Recaps

After the Empire and Castel paused their war, Theus organized an expedition to investigate the gods’ revival and the South Continent. His group crossed the Sea of No Light and found an industrial society whose people used human brains as machinery, while its church warned that the Sea’s rules were becoming deadly.

• Chloe rescued Nora from the wrecked artillery, and Nora’s crew regrouped before helping drive back the Empire’s forces.
• Theus rejected Jules’s ceasefire and alliance offers, then agreed with Isabella to pause the war and prepare to investigate the South Continent.
• Theus sent Chloe, Connor, Little Bu, and others on the refitted Black Pearl, while he kept Lina and Little Gwen near the front and began building a Stellar Furnace.
• Little Gwen told Lina that Theus had built her a new Stellar Furnace, and Lina admitted her role in aiding the Empire and trying to restrain Castel’s growth.
• The Black Pearl departed for the South Continent as Monica was left behind, while Theus later took Lina and Little Gwen through Blood Port in the walking Stellar Furnace.
• Chloe’s party reached the Corridor of Despair, discovered the Sea of No Light below, and met Theus after a submarine surfaced from the sea.
• Carter brought Theus’s group across the Sea of No Light to the South Continent, where they found advanced roads, submarines, and machines operated by living brains.
• At the Night Watchers’ church, Angelita explained that the Sea of No Light was the dream realm and warned that its awakening enemy and growing rules could kill people directly.

Theus united four powers for war while sacrifice rituals restored memories of humanity’s resistance and his creation of the Named Ones and avatars. The latest ritual revealed Blackstone as a weapon against the gods, but the gods revived on the South Continent, where dreamwalkers and their abilities became real.

• Theus agreed to supply the South Continent with industrial goods and mobilized Castel after Angelita warned that electrical radiation accelerated the gods’ awakening.
• Theus used Lina’s sacrifice ritual to recover the white-robed priest’s memories of failed rebellions against the gods and shared them with his allies.
• Theus established an alliance between the South Continent, Castel, the Empire, and the Duchy of Tis and founded a shared Academy of Sciences in Gem Bay.
• Theus recovered memories of creating the Named Ones and realized that the transmigrators were his avatars and that he had created the Throne Room and Golden Throne.
• Theus reopened contact with his former companions while the alliance expanded factories, trained armies, and sent engineers to the South Continent.
• Theus brought Little Gwen back to Bettis’s shop, where Bettis embraced her and welcomed her inside.
• Theus underwent another ritual and learned that Blackstone had injured a god and that he had created the Gear Sage and the Makers.
• Theus returned to the South Continent and learned from Angelita that the gods had revived but were being suppressed by dreamwalkers whose powers had become real.