Veneri sat on top of one of Skazka Illyuzia's taller buildings with his legs bent loosely in front of him. His hands rested behind him as he looked up at the sky.
The night was clear. No moon existed above the Timeless Realm, which meant the stars had taken over that duty completely. They scattered across the darkness. The city below was quieter at this height. Lamps glowed along the streets, distant traffic moved through the gorge and the circus district lights flashed in the distance in a softer rhythm than the louder parts of the town.
Someone sat beside him.
He did not turn immediately. He only turned his gaze and let the silence settle for a while before speaking.
"Do Phonoroxans usually hang around like this?"
Ednil, who had appeared beside him as naturally as if she had always belonged there, looked up at the stars too. Her expression was calm but not distant.
"No, but I don't mind."
"That sounds like a lie."
"It's not. Phonoroxans live lives bound to duty. We tend to act very cold when it comes to rules. A few of us got used to being casual. EPOCH is one of them."
"You know EPOCH?"
"Every Phonoroxan knows her."
Veneri blinked once. He knew enough about Phonoroxans to know that if they all knew her, then EPOCH's position must be much more important than most outsiders realized.
"She's supervising Vasreveilder, one of the top three strongest beings in the universe, so that he stays in Spheraphase and doesn't act out of line. Phonoroxans are protectors of the worlds they're assigned to. That's a great duty to EPOCH and most Phonoroxans respect her for it. She's also the one who allowed you to come here."
Veneri let out a slow breath and leaned back on his hands again.
"I made the deal through Natas."
"The male Omniscient?"
"Yes. I told Natas to tell EPOCH to send me to the Timeless Realm so I could finish my Time Trial here. I knew about its existence in Regnum Musicae when I was investigating the Orchestral Violex. Those 160 years were really something. I managed to get to hone my mage skills to the maximum."
That part still felt strange to say out loud sometimes. His life had already been split into so many chapters that even he occasionally had to pause to remember which one led into the other. Regnum Musicae, the Orchestral Violex, the first knowledge of the Time Trial, the deal, the death, the return, the century of battle, the hidden meaning of all of it, it all was a line of choices that had looked very different while he was making them than it did now while he sat on a rooftop and talked to a Phonoroxan about the shape of his own life.
"My life hasn't been easy. But at least it's better now."
"Do you resent her or me? You know, for letting you live through a century of pain in here and suffering and sixteen decades in the music realm?"
Veneri's answer came quickly enough to show he had already thought about it more than once.
"No. I asked to be taken to the Timeless Realm after I died. That part was on me. And my Destiny is literally Suffering Before Reward. It can't be changed, so I'm used to it."
"You say that like you love suffering."
"I don't love it. I just don't get to pretend it's avoidable. I'm just a pebble of sand in the universe. Compared to most people, I'm living a pretty good life. Everyone has to endure suffering someday. Mine is just more intense than average."
That was not false modesty. That was how he actually saw it.
"You gave up everything, though. Your home, your beloveds, even your Dynasty. Why?"
"My daughters and subordinates were already in the Obsidian Runic Spire. It went to my soul when I came to the Timeless Realm. They told me Vasreveilder knew about my plan and they joined in. I was meant to take Valeria alone, but they all came too. But that wasn't the real reason I came here."
Ednil did not interrupt.
"I came to the Timeless Realm to distance myself from my beloveds and friends."
"..."
"They're all prodigies. They're capable of great things. Ever since they found out I was alive after coming out of the First Epoch Cycle, they've had this instinct to protect me. Especially my beloveds. Some of my friends aren't like that. Eldrigan and Peroncerea, for example, are normal enough. But my beloveds? They're something else."
Ednil's face remained calm.
"They don't improve unless they have to. Narisva is the only one who actually pursues power on her own because she's afraid she'll lose me. That's how she reached the second stage of Primordial Deity. Two more steps and she'll be a Nexus, though that'll take millennia. The rest are fine but they never really think about pursuing power unless I ask them to or unless I'm doing it myself. So I removed myself from the picture. I killed myself and separated the Hidden Citadel from the world so they'd have time to become Deities."
He leaned back a little farther, staring up at the stars again.
"I don't regret it. I'd do it again if I went back in time. They don't need to rely on me for everything. They're powerful enough to grow into their own roles. I just kept... helping too much. I've never really asked them for help because I was always afraid of relying on them, and somehow I ended up relying on them all the time anyway. I don't remember the last time I did something completely on my own without them around."
He looked almost annoyed with himself as he said it, which was the closest he came to self-criticism in casual conversation.
"That stagnant kind of dependence would have corrupted them. It would have hindered their development. My death was the only way to break it."
"Do you want to go back?"
He answered immediately and this time the honesty in it was almost sharp enough to hurt.
"Yes."
He didn't hide the answer behind circumstance. He just let it stand.
"I miss them every day but I can't go back. I'm dead to them now."
"They might mourn you, but that's it?"
"Yes."
"And then they'll move on?"
"They have to."
"Once you pass the Time Trial, you can go back after you become a Timeless."
He shook his head.
"No."
That answer surprised her and he knew it would.
"My daughters and subordinates will go back with the Obsidian Runic Spire. I won't go with them."
"Why not?"
"That's complicated."
She waited. He didn't rush it. He was already used to explaining the parts of himself that people usually misunderstood, and this was not a small part.
"I'm not scared of facing them. I just don't want my sacrifice to be in vain. If I go back, they'll get possessive and crazy in love. I'm talking about the kind of possessive where I become the only thing they care about. They have a world to protect. They can't afford to think about anything else, especially with the Mopherian Pantheon coming."
He leaned forward now, resting his forearms on his knees.
"I killed myself on purpose for a purpose. I know them too well. They won't let me do anything that involves fighting and I can't exactly fight them all, especially now that Narisva is a Primordial Goddess."
Ednil let out a quiet breath, almost a sigh.
"You really are a being who understands the Love Divinity."
"That's an odd thing to say."
"It isn't."
He looked at her with mild suspicion, and she went on before he could interrupt.
"In two hundred and seventy years, you've managed to gain understanding of love, protection, time, and justice. Your Water Pentarch is learning in Atlantis. He's already understanding more about water. And you're here, dealing with love and the consequences of what you left behind."
"And?"
"You've already passed the Time Trial, Vastarael Blossom Richinaria. The Primordials, especially the Time Primordial, have agreed to allow you to pass. You are now a Timeless, though you need a ritual for that to happen."
He stared at her. For the first time in the entire conversation, his usual calm look cracked.
------
What is a Timeless?
Veneri had asked himself that question three times in his life and every time it had arrived with a different shape.
The first time was when Phaenora told him there was a way to escape the Fate that had once waited for him like a blade at the end of a corridor. Back then, the idea of changing that outcome sounded impossible and yet it had also sounded necessary enough to become a problem worth living through.
The second time came when he and the other Splits stood before the council of the strongest beings and heard the word Trials spoken like law. That was when the idea of a Timeless stopped sounding like a fantasy and started sounding like a state of being the universe itself had permission to grant.
The third time was when he actually landed in the Timeless Realm and realized that whatever this was, it was not just a title. He had always understood the surface meaning. It was being unaffected by time. It was a creature that no longer eroded under it the way everyone else did. But what did that mean in practice? What did it mean to exist beyond age without becoming something cold and static? What did it mean to be recognized by the realm itself?
Ednil's voice cut through that spiral of thoughts.
"Being a Timeless is an extremely rare case. One in a trillion, if you want the simplest answer. You already know about the Iterations so it's easier to explain from there. The universe has reset seven times. In all seven, there has never been a being welcomed by Time herself."
That made him go very still.
"Others have become beings of destruction, creation, space, destiny, fate, life, and death. Some were chosen by Primordials to represent their Divinities as Splits. Some were chosen out of favor. Some were made into symbols. But no one, in any recorded cycle, was ever chosen for Time and Existence. The Primordials of Time, Space, and Existence are the oldest and first Primordials in the universe. Their favor is difficult to obtain. Most beings can live, die and be forgotten without ever touching them. But you managed to get Time's favor."
Veneri stared at her.
"Lady Thyrexxa has seen something in you. She decided to make you a Timeless."
He opened his mouth but nothing came out.
"You will not be a Deity or a Seventh Enlightenment Divine either. You'll be a true pseudo-deity if you want to describe the category, though even that doesn't capture it properly. You can still become a Deity if you want to use that route."
He gave the faintest twitch of his jaw at that. She was right. He had never wanted the shortcut. If there was a harder road, he always seemed to choose it so long as it led to the thing he actually wanted.
"The Time Primordial has used your whole life as the Time Trial. It never began when you met the council. It began when you were transmigrated."
His whole life had changed under that one sentence.
The struggle. The loneliness. The years he spent as a weak First Phase Ascender in the First Epoch Cycle while everyone else moved too fast and too far ahead. The suffering that came after, the time spent separated, the years of endurance, the strange emptiness of always being behind and always having to grow harder because he had no choice, even the 260 years he spent alone discovering himself suddenly looked different through that lens.
It was not wasted or random. Nor was it misfortune piled onto misfortune because the universe was cruel for amusement. It was all a trial and a very long one. It was one so complete it had used his life instead of a short period of testing.
"You suffered through the passage of time. You endured it. You withstood it even when it hurt. Even when you were weaker than everyone in the First Epoch Cycle, even when you left and had to spend centuries alone, that loneliness too was part of it."
Veneri stayed silent.
"Your suffering and loneliness have been rewarded. Congratulations. You are a Timeless."
For a long moment, Veneri could only look at her. The stars above the skies seemed very far away.
He had heard many things in his life. Titles. Prophecies. Threats. Declarations. Praise. Burdens. However, this one came with a sort of feeling that made the others look cheap. He become the thing the trial had been shaping him towards.
Ednil watched him process it. Then, as if the conversation needed one final piece to become practical, she reached into nowhere and produced an emerald gemstone. It was small enough to hold in one hand, but it glowed with a soft light. She held it out to him.
"I'm here as a message deliverer. Once you crush that, you'll be able to meet Lady Thyrexxa."
Veneri looked down at the stone and back at Ednil.
He had been about to thank her but the words never quite formed because she was already gone. He let out a breath through his nose and closed his hand around the gemstone.
"I didn't even sense her leave."
That, for some reason, made him more aware of how powerful Phonoroxans were.
He looked at the emerald in his palm and the city below. Skazka Illyuzia kept glowing under the stars. He now understood why Thyrexxa said that it would take a long time for them to see each other again.
He sighed and crushed the gemstone.
The emerald cracked in his grip. The light burst in a thin green flare. The rooftop went still. The space in front of him changed.