Page 150 of The Ascended
At the center of it all, he stopped.
"What you're seeing," Xül said quietly, "isn't just destruction. It's the aftermath of salvation."
I surveyed the desolation surrounding us. "This doesn't look like salvation to me."
"That depends entirely on what was prevented, and who you ask." He knelt, placing his palm against the barren earth. "This was the final battle between the last living Primordials. Moros was killed here."
"Moros?" I repeated the name.
"His power had nothing to do with death, which has purpose in the natural order. " Xül's voice took on the cadence of a scholar. "While other Primordials represented aspects of reality—time, space, creation—Moros was a corruption of himself. He could hollow beings from within. Use them as vessels for his influence."
“Who killed him?”
“Vivros, of course.” Xül stood again. “Cataclysm incarnate.”
I followed, watching as he traced the crystal's edge with a careful finger. "Vivros was too powerful for Moros to take as a vessel,but as he destroyed the corruption, he absorbed traces of Moros's essence. Over time, it changed him."
The parallels to Thatcher were impossible to ignore. My brother, with his identical power, his gentle nature now joined with the ability to unmake matter with a thought.
"After Moros was destroyed, the Twelve united against Vivros," Xül continued, "His power had grown too great, too dangerous. By the time they confronted him, he had already destroyed thousands of corrupted beings. In his mind, he was saving reality. In theirs, he had become the very threat he sought to eliminate."
I tried to find the words, but my mind was racing too fast for my lips to catch up.
"What you see in the divine realm today," Xül said, gesturing broadly, "is the aftermath of this conflict. The pantheon fractured along fault lines that never truly healed."
"What does that mean?" I finally managed.
"Some wanted to understand what had happened to Vivros—my father among them. He believed Vivros could be saved, that the corruption could be separated from the being." His voice softened. "Others, like Axora and Terralith, saw only threat and demanded destruction. Those divisions created the first political factions among the Twelve—traditionalists versus reformists. Those who would destroy what they fear versus those who would understand it."
I processed this new information, connecting it to what I'd observed in my limited interactions with the divine realm. "And now? What's happening in the pantheon now?"
Xül's expression darkened. "Power dynamics are shifting in concerning ways." His eyes fixed on mine. "When gods who have maintained separate domains for eons suddenly seek unity, ask yourself what threat they perceive that requires such cooperation."
"Thatcher," I whispered.
Xül didn't confirm or deny, but his silence spokevolumes.
I took in the devastation around us. "Why are you telling me any of this?"
"Primordial power is fundamentally different from the power of the Twelve.” Xül picked up a fragment of black stone, turning it in his long fingers. "Gods manipulate existing elements of reality. Primordials could reshape fundamental nature."
"That doesn't answer my question," I pressed.
He gestured to the ruins around us. "This place shaped my understanding of power. I believe understanding history is crucial to surviving the present." His voice dropped, almost gentle in its intensity. "I bring you here not just as a warning, starling, but as a gesture of trust."
"Trust?" The word felt strange on my tongue after everything we'd been through. But I couldn't deny the subtle shift between us since our moment in the garden. "If you want me to trust you, you need to tell me exactly what all of this means. Plainly."
Xül held my gaze for a long moment. Finally, he let out a slow breath.
"Your brother is the Twelve's greatest threat," he said, each word measured and deliberate. "But he's also potentially their greatest weapon."
I frowned. "I don't understand."
"The mistake they made with Vivros," he continued, gesturing to the devastation around us, "wasn't confronting him. It was confronting him too late." He dropped the black stone fragment, watching it shatter on impact. "By the time they united against him, he was already too far gone, too corrupted by the power he'd absorbed."
"And Thatcher…" My voice caught on my brother's name.
"Is a second chance." Xül's eyes burned.
