I took a seat across the room from Odin's hospital bed. The man's eyes tracked every movement, measuring me up without hiding it.
He even used his remaining astral energy to poke at my foundations before a small grin crept across his face.
"So how's that surfer boy doing these days? He should've married that psycho by now. You've even gone through the effort of stepping past that shallow sky title."
He spoke with genuine praise, and it caught me off guard.
With his hostility toward both Crystal and the government, I hadn't expected him to move past it—much less accept my change of allegiance.
"It's taken years to finally give it up, but it was worth it," I admitted. "We weren't friends, so I won't act like I took my name to appease you.
I do understand the need to lead when faced with Thor's unwillingness and the state of both Artemis and Métis after you forced us out."
His grin widened, and a gulf opened in my stomach. I knew he only smiled this hard when someone was already in his hands.
"As I would expect of you," he said.
"Requesting my aid held more backlash than either of us expected, Uranus. One thing this world isn't shy about is forcing the younger generation to step up with or without approval. Regardless of our past rivalries and battles, I'm happy it's you leading the charge."
I nodded, my eyes drawn to the notebook clutched in his hand. The fingers of his right hand were stained with ink, as if he'd been writing his life away.
"This?" he said, following my gaze. "It's a gift for you and the rest. Although I can't fully explain it all without going through madness, this one is for Explorer use only. The pantheons know where we are now.
If my expectations even held up to twenty-five percent of what I could foresee before losing my divinity…"
He let out a slow breath.
"Then Earth is the prize. Any deals offered by pantheons, Asura, or True Path will see to it that we lose our right to our own pantheon. For now, Earth is stuck in E-rank until the barrier drops."
"Then it's a way like the ones in the Astral Sea?" I automatically finished his thought, but found myself questioning more than answering.
"Similar, but fundamentally different," he said. "Where we fight inside the Astral Barrier protecting Earth, we found recycled worlds that hadn't formed Gaias yet. The barrier wasn't against us, but the natural framework ensured anything less than a god would suffer identity fracturing. For us, it was in the form of myths and legends from a bygone cycle.
"Although we could move like gods of the myths, we were still functionally different. This notebook has those insights. Earth isn't ownerless, yet it's held back by its own laws. So build the next generation to ensure we don't become slaves of our elders' greed."
His words dragged up memories of our delusions within the Sea—when we would lay claim to micro-worlds as their kings.
Olympus and other European-descended powers entering a thousand-year war of Explorers and Travelers destroying each other. Astral residents barely smart enough to use fire became our followers.
While Earth was slowly creeping through time, we were cut off and experienced thousands of years of knowledge, then spat into a void that held nothing but recycled planets.
The place that would become home to our battles and conquests.
"So what about this barrier?" I asked. "I thought you cast a barrier to cut off our access—even if it was a byproduct to keep the Astral pantheons from invading."
He shook his head and laughed grimly at the idea.
"No, it wasn't my barrier. That's why Chronos' actions were a giant flare to the multiverse. We've been hidden from the rest of the universe—but that's information you'll learn later. Just keep moving forward like you've been doing.
"The laws of light are a good path. Especially yours, that focuses on speed and power. We're past the era of you having to fight Thor or Wukong while we all used crude forms of our abilities. With this notebook, it'll tell each of you the path forward. Vaguely, yes—but I've learned the hard way about engineering another's path forward."
I took the notebook as he turned his attention back to the TV—his new habit of staying up to date with the modern world. No doubt the reason he wrote this, and the reason he'd requested, through Nicole, to meet with me.
Scene 2- Elderly insight
Entering the office of the Society President, I carried the notebook I'd received from Odin with the intention of passing it along. I had already memorized the portions concerning me, ripped those pages out, and torched them.
The contents had held my personal information and abilities. Yet the even scarier aspect of the notebook was that I couldn't read the sections meant for anyone else. Even Crystal's was hidden from me.
So after giving it to Nicole, who would act as the liaison to travel between us and the Explorers, my part in this crazy plan was complete.
Although it was only step one, it was the hardest and biggest leap of faith we had to make.
Standardized cultivation cycles for the next generation—or what he referred to as the Third Generation.
A time when astral energy would be common knowledge, yet also the hardest pill to swallow for us.
With the birth of the next generation, the last one would be placed under extra care to keep them safe until we could find a method to assimilate astral energy. Although there might be a demon among them, by making this a known issue now, before his theoretical eight-year gap—when the first signs of the Third Generation would show up—we could still make advances and attempts.
If my daughter and her friends could rip off methods that took decades for us to perfect, then this next generation wouldn't be subtle in how connected to astral energy they were.
"Hello, Mr. Giver. I hope your health today is doing well," I said, bowing my head to the elderly man after entering his office. I placed the notebook on his desk—the safest place from greed. Even my own. There were some hungers I was willing to stomach rather than risk the theoretical knowledge that book held.
"Baldur…" he said, pausing as he looked at me—deeply this time, as if he'd caught onto something.
"Hmmm. I guess that meeting untangled knots for you. That's good. There was no reason to keep second-guessing yourself after this long. So tell me: what exactly did your old rival give you?"
He looked down at the notebook yet didn't reach a finger toward it. Clearly not interested in whatever horror stories Odin might have written.
"Not just me," I answered. "Even you benefited from his return. Our would-be returner isn't exactly a new person. In fact, we've been dealing with a ghost this entire time.
"The government forcing itself onto us is hinging on a promise they'll be capable of chasing divinity—or the hard fact that the Explorers are only human in name now. Only one step away from cementing ourselves within the laws and identities we forge for ourselves.
"I don't know what exactly to even say anymore. He's planned out more in a hospital bed than I could wrap my head around. Even each chapter is tailor-made for each Explorer or the ones with keys. Artemis is included—which I need to speak to her about, since no one was aware she had a key, or that a Moon Key even exists."
I rubbed my face as he chuckled before passing a glass over to me, then poured one for himself.
"Sounds like he's more of an old friend than a rival to you," Mr. Giver said. "You aren't speaking as if you're going to go against his plan. Although you've been forced to make the decision to cut ties with the government, you've never gone far enough to cut out the civilians.
If I'm accounted for in these notes, then Odin isn't as cutthroat as you all made him out to be."
He chuckled as he drank from his glass, lecturing me in that easy way of his.
"That's the scary part," I admitted.
"He's been back for how long, and this was written last night. His fingers were still stained with ink. Even spots on the bed. No doubt the cameras were trying to catch every word as he wrote the whole thing.
"Knowing him, the feed they captured is filled with runic language that'll break their systems. Even he wouldn't want to spawn an astral horror from madness."
I sipped mine as I grinned at the idea, and we let the conversation drift into lighter topics to ease the weight of the situation pressing down on both of us.
Scene 3 — Ambush
"So should I be worried? Ambushed by Oceanus, Baldur, Ghost, and Thor?"
I released my astral energy as the youngest present. Even Thor carrying his warhammer was giving me the wrong message.
"That depends," Baldur said, stepping forward. "How'd you get a key? The Moon Key, to be precise."
I frowned, trying to recall what exactly a key was. Only Lily's research came to mind—some stupid game and her madness sprawled across the pages.
"I don't have a key," I said flatly.
"Those keys to the Sea? Odin never gave me one. Just a notebook, and I haven't seen him yet. If this is to stop me from seeing my dying brother-in-law, then maybe I shouldn't be answering questions when that assassin is here."
I stared dead at Ghost as I let my astral energy converge into a frost sword in my hand, never taking my eyes off the woman.
"Odin already told on you, Artemis," Oceanus said, stepping up to ease the tension. He was the only one here not directly tied to my family and their affairs. "He wrote about all of us and future holders. So calm down. You can still go meet him, and no one here is going to attack you regardless of you having it."
"If you had one, it'd look like this," he added.
He opened his palm as an ocean-blue sphere crystallized above it. I glanced around and saw similar spheres of varying colors hovering over the others' hands.
Something inside me pulled itself free in response. A silver sphere, the same one from the night I'd dreamed of Odin and Tyr, slid out of my chest and hovered over my palm.
Tears stung my eyes. I'd thought it was just part of the dream—that it had vanished with the morning.
But it hadn't. It had been there all along.