The heavens responded like a bureaucrat late to lunch.
First, a distant rumble. Then a second, closer. The sky flickered. Light twisted. The clouds turned from ominous gray to deep narrative purple, which only appeared during thunderstorms of extreme plot importance — the kind footnoted in ancient grimoires with phrases like "uh-oh" and "don't be here."
Sevven stood atop Mount Gulgoroth, arms outstretched like he was trying to catch divine Wi-Fi. His tattered robe flared dramatically in the rising winds. His hair sparked as static built around him. His body began to emit a faint golden hue — not due to divine favor or power, but because he'd accidentally sat on a glowing spirit stone earlier and hadn't noticed.
Meanwhile, in a dimension and a half away — a location not so much far as it was sideways — Varka the Alchemical Binder was very much not watching the show. He was, instead, engaged in a screaming match with a jar.
"For the last time," Varka said, scalpel in hand, jabbing it accusingly at the twitching container, "you are not allowed to spontaneously turn into a mimic unless I authorize it. Lab protocol."
The jar buzzed in protest.
Then it exploded into butterflies.
Varka didn't flinch. He merely sighed, scribbled a note that read "Find stronger containment spell (again)", and tucked it into a drawer that promptly ate the paper and burped a puff of cinnamon.
Behind him, the lab was a chaos symphony played in the key of "Why?" Hundreds of books floated in midair, flipping through pages with supernatural fingers. A cauldron was brewing itself and occasionally judging nearby ingredients for poor life choices. The walls rearranged themselves according to the emotional tone of the room, which at that moment felt like caffeinated anxiety. On the floor sprawled an intricate alchemical circle surrounded by arcane diagrams, half-finished equations, and three separate drawings of Sevven's smiling face — each with increasingly unflattering mustaches.
Varka rubbed his temple and muttered, "That idiot's really going through with it."
He pulled off his goggles, revealing tired eyes with concentric burn rings around the irises, and a very suspicious scar on his forehead shaped like a philosophical question mark.
Alchemy, you see, was not a craft. Not even an art. It was madness — politely disguised as a Dao… which simply means science. A blend of logic and lunacy mixed in a crucible of "what if?" and left to simmer until something exploded or achieved sentience … or both.
Alchemical Energy wasn't just something you touched, it was also something you argued with. It was the breath between atoms. The whisper between soul and flesh. If the world was a book, alchemy wasn't the ink or the paper — it was the binding. The silent force saying, "Yes, this goes here, and no, your foot does not belong on your face unless someone badly concocts a body-shaping tonic."
Most people, even alchemists, think alchemy is just advanced potion-making.
Those people were dead now... Usually from potions, or at least, they would eventually be.
Irony was literally, like, the third rule of alchemy.
Varka, as always, was not dead. Mostly because death had tried, failed, and then filed a restraining order out of frustration.
He approached the centerpiece of his lab — a stone pedestal upon which floated a tiny mote of alchemical essence: rubedo, pure, raw, undiluted. It pulsed faintly. Alive. Hungry. It occasionally whispered things like "hypothetical annihilation" and "time has opinions."
He stared at it, thoughtful.
He remembered the first time Sevven had barged into his lab, years ago, soaked in rain and riddles, babbling about fate, destiny, and "stealing the bones of his future self to skip training arcs." The kind of man who carried seven notebooks, five contingency plans, and exactly zero common sense… no, seriously.
"Mad," Varka had said at the time.
Still was.
But even madness can have a method. Sevven's obsession with dying properly wasn't just some morbid vanity project. It was strategic. Intentional. He was preparing for something. Something enormous. Something world-threading and unsettling. And it wasn't just his fashion sense — though that was deeply unsettling.
The alchemist flicked a rune, and a projection shimmered into the air — a live feed from a scrying orb Sevven had hidden inside his left nostril for "security reasons." The view showed Mount Gulgoroth in glorious high-definition doom.
Lightning was forming.
Not just any lightning — Tribulation Lightning. The kind reserved for beings on the Peak of their 9th Divine Ascension, catastrophic failure, or particularly egregious karaoke. It didn't just kill you. It evaluated your life choices, reviewed your browser history, and then judged you publicly in the form of atmospheric violence.
Above Sevven, the sky had spiraled into a massive eye of storm. Winds had stopped — not calmed, but opted out. Bolts of light arced across the heavens in slow, deliberate patterns, like the universe was painting a warning sign and then underlining it. Twice.
"Showtime," Varka whispered.
Back on the mountain, Sevven raised the elixir high. It shimmered ominously, a swirl of silver and red that didn't so much glow as suggest the existence of forgotten truths.
He paused.
"Wait," he muttered. "Do I drink it before the first bolt or right as the bolt hits?"
He checked his sleeve. Varka had drawn instructions there:
Drink exactly five seconds before impact.
Not four. Not six. Not 'whenever you feel ready,' you indecisive drama llama.
"Okay… okay... five seconds from…"
BOOOOOOM.
A bolt crashed down from the heavens and vaporized a rock ten feet away. The shockwave nearly knocked Sevven off the mountain.
"GAHHHHHHHHHH– okay! Five seconds from now!" he yelled, popping the cork and chugging the elixir like a frat god at a divine kegger.
The potion burned like shame-flavored lava. His soul jolted. His memories unraveled and reknitted in a split second. He felt his name stretch out and contract into a sigil. His body began to glow — not golden this time, but silver, etched with countless tiny runes spinning in fractal spirals, patterns only desperate nerds and bored gods could understand.
Up above, the clouds clenched.
Another bolt charged. The air thrummed with potential. Birds fled. Time hiccupped.
In the lab, Varka leaned forward, one eyebrow raised.
"Let's see if you really dared to die properly, you magnificent lunatic."
And the sky responded.
The heavens roared. A crack of lightning split the storm, thicker than a mountain, louder than guilt, and faster than disbelief. It descended like a divine finger yelling "NOPE" in celestial Morse code.
It struck Sevven full-on.
The world went white.
No explosion. No scream. Just silence — the heavy, echoing kind that suggests something very important has just ended… or begun.
In Varka's lab, all the books stopped turning. The cauldron froze mid-bubble. Even the butterflies that had once been a jar hovered motionless, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
And then…
A spark.
A little spark.
The spark brightened, brightened until its radiance would make the sun look black.
And then, a ripple.
Varka exhaled, grinning like a man who just watched someone else survive the stupidest idea imaginable.
"Brother… he did it," he whispered. "That absolute lunatic."
Or so he thought…