Our numbers shrank while theirs barely changed, yet despite that we still believed we could endure because several Demi-Gods remained among us. As long as they stood, we thought the Prime Territory could still be defended."
"Then Theras came."
I couldn’t stop myself from asking, "He came here personally?"
"He did," Evelyn replied quietly. "You’ve fought Verilux. You’ve crossed paths with Saints powerful enough to make entire regions tremble. Forget all of that. None of it matters when speaking about Theras. He wasn’t fighting a battle that day. He was carrying out an execution."
Her gaze drifted toward the window, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing the city anymore.
"Our strongest Demi-Gods challenged him first because they believed that if they could slow him down, the rest of us might survive.
They died. Entire armies charged afterward hoping numbers might accomplish what strength could not. They disappeared just as quickly.
The battle itself lasted only a few hours, yet there are remarkably few accounts describing what actually happened. That isn’t because people refuse to speak about it. It’s because almost nobody lived long enough to remember."
She closed her eyes briefly before continuing.
"If the Warden hadn’t intervened that day, there wouldn’t have been an Ironhart left alive for you to meet.
None of the Hidas, Haliakas or Silverbanes would have survived either. We still don’t know why the Warden stopped Theras. Perhaps there are rules even someone like him cannot ignore, perhaps there was another reason entirely. Whatever the truth may be, that single intervention prevented the complete extinction of every surviving bloodline from our original universe."
"That day taught us something important. We could no longer win by meeting the Eternals head-on."
"You disappeared," I said.
"We adapted," she corrected with a small chuckle. "Disappearing was merely one part of it."
She leaned back comfortably before continuing.
"The surviving families abandoned their cities and moved beneath the Soul Sea, where we began constructing hidden settlements connected by ancient teleportation formations.
Instead of maintaining armies, we formed small strike teams that could attack, disappear and reappear somewhere else before the Eternals even understood what had happened. What had once been a war transformed into a resistance."
She looked toward the city outside once more.
"While we were rebuilding ourselves in the shadows, the Eternals slowly reshaped the Prime Territory into what you see today.
The single territory was divided into seven regions. Every newly arrived soul was identified, classified and eventually marked, making it harder with every passing generation for new arrivals to ever join the resistance.
Our settlements survived, but barely. Some were discovered and destroyed, others simply disappeared without anyone learning what became of them. Yet enough endured for our history to continue."
"And that, Billion, is where history finally catches up with the present. Everything you’ve experienced since entering the Null Realm is simply another Chapter in the same war that began in our original universe. It has never truly ended. It has merely changed its battlefield."
The history of the Ironharts, the fall of our original universe and the endless wars that had followed were simply too vast to immediately process. I quietly poured myself another cup of tea while Evelyn patiently waited, allowing me the time to gather my thoughts.
Eventually, however, another question surfaced. This one had nothing to do with wars.
I looked at her.
"...How have they been?"
The old woman didn’t need to ask who I meant. A gentle smile appeared on her face almost immediately.
"Your family?"
I nodded.
"My parents... my grandfather... everyone."
"They’ve been well."
A small breath escaped my lips before I even realized I had been holding it.
"I’ve watched them grow for many years now."
Her smile widened.
"Your father inherited his father’s stubbornness, your mother is a gentle soul, and together they somehow managed to create someone even more troublesome than both of them combined."
I couldn’t help smiling.
She laughed softly.
"I’ve lost count of how many complaints Samuel has made about your family. Though reaching this place was never easy."
I frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Evelyn slowly placed the teacup back onto the table.
"You already know that members of the original bloodlines cannot be converted into Phantoms."
I nodded.
"Our souls reject the Eternal Contract."
"Exactly."
She folded her hands together.
"That also means the Eternals cannot simply allow us to enter the Null Realm freely."
I remained silent.
"The moment an Ironhart, a Hida, a Haliaka, a Silverbane or any of the surviving original bloodlines dies, their soul is intercepted almost immediately after entering the Null Realm."
"Sometimes they’re imprisoned. Sometimes they’re tortured for information. And sometimes they’re simply executed the moment their identity is confirmed."
"The Eternals learned a long time ago that they cannot recruit us."
She looked directly at me.
"So now they simply eliminate us."
"But they didn’t know about Vaythos. And that was your family’s greatest fortune."
I waited.
"For countless generations, the Eternals believed every surviving branch of the Ironharts had already been accounted for. They knew where the major settlements had once existed. They knew which bloodlines had survived and which had gone extinct."
She chuckled softly.
"They never imagined that one tiny branch of our family had somehow ended up in a remote little world that almost nobody had ever heard of."
I couldn’t help asking,
"So... who arrived first?"
Her smile softened.
"Your great-great-great-grandmother."
I blinked.
"My what?"
She laughed.
"Yes."
"You’re going to need a while to get used to having such a large family."
I shook my head helplessly.
"What happened to her?"
The smile gradually disappeared.
"She was captured."
The answer came quietly.
"The moment she entered the Null Realm, the Eternals intercepted her exactly as they had done with countless others before."
I frowned.
"So how did she escape?"
"She didn’t."
Evelyn looked toward the window.
"We rescued her. Back then we had already established a fairly extensive resistance network. Hidden scouts constantly observed Eternal facilities while strike teams searched for opportunities to free prisoners whenever possible. One particular raid targeted a transport facility where several newly arrived souls were being held."
She smiled faintly.
"We weren’t looking for your ancestor. We didn’t even know she existed. When the battle ended and the prisoners were freed, one frightened woman kept insisting she was an Ironhart."
"Naturally nobody believed her. I probably wouldn’t have either."
"Neither did Samuel."
She chuckled.
"He actually accused her of making the story up just to receive better treatment. Fortunately she knew enough family traditions to prove who she was."
The smile slowly faded.
"And when we questioned her about where she had come from..."
Evelyn paused for a moment.
"...we discovered something none of us had ever considered."
"There were still unknown Ironhart families."
The words settled quietly between us.
"Remote branches."
She nodded.
"Families living so far away from the old war that history itself had forgotten them."
The old woman smiled.
"It gave us hope."
"What happened after that?"