Percy stared at Metatron wide-eyed as he mulled over the revelation.

  It was Gabe, his current host, who had once introduced him to the very concept of Decrees and even mentioned that some powerful faction had managed to recreate the Moirais’, though the transparent man had neglected to mention that this mysterious group was none other than the Void Hand.

  Then again, Percy hadn’t known enough at the time about this grand alliance, so the information wouldn’t have meant much to him. Perhaps, he should have made the connection after Kassorith told him about his people and their allies, however. After all, the Void Hand was one of the few factions that could rival the Moirai in the first place – not to mention that it had been established precisely to oppose them. Who else would have dared to even attempt such a feat?

  “How come the Vault’s residents know so much about such topics?” he couldn’t help but ask. “Shouldn’t you have locked the information behind credits?”

  “There are all sorts of factors that have to be taken into account when it comes to the young ones’ education,” Metatron said, before elaborating. “Some techniques – like Circulation – are taught early and for free, as they can have a holistic impact on the mortals’ strength. Others – such as specific spells or obscure techniques – are best placed in the reward pools to motivate them to try harder in their challenges. The same goes for knowledge.”

  It didn’t take Percy long to understand what the god meant. He’d already learned that certain topics – like demonic infestations or alchemy – that were of no concern to those at the bottom of the Colour realm, could only be researched by the curious, and for a hefty price.

  However, there were also titbits of information about the broader cosmos that could genuinely inspire children to strive toward greater heights. What better way to get a young person to practice magic, than to introduce them early to some of its greatest marvels?

  “So what, do you spend your days stressing over what to teach or not to teach the children?” Percy asked.

  “As if!” the god chuckled, an amused glint finding its way into his eyes. “It’s all done automatically by the system. It constantly monitors how various moves affect each generation’s performance in the challenges and dynamically adjusts the academic curriculum, the reward pools and the pricing of our resources.”

  The titan’s explanation once again gave Percy the urge to throw up. His system was downright twisted – if chillingly practical. Percy couldn’t deny that it worked, nor that even Remior’s deities had probably chosen to spread rumours about groups like the Moirai or the divine beasts to inspire the populace in a rather similar manner. Still, the idea of this being done by some uncaring machine that constantly collected data and decided what to share or not to share with a bunch of oblivious children rubbed him the wrong way.

  Alas, he had long accepted that he wasn’t powerful enough to change the artificial world for the better. Not yet, at least. Deciding to spend his time more productively, he asked something else that had been gnawing at him.

  “Gabe mentioned that the Void Decree is riddled with flaws. Why would you even want it? Why would anyone?”

  Metatron shook his head. “Your friend was correct, but ‘flawed’ doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. The Void Hand has produced several two-cored champions over the centuries. The exact shortcomings of the Decree are only known to its recipients and the top brass of the alliance. Unfortunately, my subordinates aren’t privy to them, though at least one is not difficult to guess.”

  “It can only be passed to one person at a time. Maybe a handful at most,” Percy speculated.

  “Indeed. If that hadn’t been the case, they would disseminate it to everyone, like the Moirai do. There would be no need to stick with just the top-performers of their tournaments.”

  Percy nodded grimly. This was just one of the Decree’s drawbacks, but it was already a major problem for the Void Hand. The Moirai probably produced hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of two-cored mortals every year, while the alliance was limited to just a tiny fraction of that.

  “It’s not as big of an issue as you may think,” Metatron said, clearly guessing what he was thinking. “A faction’s strength is determined by their most powerful gods, so granting a second core to the most talented Whites and demigods is infinitely more important than giving one to a random low-born. The Void Tournament is an extremely effective way to eliminate this particular shortcoming almost entirely,” he explained, rhythmically tapping one of his tentacles against the smooth, metallic floor.

  “What about the other drawbacks then?” Percy pressed, his curiosity getting the better of him. “You said that they’re kept secret, but I’m sure that you have some thoughts.”

  Metatron performed the closest gesture to a shrug that he was physically capable of.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if forming the second core requires some kind of sacrifice. In fact, it wouldn’t be so different from the broken version of the Moirais’ Decree that you pass to your hosts, which requires a lot of life mana to repair. Except, in the Void Decree’s case, this is likely the default. That said, I don’t think this is a huge problem either.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, whatever the cost is, it’s clearly something that they can stomach, otherwise they wouldn’t have dared to inflict it upon so many of their most promising talents.”

  Listening to all the hoops that the Void Hand’s gods had gone through to merely follow in the Moirais’ footsteps, Percy couldn’t help but wonder about something else.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “What makes the Moirais’ Decree so difficult to replicate? I would have thought that once a titan shows that a certain Decree is possible, it would only be a matter of time before others copy them,” he asked, shifting slightly.

  The titan sighed. “It’s not that simple. Decrees aren’t like regular spells – there’s more to them than mere power or complexity. To cast magic that can exist independently of its owner involves overriding the very rules of the universe – at least locally and subtly. Some Decrees – such as the one granting bloodlines – have indeed been successfully stolen and spread widely, while others – like Svarog’s – have never been deciphered or recreated. But that’s not all. The Moirais’ and Void Decrees involve an additional layer of difficulty.”

  Percy creased his borrowed brow, prompting the god to elaborate. “Haven’t you noticed something special about how Decrees are named?”

  Percy nodded. It would have been strange if he hadn’t. Unlike regular spells that were granted all sorts of arbitrary names that had to do with their function or their creator’s intentions, Decrees appeared to follow a very strict convention: they were always named after the titan who had cast them.

  Or, well… almost always.

  Now that the titan had brought this up, Percy instantly noticed a couple of exceptions.

  “I see that you’ve pieced it together,” Metatron said with a nod. “Titans aren’t obligated to slap their name onto their Decree, but it’s not surprising that we all do. Who would willingly forsake the opportunity to permanently carve our name into the very fabric of the cosmos – in a form that can potentially persist even if we perish? However, there are two major cases when a Decree would naturally be called something else.”

  “If it’s not your first Decree,” Percy guessed one.

  “Indeed,” Metatron confirmed. “Titans that have produced multiple Decrees are rare. They do exist, but casting a Decree requires as much luck as it does talent, power and persistence. Just because you succeeded once, it doesn’t mean that you can do so again. Regardless, the second category of uniquely-named Decrees is far more daunting.”

  “Collaborative Decrees?” Percy asked.

  This time, he was less sure of his guess, even though it made sense. The Moirais’ and Void Decrees had clearly been named after the factions – not the individual titans – who had birthed them. Percy could be wrong, but he felt that it would be presumptuous of any single god to describe their own spell using the name of their people.

  “Correct,” the titan said, a trace of melancholy showing in his expression. “Once again, I must stress how different Decrees are from the cheap parlour tricks that you are used to. Having multiple gods work together to cast one is not just difficult – it’s normally impossible. It takes some pretty special circumstances to even attempt it, and even then, the odds of success are minuscule.”

  “What circumstances are those?”

  “It varies from case to case, and there are barely a handful of instances of collaborative Decrees in the universe to learn from anyway, so it’s not easy to draw any conclusions. A powerful connection between the titans seems to be the key, but even then, it’s only enough to turn the impossible into extremely difficult. I don’t think we’ll see another case like the Moirai sisters anytime soon.”

  “Sisters?”

  Metatron nodded. “Not just sisters, but identical triplets: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. They were born in a clan with an empathic bloodline that allowed their members to share their thoughts and emotions. It wasn’t that powerful originally, but the triplets experienced a far stronger bond with one another than their relatives.”

  Percy frowned. “That doesn’t sound so rare – relatively speaking.”

  Bloodlines like that were quite common, in fact. Hell, even if he ignored his own bond with his familiars, there was also Femel’s family on Remior, among others. Finding triplets with a bloodline like that who all managed to become gods was obviously a tall order, but only from the perspective of a single planet. Things changed if he looked at it from a cosmic perspective.

  On a lesser spring, it would be impossible, of course. A family with the correct bloodline could theoretically produce a group of triplets eventually, but they wouldn’t even stand a chance of becoming gods if they weren’t Green-borns. Given that only one emerged in thousands, the odds of a set of triplets all being born with a Green core was astronomically low.

  However, this wouldn’t be a problem for a faction that was already a greater spring. Producing Yellow-born triplets in the correct clan would still take several attempts, but it was bound to happen somewhere, eventually. All three of them successfully becoming gods – and even titans – was many times harder, but Percy could still see it happening. Especially if all the major players deliberately worked toward that result for countless eons.

  “You’re not wrong, but what if I told you that they all needed to have a specific rare affinity as well? And not even the same one, so it’s impossible for all three to have inherited it from their parents,” Metatron said. “In their case, I believe that only Clotho was born with a life affinity, while the others had originally possessed pure cores. After the Moirai leaders realized the triplets’ potential, they granted mind and soul affinities to Lachesis and Atropos. The gamble clearly paid off big time for them, but good luck to any other world trying to get all the stars to align again.”

  Percy swallowed hard, finally realizing how many coincidences – both small and big – had been involved in the creation of one of his most prized Decrees. The top factions could clearly get their hands on rare affinity-granting treasures every now and then, and pure affinities were also all over the place, but getting triplets that had at least Yellow cores, pure affinities, the correct bloodline, and the talent to become titans all in one go?

  Yeah…

  After this little chat, he was never going to look at his second core the same way.

  “Then what about the Void Hand? Clearly, they got at least somewhat close.”

  “’Somewhat’ does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence,” Metatron said. “They managed to get three regular siblings with a similar bloodline, though their bond was weaker and their affinities not a perfect match to the Moirais’ sisters. If I’m not mistaken, they got only two of the rare affinities right, while the last one had some unrelated composite affinity that probably got in the way more than it helped. They also had dozens of other gods pitching in indirectly, with various bloodlines and other means. The Void Hand still had to go through hundreds of iterations and lots of dead test subjects before coming up with something even remotely viable.”

  Percy’s face twisted into a grimace the more the titan spoke.

  “Then I still don’t get why you would be interested in this weird patchwork of magic. It sounds like a vastly inferior version of the Moirais’ Decree, and it’s not like you can spread it more easily. Wouldn’t it just be me or Kassorith getting it? And we both already have a second core. Unless the Decrees stack…”

  His voice trailed off as a spark of an uncertain emotion lit up in the god’s eyes, fanning the flame of Percy’s suspicions. If he was right about this, then it was no wonder that the titan wanted him to claim the Decree – rather than buying the ticket off him to produce his own champion.

  “Well, what do you think, Percy?” the pentapus asked, his voice tinged with greed. “Are you interested in giving me a bunch of three-cored test subjects?”

  Books 1 & 2 on at no extra cost, grab copies for your shelf, or listen to the audiobooks on .