The walk back from the Jade Pavilion felt miles longer than the journey there.

The sun had fully set, plunging Scale-Iron City into a gloom illuminated only by the angry orange glow of the magma below and the harsh mana lamps lining the streets.

Judas kept his hands buried in the pockets of his black robes. His fingers brushed against the cool surface of the Platinum Token, but his mind was lightyears away.

Valerian's revelation sat in his gut like a swallowed stone.

Iscariot.

The name wasn't just a label for a disgraced noble house. It was a title. Administrators of the System. The gatekeepers of divinity.

For centuries, his "family" had regulated the distribution of power across the multiverse. They ensured that Systems—those reality-breaking interfaces that turned peasants into gods—only went to the chosen few.

It was a mechanism of control, a way to maintain order across the planes.

Then He arrived.

Valerian hadn't used a name. He only called him the Apocalypse. An entity of unknown gender, race, or origin. A singularity of destruction.

When the Apocalypse entered the high planes, the Systems didn't fight back. They turned.

The very tools the Iscariots used to police the cosmos went rogue, betraying their masters in a single night of slaughter.

The Administrators, second only to the Heavens themselves, fell.

Judas kicked a loose cobblestone, watching it skitter into a gutter.

The logic was terrifying. People in the lower worlds, in the ten thousand planes, started awakening Systems randomly.

It wasn't a blessing. It wasn't luck. It was an invasion.

Every System user was a potential doorway. A container.

'Equilibrium,' Judas thought, turning a corner toward the inn.

That was the trap. The Apocalypse's way to get the Origin was simple.

The Origin only unlocked when a world reached a perfect, horrifying balance between destruction and defiance. Between the invaders and the System users fighting them.

It was a rigged game. If the humans lost, they died. If the humans got strong enough to fight back to a stalemate, the Origin opened, and the Apocalypse descended to claim total dominion.

"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," Judas muttered to the empty street.

He reached the inn. The common room was quiet now, the earlier chaos with Valerian long forgotten by the drunk and weary patrons.

He moved up the stairs, his footsteps heavy.

He needed to think. He needed a strategy. But mostly, he needed to make sure his wives were safe.

He opened the door to their room. It was dark, save for the moonlight filtering through the curtains.

Judas sat on the edge of a wooden chair in the corner, rubbing his temples.

A shimmer of air appeared on his left shoulder.

Weight settled there. Familiar. Warm.

"You smell of anxiety," a flat voice whispered.

Nyx materialized. She didn't stay in her miniature form. She slid off his shoulder, her body elongating and expanding until she sat on the floor next to his chair, her legs tucked under her.

She wore a simple white shift, her black hair cascading down her back like a waterfall of ink.

Judas looked at her. His eyes narrowed.

"You smell of blood," he said.

It wasn't the metallic tang of an enemy. It was her blood.

Nyx stiffened. She looked away, her golden eyes fixing on a knot in the floorboards.

"It is nothing," she said. "Minor tissue damage. Regeneration is already at ninety percent."

"Who?" Judas asked. The single word carried a sudden, violent weight.

He reached out, his hand hovering near her cheek. There was a faint, red mark there. A burn.

Nyx sighed, a sound that was more of a huff of annoyance. "There is an old man. In the Academy archives. I went to collect some books."

"And?"

"He is strong," Nyx admitted, the words clearly tasting like ash in her mouth. "He detected my stealth. He used a spell... a light attribute construct. It bypassed my passive scales."

She looked up at him, her vertical pupils dilating. "He is a Master Rank. A true Master. If I were in my previous state… if I had my full reserves... he would be ash. He would be a footnote in my history."

She was justifying it. She was the Calamity of the North. The idea that a human, even a strong one, had marked her face was a stain on her pride.

"Did he see you?" Judas asked, his thumb gently brushing the red mark.

"He saw a shadow," Nyx said. "I retreated before he could identify my species."

"Good," Judas said.

He didn't scold her or tell her to be more careful. He was sure if he did either, she would be dissatisfied.

He simply moved his hand from her cheek to the top of her head.

He rubbed.

Nyx froze. Her instincts as an apex predator screamed at being touched so casually, especially on the head, a spot of vulnerability.

But the heat from his palm was pleasant. It was grounding.

She leaned into it. Her eyes half-closed. She tilted her head slightly to the left, silently commanding him to scratch behind her ear.

Judas chuckled low in his throat. The tension from the meeting with Valerian began to bleed away.

"We'll deal with him," Judas promised softly. "When we take the Academy, we'll find this old man. And you can show him what a Calamity really looks like."

Nyx purred.

"I will eat him..."

Miles away inside the library of the Academy, an old man hovered in the air with his long white beard trembling.

"I WILL CUT THAT THIEF…. ACHOO!" He sniffed. "Who the hell is talking behind my back?"

The scenery returned to Judas's room again.

Judas pulled his hand back, resting it on his knee. The silence returned, but it was comfortable now.

His mind drifted back to the problem at hand. The Apocalypse.

If Valerian was right, the Iscariot bloodline was the primary target. The Apocalypse feared the old Administrators. That meant Judas had a target painted on his back that spanned dimensions.

He couldn't run. Hiding in the Wastelands worked for a while, but eventually, the System users would come.

Or the monsters would come. Or the equilibrium would trigger, and the world would end.

"He controls them," Judas murmured.

"Who?" Nyx asked, opening one eye.

"The entity behind the Systems. He can influence them. Maybe even control the users."

Judas looked at his hands. Did that include him?

No. His interface was different. The Affection System didn't demand quests for world peace or slaughter. It demanded connection. It demanded loyalty.

Perhaps that was the key. The power of the Iscariots was the power to administer. To regulate.

'Can I hijack them?' Judas wondered. 'If I gain enough authority... can I overwrite the Apocalypse's command codes?'

He looked at the sleeping forms of his wives in the Couple Space. Summer, a vampire. Luna, an elf. Ezra, a human. Nina, a beastkin.

If he could transfer Systems to them... if he could build a squad of System users loyal only to him, disconnected from the Apocalypse's network...

He might survive.

He had two options.

Option A: Cripple the System users. Hunt them down. Kill the "heroes" before they could get strong enough to trigger the Origin.

Option B: Conquer the corrupted zones. Destroy the Apocalypse's footholds faster than the heroes could rise.

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