As told by @Clyde Heinhart ; I didn’t expect Heaven to have a dining hall.

Not this kind, anyway. The Proven call it @The Zone —a chamber hanging in open space, where the ceiling isn’t a ceiling but a rolling sheet of constellations, bending gently like a curtain in a slow wind. The floor is a mosaic of live starlight. Every step hums.

And at the center of it all stands a long obsidian table, curved so that no one sits at the “head.” Fitting, considering half the room is filled with people who could destroy continents with an afternoon sigh.

I took the last seat. The mortal seat.

They told the story while we ate.

Or—I should say—they told me the story, because I had been late to it. I heard it in pieces, across voices as different as fire and frost, and afterward I realized something strange:

Every one of them told it honestly.

I. @Brenpachi Lennix Begins

Brenpachi Lennix started it.
He didn’t mean to; he was just answering a question I asked.

“Why did @Afro come down from the stars?”

His laughter shook the entire table. @The Lennix Family have a way of laughing that feels like the ground wants to join them.

“You think he came down gentle?” Brenpachi said, leaning forward, copper-streaked hair gleaming. “Afro arrived on my hill like a hurricane that remembered how to smile.”

@Maelira Aster-Lennix , seated beside him, corrected him with a quiet elbow.

“He arrived respectfully,” she said. “He kissed our soil before he spoke.”

Afro just grinned at that, his dread-halo glowing faintly in the ambient starlight, galaxies turning behind his eyes. The God of Rhythm doesn’t speak so much as sway his words into reality.

“I was there to warn him,” Afro said. “And to ask for his strength. Family holds the world together. If the world is about to crack—where else do you go first?”

Maelira bowed her head at that single sentence.

That told me everything about their bond.

II. The Bad News From the Stars

The story darkened quickly.

Magic returning.
The seals weakening.
@Saint Estes stirring in the Draconic Expanse.
And the Ring of the End—already bonding faster than any calculation predicted.

@Julius Peppermint spoke then.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Death never does.

“Power was not the problem,” Julius said calmly. “Hesitation was. My guards died because they hesitated. @Arch-Brood Varacius did not.”

The entire table went silent.

Even @Lazarus Kane , the Proven of Love, who floated near the table with that faint golden aura that made everyone feel like the world might still be fixable—he looked away.

I understood then that Julius wasn’t cruel.

He was simply telling the truth as death sees it.

III. Choralith’s Fall

@Choralith —towering, crystalline, seven-mouthed—stood behind Afro the whole time, arms folded, fractures still glowing faintly where Varacius had cut into him.

He didn’t speak much.

When he did, the air vibrated.

“I heard the call of the ring,” Choralith said. “I moved before strategy permitted. And paid the cost.”

One of the mouths on his back sang a soft harmonic then—a mourning note.

The Proven of Faith, who sat near him with hands folded like a placid monk, bowed his head.

“It was not failure,” Faith murmured. “It was devotion. Devotion always wounds.”

Afro reached out and touched Choralith’s wrist—an impossible contrast between smoke and crystal.

“Still,” Afro said, “it showed us that the children were in real danger.”

IV. The Wards

That’s when I spoke up, because the moment they started describing the kids, I remembered each of them vividly.

“Theseus,” I said, “doesn’t talk unless he decides you’re worth the breath.”

Brenpachi laughed at that.

@Goten Namaki leaned forward with that feral grin in the memory they described—fists cracking, blood pumping, a lifetime of bad luck hardened into resolve.

@Hermoine Peppermint —smiling even when afraid, because she believes that if one of them breaks, they all break.

And @Hercules Leopine —silent, fire-veined, moving like sharpened stone.

“They were ring bearers without knowing what it meant,” Maelira said. “Children stepping into a war built long before they were dreamed.”

Then Julius spoke again, and everyone froze.

“One of them carries my blood,” he said quietly.

He didn’t say which.

Hermoine stared into her cup then, but said nothing.

I didn’t ask.
Not then.

V. The First Convergence

This was the part everyone described differently.

Afro remembered sound first.
Julius remembered silence.
Brenpachi remembered the way the hill shook, eager for battle.
Maelira remembered measuring the distance between the wards and danger.
Choralith remembered pain.
Faith remembered inevitability.
War—when he finally spoke—said only:

“Conflict corrects the story.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard the Proven of War speak.
He looked like a scholar.
A quiet one.
The kind who wins battlefields with a whisper, not a blade.

@Tookie Williams —leaning back in his seat, arms folded—snorted when War said that.

“Corrects the story? Man, you sound like a history book that learned how to threaten people.”

War smiled politely.

“That is exactly what I am.”

The entire table fell silent at that.

VI. The Sound That Saved a World

According to Afro, the spear of End-energy crossing the sky wasn’t aim. It was contempt.

“He could have destroyed the monastery,” Afro said. “He wanted to see if anyone worthy would stop him.”

Brenpachi slammed his fist into his palm remembering it.

“Half the planet,” he said. “Half the damn planet, and Afro shaved it down like trimming a nail.”

Afro didn’t brag.
He just said:

“I closed the sound until it had nowhere to breathe.”

Only the Proven could describe god-level physics like they were talking about spices.

VII. Why They Gathered

This was the part that hit me hardest.

Because until this moment, I didn’t know why I’d been invited.

Why a mortal—Limitless or not—was sitting among gods.

But Afro looked straight at me then.
The whole table did.

“You,” he said, “are proof that mortals can rise, fall, break, rebuild, and still choose the world over themselves.”

Julius added:

“And because Lazarus defied me. Mortals are… unpredictable now.”

Faith said:

“Worth believing in.”

Love said:

“Worth fighting for.”

War said:

“Worth fearing.”

Brenpachi grinned.
Maelira nodded.
Choralith hummed.
Tookie smirked like he’d always known.

And I realized something:

This wasn’t a feast.

This was a war council.

A family forming.

A promise.

And history—the real kind—was finally moving.

HEAVBOUND: MORNING IN THE ZONE

Lore Primer – from the records of Clyde Heinhart

Clyde had heard war stories before.

He’d heard them from dying soldiers in mud, from Limitless carriers strapped to hospital beds, from children in evacuation lines clutching bags that held everything they owned. But nothing in twenty-seven years of life and sixty years of borrowed fiction compared to what three teenagers and one quiet killer from a boys’ home told last night at a god’s table.

Theseus had done most of the talking. Not because he liked it—Clyde could tell the boy wasn’t bragging—but because the Ring had picked him first, and leadership clings to firsts whether they ask for it or not.

Four weeks in the yard, Lance Topper breaking him down to steel and scar.
The crypt under Saint Estes, training in the hum of the Ring.
The dungeon, the painting, Tenemi’s map to the monastery above the clouds.
The Daemos Superhighway and the ambush.
The Gravi-Maw in the tunnels.
Vontrese Cole under Silverpoint, weaving EchoThread armor out of exile.
The museum, Julius’s portrait, Hermoine realizing why her dreams smelled like mint and silence.
Haven Alley. Vileticous Rary. The Violet Shard.
The moment the Council of Ancients noticed three wards and one executioner.

Goten had filled in the gaps, half-defensive, half-proud.
Hermoine had told the rest in careful, precise phrases, like every word might shift the weight of the story.
Hercules had spoken least, but when he did—short, exact, no mercy for himself in how he described what he’d done—it sounded like a report filed in blood.

The Proven had listened.

Afro with his chin in his hand, eyes like spinning vinyl.
Julius with that polite, razor smile, as though death itself was taking notes.
Choralith, every prism facet unreadable, seven mouths humming low when dragons were mentioned.
Maelira, fingers circling a goblet that never reflected her face the same way twice.
Faith, barefoot, arms folded, silent but present.
War, neat and sharp and frighteningly amused, as if someone had just put a new, intricate game board in front of him.
Lazarus Kane, newest of them, broad shoulders hunched like he still expected shackles, jaw locked tight, saying almost nothing—just watching Theseus the way fathers in bad neighborhoods watch the road.

Tookie Williams had sat opposite the kids, elbows on the table, measuring them like a man deciding which ones might actually survive the streets he knew.
Brenpachi Lennix had laughed at all the wrong parts—at broken bones, near-death, impossible odds—because to him those were victories.

Clyde had sat and listened and thought one simple, inexorable thing:

We don’t have time for the world to grow heroes slowly anymore.

Morning came anyway.