The Forge Tournament began beneath a sky full of floating platforms.
The arena itself floated high above Shenlu Cheng. From below it had already looked imposing. Tens of thousands of spectators filled the grand stands carved around its rim, with rows upon rows of seats stretching around the central forge field. Some people had come for the spectacle. Some had come because they cared about forging. Others had come because they wanted to see a big faction embarrass themselves. A few had clearly come because they hoped to witness a legend being born or broken in public.
Veneri sat with his mask on, still three meters tall, watched the crowd settle into place. Agnar was beside him. The host stepped out and the people cheered.
She was a woman dressed in formal competition robes. Her voice echoed easily across the arena without needing much help from amplification. She smiled at the crowd and raised one hand. The murmuring died down almost immediately.
"Welcome to the Forge Competition of Shenlu Cheng. To the forgers gathered here from across the Mortal Anchor, the Immortal Anchor and the Divine Anchor, we honor your craft, your ambition and your willingness to prove yourselves before the Timeless Realm. However, this Forge Tournament is not like the others."
That got everyone's attention. The noise in the stands began to fade.
"This time, each Forger must support a fighter."
That made Veneri blink once. Agnar's mouth twitched like he found the reaction amusing before it even happened.
"This decision has been made by the strongest factions and pantheons of this world. The act of the forge will not be tested as a private craft alone but as a weapon of support in a larger competition."
A lot of the audience reacted at once. Some looked excited. Some frowned. Some clearly loved the idea because it made the stakes bigger. Others looked like they had come expecting a straightforward forge tournament and were now realizing they'd wandered into something far more political.
The host smiled and kept going.
"A Forger must be chosen by a contestant. A Forger may also volunteer themselves as fighters. From the ten thousand Forgers competing in this challenge, the Forge Tournament will select one hundred. Those top one hundred Forgers will become the designated helpers of the top one hundred fighters chosen by the factions and pantheons of Planet-4697."
That was the moment Veneri looked at Agnar.
"Planet-4697?"
Agnar glanced sideways at him, then sighed as if he had been waiting for that exact question.
"That's the name of this world."
"This isn't a planet?"
"Not exactly. The Timeless Realm is a dimension, not a single world. It's full of billions of planets. Ours is designated Planet-4697."
That made Veneri go still for a second. He looked back at the arena floor, where officials were already arranging the competition structure and attendants were moving between registration teams. Agnar noticed his silence and frowned a little.
"You didn't know that?"
Veneri gave him a flat look under the mask.
"I'm new here."
Agnar let out a breath that was half sigh, half disbelief.
"Right. Of course you are. Every planet in the Timeless Realm is based on the real universe. For Planet-4697, everything that exists here comes from a planet called Earth."
That one was not what he had expected.
"The beings, the concepts, the forgotten, old civilizations, a lot of it traces back there. We don't have memories of their past lives on Earth, but they do know they came from it. In a way, this planet is literally Earth. It's just not the Earth you'd think of in the usual sense. Since there are so many worlds in the Timeless Realm, the planets are numbered instead of named in the old way."
The people around him, the cultures, the architecture, the familiar patterns woven into the city he had been admiring since arriving, all came from that same source. It had simply been forgotten and buried under a new cosmic system. That changed the feel of the entire world in one stroke.
He was in was a copy of a mega Earth that was a history trash can.
Agnar looked back at the arena and gave a dry laugh.
"Makes the whole thing more absurd, doesn't it?"
Veneri didn't answer immediately. He was thinking too hard. The host's voice rang out again across the arena, drawing the crowd back to the present.
"Forgers who choose fighters from among the top one hundred will gain safer placement, stronger support opportunities and tournament alignment with the most promising contestants. Forgers who choose to fight for themselves rather than support one of the top one hundred chosen fighters should be aware that they will be targeted."
Some groaned. Some looked delighted because this made the competition much more vicious. Others looked like they were already regretting their decision to attend. A tournament where the craft itself had to support fighters was already unusual but the warning about self-participants being targeted made it even clearer that the strongest factions and pantheons had designed this thing to force strategy instead of pure individual skill.
Agnar leaned toward Veneri and spoke quietly.
"That's the unfair part."
Veneri looked at him.
"If a Forger decides to fight for themselves instead of choosing from the top hundred strongest fighter picks, they're going to be under pressure immediately. The factions and pantheons will come after them. They want control—wait. Why do you look amused?"
"Because it just got interesting."
Agnar muttered something under his breath that sounded like a complaint about geniuses being a public nuisance, but Veneri was already following the implications.
Ten thousand Forgers. One hundred chosen. Top one hundred fighters selected by the strongest factions and pantheons. If someone decided to choose their own path instead of getting into the approved structure, they would become a target immediately. That meant the whole tournament was about power alignment and Faction influence.
Veneri's fingers tapped once against his armrest. The host continued speaking, laying out the finer structure of the event, but Veneri was already thinking of the other man points. This was a way to identify which craftsmen could support the strongest fighters in the realm and which ones were dangerous enough to become political assets.
"You're not even bothered by the unfairness?"
Veneri gave a small shrug.
"What can we do about it Agnar? We just have to roll with it."
Agnar shook his head with a low laugh.
"You're insane."
Veneri didn't deny it.
-----
Eunecia had come to the art museum in Shenlu Cheng because she wanted peace.
Peace for her meant no shouting at the docks, no last-minute ship complaints and no passengers asking for directions. She thought maybe walking among painted walls and carved displays would clear her head.
It did not.
The museum was beautiful. The galleries were built in halls of pale stone and lacquered wood with curved roofs and lights that gave the whole place the same refined Chinese-inspired elegance Shenlu Cheng seemed to love everywhere. But unlike the streets outside, the museum carried a different kind of power. The paintings were not still.
A painted woman's sleeve would flutter faintly. A mystical beast would tilt its head. A river in one mural seemed to move under the brushwork. Even the flowers in some frames looked like they had been caught mid-bloom and left there on purpose, as if the artist had painted the memory of motion rather than the motion itself. The whole museum felt like it had been built to preserve more than art.
She walked through one hall, then another, letting the clean scent of varnish and old paper drift around her. A few visitors passed by in low voices. A pair of children stood in front of a mural of winged fish and argued over which one was prettier. Eunecia almost smiled at that but the smile never quite reached her face. She was still tired from the last few days.
Thar was when she saw her. At first it was only the shape of the dress.
It was a beautiful Chinese gown that made someone look elegant even from a distance. It had the deep, refined color balance that made the whole figure stand out immediately against the lighter walls of the gallery. Eunecia slowed down without meaning to. The woman wearing it was standing in front of one of the main paintings, looking up at it. She had long dark hair and a a graceful posture.
"Vivi—"
The name left her before she could stop herself but it broke halfway through. Her mouth closed again before the word could finish and for a second she just stood there looking at the siren she had known for years. She was the one who had always seemed to understand her in ways nobody else did.
Vivian didn't turn not because she hadn't heard. Someone else had drawn her attention first. Another woman joined her at the painting.
Eunecia realized immediately that the second woman was a painter. Her hands were stained faintly with color. She leaned in towards Vivian and said something Eunecia couldn't hear from where she stood. Vivian's entire face changed at once. She smiled in a way Eunecia had never seen before.
Vivian hugged her. Eunecia went still. The painter laughed softly and hugged her back, and then Vivian kissed her like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Eunecia felt the moment split inside her.
It was a small thing on the outside. It was just a kiss between two women in a museum but inside her chest, something cracked so hard it almost didn't feel like breaking.
She stood there with her hands frozen at her sides and watched the two of them admire the art together with their faces close. They were looking at one of the museum's center pieces now, which was a painting of a siren rendered in luminous color and clear detail. Eunecia followed their gaze and then looked closer.
It was Vivian.
The artist had captured her expression, her posture, the shape of her face, the tilt of her head and the almost dangerous look in the eyes. The painting looked alive in the same unsettling way the museum's art all did, but this one felt especially intimate. It wasn't just a siren. It was Vivian. Someone had seen her, understood her and painted her with the kind of attention that only love or obsession could produce.
Of course Vivian had someone else. The woman had been real to her and to someone else too, but in a way Eunecia had never been part of.
She looked at them and suddenly felt stupid for every quiet hope she had buried and refused to name. She felt stupid for every time she told herself Vivian's attention meant something more. She felt stupid for mistaking familiarity and sensual activity for interest or affection.
Eunecia's face changed before she could stop it. Her eyes lowered, lifted again, then shifted away. Her mouth turned to a thin line. She kept her expression as controlled as she could but inside it was another story entirely. She thought she was close to Vivian and now she had kissed a woman in front of her.
She could feel the heartbreak forming in her mind in bitter fragments as she faced a mirror and see her face. So that's what it was.
'That's what she looked like when she's happy I was never going to be that person, was I?'
'How stupid.'
'How embarrassing.'
'How could I have stood beside her and thought I mattered like that?'
Her chest ached with the kind of pain that wasn't dramatic enough to be called heartbreak in the grand sense of things, but it was sharp enough to ruin the day anyway. She watched the painter brush a hand over Vivian's cheek and saw Vivian laugh softly in response. That was almost worse than the kiss. Eunecia could have handled rejection better than this.
She took one slow step backward, preparing to leave before she made a fool of herself any more completely.
"Are you her lover?"
Eunecia froze.
She turned and found a tall man standing just behind her, wearing a white faceless mask with elegant patterns. He was three meters tall at least, which meant she had to tilt her head sharply to look at him. He was dressed with a male Chinese outfit and if it wasn't for that mask, a lot of women would be staring at him.
"What?"
He pointed towards Vivian and the painter with his fan.
"Are you her lover?"
Eunecia felt her face warm up immediately, partly from surprise and partly from the embarrassment of having been caught staring.
"No."
He seemed to study her for a second longer than necessary, then looked back toward the two women with calm disinterest.
"Then it's none of my business."
That should have ended the conversation but Eunecia swallowed and asked:
"Has the Forge Competition started?"
"Not quite. There have been a few changes in the rules, so I've got a few days to decide. I came to check the art museum."
That startled her.
"You like art?"
"One of my... companions is an artist. I thought I'd come get some inspiration. I've been into sculpting lately, so I figured I should try looking at things properly."
Eunecia looked at him in silence for a moment. There was something disarming about the way he said it, as if sculpting were just another thing he was trying because he felt like it. She turned to face Vivian and her lover. He must have followed her gaze, because his head tilted slightly.
"Is it that obvious?"
"What?"
"That you're upset."
Her fingers tightened around the edge of her shawl.
"No."
He gave her a flat look that made it obvious he didn't believe her at all, though she didn't see it.
"You hide your expression pretty well. Your eyes are another matter."
She looked up at him properly asked the question before she could stop herself.
"Have you ever been in love, Mr Veneri?"
For a second, he didn't answer.
"Yes."
"What happened to them?"
He was silent long enough that she almost regretted asking. Then, with the same calm voice he'd used for everything else, he answered.
"I died. Like all beings, I'm in the Timeless Realm now. They've probably forgotten about me by now. It's been a century since I last saw them."
Eunecia's mouth parted.
"I'm sorry."
"No worries. I'm used to being separated from my loved ones."
That almost made it worse. He said it so calmly that she felt guilty for asking. Then, surprisingly, he turned his head toward her and scoffed.
"I know exactly what can cheer you up."
"What?"
"There's a lantern festival happening. I was planning to go. You've been to a few places, right? Maybe you can show me around."
She looked at him, still trying to process the speed at which the conversation had shifted from heartbreak to quiet companionship. Eunecia nodded before she had fully decided to.
"Yes. I can show you."
The masked man gave a small, satisfied nod before he started walking.
Eunecia looked once more towards Vivian and the painter, still standing together in front of the siren portrait. The sight hurt, but not as violently now.
She followed the tall masked man out of the art museum.
"You are a mysterious man, Mr Veneri."
"Please, Veneri is fine. I'm not one for formalities."