It was late, well past the hour of midnight, and yet I couldn’t make myself leave the bridge. That column of red light, unlike the Guardian's, slowly dissipated as the days passed by, lasting only a week instead of months, which was... good. Probably. Or maybe it was Ignis's doing... It wasn't gone yet, but it was dimming and thinning out, showing signs of disappearing soon enough.

“Kustov, status?” I asked, for the hundredth time, I think, slowly blinking my eyes, expecting it to be gone between two blinks, but I wasn't that lucky.

“No movement on any perimeter that we are monitoring. The tuned, long-range pings show no energy signature changes besides what we measured. If the Prime Minister's calculations hold up, the whole thing should be gone by early morning."

“Nothing else?” I asked.

"No..." He hesitated, rechecking everything, “Only the wind.”

"Maybe it killed itself," I muttered, chuckling, making the night crew smile to themselves.

"Now that you said it, it won't come true," Merlin spoke up, following it with a shrug and a yawn, sitting at the tactical station, his hair a complete mess, a mug of coffee in his hand. “I know I said that it would be gone by morning, but... The residual mana-waves coming from there are still high,” he murmured without looking up. “The issue is, these are a type of wave I haven't seen before.”

“What do you mean?” I perked up, walking over to him to take a look at the readings, "Magic waves are magic waves. What do you mean they are different?"

“I don't get it either,” He rubbed his temple. “But something is off, and this is different from what our spells produce. Or what the monsters produce. I don't know if this is Ignis's speciality or what that thing did has this effect... but something is off. Or was off... But I have the data that something foreign interfered with it for a brief moment. And if that is true and the waves are off the normal course, my calculations could also be wrong! If we went out there, maybe I could learn more about what the hell happened... But you’d be flying straight into the unknown and towards a possibly alien spell, and I’d rather not test what unfamiliar magic does to the Camelot. Or us. Or me.”

"Finally," I smiled faintly. “You do think like a father should...”

“I did grow up a few years ago,” Merlin said flatly, emptying his mug, smacking his lips, "Apparently."

Fair.... I was about to answer him when static hissed through the intercom, and the line popped twice before a voice came through, sounding surprisingly hurried, which meant Seltana found something that we missed. Or we just got bad news... Or both? Please, don't be both.

“Sovereign, this is Seltana. You’ll want to see this! Something’s happening in the Pass, right behind us!”

"What?" Kustov asked immediately, “What kind of something?”

“We received the news from the observation posts inside the Pass. The Gods’ Formation is active again, My Sovereign. The outer rings are lighting up... Wait! Hold on, they are sending news right now... It’s… It’s rotating again! We are still in the winter, it should remain still, but it began to move!”

"That... does not sound good..." I gulped, looking at Merlin, his unknown magic readings, and now a development I wish I hadn't heard... FUCK. What's next? Will lightning come down and strike me dead?

"No," Merlin’s chair screeched as he stood up, looking at me just as dumbfounded, “That’s impossible. The Formation only moves after winter is over. It’s a seasonal control mechanism, not a—”

“Not exactly,” I said after lowering my head, expecting a lightning bolt that did not come, beginning walking toward my chair, giving a hand signal, and Kustov started turning the Camelot around at once, "It is a barrier that regulates magic and keeps beasts out. I think... Whatever Ignis did made it react. Let's go, we should check it out."

The moment we arrived, I could already see the changes: the way it rotated, its multiple rings turning as usual, and the still headache-inducing runes within it changing. Although... not all of them were moving yet. Weird... But yes, usually it should be dormant through winter, as we observed, which is one of the reasons certain monsters could come through while also releasing this coldness into the air, giving us these... winters. And if Zah'Ratil was right, this whole thing was refining magic, being the source of it in this world.

Wait? Will all magic be gone if it's done rotating? Is this some kind of final solution? Because then it may kill the monsters, too... But all my inventions will go down the drain, too. Ugh.

Well, whatever it was, it was already active, turning, albeit much more slowly than it does in the summer. Each circular band in it moved independently, intersecting lines sliding over one another, honestly, in an impossible geometry that made it hard to look at it for a long time. It was both 2D and 3D at once, probably even 4D, but I can't see multiple dimensions, I'm not that good... But... even then, my eyes and my brain, cross-referencing it, pointed something out after staring at it for just a few minutes. The rotation wasn’t random...

“Merlin,” I said as he began furrowing his brows, “Tell me that’s a trick of the light.”

“No trick,” he said grimly, glancing at me, “If you caught the same thing I did... then no. It is not."

"Caught what?" Sasha asked, arriving on the bridge, pulling her coat closer around her, her eyes still trying their best to blink away the tiredness.

"The innermost ring is accelerating,” I said, nodding at her, trying to smile, but I just couldn't.

"It is not only about it accelerating." Merlin bit his lower lip, summoning his Godly Artifact, trying to find an answer or some resonance through it. "It's... synchronizing."

"Yeah." I nodded, watching it, squinting, feeling my head hurt as if a dozen or so needles were being stabbed into the back of my head, where my optic nerves connected to the back of my brain... But... I kept watching because I was seeing the pattern... the alignment of runes, the intervals of their shifts. It took a few minutes for the entire design to emerge before my mind's eye, but it was there.

Every minute, the outermost ring sent a rune down to the second ring... then, another minute passed, and that rune slid down to the third, fourth... and did it until it reached the innermost ring, causing its rotation speed to increase by a fixed, tiny amount. It was as if... someone or something was dialing or entering a password, letting the proper puzzle pieces fall into place.

"Ouch..." I grabbed my head, unable to look at it longer, feeling my eyes sting and water up.

"Leon!" Sasha was already next to me, holding and rubbing my back, watching me blink away the pain and look like I was bawling my eyes out.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I muttered, grimacing, “It’s not only reacting,” I grunted, no longer looking at it, “Something has been activated and this thing has begun counting down.”

"Counting... down?" Merlin leaned over, frowning, looking back and forth between the formation's different layers and towards his book, “To what?”

“The end of the world?” I asked, noticing that my dark joke missed its mark because nobody was smiling, "I don't know. I'm not a God to tell what they implemented into their toys." With a moan, I looked up again, tracing the circular, changing divine sigils, seeing another one slot down through the rings, straight into the core of it all. “The intervals are consistent. The innermost ring accelerates exactly every ten minutes, while the outermost glyphs change sequentially, counting through their cycles before resetting, sending down one rune that can fit into... whatever spell this thing is preparing. If you check the 'space' in the inner ring... the runes arriving there are perfectly spaced out... Right until that thing fills up.”

"And then it activates..." Sasha’s face went pale.

“Exactly.” I moaned, my eyes already bloodshot, close to causing me to cry them all out.

"Yes... You are right..." Merlin muttered, his eyes moving rapidly, also shedding tears by now, but he pushed through it, “Acceleration constant... If we project the curve forward...”

“How long?” I asked, rubbing the back of my head, the pain slowly disappearing after I stopped watching or thinking about it.

"A moment... I need to recheck, and it may not be entirely correct. I don't have your perfect memory to do quick cross-references," He hesitated, “But...” he fell silent as he calculated, "I think we have a year. Or... until next winter."

“More than I expected...” I muttered, glancing back at it, but only for a moment because when I did, it was like my eyes were being stabbed by needles. "Send people out to notify every leader, but..." I looked at Merlin, "Not the public. I don't need panic... Just make sure everyone at the top knows that whatever is happening, their Gods have left behind a surprise. Sadly, we can't tell if it's something good or bad, but it has been activated."

...

....

......

"Mhmh... Interesting." A curious, female voice said, floating out in the Cosmos, in the same, star-filled place that Leon's soul, all those decades ago, experienced, even if just for a moment.

"Should we unseal them?" A second, another female voice asked, "Their Realm has mostly fixed itself by now; Wayland's spell helped mend the crack it had... And I can sense that they are fairly stable."

"Mostly and fairly is not enough, Ariana. This is not like when I tore open the veil around ours... That was concealing us; theirs was wrecked. Rushing things is never good."

"Mhm... I understand."

"But," The first voice chuckled, "I am curious how they are doing... So I want to take a look."

With that, a small, fair, white hand appeared, right above the realm, summoning a formation that began rotating, precisely in the same but mirrored sequence as the Gods' Formation.

...

....

......

The reports had come in just a day after we discovered the Gods' Formation acting up. The same thing was happening in the other two Passes. Although I couldn't really ask them to describe it or send over images, as it wasn't something our Imaginary could capture, I was fairly confident they were acting the same way. Still, I sent Merlin away to go and check on them all, while I stayed at the Pride.

As for the others' reactions? There was nothing much to do, only hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Whatever was coming next year, we had to amass everything we had. And I meant everything. For example, I told Arthur to, if he could, speed up the construction of the mechs and the training of the Knights. Lucca got the same message, as I wanted as many of my new subclass of Knights to be ready, too...

"Are we really going to bring him here?" Sasha asked, as we were having a family council to decide on something important.

"I vote yes," I said grimly. "I know..." I added, looking into Sasha's eyes, "But..."

"I know..." She repeated my words, leaning against me, hugging my arm, her eyes watering up, "I know..."

"He will be fine. Both of them will be fine, in fact." Yuri whispered, smiling at her, "I'll make doubly sure of that!"

"We all will be here." Luna nodded, but she was just as nervous, playing with her fingers. "It will all be fine."

Sometimes, things are inevitable. No matter how much I wanted my son to stay away, fate still forced my hand and called him up to the main stage to fight. Damn... If destiny is real, I hate it. I hate the fact that I have to put my sons and daughters in danger... It's the worst feeling as a parent, and I wasn't making this decision lightly.

"I spoke with Sa'Ith." I added, "She visited the Gods' Formation with me, and although she couldn't make sense of it, she agreed that whatever will happen when it finishes, it will decide everything."

"I hate this," Sasha muttered, shaking her head, burying it in my chest.

"We all do," Mikan spoke up, standing, and bringing us together in a big hug, "But as a family, we are unstoppable, no?" She smiled at us, "We dealt with my crazy ancestor, the Ishillian's crazy ancestor, well, it seems we dealt with everyone's crazy ancestors... This is just the Vasas' turn. And, we will deal with it. I know we will."

"Yeah," Luna grinned, "We have a reliable husband, no? He will pull us through this crisis, too~!"

"I'll do my best!" I chuckled, looking at them all, one by one, giving them a reassuring kiss, "I promise."