Chapter Twenty-Six: A World Within
Elias took the call with a wide, delighted grin, and immediately sent off an address—the place where the secret realm was to be installed.
Because he’d planned for this. When he’d handed the flood of Lifebloom income over to his parents to manage, he’d also asked them to keep an eye out for somewhere suitable to set up a breeder shop of his own. And, as luck would have it, they’d found one.
The installation was handled in a jiffy, and Elias hurried over to see his future shop for the first time.
It was an old, abandoned breeder shop—a former establishment that had long since closed its doors, which his parents had paid to have cleaned and tidied up. It wasn’t the most flattering building in the world; its better years were plainly behind it. But it wasn’t bad, either. With a little work it would do nicely, and there was something fitting about a breeder shop being reborn from an old one, the way so much of his work was about coaxing new life from the overlooked and the discarded.
He made his way to what had once been the shop’s laboratory room—and stopped in the doorway.
There, dominating the space, sat a great square platform of stone, five meters to a side, its surface carved all over with intricate runes that pulsed with a soft inner glow. And at the very center of it rested a crystal—a single crystal that seemed, impossibly, to hold an entire galaxy swirling within it, depths of starlight turning slowly in its heart.
Elias had only ever read about such things. This was the first time he’d seen one with his own eyes.
The crystal was the secret realm itself—or rather, the vessel that held it. The stone platform around it was merely the mechanism: an apparatus to safely open the realm and let one enter and leave. The crystal was the heart of everything, the irreplaceable core. If he ever wished to move his realm, he’d have to carefully remove the crystal and install it anew elsewhere. Though he’d also heard whispers—rumors, really—that once a tamer reached the King rank, they could open and enter their realm freely, at will, without need of any platform at all.
That was a concern for a far-off day. For now, he had a realm to claim.
Excited as a child, Elias pricked his finger and let a drop of blood fall onto the crystal, marking it as his.
With that, the realm was bound to him alone—only he could open or close it now, only he could grant others entry. Then he gathered his spiritual energy and poured it into the crystal, bringing the realm to life. The runes carved across the stone platform flared brighter, light racing along their channels—and in the middle of it all, a portal shimmered open.
Grinning, Elias stepped through without hesitation.
The first thing he felt, on the other side, was discomfort.
It was a strange, creeping unease—like standing in a room with just enough air to keep from suffocating, but not nearly enough to breathe easy. Every breath felt thin and insufficient, his body straining for something that wasn’t quite there.
It took him a moment to understand, and then it clicked: the void of spiritual energy. He’d known, intellectually, that a secret realm was a severed space, cut off from the world’s omnipresent spiritual energy—but knowing it and feeling it were two different things. His body had spent its whole life swimming in that energy, and now, deprived of it, it didn’t know what to do with itself.
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The solution came to him quickly. He drew his own spiritual energy out and coated himself in it, a thin protective mask of it wrapped close around his body—and at once the discomfort eased. He could breathe comfortably again, cocooned in his own energy where the realm had none to offer.
It was a strange thing to dwell on, he thought, as his breathing settled. By any sensible measure, this place should have felt natural to him—a space empty of spiritual energy was, after all, almost exactly like Earth, the world of his first life. He’d lived an entire lifetime breathing air just like this and never thought twice about it. And yet, reborn into a world steeped in spiritual energy, his body had so thoroughly adapted to its presence that its absence now felt wrong. Funny, how quickly a person forgot the air they used to breathe.
With his breathing sorted, Elias finally took a proper look around—and froze, stunned.
This was no barren, empty void waiting to be filled. It was a laboratory. A sleek, modern, fully outfitted laboratory, gleaming with all manner of high-end equipment, the kind of workspace he’d only ever dreamed of having.
And he hadn’t ordered any of it.
He walked slowly through the space, taking it in—and the more he looked, the more astonished he became. It wasn’t merely well-equipped; it was well-considered, thoughtfully laid out, every station and instrument placed with the clear understanding of someone who knew exactly how a breeder actually worked. Nothing was for show. Everything was useful. Someone had furnished this place with real care and real expertise.
There was only one person it could have been.
Elias stepped back outside and called Maeve.
She answered almost at once, warmth and mischief plain in her voice. “So—did you like my surprise?”
“Miss Thornwell, this is too much,” he said, still half-dazed. “This is—I can’t even guess. Half of what the realm itself cost, at least. Maybe more.” He meant it. He’d wanted exactly such a setup, had every intention of building toward it once he’d earned enough Contribution Points—but that had been a plan for later, a someday goal. To simply be handed it was staggering. “A little advice here and there, I understand—that’s goodwill, I get it. But this? This is far, far too much for goodwill.”
Maeve only laughed.
“Elias,” she said, fondly, “you really don’t know your own worth, do you?” She let that sit a moment. “Call it an investment. A breeder spends years—years—to successfully create a single new spirit beast, or to uncover a single new evolution path. Most never manage either in a whole career. And you did it in under four months. Four. Right at the very start of your path, barely out of the gate.”
“I got lucky,” Elias started.
“You did it,” Maeve cut in, gently but firmly. “However you’d like to frame it. And I believe—genuinely, after a very long life of watching breeders come and go—that your future is all but boundless. What you showed me that day was not the peak of your work, Elias. It was the very beginning. An investment in a talent like that is no extravagance. It’s simply good sense.”
She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened into something more sincere.
“And if I’m honest—it wasn’t only the talent. When you told me you wanted to make it public, to give it freely to everyone rather than hoard a fortune… that moved me. More than you know. In all my years, that kind of choice is rarer than any evolution. You gave the world a piece of hope—for ordinary people, for the sick, for the future. The least I can do is make sure the one who did it has the tools to keep going.”
For a moment, Elias didn’t know what to say.
He’d braced himself to argue, to insist it was too much, to find some way to repay or refuse it. But there was no calculation in her voice, no angle—only genuine belief, and a genuine kindness he hadn’t expected. To keep refusing would only insult it.
So instead, he let the protest go, and simply meant what he said next.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Truly. I won’t forget this, Miss Thornwell. I’ll make it worth the investment—I promise you that.”
“Oh, I have no doubt at all,” she said, and he could hear the smile in it. “Now go on. Go put it to use. I expect great things, Breeder Arkwright—and I intend to be there to see them.”
The line clicked off, and Elias stood a while in his old, reborn shop, looking back toward the galaxy turning quietly in its crystal—a whole world of his own waiting beyond it—and felt the road ahead open wide and bright before him.