As Seth's mind brought itself back together, focusing on this singular task and this alone, the amount of hands nearly doubled. Which was impressive, considering there were already hundreds there hard at work.

Countless threads wove themselves into the blanket surrounding his soul, giving the weave more space and mass to manifest these hands.

However with the increase in productivity, also came the increase in energy drain. Double the hands meant double the concentration and double the amount of spiritual energy he was having to expend to convert the wisps into his own essence.

Thankfully, it also meant half the time.

This was the final sprint, he could feel it and Angel's warning only served to confirm those feelings. So even as his body slumped in his chair, unable to gather the energy to support itself in a proper meditative position, Seth still continued his work in his Soul Abyss.

Even when his heart started to slow its beat in his chest and beads of sweat trailed down his pale, sweaty skin. Seth didn't slow, he only increased his pace as he burned away the remaining essence of Prometheus drop by drop.

Until finally, the hands dived underneath the surface of the liquid and could only find azure flames to grasp.

The fingers of the thread woven hands shot open, as if they were burned by the flames they were clutching, as all the different wisps were sucked back into his soul and drowned in the black ocean of his fragmented soul.

An ocean that immediately started to boil and churn, whirlpools appearing all across their surface as the very power within his soul started to shift alongside it.

As the black water swirled, a speck of silver appeared at the base of each of the dozen whirlpools, before it started to creep its way up the walls of the whirlpool and then out into the vast ocean around it.

The silver rapidly crept across the black ocean, forcing it to change as drop by drop it became silver too.

When every single drop of black water had turned silver, the whirlpools collapsed in on themselves, sending plumes of viscous silver blood shooting into the air like a volcanic eruption.

The splatters of silver blood drizzled down onto the solid continents of crystallised soul. They stayed there for a few seconds, before the crystal greedily absorbed the droplets, drinking them in and mixing them into their structure.

At the same time, the churning and chaotic silver ocean started to rise. The tides that were previously lapping idly at the edges of the crystallised soul began to crawl onto the land, slithering their way over the landmasses and slowly engulfing them in their silvery embrace.

The drowning landmasses shuddered and quaked as they succumbed to the embrace of the silver sea, sending waves of pain shooting through Seth's entire body. If he had the energy to speak, he would have been expending it to scream in agony.

But instead all he could manage to do was let out choked gargles as he collapsed to the floor, spasming and foaming at the mouth as the very essence of his being was forcibly changed and dragged into a higher existence.

Cracks spider-webbed their way across the crystalline surface. The silver sea, noticing the gap, eagerly began to pour into the cracks and make them whole again, only for more quakes and tremors to cause them to shatter all over again.

It became an endless cycle, his soul shattering and reforming itself, constantly drowning in the liquid and pulling itself to the surface, like a man being tortured for money. Never allowed to drown but never allowed to breathe either.

Always on the verge of both, his face pressed against the knife edge between life and death, wondering which side he will fall to when the knife finally cleaves through him.

Like this, it was impossible to tell how much time was passing. It could have been mere seconds, hours or even days. No matter how long it actually was, to Seth it felt like thousands of years.

His mind, in an attempt to escape the pain of his soul being torn apart and put back together over and over, delved into his memories. He saw his younger years, the weeks after his family had escaped the cult.

He saw their dinky apartment, only given to them by a kind stranger in exchange for his sister working in their store. It was cold, it was leaking and it was claustrophobic. But for so many years, it was home.

He saw his sister, coming home to that miserable apartment, completely exhausted and drained from her long hours of work. Far longer than they should have been. But, no matter how tired or bedraggled she looked in reality, in his memories she was a radiant Angel gifted to them from the heavens.

He saw many things. His siblings when they were younger, getting into trouble. First days at school, last days. He saw his first kiss and his worst break-up. He saw close brushes with death and the best days of his life. But amongst them were the strangely mundane days.

The eventless sundays, the days he spent staring at his computer in work doing nothing.

But it wasn't just the old world he saw. Memories of Seth's time in the new world flashed before his eyes too. Training with Nixie, Studying with Julius. He saw the births of every single on of his son's and he remembered holding Nixie in his arms for that first time.

Most of all... he remembered that first date with Astra. The real first one, in the endless meadow.

That memory was fuzzy... Some of the details blurred or completely missing. He couldn't remember how long they had spent there before this happened, or what sort of strange followers they had gathered at this point.

But what he could remember, with perfect clarity, was the smell of Astra's hair as she rested her head on his shoulder and he could remember the exact shade of her cheeks when she blushed.

He remembered watching a single bead of sweat trailing down her forehead until it reached her lips. Lips that completely entranced him in that moment.

His entire life, from the most impactful moments to the most uninteresting moments, were stretched out in front of him like a vast, endless tapestry.

At this point, Seth's soul had finished its forging process and had finally achieved its Apotheosis, becoming worthy of being called the Soul of a God. But Seth was unable to appreciate the ramifications of that change or test what it had brought with it.

In fact he was completely unaware that it had even finished, as he was still lost in the maze of memories.

Instead it was Angel, his trusty guardian that went to work for him. Items appeared around Seth's body. An odd looking fruit, a wine bottle that contained a crackling storm and an innocuous looking box.

His heart thundered in his chest, forcing his blood around his veins faster and faster, as his newly complete soul began to glow in resonance.

Spectral threads erupted from Seth's chest, moving with a mind of their own as they wrapped around the objects. Each object, strange in its own way, lifted softly into the air and floated towards Seth's chest under the guidance of the threads.

However instead of pressing against his chest when they reached them, they lost all sense of intangibility as they forced their way inside of him.

One after the other, the odd trio appeared in the Abyss of Seth's soul, bypassing the intricate weave of threads that acted as its barrier.

The innocous box opened, revealing its silken insides and the singular tear drop that rested within its embrace. The tear drop, crystal clear and perfectly shaped as if it was drawn in a cartoon, lifted itself from the box before its faithful container burst into azure flames leaving nothing behind to speak of its existence.

Next to change was the fruit, its body twisting in on itself like a rag being rung. Juices spurted and oozed from the fruit as it was twisted and crushed by unseen hands. When every single droplet of juices were extracted, the dried husk of the fruit too was incinerated by azure flames.

The golden juice of the Fruit of the Heavenly Tree and the Untainted Tear drifted towards each other, mixing themselves together. The juice forming a perfect sphere around the Tear, which acted as the core, before they both plunged into the depths of Seth's fully crystallised soul.

At the same moment, the bottle shattered. The crackling storm it contained roaring in defiance as it was finally free, before it rapidly spread through the entirety of Seth's Abyss. The storm raged, bolts of lighting crackling within the dark clouds as they gathered power.

For an agonising minute the storm gathered power into one singular spot, before finally a bolt of pure black lightning streaked through the Abyss and struck the surface of Seth's soul.

The entire power of the contained storm, and much more, was poured into Seth's soul to fuel its transformation.

[Catalysts Successfully Absorbed. Beginning Evolution to Celestial Realm. Please Stand by...]

Angel whispered in Seth's ear, her words floating in the air before his eyes. But he neither saw nor heard her words, as his eyes had glazed over. His mind had become trapped in the maze of memories, ensnared by one memory in particular.

A memory Seth himself didn't even know he had.

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