Book 9. Chapter 34: The Harmonious Tide |
The silence of geosynchronous orbit was absolute, a freezing, airless void hanging high above the equator of The Burning Steps.
What was fun about the trip was that Jake didn’t really need to ride on his woman like some kind of crazy rocket ship fired out of a volcano this time or anything. He used Reverse Summon to arrive in space at Sati’s celestial mirror, the fire moon. Then she helped accelerate him through space, moving tens of thousands of miles per hour, and he arrived at the destination rather quickly and called his wives.
As for the fire elemental, that was easy to take care of back at home. Jake quickly made it a permanent summon and stuffed it into his Monster Menagerie once he had a moment to recover. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the three special elementals yet, but they were slumbering peacefully for now.
Jake got here much faster than he had expected. The Aether-Brass turned out to be far better than he had imagined, allowing him to make effective anchors to link to the elemental up in orbit. Of course, it wasn’t quite enough for what they needed, but he had finished his other tasks as well. The water elemental had also cooperated much better than he had hoped, too. He may actually make some of those parties.
Suspended perfectly equidistant between the planetary orbits of the other elemental moons, Jake floated in the exosphere with Nessa and Sati. Before him hovered the Third Tier Water Elemental. Released from his hearth and in the void of space, the elemental density had expanded into a churning, small-lake-sized sphere of pure, liquid water mana.
Jake had also made it his Permanent Summon. He couldn’t summon it exactly after today, but he did this so that he could come back in case there was an emergency.
Nessa floated near the edge of the churning anomaly, her lake serpent tail safely enveloped in Jake’s projected aura to ward off the cosmic radiation. Her eyes glowed with the deep, abyssal blue of Varuna’s Spark. She was projecting her divine oceanic authority, and together, all three were acting as a living pressure vessel to keep the chaotic water mana from losing its strength from the dangers of space. Not that it fully needed it, at least once the monster got proper reinforcement. A Third Tier being of nearly any kind could, in fact, survive in the void of space quite well, lasting days or weeks at a bare minimum.
[Orbital alignment is locked,] Fhesiah reported through their bond. She was in the Great Well, calculating the connection to the anchors. [You three are perfectly positioned over the deepest oceanic trench, the exact coordinates of the ruined Water Temple. And I am deep in the waters, ready to make updates to the main anchor. I must say, we really did outdo ourselves. The density in this growing lake is fantastic already.]
Jake nodded, his mind already hard at work. He extended his hand, and from his spatial rings, he summoned several anchors made from the Aether-Brass they had frantically looted from the Titan's Astrolabe.
Meanwhile, Jake projected a feeling of confidence and safety over their bond. These anchors were not meant to trap the creature but to help it. It could discard its anchors any time it wanted, as he had designed them to cradle the core and grow along with it. Thankfully, it wouldn’t truly need the anchors forever–by the time the Pelagos finished merging in about six months, their purpose would be complete.
With a flicker of his will, the complex sphere of golden runes activated. This was the umbilical cord, albeit a weak one. This internal skeleton acted as a colossal arcane antenna, connecting the celestial keystone array within the water elemental directly to the deep-sea anchors he had previously drilled into the abyssal trench known as the Deep Well.
Instantly, a massive tether of magical gravity established itself, anchoring the raw elemental storm to the physical planet below.
“Opening the floodgates,” Jake announced. He activated the planetary array. No doubt, this allowed the elemental to feel the Deep Well in more ways than one.
The invisible tether flared to life. Almost immediately, the natural capillary action of the world asserted itself. An updraft of ambient faith, leyline runoff, and the chaotic, transformed water mana from the Fire, Earth, and Wind temples below began rushing up through the Deep Well.
It wasn’t really as fast as the speed of light, but it was much faster than a rocket ship. Because the energy didn’t just ride on the physical plane–but on the astral and spiritual planes as well, the distance was conceptually shorter.
The sphere of water mana drank it in greedily, like a rain that shot up from the planet into outer space. The arrays Fhesiah concocted converged the mana and condensed it. The world wasn’t anywhere near Tier 3, but the unique mixture containing faith energy, combined with the decent quality enhancement and planetary-scale quantities, made it a pretty great meal for a water elemental.
They didn’t have to wait for too long. It was a creature of nature and water, and it inherently understood the water cycle. That to complete its respiration, it needed to cycle that energy back. The anchor it could feel a connection to felt like a logical choice.
The ancient will of the water elemental then ‘exhaled.’ It pushed a massive wave of refined, cosmic water mana out of its form, trying to rain it back down the tether to nurture its anchors.
But the return flow failed, dispersing under the chaotic spatial energies. The water elemental tried again and again, and in truth, Jake was quite amazed at its ability to send rolling waves, condensed raindrops, blades of water, and more through space toward the world below. Nessa was paying attention–there was a lot to learn from this being about manipulating water, whether talking about Qi or Mana.
Despite its incredible capability and intense spiritual strength, it didn’t matter. It still failed, the distance far too great.
Jake’s planetary anchors in the Deep Well were entirely artificial; they lacked the immense conceptual gravity or spirituality of a true world core–Jake absolutely did not have the means to create a spirit of his own, let alone link it directly to the core with some kind of drill to the center of the world. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have needed this water core in the first place.
Until the Pelagos integration actually happened as guided by the Framework, the tether he made was almost like a vague dirt path, with the elemental core sitting at the bottom of a crater in comparison to the anchor. The path was strong or smooth enough to let energy roll down the hill to the heavy elemental’s spirit, thanks to its gravity. But the anchor didn't have the spiritual or gravitational pull to guide the energy back up the crater through the hostile void.
The moment the water mana left the protective aura of the elemental and Jake and his wives, it hit cold, unprotected space. Without a strong tether to guide it, the ‘rain’ froze into useless, mundane ice crystals and drifted away into the void, completely severed from the planet. Or, even if it used dense water mana that survived much longer, it was bombarded with cosmic energies until it broke apart.
The massive sphere shuddered violently, waves of water rippling all along its surface in anger. It had just wasted a massive breath.
It drank more energy from the updraft, but it refused to exhale again, realizing the path was broken. The elemental was gorging itself, bloating with unspent external mana, the sphere around it growing. For a being composed entirely of water, stagnation was a death sentence. It felt caged, frustrated by its total inability to reach the world it was connected to. It needed a pump–a conceptual engine to forcefully drive the downdraft and upgrade the dirt path into a superhighway or to dig a tunnel, which may be a better comparison.
Through his Summoner’s bond, Jake tried to explain the logistical bottleneck. The ancient will just churned with mounting, claustrophobic panic, ignoring Jake’s attempts.
That was when Ira slipped through the bond. The emotional void entity didn't use words or complex logic. Instead, Ira sent the elemental an experiential image: the distinct, bloated memory of Jake overeating at a Hearthtribe feast, coupled with the frustrating sensation of trying to drink from a waterskin that had a knot in the neck.
The massive sphere of water paused. Then, surprisingly, it responded in kind. It sent back a raw, conceptual image of a crushing, stagnant tidal pool cut off from the ocean.
Ira pulsed with excitement. It fired back the sensation of a dam breaking. The elemental countered with the feeling of a violent undertow.
Jake blinked. He had intended to negotiate, but Ira and the elemental had suddenly realized they spoke the exact same language of raw, abstracted vibes. The two of them went off on a rapid-fire, conceptual tangent, exchanging bizarre bursts of emotional imagery that Jake couldn't even begin to translate or keep up with. It was like watching two twins invent a secret language in real-time.
Feeling entirely left out of the conversation, Jake simply reached into his spatial inventory and presented the three spiritual engines he had prepared. Each one could act like a proxy bond, like he had done in his lab, linked to a similar anchor set below, shortening and strengthening the conceptual path to the planetary array drastically.
First, he pulled out a massive, iridescent spatial nautilus shell he had looted from the Nameless Monk's sack. Because it was a natural spatial anomaly, its aura was incredibly potent and smelled like the biggest meal on the table. If it were bound with it, it would likely create a spatial whirlpool that would grow along with the elemental.
Endless hunger. Jake projected, hoping Ira was actually translating his warnings about its unpredictability to the distracted beast. This item was worrisome for more than one reason. The first reason was because it felt unpredictable. He hoped it would become a sort of endless melting pot because so many different faiths were being channeled toward the being. But it was questionable what would happen, specifically.
The second option was a pale, deep-blue flame that ignited as it floated in front of him. It was a pure Yin-water flame engineered in the lab from an artifact found in the Mystic Expanse. Cold refinement. Solitary stillness. The item would help attune the water elemental to the cold void and draw in energies from it. It would still be an ocean and deep well, but the hearth would draw in an ancient cold that helped refine itself in addition to that.
Finally, a different flame bloomed. It was the Harmonious Tide–a perfect, unbroken unity of Sati's compassion and love, stripped entirely of her romantic devotion and infused into a hearth Jake created from rare, refined, peak Tier 2 items. Understanding. Unity. Returning mercy to the world.
Jake held the three distinct paths out to the thrashing, bloated anomaly.
Immediately, a thick tendril of water surged toward the nautilus shell. This was the second reason Jake was worried about the shell. Just as he had feared, the raw, overpowering aura of the spatial artifact was incredibly tempting. The beast was going for the biggest, most dangerous meal on the table.
Jake's stomach dropped in dismay. One might wonder why he bothered offering a choice to the creature at all. Was Jake truly prioritizing an almost mindless elemental core’s consent over the fate of an entire world and its people?
Not really. He cared, but not that much. There were strictly practical factors at play. First, forcing the elemental to bond with a spiritual anchor against its will would damage its spirit. It had to want the connection for Jake to seamlessly integrate it into the planetary array.
Second, as Sati and Fhesiah were both suspiciously intimate with elementals, they would naturally take up different concepts to form and weave the core of their evolving spirits. It was a matter of resonance. Forcing a completely incompatible item upon it could permanently cripple the creature and, thus, cripple the core. By letting the elemental choose its own ‘meal,’ it would naturally gravitate toward the concept that resonated best with its innate nature.
However, the water elemental was still a bloated, frustrated beast of will. Jake’s true fear was that it would ignore resonance entirely and simply lunge for the nautilus shell just because it possessed the strongest, most overpowering aura, and that felt just like what was happening. It was a starving animal picking the largest slab of meat, regardless of the spiritual indigestion that could follow.
But right before the water touched the shell, Ira cut through the bond with a rapid, rippling sequence of conceptual imagery.
Thankfully, Ira didn't manipulate the elemental or trick it with false flavors. Instead, Ira simply translated the future of those choices, speaking directly to the creature's fundamental instinct: the water cycle.
Ira equated choosing the biggest treasure–in this case the massive nautilus shell–to a violent flash flood. It was an immediate, gluttonous deluge that would quickly fill a deep canyon, only to eventually settle into a stagnant, unmoving lake with nowhere else to go.
Then, Ira shifted the focus to selecting based on flavor rather than size. Whether it was the translucent spark of Sati's compassion or the Yin flame of still waters, or even a smaller nautilus shell that tasted right, Ira presented them as a seed of condensation. The void entity projected the sensation of a single, pure drop of water that would evaporate, gather, and ‘ripen’ over time like a swelling storm cloud. It was a smaller bite now, but if it tasted right, it promised an endless, breathing cycle of rain and rising vapor that would never stop flowing.
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It was a choice between immediate, stagnant gluttony and eternal respiration.
The water tendril hesitated, hovering over the shell as the conceptual weight of Ira's translation rippled through its massive form. To a creature of water, stagnation was a dire, instinctual threat, while a perpetual, growing storm was the ultimate ideal. It paused and questioned the distinct ‘tastes’ of the objects, searching for the meal that resonated best instead of the one that was simply the largest.
Slowly, the massive currents shifted away from the shell and toward Jake's hands. Tasting both, it bypassed the cold Yin flame entirely and eagerly snatched the spark of Sati's mercy and unity, drawing it deep into its center and slotting it perfectly into the Aether-Brass scaffolding.
Using Jake’s Summoner’s Bond and Sati’s true flames of Unity, he helped the creature bond with the item and immediately got to enchanting the new hearth. Jake didn’t really want to inscribe a personality or virtues or anything like that, only the unity portion of things and enhancing its connection to water, as well as writing the Harmonious Tide in Demonic Runes.
But most importantly, he connected it to their anchors in the Deep Well, as he used Fhesiah as a proxy to write on the other end. His hearth flames reached out inside the Deep Well like a magical finger and inscribed the final runes to link them together.
The reaction was almost instantaneous. The spiritual dirt path violently upgraded into a flawless, high-speed magical superhighway or tunnel, a connection as close to the spirit as Jake could achieve with the items he had available. The chaotic, bloated tides of the elemental smoothed out, transforming into a harmonious sway of water that flowed around the outsides of the sphere, bumping into each other and splashing more naturally.
Waters rained down the new spiritual path, creating a siphon from the shift in spiritual pressure. The hearth drew in energy from the cosmos, burning much of it away. Then, it transformed what was left into a watery flame of unity, a magical anomaly that fed and empowered the elemental’s spiritual aspect of its core.
The cycle perfected itself. The updraft of disparate prayers was effortlessly accepted, blended into a single reservoir, and then forcefully pumped by the Harmonious Tide. A gentle, invisible downdraft of pure, refined cosmic water mana shot straight down the thickened and more direct spiritual tether, bypassing the freezing void to rain upon the leylines of The Burning Steps.
And the core grew visibly to the naked eye. It had a long way to grow to become miles deep and wide, but they had time.
“It’s stable,” Nessa breathed, her tense shoulders finally dropping. Now that it had a mana source and a means to deal with the chaotic cocktail of void energy, it no longer required protection.
Jake pulled up his Framework Menu. The integration toll on the Ledger was reduced by nearly half already by having a viable moon core in place, and as the elemental core grew, this number would only improve. They still had a few weeks before they had to choose how The Burning Step’s Raid earnings had to be spent, but Jake allowed himself to feel relieved as well.
“The foundation is set,” Jake said, a deep sense of accomplishment washing over him. He stored the rejected shell and tucked the Yin flame away into a specialized container before placing it back into his Storage Ring. A spark of pure, cold stillness could be an incredible catalyst for Jasmina or some other entity someday.
He turned to his wives. “Let's go home. We’ll go enjoy what’s left of the party, and then we have a hearthforging to complete.”
***
The victory feasts in the capital cities of The Burning Steps were deafening, a world-spanning explosion of relief and joy. Clan Hart enjoyed the revelry, walking among the people they had saved.
Their sons and daughters joined the parties and revelry, but they had been somewhat partied out. Sadly, it was like the first party was by far their favorite. The people of Serthune interested all of them more.
They felt that the deathly humans of Morvalis were boring and slow. The Norse and tribal people, even the teens of Bramvalen, were only interested in fighting and drinking…and a third thing inappropriate for children that Jake wanted to keep them well away from for now. They might be more mature than most teens on Earth already, and he may be biased in that, but five years old was still too early for at least two of those things no matter how he sliced it.
The Burning Steps party was not too bad, but a little stuffy. There were lots of temple people focused on their prayer of the moons and zealous gratitude, which was actually a bit awkward to Jake. Thankfully, the trolls and goblins did seem to know how to party, but as the night deepened, Jake and his wives quietly slipped away and tucked in their children for bed.
In the Refuge, after finalizing the preparations, the family joined Sati in her personal cultivation chamber. The physical setup was massive. Sati sat in the dead center of the chamber, hovering a few inches off the floor. Her eyes were closed, her dozen ethereal arms resting in various mudras.
Jake stood opposite Sati, his wives taking up their anchor positions along the outer rings of the golden formations. Fhesiah had prepared the room with the usual arrays. This time, she went with the heaven and earth array, the same that had drained the two horrible spirits and infused Sati with special flames and raised her spirit up.
Tanda suddenly spoke up, her tail wagging slightly. “So, like, are we just not going to talk about this? Pretend it’s not there?”
Sati tilted her head. “Like what is not there?”
Ophelia chuckled and gestured to the statue. It was truly massive, much larger than Jake had expected it would be. It was a statue of Jake, wearing simple robes and sitting in a lotus pose. “The giant statue of Jake sitting here, like a giant… Buddha, I guess. Something…is off about it, too.”
Sati blushed at that, her cheeks igniting with heat. She started looking at it a little worriedly. “What…what is wrong with it?”
Avalara’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Yeah, something is wrong about that smile! It looks a little… well…”
“Smug,” Blood supplied helpfully. “And distinctly lecherous. I dare say I have not seen such a combination on Lord Husband’s visage. In fact…”
Tanda asked, “How could you not notice, Sati? Isn’t this your special place?”
Sati pouted, her ethereal arms crossing defensively. “I… didn’t notice until you pointed it out! I don’t spend all that much time in here, in truth… it was a mere placeholder to focus my Bhakti Yoga, on the rare occasion that I would do it here alone–I normally practice anywhere there is a Hearth in our home, or with my Ishvara. The one in my spiritual temple is much more normal.”
Nessa asked, “You didn’t make this then, right? It’s gold. Where did you get it?”
Sati turned toward the culprit, and across the room, the kitsune simply buffed her nails against her robes, a devastatingly proud, unrepentant smirk on her lips that perfectly matched the giant statue’s expression.
Ophelia groaned. “I should have known. Faye had been suspiciously quiet for once.”
Fhesiah let out a melodic, chiming laugh, dropping the smirk as she casually waved her hand. With a flicker of kitsune flames, the smug, lecherous golden statue instantly melted and reformed into a perfectly respectful, serene depiction of their husband.
“My apologies, our Lovely Flame,” Fhesiah said, her tone softening into genuine, sisterly affection. “I swapped it out weeks ago to see how long it would take you to notice. If you had actually relied on this room for your deep meditations or cared about the statue’s looks, you would have fixed it immediately. It just proves your true devotion is to the man himself and our Hearth, not a piece of stone.”
Sati's pout melted into a small, forgiving smile, and she nodded. Fhesiah's pranks could be entirely shameless, but the kitsune always knew exactly where the line was, especially regarding the sanctity of their shared family.
Jake cleared his throat loudly, though he couldn't hide his own amused smile. “Alright, focus up, ladies. We do have a hearth to forge.”
Jake sat opposite Sati, his wives taking up their anchor positions along the outer rings of the golden formations. Once again, Fhesiah had gone all out here. There were fiery Yin and Yang peak Tier 2 treasures feeding into the arrays, ready to filter, alter, and transform the many wives’ energies and feed them into compatible, upgraded, and denser ones for Sati to help fuel her ascension.
Rather than a sealing formation, it was a formation of growth, meant to compress and compound energy into something more. The Yin nurtured the Yang as the energy was transformed into something more pure, and then arrived at Sati and Jake. As Jake was in Sati’s new Resonant State, he thought it would be possible for him to use her flames of Unity and truly make something uniform.
Jake was starting to understand the formations far more, the Demonic Rune’s nuances, so that he could actually identify many of them. His work to create spells for his wives, as well as trying to understand their paths on a deeper level, had definitely started to compound here.
As he prepared to ignite his Void-Divine Hearth, Jake thought back to his recent communication with Hestia. He hadn't asked her what catalyst he needed to hunt down; he knew the Ledger's strict monitoring algorithms would immediately flag and censor any direct, unearned magical guidance from a patron deity, and she would be unable to answer him without paying some kind of price.
Instead, months ago and after the first two raids were completed, after Jake told Hestia he was planning to proceed with it, she had cleverly navigated the restriction by turning it into a progress report. She had asked him to explain exactly how he planned to perform the Hearthforging, testing his understanding.
Jake had detailed his entire process: how he would use meandering fractal patterns to weave the array and improve their bonds, especially during their essence crystallization–their dual cultivation. How he would empower their spiritual connection to the absolute brink, just as he had done with Nessa. And finally, how he would infuse the essence extracted from various treasures with Fhesiah’s formations to help fuel their actual forging in their special room, to help supplement the spark.
Hestia had given him a characteristically warm, proud smile. “Perfect. Your understanding and your tremendous efforts are remarkable considering the information available to you, Champion. But whatever actions you plan to perform, skip hunting down a special catalyst this time.”
She had leaned in, her eyes glinting with the smug satisfaction of a divine accountant who had just found a massive tax loophole. “I will take the liberty of squirreling away a massive chunk of your Raid Points from the campaign. Since you saved their descendants and have righted so many wrongs, the Hindu pantheon was offering a heavy discount. I will buy the primary catalyst for you. Consider the delivery handled.”
She hadn't broken the rules; she had just confirmed his homework and used his own currency to facilitate a legal transaction.
Jake channeled his Void Furnace, pushing his heavy, transformed Qi into the outer rim of the arrays. The golden fractal patterns flared to life on the floor, and Clan Hart immediately synchronized their mana, creating a pressurized funnel of family resonance.
With the containment field completely secure, Jake opened his Champion interface.
Normally, when he received an item, it sat neatly in his spatial storage or inventory Menu as a discrete, inspectable icon. But this time, there was no item.
Jake hadn't inspected the prompt closely over the last few days. To his pragmatic, enchanter's mind, a Divine Spark was essentially a volatile, metaphysical hazardous material. Pulling an ephemeral piece of a god's soul out of the Framework's secure holding just to gawk at it before the array was built was a terrible idea. He had left it safely in the ‘box’ until this exact moment.
Nevertheless, he knew when he triggered the claim, the spark might shoot out like it did last time. He made the final preparations to forge their bond to the next level. He found resonance with Sati, attempting to enter the State of the Compassionate Mirror.
Sati’s compassion was all-encompassing. Each of his wives was an empathic being, like most women, but they were far more selective than she was. Her compassion and mercy reached to the center of her very being since the beginning of her journey as a sapient cultivator. She had a deep love for all things and an intense desire to reduce the suffering of all.
Sati was the Divine Mirror, and Jake was the empty vessel.
It was a fun State that Jake enjoyed, where Sati’s spiritual, flaming appendages came out of Jake’s back, and Jake had spiritual appendages of flames come out of Sati’s back. It was the only State Jake had made in which a wife could transmit their flames through Jake’s bond and out of his body. His wives could usually send energy alone to arrive in the Nexus, or their Auras would cover him, but it wasn’t like they could heal him infinitely remotely. Only he could do the reverse.
But with this, Sati could reach right through his bond and use her arms, even if Jake was across the continent. It was fun because it was like they were both in two places at once. However, it sort of lacked a purpose, especially with how Jake had made Sanctum and used it frequently now. Her hands couldn’t really…do anything from inside it, unless something had breached it.
And that had not even come close to happening yet. In all their testing and usage farming across worlds and Dungeon Raids, monsters couldn’t breach it, and of course, Jake didn’t allow Sanctum to just tank large attacks–he would move the Sanctum if it came down to it. He was looking to rework Sati’s State already. As it was now, it was incredibly situational.
He reached out mentally to select the prompt.
A sudden, resonant chime echoed–not in the physical room, but directly across Jake’s mind, through his Menu, he supposed.
Then came the voices.
It was like a raw audio file resonated through the chamber, carrying the distinct, overlapping cadences of a man and a woman speaking in perfect, harmonious tandem.
“To the Champion of the Hearth, and to the Unbroken Flame,” the voice of Agni rumbled with the deep, crackling weight of a cosmic bonfire, perfectly intertwined with Svaha’s bright, melodic resonance. “We offer our gratitude. For restoring dharma. For bringing justice to the betrayers, for shielding the descendants of our world, and finally, for reducing the suffering of so many. Few have achieved so much.”
Jake’s eyes widened slightly. For gods to transmit audio directly to a Frontier Sector, they either had to pay an astronomical price or Hestia had managed to exploit a massive, highly specific gopher loophole.
“We walked the path of the cosmic fire and the devoted offering,” Svaha’s voice continued, a wistful, motherly warmth bleeding through the audio. “But your Hearth blazes with a new unity. We pass this mantle to you. May your flames never break, and your hunger be sated.”
The audio faded into a lingering, resonant hum.
Beneath the fading voices, a small text note from Hestia finally appended itself to the bottom of the reward prompt.
Even by this method, I am limited in what I can say to you and what I can truthfully defend. So I will not give you a method, Jake. I will only remind you of what you already told me and what you have already proven.
I listened when you described how you meant to prepare for this moment. I believed in you then, and I believe in the foundation you have built now.
The gift is heavier than the offering you expected, but do not let its immensity draw your eyes from the center. A Hearth is not made sacred by the height of its flame but by the lives gathered around it.
Meet this as you have met every true trial since the beginning: with the Hearth and family you made together. Let what you have built decide what you become, and forge yourself anew.
Before he could chase the warning any further, the air grew heavy. Far heavier than when he had forged Nessa’s Hearthian Core.
As before, the delivery was instantaneous.
A streak of blinding divine light ripped into the physical realm from the Hearth of the Refuge, plunging directly into Jake’s chest and striking his central Hearthian Nexus.
Then came the second.
Larger. Denser. Vast enough that his soul recognized the danger before his mind could fully grasp it.
Jake wasn’t sure any amount of planning could have prepared him for that difference. If he had sensed it correctly, Svaha’s Spark was Tier 2, and Agni’s was Tier 3.