Veneri was alone in his room when the next message arrived. It came as a soft hologram hovering in front of him. This time, the message was clear.
[Pentarch Path: The Love Pentarch can now be summoned.]
He stared at it for a moment beneath the mask.
Ever since he had left the battlefield after a century, the Timeless Realm had stopped treating his Time Trial like a normal trial. The realm had decided that his path would be done through his Pentarchs. Each one was forced to live, learn and endure its own section of the Timeless Realm as if each were a separate life carved out of the same soul.
The Water Pentarch had already begun his path in Atlantis.
He was with Leviticus, the Second Oceanic Ruler, deep in the Cornvelia Ocean, learning what it actually meant to be Hydroborn. The Water Pentarch would not just gain power there. He would understand water better with Leviticus. That was what the Timeless Realm wanted from him.
Now the Love Pentarch had been opened.
He had involved himself in love through Eunecia and that meant the Pentarch Path had finally reached the part that demanded understanding instead of observation. The message from the Phonoroxan was simple.
[Experience love.]
That was the cruel genius of the Pentarch Path.
Veneri already knew why this had happened. As a Seventh Enlightenment Divine, he had two routes ahead of him. He could choose the quicker one; break forward into Deity Rank and become stronger in the straightforward way. Or, he could stay where he was, remain at Seventh Enlightenment, and pursue the much harder route towards Primordial Deity Rank. The second path required vastly more time, more patience and a much deeper understanding of his Divinities.
Most people did not choose it. That was obvious. Why would they?
It took much longer than just ascending to Deity. For a Seventh Enlightenment Divine, the road to Primordial Deity Rank took twice as long as the already difficult road a Deity would have to walk. It was the kind of path most beings looked at once and immediately rejected because they valued immediate power more than ultimate mastery.
Veneri had done the exact opposite. He wanted to reach the Primordial Deity Rank first.
He wanted to understand everything his Divinities could become before he let himself move past them. A being could break to Fifth Enlightenment and know what their Divinity was. They could understand its core function, its reason for existing and the role the universe had given it. But Seventh Enlightenment and Deity Rank were different. At that stage, understanding the Divinity wasn't enough.
They had to experience it.
If someone had the Divinity of Nature, they needed to be in nature. They had to live inside it, move with it, absorb it and think through it until it became part of their instincts. If someone had the Divinity of Music, they had to experience music in full depth, learn how it worked and understand why it moved beings the way it did. That was what the Primordial Deity path demanded.
For Veneri, the Pentarch Path was perfect for that.
The Water Pentarch was already with Leviticus, surrounded by oceans, currents, marine races and the logic of Atlantis itself. There was no better environment for him to deepen his understanding of water than being inside it every day, learning from a cousin who happened to be one of the strongest oceanic rulers in the Immortal Anchor.
The Love Pentarch was going to do the same for love. That part made sense in a way that was almost irritating.
Love, after all, was not something Veneri had ever treated lightly. It was not a simple emotion to him. It had always been tied to sacrifice, longing, pain amd memory. Eunecia had already dragged that part of him to the surface without realizing it. The Love Pentarch would now be the one forced to live inside that concept and learn its shape from the inside.
He had no idea what the Love Pentarch would become since he was now a Seventh Enlightenment.
The Water Pentarch had already changed. He had cerulean hair and eyes and a more muscular build than the original body. That was what experience had done to him already and he had only just begun. The Love Pentarch, by contrast, had not yet shown its final form. Veneri suspected it would not remain static. How could it? Love was not static. A Pentarch built to understand a Divinity would have to reflect that somehow.
He sat there thinking about it for a long time. Biolumine and Parasphlen both covered their noses at the same time. Veneri looked up, mildly annoyed by their expressions.
"What are you doing?"
Parasphlen's expression was grimly sincere.
"Your peony scent is dangerous."
"Dangerous how?"
Biolumine made a frustrated little gesture with one hand.
"If you summon the Love Pentarch while they're breathing that in, everyone nearby is going to get enchanted by you."
"I can control it."
Biolumine did not look convinced.
"Can you, though?"
"Yes!"
Both of them kept their noses covered. He looked from one to the other, then let out a slow sigh.
"You're both overreacting."
"You are a beautiful man with an absurdly powerful presence, a scent tied to peonies and seduction, and you're about to summon a Pentarch built around love. That is not something you get to call safe with a straight face."
Veneri's mouth twitched beneath the mask but he said nothing. They were not wrong though. If he summoned the Love Pentarch with his scent active, the room would become a problem. Anyone sensitive enough to emotional or sensual influence would feel it immediately. The Love Pentarch itself would likely intensify that effect further,
That was exactly why this Pentarch mattered. The Timeless Realm wasn't asking him to flirt and have sex with other men or women.
It was asking him to understand what love did to people when it was real, when it was wanted, when it was rejected, when it was mistaken for lust, when it was tied to loss and when it survived long enough to become part of someone's identity. He had already seen enough of that in Eunecia's pain, in Vivian's cold truth and in his own history to know that this would not be a simple lesson.
He exhaled through his nose and looked down at the hologram message one more time..Parasphlen and Biolumine were still staring at him with their hands over their noses like he might accidentally turn the room into a romance disaster by breathing too hard..He gave them a flat look.
"I heard you the first time so you can stop doing that."
"Good. Then don't make us regret this."
Veneri rolled his eyes at Biolumine and sat on the floor.
If the Time Trial wanted him to become the kind of being who could get to the Primordial Deity Rank properly instead of rushing into lesser ascension for convenience, then it would have to wait while he did it right. He glanced once at the hologram, then to his companions.
"Fine, let's begin."
Veneri's face had never belonged to one side of gender. That was the simplest way to explain what it meant to be Aeterium.
They were an androgynous race by nature and the higher they rose, the more obvious it became. At lower levels, the difference could be subtle enough that a stranger might guess wrong and still feel confident enough to argue about it. At the Seventh Enlightenment, that certainty vanished. Veneri's features had become balanced enough that they no longer leaned into male or female. His body still carried a masculine build, broad in the shoulders and firm in the frame, which was the main reason most people eventually read him as male.
However, even that was not enough to fully settle the matter at a glance. His face could have belonged to either side if not for the rest of him and the fact that it could sit that close to the line without ever falling off it was exactly what made Aeterium so beautiful.
Their Body Reconstruction made that possible.
It did not merely heal. Aeterium could reshape themselves into any gender, appearance or race they desired. The transformation would be complete enough to fool the eye and the senses. They would not gain the racial Base Tethers of whatever form they copied but they could look identical to it. Their bones, skin, voice and presence could all be rewritten with enough precision to make the disguise perfect. In Veneri's case, that flexibility had never been a novelty. It was simply another part of surviving as an Aeterium. But it also meant that when he summoned the Love Pentarch, the form that emerged would not be a simple copy of a man or woman. It would be a full expression of the concept it carried.
Veneri took a breath and summoned the Love Pentarch out. The moment he did, dense sapphire mist emerged. It was thick enough to blur the edges of the furniture and spill through the windows. It spread out over the hotel, over the surrounding rooftops and into the streets of Shenlu Cheng. Even Veneri took a fraction of a second to process the sheer pressure of the arrival,
The Love Pentarch stepped out of the sapphire haze and stood before them. Veneri stared. Parasphlen went still. Biolumine had the expression of a creature trying very hard not to react and failing at it.
The Love Pentarch was beautiful. They were male, technically, but that word barely contained what stood in front of them. Their face was deeply feminine in contour but strong enough in the eyes and jaw to keep it from becoming delicate. Pink hair spilled around their shoulders in long curly waves. Pink eyes looked back at Veneri calmly. Their skin was the same deep dark bronze as his own and even their eyelashes and eyebrows were pink. Their bangs gave them an even softer impression while the pink peony tattoos across their biceps, chest and back made the whole form more alluring.
They looked like a muscular female at first glance and a breathtakingly feminine male a second later. That was the part that made Veneri blink in surprise.
The the face was his own and not his at the same time. The Love Pentarch looked at him and smiled, entirely unfazed by the reaction they had caused.
"Why are you so shocked to see yourself?"
Veneri cleared his throat once. Even he had been caught off guard and that was saying something. The resemblance was obvious in the structure, but the Pentarch's presentation was far more overtly feminine than his own current body. It was as if the concept of love had looked at Veneri, taken the androgynous balance already present in his Aeterium nature, and then pushed it towards a more seductive interpretation without losing the underlying strength. He had expected something strange but not something this beautiful.
The sapphire mist still lingered around the room. It was starting to spread further than it should have. The feeling in the room was intense enough that if he didn't control it, the effects might cause trouble outside the hotel too. That would be a problem.
The Love Pentarch exhaled and with a wave of his hand, the mist responded immediately, flowing back toward him before gathering around the Pentarch like a coating. Parasphlen finally found her voice.
"This is insane."
Biolumine was staring with wide eyes.
"That is..."
The Love Pentarch glanced at them both.
"I take it this is a positive reaction."
"You don't need to be so dramatic."
The Pentarch looked down at their body as if inspecting the form for the first time, then slowly smiled.
"I'm not being dramatic, original me. You all seem stunned to see me."
They moved toward the bed, where the female Chinese outfit Eunecia had chosen had been left folded earlier and picked it up. The fabric was elegant and light, clearly selected for beauty more than practicality. The Love Pentarch slipped into it. Once dressed, they tied their long pink curls into a messy ponytail, leaving enough loose strands.
"That's better. I'm stronger now too."
"At Seventh Enlightenment?"
The Love Pentarch nodded once.
"Yes. Maybe it's because our understanding of love made me stronger?"
Their presence now carried the weight of a Seventh Enlightenment Divine. That meant their understanding of love would be conceptual and much harder to ignore. Veneri could already feel it. The body was a vessel tuned to experience love in a way the original self could not have done alone.
Biolumine covered her nose again almost immediately. Parasphlen did too. Veneri looked at both of them.
"What now?"
Parasphlen pointed at him as if he were the problem.
"Your scent is still a disaster."
"I'm literally controlling it."
"Barely."
The Love Pentarch gave a soft laugh, then looked towards the window and the city beyond.
"This will be interesting."
Veneri folded his arms, still staring at the other self. Love had not made the Pentarch weaker. If anything, it had given the body a kind of intensity that could make men fight for them. That was the point, though.
Love was not simple and neither was he.
He let out a slow breath and finally accepted the shape in front of him for what it was.
"Okay. Now, you already know what to do."
"Yes, yes, I know. I need to go to a pleasure district and work there. Thank goodness Eunecia gave us a tour of some parts of the city yesterday afternoon."