Each star burned with the power of a different elent, either natural or Cursed, and had smaller stars revolving around it.
The Cursed Stars were paired with their respective counterparts, forming stable twin suns surrounded by star systems double the size of those belonging to the natural elents.
The red threads of the human side and the void of the Abomination were used both as a frawork, allowing the various star systems that comprised the Dragon constellation to move without drifting apart from each other.
The stars beat in unison with Lith's heart, releasing a sudden burst of flas. Most of the tis, the stars flared with erald fire that nurtured the threads and lit the Void with life.
Rarely, a burst of silvery fire erupted instead, draining the excess energy from the threads and stabilizing the Cursed Stars that had neared the overload point after being nurtured by the erald flas one ti too many.
Seldom, blue flas would engulf the Dragon constellation. When that happened, everything burned. The blue flas consud all forms of energy in their path until the Void smothered them or the silvery fire purged them.
Yet no matter how many tis they appeared, the blue flas never beca part of the whole. They were a dangerous, foreign elent that only aid to break free of its host and spread outward.
Lith could feel the blue fla's hunger, their desire to consu everything. It was similar to the hunger of the Void, yet different. The Void's hunger expressed a need that only asked to be fulfilled.
It was no more evil than the feeling of drowsiness after a long day at work.
The blue flas' hunger for destruction, instead, was a compulsion. Like a virus born to infect, the blue flas needed a host to ravage. They didn't care if their host died and they with him.
The blue flas didn't care what would happen once they engulfed the whole Mogar. A single, relentless thought drove their existence. They wanted to spread and multiply, consequences be damned.
Every burst of blue flas weakened the Voidfeather Dragon's life force, requiring several erald flares or a single silvery eruption to recover. Lith gained no resistance to the blue flas, and they foiled any attempt of the other flas, natural or Cursed, to bring the blue flas into their fold.
"Great Mother almighty." Many people said, and Baba Yaga would have gladly joined them if her role didn't demand otherwise.
"Yes, yes. It's all very interesting. Maybe too interesting, but that's not the reason we are here." She said. "Now turn into a Tiamat, Lith."
He stared at the burning constellation for a few seconds longer before shapeshifting again.
The constellation spread open, freeing the Void and the threads and allowing the stars to multiply.
Lith's life force turned into a galaxy composed of stars that were linked between them by a red thread. The blackness of the Void filled the space between them and also encapsulated the entire structure, protecting it from external forces.
The protective shell of the Void passively absorbed the world energy and foreign mana in its surroundings, giving them Lith's energy signature and then feeding them to the stars it protected.
The Abomination side didn't just take, it also gave back and nurtured the other aspects of Lith's life force. The Dragon's life force, instead, rhythmically flooded the auxiliary stars with elental power, changing their color.
After that, the temporary elental stars would flare up into their corresponding Cursed Elent before going back to the violet. The elental and Cursed Stars only manifested in neighboring pairs so that the final result was always perfectly balanced.
The black stars were scattered among the colored stars and connected to the rest of the structure by the red threads, alternating between emitting pulses of death energy and absorbing the power from the colored stars.
Yet it wasn't a parasitic relationship so much as a symbiotic one. The black stars fueled the life force with their own power while also siphoning the excess energy produced under stress in order to keep the whole galaxy stable.
Also, the collected energy wasn't stolen. The black stars stored and released it whenever it was needed. In the sa way, the red threads that connected the stars allowed them to exchange elental power, life force, and mana.
The color of the threads changed in the process, matching that of the elent they carried. Stars and threads beat in a colorful symphony that ensured the balance and kept the death force of the Void in check.
At the center of the galaxy, burned a giant bright violet star around which everything else orbited. The surface of the giant violet was covered in black currents that flared up from ti to ti, turning the surface of the star silvery and sotis even forming a corona of blue flas.
Baba Yaga changed the angle to look for the elental spheres and the vortices the Tiamat was supposed to have as an evolved human, but this ti she zood out instead of in.
"Fuck sideways." Lith said the mont he could see them.
The seven elental spheres were not gathered in one place, but scattered across his life force. Each elental sphere enveloped a cluster of elental stars until their motion carried them into another sphere.
The Spirit Sphere, instead, overlapped with the giant violet, the only celestial body fixed in space. This way, the energy of the giant violet and the erald of the Spirit Sphere spread evenly throughout the life force at all tis.
They flooded every star, thread, and corner of the Void, filling them with the power of life and neutralizing the occasional wild surges from an elental sphere they couldn't withstand on their own.
The whirlpools, instead, were located at the fringes of the Void. The darkness insulated and filtered the world energy captured by the vortices, delivering it in a form that could never harm the galaxy the Void protected.
"Is this your Tiamat life force?" Baba Yaga asked.
"Yes." Lith gave the obvious question its obvious answer.
"Shapeshift into a human." She said, and he complied.
The black scales disappeared under the pink skin, his extra eyes closed and faded, and his body reabsorbed the extra limbs.
Lith looked perfectly human, but the Infirmary begged to differ.
His life force was unchanged, still a swirling galaxy surrounded by an endless Void. The galaxy had simply reshaped itself to look like a colossus, but it was made of stars, threads, and Void.
It looked human, but it was not. It was a disguise no different from that an Emperor Beast or Fae would wear.
"So what?" Morok shrugged. "We all knew this already."
"Wait, what?" Quylla was flabbergasted. "You knew about this?"
"You didn't?" Morok was even more flabbergasted. "Wasn't it obvious from the mont we learned Lith is a rank 3 human? I an, what part of him looks like an evolved human to you?"
The Tyrant pointed at the Tiamat.
"No one." Quylla had to admit.
"Exactly. Just like my human appearance." Morok shrugged. "I didn't say anything because I know how protective of his secrets Lith is. I simply assud he wasn't ready to share, and I respected his desire for privacy."
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