Program Zero

The desert stretched silent beneath a copper sky. Wind clawed across the dunes, hissing over jagged monoliths. Motorcades crept to a halt, engines ticking as they cooled. Soldiers fanned out with professional unease. Religious leaders lowered parasols and stepped into the heat. Cameras drank everything. They were even coordinates, but found no great monster city; there was nothing but sand and cliffs. Ahead of them in a cloud of sand, Someone was there.

A tall elf and a fine tailored suit. The Systems embroidered on it glimmered faintly. He stood motionless in the sand as if the desert had grown him—silver hair bound into a long braid. He did not shade his eyes. He did not clear his throat. He simply waited, serene, as though he had stood here for centuries, expecting this exact moment.

When the last engine guttered out, he bowed—not to any single sovereign, but to all.

"Leaders of humanity. Children of Heka," his voice carried cleanly, the desert seeming to bear it for him. "I am Eltheris, and I will be your guide today. By order of the Seats, I welcome you to Firmatha Sangaur."

He raised one hand.

The earth trembled.

Two basilisks erupted from the sands. There, black scales reflecting the desert sun, each body was as wide as a ship's hull. Systems were etched all along their scales, dormant sigils flickering to life. They circled and formed an arch, necks lifting, curling inward until their bodies touched at the crown.

Light bled through the seams of their scales. Glyphs rippled—connecting serpent to serpent—until the air inside their living arch began to shimmer. When it tore, it did not rend like cloth; it parted like a pupil widening to let a stranger through.

The passage was open.

Soldiers half-raised weapons and half-lowered them again under the emerald weight of basilisk eyes. The sand itself seemed to hold its breath.

Eltheris lowered his hand. "The way is open. Enter, and the desert shall trouble you no more."

The Tiny Tots stepped first, small silhouettes swallowed by light. The guards of the world's leaders followed. Then came presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, imams, and popes.

The desert fell silent again, as if it were an illusion.

Beyond the veil, the heat died.

They emerged into an obsidian station carved from the cliff-side, veins of Vaylora pulsing faintly along the walls like the heartbeat of some enormous sleeping thing. Four more basilisks stirred from carved alcoves—smaller than the gatekeepers but vast enough to bear scores. Saddles had been placed on their backs.

Eltheris extended both arms. The serpents hissed in answer, Systems along their hides flaring to life.

"Your path through Firmatha is upon these guardians," he said. "They will bear you safely. Through them, you will see the truth of what we are."

The basilisks lowered themselves.

For a heartbeat, nobody moved. Then the Tiny Tots climbed without hesitation, settling into stone cradles that fit them as if always meant to. The image of these young adults mounting living mountains ran along a million screens. Generals swallowed their pride and followed.

With a rumble like continents shifting, the basilisks rose. Sand fell from them in the curtains. They glided forward. Diving into the enormous waterway that ran through the center of Firmatha Sangaur.

"Beneath you," Eltheris called, walking lightly along the spine of the lead serpent, "lies the Valley of Crystals, where leviathans gather to spawn."

At the bottom of the waterway was a crystal floor, and beneath that crystal, countless glowing eggs could be seen. Around them, they were entranced by the way nature and technology seamlessly meld together.

"To the east," Eltheris gestured, "the Gardens of Chorus. The trees there are fluted—when the wind moves, they do not merely rustle. They harmonize. A popular dating spot."

A breeze answered him. Far ridgelines unfurled with a chord that was neither quite music nor quite wind.

"And there—our settlements."

They passed by streets alive with color. Human children chased one another under lanterns that floated like slow jellyfish. Scaled merchants sold bread that steamed lightly. A vampire woman adjusted the shawl on a human toddler and laughed with his mother. A serpentine artisan etched glowing Systems in the air that cooled into signage above a shopfront.

Around a market stall, the first crack formed.

A human merchant slapped his palm on a counter. "You shorted me, Orvash!"

The hulking insectoid—carapace opal-dark, a bloom of arms folded tight—clicked his mandibles in offense. "You weighed with your thumb."

"How would you know, you don't have thumbs!"

"How dare you!?"

"You insulted me first!"

One claw lifted. The human's voice pitched up. Gasps rose from the delegations riding past; cameras leaned in; a senator actually whispered, "Here we go."

A shadow crossed the square. A Veridahn dropped from a rooftop, the tail coat of his uniform blowing in the wind, as wings expanded from his back. He had sharp features, a combination of human and avian. He landed with an annoyed sigh as his wings folded.

"Again, Orvash?" His tone was weary, familiar. "How many times have we talked about your temper?"

The insectoid's mandibles clicked, shameful. The human shifted, eyes dropping. "He tried to—"

"And you tried to insult him into rage," the Veridahn said evenly. "Both of you need to calm down. Trade fair, or walk away."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There was a beat. Then an exhale.

"Fine," the human muttered.

"Fine," Orvash echoed, claws lowering.

They bowed, awkward mirror images, and separated. The Veridahn shook his head with the smallest smile and resumed his patrol, nodding to a baker who handed him a bun before he took off into the skies again.

From the basilisk's back, Eltheris did not break rhythm. "As you see, tempers rise. But peace is more than the absence of anger. It is the strength to restore harmony. This is Firmatha's promise."

Some leaders softened at that. Others kept their jaws clenched. The world saw both and kept its own counsel.

The basilisks slid onward, and the city began to fall away. On the horizon, the tower rose.

It was not architecture; it was an axis—a pillar of black stone latticed in veins of Vaylora, so tall it seemed to spear the atmosphere itself.

"That is where we are summoned?" someone whispered. The whisper did not belong to any one person. The tower drew it out of many.

At the base, another station waited, this one ringed with quiet courtyards and water that fell upward into bowls of light.

"Here the guardians' duty ends," Eltheris said, bowing as the basilisks dove back into the waterway and disappeared. "The ascent is by train. The Covenant Chamber awaits."

Doors parted along the platform without visible hinges. From the shaft inside, trains rose—sleek, silent, hovering on currents of Vaylora like swans riding the wind.

They boarded. The doors slid shut.

They rose through rings of the tower, each a world of its own. One floor, a winter wonderland, the next a tropical jungle. There were schools with open walls where human and nonhuman children wrote in light on the air. Clinics where healers performed complex and dangerous surgeries, with a simple application of a System, laughing with the patient as they worked. Amphitheaters where a dozen tongues told the same story, the listeners crying the same tears for different reasons.

The trains curved around a core of luminous darkness and eased into the highest platform as delicately as a breath. The doors opened into a hall.

The Covenant Chamber had been reborn as a banquet.

Walls of obsidian breathed with Systems. There didn't appear to be a ceiling, as they all could stare out into the vastness of space. The floor mirrored the heavens, black glass veined with light. A single table ran the length of the chamber, cut from stone so dark it swallowed reflections, inlaid with slender rivers of Vaylora that pulsed like veins.

Nine thrones hovered behind the table. At the center sat Lord Cefketa, draped in an ornate robe. His black scales glissing in the starlight. Mythara could still pick up the scent of blood rolling off him..

He rose with arms spread wide.

"Welcome, world leaders," he said, and the room seemed to lean in. "At last, you have arrived at Firmatha Sangaur—the heart of the new world."

Some bowed too deeply, betraying their fear. Some remained painfully straight. The cameras found both, cut them into opposing symbols, and sent them everywhere.

Food came like art. The preparation, smell, and presentation were something none of them were used to, but none could deny the favor..

When the courtesies were done, someone finally built the courage to speak.

"While we appreciate the warm welcome. I'm still curious. Is peace possible, given that we have used Heka to hunt your kind for over a century?" The question was followed by a chuckle from the vampire lord and First Seat of Firmatha Sanguar.

"A century…that's it? Hehehe, Zyvaroth then proceeded.

"Once, the Vampires sought to rise beyond our curse. You see, we cannot naturally gather Vaylora within ourselves. We must drink it— stolen from the living through blood."

His face soured, a mix of disgust and pity.

"Nearly an eon ago, we learned of the Titan Orcs. Of their sacred Pools of Blood—places where the fallen were returned to the living, where a warrior's body is dissolved into the pool and strengthened for those yet to come. It's so potent, so volatile, it becomes one of the most corrosive substances in creation. The young Orcs dive into it as a rite of passage. Those who perished become part of the Pool. Those who endured the bottom and returned are tempered with the pool's Vaylora. This ensures the strongest warriors, and that each generation is more powerful than the last."

It was not poetry, the way he said it. It was an inventory of grief.

"To the Vampires, this.. Blood Pool was a holy grail. We enslaved the Titan Orcs and drank deep from their pools. It was easy because they were too divided as a people. At our height, our empire expanded far beyond the stars."

He let the image hang.

"But the Orcs were not bones. They rose, spurred by the Dragons—the protectors of Creation—who reminded them of what they were meant to be. What followed was a war that lasted several millennia. Rivers of blood across worlds. Trillions upon trillions of deaths. It ended only when Dragons intervened again, and balance was imposed."

He looked down the table and past it—to the cameras, to the unseen billions watching. He then turned his gaze toward the 2nd Seat Vaerros, the Titan Orc Warchief.

"These days, Orcs and vampires not only live but thrive together. If such enemies can be made to live in relative peace, so can you."

Silence took the room by the throat.

A statesman broke it, his voice captured on a stray microphone that had not learned reverence. "They ceased because Dragons forced them," he said. "That is not peace. That is obedience."

The sentence scattered like beads dropped on a stone. Some nodded. Some recoiled, offended by the lack of ceremony. Some smiled like they'd been waiting for someone else to say it first.

Cefketa did not glance at the speaker. He did not need to.

"You speak of obedience as if it were shame.

But I tell you—obedience is the root of every peace you have ever known."

He stepped forward, robes dragging across the floor.

"I lived most of my life as a man. I bled for you, fighting my own kind. I buried my human wife and our unborn child in service of you. Over 2 decades, I've learned what you all already know. Peace is not found in kindness.

Peace is held in chains. " Lord Cefketa turned to face the camera.

"The United Nations has bound your nations in chains so carefully constructed that you call them cooperation. You call it unity. You call it progress. But you know the truth. You have kept your peace because you are bound. And now you fear us—because those chains will no longer be in your hands"

A murmur rippled through the delegations. Some lowered their eyes. Others clenched their jaws. The cameras caught both.

Cefketa spread his hands.

"But chains are not all I offer. If you wish to prove yourselves more than vassals, then rise beyond obedience. You crave a seat at our table? It will not be given. You must earn it. Not with treaties. Not with signatures. In our way. With the Rite of Measure."

The Stars above seemed to brighten, veins of Vaylora in the walls pulsing like an anticipatory heartbeat.

"In the Rite, you will be weighed as we weigh each other. Strength against strength. Spirit against spirit.

If you triumph, you will sit as equals.

If you fail, you will learn that obedience is not shame, but salvation from yourselves."

The phrase hung like a blade. It was no longer a vague promise. It was judgment, naked and plain.

Deals were made with eyes alone. Some heads of state leaned closer to Cefketa. Others angled their bodies toward the Tiny Tots, desperate for reassurance. Faith leaders whispered prayers that now sounded more like wagers.

At the far end of the hall, Mythara stood among the Tots.

He did not speak. He did not move. He lifted his head and looked across the length of black stone and met Cefketa's eyes.

Dragon to dragon.

The world believed it had come to a table of peace. The ones who knew better understood theater when they saw it. The curtain had only just risen. The sound of booming laughter filled everyone's ears as Vaerros stepped forward, his battleaxe the size of an SUV resting on his massive, broad shoulders.

"Come, humans, choose your champion!"