Enith stared at her fellow remnants, the feelings of guilt returning after almost thirty thousand years.

"Tell me, boy," Sendriel faced the boy she'd sacrificed a vast swathe of trial energy to summon. That was wrong for so many reasons Enith didn't even want to get into. "Do you not know yet why she showered you with so much attention?"

The boy looked like he was struggling to speak. She knew he could now, but perhaps the boy didn't.

"I… I don't," he answered.

"Regardless of how she framed it in the beginning, you have become a focal point of fate. She can sense it. Just like I could sense it when the mantle was about to leave my grasp. When the mantle chose its next barer."

"What?!" Enith snapped, finding a new focus for her rising fury, although it could have been panic for all she knew.

"There are no more mantles," Liam commented.

The phoenix turned human woman only shrugged. "I have told no lie. You, both of you… No, all of you have been pushed along the river since the boy arrived. A barely awakened human boy with a fate strong enough to have all six of us pay this much attention? Remnants were summoned from other trials, for crying out loud! Nothing about this has been normal. Even his time in the tower. It's almost like the whole trial was built just for this moment."

"Your words make no sense," Noid said. "We have had billions of trial takers and none of them were not fated. Besides,vwe had an agreement. A plan."

"What is this plan you speak of, Noid?!" Enith asked, not liking where this was going.

Sendriel ignored everyone though.

"It is true all our trial takers are fated," the phoenix agreed with a nod. "But explain the girl's interest. He's not her trial taker. He's not any of our trial taker but yours."

Enith always hated it when Sendriel called her girl, but then she still was. Here were beings like Liam who'd lived millions of years. She hadn't lived more than a thousand before the tragedy. Now her spirit remnants had only lived thirty thousand years in the time since.

"Tell the truth, Enith," the phoenix continued. "Were you this excited even about your best apprentice? You can sense it, no? His connection to your, no, our mantle."

"But…that makes no sense. The connection should be cut," Enith complained, biting her lips in agitation.

"Indeed," Liam said, also frowning in Sendriel's direction.

"Do not be foolish," Sendriel ordered, and all six faces present faced her with differing looks of horror. That was the oldest one of them all. To disrespect him like that.

"We all stayed connected to the mantle, even after we'd passed it on, did we not? What did Enith do, except simply pass the mantle on? The only difference is that she didn't pass it on to the next individual, but rather to the whole multiverse."

"But… if the mantle calls to him, then is he not like her?" Enith questioned, frowning at the boy.

"Of course not," Noid replied instead. "The mantle never called to her. Which is why she made the decisions she did. She wants power at all costs."

"Yes, but… she is right," Enith couldn't help but say.

"And this is the reason I wonder at your growth, Enith? It was not a mistake. You just did not have all the facts. Of course the biggest problem was your insistence on doing everything alone. This was a working involving multiple universes, the first of its kind ever seen. Is it any surprise there were some hiccups."

And everyone had had to come to bail her out. The darling of the multiverse. The most talented person ever known. She hoped to save the universe, to build and unite a multiverse. All on her lonesome. What ambitions she held.

"And I cost all of you everything, in the end, didn't I?"

"And yet…" Liam tried.

"We regret nothing," Noid said.

"We never wanted to be the strongest, Enith," Granderel addressed her. "We did not want to outlive our children, our great grandchildren. That is perhaps why the mantle chose us. And with one last chance to protect our universe, the multiverse even, why not sacrifice our lives?"

Enith noticed the boy's eyes bulging at this. Yes, that had been the fate of the greatest pantheon the multiverse had seen in the pre-system era. The era she had ended with her very lofty ambitions.

"If you had asked for our help from the beginning, instead of fighting all the other guardians yourself, well," Sam shrugged. "I don't want to say things would have been different, but maybe…"

"You just wanted a chance to steal the other mantles," another Sam appeared out of nowhere, popping into existence next to her twin.

"I thought you'd left?" the first Sam growled at her, her tone sour.

"Oh, she left. This conversation just has all the remnants with enough saved up energy paying attention."

Enith whirled on the remnant. "You would waste energy on this. We have a mission! This boy might be interesting but—"

"It is time, Enith. Time you accepted the truth. This is the chance we've been waiting for. We either go all in, or we don't. And that starts with you," Sendriel said. "You will ask for the help of another this time. You cannot perform a project this huge alone. You need to open up to him."

The Enchantress stared at the other woman. She was so lost in Sendriel's eyes, she did not notice the others start to move and surround her, loom over her. She was staring at her mentor.

It was a mystery how mantles connected beings. Or at least how theirs had, because none of the other guardians from their universe had ever passed on theirs willingly. Sendriel had been in the middle of a battle at the end of the universe. Then a thread of fate thousands of years in the past had attracted her.

Even the then guardian had not known why she had gotten interested in the little child and her little skill. But Sendriel had gotten distracted and almost killed by the Demon God. She'd gotten her attention back and fought, but she'd marked the girl and kept an eye on her over the years.

It was the first time the mantle had passed between two beings from the same world, although Sendriel was a mythical beast and Enith a human. When Enith had stumbled onto Sendriel's nest as a lost teenage girl, a past version of the phoenix had noticed the mark, and the rest was history.

Enith blinked and looked away from the woman, only to notice the wall of bodies hemming her in.

She stumbled backwards, surprised. She stared at each of them for a moment. They looked intimidating. She was called the multiverse's strongest god ever, but these five were not that far behind. Fighting them all on her own was not something she could do easily. And even if she could, she owed them too much. She tried to never show it, but she was very grateful to them for coming to her aid back then, even though she'd been too prideful to call on them earlier.

"Speak to the boy, Enith," Liam said. "Maybe I don't share Sendriel's reasoning, but I still think making him an enemy serves no purpose. It is only a slight miscommunication. At least try."

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Enith blinked at him. Then one by one she surveyed the others, staring at their resolute faces. It might have come early due to the boy's near accident, but the others had been planning this behind her back.

She took a deep breath as if to show she was trying to hide her irritation, but in truth she felt herself wilting. She had to work to keep her shoulders straight and her face level with the boy's as she turned to him.

"Rafael Kingsley, I… I need your help," she started, cursing herself for her stammering. "I cannot tell you much yet, but I can say a few things. The system, the Unclaimed Throne, the Celestials… I created them. My masterpieces."

The boy let out a huge breath that she suspected was supposed to be a snort. He'd stopped himself at the last moment. At least he'd spared her little confidence, though she was loathe to admit it.

"The system is not… it's not a unique concept by a long shot. And yes, I said concept. Those were mine you know. Most of the celestials were skills I pulled straight out of my soul. And they were core skills too. What you'd call classes. Everything, my stats, my truth. Everything was used in that endeavor. They are my children. But I did not know. I could not know," she quieted again, thinking back to those years she'd spent learning and writing enchantments for the greatest working ever created in the known multiverse.

It had all gone wrong, but here was a chance, as Sandriel had said. In some capacity, they'd all thought the boy was special somehow. Sandriel could look into fate but hers was not a divination concept as such. To truly divine the boy's future, they'd have to call in another old friend from whom Enith had stolen a mantle.

The boy frowned at her. It was to be expected. The system was a very complex subject. Both emotionally and logically and ethically and every other word she could think of. She searched through her knowledge of the boy's world.

"You know what a… hmm, computer operating system is, yes?"

The boy nodded, staring at her with such attention it caused her mind to whirl. Was he going to agree to help here and now? She could only hope.

"Well, as I said, the concept of the system is in no way original. When I was making my research, I went to many worlds. I even crossed boundaries unseen before, entering universes that were disconnected from ours at the time. I am an inventor. I am an enchanter, and I am proud of that. Codes? Special structured languages with rules and bugs and lots of little applications? That is the kind of thing I dreamed of."

Enith knew she was gushing, probably grinning like an idiot too, but she didn't care.

The boy listened, not interrupting. He was immersed in this moment. She appreciated him for that, if nothing else.

"I knew what I wanted the system to do. I thought I knew all the problems inherent in sealing off the universe, the multiverse. In protecting it from that end you saw during Sendriel's fight. The mantles…they are Essence crafted tools. Aides, if you will, from eras and universes long gone. The Essence uses its memory to try and give us a chance against the calamity that eventually devours every universe."

Enith took a long breath. She knew what was coming next. She had been ready for it, or so she had told herself. She decided it was better to get everything out as fast as she could.

"You see… I told you I tore out core skills of my own to form the pillars for six of the celestials. I did not know it at the time, but they grew, those pieces, into souls of their own. But I had already created the ritual, you know? Because tearing out my core skills and all the mantles I had bonded would leave me powerless. So I had to prepare the grand ritual first. By the time I realised what I had done, it was too late."

She was quiet, her mind going dark as she tried to push the memories away.

"What had you done?" the boy asked, breaking her out of her dark remembrances.

But she could not look him in the face anymore and she was hunched over, and she was shaking. She had wanted to look strong in front of him. To look impressive. She was the strongest god the multiverse ever saw, even without ever stepping into the S-grade.

Someone from the other gathered gods sighed. She heard them speak, as if from a great distance.

"First off, our dear Enith had stolen a flame of creation from another universe that was on the cusp of being born. That is tantamount to some kind of genocide, or abortion, if you will."

"Still just sour she so thoroughly out robbed you," another Sam commented, coming close and putting a hand on Enith's lower back as a show of support.

It at least reminded her of what she had forgotten all those thousands of years back, and what she had forgotten again now. The journey might have been solo, but the ending didn't have to be. Her failure was only a thing because she'd left it too late to call her family for aid.

Enith looked up into Sam's face. The other god was not smiling. Both versions of her were not. Enith appreciated how seriously they took the matter, though she wouldn't have faulted them for making a few jokes. She was used to that by now, and it was comforting at times.

She saw in her eyes that Sam wanted to tell the rest of the story for her. That gave her the strength she needed to take a breath and shake her head in the negative. This was her story to tell.

"The flame… the primordial flame, it's called. The souls… do you know the true appearance of a spirit? Not that vague stand-in you see with your weak ability?" she asked the boy.

Her voice was rough, even to her own hearing.

The boy grunted in affirmation. Sam had told him already. The other woman's hand tightened a little on Enith's back, as if she couldn't contain her happiness at having contributed to their prodigy's future. And that he was. He was their prodigy. All of theirs, not just Noid's anymore.

The spirit and body were so intertwined. The spirit in fact, was what determined the shape of the body, and therefore formed the framework for the body. Therefore the true form of the spirit was a schema of the body's true shape. And once the boy's soul sight had grown to a level where he could see the complete schema, that was when he'd be able to start attempting what Liam had done and become a soul architect. Or so the boy said Sam had told him.

Most people at high levels only ended at seeing the curtain shape. Being able to see the whole schema was a special ability that could make one a soul architect, so not everyone could do it, obviously.

"The true soul shape of any being determined their body's state. That is how the Essence, even as it is unconscious, creates. And that is how I created life," Enith found herself saying, dispassionately this time. How she wished the rest of the conversation would go like this.

"Ahhh…" the boy said with a hesitant nod.

"But they were…no, they are babies. They are still there, at the frameworks, carrying the fate of the multiverse on their malformed backs. Unable to grow."

The boy frowned. She had stopped shaking, instead fisting her hands. He spoke when she did not continue.

"I do not understand the problem."

"The framework of the system. The whole concept of an unfeeling machine," this time it was Liam speaking, his tone fast and clipped. "They were built on thinking, living, beings, able to grow. But as machines, well, they are built with all the instructions they are supposed to have. Machines can grow, as you well know, but not organically. They only grow in a predestined direction."

The boy only looked at him blankly. Enith wanted to snort. Not everyone from these tech savvy worlds knew how machines worked. Besides, he was just a kid when he left his homeworld. A normal kid.

"That doesn't matter anyway," this time Noid was the one to interrupt. "What matters is that to come on line, the newborn's lives were going to be consumed. Their bodies would remain, but their brains, well there were mantles involved, and you know mantles and young children without any truths, even if these were not normal young children."

"It was a hot mess, is what they are saying," this time Granderel chimed in.

"And that is how we come in," Sendriel spoke.

"Yes," Enith spoke. "There is a reason no one before me, even if they were all stronger than the other guardians, could take even one extra mantle. Sam could not steal mantles, and neither could Liam and the rest of them. Even if he had seven souls. One person, one mantle."

It was an absolute rule of the multiverse. One only person had ever been able to break. Like so many rules before, Enith had managed to steal mantles.

In the vision they showed new entrants into the trial, Enith had taken two mantles after she'd killed the Demon God. They never outright said it was a memorable feat. If the trial takers were resourceful enough though, they would find out either way. Once they reached the multiverse heartlands they would know all about the mantles and why it was impossible to have more than one. And they would know how impressive it had been for her to hold two without ever reaching the S-grade.

She sighed. "I tried to destroy my ritual before it could go online."

Her voice was bitter now, frustrated.

"But that, even if it would have saved the children, would have been catastrophic for the rest of the multiverse," Liam said.

"With all those mantles in the same place, and out of the formation, yeah. The destruction of the universe in Sendriel's dreams would have been a dream scenario," Noid said.

"And so we stepped up. With a better solution. Hopefully temporary, but a little better at the very least," Sendriel said.

"It was only temporary in that we hoped someone like you would come along and free the children some day," Sam said.

"Huh?" the boy asked.

"And that is what your …friend, Devila is trying to accomplish, in her own way," Enith tried, hoping to see where this current thread would lead.

"Do not defend the girl," Noid spoke up. "Listen boy, forget about her. She will be no friend to you when you enter the multiverse."

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