Kiba Teaii Mel’Aodh let out a screech, his cry tearing at the fabric of space and turning nearby pnets into cosmic dust.

  Rage, unlike anything he had felt in eons, burned through him. Kiba’s form burst into white fmes, mirroring his anger as he unfurled gigantic wings. Stars brushed against the fme like feathers, only to be consumed by the heat a second ter.

  Space twisted as the great phoenix drew in a breath. Cracks appeared around his mouth as the void between space was revealed. Creatures moved in the void, turning sightless eyes towards the heat of fme and the taste of life.

  A second ter, Kiba breathed out and fmes boiled across the gaxy.

  Spirit, strong enough to cripple most lifeforms, burst forth from Kiba as he scanned the area, his anger still burning.

  Among the sea of fme was a single dead spot, where fme and heat could not reach. Tiny compared to the inferno raging around it, and almost insignificant in its energy, most would have missed it, but not Kiba.

  With the screech of a bird of prey, the phoenix dove, its wings tucking in close to its body as it angled toward the dead spot. Tongues of fme trailed its body like the dust behind a shooting star.

  The phoenix’s mouth opened wide, wide enough to swallow pnets, as Kiba attempted to swallow the god, for what else could harm a primordial beast but a god?

  His beak snapped shut on nothing. The dead spot had vanished and with it, his attacker.

  Kiba Teaii Mel’Aodh floated there in space, seething, as he searched for any signs of his quarry. The ash and burning embers of dozens of worlds drifted around him as stars were pulled towards his fmes.

  Gaining control over his emotions once more, Kiba’s form shrunk. The fmes condensed and shifted, and moments ter a man stood where once a primordial beast had existed. A scowl twisted Kiba’s handsome features as he gnced around with eyes that changed color constantly. First blue, then orange, then red, before fading to white. One hand rose, brushing bck and red streaked hair from his face.

  Kiba gnced down at his bare chest and the dark purple bruising that covered his left pectoral. Touching it gingerly with a fming finger, his scowl deepened as he felt the foreign energy fight against his efforts to heal it.

  It had been a while since he had encountered something that his passive healing couldn’t overcome. Taking a moment to focus inwards, Kiba allowed Vitalis, rich with the Principles of his Path, to cycle around his body.

  Watching the energy move through him, he saw it make contact with the poison, the warm red and gold pushing against the sickly green, wearing it down.

  Until it didn’t.

  Kiba watched with concern as the poison tched onto his energy, feeding from it and growing. Tendrils of the green energy dug deeper into his body as it sought out his soul. Resisting the urge to throw even more Vitalis at it, Kiba gnced back down at his chest. The bruise had grown, it now covered his left chest and most of his ribs.

  Pulling up his stats, he did something he hadn’t done in many many years. He looked at his health. It gradually ticked down.

  Kiba almost ughed at the absurdity of it all. This body may just be an avatar of his true self, but it still had a spark of a primordial’s energy within him. A fragment of his greater selfs soul. To be poisoned beyond healing…was just embarrassing.

  Kiba did ugh then. A full-bellied ugh of amusement, though a darker yer of anger, added a hard edge to the sound.

  He would need to return to his main body.

  Still ughing, Kiba turned his back to the ruined gaxy as he focused inward, trying to locate the tether between this body and his true self.

  The ughter cut off as a thought turned Kiba’s heart cold. Looking once again at his failing health and the poison chewing its way through him, Kiba sighed.

  He couldn’t risk exposing his main body to the poison. He would need to find a pce to lie low and heal. The poison was clearly designed to kill him. Designed to kill the Primordial of Fme.

  Decision made, Kiba wasted no time severing the connection to his true body. His soul shook and an empty ache took up residence in his chest. With that done it was time to find a pce to recover.

  With a single step, Kiba appeared in another gaxy. The Vitalis was thin enough to mark it as belonging to a middle realm. Another step and he appeared in a different realm, this one with a Vitalis so thin it had to be minor.

  No one would think to look for a Primordial here.

  Kiba felt something brush against his spirit as he prepared to step forward. A call. It wasn’t meant for him, but it also wasn’t far. Smiling to himself, Kiba completed his step and reappeared above a small ball of dirt. A pnet. Not even integrated into the system yet, thought Kiba could sense a pnetary core that was primed and ready. Lights flickered across the nd masses of the dark half of the world.

  Grimacing as pain fred through his chest, Kiba began to descend through the cloud cover. The moisture in the air burned before it came into contact with his skin causing steam to rise around him. Kiba felt the signal again, stronger and just below him.

  Breaking through the clouds, his eyes saw what his spirit had sensed already. A bipedal creature, rge enough to dwarf the surrounding mountains, knelt near the edge of a ke. It’s dark leathery skin unduted with thousands of tentacles, each moving, searching for something. A single horn protruding from its brow looked like a lightning conductor.

  The creature moo’d in distress as Kiba approached, its skin blistering. The water in the ke began to boil and pnt life withered and died before turning brown and bursting into fme and ash.

  “Such fragility,” Kiba murmured, pulling in his aura as tight as he could, lest he activate the pnet's molten core and destroy it by accident. “And you…thank you for finding me a resting pce, but I don’t need the added attention.”

  Continuing his downward descent, Kiba dropped towards the base of the creature's head. As he was now, his human form was little more than a spec in retion to the size of the beast. But still it bucked, trying to move, but it couldn’t. The tentacles along its limbs had sunk deep into the pnet, rooting the creature in pce.

  Like a hot knife through butter, Kiba dropped through the creature's body, severing its spinal cord. Flesh and bone melted away, creating a hole wider than he was.

  When he cleared its body and met soil beneath, it melted away just as easily. Nothing remained where his fmes went.

  Above him the rge creature colpsed, its weight made the ground shake.

  Deeper still Kiba sank, until all that remained was a cocoon of darkness. The Primordial of Fme closed his eyes and waited. He had existed before time. Before the System.

  He could feel the inhabitants of this world scurrying about its surface like ants. Kiba wondered how many would survive what was to come.

  The Fre Calf above him was the first sign.

  This world would be integrated.

  Kiba Teaii Mel’Aodh smiled in the darkness and began to make pns.