Tar roots tunneled through solid stone, burrowing deep within underground waterways. The pursuit for Preservation eternal, and all creatures, no matter how small, deserved refuge.

  Today marked the passing of a year since the blessing had stirred from its slumber. A year of silence, of dark, and him sitting in the belly of the world, his hands shaping stone while his mind reached out through the roots of the blessing.

  Below, the realm was not empty.

  Life clung to the deep places, huddled around the veins of magma that pulsed like arteries in the rock. Rivers of heated water cut through the gloom, teeming with blind fish and pale, soft-shelled crabs.

  They were small lives. Weak souls.

  Infant souls.?

  Most had Tier 0 Cores, barely a spark in the dark. They drifted into the Preserverant like moths into a web, their passing gentle, their dreams simple.

  It wasn't much, but it was enough.

  The Garden stockpiled the power. It hoarded the mana from nine sleeping dragons, and thousands of preserved mortals, adding the trickle from the deep-life to the reservoir.

  We are growing, the Mist whispered. We are heavy.

  But above, the weight was different.

  The surface was a graveyard.

  Amon didn't need to see it to know. The dreams of the captured Kobolds—not just Reds now, but Blues, Greens, and others—painted a picture of industrial annihilation.

  The Tharnell advance hadn't stopped, the loss of a god was a stumble, not a fall.

  Three new gods had walked through the rift.

  Three.

  They stood, mountains of steel and rune-glass, their footsteps shaking the bedrock miles below. Around them, Demigods marched in phalanxes, their mechs bristling with weaponry that turned forests to ash, and cities to dust.?

  And the sky…

  The sky belonged to the machines now.

  Skyclaw Bombers drifted through the clouds like fat, iron sharks. They were clumsy, ugly things, but they carried death in their bellies. Mana-bombs that could crack a fortress open like an egg.

  Around them, smaller aircraft, known as Talonspine Interceptors, buzzed like angry wasps. They were fast, sleek, and lethal. They hunted dragons in packs, using speed and numbers to overwhelm the ancient beasts before they could bring their fire to bear.?

  The dragons still fought back though.

  They were gods of this realm, after all. Reds burned entire battalions, Blues drowned tank columns in flash floods, and Greens turned the forests into traps that swallowed walkers whole.

  But for every machine they broke, the rift spit out two more.

  ‘Attrition,’ Amon thought, carving a rune into the stone mask in his lap. ‘They are fighting math with magic, and the math is winning.’

  But the Tharnells weren't the only ones.

  The Mist shivered as it relayed the news.

  Potore.

  The name tasted like grease and blood.

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  Boar-men, walking hogs. Slavers and butchers who saw the realm not as land to be conquered, but as a larder to be stocked. They had arrived in force, their own machines grinding through the mountain passes, their hunger endless.

  And then, the Dwarves.

  Everforge.

  These were the ones that made the tar nervous. They were short beings, hybrid things of rock and flesh, beards of granite, and built like boulders. They didn't care about the surface, they wanted the deep. They wanted the ore, the gems, the bones of the world.

  And they were the masters of written magic.?

  They had invented runes, and the first to create rifles, and cannons. They were the ones who taught the multiverse how to kill dragons with firearms.

  If they dug deep enough…

  They will find us.

  Amon’s hand slipped, the chisel screeched against the stone.

  Not yet, the Mist soothed. We are deep. We are quiet.

  For now.

  But the clock was ticking. The realm was a carcass, and the vultures were fighting over the best cuts.

  So Amon worked.

  Not to build an army, the Caregivers needed no stone to fight, only tar and will. He worked to keep his mind from eating itself in the silence.

  The rhythmic scraping of the chisel was a metronome for his meditation.

  In. Spin. Out.

  He cycled his mana, pushing it into the Core, refining it, compressing it, and slowly ascending it. The stone carving was just an anchor, a way to focus his intent while his soul did the heavy lifting.?

  But the stone had cost him. A year of grinding granite against his palms had taken a toll, the skin, dead as it was, had frayed and split. The bone beneath had started to wear.

  The Preserverant had noticed.

  It didn't heal him—he was a corpse, after all—but it reinforced him. The tar had seeped into his clothes, hardening the leather of his boots, the weave of his trousers, and shirt. But on his hands, it had done more.

  It had formed gauntlets.

  Black, slick, and harder than iron, the tar encased his fingers and palms, acting as a second skin. It allowed him to grip the stone without shattering his own knuckles, and it allowed him to work without destroying himself.

  ‘A fine gift,’ he thought, flexing the armored fingers. ‘Armor for the artisan.’

  And he was becoming an artisan, one that wasn't just carving faces anymore; he was carving logic.

  He picked up the mask in his lap, a dragon’s visage, stylized and fierce. On its forehead, he had etched a Glyphos script. A simple enforcement square, the kind used to keep a plowshare from breaking.

  He wasn't making a magic item, instead practicing the language of the enemy.

  If I can write it, he reasoned, I can read it. If I can read it, I can break it.

  Or fix it. Or use it.

  He pressed his armored palm to the stone, and pushed a pulse of mana into the runes.

  In. Spin. Out.

  The letters glowed. A soft, pale blue light filled the carvings.

  The stone hardened.

  Amon picked up his chisel, and struck the mask Hard.

  CLINK.

  The chisel bounced off, not a scratch made. He nodded. Satisfied, as another lesson had been learned.

  ‘One step closer,’ Amon thought. ‘To understanding the machine.’

  Arbah clapped her little tar-hands, mimicking a human child’s delight.

  Amon handed the mask to a waiting Caregiver. The construct took it, pressing the stone to its face. The tar flowed around the edges, sealing it in place. The Caregiver did a little jig, a grotesque, joyous dance in the dark, before merging back into the wall.

  Arbah presented him another slab of rock, which he took, preparing to carve again. But then, the Mist rippled with excitement, and flowed through the tunnels, rushing toward the west.

  Amon closed his eyes and rode the sensation.

  Far away, miles through the crushing dark, the tar had found something.

  A chasm.

  It was immense, a league wide, a league deep. A scar in the earth filled with water and heat. At the bottom, thermal vents poured life-giving minerals into the dark.

  And around those vents…

  Life.

  Real life, sentient life.

  Crab-men. Giant, shelled warriors clacking their claws in the gloom. Fish-folk tending moss gardens in the thermal currents. They were primitive, and he saw us no magical use among them.

  But there were thousands of them, and they were unprotected. Amon felt the hunger of the Garden, not to eat, but to save.

  New friends, Arbah seemed to say, hopping on his knee.

  Amon smiled.

  "Yes," he whispered to the dark. "New friends."

  The tar surged forward. The war above could wait; the harvest below was just beginning.