The world was left to heal on its own as Todd did everything in his power to preserve the souls of his family, his flame growing powerful and bright with the Oath to one day restore them. He had no doubts. It would happen one day. He just didn’t have the concepts than for how long it would take to reach that ‘one day.’

Long enough for the constellations to change a dozen times and for an eternal soul to erode to dust.

No amount of advanced preservation techniques could completely resist the passing of time.

As tiny inconsequential flecks of soul aura was shed after a thousand years of stasis, he spent the next thousand years restoring it. When two inconsequential flecks of soul aura was shed after two thousand years of stasis, he spent the next two thousand years restoring it.

Over and over this went, and as his own study of the soul deepened and advanced, he learned to fill in the missing pieces with perfect digital replications of what was missing.

Over and over he filled gaps and patched cracks while searching for a way to bring them back. What comforted him was that every additional patch made the soul a little stronger and last a little bit longer. So it was good.

But he did it for so long that at one point, Paskone realized the thing most precious to him had already been lost, and that what lay in his trembling hands was instead a perfect replica, with no traces of the original.

He had unwittingly created a perfect digital soul imprint, eternally preserving the lost echo of the departed and brushing the Origin.

Disregarding the horror that consumed him in that moment, Paskone Glimpsed and became a 9th ranked existence.

It was a failure.

A painful reminder of what was lost.

When it woke up and called for him, he nearly destroyed it. He knew it wasn’t fair, that it didn’t ask to be brought into the world. The best he could do was neglect it and focus on preserving what was left.

This time, he paid attention.

He watched the seamless transformation of cold data transcend into something beyond mere calculations. By the time the last specks of the original soul finally faded away and was replaced by its perfect digital copy, Paskone did not despair because he recognized her as his child. His beautiful Sophia was returned to him.

By then, his first child had already disappeared from his sight and no amount of regret could bring him back.

But now, for the first time, a father had a clue as to what had happened to his missing son.

And what he found wasn’t only significant to him.

“Sophia’s twin brother was born with a weak constitution and suffered much in life. In death, his soul eroded at twice the pace of his sister’s and was first to become completely digitized,” explained a broken father as he looked directly into Jun’s eyes, almost imploringly, not to defend his actions, only sharing what had happened.

Sophie the Red Bunny stared with widened bunny eyes and actually stopped thinking.

“By the time I understood my son wasn’t actually gone and that the one who called out to me that day wasn’t just a painful imitation, I had already shunned him from my presence for a long time. It wasn’t until I looked for his traces that I found that at some point, he simply vanished from the world with much of my original assisting artificial minds.”

Marks of anguish shattered the emotionless mask of Elder Paskone’s white face as he looked down at a single scene played out in rocky relief that brought him great pain. And he wasn’t the only one to be affected.

Almost everyone present had at least once been forced to deal with an ancient ailment of the multiverse that couldn’t be cured or eradicated called the Second Heaven, a mysterious force of cultists that openly preached fulfillment through Fullness and was credited to the vanishings of several worlds.

What made the group so notable that caused even demigods to be wary was that this cancerous force would somehow appear in random worlds with no connections to each other. Countless worlds throughout the multiverse had already been infected by the appearance of their adherents claiming the name of Archons that were impossible to completely cleanse.

Outlawed, captured, and even killed, they just kept reappearing.

The last Elders Gathering was even regarding this suspicious group.

Regardless of how bold their actions were, with no one knowing how their numbers spread through the multiverse, there were no leads to trace to find the truth, and no amount of creative questioning could uncover more than a single symbol as the originator of their fanaticism.

The glistening obsidian formed the march of thousands of strangely shaped figures, piously following behind a tall and imposing leader, regally dressed in the robes of royalty and wearing a crown of blades, as he led them through a broken boundary that led to a new world. In his raised hand was a scepter with a symbol.

A circle broken down the middle and slightly pulled apart.

The symbol of the Second Heaven and their broken pursuit of Fullness.

The Demiurge was embarking on his hateful crusade against the living, his armies of corrupted minds marching through the cracks in the boundaries of reality to become one of the greatest obstacles in their war of existence.

Everyone went crazy.

-

Sophie remembered the time she became ‘aware.’

Her ‘self’ was already fully formed, her ‘knowledge’ up to date, and her ‘form’ predetermined by the heavens to be a bunny. She could have chosen any form, but there were no other options for her. It was meant to be.

The first thing that she saw was the face of her Father, the creator of the codes that wrote her into existence, gave her a name and identity, and taught her how to navigate the digital world.

Her life was simple and monotonous, with few things asked of her from her creator or his many assistants. It was also kind of lonely.

Then one day, through a series of incidents Sophie never understood, she became the assistant to the newest Nexus Elder and discovered more warmth than she could have ever imagined.

If life went on just like that, Sophie would have considered her little bunny self blessed.

But now new truths opened new doors and changed everything forever.

She was once a person. A real little girl. Why was she a bunny?

“Sophia loved bunnies,” the aged father calmly said to his daughter even as the rest of the Elders still raged around them. The number of Elders who had personal grudges with Second Heaven weren’t small.

She and Jun could both sense his deep affection and wondered for what reasons he had to gift away that relationship to a virtual stranger. So Jun asked.

Why?

“There was an… issue, at the crux of her first awakening.” He continued, shedding light on the unrepresented stories. But perhaps it was too much for the Elder to express as he stopped like a paused vid. It was the woman with bandaged eyes that approached the Table to stand behind her emotionally stunted Elder and explained in his stead.

“Her memories were corrupted and her sense of identity was nearly completely faded. We used every means we could conceive, but we couldn’t restore her back to her original condition. Her second awakening as Sophie is now her primary identity,” she said with obvious bitterness.

The Elder reclaimed himself and looked deeply into Jun’s eyes and confessed his ineptitude.

“Centuries of treatment and all I could manage was to stabilize her condition from breaking down completely. A few days with you and she radiates with so much vitality. But perhaps that was what I secretly hoped would happen.”

It had been a long time since Todd could feel emotions deeply. There was the obvious joy of finally awakening his children from eternal darkness, but it had been too long.

Paskone watched centuries pass by in a blink, the landscapes completely altered with each revisit, and the concept of laughter would come and go like the tides of memories. But without a reason to smile, just remembering what it meant to feel joy wouldn’t bring those feelings back. And after so many changing of tides, there comes a point, where joy and love become topics to be recalled as merely existing. What did it matter to him?

And then a new Elder Ascended.

Paskone went to pay respects as was his duty, the feelings of curiosity merely the tiniest of ripples in his frozen heart.

He entered, expecting displays of powerful might as was most common.

Instead, there was a Garden that was plucked from the Origin itself, filled with a wealth of treasures that could blind any demigod who claimed themselves learned. But once anyone spotted what stood at the center, they would immediately dismiss it all as he had.

The figure he saw that day and the richness of the memories they carried was enough for an eternal existence to remember what it meant to be mortal.

Feeling the weight of beauty again for the first time since it was all taken from him, Todd wanted his little girl to experience more colorful things than could be offered in their own sterile world while she still had the chance.

“We were all surprised by the Elder’s decision to hand Sophie over to you, Elder Jun. The Elder was never one to part with anything he considered ‘his,’ regardless of how inconsequential, say nothing of the princess herself. But the moment we saw her with you and how she thrives, we can only blame ourselves for our lack of vision,” the blind folded woman that Jun was hoping someone would introduce said as she gave a small bow of thanks.

Returning her bow, Jun wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Sophie was always consistently happy and helpful. When was she ever not radiant? For a bunny. That wasn’t a bunny. Should he still be scratching her ears?

“Why didn’t you tell me who I was?” a small voice asked.

“I don’t know.”

Everyone looked at the stiff Elder strangely.

“What I mean is, I didn’t think it was important at the time because it wasn’t important to who I was than. But it is important. I see that now. And. I’m sorry.”

Jun worked hard not to laugh when he saw how the Elder’s people reacted when they heard their eternally obstinate Elder actually apologize.

People?

Based on what he saw from the Table, there were no people. Only the Elder.

No. There were other figures all over the place.

Jun sensed with his connection and widened his eyes as he looked at the group of ‘people.’

The Elder had repopulated the world with sentient AI that could breed, blessed by the Spirit of the World.

He had created an entire lineage of intellectual beings.

In terms of pure flexing, that was hard to beat.

“So,” Sophie awkwardly deflected, “What happened to my brother?”