, until there is nothing but the drowned sky. Because that is what you took from me!”

Wei shouted in return, “My home, my mother, my people—nothing, nothing we did to you. Everything we did to cultivate virtue to defy the heavens, and you struck at us.”

“It wasn’t the heavens that spited me,” he continued, voice rising. “No, I no longer make that mistake. I no longer attribute blame to a shapeless entity, to a faceless entity, to a thing that is hateless, that cannot feel. That is the entirety of the Fathoms. It is not real. No, you—you are the nature of my calamity, and you, I will let everyone know about you, Haytham Winters. I will let everyone on earth remember you forever, but I will have them remember you as the reason they have been conquered.”

By the time Wei finished, his hands were shaking, and he was practically on the verge of tears. Yet it felt like a release. It felt like relief. Haytham looked beyond furious—heartbroken, enraged, and tired all at once.

“And so this was all a waste of time?” Haytham finally asked.Moonscar shook her head. “We—we thought there was…” 

She paused. “There is nothing. It is not a waste of time. It’s just something to give us all perspective. And to stop any time being wasted later on.”

“Send your assassins,” she added quietly. “But do it openly. Do it honestly.”

“Wei, he’s been trying to kill you this entire time, you noticed,” she continued. “But this overture of diplomacy has been pointless. I just wanted you to see the face of your enemy—and him to see his.”

“And you, Wei?” she asked, shrugging. “It just makes you easier to manipulate.”

Wei laughed incredulously. “And you’re just telling me this? Is that who you are—your nature? Just the honest liar? Is that… is that your class?”

“No,” Moonscar replied. “It is my nature. I am not so different from Mepheleon. But I want to be different. I want to change. But I have to stay the way I am, just to see the end I want to see. So again, I’m going to lie to you. I’m going to betray you. I’m going to play both friend and enemy. But I will make this plane right now. That is what you can expect from me. I will help you if it benefits me. And I will help you reach Earth, because I think it benefits me. After that… we will see how far this alliance endures. But I will not kill you. That is my oath. That is the one thing I will not do—because I need your system. Only because of that.”

Wei felt a surge of conflicting emotion—anger, distrust, yet also… appreciation. This honest lie. She was practically noble among the sinners of the claimed hells. And frankly, it was good to know that you couldn’t trust someone—ever. It was good to know where you stood against her. That… that was a relief.

“Fine,” Wei said. “I… I will try to break through all of your lies. I will try to crush your agents and rip through your schemes. And I will assert myself because I am tired of these games. And I am Will Incarnate. I am Wrath Descending. And I am the Harvester. Come to claim his crop. But I will not kill you, Moonscar. I will not—at least not right now. I know what I must do.”

He turned to Haytham. “And I have enough true enemies.”

“So then this is done?” Haytham asked. “We came all this way to—”

Without warning, Wei expanded the Concept Core of the Harvest. Haytham’s eyes widened. For the first time, Wei brought down that great scythe that swelled in the sun. It crashed against Haytham’s shield, which cracked under the force. The shield was a thing of Essence, but Source—Source devours all Essence. Source is the primordial origin of Essence. Source broke Essence.

As the protective ward bore its permanent wound, the wizard clenched his jaw and roared a final spell—a spell of escape, an absolute command, a power word. Time itself seemed to slow. But Moonscar said another, and time began to quiver again. Before he vanished, he stared at Wei one last time. Haythem turned away first.

“Fine, coward,” Wei sneered. “Run from me.”

And a moment later, the world jolted. The Consuls were gone. It wasn’t much of a conversation, and he didn’t get much insight—but he thought he’d said enough. He didn’t need to know these people, didn’t want to know their names or remember their faces. All except for Haytham. He wanted to see that old man’s face once more—just in tears, broken and in abject misery, begging for death, wailing as Wei took everything from him.

“So,” Wei said, “are we done here? Or is this part of your absurd scheme?” 

Moonscar stared, tilted her head a little, and said nothing.

The young master snorted. “Of course. Do not contact me for the next week. I will kill the remaining challengers. We’ll gather significance by then. We’ll be Hell’s Vanguard. After that… we will see how long this alliance lasts.”

Before he left the room, Moonscar called out. “Mind how you swing your scythe. Some things, when you break, cannot be put back together.”

Wei studied her for a moment and, in return, said nothing before stepping out. As emerged outside, he saw his inner council waiting for him, read concern and surprise on their faces. William came closer—and froze as Wei turned his full glare on him. “No,” was all Wei said to the man that used to be his father. Instead, he turned to Agnesia. “You. Come. We’re going to kill a lot of people today. We’re going to do it until I feel like talking again.”

Ellena flinched. “Wei—”

“You are not the one I asked,” Wei said calmly. As calmly as he could. The former queen bit her lip and swallowed. “She will either be the dragon. Or the prey. We have so few choices.” He looked down. “Agnesia. Come. It’s time to show me who you have become.”