From the inconceivable darkness of the universe, beyond all known light, a solitary luminescence advanced without cease, unstoppable as time.
But far from that cosmic promise, in the small haven of peace that was the beach house, dawn broke over an intimate and heavy silence. The previous night, the laughter—released after Kai's confession—had persisted until blissful exhaustion overcame them. Now, the scene was one of pure harmony. The queens slept, one entangled in the other's embrace, and in the center, little Aliarda, a sweet and tender sprout of nature, was sheltered. Her brother Kai's arm curved gently over her, forming a protective cradle.
When the first caress of the sea breeze—salty and fresh—filtered through the open windows, Kai was the first to wake. He slid his body out from the sheets and woke his wives with a serene smile that hid a barely contained expectation. He asked them, in a low voice so as not to break the magic of the morning, to prepare light bags.
"I want to take you to a special place," he announced.
They, still with sleep in their eyes, asked if they would be returning to the hotel. Kai's negative, soft but firm, raised a first pang of mystery. Then, they saw him take his sheathed sword, his battle shield, and finally, the ring of his lineage. Weapons for a walk? The question did not need to be said aloud. Kai only responded that, yes, they would be necessary.
While the queens dressed quickly and four-year-old Aliarda premiered the dress that made her look like a radiant flower, they all headed toward the king's most secluded and private area: the sacred forest that embraced the base of the volcano and the ancient imperial palace. There, under the canopy of trees, Kai asked them to hold hands. The trust they felt was so absolute that they did so without hesitation. What they could not know was that, hours earlier while they slept, Kai had cast his blue gem toward the moon, activating an ancient ancestral mechanism.
When Kai pronounced the word: "Now," the teleporter necklace he wore hidden enveloped them in a blinding light. Kai's dense body—that body which, due to its evolution and its weight of about five hundred tons, needed to divide itself in order to love—dissolved in an instant of pure energy, taking with him the queens and little Aliarda.
☽ Arrival at the Lunar Base
In the next microsecond, everyone appeared. They materialized upon a vast floor of white lunar marble, a cold and clean surface made of native materials from that satellite. They were in the gigantic courtyard of what looked like a palace, but which was, in reality, a Lunar Base and the center of the system's space defense.
The view rose toward marble stairs of nearly sixty steps. On each step, to the left and to the right, one hundred and sixteen figures identical to Kai materialized with supernatural synchronicity. At the summit, the one hundred and seventeenth Kai, the leader, dressed in a ceremonial gala suit and a ceremonial hat, performed a deep and elegant bow, his movements the proof that a single brilliant mind governed them all.
A singular voice, carrying echoes of his past as a scholar on Earth and his present as a sorcerer and strategist of Jetris, resonated in the dome:
"Welcome, daughters of Siris," the leader greeted with a solemn warmth. "Welcome to the first lunar base of our solar system."
As the leader concluded the greeting, the one hundred and sixteen doubles approached. These lower-density bodies, which were the physical manifestation of Kai's love, moved with exquisite grace. A parade began: the clones surrounded the queens, giving them flowers, exotic chocolates, and playing instruments. It was an improvised symphonic orchestra, where each clone dedicated himself to a particular queen. It was the perfect multiplication of affection: a single man who, through divided essence, managed to make each of his wives feel authentic and loved individually.
🌌 Jetris and the Wall of Stars
Behind the leader Kai, the view transcended wonder. The giant planet Jetris was not a distant point; it rose in the crystal dome like a blue and white deity, its immensity such that it seemed to swallow the night firmament. On its surface, the seas sparkled with a liquid glow, and the luminous cities, jewels of engineering and magic, rotated with a slow and tangible majesty.
Astonishment struck the queens. They remained paralyzed, their minds unable to process the scale of what they saw. Some felt a sweet lunar vertigo; others were moved to tears. The clones took them by the hand with a softness that promised touch and not harm, making them twirl with the lightness of a feather. They attempted, playfully, to remove the main Kai's mask, but he evaded the attempt with impossible grace, maintaining the mystery of his identity while spinning them like dancing stars.
As the melody ended, a spectacular banquet awaited them inside the palace. Long tables and polished chairs were served with dishes of all colors. The clones hurried to pull out and hold the chairs for each queen and for Aliarda. The women sat down, completely captivated. They were in space, on a moon, a place that for them was the equivalent of stepping on the clouds. In their fascination, they did not ask why the clones remained standing behind them without taking a bite.
Suddenly, a murmur ran through the dome. The palace roof, a design of magical and futuristic engineering, opened slowly, as if it were a mechanical petal. The internal lights dimmed and the outer sky poured over them. Space filled with stars, while the planet Jetris dominated the panorama behind the silent figure of the king. The scene was so beautiful that some queens could not contain their tears.
At that moment, a new melody, somewhere between ballet and chanting, resonated. Small blue flashes, like tiny fairies emerged from some magical orb, began to dance around the queens.
After the banquet, the clones joined together once again into a single group. Kai, with his soft voice and a smile in his eyes, asked everyone to accompany him on a tour of the palace. There, without them knowing it, the truth that would change the destiny of their world and begin the great challenge of the Heroes' Arc would commence.
The walk led them through corridors of pristine marble, where the light from magical orbs mixed with the cold and precise lighting of advanced technology. The facade of fantasy crumbled when Kai led them into a room of colossal proportions, the true heart of the Lunar Base. It was a silent and intimidating command center, with more than two hundred seats curved before consoles, and in the depths of its walls, the wide mouths of space cannons could be distinguished, looking ready to spit explosive ammunition.
The distinction was brutal: they were not in a summer palace; they were in the bastion of defense for the solar system.
Kai had them take a seat. He did not occupy a throne, but rather a carbon fiber seat that rose slightly: the Base Commander's chair. Then, without preamble, he explained to them the reality of the Dome: this complex, forged by his own hand and science, was a military base built to defend them from a threat that, until now, he had been unable to eliminate.
The tone of the room plummeted. The laughter died out. The queens, who knew their king's direct nature well, understood the absolute gravity of the situation.
The six most astute queens, including those from the house of knowledge and the kingdom of geniuses, straightened up. "What is the threat?" one inquired. "Perhaps a demon throwing meteorites?"
Kai looked at them with the calm of a man who has weighed every scenario. "If it were only a meteorite, even one the size of this Moon," he said with surprising honesty, "it would be the least of my worries. I would stop it."
The wonder at his power floated in the air, but it was soon replaced by tension. Kai activated the console. A gigantic screen came to life, showing the devastating impact an object of that scale would have on their solar system. The base responded to its creator's command, and from Kai's ring, the serene voice of the Artificial Intelligence Lyris materialized, controlling the shield and the complex defense network.
"It is not a meteorite," Kai continued. "It is a rogue star."
On the screen, the image of a tiny but terrifying sun appeared. Lyris explained that, through the base's telescopes, the star had been tracked, expelled from a galaxy. Kai pointed to an incandescent spot on the tactical screen, a speck of light that seemed insignificant but dictated the end of everything.
— This threat departed from a system 126 light-years away — Kai explained, with the coldness of an astronomer —. It travels at exactly half the speed of light. That means its total journey to reach us is 252 years.
He paused, letting the scale of time sink into the minds of his queens.
— That light has crossed the vacuum for 249 years without stopping for a single second. While your ancestors were building empires, this was already coming toward us. Now, we have only 3 years left before impact.
Gravity became their sentence: attracted by the enormous mass of Jetris's sun, the rogue star was heading directly for a total impact.
"If we do not stop it now, within a period of three years, it will impact our sun," Kai declared, his voice firm and without a trace of emotion, "and everything we love will die."
The words fell like blocks of ice. Fear flooded many. The queens of the church, their voices trembling, asked if he had turned to faith.
"I have prayed every day regarding this matter," Kai replied with a note of hidden bitterness, "but I have not yet had an answer."
It was then that Isabella, the boldest queen and one well-versed in sorcery, broke protocol with a pointed question:
"Since when did you know that the sun was approaching Jetris, my King?"
Kai, the man who held five university degrees and possessed the density of a mountain, looked at her without evasion.
"I have known for eight years," he confessed, "since before I met you."
The room fell into a thundering silence. The queens, shocked by the challenge they faced, were totally overwhelmed by the silent betrayal: their husband had hidden from them a truth capable of destroying their world, while building his life with them.
The thundering silence was broken by weeping. The queens of the human kingdom, a blonde of classic beauty and her sister (both wives of Kai), threw themselves upon him, tears overflowing.
"Why did you lie to us?" one cried out, her hands gripping his with desperation. "Why did you make us build a life with you if there was no hope for a future?"
Behind them, the same grievance resonated, amplified by the crowd. They all looked at him, not as their king, but as a man who had cemented their happiness upon a cosmic lie. The reaction was visceral, the natural denial of someone who learns of a sentence without escape.
Kai listened to them. He heard the pain of the witches, the pragmatism of the pirates, the fury of the mercenaries, and the lament of the female warriors. He heard the voices of the queens of the jungles and those of the sand, and the contained rage of the daughters of fire. In the room, silence reigned only in one corner: Lyris, Solarael, Voraghun, and little Aliarda remained motionless, like witnesses to the storm. Kai was the luckiest man in the universe, with thirty-seven races represented in his life, and now he listened to each and every one of them demanding an explanation.
Only when the torrent of pain had exhausted itself did Kai raise his voice.
"Now I can speak," he said, and his tone, though firm, was saturated with a deep affection. "When you arrived at the magical lands of the white sorcerers—a country that, a thousand years ago, did not exist—you never thought to ask why it was not inhabited."
He paused. A silence as heavy as Kai himself fell over the command center.
"When I met you, when your smiles filled my lands and restored hope to people who had lost it... I understood something. That even if we had no future, even if the star approached, in your eyes and in the love you gave me every day, I felt alive again."
His voice broke slightly. "I didn't tell you the truth because my heart broke thinking that our happiness had no future. I hid it because it was a problem that I, on my own, was trying to solve. I tried to evolve myself, to train, to obtain all the knowledge of this planet to be able to stop that star. The demonic hordes, the plans of the Abyss, and even the orders of Heaven... they stopped mattering. I prayed to the Lord to give me the strength to save you."
Kai took a step forward. "My loves, I did not lie to you. I simply did not want to see you cry."
In that instant, magic and will united. Kai's single body dissolved and multiplied into one hundred and seventeen figures with a speed that surpassed human comprehension. 117 Kais moved simultaneously, enveloping each of his wives in an embrace.
All of them wept in the arms of their King, feeling the individual caress, the soft and non-dangerous touch of divided matter. The King looked at them, his omniscient mind focused on the pain of each one, and with a tiny sliver of hope in his voice, he said:
"But I discovered a way to solve it. There is a small... almost zero... but a small hope."
Kai held the face of the queen closest to him. "Every time you looked into my eyes and told me you loved me, I felt my heart beat, and I never gave up. So this small hope depends on the decision you make at this moment."
Time was suspended in the frigid command center. Kai held the face of each of his queens, his blue eyes shining now not only with technology, but with a light that seemed to contain the radiance of a thousand stars. That light illuminated the rainbow of faces, hair, and skin tones of his beautiful wives. In that moment of shared silence, they understood the atrocious truth. They understood that the only way to save them all was for him to sacrifice himself.
And with a pain that tore their souls apart, they all said no.
"No," implored the human queens, whose tears overflowed once again. "We will not be able to live without you."
The grievance was as one, a unified cry from 117 hearts that had found a home in him. Kai did not take offense. He dried his wives' tears with infinite sweetness, caressing them with the hands of his clones. He loved every atom of those perfect beings, a divine gift that had rescued him.
"This is a difficult decision," he told them, his voice calm. "It may be that I survive, and it may be that I do not. But I will stop it. This is not an empty promise. I will defend our homes, our hopes, and everyone's smiles."
Multiplied, 117 embraces tightened, 117 eyes saw the panic of his wives.
"I want you to support me in this decision," he whispered, his gaze heavy with eternity. "That if this invincible enemy destroys me, I will never forget you."
The queens wept; their world was falling apart. They never thought they would lose their husband, but in the deepest part of their being, they remembered the words he repeated to them every morning: "One day, you will have to see His will, or the will of my Father. Unite your will with His."
They understood. They saw Kai, their king, their sorcerer, their warrior, as a man of unbreakable faith asking them for the supreme sacrifice. They would have to choose to suffer the loss to save everyone they loved.
In that moment of sublime pain, the collective voice of the 117 queens rose, firm in its sorrow, but stronger in its heroism.
"Yes," they said. "We will do it."
Kai smiled. Time returned to the Lunar Base, the starlight shining with new intensity in his eyes.
"It is time to get to work."
DANCING OVER THE CLOUDS
After the decision, Kai declared: "It is time to get to work."
Immediately, the base activated. Kai assigned tasks, demonstrating the strategic mind of the scholar he was. Some queens dedicated themselves to astronomical calculations and logistics. Others prepared special weapons. The central weapon was a Plasma Cannon created by magic, not by technology. It was a necessity; even with Earth's technology, it would be impossible to reach the star at the speed of light. Therefore, Kai devised a Magical Portal that would guide him directly in front of the star. The portal would open at the collision point and, after his mission, it would close. He, a being of five hundred tons, would not pass through by walking or running, but by being transported.
While Kai showed the blueprints, Lyris, the ring's Artificial Intelligence, guided the queens in their tasks. Aliarda, the four-year-old sister, approached her brother.
"Will you be alright, Kai?"
"One must have faith in the Lord, but yes, I will be alright, Aliarda," he replied. "Don't you worry, I will be back soon. I am going to go put out that light."
"To put out the little sun?" the girl said, without understanding the terrible truth her brother was about to face.
The work efficiency was astounding. Thanks to the number of queens and Kai's multiplied clones, they were able to finish by the scheduled date. They spent four months at the lunar base preparing every detail.
🔬 The Science of Sacrifice
With everything arranged, the A.I. Lyris called everyone to take their seats. She began to recount the plan, explaining why Kai had waited until that moment. The star, at that instant, would be far from any solar system, in dead space, where there is only dark matter. It was the precise location where they could consume the star without causing havoc.
Lyris continued, her voice robotic and precise:
"With the limited information we have obtained, we know that the mass of a sun is in Hydrostatic Equilibrium: the core exerts outward pressure, but colossal gravity exerts inward pressure. The core is massive plasma, where thermonuclear fusion is permanent. Any material would be destroyed at the surface. Entering the solar mass is annihilation, and reaching the core would be instantaneous death."
The A.I. paused so that the magnitude of the danger could sink in.
"But we have a plan. Voraghun, with his magic shield, will contain the pressure, gravity, and gamma radiation, protecting Kai as he travels toward the core. Kai's armor—which is what I am—will increase his density a thousandfold and protect him."
"And Solarael," Lyris continued, "since she possesses the divinity to control stars, will absorb the sun's energy, but for that, Kai must reach the core."
One of the most intelligent queens inquired: "And how long would it take Kai to reach the core?"
"One full hour," Lyris replied.
"He would be dead before he even enters the sun," Anya said.
"I will protect him," Voraghun said.
"He will protect him from the pressure. Kai must carry the sword to the center," said Lyris.
The mercenary queen, pragmatic by nature, asked: "And why not launch the sword directly at the star?"
"It would be useless," Kai explained. "Our intention is not to destroy the star; the star is practically indestructible. There is no way to destroy it. We want to absorb its energy. We do not have the strength to stop it, so we will absorb its energy."
Solarael, the angel trapped in the sword, spoke, her voice resonating in the room: "I have the capacity to push all that energy into another space, but I need to be in the center, in the core, so that we consume it from its center while the star travels."
The queen of the Kingdom of Knowledge, with her analytical mind, inquired: "And where would the star's energy go, if you say it is practically indestructible?"
At that moment, Kai raised his hand and cut off the conversation, pointing to himself.
"The energy will go inside me," he declared. "All that energy will be sent to my interior."
The draconid queen shouted: "You're crazy! It will kill you the moment it touches you!"
"I have my ability: Evolution," Kai explained, revealing the secret of his last and most desperate defense. "Energy does not disappear. We need to consume it. While the solar energy and radiation enter my body, my armor and the shield will contain it, but my ability, Evolution, will fight against all that energy. Whichever is more powerful will win. We must consume it."
Lyris concluded, her voice icy: "What will happen is that Kai's body will be consumed and disappear, and there will be millions of kilotons exploding inside his cells. He will have to endure impressive radiation and still stay alive."
The queen of the Water Monarchy looked at Kai, her eyes full of pain and understanding. "We understand that you want to save us," she said, "but you have no certainty that you can survive even for a second."
Kai's response was that of a king, a husband, and a man of faith who has weighed every loss.
"We have this plan," Kai said, looking at the beautiful queen's face. "I understand your concern for my person and I do not wish to belittle your feelings. But if this is the only chance to be able to do this, even if it sounds impossible, I have faith that I can achieve it."
His voice rose, imbued with love and the terrible responsibility he carried. "I want you to understand something: if we do not stop this star, everyone we love and know—your fathers, your brothers, your mothers, childhood friends, entire villages—Jetris will disappear. Every smile you have loved in these magical lands has no hope if we give up now. I feel your pain, but we are not the only ones who are going to lose everything. Please, Lyris, continue explaining the plan."
After those words, silence took over the room, a silence broken only by the tears running down the queens' cheeks.
Lyris continued, immovable: "The Plasma Cannon we have designed will point directly inside the portal. Kai will put on the armor, hold the shield and the sword, and be launched with that cannon at a speed close to that of light. He will cross the portal, which will close automatically in a millisecond. After about forty-five seconds, Kai will collide with the star."
"It will be a mortal impact for any existing physical matter," the A.I. admitted, "but we have a combination of divinity, technology, and magic. Our hope lies in our work, our effort, and the faith we have in our Lord. We need you to trust our King."
One of the queens of the Black Sorcerers, with a firm voice, asked Kai: "When you collide directly with the star, won't you be destroyed?"
"No," Kai replied. "Voraghun will take the hit. I will only hold the shield."
The demon trapped in the shield, Voraghun, spoke: "I can repel a lot of kinetic energy. That will allow us to enter the star at high speed. Regardless, the star is not physical, but plasma and pressure. Even so, it will be very difficult to reach the center, the core. We have only sixty minutes of support. We must arrive before then."
The plan was a strategic suicide. No known material could survive that, and the queens knew it. But Kai had faith that his Lord had given him the necessary tools to face the massive enemy.
"As of two hundred hours, the cannon countdown will begin," Lyris finalized.
The Collision
The moment arrived. All the queens took their positions in the command center. No one said goodbye to Kai. He wanted to say goodbye to some of them, but not even his little sister paid him any attention. They all looked at him, holding in their gaze a single promise: "You are coming back."
Kai, encased in his armor, placed himself inside the cannon. It took aim, the portal opened, and the countdown for the hope of billions of people began:
9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
In that instant, the moon trembled. The cannon detonated with a force that surpassed comprehension—a blast that lasted only an instant. A blue beam pierced through the portal, which closed instantaneously in its wake. Ahead of the beam, the enormous silhouette of the rogue star covered the space.
There was no turning back now. The final battle had begun.
Kai collided with the star. The impact was an unbearable agony. He felt each of his bones break, his nerves severed. He went into shock, and his Evolution ability activated, healing him immediately.
"Kai! Endure, we are about to enter!" Voraghun roared.
They entered the star like a needle into the surface of an immense body. The heat was beyond scorching; Kai felt every one of his atoms begin to burn.
"Do not lose consciousness! Stay with us!" Lyris shouted.
Solarael expanded a field to protect Kai from the temperatures. Voraghun did the same. Lyris expanded the armor until it weighed five thousand times its weight.
For an hour, Kai endured indescribable force and pressure. The armor began to fissure; the shield heated up until it could barely be held in his hands. The sword, Solarael, seemed to live and vibrate with the hottest day it had ever known. His body experienced destruction every second, and Evolution fought to reconstruct it.
As they neared the core, the pressure and heat increased. At that moment, Kai felt he no longer existed. His brain was burning, and he saw memories of his past life: his wives running on the beach, their voices in his mind: "Stay with us... Stay with us..."
Lyris screamed at him: "We have reached the core!"
Kai had to move billions of tons with a single movement. Since he had entered the sun, he had been unable to move his body; he had only been able to endure. But now, with the pain of cellular destruction at its maximum intensity, Kai unleashed the last vestige of his will.
With an effort that made the densified armor tremble and the shield creak, he raised the sword like an ancient warrior.
The sword Solarael shone within the plasma light with a white, divine radiance, and plunged into the core: a plasma as dense and viscous as condensed lava.
And the worst—the inevitable—began.
The energy did not just enter; it poured. Kai felt the entire universe being born within him. All the energy, which told the story of creation, flooded him. In that flow of power, his consciousness expanded beyond the physical body, seeing the First Spark initiate the cosmos. He saw how the Word of the Lord was pronounced, and all of existence bowed before that command.
The Lord said: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
The voice became deeper, more overwhelming—the echo of absolute power.
And the Lord said: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
Kai continued to listen, the energy consuming him, the wisdom filling him.
And the Lord said: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."
In that moment, Kai passed to another plane of consciousness. He felt his soul disintegrate as he absorbed centuries of energy, and it was there, in the agony of rebirth, where he heard the final lesson.
The Lord said: "The true Warrior does not abandon the battle; he suffers, weeps, laughs, and does not turn back. He falls and rises confident that God will give him the victory."
All the colossal energy of that star had entered his body. His Evolution ability, driven by the voice of the Creator, began to consume the energy in an astronomical and incredible way. Kai was the first being who managed to break the limits of the physical. To him, it had been centuries of agony, centuries of traveling to other worlds and returning. He had died, been reborn, and died again millions of times, and in barely fifteen seconds, he consumed all the energy.
Kai Kuillerman was about to evolve into something outside the physical plane.
In that moment, the rogue star died. Its colossal surface transformed into gases, and its massive advance toward the Sun of Siris stopped. Its own energy and gravity collapsed.
Kai's brain boiled worse than a star, but the absorption was complete. The massive star became a neutron dwarf, remaining motionless and static in space, surrounded by hundreds of millions of kilometers of condensed gases.
With all the kinetic energy that the shield had endured, Voraghun released a massive explosion, like a concentrated supernova. Kai was expelled from the dying star with that force. Still holding his shield and his sword, his body became a comet, a radiant beam heading toward his solar system.
The final battle had ended, but for Kai, the warrior, the struggle had just begun.
At the lunar base, the silence was deafening. The queens tried desperately to communicate with Lyris, Kai, Voraghun, or Solarael, but all communications were cut off. On the screen, there was only darkness. Hope had vanished.
It was Aliarda, Kai's rival, who broke the panic. Her golden eyes shone with the light of two small suns. "Do you want me to open a portal near Kai to bring him back?" she asked, with a calm that did not belong to a four-year-old girl. "Kai and I are always united. He is still alive."
Joy and hope flooded the room. The queens, with tears of relief, gave her permission. In that instant, Kai, the blue beam that had defeated the impossible, traveled through space like a comet. Suddenly, in front of him, a portal opened. The comet crossed through.
At the lunar base, the queens saw a blue star appear near the moon of Siris. At the same time, communications with the ring were restored.
"We cannot hold Kai any longer!" Lyris shouted, her voice saturated with tension. Solarael and Voraghun confirmed the danger. The success of the absorption had activated Kai's multiplication, but with a catastrophic consequence: he had become extremely dense. The tremendous gravity of the planet Siris was pulling them down.
"Voraghun, do not let go! Solarael, hold on!" the cries resonated in the room.
"I can't do it anymore!" Voraghun replied, at the limit of his endurance.
Kai's multiplication activated in space: 117 Kais fell toward the planet Jetris. The shield Voraghun and the ring Lyris could not contain them. They were 117 blue stars falling; the ring, the sword, and the shield separated, falling as they pierced the atmosphere. It was a planetary threat: if those bodies, whose weight had increased exponentially, impacted, they would destroy half of the planet.
"You must go and hold him!" Lyris shouted to the queens.
The queens, in terror, asked how to do it, if they could not even breathe in space. Lyris, with terrible urgency, communicated with Aliarda: "You can open portals! Open 117 portals so that each queen can rescue a Kai before they fall upon the planet!"
Aliarda looked at the queens, and the fear vanished from their faces, replaced by absolute faith. 117 portals opened behind them. Without hesitation, the queens threw themselves into the void.
💖 The Faith That Brings Victory
They appeared falling in a headlong dive through the atmosphere. In front of them, each Kai glowed, his skin like red-hot iron from the friction. Lyris shouted to them: "Do not touch him! Wait for the atmosphere to cool him for a moment."
The people of Siris looked toward the sky, seeing the 117 blue beams fall, making wishes upon the shooting stars. They did not know that their king was falling in pieces.
When the atmosphere cooled the bodies, the queens drew near. The image was one of desperate beauty: 117 women embracing their husbands, falling toward annihilation. With the sensation of time standing still, they looked at their husbands. They held onto their faith and their love.
And each one gave him a kiss.
In the middle of the dive, Kai returned from the darkness. He opened his eyes, which were now a beautiful brown with a flickering blue cosmos. He saw his queens, whose faces were lined with tears of joy.
Suddenly, the fall stopped. The 117 Kais rose, holding their queens. The reason for their ascent was not brute force; each of the 117 bodies had activated a gravitational field of its own, a direct consequence of the extreme density his Evolution had granted him. He now manipulated physics itself at his will. They ascended through the clouds, controlling their fall and turning it into an ascent.
They had thrown themselves into the void without thinking of how to stop him, clinging to their faith and their love. Even though the boy was still boiling like hot iron, they suffered no burns. They did not know if it was magic or divinity.
He looked at them. His voice rang with the authority of one who has heard the word of the Creator and has mastered the physics of the universe:
"Nothing that comes from me, neither my heat nor my cold nor my feelings, will hurt you. For so my Lord has said: I for you and you for me."
The couples floated and danced above the clouds; the battle was over. No one in Jetris ever knew of the danger they had been saved from, all because of a king, a warrior, a simple human who sacrificed himself for faith and for the love of his queens.
In that moment, Kai, with his 117 queens still embracing him, landed gently upon a high mountain, near the coasts of the distant Empire of Cathay, far from his home.
Once safe, the 117 bodies unified into one.
Kai Kuillerman stood up at the highest part of the peak. He looked back and smiled at his wives, and they responded with beautiful, lovely smiles, full of the happiness of having recovered their husband.
In that instant, his allies—the ring, the shield, and the sword—fell in different parts of the planet upon being released by the impact. Kai, unified and with his eyes glowing with an intense blue, raised his voice with firmness, a power that moved mountains:
"Come to me."
Instantly, the three allies responded. Like three striking beams of light, Lyris, Voraghun, and Solarael guided themselves toward the point where their master stood.
A great light burst forth at the top of the mountain, and before all the queens, the Black Knight manifested, raising his sword to the sky. His dark cape billowed in the wind. His shield, Voraghun, screamed and roared, not in pain, but as a sign of absolute victory.
"VICTORY!" shouted the warrior.
Kai was celebrating his silent triumph with his wives when, suddenly, a portal opened behind him. From it stepped his sister, Aliarda, four years old. She ran and embraced him, crying.
"Why did you leave me alone on the Moon?" the girl complained to him.
Kai hugged her tight. "I went to put out the light, little rival. Now I owe you one."
All the queens watched the scene with tears in their eyes, an immense joy for having stopped the impossible. Kai looked at them all, with his whole family in his arms. In that moment, he unified into one, his body vibrating with power.
"We will take a well-deserved vacation here, in the Empire of Cathay," he announced with a smile.
Without waiting, Kai turned and asked his wives and his sister to wait for him. Using his necklace and his navy blue gem, he teleported to the peninsula of his country. There, he gathered wagons, horses, provisions, and gold. Immediately, he teleported that entire convoy back to the Empire of Cathay, setting up the necessary logistics for his family and renting some land.
It wasn't that Kai didn't want to return to his lands; he had done too much and needed a rest. But his people had no idea of the sacrifice their king had made and considered him a lazy king, since he had appointed governors to delegate all the work of the country.
After assembling the convoy, Kai multiplied back into 117 bodies. The 117 Kais set off with the wagons, their queens, and his rival toward a small village on the outskirts of the capital of the Empire of Cathay, near a mountain where it was said there were beautiful hot springs.