On the other side, Arden and the pope appeared in a large living space. It was decorated with extravagant furniture, beautiful rugs, and what looked like the high fantasy version of a mini fridge, complete with runic scrawls. Arden believed that the Usurper’s Throne would look very at home here. The area gave off the vibe of a cozy cabin in the woods, right down to the wood that made up the ceiling, walls, and floor.

  “This is my home-away-from-home,” the pope said. “Very few know about this place, and even fewer know how to get in. Fewer still have the capacity to actually get in. I'd make a list of the people who fulfilled that last condition, but I think a list should have more than just one name on it.”

  The pope sat down on one of the couches with a satisfied groan, and put his feet up on a table in front of him. He laid his staff against the couch and made a gesture with his now empty hand.

  The runes on the mini fridge glowed blue and the door swung open. A bottle with a label that Arden couldn't read floated through the air to the pope. He caught it, and brought the cap down on the end of his staff, using it as a bottle opener. He brought the drink to his mouth and took a long swig.

  “The princess’ drinks are great, but they don't come close to mine. You can talk in here by the way. No one can hear us here. Oh that reminds me,” he snapped his fingers.

  Arden felt something in his mind click. It was a strange feeling, like fingertips were just removed from the surface of his mind.

  “The mental link is broken,” the pope said. “From now on, I can’t hear your thoughts.”

  Arden watched the pope in a daze. He hadn’t expected the place the pope had in mind to be a pocket dimension. He also hadn't imagined said pocket dimension to look like a man cave.

  ‘Actually, it's not that weird. Stargates are pocket dimensions themselves. I guess the weird thing would be that the pope is able to create them.’

  The more Arden thought about it, the more he realized that it seemed normal to him. Celestials weren’t spawning in the pope’s man cave. Spatial powers were rare, but not unheard of even in Arden’s world. If he remembered correctly, spatial technology was used a lot in day to day life back home, even in the slums. Things like the municipal building or the Starborn Association branch were created with the knowledge of spatial Starborn, being much larger on the inside than how they appeared.

  Honestly, the most startling development was the nature of the pope in his hidey hole. He went from religious leader with a few quirks to an overworked salary man on his day off. Arden sat down on a chair facing the pope.

  “Is this what you're really like?” Arden asked with his voice for the first time. “I thought priests aren't supposed to be materialistic.”

  “You have a lot of misguided beliefs about the clergy. Priests are just like every other person. Sure, Helios priests are a lot more free than others, but the majority of them on the continent keep their personal lives from interfering with their Church lives.”

  “To the point of having a secret room in someone else's house filled with luxurious furniture and what I'm assuming is alcohol?”

  “Alright, maybe not to that extent,” he conceded. “But I get a bit more leniency for a few reasons. One of the reasons being no one wants to offend Aldren, leader of the Helios Church. There is more than that, obviously.”

  “Is one of those reasons why the princess called you grandfather?”

  Aldren nodded his head.

  “Godfather would be more accurate. The current patriarch of the Valtorin family named me both hers and Nux's godfather. We go way back, he and I. We’re sworn brothers, if you know what that means.”

  “I think I do.”

  “I said that very few people know how to get in here. The patriarch is one of them. He's actually the one who gave me free reign of the tree.”

  “He gave you the tree from his land?”

  “Our land,” Aldren corrected. “I grew up on the estate with him. But enough about me. I want to hear about you, now. Who are you? And I don’t mean your name. What are you doing here? Why are you pretending to be a mute? Why now?”

  ‘Why now?’ Arden wondered.

  “Is the timing of my arrival bad?” Arden asked.

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me what you are.”

  Arden wondered if there was ever an aspirant who told the people in the trials with them their identities, that they had come from another world.

  ‘Probably. There’s too many Starborn for that to have not happened.’

  “Well,” Arden began. “If you really must pry.”

  “I must, I must.”

  ‘No point in making everyone question their reality by telling them that this is my trial. I’ll keep quiet about it. But I’ll still have fun with it.’

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  Vera taught both him and Sya that survival was the highest priority when undertaking a trial. Arden believed that while that was true, the value of having fun was important as well.

  “I’m from another world. I don’t know how or why I’m here, but I am. And once more, I ended up in here,” Arden said, gesturing to his body. “For now, I’m just trying to figure out who I am, or who I’m meant to be. I got off to a rough start, not knowing that this body was a mute, which led to the altercation with Nux back there. I figured it would be easier to just remain a mute than surprise everyone here who knows me.”

  “You’re…from another world?”

  Arden glanced at Aldren’s face. There was mild confusion, and a little bit of suspicion. Alrden continued.

  “You possessed that body?”

  “I don’t like that word. It makes me seem like a demon. I didn’t choose this body. Back home, I was on the brink of death when I woke up here.”

  Aldren wasn’t buying it, Arden could tell. He was a professional liar these days, so he saw the signs of seeing through his deceptions.

  “...I shouldn't have canceled the link,” Aldren muttered. “You were about to die when you were brought here. You have no knowledge about the world, and you just happened to fall into the body of the attendant of perhaps the third most important person on the continent.”

  “What are the odds, right?”

  “And you have no idea why you're here.”

  “Pretty much. I know I have to do something, but have no clue what that thing is. For all I know, surviving is all I need to do, which in all honesty doesn't sound that hard.”

  “...That's because you don't know what's coming,” Aldren said ominously.

  “...All of a sudden, I'm feeling less confident in my chances of survival.”

  Arden neglected to mention that thanks to his new status as a husk, he could survive anything. Not that he wanted to be forced into a desperate struggle for survival again, but his new biology would be helpful when it inevitably did.

  “I confess,” Alrden said. “I never wanted the gig. Being the Helios Saint has a lot of perks. Power, respect, wealth, but I've lost out on a lot of my life. Learning scripture takes time. Guiding the church in a positive direction takes time. Thank the Golden Star that we clergy members aren't forced into celibacy. Have you ever been with a woman?”

  Arden was thrown by the question. It came out of nowhere, and he couldn't figure out how it connected to the conversation about the mysterious oncoming event.

  Nevertheless, Arden answered, slightly embarrassed.

  “I have not.”

  Aldren gave him a surprised look, like he wasn't expecting Arden to answer the question, much less answer honestly.

  “Wait, really? I was speaking rhetorically. You've never gotten laid?”

  “I was busy trying to survive the slums for the last few years. Not many women wanted to screw a hated malnourished slum rat. At least not in that sense.”

  “Anyway,” Aldren continued. “I have a wife. We’ve been together for close to 50 years now.”

  “Congrats.”

  “Thank you. I consider her to be my crowning achievement. I don’t know how a lout like me managed to win over such a jewel, but I did. And her love is all that I want now. Anytime work gets rough, I remember that I have her waiting for me back home, and every bad thing vanishes. She made me realize that I actually can be the Helios Saint.”

  Aldren looked up into the air with a dreamy expression. Arden could tell that he was thinking about his wife. Judging from his expression, Aldren was still deeply in love with his wife. Arden was willing to bet that their love for each other had only gotten stronger over the past 50 years.

  A worm of doubt crept its way into Arden’s mind seeing the expression of the pope. The thought occurred to him back in the Mausoleum of the Maverick as well.

  Was this all truly fake?

  It all seemed too real.

  But for now, Arden couldn’t worry about the validity of these worlds. He was here to complete the mission. To him, that was what needed to be important. Not the questionable reality.

  Aldren picked up his staff and tapped the base of it to the floor. The ceiling changed from a wooden ceiling to a constellation map that slowly rotated. In the middle of the map was a golden star that everything else orbited around. Arden looked up at the stars scattered across the ceiling, reminiscing of the void before his trial had begun.

  “I mentioned that I never wanted my job. This is the main reason.”

  “The stars? Back home, we’d kill for stars to be our biggest worry.”

  “Not the stars themselves, but what the stars represent. Fate. Fate is written in the stars, and it is the duty of the Helios Saint to receive revelations of fate and prepare for them accordingly.”

  He scoffed.

  “Fate is a fickle thing. I see the revelations, but the preparations do nothing, because fate is impossible to defy.”

  Arden didn't say anything. He'd heard pretty much the same from Podren before he gave Arden the Codex Momenti Proximi.

  “I can never avert events, I can only attempt to mitigate the damage done. That is what brings me here today to the Valtorin family.”

  The tip of Aldren’s staff glowed with golden light, as did the golden star in the center of the map above them. From the edges of the map, a dark gray cosmic haze slowly encroached upon the many stars. One by one, the stars that were blanketed by the mist dimmed and died out.

  The haze didn’t stop after devouring a star. It didn’t even slow. The haze made its way to the center of the map, where the last star still glowed with golden light. In the golden star’s presence, the haze slowed, but advanced nonetheless. The haze covered the last star as well, but unlike the others, it didn’t die out. The star blazed to life, burning away the fog, causing it to recede. When the fog did recede, the star glowed even brighter, before disappearing altogether.

  Only one star remained in the sky.

  Arden watched with bated breath. He hadn’t been born at the time to witness the greatest event in humanity’s history back in his world, but he knew about it, as did everyone.

  Aldren’s staff dimmed and the map above returned to its normal form as a ceiling.

  “This is the fate I have seen. As the Helios Saint, I have to do my best to avoid this scenario. But you saw the scale of the event. It's far more than what we can handle.”

  He chugged another bottle.

  “It's the end of the world.”