Tucked away in a small, abandoned alley a good thirty minutes’ walk away from the bustling residential district, a cathedral made out of pure, uncorrupted alabaster loomed.

  Not a soul wandered this section of the city. The sharp, cold air stung Marisol’s cheeks, and there were only the faint sounds of rain and waves breaking against the harbours below. The cathedral gleamed like polished bone under moonlight, and every detail—every arched window, carved saint, and worm-patterned relief—were sharpened by the silvery glow. It was a beautiful building with decades of history to be sure, but the killing pressure radiating from behind the heavy alabaster doors pressed against her chest, making it hard to breathe.

  She hesitated, cold rain pitter-pattering against her shoulders, but Victor strode right forward and the double doors creaked open automatically. The killing pressure intensified. She winced and slid back unconsciously, her body moving on its own, and Victor to grab her by the wrist before yanking her in—she would’ve slid down the street without her knowing it otherwise.

  The moment she got out of the rain, the double doors slammed shut behind her.

  …

  The cathedral was vast, almost cavernous in nature, and it was lit only by pale moonlight filtering through cracked, stained-glass windows. Rows of empty pews lined the hall, the wood warped and darkened by time. Tall alabaster columns rose by the sides, their surfaces etched with faded carvings of worms, while their shadows stretched across the floor, solid like actual pools of oil. There was no in-between. Either the cathedral was extremely well lit or not at all; either she endured the freezing temperature, or she didn’t endure anything at all.

  Hugging herself, teeth chittering, shivering from head to toe, she stayed by the entrance and tried to breathe. Tried to think. Carved entirely out of even more alabaster, a throne made of twisted petrified worms sat on a raised dais at the end of the hall, and the boy sitting on it was unnervingly still—because was the source of the killing pressure.

  White hair spilled over his face, framing soft, delicate features. Four curved horns jutted from his head. Silvery veins ran under his pale biometal skin, glimmering like stars. Draped over his shoulders was a cape made of woven diamond flowers, and he had nothing more than a plain trousers underneath. His chest was bare. His feet were bare, resting lightly against the dais as though he hadn’t moved in years, and that was because he probably moved in years.

  His eyes were closed, his cheek was propped up by a hand on an armrest. He was deep in slumber, and Marisol didn’t even want to wonder what sort of dreams or nightmares the strongest human in the world had to grapple with.

  Could he even dream?

  Could he even suffer from nightmares?

  As Victor trudged forward, walking cane clacking softly against the hard stone, Marisol followed—and she couldn’t stop her heart from thumping in her chest the entire time.

  The Archive sighed exasperatedly as the two of them neared the boy’s throne. just another human. As long as your mind is unable to bridge that gap, you will never be able to speak on even terms with him.]

  Victor stopped right before the dais and knelt, both hands clasped on his walking cane. Marisol followed suit, if not only because she feared for her life.

  The was right in front of her.

  “Okay, that’s enough paying respects to a fucking clone,” Victor grumbled, shooting to his feet and taking two steps up the dais before jabbing his cane down at her. “Oi, Enki. Make the lass a registered Flower Cape. She’s had her Altered Symbiotic System for months already, but she inherited it directly from Antonio instead of passing your exam. Before she goes any deeper into the whirlpool, I want her Archive to have its full functionalities back.”

  No response.

  Anxiously, she looked between the old man and the boy, and then Victor chucked his walking cane at the Worm God’s head. The cane bounced off, ricocheted into a window to their left, and then smashed through glass to let a stronger shaft of moonlight fall into the cathedral.

  Marisol clenched her jaw as the Worm God suddenly cracked his neck, his lips parting slightly to exhale a cold, bone-chilling mist—and without even opening his eyes, he opened his right palm and raised it in her direction.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and braced her face—as if that was going to protect her at all—but nothing happened. The Worm God didn’t make a wormhole and shred her into pieces. He didn’t stretch his arm out like a worm and grab her throat. His palm was simply outstretched, he was muttering an incomprehensible, metallic script under his breath, and he was still resting his cheek against his other hand. If she closed one eye and ignored his raised hand, she could very easily mistake him for still being asleep.

  And whatever he was doing… she didn’t feel it.

  Maybe the Archive in her nape was squirming or rearranging itself or literally breaking down into tiny biometallic parts, but she was still so damned cold, and the cold was all she could focus on.

  “... Alright. Now we just sit here and wait for five or so minutes until he’s done registering your Archive,” Victor said, shrugging nonchalantly as he sat down on the dais, just a few steps away from the Worm God’s feet. She he looked a little miffed at the walking cane he threw out himself, but instead of going out to retrieve it, he motioned for her to stop kneeling and make herself comfortable on the floor. “What? You thought he was even going to bother talking to you? Don’t be silly. He’s got more important things to do on the mainland.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It took a bit of self-convincing, it took a of effort, but she was eventually able to stop kneeling and sit down cross-legged instead, hugging herself as she peeked nervously up at the Worm God.

  “I thought… what?” she muttered, her voice coming out weak, laboured, as though her mind was getting frozen over by the cold as well. “I thought… you know, he’d interview me… or something. Becoming a Hasharana’s a big deal, right? Is it okay to… sit there and… register me just like that—”

  “I was the one who brought you here. He’ll pass anyone I bring to him.”

  “Is… is that so—”

  “Besides, I’m pretty damn sure you have the wrong idea here.” Victor thumbed back at the Worm God, a small smile wrinkling his bandages. “This kid here isn’t the real Worm God. He’s just one of his ten clones scattered across the continent. I bet his real consciousness didn’t even stay for long enough to take a good look at you. He just felt me hitting his head with my cane, popped in to hit you with his killing pressure, and then left.”

  Marisol blinked.

  “What?”

  “Don’t they teach you anything in school?” Victor grumbled. “Year Seventy, after the Worm Mage was killed by the Swarm God, he came back as the ‘Worm God’, split himself into multiple bodies, and went to the Six Swarmsteel Fronts to duke it out with the Six Greater Insect Gods all at the same time. As of right now, there are eleven Worm Gods.” He raised six fingers. “One clone resides in each of the Six Swarmsteel Fronts, three clones reside in the centre of the mainland continent, and one clone is free to walk around the continent helping out the Flower Capes wherever help is needed. His real body sits atop his tower in the centre of the continent, and… come on. There’s no way you don’t know what he does up there.”

  She wracked her head, tried to come up with an answer, and found it almost immediately—ingrained in her head from all the legends, stories, and books she’d read as a child.

  “His strongest attack,” she said, snapping her fingers, her eyes lighting up briefly blue. “Brightmoon Collapse.”

  Victor tilted his head. “So you heard of it.”

  “He… the Worm God sits above his alabaster tower in the centre of the continent, and whenever a Greater Insect God shows itself, he arms his railgun and prepares to fire Brightmoon Collapse!” she breathed excitedly, reciting from the picture books every child in her desert town had multiple copies of. “It’s like… an attack that combines the weather, his wormholes, and thousands of Symbiosteel all working in sync to deliver a super fast projectile that can decimate in its way! I know that! It’s how we still haven’t lost to the Swarm yet, because none of the Greater Insect Gods want to risk getting targeted by that attack!”

  “Well, it’s not powerful,” Victor mumbled. “It’s true that it’s a railgun that he can fire anywhere from atop his tower to deal massive damage, but there are many conditions that must be fulfilled before he can actually pull the trigger. For one, it takes him twenty-four hours to charge up his bioarcanic railgun, so any Greater Insect God that shows up must remain visible for twenty-four hours straight—and Corpsetaker can wreck this entire city in well under an hour if left uncontested. By the time the Worm God charges up his railgun, it’d already be too late.”

  “What? But that’s—”

  “That’s why he has a clone in each Swarmsteel Front,” Victor interrupted, thumbing back at the Worm God again. “All ten of his clones combined make up about eighty percent of his power, so the real body only has twenty percent of his total power remaining, and this guy right here has only about eight percent of his total power. Since the Imperators have such a tight hold on the city, he doesn’t even bother moving this clone unless something demands his attention, and that’s nothing short of multiple Insect Gods breaching the whirlpool. In the event the city compromised, his one and only duty is to make sure Corpsetaker doesn’t reach the surface.”

  “... And if Corpsetaker manages?”

  “He’ll try to keep the Greater Crab God distracted on the surface for twenty-four hours.” Victor shrugged again. “Then he’ll use Brightmoon Collapse and destroy the entire city, most likely. He’d rather kill everyone on this island than let Corpsetaker roam free around the Deepwater Legion Front.”

  Marisol’s face paled, but she wasn’t sure how much paler she could go. Every word that came out of Victor’s mouth sounded like a half-joke, but the Worm God’s killing pressure wasn’t a joke.

  “But if he’s so strong… why doesn’t he just go around the entire continent with his real body, killing one Greater Insect God after another?” she managed to ask, teeth chittering, the cold starting to harden her skin. “If he’s that strong… if humanity’s is this strong—”

  “He can’t,” Victor said plainly. “Brightmoon Collapse is the only attack of his capable of actually hurting the Greater Insect Gods, and it’s the only thing keeping the Swarm from overrunning this continent.”

  “How?”

  Victor frowned. “It’s a stalemate,” he said. “The Greater Insect Gods aren’t overwhelming the Six Swarmsteel Fronts he’s always watching. Say he leaves his tower and comes here with his real body. Sure, he’ll be able to dive down with us on a Corpsetaker extermination mission—and there’s a thirty percent chance we can win—but that opens up the rest of the continent up to attack. There’s no point if we literally lose the rest of the continent just to win the Deepwater Legion Front.”

  “... Oh.”

  “The Swarm’s afraid of him, and none of the Greater Insect Gods want to die. It’s as simple as that. The stalemate will be maintained as long as his real body never leaves his tower, because none of the Greater Insect Gods will show up for long, and even if they do, they have to contend with the clone that’s already sitting there in each of the Six Swarmsteel Fronts.” Then Victor elbowed the Worm God’s feet, grinning as though trying to elicit a reaction from the clone. “Between this guy and the Imperators, I think we can put up a pretty decent fight even against multiple Insect Gods breaching the whirlpool. I’m pretty sure the protocol for that is… well, he’ll transfer a portion of his consciousness in first, and then he’ll wake up, and then he’ll lock every invading bug into an alternate space with his wormholes, giving the rest of us time to evacuate civilians off the island and prepare our defences.”

  Marisol had heard of the Worm God’s ‘impossible defences’ across the continent many, many times, and they were completely different stories every time. Once, she heard he’d thrown an entire borough down a wormhole, keeping the citizens safe from a Swarm siege for three whole days while he dealt with the bugs himself. Another time, she heard he’d summoned an entire wall of worms to protect an entire coastal city from a tidal wave of giant ants. Yet time, she heard he’d given every soldier in a marching army their own personal wormhole, and every time one of them were about to fall in battle, they were automatically teleported away. The casualty rate for that army’s campaign ended up being a big, fat zero.

  So, somehow, hearing Victor say he was just going to lock any bug invading the Whirlpool City into an ‘alternate space’ wasn’t so surprising.

  Even if the Archive said otherwise, she couldn’t think of the boy in front of her as anything but human god.

  [... Altered Symbiotic System registered]

  [Please fall asleep for soft reset initiation]

  The status screen that popped up next to her head gave her a good jolt, and as she squinted at the tiny words, Victor popped onto his feet with a soft groan.

  “It says you have to go to bed for its full functionality to unlock, right?” he said, meandering down the dais and walking past her, patting her on the shoulder. “Stop training just for tomorrow. You’ll wake up being bombarded by a thousand annoying notifications—because you’ve been unregistered for so long and they’ve probably been accumulating in your Archive—so it’ll take you an entire day just to sift through all of it. Figure out your fully functional system by yourself. Kids are better with technology these days, anyways.”

  With that, the old man left her alone in the chapel with the Worm God, the heavy alabaster doors creaking open slowly before closing with a loud slam.

  For her part, she was still just staring at the Worm God, who’d pulled his outstretched hand back and went back to sleep the moment her status screen popped up.

  Naturally, she had lots of questions she wanted to ask Victor—and even more she wanted to ask the Worm God, humanity’s greatest hero—but there was a reason why the cathedral was so damned cold, and it probably wasn’t because the Worm God wanted people to just lounge around in here.

  Gathering herself, she scrambled onto her glaives and started tip-toeing out of the cathedral, hurrying to get away from the Worm God’s killing pressure.

  A metallic voice buzzed in her ears, utterly incomprehensible. She winced for a short moment, hand flying to her nape, but then the little water strider phased into existence on her shoulder, looking the same as ever.

  Relief flooded into her chest as she practically dashed out the cathedral, panting for breath, savouring the cold rain on her shoulders.

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