(3rd POV)
While waiting for word from Saza, Arthur turned his attention to the Matrix and found it sitting at 80% completion.
He took a look at what the Architect had built so far, and was genuinely impressed. The world that had taken shape was vast and layered — built around adventure and mystery as its core pillars, with a cosmology to match.
Three realms formed the foundation of it all.
The Living Realm stretched as wide as a universe. Most of its territory would remain untouched and unprocessed — the sheer scale of it ensured that — but the space where life actually existed was rich and fully realized.
Above it sat the Miracle Realm, reserved for those mortals powerful enough that the Living Realm could no longer contain them; beings who had cultivated themselves past the threshold of ordinary existence and ascended into something greater.
And beneath both of them lay the After-Life Realm, where the dead gathered and waited — not in stagnation, but in queue. Life moved in a circle here: living, dying, and returning again, the souls of the After-Life Realm invisible to the living but fully present to each other, capable of physical sensation within their own domain.
The lore the Architect had built — and calling it lore felt like an understatement, given that he'd run accelerated simulations to push the world to a state of genuine completeness — began with possibility. Mortals could aspire to become «Eternal Deities», transcending the cycle entirely and overlooking all of existence from above. The path was open. The pursuit was the story.
Then the Unexpected Calamity struck.
The Three Realms developed a consciousness, and that consciousness made a judgment: the deities ascending beyond natural law, beyond the cycle of life and death and reincarnation, were a violation of the order.
And so the Three Realms turned against them. Deities fell. The Miracle Realm descended into chaos. The path to invincibility, once open to any mortal willing to walk it, became something that had to be fought for against the very fabric of existence itself.
Arthur recognized where the Architect had drawn his inspiration. It was lifted almost directly from what Ressète had told him — the Divine World gaining consciousness, turning on its own gods, dismantling the Age of Deities from the inside.
The Architect had taken that history and rebuilt it as the foundational myth of an entirely new world.
---
During this period, Arthur made an attempt to construct a second Super-Computer. The moment the process completed, it failed. The S-C, it turned out, was singular by nature — bound to the authority of the Lord of Invention, a realm could only support one. A second wasn't possible.
It didn't particularly bother him. He moved on.
Star Wars II had been sitting in the back of his mind for a while now. The original had been long enough ago that a sequel felt overdue, which meant it was time to bring back his most unusual collaborator.
He summoned Yoda.
Yoda materialized with the settled composure of someone who had been through stranger things than unexpected dimensional displacement — which, given his life, was saying something.
He looked at Arthur for a moment, and when he spoke, there was equanimity in his voice, though not without a thread of mild reproach beneath it.
"Only half a year, friend, since you last sent me back — and summoned again, I am already?"
"Half a year for you," Arthur said. "Two years for me."
Yoda considered this with the careful intelligence of someone who knew better than to dismiss an unusual claim without examining it. He accepted it. "The reason for this summoning — what is it, friend?"
"The Star Wars sequel," Arthur said. "And this time, it's not just advisory work. I'm casting you in the film itself — as yourself. As Yoda."
Something shifted in Yoda's expression. Faint surprise, then something quieter behind it.
"Looking forward to the second film, I have been," he said. "The first... troubled me deeply, it did. A future it depicted — one I had hoped was fiction alone. Yet in my world, that path... already forming, it is. Tried to change it, I have. Difficult, it remains."
"Perhaps in this sequel, a different way forward, there is. That is why here I am, friend. Willing."
Arthur was still not entirely accustomed to the way Yoda spoke, and after a few exchanges where he found himself mentally untangling the syntax, he simply led him to the project team and let them sort it out together.
Time moved quickly after that.
A week in, casting began. Arthur was reprising Darth Vader — that had never been in question — and the core cast from A New Hope was largely returning. But the sequel needed new faces, and the search was underway.
Word leaked before anyone officially said anything.
"HELLFIRE CONFIRMS NEW STAR WARS FILM — TWO YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL!"
"Star Wars Fans Erupt Worldwide as Sequel News Breaks — 'We've Been Waiting For This'"
"The Force Returns: Hellfire's Most Anticipated Sequel Is Finally Coming"
Television, newspapers, HellBook — the news moved through every channel simultaneously. For a company of Hellfire's scale, a new project announcement was no longer surprising. But Star Wars carried a particular kind of devotion that made even routine news feel like an event. The fans had been waiting two years and were not subtle about it.
But then a second wave of news broke entirely, and it swallowed the Star Wars coverage whole.
Arthur Pendragon and Firfel were getting married. Publicly. The ceremony was to be held at Hellfire Park.
"ARTHUR PENDRAGON WEDS FIRFEL IN CEREMONY AT HELLFIRE HQ — THE WEDDING OF THE DECADE"
"Forget Star Wars — Did You See Firfel's Dress?!"
"The Demon King is Off the Market. A Nation Mourns."
---
[HellBook — Public Forum]
"I came for the Star Wars news and stayed for the wedding coverage. What a day to be alive."
"Firfel has been glowing lately. Like, genuinely glowing. Is she okay? Is she more than okay? What is happening to her?"
"Arthur Pendragon built the biggest company in the world and somehow still had time to fall in love. Some people have everything."
"I'm happy for them but I'm not okay."
---
Guests arrived in steady streams throughout the morning. Among them, one entrance drew more attention than most.
Queen Delaney of the Roses Kingdom — Firfel's mother — swept in with the bearing of someone attending a function they disapproved of but could not refuse.
She had never made peace with Firfel choosing entertainment over her duties as a princess, and nothing about today was softening that grievance. She moved through the venue with a cool, deliberate distance toward her daughter.
Then she spotted Sylwen.
Her expression hardened. She crossed toward her with purpose, voice dropping to something sharp and low. "You actually dared to show your face before me?"
Her hand came up.
Sylwen caught her wrist without flinching. "Mother. Mind your place. This is not the Roses Palace."
"You..." Delaney's composure cracked at the edges. If she couldn't move openly against Firfel today — not with Arthur's position making that politically disastrous — Sylwen was another matter entirely. She cut a glance to her Royal Guards. They began to move.
"Mother-in-law." Arthur was suddenly there, his tone warm, his smile easy. His eyes said something different. "It would be a shame to make a commotion today of all days. After all, this is my wedding."
Delaney held his gaze for exactly as long as it took to remember who she was looking at — a man the entire Church of Solarus had failed to handle. She swallowed her pride, lifted her chin, and walked away with a sharp "Hmph."
Arthur watched her go and shook his head.
"Please forgive her attitude." Firfel said wryly.
"I get it," Arthur said simply.
He didn't have time to dwell on it.
"Big brother!"
Apollonia appeared and the energy of the whole exchange reset. He pulled her into a hug without hesitation.
Behind her came the rest of the Morningstar siblings — Lucy, composed and distant as always; Arnold and Bobby with the particular look of people who had not expected today to be a good day and were trying not to show that it was.
Arthur greeted them, nothing warmer than courtesy required, and moved on.
Then Azazel.
The Crown Prince pulled him into something that was nearly an embrace, laughing openly. "You're actually getting married. I'm jealous!"
"Jealous?" Arthur said. "Last I heard, you had a harem going."
"Haha — nothing but rumours." Azazel waved it off, then sobered slightly. "I'm sorry our parents couldn't make it. Politics. You know how it is."
"I know," Arthur said, and meant it without bitterness.
The King and Queen of Morningstar were not his real parents — a truth Azazel and the others had never been told. His blood came from the King's sister, his father unknown. It was old information, long processed, and it didn't touch the mood of the day.
Azazel studied him for a moment with quiet admiration, and behind it, the same old puzzlement he'd never quite been able to let go of.
The King and Queen's coldness toward Arthur had never made sense to him. It still didn't.