The partitioned Veilthorn was much more manageable for Petrah. Balor watched the effects of it manifest from high up above until Resil handed his throne to the Empress twenty years later.

  The world adapted to this new configuration within that time, populations living in sectors approved for them. Petrah acted as the hub for all travel across continents, and the flow was strictly controlled. This ensured no usurper could organize across continents against the emperor, because such an effort required resources from all over the world.

  Ongoing operations partitioned off even smaller chunks of the world with barriers that only the Petranova bloodline could pass through. This oppressive system of governance ruined Resil’s reputation for greatness, but it curbed the proliferation of bloodstone.

  Four more moon gates were constructed during these twenty years, each one as large as the one on Petrah. Continental moon gates, as they were called, allowed each continent to mine its own Sky Stone with their own people. This was also strictly controlled by Petrah on all eight access points.

  With this, the structure of the partitioned Veilthorn offered three common grounds for all four continents. First was Petrah, where the most direct hub was. Second was the moon with continental moon gates allowing travel through there. Third was all the way on the other hemisphere, the largest barren continent of Veilthorn that dwarfed the other four.

  The four barriers cutting into that land dissipated as they reached intersections, because that hemisphere had no soul matter by design. All magics collapsed there, and Balor had intended to keep it there for the civilization to conquer at last without relying on magics. It was an inherent milestone.

  This way, the two major common grounds were Sky Stone, or other resources, with the on-planet frontier far more dangerous than the moon.

  Balor snapped awake, scoping back to regular time twenty-three years after the Great Split. Again, he was worried about Resil’s well-being, but this was about reaching an exciting threshold.

  The inventor’s guild established by Resil was prioritizing a project to explore the nearest planet with the lessons learned from the moon. The construction of a giant portal was ceremonially inaugurated by Resil and his daughter. This gate had an aperture a hundred times larger than the moon gates.

  It wasn’t viable as a vertical gate. It was rotated to face upwards, and it had to be created along an inactive volcanic crater from Balor’s terraforming days.

  In the next weeks, eight pillars were launched within hourly gaps of each other towards a distant dot in the sky, a planet the Petrahn Empress titled Varlgus. They had yet again used bloodstone to propel such large pillars out of the atmosphere.

  The inventors set up their stations around the massive portal for any signs of success. Each pillar was independently capable of opening a rift to the portal in Veilthorn.

  About a month and a half later, the first rift carved a tear into the fabric of the massive portal. Three more flickered into existence shortly afterwards, and the first expedition to Varlgus took place straight away.

  Veilthorn: Sixth Phase.

  The moment the first Veilthornian set foot on the Varlgus, a planet categorically a new world, the world seed declared Balor’s victory against entropy.

  Veilthorn was ready to carry on in this direction for the entirety of its interplanetary phase, worthy of becoming part of the Dominion. In the coming Millenia, it will be visited and improved by dragons.

  The planet came to a standstill as the world seed coated every surface with a surge of soul matter that belonged to Balor. They erupted in wide flaring arcs into the atmosphere, reaching for him like white tendrils.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Frozen in time, Veilthorn became the oblivious stage for his ascension. Balor materialized himself into his bipedal form as soul matter tendrils from all over the planet sought and fused with him, changing his form with each flaring burst.

  Veilthorn: Ascension Of The First Dragon.

  The soul matter leaking from the world seed contained memories of the world, and for a moment, Balor’s mind expanded without borders, giving him perfect comprehension and infinite attention to everything in its past, present, and future.

  Hovering above Petrah, he slowly shed the bipedal form as he warped into the celestial dragon that he was meant to become. Soul matter rivers flowed towards him, cascading from every direction.

  Veilthorn had worked. It was his gem in the cosmos. He felt possessive over it, a fresh drive erupting within him to preserve it against all odds to the end of time.

  The gathering of timeless rivers of soul matter enlarged Balor to the size of Petrah itself, and he grew to the size of an astral body. A living comet. This was better than his stellar core in all respects.

  It no longer required any thinking to do what he wanted to do. His consciousness separated from his body as it became the perfect tool. His body transformed into the ideal terrestrial form even as it gathered more soul matter.

  This process took close to a Dominion year in the forward march of time, although the world seed froze time for the rest of Veilthorn. Balor kept a close eye on the rivers of soul matter flowing from the planet, wary of the corrupted Seedmaker’s appearance yet again.

  The fact that it didn’t so far actually made him paranoid. He had expected the next planet-scale battle to erupt as soon as he ascended. It was the peak of his power and the most vulnerable moment. He imagined many other serpents before him succumbing to the fate, even if they were successful at taming Veilthorn.

  The attack never came. He couldn’t see that cursed red energy anywhere.

  If it's waiting, then it’s waiting for me to get better.

  Perhaps it was waiting for him to gather every last drop of soul matter from the world seed. It could only mean the Seedmaker wasn’t even scared of the confrontation. It likely had a very confident way to get rid of Balor at the right moment.

  Far from being happy about finally becoming a celestial dragon, Balor found himself displeased and worried about his future. He’d technically won with a set of clever interventions. He didn’t feel the joy or the excitement of the victory while the Seedmaker was still looming under the crust of the planet.

  It only gave him confidence about his capabilities to handle the next confrontation. The world seed was giving him more soul matter than what he spent to create the magics. With such an amount of power in his control, Balor could do more than escape.

  He also wondered about the implications now that he’d become a Dragon. If he hadn’t been lied to, he was the first to tame Veilthorn. This hadn’t happened before, and the Seedmaker was sure to adapt their plans accordingly.

  There were several possibilities now that he’d fostered a civilization reaching out to the stars. He had essentially shown the world a way to do it in a relatively low amount of time. One horrible realization that he had made him pause for a moment.

  What if this is what the seedmaker wanted? What if it takes the world from me now?

  He would much rather destroy the whole experiment than let anything else steal his gem in the cosmos. He would go to absurd lengths to prevent it, even if it meant wiping out the majority of the population.

  He had to prevent it from deteriorating to that level. Everything was going to happen at once when time started flowing again at the end of his ascension. He was almost certain about new attack vectors from the Seedmaker to corrupt the world that he created.

  He couldn’t rely on Petrah alone. Resil had been his favorite tool towards the end, and it wasn’t going to cut it anymore. He needed to establish a rolling system of empires like Petrah. Ones that rose from the ashes of the other, each one maintaining the Source magics that he established.

  He needed to embed systems into Veilthorn that would wipe the slate clean if bloodstone was relied upon too much. There were thousands of things that he could do, and each one had to start the moment the ascension ended.

  As a dragon, he had free rein over altering his world the way he wanted. He could atomize the areas where bloodstone had already conquered. It would buy Petrah another millennium or two.

  The world that comes after it had to be worked on from the next moment. The foundations for that solution had already been laid in his forest realm. He needed a race that could perfectly encapsulate his will and act on it.

  He couldn’t bet on them to always win, but their existence could balance out the populations easily captured by the Seedmaker’s influence.

  The soul matter rivers thinned and eventually died out, giving him enough to become a satellite moon on his own. Balor intentionally altered his size to a more manageable size, dispersing the excess soul matter perpendicular to the planet.

  He became a looming Dragon the size of Petrah’s capital, with a thousand wings piercing through the atmosphere, each one containing more soul matter than what he gave the world of Veilthorn when he crashed the crystal.

  There was a lot that he could do, and he intended to do all of them for his gem.

  The world seed resumed time, and the inhabitants of Petrah saw their God in Dragon form for the first time.