Primordial pairs are seemingly opposing concepts that cannot exist without the other. As the goddess of nature, I bring light and life to the void, while my primordial pair brings death and darkness. Bile was once my husband, and he was a kind man that escorted the souls of those I created toward his Soulscape—the true underworld. Until he became jealous of my creations and turned on me. Unable to kill him, Bile forced me to turn his own Soulscape into his prison.

~Mother Danu, The Primordial Goddess of Nature

Night Fire raged all around them. Crow was used to it, but Nin, despite being a dragon, still felt awe and fear at the strength contained within the soul flame. However, after she got past that and understood its tyrannical nature, she rushed into the fire. The benefits of its cleansing power were beyond her comprehension. Just basking in the residual flames was enough to strengthen her own soul.

No wonder Crow tried to warn her away because this hellscape should devastate a young cultivator like him. She tried to put herself in his shoes and wondered if she could endure this like he had. The problem was, Crow didn’t realize the situation his body was in.

The black fire was ultimately a fire, and for any fire to exist, it needed fuel. All living things comprise the five base elements, including fire. These were the essences of life, and Crow’s fire essence was feeding those black flames, keeping it alive.

It was a subtle nuance that only those highly attuned to fire would even notice. Crow had so much fire within him, and yet none of it nourished his body. Nin sighed at the irony, and while they drifted toward his Soulscape, she pulled him close.

The moment her feet touched the ground inside his Soulscape, she pressed her lips against his. Crow instinctively slid his tongue inside her mouth. Nin, forgetting what she was doing momentarily, leaned into the kiss and her tongue moved around his.

When she realized what was happening, she bit down on his tongue. Crow withdrew, but she held his head, keeping their lips locked. Before he could react further, she blew Dragonfire into his mouth.

A cooling sensation filled Crow’s body, but that was his mind playing tricks on him. Dragonfire was not cold. A tyrannical fire filled his body and compared to that, it only felt cold. Nin had never seen Night Fire, but she recognized the rarity of the flame. However, it couldn’t rival Dragonfire, which was ranked at the top of the lists. The heat wasn’t the only measure of a fire’s strength and purity.

Regardless, Dragonfire filled Crow’s body with an abundance of fire essence.

It empowered him so much that within his Soulscape he felt like a god. He knew he could build and destroy entire cities, provided he had enough power within him. Moving more by instinct than anything, he absorbed all rampant Night Fire, something he previously had not refined and did not control. A bright ball of condensed fire continued to grow within his hands, only now it contained elements of Night Fire and Dragonfire.

Even the fire-coated leaves of the massive oak tree at the center of his Soulscape weren’t immune to his absorption. The more he drew the fire to him, the more affinities revealed themselves. Initially, his affinity to the Wood element was the strongest, but fire now took that spot. The tree still took center stage, and the earth it rooted in no longer looked scorched. While he absorbed the fire, Nin rammed her fingers into the soil, and life emerged from it. Grass and miscellaneous plants formed.

Lily flew out of the tree and helped form a small pond—more like a puddle. Crow’s affinity to water was low, so she could only do so much. Her lightning element blasted out in a sphere with her at the point of origin. As it did, she cleansed the air of the burnt ozone, and the whole place lost that campfire smell.

Meanwhile, the ball in Crow’s hands had grown larger than him and wasn’t slowing down. There was so much fire that he tried to push it up and away from the surface of his Soulscape but found that it was cumbersome. Lily offered some of her energy, and Nin joined her.

Flying in front of Crow, Lily tapped his forehead. When he looked at her, she jerked her thumb toward Nin—his eyes strayed over toward Nin. Her golden eyes looked back and forth between fae and Crow. She wasn’t sure until just now, but beyond all imagining, she realized Crow had somehow bonded with a fae princess. It was enough to shock even a dragon.

“This Night Fire is fire, but as a soul-based fire, this one contains the essence of light and dark. Split them to create a balance. Otherwise, your Soulscape will remain unstable and possibly destroy itself,” Nin explained. “It is no wonder you didn’t want me to come here. This place is a mess, and girls don’t like dirty boys. Hmph.”

Crow started laughing.

“It is good you can laugh because I’m going to add to your problems. As an Emerald Dragon, I specialize in fire, metal, and earth. My presence is going to increase your affinity to those three elements, which means you’ll eventually need to balance that in this place too.”

“How do I separate the light and dark?”

“You understand that light and dark exist as a primordial pair—as such, they are inseparable. One doesn’t exist without the other. You need to split them so that they balance each other. If I hazarded a guess, I’d say condense that flaming ball until it was so bright that it’d naturally chase the darkness away toward the shadows of this place. Your Soulscape already has the beginnings of a planet, so you just need enough light to push the darkness to the other side of it.”

“While I’ve never heard of a primordial pair, I understand the concept of light and dark. My issue is I don’t know how to keep it all balanced. I’m already sensing my body is in a dangerous situation.”

“It is. Night Fire is extremely tyrannical, and you are absorbing a lot. Can you feel its sentience? It is trying to resist your control. You want this fire, then you must tame it and make it yours. Are you not Draoidh? You are a follower of the natural order, so sense it and let it guide you.”

Crow sighed and knew she was right. It almost mirrored what Dagda had said, and he realized he hadn’t fully understood all the profundities under that man’s guidance. Looking at the black fire surrounding his Soulscape, Crow felt overwhelmed. The ball of fire in his hand continued to grow, and he realized he went down a path of no return.

The natural order was always about balance—a synergy of elements that formed the ecology of all things. Taking away any part of that balance and the entire thing crumbles. In this place, Crow felt he was a god—the sole entity in control of all things within this Soulscape. Looking toward the sky, directly above the massive oak tree that took the centermost position of his world, he saw the breach. The entry point in which Night Fire had leaked into his soul.

Absorbing the fire faster than before, he simultaneously used the pressure of his godlike power. He made the sphere smaller, denser, and brighter. Again and again, he did this until his clothes were soaked and his body ached. Muscles quivered with exhaustion. Somewhere within that focus, he suddenly felt the sphere trying to pull everything toward it.

“Gravity!?” Nin gasped, and Crow almost lost control at her startled outburst. However, other than giving her a strange look, he kept going. She wasn’t wrong, and the weightlessness increased the more he condensed that fire. It finally clicked. The reason he felt the urge to create this sphere in the first place was just for this attraction force.

Leaping into the sky of his Soulscape, he flew as far out into the void of his steadily expanding soul and placed the fiery sphere near the breach. Sensing truths he didn’t fully understand, he set the sphere spinning, which created a sort of vacuum. It immediately drew all Night Fire entering this place toward the sphere. The enormous ball of fire continued to absorb Night Fire, so Crow would need to return periodically. If he didn’t continue to condense that sphere, he could imagine it exploding and destroying his soul. For now, it kept all those flames at bay.

Now that his Soulscape had natural light, it also had natural darkness. So he took away the essence of darkness from within the fire, which caused the sphere to glow even brighter. Rushing toward the other side of his landmass that hadn’t entirely formed a spherical shape yet, and released the dark essence. He could feel an abundance of both dark and light essence within this place. It was the first balance that had to be struck for the possibility of life.

He’d never thought about the fact he had already grown a large oak tree within this place. However, before now, he had never felt or sensed spirituality from the tree. It was different now because it had a vitality it lacked previously. It wasn’t strong, but he knew it would be in time.

Watching that previously charred soil, he could sense that it, too, was saturated with a vitality it lacked previously. There were even the motes of life slowly forming that he hadn’t created. He suspected that life itself would still be hard to achieve until he gained some affinity toward water.

After thinking about what to do next, he looked at that small puddle formed by Lily and took away some of the water. Crow then transformed it into vapor so he could create some clouds. With the tree directly below the pseudo sun, he placed the clouds off to the side, halfway between the light and dark. There was an elemental essence that he’d neglected until this point, and it had just enough that it could sustain itself, so he placed it inside the clouds. The cloud gained both darkness and light essence as the purple lightning crackled inside it. It lacked the power to strike the surface of his landmass, but he could clearly see the lightning inside the cloud. Lily gave Crow a thumbs up and then flew into the cloud. He smiled as he watched her swoop in and out of the lightning-infused clouds with glee.

Since his landmass was not quite a globe, the edges of the surface ended about thirty kilometers in any direction from the tree. Considering what he knew about geomancy, he created a mountain on the opposite side from where he put the cloud. It was closer to a massive stone slab than an actual mountain, but it was enough to create a cave. He partitioned off rooms that he currently had no use for but primarily created them for Nin. If she was living in this place, he wanted to have a home. He imagined she’d spend a lot of time here, hidden away from the world.

Finally, he released his control over the power within his Soulscape. He sat below the oak and sensed everything around him, looking for any instability, but found none. For now, everything had reached a sort of equilibrium.

“Impressive. But I have to ask, what is with the oak tree? Compared to your fire and darkness affinity, your wood element is weaker by far. And yet… you anchored everything around this enormous tree.”

“My affinities weren’t always like this. Before the curse, my affinity to wood used to be pure, and every other element was ten times weaker in comparison. My father once told me it is okay to change, but always remember who we are at the core of our being. This tree isn’t just about my wood affinity, but… a state of mind. Once, during an arena battle, I told everyone that I was an oak tree. Mighty, noble, sturdy, and steadfast, and I was unwilling to bend for anyone. The oak tree is in a state of perpetual change, but it always has the heart of an oak.”

“Notice anything different?” Nin asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve solved your soul issue. Sure, the curse is still there, and it’ll be a laborious process to increase your Source’s power. But…”

“The pain in my soul is fixed that easily?”

“Easily? You damned fool. Your soul has expanded beyond mortal limits. You used so many truths to create this place that it boggles the mind. You have no idea what you’ve done here. You will have almost no bottlenecks in your cultivation in the future. Soul Burn will make sure your mana stays pure and doesn’t form any negative side effects. Your Soulscape can’t create life yet, but with some water essence, it could sustain anything you brought here.”

Lily had arrived at some point and was nodding earnestly at everything Nin was saying. Crow looked over at her, and she pointed at the sun and shook her head in exasperation.

“Can you not talk anymore?” Crow asked her. He didn’t totally get what she was saying about the sun, but he understood enough. It was like she said that it shouldn’t exist.

Lily shook her head and pointed at Nin. She put her hands together and then split them apart as if breaking something and then pointed at her head and then Crow’s.

“Nin’s presence breaks our connection?”

Her hand went up and rocked back and forth. Her finger pointed at Crow and then up into the void, then mimed that they could talk.

“So if I’m outside, you can speak to my mind, but in here, it isn’t possible?”

“Close enough,” Nin said. “Mind, body, and spirit make up your soul. Previously, your spirit energy was mostly unused, but now that you’ve fully formed your Soulscape, it’s different. While I don’t fully know how you two are bonded or what means she used to communicate, I can gather that I’ve overwhelmed that link because of my size and power. So there isn’t enough mana left for her to create sound. Fae don’t have vocal cords and need to use specific mana, like wind, to create sound. A lightning fae naturally lacks that mana type and needs to borrow it. She should still be able to communicate telepathically using her lightning mana, but only through the link between you and your Soulscape.”

“You can’t talk to me even through touch?” Crow asked, looking at Lily.

“Idiot,” Nin snorted. “You want her to send lightning into your brain?”

Lily pointed at Nin and nodded.

“Is there a way to change that?” Crow asked. The tiny flying woman nodded her head vigorously, pointed at her heart, and then mimed it growing larger. “Got it. I need to become stronger.”

Once more, Lily nodded.

Nin tilted her head, and her eyes glossed over for a second. She giggled uncontrollably before walking over and wrapping her arms around Crow’s neck.

“You okay?” He asked.

“You should know that I’ve not officially entered your Soulscape yet. This was the last part of our bonding, so I’m only here spiritually at the moment. The next time I enter this place, it will be in mind, body, and spirit. Oh… and you are currently on top of me with our lips locked. Our clothes burned off a while ago.”

“What!?” Crow panicked and struggled to escape his Soulscape.

Neither of them saw Lily frown and stick her tongue out at the departing Nin.