Despite the day full of loss and knowing full well that he would be helping his friends mourn after this battle, Paul was relieved to be returning home with his own children who had all become so important to him. He was even more pleased that they had all agreed to be by his side during what would literally be a life-changing event for him.

  Before he could get ahead of himself, he had a list of things to do for actually ascending. The first of which was to remove his Wings of Zeal before they burned with him. He also made sure to collect his bundle of acquired Spirit Gems from the magically sealed family vault he had been keeping them in.

  Paul had spent years slowly collecting and curating the ones he would decide upon. They would be the st gems he would ever absorb and alter his soul with since Obsidian wouldn’t require any if he managed to make it that far. It was an important choice, and one he had taken his time with, but now there was no more time to wonder or hesitate. His path was set, his new goals id before him, and he was determined to see them through.

  The kids were already in the rger ritual room when he arrived, subdued and patiently waiting as they leaned or sat against the far wall. The twins seemed the most upset at the moment. Saiya was still crying, obviously mourning the loss of her young friend and the impact it had on everyone else around her.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to grieve with them yet, and he knew there would be a lot more lives to mourn by the end of this war. His main goal was to make sure it wasn’t one of the five children in front of him that would be counted among those lives. The best way he knew to ensure that was to ascend to the Ruby Caste.

  He dismissed his conjured armor, leaving himself in only the silvery Sliksilk Compression Gear that most Adventurers wore. Then he quickly drew out the first diagram with the ritual chalk he always carried in his hip satchel, which was magically held in pce not by a belt but by the enchantments woven upon it.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t take the opportunity to instruct Phoenix on these particur diagrams as they were pressed for time. Plus, he could always show her ter once the fighting was over.

  Once the circle was drawn, he stood in its center and gnced over at the group watching curiously as he warned, “So, I’ve only seen this done once before to a lower Caste person, and it looked… painful. I’m not sure if it’ll affect me the same at Emerald, but I thought I should warn you in case it does.”

  Phoenix looked up from her seated position next to the weeping voxen and asked Dazien, who was leaning against the wall next to her, “Do Emeralds even feel pain? I don’t think I’ve ever heard Paul even give a startled ‘ouch’ before.”

  “Technically, they still should,” Dazien began answering, “At Ruby, I don’t believe so since they ck a nervous system and can basically choose to not feel physical pain.”

  Paul found himself wondering when exactly the kid had managed to become such an automatic source of knowledge for his daughter to turn to but liked seeing them get along so well. Knowing Dazien would be there to help support her as a brother if something were to happen to him was a relief he wouldn’t dare to admit aloud.

  “Does anybody ever choose not to not feel pain?” she asked curiously.

  Paul saw the wicked grin crawl across Dazien’s face, and he interjected, pointing a warning finger at him, “Don’t you dare put ideas like that in her head, kid.”

  His smile widened as he asked too innocently, “What ideas could you possibly be referring to, Lord Padin?”

  Paul gave a huff of annoyance as he simply shook his head, refusing to be baited into the obvious verbal trap, and activated the Separation Ritual to remove his wings.

  The pain was excruciating.

  It felt so much worse than what he had witnessed before. They had removed an extra set of arms from one of the victims he had rescued long ago in what almost felt like another life by now. He knew it wouldn’t look pretty, but he hadn’t expected this level of pain.

  He could feel the wings on his back resist as the magic slowly attempted to detach every tendril of magic acting as nerves and muscles from his very core. It was like bendable needles being drawn out in the most painful way possible along his upper spine. Threads of power being forcibly unwound and pulled in the direction they were assuredly not meant to go. He thought for certain those threads would tangle and leave him a broken mess.

  When the pain finally stopped, he opened his eyes to find his face against the warm stone flooring, the ritual chalk burnt from use and smearing his cheek, and a small silver pin in the shape of a pair of wings on the ground next to him.

  “Next time Waynd decides to do that, This One does not want to be merged,” Orebe said from within his mind, and he could feel her annoyance at him.

  Groaning as he lifted himself up, he gred at the offending wings as he muttered, “I’m not sure that was worth not letting them burn up.”

  “Are you okay?” Phoenix quietly asked him, and he turned to see five slightly horrified faces staring back at him.

  “I’ll be fine,” Paul replied, not quite ready to stand again and opting to sit for a bit.

  “I think I’m going to have nightmares about that,” Rayna muttered and visibly shivered.

  “Definitely nightmare fuel,” Uriel agreed, and Paul noticed then that he hadn’t put his calming earrings back on. Paul wasn’t sure if he felt proud or concerned by that and put it aside for now.

  Paul hoped to have a much calmer talk with him once the battle was done, partially to expin his motivations for adopting Dazien, but also to reassure Uriel that despite his past, Paul would never be the one to shove him out of their lives. He could clearly see what they meant to each other, and he never wanted to come between that.

  He tossed the Augment over to Phoenix, who caught it, as he said, “For when you hit Emerald… if you don’t end up with a power that does it.”

  She looked at him slightly surprised, “Are you sure?”

  Paul gave a half-shrug, “You helped defeat her too in order to even get that in the first pce. If you don’t want to fly, though—”

  “I do!” she interjected happily, causing the others to chuckle.

  “I mean, you practically do already with that cheating gravity ability,” Rayna pointed out from her pce on the other side of Saiya.

  “That’s not really flying,” Phoenix replied with a grin, “More like falling with style.”

  Another round of ughter and Paul finally said, “Well, one ritual down. Time to ascend, and then two more rituals to go.”

  “Two?” Phoenix asked.

  “Yes. Spirit Gems and resummoning Orebe. The current vessel gets burned up in the ascension process, so I’ll have to create a new one by summoning her again. Besides, I want her to be Ruby too,” he said and repositioned himself into a lotus position with his legs crossed and hands resting on his knees. He had made the mistake at his Sapphire Ascension of trying to do a sword dance meditation and was surprised he didn’t end up with a permanent soul scar from his stupidity.

  As he closed his eyes, the room fell silent. He began to feel aware of everything and nothing all at once, slowly directing his focus inward towards his core—the spiritual point that entwined with his physical being yet remained incorporeal. This was the seat of his powers and the source of his magic that truly made up his very being. It currently felt… impatient, and his mouth twitched in a small smirk at the moment of self-reflection.

  Paul focused on pulling the threads of experiences—of memories—that told of his victory over challenges and carefully wound those into his core; feeding it, strengthening it, and condensing it. It couldn’t be forced, and it was harder to do at the peak of a Caste like this, when the power simply wanted to explode outward instead of transforming… but transform, he must.

  The emerald glow he always saw in his mind was the darkest he had ever seen it before, and it felt like just one… more… thread…

  The moment was like a snap of the tightly wound string of power, and he was no longer aware of what was around him as his core seemed to implode upon itself, shrinking to the smallest he’d ever felt. It became engulfed in ruby-colored fmes, and he knew that his body was replicating the effect as it burned off more of his physical form to repce it with refined magic.

  Just like he had been doing with the threads around his core, the magic now took over to do the same to his body; strengthening it, condensing it, and empowering it to an even greater tier of power, resilience, and longevity.

  He grimaced slightly as he felt Orebe disappear from his consciousness, her lower Caste vessel within him burned away by the Fmes of Ascension. He knew it was temporary and that she would be back with him soon, but it was still unsettling.

  Suddenly disconnecting like that triggered painful memories of when the Purifier had ripped away their own presence from within his soul. In the Fallen God’s pce, however, he could now feel the Avenger, and he knew the deity was watching him and smiling.

  Paul carefully focused as the fmes began to die down, simmering into the more compact core he now saw in his mind’s eye, and was a glistening bright red sphere. Of course, there wasn’t an actual sphere inside of him waiting to be plundered. It was simply how his physical mind interpreted the spiritual power within him, coursing through his entire being that had now fully transformed.

  “Well, I guess we know who the favorite child is,” Dazien’s voice rang out with mirth in the space, which felt a bit smaller than it had a second ago. It also took him a moment to realize that Dazien hadn’t shouted the words but whispered them down to Phoenix, who sat beside him while he stood leaning against the far wall.

  As he gnced over at the group, all of them were wildly grinning except for Phoenix who had her hands over her mouth as a blush heated her face and even her ears.

  “What?” was all he could manage to breathe out, and even that felt a bit too loud to him at the moment as he continued blinking at the ground trying to regain his bearings.

  Phoenix conjured a hand mirror and offered it to Dazien. The kid grinned like he just won a lottery as he took the proffered mirror and practically skipped over to Paul, squatting down as though attempting to be eye to eye.

  “You’re very… ruby now,” Dazien teased, lifting the mirror for him to see into.

  He blinked at his reflection and almost couldn’t believe his new eyes as he saw that his once blonde hair was now the same red shade as Phoenix’s curls.

  Not only that, but he looked almost a decade younger now, and he could have likely been mistaken for Phoenix’s older brother rather than her father. That was something he had expected, though.

  The body usually took on a younger appearance as Caste increased and was remade again. Most older Emeralds looked in their mid to te thirties while Ruby Casters would age down again to be in their mid-twenties. This also depended on various other factors, such as personal powers and their species, but was a common enough trend that he had anticipated it.

  The hair changing was not common, however, despite him already having had it happen before. Maybe he was just more prone to express his soul in that way?

  His naturally brown hair had become golden during a time when he was fully dedicated to the Purifier’s cause, and now his dedication had shifted. He might be able to py it off as a reflection of the crimson his cloak had for the Avenger, but he knew deep down that what Dazien had first said was the truth of it.

  Phoenix had given him purpose again. Not just to help her in some sort of obsessive fixation on her quest or being, but to realize that he could find purpose beyond what a god gave him. Beyond what past trauma and wrath had pushed him towards. She had given him the family he had never felt that he could fit in with before.

  She had given him hope again.

  He ran a hand through the ruby locks of hair, noticing just a slight bit of curl to them that definitely hadn’t been there before, and smiled at the reflection as Phoenix muttered, “You really are trying to be my dad.”

  Paul chuckled, “There’s no trying about it anymore,” he replied, carefully taking his time to stand as he adjusted to the new weight and strength he had to bance. Then he added in almost an afterthought, “And you had doubts?”

  There was a small collective intake of breath as he finally turned to look at all of them, and Rayna blurted out, “Holy crap, you got younger!”

  “Daze, please, for the love of every Radiant god, do not call him ‘Daddy,’” Uriel said pointedly at his partner, “I know we don’t usually interfere, but I will not be able to handle that.”

  Dazien chuckled and looked Paul up and down before shaking his head, “Honestly, I don’t think I could handle that.”

  “We still have more rituals to do,” Saiya reminded softly. The tears had finally died down as the happiness of the moment helped wash away the previous sorrow.

  Paul nodded, “You’re right, and we can’t afford to waste more time. This will look a lot like the st Spirit Gem ritual I did for you two, just… more as I do all ten at once,” he expined and pulled out the chalk once more to begin drawing. He grimaced as he snapped the chalk at first, pulled out another, and readjusted his grip to be lighter this time.

  It wasn’t difficult to adjust to everything, per se, it would just take a bit of trial and error for certain things to recalibrate. He tried to hurry, though, as he felt the heavy weight of exhaustion threaten to settle upon him.

  Normally, it took a freshly ascended Ruby Caster about nine days to recover from the drastic change to their soul and physical being. He didn’t have the luxury to allow himself that, however, as far too many lives would be lost from it.

  Paul had heard of some people forcing themselves to push through and postpone the recovery time, so he knew it wasn’t impossible. However, it would hit eventually, one way or another, and often all the harder for being deyed, but that was a price he was willing to pay.

  Just for the sake of heading off the inevitable questions he would get from Phoenix, at the very least, he spoke the names of each gem aloud as he pced them in their spots within the eborate ritual diagram.

  “Avatar, Zeal, Battle, Consecrate, Hunt, Defiance, three Radiant, and Vengeance,” he stated, adding with a pointed look at Phoenix, who had begun to open her mouth to speak, “And no, that st one is not new.”

  Phoenix’s mouth snapped shut, and he shook his head with a smirk as he took his pce in the ritual once more. Just one more after this, and he could return to the war—return with the new position as the Ruby hope for the entire tundra, just as Phoenix had been his ruby-haired hope for a future worth fighting for.