Stepping on familiar rubble, in the very spot Jun found his daughter, he found a new face. Faces made of rubble growled, the screams of scrapping waste facing their mortal enemy.


    When Jun hopped back to Earth to grab some materials, the last thing he expected to find was an angry mob of rubblemen, the wandering menace of the wastelands.


    His last encounter with the supposed rare existences was already a statistical anomaly, few traders ever seeing any for years at a time in small numbers. Why the hell were there so many now?


    The first time he saw these creatures, he hadn’t allowed the largest of their group enough time to fully manifest before blasting them to dust. These were fully formed rubblemen, humanoid monsters easily fifty feet tall, composed of whatever surrounding materials it could attract. He could feel them this time.


    They felt like pain.


    Fists of broken cement and twisted steel the size of runecars came hurtling down with savage intensity.


    Snap*


    Chains of hypercompressed earth, stronger and denser than any man-made steel, burst from a thousand directions and sealed the movements of every rubbleman from head to foot.


    Stepping closer, Jun placed his palm on the trembling surface of restrained violence.


    He flinched, his hand recoiling back in shock. Not an electrical one, but an emotional one like a spike to his feelings. It was so different from anything Jun had ever experienced; it disturbed him.


    With unexplained resolution, he reached out again. Something told him this wasn’t something he could run from.


    Pain.


    Emotional pain so fierce it became physical.


    Hate, fear, resentments and despair. All of it was concentrated and molded into a being that couldn’t escape its own existence. It revolted him.


    This thing shouldn’t exist. It was too pitiful.


    Applying the principles of the Shattering Realm, the chains trembled and their prey returned to dust, as did they, their purpose accomplished.


    Jun frowned.


    He could still feel it. The cores of emotional pollution hadn’t disappeared but were merely diluted back into an atmosphere his instincts was weary of.


    What was this? Had it always been like this?


    Jun stood quietly in the silence he created and closed his eyes. He felt out with newly honed senses.


    And gasped.


    His heart was beating miles a minute, face drained of blood, cold sweat drenching his whole body and slammed with a wave of blurry fatigue.


    He wasn’t ready for that.


    Hand on his pounding chest, Jun took a moment to calm his breath and his vision, trying to make sense of it all.


    After a few minutes, the weary mortal decided to put a giant pin on this for later and get back to what he came for before Ella woke. He had people he could ask questions to now.


    Far beyond the flattened planes was a range of newly risen mountains. According to the Greasy Man’s records, the terraforming beam that shot down from space during the Fall did more than create plains through entire provinces. They also pushed out a new mountain range. He did not know that.


    With speeds no modern land transport could reach, Jun glided across the unnaturally flattened valley with the same ease as taking a stroll. With a combination of earth and wind origin runes, the air simply swam around his figure, his clothes unruffled, as he traveled miles by seconds with unhurried steps, displaying power never before seen in the world.


    After a few minutes and hundreds of miles, he saw it.


    The Jaws of Madness, the notes had called it.


    Madness pushed a button that did terrible things. This was the result.


    For countless miles along the borders of the flattened plains, savage rocky teeth gnawed at the sky, their terrible bite sinking deeper as he approached.


    Jutting into the sky like jagged blades, its sheer, obsidian-black rock face glistened under the Veil, demanding reverence. Razor-thin ridges carve through the clouds, edges so sharp they slice the very wind.


    Another legacy of humanity’s hubris.


    What a sin.


    This was exactly what he was looking for.


    ——


    Everything having taken longer than intended, Jun sighed with relief to find his angel still fast asleep. He wanted to be there when she woke up.


    Activating his personal rune, the sky became a curtain that folded aside a hole in space, from which a massive glistening black stone that looked like a broken fang of a titan gently floated down.


    Breaking off a mountain top was both easier and harder than he thought it would be - nearly having dropped the damn thing more than once - but he managed in the end.


    Moving the colossal piece of rock into position with his intention, Jun moved his cloud platform to face the mirror finish cut, his reflection staring dumbly back at him, holding the tools of his trade.


    He’d waited long enough. It was finally time for him to make something.


    ——


    Mary came in first. Juan was still busy meeting with a few collaborators on his latest project, too creatively invested to cancel, and the kids had another hour before their last class ended.


    Surprisingly, Tiana and Nicole, the two busiest people in their little circle, arrived only a few minutes after her.


    “Whaaaat is that?” Nicole asked as more of a sigh.


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    “A new table, apparently,” Mary answered blandly, totally focused on playing with her napping granddaughter’s hair.


    “Isn’t that… a mountain?” Nicole tried.


    “That’s floating…” Tiana added.


    “Surrounded by cotton candy monsters.”


    “Hey! They’re so cute. Don’t call them monsters.”


    “Oh, two hundred meter tall animals made of clouds aren’t monsters? This is what we’re out of sync on?


    “Cute is cute. If you’re gonna label things as monsters, at least make the proper distinction. We are surrounded by a swarm of cute cotton candy monsters.”


    “….”


    Juan was running late. Again.


    When an interesting project came in that scratched a really good itch, Juan could get a little carried away. A lot.


    But this was a really good project. And he’d missed his job. It felt like it had been an eternity.


    Of fire.


    Suppressing the onset PTSD, Juan took a moment while he was alone in his office to readjust to his new condition.


    The Chaos God’s Copper Body transformed more than his physique. His mind and spirit had also undergone tempering. The scales of suffering he could now endure were not something a normal human could comprehend. It still sucked though.


    “Sophie, is anyone left in the office?”


    “Your secretary left an hour ago and the cleaning crews won’t be through for another 43 minutes.”


    “You’re the best Sophie.”


    “Heehee~ Thank you! Ready to go?”


    “Let’s do it.”


    Mini PA Sophie did a cute, happy hop from her new official nest on the office table and activated the Elder’s Invitation, opening a portal to her master’s home, excitedly hopping through after Juan had stepped through.


    The first thing Juan saw was his children and their new friends gathered around his Mary, who was telling a funny story with an attentive little Ella in her lap, sheltered under a small tree on a grassy hill. It was a beautiful scene.


    With the bright natural sunlight shining down on those animated eyes, he couldn’t help being captivated.


    It took a few steps of thoughtlessly approaching his family, wondering what was so funny, before the rest of his surroundings began to register.


    The grassy hilltop he was walking to was half a grassy platform that seemed to be floating in the air as a single part of a giant floating ring of platforms, each with a different environment, over a white terrain.


    Turning around, he saw a white butterfly fluttering over a hopping white… kangaroo? On a white plain? What was he looking at? Were those very close? Could he pet that?


    That was when he found his son’s figure, hard at work on a new project, to helpfully provide a sense of scale to the titanic manifestations that roamed all around him.


    He wasn’t sure what direction his double take was supposed to go.


    Realizing the small kitten was far in the distance and hundreds of feet wide made his jaw turn right, but seeing his son’s shadow rapidly flashing across the vertical surface of a floating stone tooth made his eyes turn left.


    He strained something in his neck.


    The sounds of laughter finally won his attention. Mary was laughing with her chest as she pointed at him with a shaky finger, while everyone else seemed to have missed it.


    His face went twisted. She was thankful her memory had become so good. That was hilarious, and she was never going to forget it.


    Juan was about to make an incredibly witty comeback that was going to save his dignity and humiliate his opponent when a tremble shook the world and his soul. Turning to the source, they saw Jun had finally stopped moving.


    They couldn’t see what he’d been working on from their angle, but they’d watched for hours as Jun traveled his canvas with a hammer and chisel and a crazed look in his eyes, a continuous stream of broken stone fragments spraying after him. Now, he was floating away on his cloud, his work finished.


    The broken rock moved by its creator’s will to the center of the floating ring, where it completely inverted, peek down, carved side up so that only its surface was seen above the cloud sea.


    The number of shocked faces far exceeded the numbers present.


    Violet hair that flowed like a liquid jewel cradled the shocked expression of a divine beauty, her presence between them sudden but strangely natural.


    Elders in meditation, socializing, or simply loafing around in their Domains all paused in confusion, a few with thoughtful expressions and one old bushy bearded dwarf hopping up and down, stubby fingers pulling bald the beards of other dwarves in excitement.


    When Jun started, he had a simple idea.


    The only way of sharing who they were was to present an honest look at their history. Thankfully, his interests were in line with most kids of their generation and was a master of historical facts.


    For generations of children who’d never seen the sun, felt grass under their toes, or rested under the green shade of a forest, the history of mankind before the Fall were like fairy tales, things they had to use their imaginations to comprehend.


    He started from the center.


    This was the story of the universe through the limited vision of their collective wisdom.


    The Big Bang. The formation of the first stars, the birth of the sun and the collision of two rocks that made the perfect platform for a miracle.


    Jun carved what thousands of years of human intellect understood of the birth of the universe and how humans came to be.


    There was the first protocell and the first multicellular accident, and the first life that stepped foot on land from their primordial cradles.


    There were giants and empires of predators that ruled for millions of years.


    Boom.


    Floods.


    The world anew.


    His hammer guided his chisel, and scene after scene of imagined history wove around from the center at a steady pace.


    There was life who awoke wisdom and ruled the savage lands with rocks and branches.


    They tamed the forests and plains and beasts and conquered the moon.


    They made groups and flourished as distinct and beautiful cultures.


    They made groups and made wars.


    Heroes rose and quelled chaos.


    Villains swayed the foolish and bred more.


    The tapestry of man’s history was not clean, but it was beautiful.


    The collective human spirit had endured plagues, wars, and tyrants and even the literal apocalypse to thrive again, stronger than ever.


    His chisel didn’t hide the horrors of their past, and it didn’t needlessly embellish their achievements. They just told the story as he knew it.


    At the last clean section, having already told all the stories of man, he told his own.


    There was darkness and danger and a mother and child.


    There was sacrifice and bloody retribution.


    There was fleeing and finding a new home.


    There were simple scenes of simpler times and scenes that showed a mortal befriending gods.


    The last scene was of his family, his little Ella prominently held in his arms in the center, her cheeks full and joyful.


    With the last small tap, just to make her smile shine, he was done.


    Stepping back and admiring his latest work, enveloped with feelings of satisfaction, he hummed a little tune as he moved his new meeting table into position.


    There.


    In the center of two rings on a bed of clouds.


    Very cool, very cool.


    “It’s beautiful.”


    “Thank you.” Jun said to the Administrator, trying hard to look like he wasn’t having a heart attack. Where did she come from?


    “Congratulations Elder, you’ve done it again. I knew you were capable, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”


    “Hmm?”


    “Hmm?”


    Seeing the child’s genuine confusion, the Watcher burst into laughter. How many Fruit had fallen since she laughed like this?


    “Take a closer look at your new creation. Do you notice anything?” The violet haired beauty teased.


    Confused, Jun flew up so that he could have a better view of his new relief-made-table. It was really big.


    Looking down at the massive surface, covered in layers of small intricate story telling carvings, Jun wondered what he was looking for.


    It only took a glance.


    Something was different.


    From the center, there was no longer an explosive depiction of the Big Bang and the birth of the universe, but a ripening of a fruit and a familiar magical tree.


    The universe expanded from a singular seed of fate, the rules of reality woven for its birth.


    A planet housing the consciousness of the universe formed at the perfect distance from the perfect star and formed the perfect moon to rapidly form the perfect lifeforms.


    The nonsense about protocells and fish walking on land was all gone.


    In its place were rich tales of magical spirits birthed from the world’s formation, who wove magic with their thoughts and built empires that chased the boarders of the expanding universe.


    Powerful beings ruled the galaxies and maintained order and peace where anyone could travel between the oceans of stars and be fruitful.


    Jun’s eyes were nearly falling out of his dumbfounded face as he looked at a completely unfamiliar history carved up on the table he’d worked so hard on. Who fucked with his shit?


    “Did you really think an asteroid killed the dinosaurs?” The Administrator asked, like he had said, all the lights in the world turned off when he closed his eyes.


    “The spiritual core of the universe won’t get hit by stray rocks or have sudden apocalyptic ice ages.”


    “Fine, but while I process that, why is that on my table?”


    “It’s the reason why I am congratulating you. You’ve created a new Spiritual Treasure. Every powerful being in the Nexus has felt the reverberation of its birth.”


    “Huh.”


    “Yup.”