01/24/2026
Markus remembered back to visiting his friend Professor Bianca, an Owlin instructor at the Farseer Academy for the Gifted in Serenity Shores, and having her inspect his soul using her powers of Animancy, or spirit magic.
Bianca commented on the unique natureof Markus's soul, and its ties to Lloviatar, and informed him that she believed the soul was always changing with every experience on has in life.
Back at Ology in the present, Gift said goodbye to Eden with a thank you for affecting his life such that he could discern his mission from his feelings, and do the right thing. He credited Eden and Zeb for that, and offered to consult them once he'd destroyed the gods on what to do with all the divine energy.
Elowyn worked through the night on the telescope in the observatory alongside May, until they were interrupted by the arrival of Tambor and Melil, who claimed they'd been working on finding a song that could "release people from a place they'd been trapped."
May recorded the songs on two spherical recording devices, and Gift arrived, attempting to consume Tambor and Melil, but the Benefactor intervened, moving Ology's rooms to separate them and hide the two gods.
Eowyn moved fast to study the stars in a new way with the updated observatory and discovered a number of things:
Every planet around Vault was on an elliptical plane, and in the center were the three moons, meaning every planet had the same moons.
The three moons aligned once for each planet every several thousand years, and Vault's alignment would be at the beginning of the year 2400, and would be best viewed from the Final Sea.
Jaspin showed up to the Observatory to ask for Markus's help in infiltrating the Beneficiaries and discovering what they were up to.
Star and Scale made their way to the barn-like room the Beneficiaries had chosen for their base, and found they were getting riled up to find and capture Melil by the emissaries from Demon's Hollow, Ravana and Chalice.
They wanted Melil for bait to draw Gift into a trap.
The group came up with a plan, but before it could be enacted, the Erudians showed up and attacked. Quick thinking from Eden prevented bloodshed, and she lead them out of the tower and to safety from the possible fight to come.
Meanwhile, Zeb and the rest of the group got the Beneficiaries out of the tower as well due to some shenanigans involving shapeshifting into Melil.
When the group once again confronted Ravana and Chalice, Ravana seemed to be interested in Markus's soul, and they sooned discovered Ravana was an Animancer, as he ripped Markus's soul from his body to inspect it, caring little for the effect it had.
As the group threatened violence, Gift showed up, causing Ravana to shift his focus from Markus, and the fight began.
Tumbling through Ology as Calypso, or the Benefactor, changed rooms around to throw Ravana and Chalice off-guard, the two emissaries saw they were being outmatched by the god and his party of Star & Scale, so began channeling a demon.
Tambor and Melil showed up and sang a song that threw the two emissaries into the very rift they were channeling into the Abyss, removing them from Ology.
Afterwards, Tambor surrendered to Gift, claiming she'd just wanted to find the song she'd passed on to May earlier, and she was ready to go. Melil claimed he would go where she went, and so Gift took their divine power, killing them both.
Gift asked for understanding from Star & Scale as he left them to do what he needed to go around Vault. The group seemed to come to peace with it, and hugged him, sending him off to continue the war against the gods.
The peole of Ology returned, Eden and Zeb finished their synthetic wing research, and the group said their goodbyes to new friends from around Ology.
They climbed to the top of the tower, and Markus left to go north and search the Hollow Hills for Rosario, a teleportation expert, while the rest of the group took to the skies toward Jawhara, where they'd seek Garrick's contact to allow them to infiltrate the Nine Hells and get back Lubomir.