Eathan had glued together shoe soles, art projects, even fake eyelashes for Halloween.
He had never glued together a war deity.
Chewie nudged him with her elbow. “You’re stalling.”
“I’m mentally preparing,” he said.
“You’ve been mentally preparing for ten minutes,” she replied. “If you keep prepping, he’ll reincarnate without us.”
Eathan inhaled once, deep and slow. The air here smelled expensive, the scent of soft incense mingled with some kind of spectral citrus that made its dwellers relax.
However, he was far from relaxed.
The core’s aura brushed against his senses, familiar under the static. Eathan’s chest tightened. He twisted the gluestick’s base. The tip pressed out with a faint, wet sound. A smear of viscous light clung to the jade like molten moonlight, threads of runes flickering within.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. Here goes nothing.”
He pressed it down.
The moment the adhesive touched the core, everything snapped awake.
Light burst along the fracture, racing outwards in a spiderweb of silver and pale gold. The glue sank in as if the core was a magnet, runes unraveling into thinner filaments that stitched into the broken edges.
The coffee table shook.
“Uh,” Chewie said, watching as the core lifted from the surface.
It floated while spinning, threads of light whipping from it like comet tails. They lashed across the room, drawing sigils into the air that flickered and rearranged faster than Eathan could read.
“I distinctly remember the grandma not mentioning levitation—”
Chewie’s words cut off as the lights surged.
The Memory Lattice yanked forward from Eathan's grasp on its own and slammed itself against the fracture. A sharp hiss tore through the air. The gluestick’s jade cap flared, and the entire prism of adhesive liquefied, bleeding straight into the core like ink poured into water.
Eathan lunged, half on instinct.
“Wait wait wait the manual said thirty minutes in the casing—!”
The rest of his sentence drowned in brightness.
The glue vanished into the core. The crack sealed shut with a flash like a blade catching sun.
Then the room exploded.
It wasn’t a literal explosion, per se. It was worse—like being inside a bell when it rang. Divine qi swelled through the suite, vibrating the glass, the furniture, the fillings in his teeth.
[Calamity Radar] blinked red once in his HUD, then fuzzed into static.
Chewie dug her boots into the carpet, aura flaring in response. “Stabilize it!”
“I’m trying!”
He reached into the storm and grabbed.
Energy from the core poured through his fingers, up his arms, straight into his spine. For an instant, Eathan’s vision went white—fragments of the ancient battlefield, a mountain reaching into the sky, running script in a dark room and the smell of dust and cigarette smoke.
A chorus of [SYSTEM] alerts tried to overlay those memories and failed.
[Auspicious Aura] flared on its own. Gold flooded out from Eathan’s chest, wrapping his hands, the core, the ropes of runaway qi. He dug in his heels with one anchored breath and squeezed the storm inward.
Through the whirlwind chaos, he vaguely glimpsed fragments lifting and weaving into shape.
The lattice of light folded one last time and collapsed inward.
When the glare finally dropped, the table was empty.
Eathan staggered, caught himself on the table’s edge, and blinked spots from his vision.
The capsule lay empty; the core was gone.
In its place, barefoot on the rug, was Taeril White.
He sat very straight, back against the cushions, hands resting loosely on his knees. Robes settled in clean lines, cream?white with faint silver edging. His hair fell in pale curls over his shoulders, a familiar, almost ridiculous softness that never matched the way he moved.
His eyes were closed.
The suite’s hum faded into a thin ring—then silence.
No aura pressed outward yet. The usual weight he carried still slumbered, which made him look like an ice sculpture waiting to come alive.
Eathan’s chest hurt.
All the rehearsed words he’d thought about saying—You idiot, you scared everyone, Welcome back, Please don’t ever do that again—jammed into each other and lodged somewhere behind his ribs.
Chewie hovered just out of arm’s reach, bladeless for once, which somehow made her look more on edge. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. Good start. He has limbs.”
Eathan’s throat felt too tight. “Please be okay,” he heard himself say, voice barely there. “Please—”
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As if answering, Taeril’s lashes flickered.
It was a small movement, followed by a deeper draw of breath, chest rising a little more. His fingers curled against his knees, like someone testing fine motor skills.
Then, the White Tiger opened his eyes.
Obsidian black; they were as dark as Eathan remembered. Depth without bottom. For a heartbeat, they were unfocused, sliding past the curtains, over the ceiling, across the coffee table.
Eathan’s heart lurched so hard his vision blurred. All the tension that had been strangling him since the COZMART explosion cracked at once; relief came flooding in so viciously it almost hurt.
“Mister White,” he said, and the name shook. “You—”
His own eyes stung. Stupid. He hadn’t cried when the shop blew, not even when he saw his own funeral. Now, faced with the most familiar stare in his life, something in him decided this was finally the time to fall apart.
He blinked hard, trying to clear it—
And froze.
Something shifted at that very moment.
Not in the air. In his face.
The smallest quiver touched the corner of Taeril’s mouth. His brows drew together, very slightly, like a man trying to remember the right expression for a feeling he’d only ever observed at a distance.
His eyes shone.
Hm?
Eathan stared as something swelled in those obsidian eyes, trembling on the lower lid before slipping free. It traced along sharp bone, hesitated at his jaw, then dropped onto the carpet with an almost audible tap.
Chewie stared.
Eathan forgot how to breathe entirely.
The White Tiger—the war god who’d single-handedly wiped the entire Southeastern Ridge off the map, the Cstoic, ruthless, borderline-sociopathic deity who’d put an end to a collapsing nightmare and saved half the Council’s ass from permanent disintegration—was sitting before them with his hair in soft curls and his gaze downcast…
Crying?
The three of them sat in complete silence.
Chewie’s jaw had dropped. She looked as though she’d just witnessed Quine Long in a frilly pink corset yodelling a love ballad to Li Wei.
“Boss?” She shot forward, almost tripping on the rug. “Boss, what’s wrong? Does it hurt? Did we glue you wrong?”
“Maybe don’t say ‘glue,’” Eathan hissed, stumbling to the other side. “Mister White? Can you hear us?”
He grabbed Taeril’s shoulder carefully, half?expecting his hand to pass through. It didn’t. The cloth under his fingers was solid, the muscle beneath it real and warm.
Taeril blinked once, slowly, as another tear slid free. Then, with impeccable composure, he lifted one hand and wiped it away.
Two more immediately replaced it.
“What is this,” Chewie whispered. “What is this?”
Eathan gulped.
The man in front of them looked exactly like their Commander, from the precise slope of his shoulders to the way his fingers curled when relaxed. Emotionally, though, he resembled a tap someone had snapped off.
No rant, no sarcastic comment, no glare. Just silent, continuous leaking tears.
They tried everything.
“Do you know who you are?” Eathan asked.
No answer.
“Do you know who we are?” Chewie asked.
Blank stare. Damp lashes.
“Blink twice if you want to sue the Jade Deity,” Eathan tried.
No blink pattern. Just another tear.
Chewie looked desperately uncomfortable. "Should we... hug him?"
"Absolutely not," he replied instantly. "I think that violates some celestial HR code."
Chewie sighed, tugging at the white-haired man’s sleeve like she could shake personality back into him. “Boss, if someone bullied you in the river, tell me who, I’ll go stab them!”
Taeril’s only response was to very politely wipe his cheek again, as if the moisture itself wasn't an inconvenience.
The ridiculousness of it crashed over Eathan all at once. This wasn’t right. Taeril White had a full emotional range: annoyed, very annoyed, pretending not to be amused, weaponised apathy. This… quiet, leaking statue was none of those.
He forced his breathing to slow.
Think.
Lady Foxfire’s voice slotted into place in his head, annoyingly smug even in memory:
His essence isn’t just fractured—it's splintered across many things. A chaotic puzzle, if you will.
Incomplete.
Eathan’s stomach dropped. “Chewie,” he said. “Stop shaking him a second.”
“I am comforting him,” she snapped back.
“You’re going to rattle his soul loose again,” he said. “Look at him properly.”
She paused, scowling, but obeyed.
Together, they took him in. Perfect posture; perfect face. Zero visible expression, other than the tears that streamed steadily.
“Lady Foxfire said his essence was splintered,” Eathan went on. “If each shard holds a piece of him—memories, temperament, whatever—then this is…”
“The version without?” Chewie squinted at Taeril’s face. “Without what, exactly?”
“Filters?” Eathan guessed. “Stability? Emotional, um, moderation?”
Taeril, as if offended by the word “moderation,” let another tear fall in a perfect line.
“Missing core pieces, missing personalities,” Chewie said, clutching her head.
They both stared down at the man again.
Eathan’s wristband vibrated, cutting through the panic.
He jerked his gaze down. For the first time since entering the Passing, his [Qi Tokens] count was not greyed out.
[Qi Tokens]: 8339
The burst of divinity from Taeril’s reconstruction had somehow punched a hole through realm restrictions and reconnected him, at least temporarily, to his [PROFILE].
“Okay,” Eathan breathed. “Okay, that’s—”
Another notification slid in on top of it.
[Calamity Radar ω] – Deep-Scan Mode Available
His gaze snapped back to Taeril.
“Hold on,” he said. “Don’t move.”
Chewie gave him a look. “He hasn’t moved in five minutes. I think we’re safe.”
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION
Skill [Calamity Radar ω: Deep-Scan Mode] has been activated!
30 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (8339 → 8309)
Eathan ignored her, calling up [Calamity Radar]. The familiar interface unfolded across his inner vision—golden grid, threat markers, now threaded through with a newly added overlay.
He focused on the man in front of him, then let in a sharp inhale.
He saw a stylised silhouette with seven circular nodes down the torso, each a different luminous shade.
Three glowed steady inside the outline; the remaining four were semi-transparent holes where colours had once thrived. Eathan saw clearly how the those shards flickered with uncertainty, like candles buffeted by invisible winds.
When he tried to squint and gauge the exact hue, his vision grew blurry as if there was a censor filter. His gaze traced a jagged void near Taeril’s heart. Another gap, this one near his temple. Even the gaps where most luminous shades were lingering barely held their form.
Eathan swore under his breath.
“We’re missing four,” he said. “One we saw go downstream. The other three… I don’t even have a ping.”
“Can you tell what each fragment does?” Chewie asked.
“No.” His teeth clenched. “But if this is three out of seven, and he’s already like this…”
Taeril’s eyes were slightly pink at the corners now. He still hadn’t spoken. Breastbone rose and fell, even and calm, as if he was sitting through a particularly boring meeting while his tear ducts staged a coup.
Chewie leaned back. “We are so doomed.”
It was at that moment.
A knock hit the door.
Both froze simultaneously. Someone was there.
Eathan’s mind ran through the instructions he’d given the staff.
Nobody mortal—or post?mortal hotel?employed—should be knocking.
He tried to activate Deep-Scan again, but [Calamity Radar] was under the thirty-minute cooldown. He narrowed his focus on passive mode, noting a red arc flashed at the corner of the radar UI.
The knock came again. This time, slightly sharper.
Chewie’s hand dropped to her weapon. “I’ll deal with—”
“Wait.” Eathan grabbed her wrist. “You can’t just stab a hotel ghost in a hotel corridor.”
“Watch me.”
“Also,” he added, “we cannot let anyone see Mister White like this.”
They both looked down.
Taeril glanced back, tears still collecting neatly in his lashes. He seemed… mildly puzzled. Or maybe that was just Eathan projecting something onto the otherwise neutral death?glare.
“If they came for a random inspection,” whispered Eathan, “we bluff. But if they came for him…”
The knock came again, and they grimaced under the impeding pressure.
Chewie turned to him, eyeing the white-haired man still dapping on damp eyes.
"What should we do?"
They were running out of time.