The eyes of the Petrahn King’s bloodline were bigger trouble than Balor thought. They seemed to see straight through soul matter, perhaps even seeing the world in terms of Source energy composition. He almost decided to pluck one of the King’s vulnerable children to dissect, and then recreate them to understand their eyes. Still, he didn’t want to accidentally cause a major inflection point by diverting the King’s attention from his civilizational goals.

  Balor couldn’t get close to the Petrahn monarchs for any reason. He would stand out immediately like a beacon, because what they called the Source was his stellar core soul matter. An entire humanoid made of the same material as their power would be difficult to explain away. He would be their embodiment of God, which would then alter the natural flow of events too far from where Balor wanted them to be.

  He observed Petrah from the periphery, the opposite plan as before. He was back to being a lowly civilian as when he first assimilated with Erul the Hunter. The Petrahn equivalent of that led much more prosperous and glamorous lives.

  They had rapidly advanced through construction and transportation in the last hundred years. Their houses were made of clean-cut rocks, made with Source mechanisms and lensing techniques. Their clothes were woven with Source-infused silk threads, and relative to the rest of the hominid population around or beneath them, they led lives that were comparable to the King himself.

  Balor spent five years as a scribe working under what Petrahns called a Source wielder, or a Mancer, someone who had exceptional affinity towards the Source. The one he worked for as a nondescript servant was about as old as Farrador, having given up his adventuring days to reside in a quiet village in the Petrahn valley.

  The man was documenting history, and Balor learned all that he needed about the Petrahn monarchs within a month. They were direct descendants of Valder, and Karovak the Shatterer was put together by Farrador.

  There were two siblings close in age who had been the closest successors after Valder’s death. One was called Arimon Petravolta, and the other was called Varsil Petranova. The younger sibling, Varsil, had proven themselves in Valder’s selection ritual, which had been put together by Farrador.

  Varsil Petranova ruled Petrah and its settlements alongside his brother, who had been deployed on a decades-long expedition to discover all populations of Veilthorn. It has been eight years since Arimon’s departure, and he has managed to send several envoys from far settlements to negotiate with Petrah.

  A suspiciously high success rate. Hundred percent in fact.

  The first Petrahn monarch who set out had been softly conquering every settlement and kingdom that he came across.

  Balor knew why. They had the eyes, the eyes that bent the wills of those around them. None had been immune to it, nor has anyone ever detected it. Everyone loved the monarchs, and they knew monarchs loved them just as much.

  This was too good to be true, of course, but Balor couldn’t find any holes in it. It just worked, and it continued to keep working. He estimated the discovery of their bloodline advantage to occur in a more information-dense age, with more research into the Source, and more knowledge about other bloodline traits.

  For now, it was Petrah’s world, and Balor himself was now on the fastest possible track to become a Dragon, because it seemed like, in a generation or two, the King would naturally become the Emperor of Veilthorn. A unified global population could demonstrate its will, and if it aligned with the Serpent’s blood drive, Balor would have succeeded in taming Veilthorn.

  The populations that Petrah discovered were interesting themselves.

  The easiest one had been the pointed-eared, pale-skinned ones from the first stratum directly below. They had been Source Wielders on their own for centuries, although they were nowhere near as advanced as the Petrahns. Petrahns called them Elves, an isolationist tribe that placed a lot of value on others who looked like them.

  Elven leaders met with the Petrahn king almost weekly, weaving their alliance, knowledge, and resource exchange tighter each time. The only hard line they had started and ended at interbreeding. Varsil seemed to respect their wishes rather than insisting on changing their customs.

  The second most important population was found on the third continent’s surface, where Balor’s terraforming efforts had created some unique vertical landscapes. They were a fairly small population of winged people, the only ones of their kind. Varsil had immediately taken a personal interest in them. They were called Wrenths, and their unique ability of flight granted them fame and prosperity by default. They had no qualms about interbreeding. In fact, they bred like rabbits, but it was rare for a mixed-race Wrenth to be born with a full set of wings.

  Arimon had then focused his entire attention on the largest continent in the hemisphere, and he had found various hominds engaged in constant strife across all strata. These new arrivals had various names among the Petrahns, and they came in three sizes.

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  The small ones in the second stratum were called Gobs, a pale green-skinned set of individuals with pointed ears like elves. They had a bloodline trait that allowed them to evolve and adapt to various terrains and conditions. Their evolutions didn’t always pan out, and hundreds of Gobs settlements were either stagnant or downright animalistic. Varsil negotiated with the Gob king, the tallest, most original Gob, to enact a breeding program to preserve only the best evolutions.

  To the south of Goblands in the impoverished third stratum, Arimon had found Orks, gray-skinned individuals that were constantly at territorial conflict with Gobs. They had no organized command structure or ruling systems, an entire group of hominids waiting for someone to represent them. When they met Arimon with his will-bending eyes, they had essentially become his. Varsil wasn’t keen on having a population that was so subservient. He was currently training a group of the healthiest and young Orks in the way of kingdoms by including them in the Petrahn court.

  After that, Arimon had met the most troublesome set of individuals that he’d met so far on the continent’s surface. The Ogres were nomadic tribes who were at war with everything, including each other. They were towering giants, and their own conflicts had reduced their numbers to thousands. It had taken Arimon the better part of a year to track down all tribes and bend the will of their leaders. Varsil had seen thirteen of them, and negotiations were currently underway to unite them under one Ogre King.

  The latest addition to the population roster had come from the third continent, the second largest. Most people across stratums there had been similar to the Petrahns, isolated remnants from the Dark Age. The discovery of an entirely new group of hominids came from the third stratum, a group of small individuals who built their dwellings into the rock. They were called Dwarfs, and Balor remembered who they were.

  They were an isolated strain that had evolved during the drastic terraforming. Learning about their digging habits in the third stratum was instant cause for worry for Balor. It would be impossible for them to dig Veilthorn’s crust underwater, but this digging blood drive had to be dealt with in some way.

  He interfered with their negotiations directly by hijacking Varsil’s representative for them. He managed to convince the majority of them to move their capital to the surface of the continent, where they could live in abundance while mining useful minerals to their heart’s content.

  They were also given citizenship of Petrah, in order to assist the King’s Sky Stone crystals when needed. With everything else that they received from Petrah, they were guaranteed to emigrate over to the surface in the next few decades, leaving their third-stratum caves with a few stubborn ones who would eventually die out.

  Balor had almost finished dealing with the Dwarfs when Arimon sent an envoy from an interesting group that Balor hadn’t thought possible.

  Demons, with horns and red skin. One of his isolated space pockets had breached containment. These were terraforming mishaps that Balor quickly swept under the rug, and Petrahn scholars had detected them over the years as spatial anomalies. They called them realms, and this was the first instance of a hominid population that evolved independently from most other strains that had broken out.

  Balor remembered shoving some lesser Dark Lord or two into one of the pockets during the Dark Age. He hadn’t bothered to check them until Arimon somehow found a way to breach through the spatial wall.

  Arimon’s documentation described their realm as perilous and volcanic, and Demons were a race with special adaptation to survive heat and low resource conditions. Their ruling structure had been the most despicable by far, involving a lot of sacrificial rituals and cannibalism. They had the concept of hierarchy in their bones, but it was about the raw power of magics.

  Demons would’ve been Petrah’s first taste of war and conflict, but the will-bending eyes had worked exceptionally well on Demons, and they had bent the knee to Arimon as if they had been waiting for his arrival. They were even more subservient than Orks, albeit for more self-serving, resourceful reasons. Varsil had not yet devised a plan to restructure their society.

  Balor let it sort itself, since it seemed like part of the timeline now. Continuing this way, he envisioned a world where all these planned and unplanned bloodlines collided. Mixing of races in a global empire. All the rough jagged edges would eventually be dulled, and a stable equilibrium could be reached in due time.

  Balor didn’t assimilate with anyone, and he carefully watched over Petrah’s growing success over Varsil and Arimon’s lifetimes. It was the first time he really paid attention in decades. It was entertaining in its own way, watching his creations behave the way he wanted them to. Varsil birthed six sons and eight daughters during his lifetime. Arimon had three sons and way more undocumented ones during his decades-long trip around the world.

  The two brothers only met a handful of times, and Varsil took his brother’s official children into the monarch before his own death a few years later. They left behind all the ingredients needed for a big story to unfold in Veilthorn, one where monarch siblings fought for control. One where ideas and populations could clash, bent wills competing against each other for control.

  Balor retreated to his serpent forest realm, which luckily, Arimon the Explorer hadn’t discovered. He wanted to let the bloodlines of will-benders play out, and for the true emperor of Veilthorn to emerge. He also had another plan after seeing Demons come out of the realm.

  Nothing was stopping him from introducing another race. One that could represent and project his will, the will of the God of Veilthorn. He could weave his own network into the population. He just had to find a way to perfectly mix serpent and hominid, and the small population that was currently thriving in his forest held the key.

  He decided to undertake this project while Petrah advanced and settled into the empire that he wanted it to be. he didn’t want to directly interfere with Petrah again. It was a creation out of his hands, except for a few nudges here and there.

  Disappearing into his forest, Balor began the first step in creating his own race.