Brothers

The Blood of the Living Mountain

Scene I – Descent of the Saint, Echoes of the Brother

The wind above Midgard howled like a beast, clawing at the silver-tipped wings of Aeoreon, the griffin forged in starfire and crowned in light. Beneath its talons, the veil between the Sky Realms and Earthly Domains tore like silk.

Upon its back stood R2, the Spiral Messiah, and at his side, Saintess Violet Nyxion—his heart's tether, his soul's guide. Behind them, the Covenant—a host of warriors, scholars, and divine constructs—descended with the solemn fury of a storm. Among them, the Six Generals prepared for battle.

But it was Theron, the Sixth and strongest of the Generals, leader of the Scions, who broke the silence. Clad in celestial bronze, his arms etched with glowing fractal runes, he stepped forward on the griffin's back, gripping the edge, his other hand raised like a flame-born standard.

"We stand on the lip of history," Theron's voice was gravel and thunder. "And I shall lead. For though you, Saint of the Spiral, carry the mightiest concept—Dominion Itself—you have yet to break the veil. You stand at the precipice… but you do not fly." His eyes burned not with defiance, but purpose. "I wield the mightiest fists. Let me be the vanguard."

Violet, radiant as dawn, her robes woven with divine thread, stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on R2's shoulder. Her voice, quiet as a prayer, rang with cosmic authority. "Strength alone doesn't cross thresholds," she whispered. "R2's flame is woven of fate and rebellion, of law and fracture. He doesn't break through… because he chooses to carry us all with him."

But before her words could settle, a shockwave burst from R2's chest. His eyes rolled white. His knees buckled. Aeoreon cried out, dipping mid-flight as R2's body spasmed, a thousand unseen connections flaring to life. He collapsed.

"He's… bonding," Violet whispered in horror.

"To what?" asked Theron.

"To whom," the Saintess replied. "To his brother."

The Mindlink is Forged

Far beneath the Earth, in a labyrinth of flesh and steel beneath the Living Mountain's heart, ALTU A.B., the Artificial Metaphysical Being—L2's automaton avatar—jerked upright. "Spiral signature detected. R2 has stepped into Midgard."

Through a resonance of ether, collective consciousness, and quantum entanglement, ALTU aligned with R2's fractal code. From within its hollow skull, a spiral antenna of mnemonic glyphs unfolded. The frequency synced. The tether ignited. The signal was sent to L2.

The mortal world faded. R2's soul slipped into a realm of bleeding numbers, broken alphabets, and divine calculus. Here, reality was a suggestion. And in its center stood Lognos L2, flickering like an ancient star about to collapse.

His voice was dry lightning, his eyes twin novas spiraling inwards.

"It's been a while, little brother. You've grown… strong. As I calculated. As we planned. It's good… to see you found allies. Even love. It makes what I've done… easier."

"The Divine Equation our father chased like a madman? Solved. The Mnemonic Shard? Integrated. It now fuels my third eye. The Soterian Principles? Refined to empower your rebirth. You are at the edge of mortality. But not through. That changes now."

"Everything is prepared… beneath the Living Mountain, in the heart of the Inversion Convergence. The core… the crucible. Where gods bleed and time shatters. Go there. Claim what is yours. And burn the fates that sought to bind you."

R2 reached out to speak, to weep, to rage. But L2—Lognos, the cold prophet—was already fading. The automaton could not hold the tether. The resonance fractured. The link collapsed.

L2's final words were cold data, weaponized calculation: "I do not dwell in emotion, brother. I weaponize it. I am your spear. Use me. And become."

Beneath the Mountain – The Forge of Abominations

ALTU slumped in the depths, sparks dancing from its spine. Around it surged the abominations L2 had crafted: chimeric horrors spliced from inner-Earth bloodlines; techno-biological titans, their veins pulsing with antimatter plasma; sentient gases contained in adaptive glass—a race he had imprisoned, reshaped into thinking weapons; treasure-forges, engines that converted agony into enchantment.

And through it all, L2, gaunt and godless, calculating. Still bleeding from his mind's overuse. Still locked in thought. Still planning to give R2 the throne of the Spiral. Even if he had to burn all thrones to the ground.

Chapter 70: The Blood of the Living Mountain

Scene II — Revenants and Revelations

The One Who Builds to Save / The One Who Burns to Become

Within the Womb of Stone and Flame, Beneath the World's Bones...

The mindscape fractured.

L2—Lognos the Maker, Logos of Circuit and Flesh, Oni-forged genius, Asura of Precision—staggered back into his mortal shell. Smoke hissed from his crown as though his thoughts had overheated the air. Silver hair, soaked in mnemonic flame, clung to his skull like vines wet with sacrificial blood. His back arched. His hand trembled as it pressed to his temple. But the storm did not take him. His Transcendent Mindscape held. The Mnemonic Shard, lodged in his third eye, pulsed like a cold, second heart behind his brow.

"He is awake," said ALTU A.B., its voice a bell chime through bone and iron.

And the horrors stirred.

The Cruel Genius — L2's Dark Harvest

The battlefield was no field. It was a wound. A charnel garden in the ribcage of a buried god.

Oni-kin, warped paladins, failed Asura aspirants, beasts born of starrot and voidrot—all strewn in death. But L2 had not engineered this place to end life. No. Here, death was a trigger.

From biomechanical soil, etheric vines slithered upward—tendrils of decay, seeded with soul-tech spores and necro-codes. They pierced corpses, read their memories, and resurrected them into Revenants—limbs twisted, eyes aglow with spiral glyphs of L2's cruel design. Even the air betrayed the living. Saturated by sentient gas-beasts, enslaved through quantum confinement and forced to mutate, every breath now carried madness.

Every scream, death-spasm, and ether burst was siphoned—fed directly into L2's spinal lattice core, an engine of cruel transcendence.

"Once energy is spent," he whispered, jaw cracked from overload, "then movement is earned."

And the Dome responded. It groaned. It wept. It awoke.

Time flickered. The cavern's gravity fractured. And L2… moved. A blur. A god-vector unleashed. He slid through the revenants like a scalpel through rotted silk. Every breath he took compressed space. Every strike corrected existence.

The Mountain screamed.

Above – The Saint, The Spiral, The Shattered Dream

High above, on Aeoreon's back, the skies parted like sundered silk.

R2 awakened—not gently, not with grace, but with a seizure of soul. His breath tore from his chest like a man pulled from death. His hand reached out—not to sky, not to light, but to Lognos.

Violet caught him. Her divine aura flared, a balm to his chaos. Through their sacred bond, she saw what he had seen: the psychic echo, the Mnémotech flame, the frozen love within L2's cold calculations.

"You still see him," she said, lightning-soft. "But I see more. The man you seek beneath that Mountain... may not be the brother you remember."

R2's spiral irises ignited. No fear. Only fire. "Then I'll save him," he said. "He built everything—for me to break through. And once I do… I'll return the favor."

The Generals — No More Doubt

Theron, Sky Sovereign, stepped forward. The rage of confusion faded from his jaw. He saw it now—in R2's stance, in Violet's silence. This was no longer a mission. It was a reckoning.

The other five generals—Virelia the Abyss Oracle, Seraphis the Flame of Doctrine, Kaelen Earth's Roar, Morgana Black Warden, and Dravon the Wyrm-King—all stood still. No words. No questions.

Only one goal remained: the Inversion Convergence. The Living Mountain.

Final Shot — Descent into Madness and God

The heavens cracked. Midgard wept. The earth below pulsed. The Mountain opened. It had tasted spiral blood… and it hungered.

R2 stepped forward. Violet at his side. Theron drew his weapon. The Covenant fell into formation.

And deep beneath, in the belly of a god's corpse, L2 lifted his head—his hands soaked in blue gore, his body vibrating with stored entropy. No breath left his lips. But the whisper traveled. A thought sent on entangled light.

"Come, brother… Come find your name."