The Call of Asheron:
An Epic of Four Souls

Three weeks before the whirlwinds began appearing across the kingdom, Duulak the Twice-Blessed stood before the Chromatic Court and proved himself a fool.

He knew it even as he drew the ritual circle in phosphorescent chalk, even as he measured the angles with obsessive precision, even as Korvain—bless the boy—held the copper resonance frame steady despite trembling hands. The Liege Paramount sat elevated on the Celestial Throne, surrounded by advisors whose silk robes whispered like disapproval given voice. To his left, the Merchant Council, fingers heavy with rings of calculated wealth. To his right, the Arcane Assembly, his supposed peers, their faces showing that particular expression scholars reserve for watching a colleague approach the cliff edge of hubris.

• ‘Master Duulak,’ the Liege’s voice carried the careful neutrality of power watching a potential threat. ‘You claim this demonstration will revolutionize our understanding of dimensional theory?’

• ‘Not claim, Magnificence. Prove.’ Duulak adjusted the final angle of the resonance frame, checking it against calculations scrawled across his left forearm in emergency ink. ‘For seventeen years I’ve theorized about parallel worlds—realities adjacent to ours, separated by membranes thinner than thought. Today, I show you direct observation. Controlled rifts into probability spaces. Pure theory made visible.’

• ‘And safe, you assure us?’ The Master of the Mercantile spoke, his concern wrapped in the language of risk assessment. ‘Safe enough to demonstrate before the highest assembly of Qush?’

Duulak should have heard the warning. Should have recognized that when men of power ask about safety, they’re really asking about control, about what happens when your clever trick escapes its cage and savages the audience. But he was forty-seven and brilliant and had spent too many years being right about things other people couldn’t even conceive, and so he smiled with the confidence of a man who has never had his confidence truly tested.

• ‘Magnificence, I am the Twice-Blessed. I transferred Rashida’s consciousness across the boundary of death itself. Compared to that, this is merely… sightseeing.’

Laughter rippled through the assembly, more nervous than amused. They knew Rashida’s story. The girl who had died and been reborn, who had thanked him and then walked into the desert and never returned. The miracle that tasted of madness.

He began the incantation. The words were Empyrean in origin, recovered from ruins that pre-dated the Sundering War, but he’d modified them, improved them, made them sing with mathematical precision. Around him, the air began to thicken, reality developing texture like water disturbed by swimming things unseen. The resonance frame hummed, not sound but the promise of sound, vibration in dimensions the human ear wasn’t designed to detect.

Korvain gasped. The boy had good instincts—he felt it before the others, the way reality was thinning like fabric stretched too taut.

And then it tore.

The rift opened in the center of the ritual circle, a vertical slash in the world’s skin. Through it, Duulak could see… elsewhere. A city that was Qush but wasn’t, where the Institution’s obsidian spires were shattered ruins, where purple fungus grew across surfaces that should have been sterile stone. A reality where something had gone catastrophically wrong, decades or centuries ago, and no one remained to mourn the outcome.

• ‘You see!’ Triumph swelled in his chest, bright and chemical as any drug. ‘A parallel reality, a might-have-been made observable! We can study causality itself, understand how choices cascade across dimensional boundaries—’

Something looked back.

Later, Duulak would try to explain what he’d seen, but language fractured around the attempt. It wasn’t that the thing was indescribable—it was that description itself became inadequate, like trying to explain color to those born blind or temperature to those who had never felt heat or cold. There was vastness. Intelligence. And hunger of a sort that made the simple hunger of predators seem almost loving by comparison.

The Archmage Salim, his longtime rival, saw it too. The man’s face went from professional skepticism to absolute terror in the span of a heartbeat. Three courtiers—sitting closest to the rift—began to seize. Not collapse but seize, their bodies rigid as their minds touched something consciousness was never meant to touch.

• ‘Close it!’ someone screamed.

• ‘Duulak, for the love of all gods, close it NOW!’

His hands moved with trained precision, even as panic fluttered bird-like in his chest. The counter-incantation, the reversal sequence, the mathematical unwinding of what he’d so carefully wound together. The rift shuddered, contracted, and finally—mercy of mercies—sealed.

Silence fell across the Chromatic Court like ash after fire.

The three courtiers were still convulsing. Court physicians rushed forward, but Duulak could see from their faces they had no idea how to treat this. How do you heal someone whose mind has been shown the architecture of their own insignificance? How do you mend consciousness that has learned there are things that should not be learned?

The Liege Paramount descended from the Celestial Throne, and the rustle of his robes was the only sound in that vast chamber. He approached until he stood before Duulak, close enough that only they could hear the words that followed.

• ‘You are the Twice-Blessed,’ the Liege said, his voice carrying the chill of absolute authority. ‘Blessed once by whatever gods watch fools, blessed twice by the tolerance of those you serve. There will not be a third blessing. You will cease these experiments immediately. You will submit all research to the Arcane Assembly for review. And you will remember, Master Duulak, that knowledge pursued without wisdom is not enlightenment. It is merely arrogance finding novel methods of causing harm.’

Duulak wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that observation requires risk, that understanding demands we look at things that might look back, that the advancement of knowledge has always required those willing to approach the edge. But three people lay seizing from having glimpsed what his pride had revealed, and his mouth tasted of ashes, and so he bowed his head and said nothing at all.

The assembly dispersed in horrified whispers. Korvain helped him gather the equipment, neither speaking. They loaded the resonance frame into its carrying case with the care of morticians handling the dead, and walked back toward the Institution through streets that seemed somehow narrower than before, as if the whole city had contracted in sympathy with Duulak’s shriveled sense of himself.

Yasmin was waiting at their modest home near the Institution’s grounds, dinner warm on the table, her expression carefully neutral in the way of those who have learned not to ask questions they don’t want answered.

• ‘It went poorly, then,’ she observed.

• ‘Three courtiers are having seizures because I showed them something their minds cannot process. The Liege has forbidden further experimentation. My colleagues now regard me as dangerous rather than brilliant. So yes, my love, it went poorly.’

She brought him wine, placed food before him that he didn’t taste, sat across the table in silence that felt more comfortable than any words. Twelve years of marriage had taught her that some failures were too large for comfort, that sometimes a man needed to sit with his shame until it became something he could carry rather than something that crushed him.

• ‘Will you stop?’ she asked finally. ‘The experiments, the theories, the pushing toward things that perhaps should not be pushed toward?’

• ‘I don’t know.’ And it was true. He genuinely didn’t know. The rational part of him recognized he’d been reckless, that he’d prioritized discovery over safety, that he’d let pride guide his hand when wisdom should have stayed it. But the other part of him—the part that had first looked at the world and wondered why—that part whispered that understanding required risk, that safely ignorant was still ignorant, that every boundary of knowledge had been pushed by someone willing to stand too close to the edge.

He slept poorly that night, and in his dreams, something vast looked back at him with what might have been recognition or might have been appetite or might have been something for which no human word existed.

When he woke, sweating and gasping in the pre-dawn darkness, Korvain was pounding on their door with news of the first whirlwind.

Twenty-two days after the Chromatic Court disaster, Duulak’s study had become a temple to obsession.

Maps covered every wall, each marked with symbols that would have meant nothing to anyone but him—here a whirlwind sighting, there a pattern in the reports, everywhere the desperate attempt to impose order on chaos. His journals lay open across every surface, pages dense with calculations that spilled into margins and then onto the walls themselves when paper proved insufficient. He had taken to writing directly on his skin again, a habit from his student days when understanding came faster than the ability to record it.

Korvain sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by testimonies from across the kingdom. The boy was twenty-four and brilliant in the way of those who hadn’t yet learned that brilliance could be dangerous, and he read each report aloud with the patience of a monk reciting scripture.

• ‘Three more sightings in the Northern Reach. Village of Khayyaban reports a vortex appearing near the common well, present for six hours before vanishing. No casualties, though several children attempted to approach it before adults intervened.’

• ‘Time of manifestation?’

• ‘Third hour past dawn.’

• ‘Mark it.’ Duulak made a note on his arm, the ink joining a constellation of other times, other places, slowly resolving into a pattern his conscious mind hadn’t quite grasped but his instincts insisted was there.

The door opened without knock—only one person in Qush held that privilege. Yasmin entered carrying tea and bread, her disapproval as carefully controlled as everything else about her.

• ‘You’re writing on yourself again.’

• ‘Paper is too slow.’

• ‘Paper can be organized. Paper doesn’t make you look like a madman when you walk the streets.’

• ‘I haven’t been walking the streets.’

• ‘Yes, I noticed.’ She set the tea before him with deliberate care. ‘Three days now. Korvain, when did he last sleep?’

• ‘I… truthfully, Lady Yasmin, I don’t know. He was calculating when I arrived yesterday morning, and he was still calculating when I left last night, and he was calculating when I arrived this morning.’

Duulak looked up from his papers, momentarily confused by the intrusion of human concern into the clean world of numbers and patterns. Yasmin’s face showed the particular expression she reserved for moments when his work had consumed him so completely he forgot about the flesh that housed his mind.

• ‘Have I been neglecting my health?’ he asked, genuinely uncertain.

• ‘You’ve been neglecting your humanity. There’s a difference, though you seem determined to erase it. Eat. Sleep. Remember that you’re made of meat and bone, not merely mathematics.’

• ‘But the pattern—’

• ‘—will still be there after you’ve rested. The whirlwinds have been appearing for weeks. They will not cease existing simply because you close your eyes for a few hours.’

She had that particular note in her voice, the one that suggested this was not a request but an intervention. Duulak sighed and reached for the bread, chewing without tasting, drinking the tea without noticing its temperature. Yasmin watched to ensure he actually consumed both before speaking again.

• ‘Tell me what you’ve found. In words I can understand, not in your equations.’

• ‘The whirlwinds are not random.’

• ‘That much even the priests have determined, though they attribute it to divine displeasure.’

• ‘They correlate.’ He gestured to the maps, to the symbols that covered them like a rash. ‘Temporally and spatially, they correlate with the demonstration I performed at the Chromatic Court. The first appeared twenty-two days ago, which is exactly three weeks after I opened that rift. The distribution follows a decay pattern that matches the theoretical resonance spread I calculated for dimensional membrane stress.’

Yasmin studied the maps with the same careful attention she gave to architectural plans. She was no scholar, but she had spent twelve years married to one, and had developed an ability to see through his explanations to the truth beneath.

• ‘You think you caused this.’

• ‘I think I may have caused this. The distinction is important.’

• ‘Is it? If a man thinks he may have poisoned the well, does he wait for certainty before warning the village?’

The question hit harder than she likely intended. He set down the bread, no longer able to pretend to eat.

• ‘I showed something vast and terrible how to look at our world. I created a crack in the membrane between here and elsewhere, and now those cracks are spreading. Each whirlwind is another place where reality has worn thin, another potential opening through which…’

• ‘Through which what?’

• ‘I don’t know. That’s what terrifies me. I don’t know what I’ve invited to see us. I don’t know if it’s observing or preparing. I don’t know if my demonstration was the first knock on a door we should have left sealed, or if I merely confirmed what was already coming.’

Korvain looked up from his reports, young face drawn with exhaustion and concern. The boy had been his shadow for three years now, learning theory and practice in equal measure, and had earned the right to speak uncomfortable truths.

• ‘Master, if you caused this—even partially—doesn’t that suggest you might be able to stop it? If you understood the mechanism of opening, shouldn’t you be able to determine the mechanism of closing?’

• ‘Or of widening it catastrophically in the attempt.’ Duulak ran his hands through his hair, feeling the grease of days unwashed, the physical neglect Yasmin had noted. ‘The mathematics suggests the whirlwinds are stable, purposeful. They’re not tears in reality but doors being carefully opened. Which means there’s intelligence behind them. Which means attempting to close them might provoke a response we’re unprepared for.’

• ‘And leaving them open?’

• ‘Also might provoke a response. Or might not. I’ve created a situation where action and inaction are equally dangerous, and the only way to determine which is to choose and live with the consequences. Or die from them, as the case may be.’

Yasmin touched his shoulder, a gesture of affection and anchor both, reminding him that his body existed in space, that he was not merely disembodied intellect floating in seas of theory.

• ‘If you caused this,’ she said carefully, ‘can you fix it?’

• ‘I don’t know if ”fix” is the right word. Reality isn’t a broken vase you can glue back together. But can I understand it? Can I perhaps… negotiate with it, redirect it, transform danger into something less than catastrophic? That I might be able to do. If I’m willing to take the risk. If I’m willing to potentially make things worse in the attempt to make them better.’

• ‘You’ve never been good at walking away from risks.’

• ‘No. I’ve been good at convincing myself that risks are really opportunities in uncomfortable guises.’

A runner arrived at the door, one of the Institution’s messengers, barely sixteen and panting from speed. Yasmin answered, exchanged words too quiet for Duulak to hear, then turned back with an expression he couldn’t quite read.

• ‘The largest whirlwind yet has appeared in the Institution’s central courtyard. They’re requesting your presence immediately.’

Duulak stood, joints protesting three days of stillness, and reached for his formal robes. Korvain scrambled to gather their instruments—measurement tools, crystalline resonators, journals for recording observations. This was it. This was the moment where theory met reality, where his understanding would prove either sufficient or fatally inadequate.

Yasmin caught his hand as he turned toward the door, her grip tight enough to hurt.

• ‘Come back,’ she said simply.

• ‘I always do.’

• ‘This time I mean it. Not just your body returning by reflex while your mind chases equations. Actually come back. Look at me and see me, not just an outline of a person-shaped concern interrupting your work.’

He looked at her—really looked, perhaps for the first time in weeks. Yasmin was forty-three, with silver threading through black hair, crow’s feet at her eyes from decades of squinting at architectural plans, hands scarred from years of working with stone and mortar. She had married him believing she would share his life, and instead had received only the edges of it, the leftover moments after his work took its fill.

• ‘I see you,’ he said, and tried to mean it. ‘I will come back. And when I do, perhaps we can discuss whether this life we’ve built together has any foundation worth maintaining, or if we’re both simply maintaining momentum out of habit.’

• ‘That’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me in months.’

• ‘Impending potential catastrophe clarifies one’s priorities.’

She kissed his cheek, a gesture more formal than affectionate, and released him to whatever awaited in the Institution’s courtyard.

As they walked through Qush’s evening streets, Korvain beside him and stars beginning to emerge overhead through the celestial sphere’s holes, Duulak felt the weight of knowing settle across his shoulders like a cloak woven from obligations. He knew too much to walk away, too little to be confident in his actions, and just enough to recognize that either quality could kill him.

But he had never learned to walk away from edges. And so he walked toward the Institution, toward the whirlwind, toward whatever knowledge awaited him on the other side of fear.

The Institution of Theoretical Thaumaturgy’s central courtyard had been designed by Yasmin herself, eight years ago when her reputation as an architect had drawn the attention of those with money and vision. She had created a space that married functionality with beauty—obsidian paving stones arranged in geometric patterns that helped with magical resonance, raised beds containing herbs useful for reagent work, a central fountain whose water flowed in patterns that soothed the mind and soul.

All of that was barely visible now, obscured by the thing that swirled in the courtyard’s heart.

The whirlwind was beautiful. Duulak’s first thought, approaching through the gathering crowd of scholars and students, was of beauty so profound it became almost painful to witness. It was colors that shouldn’t exist, moving in patterns that hurt to watch but compelled watching, a vertical slash in the evening air that seemed to contain depths impossible in three dimensions.

• ‘Master Duulak!’ The Dean of Theoretical Studies pushed through the crowd, relief and terror competing in her expression. ‘We were attempting measurements, but anyone who approaches too closely begins to… they hear things. Words that aren’t words. A kind of song.’

• ‘I hear it from here.’ He did. Not with his ears but with something deeper, something that preceded language and bypassed rationality entirely. The whirlwind sang of questions answered, of mysteries illuminated, of understanding so complete it would make all his previous knowledge seem like a child’s first attempts at counting.

Korvain unpacked their instruments with shaking hands. The crystalline resonator, carefully calibrated to detect dimensional membrane stress. The mathematical tables for calculating spatial distortions. The journals for recording observations that might be the last thing they ever recorded.

Duulak approached slowly, measuring each step, watching how reality behaved near the whirlwind. Space was bent here, not broken but curved like light through water, and he could see the mathematics of it written in the way shadows fell wrong, in the way sound arrived fractionally delayed from lips moving.

At ten paces, the song intensified. Not louder but deeper, reaching past his ears into the part of his mind that had always wondered why, that had never been satisfied with the surface of things.

• ‘It’s calling to specific people,’ he said, loud enough for the gathered scholars to hear. ‘Not everyone equally. It has… preferences. Criteria. It’s selecting.’

• ‘Selecting for what?’ the Dean asked.

• ‘For those who’ve spent their lives asking questions that comfort couldn’t answer. For those who’ve looked at the boundaries of understanding and refused to be satisfied with maps that labeled the edges ”here be dragons.” For those who are… ’ He paused, recognizing the truth even as he spoke it. ‘For those who are exactly like me.’

At five paces, he could see through it to something beyond. Not just another place but another mode of being, a reality structured on principles adjacent to but fundamentally different from this one. The sky there was purple. The stars, if they were stars, moved. And in the distance, structures that might have been buildings or organisms or concepts given sufficient complexity to develop architecture.

Korvain touched his arm, breaking the trance of observation.

• ‘Master, we’ve been measuring for three minutes and seventeen seconds. You’ve been standing perfectly still, staring at it, for all of that time. The resonator shows the membrane is stable but selective. It’s allowing observation but preventing casual passage. You’d have to choose to enter. It won’t pull you through against your will.’

• ‘No,’ Duulak agreed, his voice distant in his own ears. ‘It’s far more subtle than force. It’s showing me what I could learn, what I could understand, what questions I could answer if I simply had the courage to step through. It knows exactly how to tempt me because it’s been watching. That thing I showed the Chromatic Court? It wasn’t looking at them. It was looking at me. Learning how I think, what I value, how to phrase its invitation in terms I cannot refuse.’

Behind him, the gathered scholars muttered and argued. Some called for sealing the courtyard, for preventing anyone from approaching the whirlwind. Others demanded further study, measurement, careful documentation before any action. A few—and Duulak could hear the hunger in their voices—wanted to know what would happen if someone did step through, wanted to volunteer for that experiment if the institution would sanction it.

He turned away from the whirlwind, the motion requiring physical effort as if he were pulling against invisible currents, and addressed the assembly.

• ‘I believe I may have caused this. My demonstration at the Chromatic Court—the dimensional rift I opened—it showed something vast and intelligent how to perceive our reality. These whirlwinds are that thing’s response. They’re not invasions but invitations. Doors being opened to see who might be curious enough, desperate enough, or foolish enough to walk through.’

• ‘Then we bar the doors,’ the Dean said firmly. ‘We seal this courtyard and prevent access.’

• ‘That won’t stop them from appearing elsewhere. There have been forty-three documented sightings across Qush alone, more in the outer provinces. We can prevent access to one portal, but we cannot prevent their proliferation. And if my theory is correct, preventing investigation might itself be dangerous. If this intelligence is testing us, measuring our response, then isolation might provoke escalation.’

• ‘So what do you propose?’

Duulak looked back at the whirlwind, at the impossible beauty of it, at the promise of understanding that sang through dimensions he could sense but not name.

• ‘I propose that someone who understands the risk goes through. Someone who might be able to communicate, to negotiate, to determine what this intelligence wants and whether it can be reasoned with or must be resisted. Someone whose responsibility this is because their actions created the situation.’

• ‘Master, no!’ Korvain’s voice cracked with the fear of youth witnessing someone they admired approach the cliff edge. ‘We don’t know what’s on the other side! You could die, or worse than die—you saw what happened to those courtiers who glimpsed it for mere seconds!’

• ‘I saw what happened to those unprepared to witness the incomprehensible. But I’ve spent my life preparing for exactly that. My consciousness has been transmitted across death’s boundary and returned. I’ve performed calculations that required holding more variables in mind than human thought was meant to contain. I’ve touched the edges of madness in pursuit of understanding and stepped back before it consumed me. If anyone can survive that thing’s attention, can walk through its door and maintain enough coherence to return with useful knowledge, it’s me.’

He didn’t mention that he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to return. Didn’t admit that part of him—growing louder with each day of marriage growing staler, each student who learned his lessons and surpassed his understanding, each proof that his greatest achievements were behind him—wondered if walking through that door might be the best thing he could do. Go forward into mystery rather than backward into comfortable irrelevance.

Yasmin would understand. Or she wouldn’t. Either way, she had built a life sturdy enough to survive his absence. Perhaps that was the cruelest kindness he could offer her—the freedom to finally live fully rather than existing in the margins of his obsession.

The Dean was speaking, arguing against what she recognized as his decision more than his proposal, but Duulak was no longer listening. He had turned back to the whirlwind, to the song that promised answers to questions he’d spent forty-seven years accumulating.

Korvain caught his sleeve, desperation giving the young man boldness.

• ‘Master, please. If not for yourself, then for those who’ve learned from you. For those who still need your guidance. For… for me. You’re the only one who’s ever looked at my theorems and seen genius rather than blasphemy. Don’t abandon that. Don’t abandon us.’

The words hit harder than they should have. Duulak paused, hand half-raised toward the whirlwind, and looked at his apprentice. Korvain was brilliant and would likely surpass him within a decade, would likely make discoveries that rendered Duulak’s life work preparatory rather than definitive. But the boy needed guidance, needed someone to see his potential and nurture it rather than fear it.

Like Rashida had needed. Like Rashida had deserved. And he had failed her so completely she’d walked into the desert rather than continue existing in a world that could produce her resurrection and his carelessness in equal measure.

• ‘Korvain, listen carefully. If I don’t return—’

• ‘Master—’

• ‘If I don’t return within one hour, you will seal this courtyard. You will convince the Dean to establish a perimeter around all whirlwind sites. You will continue my research using the journals in my study, and you will be far more cautious than I was about the boundary between curiosity and catastrophe. Promise me.’

• ‘I… I promise. But you will return. You have to return. You’re the Twice-Blessed. You always survive what should kill you.’

• ‘Blessed once by luck, blessed twice by other people’s skill at cleaning up my mistakes. There is no third blessing, Korvain. Remember that. Sometimes the only thing that survives our ambitions is the lesson they teach to those who come after.’

He released the boy’s sleeve gently and approached the whirlwind. At three paces, the song became symphony, multi-dimensional harmonies that his mind shouldn’t have been able to parse but did, showing him patterns in reality’s structure that theoretical thaumaturgy had guessed at but never confirmed.

At one pace, he could see individual threads of possibility, branching futures that split from the moment of his choice. In one branch, he stepped back, lived out his days in comfortable irrelevance, and died having proven himself wise. In another, he stepped through, learned wonders, and returned to reshape human understanding of existence. In a third, he stepped through and was destroyed so completely that even the lifestone’s magic couldn’t reconstitute him. In a fourth, he stepped through and became something neither fully human nor entirely other, living as bridge between realities until memory of his origin faded into mathematics.

All possible. All equally real from the perspective of the whirlwind’s architecture, which existed partially outside time’s linear flow.

His final thought before stepping through was of Yasmin’s face—not as she was now, worn by years of existing adjacent to his obsession, but as she had been when they first met, when she’d looked at his equations and seen beauty instead of madness, when she’d believed that loving a scholar might mean partnership rather than spectating his slow abandonment of human connection.

He stepped through.

Reality inverted.

Colors he’d never named flooded his perception, mapped onto wavelengths that didn’t exist in any spectrum his world contained. Sound became texture became scent became concept, his senses tangling as his mind tried to parse input that human neurology had never evolved to handle. Distance lost meaning—he was simultaneously standing on alien soil and still in the courtyard and scattered across a thousand adjacent possibilities, observing himself from perspectives that should have been impossible.

Above him, if ”above” meant anything here, a purple sky stretched toward horizons that curved wrong. Two suns—one larger and more golden than his world’s, one smaller and blue-white—hung in positions that suggested late afternoon or early morning or some temporal state that had no equivalent in linear time.

The air tasted of copper and ozone and something organic that his vocabulary refused to name. When he breathed, his lungs accepted it, but his body recognized wrongness at a cellular level, every mitochondria suddenly aware it was processing chemistry that should have been poison.

He was standing on something. Ground, technically, though the surface had a crystalline quality that made it look simultaneously solid and liquid, as if he were walking on frozen light or solidified thought. In the distance, structures rose—were they buildings or mountains or organisms or architectural expressions of mathematical concepts that had achieved sufficient complexity to develop physical manifestation?

Behind him, the whirlwind still swirled, visible from this side as well, showing the courtyard where Korvain and the Dean and dozens of scholars stared at the space where he’d stood seconds or centuries ago, time flowing differently between realities such that correlation of moments became an approximation rather than a fact.

He could return. Step back through, claim brief observation, live to study his notes and theorize from safety.

Or he could turn. Walk forward into this impossible landscape. Learn whether his demonstration had opened a door to understanding or damnation.

Duulak the Twice-Blessed—hero of the Sundering War, slayer of the Void Drake, first mage to successfully transmute consciousness itself, husband who had failed his wife and teacher who had failed his students and scholar who had perhaps doomed his entire world through hubris wrapped in curiosity—turned away from the whirlwind.

And walked into the purple-skied unknown, toward whatever knowledge awaited those foolish enough to ask questions that comfort insisted should never be answered.

Behind him, in another world, Yasmin waited at a window, watching for her husband’s return and understanding, with the particular wisdom of those who love scholars, that she might wait forever and he would still consider himself justified in the choice that left her waiting.

The whirlwind sang on, beautiful and patient, offering passage to any who shared Duulak’s particular genius and particular blindness, that combination of brilliance and arrogance that turns understanding into obligation and obligation into catastrophe.

In the distance, something that might have been laughter or wind or the sound of reality acknowledging a fool who had finally met his match echoed across the crystalline wasteland.

And Duulak, who had never learned to fear the edges of maps, walked toward it with the certainty of a man who had confused knowledge with wisdom and confidence with competence, and who was about to learn the cost of that confusion measured in currency more permanent than gold and more precious than pride.

The clicking sounds resolved themselves into geometry.

Duulak had been walking for perhaps twenty minutes—though time felt negotiable here, as if duration were a convention rather than a law—when his scholarly mind finally imposed structure on the alien soundscape. The clicks weren’t random. They were echolocation, triangulation, the mathematical expression of a predator mapping its environment through sound.

Which meant something was hunting him.

He stopped walking. The crystalline ground beneath his feet rang softly with the cessation of movement, a sustained note that took too long to fade. Everything here had resonance, as if reality itself had become a musical instrument played by forces he couldn’t yet perceive.

The purple sky offered no proper sense of time. The binary suns hung in positions that suggested either late afternoon or early morning, but the shadows they cast intersected at angles that defied Euclidean geometry. Duulak found himself calculating the mathematics of impossible light, his mind seeking refuge in numbers even as his body prepared for whatever was producing those sounds.

There. Movement against the crystalline formations to his left. Something large, low to the ground, moving with the fluid precision of a creature perfectly adapted to its environment. Duulak’s hand went to his chest, fingers tracing the gestures for a basic illumination spell before his conscious mind had fully registered the threat.

The Olthoi emerged from behind a formation that might have been mineral or might have been architectural—the distinction seemed meaningless here, where geology expressed intent. It was beautiful in the way that mathematics could be beautiful: elegant economy of form, every curve serving multiple functions, chitin that reflected the binary suns’ light in patterns that suggested both armor and sensory array.

It was also absolutely terrifying.

Duulak had read accounts of the behemak, the sand wyrms of the deep desert, the void drakes he’d helped slay during the Sundering War. None of them had prepared him for this. The Olthoi was larger than a horse, its compound eyes reflecting his image in a thousand faceted fragments, its mandibles opening and closing with the methodical patience of something that had no doubt about the outcome of this encounter.

• ‘I mean no harm,’ Duulak said, his voice sounding thin in the alien air. He spoke in Gharu’ndi first, then Roulean, then the ancient Empyrean he’d recovered from texts. The words felt inadequate, but communication had to be attempted. ‘I am a scholar, not a warrior. I seek only understanding.’

The creature tilted its head—a disturbingly human gesture from something so alien—and clicked a sequence that Duulak’s mathematical mind immediately tried to parse. Was that language? Or merely the sound of a predator calculating the optimal strike angle?

He drew the first glyph in the air, phosphorescent light trailing his fingers. The spell was simple: a geometric pattern that would project his peaceful intent through shared mathematical principles. It had worked during the Sundering War when words failed, creating a common language of pure form.

The Olthoi’s response was to charge.

Duulak barely managed to complete the defensive ward before those mandibles closed on where his torso had been. The spell was supposed to create a barrier of solidified air, resistant but not harmful, a shield that demonstrated capability without aggression. Instead, the magic detonated like thunder, flinging the Olthoi backward with enough force to shatter several crystalline formations.

Duulak gasped, not from exertion but from the sensation itself. On Ispar, casting had always felt like pushing—will against resistance, consciousness negotiating with a substrate that preferred its default configurations. Here, magic felt like surfing. The quality-space saturation was so dense he could almost see it, perceive the correlations between consciousness and reality as shimmering threads that his bandwidth could finally hold. His defensive intention had barely formed before the substrate accepted it, amplified it, actualized it with an eagerness that terrified him.

The air didn’t just taste of ozone—it tasted of potential, copper and lightning and something his senses had no name for. He could perceive the quality-space itself, see the way his consciousness had bent reality not through symbolic mediation but through direct proposal. This wasn’t reality resisting transformation and him forcing it anyway. This was reality waiting to be transformed, countless degrees of freedom eager for consciousness to propose configurations.

His carefully constructed paradigm—thirty years of disciplined study, of mastering symbols and gestures and the precise calibration needed to negotiate with Ispar’s stubborn substrate—was worse than useless here. It was dangerous. Every technique he’d perfected was designed for a world where magic required immense effort. Here, magic required restraint. The substrate was so negotiable, so saturated with possibility, that his trained will acted like a siege engine where a scalpel was needed.

The creature landed on its back, legs cycling uselessly for a moment before it righted itself with a motion too quick to track. It clicked frantically now, a sound that might have been rage or might have been surprise or might have been the Olthoi equivalent of laughter at the fool who’d just demonstrated he had no idea how to calibrate his magic in this new world.

Duulak’s hands shook as he prepared another spell. The magical field here was so dense, so responsive, that his carefully calibrated techniques were like using a siege engine to crack an egg. Every gesture produced ten times the effect he intended, the ambient magic amplifying his will to dangerous extremes.

The Olthoi charged again, learning from the first encounter, approaching from an angle that would make geometric shields less effective. Duulak switched tactics, drawing the glyphs for acceleration rather than barrier, time compression applied to his own perception rather than external force.

The world slowed. Or rather, his experience of it accelerated, thoughts racing at velocities that left his body struggling to keep pace. He could see individual facets of the Olthoi’s compound eyes now, the microscopic articulations of its chitin plates, the chemical signatures of pheromones it secreted—information his enhanced perception could process but not yet comprehend.

More importantly, he could see the gaps. The joints where chitin segments overlapped, creating flex points necessary for movement but vulnerable to properly applied force. The way its weight distribution shifted mid-charge, a pattern he could predict three steps ahead.

He didn’t want to harm it. Even fleeing for his life, Duulak’s primary instinct was curiosity about this magnificent organism. But survival demanded pragmatism, and pragmatism meant exploiting weakness.

The kinetic lance he conjured was supposed to be a warning shot, targeted at the ground near the creature’s feet to startle it into retreat. Instead, the overcharged spell punched through the crystalline surface like paper, creating a crater that caused the Olthoi to stumble. As it recovered, Duulak hurled a concussive blast—intended as a gentle push—that caught the creature mid-stride and sent it tumbling across the landscape.

When it rose this time, the Olthoi didn’t charge. It stood at a distance, clicking in patterns that felt somehow more complex, more contemplative. Duulak found himself convinced—irrationally, perhaps, but with the certainty that comes from thirty years of studying patterns—that he was being analyzed. The creature was no longer hunting. It was observing.

• ‘You’re intelligent,’ Duulak said, keeping his hands still, palms open to show he was preparing no further spells. ‘You’re not merely reacting. You’re evaluating. You just learned something about me, and now you’re deciding whether I’m prey, threat, or something outside your categorical framework.’

The Olthoi regarded him with its thousand-faceted eyes. For a long moment, the only sound was the ambient hum of this world’s magical field, a constant vibration that Duulak suspected his ears hadn’t fully adapted to hearing.

Then the creature turned and began walking away. Not fleeing—its movements were too deliberate for panic—but deliberately choosing to disengage. Before it disappeared behind the crystalline formations, it paused, turned its head to look back at him one final time, and clicked a sequence that felt unmistakably like a statement.

Duulak stood alone in the alien landscape, hands still trembling from adrenaline and overcharged magic, watching the space where the Olthoi had vanished. He had survived his first encounter with this world’s dominant species, but only because his magic here was dangerously unpredictable. He’d intended communication and gotten violence. He’d attempted calibrated force and delivered catastrophic energy.

He was, he realized with the sick certainty of academic honesty, dangerously incompetent in this environment. All his training, all his theoretical mastery, was worse than useless—it was actively dangerous when the fundamental constants had changed.

Duulak sank down onto the crystalline ground, noting distantly that it felt warm, almost alive, vibrating with energies his body could sense but not name. His hands were covered in ink from the calculations on his arms, smudged now with sweat and fear. He should record his observations: the Olthoi’s morphology, the behavior patterns, the way magic manifested here. His journals were in his robes, waiting.

Instead, he thought of Yasmin. Not as she’d been when he left—weary, resigned, a woman who’d learned to love the edges of her husband’s life—but as she’d been twelve years ago, showing him the architectural plans for the Institution’s courtyard. She’d explained how beauty and function were not opposed but complementary, how true design served both aesthetic and practical needs simultaneously.

• ‘I didn’t want you to come back,’ he whispered to the purple sky, knowing she couldn’t hear, saying it anyway. ‘I wanted an excuse to leave a life I’d grown tired of, to walk away from responsibilities that felt more like weights than purposes. And I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve: a world that punishes me for knowing too little after a lifetime of knowing too much.’

In the distance, where smoke rose against the alien sky, he could see evidence of fire. Fire meant humans, or at least something that used combustion. Fire meant civilization, or at least its possibility.

Duulak stood, his joints protesting in ways that reminded him he was forty-seven and had just fought for his life using magic that had nearly killed him as efficiently as the creature he’d been defending against. He checked his robes: journals intact, reagents intact, pride significantly damaged but not destroyed.

He began walking toward the smoke, knowing he might be walking toward more danger but unable to remain alone with thoughts that offered no comfort and a landscape that offered no familiarity.

Behind him, the portal through which he’d entered was no longer visible. Whether it had closed or simply couldn’t be perceived from this side, he didn’t know. But the message was clear: there was no return. There was only forward, toward smoke and uncertainty and the slim hope that whatever waited there would be less interested in killing him than the magnificent alien predator he’d just encountered.

The clicking sounds began again, distant now, moving parallel to his course rather than toward him. The Olthoi was shadowing him, observing, learning. Duulak found that oddly comforting. At least his presence here had provoked curiosity rather than mere appetite.

Though perhaps, a darker part of his mind suggested, curiosity was merely appetite of a different sort.

The smoke came from a settlement that Duulak’s architectural sense told him was both desperate and disciplined. The fortifications were crude but geometrically sound, positioned to maximize defensive advantage while minimizing resource expenditure. Whoever had designed this understood siege principles, even if they lacked proper materials.

As he approached, figures appeared along the makeshift walls. Humans, he saw with relief that felt almost physical. People from Ispar, recognizable not just by their forms but by the way they held themselves, the patterns of motion that spoke of cultural origins he could identify.

One of them shouted something in Aluvian—a challenge or a warning, Duulak couldn’t quite parse it at this distance. He raised his hands, palms open, in the universal gesture of peaceful approach.

• ‘I seek shelter,’ he called back in Roulean, then repeated it in Gharu’ndi. ‘I came through a portal. I am no threat.’

The figures conferred. After a moment that felt eternal, a section of the wall opened—not a gate but literally a gap created by several people lifting away interlocked pieces of salvaged crystal. The engineering made Duulak’s fingers itch to sketch diagrams. Modular defensive barriers that could be reconfigured based on threat vectors. Yasmin would have appreciated the elegance.

He walked forward slowly, maintaining the non-threatening posture, hyper-aware that his robes marked him as a scholar or mage and that might be viewed with either respect or suspicion depending on these people’s experiences.

A woman met him just inside the perimeter. She was perhaps thirty-five, her hair pulled back in a style common to Gharu’ndim cavalry officers, but her eyes held the particular weariness Duulak associated with people who’d seen too much too quickly. She studied him with an assessment that was neither hostile nor welcoming, purely evaluative.

• ‘You’re new,’ she said. Not a question.

• ‘I… yes. The portal in Qush opened three hours ago. Or perhaps three days. Time feels uncertain here.’

• ‘Here is Dereth. The portals are Asheron’s work. Time is whatever the suns say it is, and the suns lie.’ She gestured toward the settlement. ‘I’m Celeste. I was a court astronomer before I was transported. Now I mostly try to keep people alive and occasionally figure out where we are and why.’

• ‘Duulak. I was—am—a theoretical thaumaturgist. The portals may be partially my fault, though I’m not certain of causation versus correlation.’

Celeste’s expression shifted to something that might have been amusement or might have been recognition of a familiar type of madness.

• ‘A theorist who thinks he broke the world. That’s refreshingly honest. Come. You’ll want to meet the others, and we’ll want to hear your story. New arrivals sometimes bring information about the timing of portal manifestations, which helps us understand the pattern.’

• ‘There’s a pattern?’

• ‘There’s always a pattern. The question is whether we’re intelligent enough to perceive it or whether we’re part of it and thus incapable of objective observation.’

Duulak found himself liking Celeste immediately. It had been years since he’d met someone who spoke in that particular rhythm, the cadence of a mind that saw existence as a puzzle to be solved rather than a circumstance to be endured.

The settlement—they called it the Seeker’s Encampment, he learned—housed perhaps forty people. They came from across Ispar: Gharu’ndim, Aluvian, Sho, even a few from smaller kingdoms he recognized only from geographic texts. What united them was the look in their eyes, that particular combination of trauma and stubborn determination.

And they all had questions.

• ‘Did you choose to come through?’ A young Aluvian man, barely twenty.

• ‘Did you see Asheron?’ An elderly Sho woman.

• ‘Did the portal show you what was on the other side before you crossed?’ A Gharu’ndim trader.

• ‘Did it sing? They sing, sometimes. Did yours sing?’

Duulak answered as he could: Yes, he’d chosen, though the choice had felt inevitable. No, he hadn’t seen Asheron, didn’t know who Asheron was beyond the name Celeste had mentioned. The portal had shown glimpses, yes, enough to tempt. And yes, it had sung—wordless promises of understanding that bypassed language entirely.

Celeste led him to what served as her study: a shelter constructed from salvaged Empyrean ruins, the walls covered in astronomical charts that made no sense because the stars here followed no pattern Duulak recognized from Ispar.

• ‘The portals started appearing three months ago by our reckoning,’ Celeste explained, spreading out maps that showed locations marked across what was presumably Dereth. ‘We’ve tracked over two hundred documented instances across Ispar. They appear most frequently in centers of magical study, royal courts, and areas of significant population. But there are outliers—wilderness appearances, individual summonings that follow no obvious pattern.’

• ‘Selective,’ Duulak said, studying the maps with growing fascination. ‘The portals are choosing specific people or types of people.’

• ‘That’s our hypothesis. But we can’t determine the selection criteria. We have scholars, yes, but also farmers, soldiers, merchants, children. No obvious unifying factor beyond sapience.’

• ‘How many have come through?’

• ‘We estimate thousands. Most scatter, seek their own survival. A few—like us—settle and try to understand. Others…’ She paused, her expression darkening. ‘Others don’t survive the first day. The Olthoi are efficient predators, and most portal arrivals have no combat training.’

Duulak thought of his own encounter, the way he’d survived through accidental overwhelming force rather than skill.

• ‘I encountered one. An Olthoi, you called it? I barely survived, and only because magic manifests dangerously powerful here. I meant to create a barrier. I produced what amounted to a siege weapon.’

• ‘The magical field saturation here is approximately ten times what we experience on Ispar,’ Celeste said, as if this were a normal astronomical observation. ‘Spells that require extensive ritual there manifest from mere intention here. We’ve lost three mages to their own magic before they learned recalibration.’

• ‘Lost?’

• ‘Dead. Though death here is… complicated.’

She proceeded to explain the lifestones, and Duulak felt his understanding of reality undergo its second major revision of the day. Consciousness persisting beyond physical death, reconstituted by ancient Empyrean technology that turned mortality into a temporary inconvenience. It was simultaneously the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard and the most horrifying.

• ‘You’re telling me death is impermanent but trauma is eternal?’ he asked. ‘That people can die, remember dying, and be forced to continue living with that memory?’

• ‘Yes. We’ve seen it break minds. Some people die once and never recover psychologically. Others die repeatedly and each death accumulates until they’re more trauma than person.’

• ‘And we can’t truly escape this world because even death doesn’t release us.’

• ‘Precisely. Welcome to Dereth, Duulak. The prison with immortal inmates.’

The Seekers, Celeste explained, had formed around a simple principle: if they were trapped here, they would at least understand why and by whom. They excavated Empyrean ruins, translated what texts they could, mapped the patterns of Olthoi movement, and tried to reverse-engineer portal mechanics.

• ‘We call ourselves Seekers,’ Celeste said, ‘because we refuse to accept our circumstances without understanding their causation. If Asheron summoned us, we’ll learn why. If the portals can be reversed, we’ll discover how. If we’re pieces in a game whose rules we don’t know, we’ll learn those rules and find the players.’

• ‘Who is Asheron?’

• ‘An Empyrean. Perhaps the last one on Dereth, though we have incomplete information. The portals are demonstrably his work—we’ve found references in the ruins. But whether he’s savior or kidnapper depends on perspective we don’t yet have.’

• ‘Show me the texts.’

Celeste smiled, the first genuine warmth he’d seen from her.

• ‘I was hoping you’d say that. Most new arrivals are too traumatized to immediately engage with research. But you…’

• ‘I’ve spent my life asking questions that comfort couldn’t answer. Being transported to an alien world doesn’t change the fundamentals of who I am.’

• ‘Or it reveals them. Come. I’ll show you what we’ve translated so far. Most of it is fragmentary, but there’s a phrase that keeps appearing: ”Harbinger Protocol.” We think it refers to the summonings, but the context is maddeningly opaque.’

Duulak spent the next several hours immersed in Empyrean texts, his mind finally engaged with something approaching familiar territory. The language was related to the ancient Empyrean he’d studied in the ruins near Qush, but evolved, corrupted by time or perhaps deliberately obscured. Reading it required equal parts translation and cryptanalysis.

But patterns emerged—and they were profound. These weren’t simple technical manuals. The Empyreans had developed a theoretical framework for magic that made his own life’s work seem like a child’s first attempts at arithmetic.

He found references to ”quality-negotiation” versus ”quantity-manipulation”—the Empyreans understood that magic and physics engaged different aspects of the same reality. They had mathematized bandwidth constraints, treating the 7±2 limit of working memory not as folk wisdom but as a fundamental constant governing consciousness-reality interaction. One fragmentary theorem—Celeste had translated it as the ”Bandwidth Sufficiency Principle”—suggested that any finite consciousness would hit limits in perceiving what they called ”The Mechanism.”

• ‘What is The Mechanism?’ Duulak asked, tracing the recurring symbol with his finger.

• ‘We don’t know. The texts reference it constantly but never define it. Best we can determine, it’s their term for… reality itself? The underlying structure? The way qualities and quantities relate? They treated it as the central mystery of existence.’

• ‘And they couldn’t solve it?’

• ‘Thirty thousand years of civilization, and no. They made progress—we think the lifestone network was part of that—but the texts suggest The Mechanism exceeds any bounded understanding. Even theirs.’

Duulak felt a chill that had nothing to do with Dereth’s temperature. The Empyreans had been ahead of him. Far ahead. And if they’d hit limits to comprehension…

But then he found the passage that made everything cohere. Celeste’s partial translation noted four cryptic terms that appeared throughout the Harbinger Protocol references: ”Organizer-consciousness,” ”Understander-consciousness,” ”Connector-consciousness,” ”Transcender-consciousness.”

• ‘Four distinct what—personality types?’ he asked.

• ‘Maybe? Or cognitive architectures? The text suggests they’re fundamental ways consciousness relates to reality. The Protocol mentions needing all four for some kind of… triangulation? The translation gets murky here.’

• ‘Show me the original.’

The Empyrean glyphs were dense, layered with meaning. But Duulak’s translation yielded something that stopped his breath:

No singular consciousness-architecture perceives The Mechanism completely. The Organizer sees structure where there is flow. The Understander sees pattern where there is paradox. The Connector sees relationship where there is isolation. The Transcender sees fluidity where there is fixity. Together, their perspectives triangulate truth no single bandwidth can hold. Thus: the Protocol requires four, selected for maximal archetypal purity, forced into confluence under existential pressure.

References to ”adaptive species” and ”consciousness transfer” and ”evolutionary acceleration” appeared throughout. The Harbinger Protocol, as best he could determine, wasn’t a simple summoning spell but something more complex: a system for selecting, transporting, and cultivating consciousness toward some unspecified end.

• ‘We’re not random refugees,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘We’re being selected. Tested. Cultivated for something.’

• ‘Cultivated how?’

• ‘The lifestones. They don’t just resurrect—they record. Each death creates a template, a map of consciousness that persists. Over time, over multiple deaths and resurrections, we’ll change. Adapt. Become something other than what we were on Ispar.’

• ‘You’re saying we’re experiments.’

• ‘I’m saying we’re seeds being planted in hostile soil to see what grows. But it’s more specific than that. The Protocol is selecting for these four consciousness-types. Somewhere on Dereth there are three others, each representing a different way of engaging with reality. And whoever designed this…’

He looked down at the text, at the elegant Empyrean script describing consciousness-architectures and triangulation and The Mechanism that exceeded all understanding.

• ‘Whoever designed this believes that together, the four of us might perceive something none of us can alone. Something even the Empyreans couldn’t grasp with their uniform cognitive style.’

Duulak realized, with the sick certainty that comes from truly understanding, that he was the Understander. His entire life—the endless questions, the pursuit of comprehension over comfort, the need to map reality’s deep structure—had been preparation for a role he hadn’t consented to in a plan whose purpose he still couldn’t fully see.

Celeste sat back, her expression unreadable.

• ‘I’ve been here three months. I’ve died twice. The second time, I noticed something. My memory of the astronomical charts was more detailed afterward, as if the lifestone had somehow enhanced my recall during reconstitution.’

• ‘Selective enhancement. The lifestones are learning what skills matter to you and optimizing for them. If you’re right about the archetypes, they might be amplifying whatever makes you… you. Deepening your Connector-ness or Understander-ness or whatever category you fit.’

• ‘Which means we’re being improved whether we consent or not.’

• ‘Yes. And that’s both the most fascinating and most horrifying thing I’ve ever encountered. We’re becoming what this world needs us to be, losing what we were in the process.’

Night fell with disconcerting rapidity, the binary suns setting in sequence rather than simultaneously. The Seekers’ settlement took on a different character in darkness: fires burned behind crystalline shields that refracted light in patterns that hurt to observe too directly, and guards maintained watch with the nervous tension of people who knew safety was always temporary.

Duulak was given shelter in a communal structure, a space shared with three other scholars who’d arrived over the past weeks. They exchanged stories in the darkness: portal experiences, first encounters with Olthoi, the slow adaptation to a world that felt simultaneously more and less real than Ispar.

But sleep, when it finally came, brought dreams. Not the normal fragmentary chaos of sleeping minds but something more structured, more deliberate. He dreamed of vast networks spreading beneath Dereth’s surface, of consciousness flowing through crystalline channels, of being observed by something that existed partially in dimensions his mind couldn’t properly process.

He dreamed of Yasmin, standing at a window, waiting.

And he dreamed of the Olthoi that had spared him, clicking patterns that his sleeping mind translated into something approximating language: ”You are seen. You are measured. You are not yet understood, but you will be.”

The Olthoi attack came on his third day at the Seeker’s Encampment, just as Duulak had begun to convince himself that scholarly pursuits might shield him from the violent realities of this world.

He was in Celeste’s study, analyzing a particularly complex passage about consciousness architecture, when the alarm sounded—a series of crystal chimes that created harmonics designed to penetrate even deep concentration. The sound was beautiful and terrible, and every person in the encampment responded with the practiced urgency of people who’d learned that seconds meant the difference between survival and catastrophe.

• ‘How many?’ Celeste called out, already moving toward the weapons cache.

• ‘Six workers, three soldiers,’ someone shouted from the wall. ‘Coordinated approach from the eastern quadrant. They’re testing the modular barriers.’

• ‘Standard defense pattern three,’ Celeste commanded, her voice carrying the authority of someone who’d led these defenses before. ‘Mages to the inner ring, non-combatants to the shelters, and someone get Duulak to—’

• ‘I can help,’ Duulak said, the words emerging before his rational mind could evaluate them. ‘I have combat training from the Sundering War.’

• ‘That was twenty years ago on a different world with different magic.’

• ‘Which makes me experienced and adaptable rather than merely desperate.’

Celeste looked at him for a half-second that felt eternal, then nodded.

• ‘Inner ring. You’ll work with Darius and Senna. They’re your age, they know recalibration, and they won’t judge you if you accidentally obliterate a crystal formation. Just try not to obliterate any humans.’

Duulak took his position in what the Seekers called the ”mage ring,” a circular formation that provided overlapping fields of fire while preventing friendly fire from overcharged spells. It was elegant tactical magic, the kind of combat theory he’d helped develop during the Sundering War but never expected to use again.

Darius was on his right: a Sho scholar perhaps his own age, with the particular calm that came from either deep philosophical acceptance or multiple deaths dulling the fear response. Senna was on his left: a Gharu’ndim woman who moved with the fluid precision of someone who’d spent years studying wind magic and its applications to both construction and destruction.

• ‘First combat on Dereth?’ Darius asked conversationally, as if they were discussing weather rather than imminent violence.

• ‘Second. I encountered an Olthoi soldier my first hour here. Survived through luck and overcharged magic.’

• ‘Then you understand the fundamental problem,’ Senna said. ‘Every spell you know is ten times more powerful and half as controllable. Welcome to war in a world that amplifies everything, including mistakes.’

The Olthoi workers hit the eastern barrier first, their mandibles carving through the crystalline formations with disturbing efficiency. They weren’t attacking randomly—they were systematically dismantling the defensive structure, creating calculated weaknesses for the soldiers to exploit.

Duulak watched the pattern emerge, his tactical mind automatically cataloging the assault sequence. The workers weren’t laborers; they were combat engineers, demolition specialists working in perfect coordination to create optimal breach points.

• ‘They’re too organized,’ he said. ‘This isn’t opportunistic predation. This is military tactics.’

• ‘Welcome to the war none of us signed up for,’ Darius replied. ‘The Olthoi aren’t beasts. They’re soldiers serving a hive intelligence that makes tactical decisions beyond anything we encountered on Ispar.’

The first soldier Olthoi breached through a gap the workers had created, moving with horrifying speed toward the inner defensive ring. Duulak felt his hands begin the familiar gestures for a kinetic barrage, his mind automatically calculating vectors and force distributions.

The spell manifested as a wall of semi-solid air that caught the Olthoi mid-leap and slammed it backward into two more soldiers attempting the same breach. Duulak had intended a targeted strike. He’d created area-effect devastation.

• ‘Good instincts, poor calibration,’ Senna called out. ‘You’re still thinking in Ispar values. Divide everything by ten and you’ll get closer to precision.’

He tried to adjust, to scale down his magical intentions, but the problem was that his training had been systematic, automatic, muscle memory built over decades. Telling himself to use one-tenth the effort was like telling himself to breathe one-tenth as deeply—possible in theory, nearly impossible in crisis.

The Olthoi soldiers adapted to the defensive pattern with disturbing speed. Where one approach failed, they tried another, learning from each repulsed assault. Duulak found himself in a rhythm: observe attack vector, calculate response, execute spell, immediately assess whether the outcome matched intention or created collateral devastation.

He was getting better at calibration. Not good—not even adequate—but better. His third kinetic lance merely knocked an Olthoi soldier off its trajectory rather than punching a crater in the landscape. His fifth barrier spell created an actual wall rather than a explosive force distribution.

That was when he made his fatal mistake.

An Olthoi worker had circled around during the confusion, approaching from the blind angle that developed when three soldiers pressed the eastern barrier simultaneously. Duulak saw it in his peripheral vision, turned to engage, and drew the glyphs for a precision compression field—a spell designed to immobilize without harm.

The magical field manifested correctly. The Olthoi stopped, suspended in an invisible matrix that prevented movement while preserving life. Duulak felt a moment of satisfaction: finally, precision, finally control over this world’s overwhelming magic.

Then he saw Darius, lying on the ground where a second worker Olthoi had pulled him from the defensive ring. Saw the massive mandibles closing around the scholar’s torso. Saw the moment of resistance before chitin edges, sharper than any blade, found the spaces between human ribs.

Duulak’s concentration broke. The compression field collapsed. The immobilized Olthoi resumed its charge, now furious from confinement, no longer testing but committed to killing the mage who’d held it.

He drew another spell, something, anything, but the gestures came too slow, his hands suddenly uncertain whether to protect himself or help Darius. The Olthoi covered the distance between them in three strides, mandibles spread wide.

The pain was indescribable.

Then it stopped.

Duulak woke screaming.

He stood at a lifestone—he understood that intellectually even as his body insisted it should be lying in pieces where an Olthoi’s mandibles had found the spaces between his ribs. The scream that tore from his throat wasn’t pain, exactly, but something deeper: the sound of a mind confronting the impossibility of its own continuity.

• ‘Breathe,’ someone said. Celeste, he realized after a moment. She stood nearby but not touching, respecting the space that newly resurrected people needed. ‘You’re whole. You’re alive. The body is real. The death was also real. Both things are true.’

• ‘I died,’ Duulak gasped, his hands moving over his chest, feeling for wounds that should be there, finding only intact flesh beneath his robes. ‘I remember— the pain— everything—’

• ‘Yes. You remember. That’s the price of the lifestones. They preserve consciousness completely, which means they preserve the moment of death. The trauma doesn’t fade with resurrection. You carry it now, permanently.’

Duulak sank down against the lifestone, his legs suddenly unable to support his weight. His hands were shaking so violently he couldn’t have drawn a simple glyph if his life depended on it.

His life.

He had a life again. A life he’d lost. A life that persisted only because ancient Empyrean technology had recorded his consciousness and rebuilt his body according to a template that…

• ‘Am I the same person?’ The question escaped before he could consider its implications. ‘The Duulak who died— is that who I am now? Or am I a copy, a reconstruction that merely thinks it’s continuous with—’

• ‘That’s the question that breaks some people,’ Celeste said, sitting down beside him. ‘The philosophical implications of consciousness transfer and resurrection. Some decide they’re copies and have existential crises that never resolve. Others decide continuity of memory equals continuity of self. Most just stop thinking about it because thinking about it makes survival impossible.’

• ‘Which category do you fall into?’

• ‘I’m a scientist. I hold multiple hypotheses in superposition and continue gathering evidence. It doesn’t matter which answer is objectively true if I can’t determine it empirically. What matters is whether I’m useful, whether I can contribute to understanding, whether this consciousness—however it arose—serves purposes I consider valuable.’

They sat in silence for several minutes. Duulak’s breathing gradually steadied, though his hands continued trembling. In the distance, he could hear sounds of the settlement recovering from the attack: calls of the wounded being tended, the clatter of debris being cleared, the quiet conversations of people processing their own traumas.

• ‘How many died?’ he asked finally.

• ‘Four. All resurrected, all traumatized but alive. Darius is at his lifestone now. This is his eighth death.’

• ‘How does anyone survive eight deaths?’

• ‘They don’t, not really. Darius was a gentle man when he arrived, a scholar who studied poetry and philosophy. Now he’s something else—still brilliant, still capable of beauty, but carrying eight separate moments of ultimate trauma. He functions because the alternative is collapse, and collapse means vulnerability, and vulnerability means death number nine.’

Duulak stood, testing whether his legs would support him, finding they would if he concentrated.

• ‘I need to see him. I need to…’ He trailed off, uncertain what he needed. To apologize for failing to save him? To confirm that his own resurrection wasn’t unique, that the impossibility was universal?

• ‘He’ll be at his shelter by now. Celeste gave directions. ‘But Duulak— don’t expect the man you fought beside. Death changes people, and eight deaths change them eight times over. Be prepared for someone who looks familiar but thinks differently.’

He found Darius sitting outside his shelter, staring at the purple sky with eyes that had seen too much. The scholar turned as Duulak approached, and his smile was genuine but somehow distant, as if emotion required conscious effort rather than spontaneous response.

• ‘Duulak. Welcome to the club of the dead who walk. How was your first resurrection?’

• ‘Horrifying. World-shattering. Philosophically paralyzing.’

• ‘So, typical. It gets worse each time, actually. You’d think you’d adapt, but consciousness seems designed to process death as ultimate rather than temporary. Each resurrection is shock reimposed on already traumatized neural patterns.’

• ‘How do you continue functioning?’

• ‘Purpose. I study the patterns of death and resurrection, cataloging how consciousness persists through the lifestone process. If I’m going to die repeatedly, I might as well understand it completely. Knowledge doesn’t prevent trauma, but it provides context that makes trauma bearable.’

Duulak sat down beside him, matching his posture, two scholars contemplating mysteries too large for comfortable comprehension.

• ‘I saw you die,’ Duulak said quietly. ‘I was holding an Olthoi in a compression field, and in my peripheral vision, I watched you… I lost concentration. The Olthoi I’d immobilized got free and killed me.’

• ‘So you died because my death broke your focus. And I died because I was too slow reacting to a worker’s approach. We’re caught in cascading failure states, each death creating conditions for more deaths. It’s mathematically elegant and emotionally devastating.’

• ‘We need to get better at this. At combat, at magic calibration, at not dying constantly.’

• ‘Yes. Or we need to accept that death is the constant and survival is the temporary state we cycle through between traumas.’

They sat in silence, watching as one of the binary suns set, leaving only the smaller, blue-white sun to illuminate the landscape in colors that hurt Duulak’s eyes with their alienness.

• ‘I left a life on Ispar,’ Duulak said. ‘A wife I’d grown distant from, an apprentice I’d failed to nurture properly, work that felt more like obligation than passion. Part of me stepped through that portal hoping to escape responsibilities that had become weights. But sitting here, having died and returned, I realize: you can’t escape yourself. All your failures, all your inadequacies—they persist through any transition. Even death doesn’t release you from who you are.’

• ‘That’s the cruelest aspect of the lifestones. They preserve everything, including the parts of yourself you’d rather lose. I was afraid of pain when I arrived. Now I’ve experienced ultimate pain eight times and fear it more than ever, while simultaneously knowing the fear doesn’t protect me, doesn’t prevent recurrence, serves no purpose except to make existence worse.’

• ‘Then why continue? Why not simply stop resurrecting, stay dead?’

• ‘Because the lifestones don’t offer that option. They bind consciousness to the pattern, maintain continuity whether we consent or not. We can’t refuse resurrection any more than we can refuse to think. We are, therefore we persist, whether persistence is blessing or curse.’

Duulak thought about the Empyrean texts he’d been studying, the references to ”consciousness cultivation” and ”evolutionary pressure.” Suddenly the full horror of the Harbinger Protocol became clear: they weren’t just being kept alive. They were being forced to evolve through repeated death and resurrection, shaped by trauma toward some end they couldn’t perceive.

• ‘We’re not prisoners,’ he said slowly, working through the implications. ‘We’re subjects in an experiment where death is the independent variable and consciousness modification is the dependent variable. Asheron isn’t saving us or even enslaving us. He’s farming us. Growing whatever consciousness becomes after enough iterations of destruction and reconstitution.’

• ‘That’s dark even by my standards, and I’ve died eight times. But yes, I’ve reached similar conclusions. The question is: what do we become? And is it something we’d recognize as ourselves or something so changed that continuity becomes meaningless?’

• ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

• ‘Which is?’

• ‘We study it. We catalog each death, each resurrection, each change to consciousness and capability. If we’re experiments, we become self-aware experiments. We gather data on our own transformation and use that data to understand not just what’s being done to us but potentially how to direct it.’

Darius turned to look at him directly for the first time, his eyes focusing with the intensity of someone who’d found unexpected purpose.

• ‘You want to turn the experiment around. Make ourselves observers rather than mere subjects.’

• ‘Exactly. We’re scholars. Understanding is what we do. If we’re being changed, we’ll understand the mechanisms. If we’re being cultivated toward something, we’ll identify it. And if we’re pieces in a game whose rules we don’t know, we’ll learn those rules and find the players.’

• ‘That’s basically Celeste’s founding principle for the Seekers.’

• ‘Then I’ve found my people. Show me everything you’ve documented about the death and resurrection process. I’ll add my own observations. Together, we’ll build a model of consciousness persistence that might give us agency in a situation designed to deny it.’

They worked through the night—if night meant anything on a world with binary suns that set in sequence—compiling observations, comparing experiences, building the first systematic catalog of how consciousness behaved when subjected to repeated cycles of destruction and reconstitution.

Duulak found himself falling into familiar rhythms: hypothesis, observation, data compilation, model building. The work was horrifying in its subject matter but comforting in its methodology. Death might be inescapable, but death could be studied. Trauma might be unavoidable, but trauma could be measured, quantified, understood.

As the blue-white sun climbed toward something approximating morning, Celeste found them surrounded by pages of notes, diagrams of consciousness architecture, theoretical models of how the lifestones preserved and reconstructed identity.

• ‘You’ve been awake all night,’ she observed.

• ‘We’ve been productive all night,’ Duulak corrected. ‘There’s a difference. I’ve died, resurrected, confronted the philosophical implications of consciousness persistence, and begun the systematic study of the phenomenon. Sleep would merely delay understanding.’

• ‘You sound like you’ve found purpose.’

• ‘I’ve found what I always had: the need to understand, elevated to existential necessity. If we’re being transformed, I’ll understand the transformation. If we’re being used, I’ll identify the use. And if we’re being destroyed, I’ll at least document the process so those who come after can learn from our failures.’

• ‘Welcome to the Seekers, Duulak. You’ve been one of us since you first asked why the portals appeared. You just needed to die once to fully commit to the path.’

Duulak looked at his hands, steady now, covered in ink from hours of writing. He thought of Yasmin, waiting at a window on a world he could never return to, watching for a husband who would never walk through her door again. He thought of Korvain, brilliant and doomed to surpass his master, carrying forward work that Duulak would never complete on Ispar.

And he thought of the Olthoi that had killed him, efficient and intelligent, following imperatives he didn’t yet understand but would, given time and determination and however many deaths it took to accumulate sufficient data.

• ‘I have a journal entry to make,’ he said, standing and stretching muscles that protested from a night of stillness. ‘Day Three on Dereth. Or Day One of my second life. I’m not certain which framing is more accurate. I’ve discovered that death is impermanent, consciousness is persistent, and understanding is the only anchor in a world designed to strip away everything else. I don’t know if I’m still Duulak or merely an entity that remembers being Duulak. But whoever I am, I have work to do. The portals, the Olthoi, the Harbinger Protocol, the nature of consciousness itself—all of it is puzzle pieces scattered across a landscape I barely comprehend. I’ll gather those pieces. I’ll understand the pattern. And perhaps, in understanding, I’ll find something approximating purpose in this prison that denies even death as escape.’

He paused, then added one final line:

• ‘Yasmin, if some version of this ever reaches you across whatever gulf separates our worlds: I see you now, truly see you, in ways I never managed when we shared physical space. I hope that counts for something. I hope you’ve found the freedom to live fully rather than existing in the margins of my obsession. And I hope, somehow, you understand why I couldn’t turn back from the edge, even knowing the cost.’

The blue-white sun climbed higher, painting the Seeker’s Encampment in colors that still hurt to observe directly but that Duulak was learning to tolerate. The Olthoi would attack again—they always did. He would likely die again—everyone did, eventually. But death was no longer the end, merely a transition point, another data point in the ongoing study of consciousness persistence.

He was Duulak the Twice-Blessed, though the blessing had become more burden than gift. He was a scholar in a world that punished certainty and rewarded adaptation. He was, perhaps, the first systematic observer of his own potential transformation from human to something else entirely.

And he had work to do.

The forest spoke in languages Thomas had spent thirty-four years learning to read. This morning it told him of rain three days ago, of deer passing through at dawn, of the behemak’s trail growing fresher with each mile he tracked north.

He knelt beside a depression in the soft earth, running his fingers along its edges with the gentleness of a man reading scripture. The print was massive—large as his torso, pressed deep into ground that had been rain-softened but was now beginning to harden in autumn’s gradual shift toward winter. Four claws, each the length of his hand, had carved distinct furrows. The pattern of weight distribution told him the creature favored its right side, likely from the wound he’d witnessed three days ago during its territorial fight with the younger male.

Thomas closed his eyes, letting his other senses fill the gap. The forest’s ambient sounds: wind through oak leaves that hadn’t yet fallen, a jay’s warning call about his presence, water running somewhere to the east over stones that would be ice-slick in another month. Beneath it all, the smell of disturbed earth, scat that marked territory, and something else—the faint copper scent of old blood.

The behemak was wounded worse than he’d initially estimated. The younger male’s tusks had found something vital, and while the elder had driven off its challenger, it had paid a price that would cost it dominance and possibly life.

Which made it Thomas’s opportunity.

He stood, adjusting the bow across his shoulders, feeling the familiar weight of his hunting knife against his hip. Three days he’d been tracking, sleeping in trees when darkness made following the trail impossible, eating cold meat to avoid smoke that might alert his quarry. His wife Mara thought he was hunting deer to stock the winter stores. She’d packed him supplies for five days, kissed his cheek with the resigned affection of a woman who’d married a hunter and learned to accept the absences.

But this wasn’t about deer.

The behemak’s hide alone would fetch enough gold to pay the healer’s fees for William’s persistent cough. The tusks—ivory that held magical resonance—could buy medicine for a year. And if the old male had managed to accumulate even a fraction of the hoard these creatures were known to gather, if Thomas could claim it before scavengers or the younger male found it…

He could stop hunting. Could spend winters by the fire teaching William to carve. Could give Mara the security she’d never asked for but deserved. Could be the father and husband he’d always meant to become after one last hunt.

After this hunt, he promised himself, as he’d promised after the last one, and the one before that.

The trail led deeper into territory Thomas had never explored. The forest here was old—not the managed woodland near the village where foresters maintained clear trails and marked dangerous areas, but true wilderness. Trees grew so thick their canopies blocked most sunlight, creating a perpetual twilight that played tricks on depth perception. Roots sprawled across the ground like arthritic fingers, and the undergrowth was dense enough that Thomas had to trust the behemak’s trail rather than his own sense of direction.

He stopped every hundred yards to reconfirm the track, noting where the creature had scraped against trees to relieve itching from its wound, where it had paused to feed on bark, where its gait had grown more uneven as exhaustion and blood loss accumulated. The trail was a story Thomas read with the ease of a scholar interpreting familiar texts, each sign a word in a narrative of decline.

By midday—judged by the quality of light filtering through the canopy rather than any glimpse of the sun—he estimated he was perhaps an hour behind the behemak. Close enough to be cautious, far enough to avoid alerting it. The trick with wounded prey was patience. Let the injury do half the work. Track but don’t pressure. Wait for the moment when exhaustion made the creature vulnerable.

Thomas found a stream and drank, refilling his waterskin, taking a moment to eat some of the bread Mara had packed. It was good bread, solid and dense with the nourishment a man needed for long days in the forest. She’d baked it three days ago, still warm when she’d wrapped it in cloth, and Thomas had watched her hands work with the familiar efficiency of fifteen years of marriage.

Fifteen years. William was seven now, old enough to start learning to track, to shoot, to read the forest’s languages. But the boy’s cough had worsened over the summer, and the healer said his lungs were weak, needed medicine that cost more than Thomas earned from selling deer and rabbits to the village market.

The behemak would solve everything. One hunt. One kill. One opportunity to stop being the provider who was never quite providing enough.

He finished eating and stood, wiping bread crumbs from his beard. The afternoon light was shifting, taking on the golden quality that preceded evening. He needed to decide: continue tracking and risk camping in unknown territory, or find a secure position to spend the night and resume at dawn?

The behemak’s trail answered for him. Fresh scat, still steaming slightly in the cool air. The creature had rested here less than an hour ago, which meant it was slowing, struggling, close to whatever den it had chosen for refuge.

Thomas’s hunter’s instincts warred with his father’s caution. Push now and he might find the behemak vulnerable, claim its hoard before darkness fell, return to Mara and William with enough wealth to change their lives. Wait until morning and the creature might recover enough to be dangerous, or might die and attract scavengers who’d claim the hoard before Thomas could reach it.

He pushed forward.

The trail led to an area where the forest changed character. The trees here were ancient beyond estimation, their trunks so massive that five men linking arms couldn’t encircle them. The undergrowth thinned as if the old trees’ dominance prevented lesser plants from competing. And there, between two particularly massive oaks, Thomas saw something that made his heart stutter and his hunter’s mind go blank with incomprehension.

A shimmer in the air. A distortion, like heat rising from sun-baked stones, except the air here was cool and the effect was too localized, too stable to be natural atmospheric phenomenon.

Thomas approached slowly, bow in hand though his rational mind knew arrows would be useless against whatever this was. The shimmer intensified as he drew closer, resolving into something that hurt to observe directly. Colors that had no names. Movement that suggested depth without consuming space. A vertical slash in the forest’s reality, as if someone had cut through the world’s surface to reveal something underneath.

It sang to him.

Not with sound—Thomas’s ears heard only the forest’s normal evening chorus—but with a wordless promise that bypassed his senses and spoke directly to needs he’d never named. Safety for William. Security for Mara. An end to the constant calculation of whether they could afford meat this week, medicine this month, survival this winter.

The behemak’s trail led past the shimmer and continued north. Thomas could see its tracks clearly, could estimate he was now perhaps twenty minutes behind the wounded creature. Everything he’d worked for over three days of tracking was within reach.

But the shimmer promised more than one behemak’s hoard. It promised solutions to problems Thomas hadn’t consciously acknowledged: the growing awareness that his body was slowing with age, that the hunts grew harder each year, that William’s needs would increase as the boy grew. It promised escape from the endless grinding necessity of providing.

Thomas stood between the behemak’s trail and the shimmer, caught in the paralysis of a man who sensed that this moment would define everything that came after. His hunter’s instinct screamed warnings about the unknown, about pretty lures and hidden traps, about things that seemed too good to be true because they were.

But his father’s desperation whispered that sometimes you took risks because the alternative was watching your son grow sicker while you did nothing.

• ‘Just a quick look,’ he told himself, his voice sounding hollow in the ancient forest. ‘The behemak isn’t going anywhere fast. I can spare a moment.’

He took a step toward the shimmer. Then another. The singing intensified, not louder but more insistent, showing him visions of Mara’s smile without worry creasing the corners, of William running without coughing, of a life where providing wasn’t a constant struggle against scarcity.

His hand reached out without conscious command. The rational part of his mind—the experienced hunter who’d survived three decades in the forest by respecting its dangers—screamed for him to stop, to turn away, to continue tracking the behemak and take the opportunity he understood rather than gamble on mysteries.

But Thomas’s fingers touched the shimmer’s edge, and reality rippled, and he felt himself beginning to fall through into somewhere else, and his last conscious thought was of William’s laughter, the pure unselfconscious joy of a seven-year-old who still believed his father could solve any problem and provide any need.

Four days earlier, Thomas had woken before dawn in the bed he’d shared with Mara for fifteen years. She was still sleeping, her breathing deep and steady, her face relaxed in a way it never was during waking hours. He watched her for a moment, studying the silver threading through her dark hair, the fine lines around her eyes, the particular set of her features that had first attracted him when they were both young and foolish enough to marry for love rather than practical considerations.

They’d been lucky, he supposed. Most marriages in the village were arrangements between families, strategic alliances that sometimes grew into affection and sometimes remained merely functional. But Thomas and Mara had wanted each other, and fifteen years later they still did, though want had transmuted into something quieter, deeper, less exhilarating but more sustaining.

He rose carefully, trying not to wake her, and dressed in the pre-dawn darkness with the efficiency of long practice. His hunting clothes: leather trousers that wouldn’t catch on undergrowth, wool shirt in forest colors, the jerkin with reinforced shoulders that Mara had made him three winters ago. His bow waited by the door, already strung, and his quiver held twenty arrows—more than he’d need for deer, barely enough if he encountered something dangerous.

The cottage was small, three rooms that Thomas had built himself over the first year of their marriage. He’d designed it with a hunter’s eye for practical function: strong walls to keep out winter wind, a large fireplace for cooking and warmth, shuttered windows that could be secured against storms. No luxuries, but solid and weatherproof, which was more than many in the village could claim.

William’s room was little more than a closet with a bed, but the boy loved it. Thomas paused outside the door, listening to his son’s breathing—rough with the cough that never quite cleared, but steady, alive. On the wall inside, he knew, hung William’s treasures: drawings of trees and animals, a practice bow Thomas had made him, the rabbit’s foot charm that Mara insisted would bring luck.

Thomas’s hand rested on the door frame, his chest tight with an emotion he couldn’t quite name. Love, certainly, but also fear, and determination, and the terrible weight of being responsible for a small life that depended on your competence. Every hunt Thomas undertook was really for William—for food to keep him fed, for funds to keep him clothed, for medicine to keep him breathing.

• ‘You’re leaving early,’ Mara said from the bedroom doorway, her voice still rough with sleep.

• ‘Deer move at dawn. I want to be in position when they start feeding.’

• ‘You’re always leaving early. Sometimes I think you love the forest more than you love us.’

It was an old argument, familiar as worn clothing, and Thomas knew all the responses. He could say he hunted for them, that every deer was food and funds, that providing was how he showed love. He could point out that his work was solitary by necessity, that a hunter with chattering companions caught nothing. He could deflect with humor or redirect with affection.

Instead, he told the truth.

• ‘I love the forest because it makes sense to me in ways people don’t. Track reads clearly, behavior follows patterns, cause produces effect. Out there, I understand the rules. Here, I’m constantly uncertain whether I’m doing enough, being enough, providing enough.’

• ‘Thomas…’

• ‘I know. You never ask for more than I give. That’s part of what makes it hard. You never complain, never demand, just accept whatever I manage to provide. And I keep hunting because maybe the next kill will be the one that finally makes me feel like enough.’

Mara crossed the small space between them and took his face in her hands, her palms rough from work but gentle in their touch.

• ‘You are enough. You have been enough. The problem isn’t your providing. The problem is you’ve convinced yourself that your worth is measured in what you bring home rather than in who you are. William doesn’t need more gold. He needs his father to be present, not constantly chasing the next hunt.’

• ‘He needs medicine. The healer said—’

• ‘The healer said his lungs are weak and some children grow out of it and others don’t and there’s medicine that might help but might not. You’ve latched onto that ”might” like it’s certainty because it gives you something to hunt, something to solve through effort and skill.’

• ‘So I should do nothing? Just accept that my son struggles to breathe and hope he grows out of it?’

• ‘I’m saying you should be here while he grows. Whether he gets better or worse, he needs his father. And I need my husband. Not the hunter who provides. The man who chose me fifteen years ago and promised we’d face everything together.’

Thomas pulled away, the conversation suddenly too heavy for pre-dawn darkness.

• ‘I need to go. The deer won’t wait.’

• ‘Neither will we. Remember that, while you’re out there being alone with your certainty.’

He left before she could say anything else that might make him question what he was doing. The village was still dark and quiet as he made his way to the forest’s edge. A few early risers were visible in doorways or tending to animals, and they nodded to Thomas with the respect accorded to a man known to be competent at his work.

But Mara’s words followed him into the forest, unwelcome companions on a hunt that was supposed to provide solitude from exactly this kind of complicated human emotion. He pushed them away, focusing instead on the familiar ritual of entering wilderness: checking the wind direction, listening for bird calls that might indicate predators, moving from the managed woodland into the deeper forest with the comfortable efficiency of coming home.

By full dawn, he’d found fresh deer sign and settled into a position downwind from a game trail. This was what he was good at: patience, observation, the ability to become so still that his presence vanished into the forest’s background. He could wait for hours without fidgeting, mind calm and empty of everything except awareness of his surroundings.

Except this morning, the calm wouldn’t come. Mara’s face kept surfacing in his thoughts. William’s cough. The healer’s careful words about medicine that might help. The reality that Thomas’s providing had never quite been enough to get ahead of need, only to keep pace with it.

A deer emerged from the treeline—young buck, healthy, exactly what he should take. Thomas’s hand found his bow, fingers fitting arrow to string with unconscious precision. The shot was clear, the range optimal, the kill virtually certain.

He didn’t take it.

Instead, he watched the deer drink from the stream, its movements relaxed and unsuspecting. Thomas could observe its behavior, note the patterns in its feeding, catalog the information for future hunts. Or he could end its life with a single arrow and bring home meat that would feed his family for a week.

Providing. Always providing. The endless cycle of kill, sell, buy, repeat. Never quite getting ahead. Never quite achieving the security that would let him stop hunting and just be with Mara and William.

The deer moved away, disappearing into undergrowth, the opportunity lost. Thomas lowered his bow, feeling oddly relieved. He wasn’t ready to go home yet, to return empty-handed and face Mara’s knowing expression, her awareness that sometimes he hunted not to provide but to escape the weight of providing.

That was when he saw the behemak signs. Fresh tracks, territorial markings, evidence of the kind of prey that could change everything if he succeeded. Not a deer for a week’s meat but a creature whose hide and tusks and potential hoard could buy months of security.

One last hunt, he promised himself. One last time pursuing something in the forest instead of facing something at home.

The shimmer wasn’t getting smaller.

Thomas had stepped back from it—or tried to—but the distortion in the air between the ancient oaks seemed to fill more of his vision now, as if observing it changed its properties. Colors bled and merged at its edges, and the wordless song had become impossible to ignore, a constant presence in his mind that promised solutions to problems he’d spent years pretending weren’t growing.

He should return to the behemak’s trail. The wounded creature was close, vulnerable, exactly the opportunity he’d spent three days tracking to find. This shimmer—this impossible thing that shouldn’t exist—was distraction from the practical realities of a hunter’s life.

But the song showed him William, not as he was but as he could be: healthy, laughing without coughing, running through the village with the boundless energy of childhood uncompromised by weak lungs. And Mara, her face relaxed and smiling, the worry lines smoothed away because worry had become unnecessary.

Thomas’s rational mind knew these were illusions. The shimmer was showing him what he wanted to see, tempting him like the tales old hunters told of forest spirits that lured men to their deaths with visions of desire. He should walk away, continue tracking, focus on the real opportunity instead of impossible promises.

His feet moved forward instead of away.

Each step felt both involuntary and absolutely chosen, as if his body was simply expressing what some deeper part of him had already decided. The hunter’s caution that had kept him alive for thirty-four years screamed warnings, but beneath it lay a father’s desperation and a husband’s exhaustion, and those voices were louder, more insistent, more immediately compelling.

• ‘Just to see,’ he told himself, the words hollow even as he spoke them. ‘Just to understand what this is. Knowledge isn’t commitment. Looking isn’t entering. I can observe and then return to the hunt.’

But he knew he was lying. Had known it from the moment his fingers first touched the shimmer’s edge. Some part of him—the part that was tired of tracking prey to sell hides to buy medicine that might not work, tired of being competent but never quite successful, tired of the endless grinding necessity of survival—wanted whatever the shimmer offered.

At three paces distance, he could see through it to something beyond. Not just another part of the forest but another mode of existence entirely. The glimpses were fragmentary, disorienting: sky that was the wrong color, structures that couldn’t be natural but didn’t look built, horizons that curved in directions that made his eyes hurt.

His hunter’s mind tried to catalog what he was seeing, to impose familiar patterns on alien landscapes. Was that a mountain or a crystal formation or something without equivalent in his experience? Were those trees or towers or organisms too strange to categorize? The harder he tried to understand, the more his understanding fractured.

• ‘This is madness,’ he whispered. ‘Walking toward something I can’t understand, abandoning a hunt I’ve invested three days in, risking everything on visions that promise too much to be real.’

But William’s cough was real. Mara’s worry was real. The constant calculation of whether they could afford necessities was real. And if this shimmer offered escape from those realities, even temporarily, even through means Thomas couldn’t comprehend…

His hand reached out. The shimmer felt like nothing—neither solid nor liquid nor air, just a boundary between here and elsewhere that offered no resistance to pressure. When his fingers crossed the threshold, reality rippled outward from the point of contact, and he felt himself being pulled or pushed or simply translated through dimensions his body wasn’t designed to navigate.

The last thing he saw of his world was the behemak’s trail, continuing north through ancient forest toward den and hoard and the opportunity he was abandoning. The last thing he felt was regret mixed with relief, guilt mixed with hope, the complex emotional contradiction of a man who knew he was making a terrible choice but couldn’t stop himself from making it.

Then the forest vanished.

Thomas experienced the transition as simultaneous destruction and reconstruction, his body pulled apart into component elements and reassembled according to rules that hadn’t existed a moment before. It didn’t hurt—pain required continuous consciousness, and consciousness during the crossing was fragmented into discrete moments separated by gaps where existence became negotiable.

He landed in a stumble, hunter’s reflexes engaging before conscious thought, hands reaching for balance against ground that felt wrong. Not soil and leaf mold but something crystalline and warm, as if he’d fallen onto a surface that was simultaneously mineral and alive.

The air tasted of copper and ozone. The light was all wrong—purple-tinged, coming from two suns that hung at angles that violated everything Thomas knew about sky and time. The sounds were alien: clicks and chitters where bird calls should be, resonance where wind through leaves should rustle.

• ‘No,’ Thomas gasped, the word inadequate but the only response his shocked mind could produce. ‘No, no, this isn’t— I need to go back— Mara, William, I didn’t mean—’

He spun around, looking for the shimmer, for the portal, for any way to reverse what he’d done. Behind him was only more alien landscape: crystalline formations rising like trees but refracting light in patterns that hurt to observe, ground that changed texture and color as he watched, horizons that curved wrong.

The portal was gone. Or invisible. Or only functioned one direction. Thomas’s hunter’s mind tried all three hypotheses and found no evidence to support any of them. He was somewhere else, and the path back—if it existed—wasn’t obvious.

Panic hit him like physical force, making his hands shake and his breath come short. Everything he knew, everything he was, depended on geography he understood and rules that made sense. The forest was his domain because he’d spent decades learning its languages. This place spoke in sounds he couldn’t interpret, showed him vistas he couldn’t categorize, operated on principles he couldn’t begin to deduce.

He was going to die here. Was going to die without seeing Mara again, without teaching William to track, without ever explaining that he’d abandoned the behemak hunt for a pretty light that promised too much. His last thought would be of them, and their last thought of him would be why didn’t he come home, what kept him this time, why did he always choose hunting over family?

The clicking sounds intensified. Thomas’s panicked mind finally registered what his hunter’s instincts had been screaming since arrival: he was being hunted.

He drew his bow with the automatic efficiency of muscle memory, fitting arrow to string, but his hands were shaking too badly for accuracy. Whatever was producing those sounds was circling him, using tactics he recognized—surround the prey, cut off escape routes, attack from the blind angle when attention diverts.

It exploded from the ground where ground should have been solid, mandibles spread wide enough to bisect a man. Thomas had hunted predators before—wolves when they threatened livestock, the occasional rogue bear—but this was different. This was alien in a way that bypassed tactical assessment and went straight to primal terror.

He dove aside more from instinct than skill, the creature’s attack missing him by margins measured in finger-widths. His arrow flew wild, clattering harmlessly off chitin that looked harder than any armor he’d ever seen. He rolled, came up reaching for another arrow, and found himself staring at compound eyes that reflected his terrified face in a thousand fragmented images.

• ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, not to the creature but to Mara, to William, to the life he’d abandoned because he couldn’t resist a promise that was too good to be true. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I was providing. I thought I was solving. I was just running. And now you’ll never know.’

The creature tilted its head—disturbingly human gesture from something so absolutely not human—and clicked a sequence that might have been laughter or hunger or simple acknowledgment of successful hunt. Thomas drew his hunting knife, knowing it was inadequate, knowing he was going to die, knowing his death would leave Mara and William with questions that would never be answered.

Arrows struck the creature from multiple angles, precisely targeting the joints where chitin segments connected. It shrieked—a sound that bypassed Thomas’s ears and resonated in his chest cavity—and turned to face this new threat. Thomas saw humans, scarred and competent, attacking with the coordinated efficiency of people who’d fought this enemy before.

One of them—a woman with the weathered face of someone who’d survived too much—grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet.

• ‘Another one through the portals,’ she said, her voice carrying the weary resignation of someone who’d seen this before. ‘You’re lucky we found you before they did worse than play.’

• ‘I need to go back,’ Thomas gasped, still gripping his useless knife. ‘My family— my wife— my son— I need to go back.’

• ‘There is no back. There’s only forward, and forward means learning to fight or learning to die. Here, you’ll learn both.’

She led him away from the creature, which had retreated but not fled, its clicking sounds following them like commentary on a hunter who’d become prey. Thomas’s legs moved automatically, following this stranger through a landscape that made no sense, while his mind cataloged all the ways he’d failed.

He’d abandoned the behemak hunt. He’d left Mara without explanation. He’d robbed William of his father. And for what? For a portal that had promised solutions and delivered only separation?

The woman led him toward smoke—fire, at least that was universal—and a settlement that looked desperate and temporary. Other people emerged from crude shelters, and their faces told the same story: loss, adjustment, stubborn survival against incomprehensible circumstances.

• ‘Welcome to Dereth,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Elena. You’ll want to sit down before we explain what’s happened. It’s better to receive impossible information while seated.’

• ‘I don’t want information. I want to go home.’

• ‘Everyone wants that. But wanting doesn’t matter here. Only surviving matters. So you’ll listen to the explanation, and you’ll learn to fight, and you’ll come to terms with the fact that the life you had is over and the life you have now is all that’s available.’

Thomas sat because his legs gave out rather than from conscious choice. Elena explained—Dereth, the Olthoi, Asheron’s summoning, the impossibility of return. Each word felt like another nail in a coffin being built around everything Thomas had been.

He was a hunter. That identity had defined him for thirty-four years. But hunters operated in environments they understood, tracking prey whose behaviors they could predict. Here, he was the prey, and the predators followed rules he didn’t know.

He was a husband and father. But Mara was in another world, probably already wondering when he’d return, and William was growing up in Thomas’s absence, and neither of them would ever know that he’d tried to return, that the portal wouldn’t open from this side, that separation wasn’t choice but consequence.

• ‘How long?’ he asked, his voice rough. ‘How long have people been coming through?’

• ‘Three months,’ Elena said. ‘We’re all recent arrivals, still learning, still dying, still trying to survive long enough to understand what’s been done to us.’

• ‘Three months here… how much time on Ispar?’

• ‘We don’t know. Time flows differently between worlds, or so we’ve theorized. Could be days. Could be years. Could be centuries. We have no way to determine correspondence.’

Thomas felt the last hope drain out of him like water through cupped hands. If time was unreliable, if years could pass on Ispar while days passed here, then Mara might already have grown old waiting. William might already be grown, might have children of his own, might remember his father only as the man who went hunting one day and never came back.

Everything Thomas had built—the marriage, the family, the modest competence that let him provide for those he loved—all of it was gone, separated from him by dimensional barriers he couldn’t cross and time differentials he couldn’t overcome.

• ‘I should have taken the deer,’ he said, the observation emerging from shock rather than thought. ‘Four days ago, I had a clear shot at a buck, and I didn’t take it. I kept hunting, kept looking for the bigger score, the behemak that would solve everything. And I found the portal instead. If I’d just taken the deer, gone home satisfied with enough, I’d be with Mara right now. William would be asking about the hunt, and I’d be showing him how to dress the kill. We’d be together.’

• ‘You can’t think like that,’ Elena said, though her voice suggested she’d had similar thoughts about her own choices. ‘The portals called to specific people. If it wasn’t that moment, it would have been another. They’re selective, purposeful, designed to lure those vulnerable to what they promise.’

• ‘And what did they promise you?’

• ‘Escape from a life I’d built around hiding what I was. I was a thief, a good one, but eventually the law catches everyone. The portal offered freedom from pursuit. I took it, and got a different kind of prison.’

They sat in silence as the alien suns moved through their incomprehensible paths across the purple sky. Other people from the settlement approached, asked questions, shared their own portal stories. Everyone had lost something. Everyone had been tempted. Everyone had made a choice that seemed reasonable at the time and catastrophic in retrospect.

• ‘I need to learn to fight,’ Thomas said finally, the decision settling over him like familiar clothing. ‘If I can’t go back, if I’m stuck here, then I need to survive. And if I survive long enough, maybe I find someone who understands portals better than I do. Maybe I find a way to reverse what’s been done.’

• ‘That’s the right attitude,’ Elena said, though her expression suggested she didn’t believe reversal was possible. ‘Tomorrow, we start training. I’ll teach you what we know about the Olthoi: their weak points, their tactics, how to kill them before they kill you. You’ll die anyway—everyone does—but at least you’ll die competently.’

• ‘Die?’

• ‘Oh. I forgot to mention the lifestones.’

And Elena proceeded to explain that death wasn’t permanent, which should have been comforting but was somehow the most horrifying revelation yet. Thomas could die, resurrect, die again, an eternal cycle of trauma without release. Even death wouldn’t reunite him with Mara and William because death here was just another transition, another change in circumstances that left core problems unsolved.

That night, Thomas lay in the crude shelter they’d assigned him, staring at the purple sky through gaps in the roof, listening to the alien sounds of a world that would never be home. He thought of Mara, probably at the window now, watching the path he should have walked back days ago. He thought of William, asking when Papa would return, and Mara having to explain that sometimes people didn’t return, that the forest took men and gave back only silence.

And he thought of the behemak, dying alone in its den, its hoard unclaimed, the opportunity Thomas had abandoned for a promise that was too good to be true because it was entirely false.

• ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to people who would never hear him. ‘I tried to provide. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought one more hunt would solve everything. Instead, I solved nothing and lost everything. And now all I can do is survive and hope that surviving leads eventually to understanding, and understanding leads eventually to return, even though every rational assessment says that hope is as false as the portal’s promise.’

Sleep came eventually, troubled by dreams of William’s cough and Mara’s face and forest trails that led always toward shimmers that promised solutions and delivered only separation. And when Thomas woke to the wrong-colored light of Dereth’s morning, his first coherent thought was a hunter’s observation: he’d tracked the wrong prey, followed the wrong trail, and ended up in territory where all his skills meant nothing.

His second thought was more fundamental: he was alive, which meant he could learn, which meant he could adapt, which meant maybe—however unlikely—he could find his way back to the people who made survival worthwhile.

But as the days would prove, survival on Dereth was never simple, adaptation was never painless, and hope was the most dangerous prey of all to hunt.

The last coherent thought before he stepped through was of William’s laughter. Then even that dissolved in the siren song of the portal, the call that would tear him from everything he’d ever loved.

Maajid was seventeen, brilliant, and utterly convinced that existence was a cosmic joke with humanity as the punchline. In the humble village where he’d been raised, surrounded by simple farmers who found comfort in their limited horizons, he alone seemed to see the bars of the cage.

He had discovered his magical talent by accident—or perhaps by destiny. The annual visit of the robed men who blessed their fields had always intrigued him. While others saw religious ceremony, Maajid recognized patterns, formulas, the manipulation of forces that had nothing to do with divine intervention.

When one of them had deliberately left behind a bag of arcane implements—a test, Maajid later realized—he had seized the opportunity. The scrolls, the reagents, the staff; all became keys to a door he hadn’t known existed. “Malar Cazael,” he had spoken, and felt reality bend to his will.

But even this newfound power felt hollow. What was magic but another set of rules, another cage with prettier bars? He sought not just to understand the universe but to transcend it, to find the space between the cosmic joke and its punchline.

His father, a practical man who valued honest labor over intellectual pursuit, had given him an ultimatum: commit to their way of life or leave. Maajid chose exile over submission, setting out for the harbor city of Mawwuz with nothing but his stolen arcane knowledge and his boundless ambition.

Now, standing in the royal court, he watched the portal manifest with a mixture of excitement and recognition. This wasn’t one of the wild portals that had been appearing randomly. This was deliberate, controlled, created by someone who understood the mathematics of reality as deeply as Maajid aspired to.

• ‘Magnificent,’ he breathed, approaching the swirling vortex.

• ‘Stay back!’ a guard warned, but Maajid laughed.

• ‘Don’t you see? This is what I’ve been searching for. A door to elsewhere, to elsewhen, to else-everything. The universe is finally showing its hand.’

The portal sang to him, but unlike the others who would be seduced by its call, Maajid heard the song clearly. It was the music of infinite possibility, the harmony of paradox resolved, the laughter of the void that mocked all certainty.

He stepped through not because he was compelled, but because he chose to. Because on the other side lay either truth or a better class of lie, and either would be preferable to the mundane deceptions of ordinary existence.

Commander Marcus Tiberius of the Third Legion had seen enough impossible things in his forty-three years to know that the impossible was merely the improbable having a particularly aggressive day. He’d fought alongside the Gharu’ndim against raiders from the Drylands, had stood shield-to-shield with his brothers against horrors that crawled from the Direlands. He’d earned his cognomen “Steel and Sinew” not through boasting but through survival.

When the portal appeared in the Legion’s training ground, his men had fallen back in superstitious fear. Marcus had stood firm, not from bravery but from a lifetime of trained response to the unknown: evaluate, adapt, overcome.

The swirling vortex was unlike anything in his considerable experience. It defied tactical assessment, offered no flanks to exploit, no weakness to probe. It simply existed, a vertical wound in the world that sang a song of distant battlefields and impossible victories.

• ‘Commander,’ his lieutenant, Gaius, approached cautiously. ‘Should we evacuate the compound?’

• ‘Negative. Set a perimeter. No one approaches without my direct order.’

• ‘And if it… does something?’

• ‘Then we respond accordingly. We are the Third Legion. We do not flee from the unknown; we catalogue it, contain it, and if necessary, kill it.’

But even as he spoke with commander’s confidence, Marcus felt the portal’s call. It whispered of battles that would make his previous campaigns seem like children’s games, of enemies worthy of a true warrior’s steel, of a purpose greater than maintaining order in an empire slowly rotting from within.

He had joined the Legion as a boy of sixteen, filled with dreams of glory and honor. Twenty-seven years had beaten those dreams into the shape of duty, responsibility, and a bone-deep weariness that no amount of rest could cure. He commanded respect, owned land, had wealth enough to retire in comfort. But comfort had never been what Marcus Tiberius sought.

The portal offered something else: a war with meaning, a cause worth the spending of his remaining years, a final campaign that would either kill him or make him whole again.

His men would follow him anywhere; he’d earned that loyalty in blood and suffering shared equally. But he wouldn’t order them through the portal. This was a choice each man had to make alone.

Marcus removed his commander’s plume, set aside his insignia of rank. If he was going to step through that doorway, he would do it as Marcus the soldier, not as the Commander of the Third. He had no family to leave behind—the Legion had been his family for decades. No children to mourn him—the men under his command had been his only legacy.

• ‘Sir?’ Gaius watched with growing concern. ‘What are you doing?’

• ‘Something necessary, soldier. Hold the perimeter. If I don’t return within the hour, seal this area and report to the Senate that Commander Marcus Tiberius died investigating an anomaly.’

• ‘Sir, I cannot allow—’

• ‘You cannot allow?’ Marcus smiled grimly. ‘Since when does a lieutenant tell a commander what he can or cannot do? But you’re right to be concerned. This is not an order, Gaius. This is a personal choice. The Legion trained me to evaluate threats. This portal is either the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, or the greatest opportunity. Either way, someone needs to scout it.’

He approached the portal with the same methodical care he’d approach a fortified position—checking angles, noting details, preparing for anything. The song grew stronger, promising not comfort but purpose, not peace but a war worth fighting, not home but a place where a warrior past his prime might still matter.

Marcus Tiberius, Steel and Sinew, veteran of a hundred battles, stepped into the portal with the same deliberate precision he’d once stepped into shield walls. Whatever lay on the other side, he would meet it as he’d met every challenge in his life: with discipline, determination, and if necessary, death.

But death, he would soon learn, was about to become a much more complicated concept.

The clicking sounds resolved themselves into geometry.

Duulak had been walking for perhaps twenty minutes—though time felt negotiable here, as if duration were a convention rather than a law—when his scholarly mind finally imposed structure on the alien soundscape. The clicks weren’t random. They were echolocation, triangulation, the mathematical expression of a predator mapping its environment through sound.

Which meant something was hunting him.

He stopped walking. The crystalline ground beneath his feet rang softly with the cessation of movement, a sustained note that took too long to fade. Everything here had resonance, as if reality itself had become a musical instrument played by forces he couldn’t yet perceive.

The purple sky offered no proper sense of time. The binary suns hung in positions that suggested either late afternoon or early morning, but the shadows they cast intersected at angles that defied Euclidean geometry. Duulak found himself calculating the mathematics of impossible light, his mind seeking refuge in numbers even as his body prepared for whatever was producing those sounds.

There. Movement against the crystalline formations to his left. Something large, low to the ground, moving with the fluid precision of a creature perfectly adapted to its environment. Duulak’s hand went to his chest, fingers tracing the gestures for a basic illumination spell before his conscious mind had fully registered the threat.

The Olthoi emerged from behind a formation that might have been mineral or might have been architectural—the distinction seemed meaningless here, where geology expressed intent. It was beautiful in the way that mathematics could be beautiful: elegant economy of form, every curve serving multiple functions, chitin that reflected the binary suns’ light in patterns that suggested both armor and sensory array.

It was also absolutely terrifying.

Duulak had read accounts of the behemak, the sand wyrms of the deep desert, the void drakes he’d helped slay during the Sundering War. None of them had prepared him for this. The Olthoi was larger than a horse, its compound eyes reflecting his image in a thousand faceted fragments, its mandibles opening and closing with the methodical patience of something that had no doubt about the outcome of this encounter.

• ‘I mean no harm,’ Duulak said, his voice sounding thin in the alien air. He spoke in Gharu’ndi first, then Roulean, then the ancient Empyrean he’d recovered from texts. The words felt inadequate, but communication had to be attempted. ‘I am a scholar, not a warrior. I seek only understanding.’

The creature tilted its head—a disturbingly human gesture from something so alien—and clicked a sequence that Duulak’s mathematical mind immediately tried to parse. Was that language? Or merely the sound of a predator calculating the optimal strike angle?

He drew the first glyph in the air, phosphorescent light trailing his fingers. The spell was simple: a geometric pattern that would project his peaceful intent through shared mathematical principles. It had worked during the Sundering War when words failed, creating a common language of pure form.

The Olthoi’s response was to charge.

Duulak barely managed to complete the defensive ward before those mandibles closed on where his torso had been. The spell was supposed to create a barrier of solidified air, resistant but not harmful, a shield that demonstrated capability without aggression. Instead, the magic detonated like thunder, flinging the Olthoi backward with enough force to shatter several crystalline formations.

The creature landed on its back, legs cycling uselessly for a moment before it righted itself with a motion too quick to track. It clicked frantically now, a sound that might have been rage or might have been surprise or might have been the Olthoi equivalent of laughter at the fool who’d just demonstrated he had no idea how to calibrate his magic in this new world.

Duulak’s hands shook as he prepared another spell. The magical field here was so dense, so responsive, that his carefully calibrated techniques were like using a siege engine to crack an egg. Every gesture produced ten times the effect he intended, the ambient magic amplifying his will to dangerous extremes.

The Olthoi charged again, learning from the first encounter, approaching from an angle that would make geometric shields less effective. Duulak switched tactics, drawing the glyphs for acceleration rather than barrier, time compression applied to his own perception rather than external force.

The world slowed. Or rather, his experience of it accelerated, thoughts racing at velocities that left his body struggling to keep pace. He could see individual facets of the Olthoi’s compound eyes now, the microscopic articulations of its chitin plates, the chemical signatures of pheromones it secreted—information his enhanced perception could process but not yet comprehend.

More importantly, he could see the gaps. The joints where chitin segments overlapped, creating flex points necessary for movement but vulnerable to properly applied force. The way its weight distribution shifted mid-charge, a pattern he could predict three steps ahead.

He didn’t want to harm it. Even fleeing for his life, Duulak’s primary instinct was curiosity about this magnificent organism. But survival demanded pragmatism, and pragmatism meant exploiting weakness.

The kinetic lance he conjured was supposed to be a warning shot, targeted at the ground near the creature’s feet to startle it into retreat. Instead, the overcharged spell punched through the crystalline surface like paper, creating a crater that caused the Olthoi to stumble. As it recovered, Duulak hurled a concussive blast—intended as a gentle push—that caught the creature mid-stride and sent it tumbling across the landscape.

When it rose this time, the Olthoi didn’t charge. It stood at a distance, clicking in patterns that felt somehow more complex, more contemplative. Duulak found himself convinced—irrationally, perhaps, but with the certainty that comes from thirty years of studying patterns—that he was being analyzed. The creature was no longer hunting. It was observing.

• ‘You’re intelligent,’ Duulak said, keeping his hands still, palms open to show he was preparing no further spells. ‘You’re not merely reacting. You’re evaluating. You just learned something about me, and now you’re deciding whether I’m prey, threat, or something outside your categorical framework.’

The Olthoi regarded him with its thousand-faceted eyes. For a long moment, the only sound was the ambient hum of this world’s magical field, a constant vibration that Duulak suspected his ears hadn’t fully adapted to hearing.

Then the creature turned and began walking away. Not fleeing—its movements were too deliberate for panic—but deliberately choosing to disengage. Before it disappeared behind the crystalline formations, it paused, turned its head to look back at him one final time, and clicked a sequence that felt unmistakably like a statement.

Duulak stood alone in the alien landscape, hands still trembling from adrenaline and overcharged magic, watching the space where the Olthoi had vanished. He had survived his first encounter with this world’s dominant species, but only because his magic here was dangerously unpredictable. He’d intended communication and gotten violence. He’d attempted calibrated force and delivered catastrophic energy.

He was, he realized with the sick certainty of academic honesty, dangerously incompetent in this environment. All his training, all his theoretical mastery, was worse than useless—it was actively dangerous when the fundamental constants had changed.

Duulak sank down onto the crystalline ground, noting distantly that it felt warm, almost alive, vibrating with energies his body could sense but not name. His hands were covered in ink from the calculations on his arms, smudged now with sweat and fear. He should record his observations: the Olthoi’s morphology, the behavior patterns, the way magic manifested here. His journals were in his robes, waiting.

Instead, he thought of Yasmin. Not as she’d been when he left—weary, resigned, a woman who’d learned to love the edges of her husband’s life—but as she’d been twelve years ago, showing him the architectural plans for the Institution’s courtyard. She’d explained how beauty and function were not opposed but complementary, how true design served both aesthetic and practical needs simultaneously.

• ‘I didn’t want you to come back,’ he whispered to the purple sky, knowing she couldn’t hear, saying it anyway. ‘I wanted an excuse to leave a life I’d grown tired of, to walk away from responsibilities that felt more like weights than purposes. And I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve: a world that punishes me for knowing too little after a lifetime of knowing too much.’

In the distance, where smoke rose against the alien sky, he could see evidence of fire. Fire meant humans, or at least something that used combustion. Fire meant civilization, or at least its possibility.

Duulak stood, his joints protesting in ways that reminded him he was forty-seven and had just fought for his life using magic that had nearly killed him as efficiently as the creature he’d been defending against. He checked his robes: journals intact, reagents intact, pride significantly damaged but not destroyed.

He began walking toward the smoke, knowing he might be walking toward more danger but unable to remain alone with thoughts that offered no comfort and a landscape that offered no familiarity.

Behind him, the portal through which he’d entered was no longer visible. Whether it had closed or simply couldn’t be perceived from this side, he didn’t know. But the message was clear: there was no return. There was only forward, toward smoke and uncertainty and the slim hope that whatever waited there would be less interested in killing him than the magnificent alien predator he’d just encountered.

The clicking sounds began again, distant now, moving parallel to his course rather than toward him. The Olthoi was shadowing him, observing, learning. Duulak found that oddly comforting. At least his presence here had provoked curiosity rather than mere appetite.

Though perhaps, a darker part of his mind suggested, curiosity was merely appetite of a different sort.

The smoke came from a settlement that Duulak’s architectural sense told him was both desperate and disciplined. The fortifications were crude but geometrically sound, positioned to maximize defensive advantage while minimizing resource expenditure. Whoever had designed this understood siege principles, even if they lacked proper materials.

As he approached, figures appeared along the makeshift walls. Humans, he saw with relief that felt almost physical. People from Ispar, recognizable not just by their forms but by the way they held themselves, the patterns of motion that spoke of cultural origins he could identify.

One of them shouted something in Aluvian—a challenge or a warning, Duulak couldn’t quite parse it at this distance. He raised his hands, palms open, in the universal gesture of peaceful approach.

• ‘I seek shelter,’ he called back in Roulean, then repeated it in Gharu’ndi. ‘I came through a portal. I am no threat.’

The figures conferred. After a moment that felt eternal, a section of the wall opened—not a gate but literally a gap created by several people lifting away interlocked pieces of salvaged crystal. The engineering made Duulak’s fingers itch to sketch diagrams. Modular defensive barriers that could be reconfigured based on threat vectors. Yasmin would have appreciated the elegance.

He walked forward slowly, maintaining the non-threatening posture, hyper-aware that his robes marked him as a scholar or mage and that might be viewed with either respect or suspicion depending on these people’s experiences.

A woman met him just inside the perimeter. She was perhaps thirty-five, her hair pulled back in a style common to Gharu’ndim cavalry officers, but her eyes held the particular weariness Duulak associated with people who’d seen too much too quickly. She studied him with an assessment that was neither hostile nor welcoming, purely evaluative.

• ‘You’re new,’ she said. Not a question.

• ‘I… yes. The portal in Qush opened three hours ago. Or perhaps three days. Time feels uncertain here.’

• ‘Here is Dereth. The portals are Asheron’s work. Time is whatever the suns say it is, and the suns lie.’ She gestured toward the settlement. ‘I’m Celeste. I was a court astronomer before I was transported. Now I mostly try to keep people alive and occasionally figure out where we are and why.’

• ‘Duulak. I was—am—a theoretical thaumaturgist. The portals may be partially my fault, though I’m not certain of causation versus correlation.’

Celeste’s expression shifted to something that might have been amusement or might have been recognition of a familiar type of madness.

• ‘A theorist who thinks he broke the world. That’s refreshingly honest. Come. You’ll want to meet the others, and we’ll want to hear your story. New arrivals sometimes bring information about the timing of portal manifestations, which helps us understand the pattern.’

• ‘There’s a pattern?’

• ‘There’s always a pattern. The question is whether we’re intelligent enough to perceive it or whether we’re part of it and thus incapable of objective observation.’

Duulak found himself liking Celeste immediately. It had been years since he’d met someone who spoke in that particular rhythm, the cadence of a mind that saw existence as a puzzle to be solved rather than a circumstance to be endured.

The settlement—they called it the Seeker’s Encampment, he learned—housed perhaps forty people. They came from across Ispar: Gharu’ndim, Aluvian, Sho, even a few from smaller kingdoms he recognized only from geographic texts. What united them was the look in their eyes, that particular combination of trauma and stubborn determination.

And they all had questions.

• ‘Did you choose to come through?’ A young Aluvian man, barely twenty.

• ‘Did you see Asheron?’ An elderly Sho woman.

• ‘Did the portal show you what was on the other side before you crossed?’ A Gharu’ndim trader.

• ‘Did it sing? They sing, sometimes. Did yours sing?’

Duulak answered as he could: Yes, he’d chosen, though the choice had felt inevitable. No, he hadn’t seen Asheron, didn’t know who Asheron was beyond the name Celeste had mentioned. The portal had shown glimpses, yes, enough to tempt. And yes, it had sung—wordless promises of understanding that bypassed language entirely.

Celeste led him to what served as her study: a shelter constructed from salvaged Empyrean ruins, the walls covered in astronomical charts that made no sense because the stars here followed no pattern Duulak recognized from Ispar.

• ‘The portals started appearing three months ago by our reckoning,’ Celeste explained, spreading out maps that showed locations marked across what was presumably Dereth. ‘We’ve tracked over two hundred documented instances across Ispar. They appear most frequently in centers of magical study, royal courts, and areas of significant population. But there are outliers—wilderness appearances, individual summonings that follow no obvious pattern.’

• ‘Selective,’ Duulak said, studying the maps with growing fascination. ‘The portals are choosing specific people or types of people.’

• ‘That’s our hypothesis. But we can’t determine the selection criteria. We have scholars, yes, but also farmers, soldiers, merchants, children. No obvious unifying factor beyond sapience.’

• ‘How many have come through?’

• ‘We estimate thousands. Most scatter, seek their own survival. A few—like us—settle and try to understand. Others…’ She paused, her expression darkening. ‘Others don’t survive the first day. The Olthoi are efficient predators, and most portal arrivals have no combat training.’

Duulak thought of his own encounter, the way he’d survived through accidental overwhelming force rather than skill.

• ‘I encountered one. An Olthoi, you called it? I barely survived, and only because magic manifests dangerously powerful here. I meant to create a barrier. I produced what amounted to a siege weapon.’

• ‘The magical field saturation here is approximately ten times what we experience on Ispar,’ Celeste said, as if this were a normal astronomical observation. ‘Spells that require extensive ritual there manifest from mere intention here. We’ve lost three mages to their own magic before they learned recalibration.’

• ‘Lost?’

• ‘Dead. Though death here is… complicated.’

She proceeded to explain the lifestones, and Duulak felt his understanding of reality undergo its second major revision of the day. Consciousness persisting beyond physical death, reconstituted by ancient Empyrean technology that turned mortality into a temporary inconvenience. It was simultaneously the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard and the most horrifying.

• ‘You’re telling me death is impermanent but trauma is eternal?’ he asked. ‘That people can die, remember dying, and be forced to continue living with that memory?’

• ‘Yes. We’ve seen it break minds. Some people die once and never recover psychologically. Others die repeatedly and each death accumulates until they’re more trauma than person.’

• ‘And we can’t truly escape this world because even death doesn’t release us.’

• ‘Precisely. Welcome to Dereth, Duulak. The prison with immortal inmates.’

The Seekers, Celeste explained, had formed around a simple principle: if they were trapped here, they would at least understand why and by whom. They excavated Empyrean ruins, translated what texts they could, mapped the patterns of Olthoi movement, and tried to reverse-engineer portal mechanics.

• ‘We call ourselves Seekers,’ Celeste said, ‘because we refuse to accept our circumstances without understanding their causation. If Asheron summoned us, we’ll learn why. If the portals can be reversed, we’ll discover how. If we’re pieces in a game whose rules we don’t know, we’ll learn those rules and find the players.’

• ‘Who is Asheron?’

• ‘An Empyrean. Perhaps the last one on Dereth, though we have incomplete information. The portals are demonstrably his work—we’ve found references in the ruins. But whether he’s savior or kidnapper depends on perspective we don’t yet have.’

• ‘Show me the texts.’

Celeste smiled, the first genuine warmth he’d seen from her.

• ‘I was hoping you’d say that. Most new arrivals are too traumatized to immediately engage with research. But you…’

• ‘I’ve spent my life asking questions that comfort couldn’t answer. Being transported to an alien world doesn’t change the fundamentals of who I am.’

• ‘Or it reveals them. Come. I’ll show you what we’ve translated so far. Most of it is fragmentary, but there’s a phrase that keeps appearing: ”Harbinger Protocol.” We think it refers to the summonings, but the context is maddeningly opaque.’

Duulak spent the next several hours immersed in Empyrean texts, his mind finally engaged with something approaching familiar territory. The language was related to the ancient Empyrean he’d studied in the ruins near Qush, but evolved, corrupted by time or perhaps deliberately obscured. Reading it required equal parts translation and cryptanalysis.

But patterns emerged—and they were profound. These weren’t simple technical manuals. The Empyreans had developed a theoretical framework for magic that made his own life’s work seem like a child’s first attempts at arithmetic.

He found references to ”quality-negotiation” versus ”quantity-manipulation”—the Empyreans understood that magic and physics engaged different aspects of the same reality. They had mathematized bandwidth constraints, treating the 7±2 limit of working memory not as folk wisdom but as a fundamental constant governing consciousness-reality interaction. One fragmentary theorem—Celeste had translated it as the ”Bandwidth Sufficiency Principle”—suggested that any finite consciousness would hit limits in perceiving what they called ”The Mechanism.”

• ‘What is The Mechanism?’ Duulak asked, tracing the recurring symbol with his finger.

• ‘We don’t know. The texts reference it constantly but never define it. Best we can determine, it’s their term for… reality itself? The underlying structure? The way qualities and quantities relate? They treated it as the central mystery of existence.’

• ‘And they couldn’t solve it?’

• ‘Thirty thousand years of civilization, and no. They made progress—we think the lifestone network was part of that—but the texts suggest The Mechanism exceeds any bounded understanding. Even theirs.’

Duulak felt a chill that had nothing to do with Dereth’s temperature. The Empyreans had been ahead of him. Far ahead. And if they’d hit limits to comprehension…

But then he found the passage that made everything cohere. Celeste’s partial translation noted four cryptic terms that appeared throughout the Harbinger Protocol references: ”Organizer-consciousness,” ”Understander-consciousness,” ”Connector-consciousness,” ”Transcender-consciousness.”

• ‘Four distinct what—personality types?’ he asked.

• ‘Maybe? Or cognitive architectures? The text suggests they’re fundamental ways consciousness relates to reality. The Protocol mentions needing all four for some kind of… triangulation? The translation gets murky here.’

• ‘Show me the original.’

The Empyrean glyphs were dense, layered with meaning. But Duulak’s translation yielded something that stopped his breath:

No singular consciousness-architecture perceives The Mechanism completely. The Organizer sees structure where there is flow. The Understander sees pattern where there is paradox. The Connector sees relationship where there is isolation. The Transcender sees fluidity where there is fixity. Together, their perspectives triangulate truth no single bandwidth can hold. Thus: the Protocol requires four, selected for maximal archetypal purity, forced into confluence under existential pressure.

References to ”adaptive species” and ”consciousness transfer” and ”evolutionary acceleration” appeared throughout. The Harbinger Protocol, as best he could determine, wasn’t a simple summoning spell but something more complex: a system for selecting, transporting, and cultivating consciousness toward some unspecified end.

• ‘We’re not random refugees,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘We’re being selected. Tested. Cultivated for something.’

• ‘Cultivated how?’

• ‘The lifestones. They don’t just resurrect—they record. Each death creates a template, a map of consciousness that persists. Over time, over multiple deaths and resurrections, we’ll change. Adapt. Become something other than what we were on Ispar.’

• ‘You’re saying we’re experiments.’

• ‘I’m saying we’re seeds being planted in hostile soil to see what grows. But it’s more specific than that. The Protocol is selecting for these four consciousness-types. Somewhere on Dereth there are three others, each representing a different way of engaging with reality. And whoever designed this…’

He looked down at the text, at the elegant Empyrean script describing consciousness-architectures and triangulation and The Mechanism that exceeded all understanding.

• ‘Whoever designed this believes that together, the four of us might perceive something none of us can alone. Something even the Empyreans couldn’t grasp with their uniform cognitive style.’

Duulak realized, with the sick certainty that comes from truly understanding, that he was the Understander. His entire life—the endless questions, the pursuit of comprehension over comfort, the need to map reality’s deep structure—had been preparation for a role he hadn’t consented to in a plan whose purpose he still couldn’t fully see.

Celeste sat back, her expression unreadable.

• ‘I’ve been here three months. I’ve died twice. The second time, I noticed something. My memory of the astronomical charts was more detailed afterward, as if the lifestone had somehow enhanced my recall during reconstitution.’

• ‘Selective enhancement. The lifestones are learning what skills matter to you and optimizing for them. If you’re right about the archetypes, they might be amplifying whatever makes you… you. Deepening your Connector-ness or Understander-ness or whatever category you fit.’

• ‘Which means we’re being improved whether we consent or not.’

• ‘Yes. And that’s both the most fascinating and most horrifying thing I’ve ever encountered. We’re becoming what this world needs us to be, losing what we were in the process.’

Night fell with disconcerting rapidity, the binary suns setting in sequence rather than simultaneously. The Seekers’ settlement took on a different character in darkness: fires burned behind crystalline shields that refracted light in patterns that hurt to observe too directly, and guards maintained watch with the nervous tension of people who knew safety was always temporary.

Duulak was given shelter in a communal structure, a space shared with three other scholars who’d arrived over the past weeks. They exchanged stories in the darkness: portal experiences, first encounters with Olthoi, the slow adaptation to a world that felt simultaneously more and less real than Ispar.

But sleep, when it finally came, brought dreams. Not the normal fragmentary chaos of sleeping minds but something more structured, more deliberate. He dreamed of vast networks spreading beneath Dereth’s surface, of consciousness flowing through crystalline channels, of being observed by something that existed partially in dimensions his mind couldn’t properly process.

He dreamed of Yasmin, standing at a window, waiting.

And he dreamed of the Olthoi that had spared him, clicking patterns that his sleeping mind translated into something approximating language: ”You are seen. You are measured. You are not yet understood, but you will be.”

The Olthoi attack came on his third day at the Seeker’s Encampment, just as Duulak had begun to convince himself that scholarly pursuits might shield him from the violent realities of this world.

He was in Celeste’s study, analyzing a particularly complex passage about consciousness architecture, when the alarm sounded—a series of crystal chimes that created harmonics designed to penetrate even deep concentration. The sound was beautiful and terrible, and every person in the encampment responded with the practiced urgency of people who’d learned that seconds meant the difference between survival and catastrophe.

• ‘How many?’ Celeste called out, already moving toward the weapons cache.

• ‘Six workers, three soldiers,’ someone shouted from the wall. ‘Coordinated approach from the eastern quadrant. They’re testing the modular barriers.’

• ‘Standard defense pattern three,’ Celeste commanded, her voice carrying the authority of someone who’d led these defenses before. ‘Mages to the inner ring, non-combatants to the shelters, and someone get Duulak to—’

• ‘I can help,’ Duulak said, the words emerging before his rational mind could evaluate them. ‘I have combat training from the Sundering War.’

• ‘That was twenty years ago on a different world with different magic.’

• ‘Which makes me experienced and adaptable rather than merely desperate.’

Celeste looked at him for a half-second that felt eternal, then nodded.

• ‘Inner ring. You’ll work with Darius and Senna. They’re your age, they know recalibration, and they won’t judge you if you accidentally obliterate a crystal formation. Just try not to obliterate any humans.’

Duulak took his position in what the Seekers called the ”mage ring,” a circular formation that provided overlapping fields of fire while preventing friendly fire from overcharged spells. It was elegant tactical magic, the kind of combat theory he’d helped develop during the Sundering War but never expected to use again.

Darius was on his right: a Sho scholar perhaps his own age, with the particular calm that came from either deep philosophical acceptance or multiple deaths dulling the fear response. Senna was on his left: a Gharu’ndim woman who moved with the fluid precision of someone who’d spent years studying wind magic and its applications to both construction and destruction.

• ‘First combat on Dereth?’ Darius asked conversationally, as if they were discussing weather rather than imminent violence.

• ‘Second. I encountered an Olthoi soldier my first hour here. Survived through luck and overcharged magic.’

• ‘Then you understand the fundamental problem,’ Senna said. ‘Every spell you know is ten times more powerful and half as controllable. Welcome to war in a world that amplifies everything, including mistakes.’

The Olthoi workers hit the eastern barrier first, their mandibles carving through the crystalline formations with disturbing efficiency. They weren’t attacking randomly—they were systematically dismantling the defensive structure, creating calculated weaknesses for the soldiers to exploit.

Duulak watched the pattern emerge, his tactical mind automatically cataloging the assault sequence. The workers weren’t laborers; they were combat engineers, demolition specialists working in perfect coordination to create optimal breach points.

• ‘They’re too organized,’ he said. ‘This isn’t opportunistic predation. This is military tactics.’

• ‘Welcome to the war none of us signed up for,’ Darius replied. ‘The Olthoi aren’t beasts. They’re soldiers serving a hive intelligence that makes tactical decisions beyond anything we encountered on Ispar.’

The first soldier Olthoi breached through a gap the workers had created, moving with horrifying speed toward the inner defensive ring. Duulak felt his hands begin the familiar gestures for a kinetic barrage, his mind automatically calculating vectors and force distributions.

The spell manifested as a wall of semi-solid air that caught the Olthoi mid-leap and slammed it backward into two more soldiers attempting the same breach. Duulak had intended a targeted strike. He’d created area-effect devastation.

• ‘Good instincts, poor calibration,’ Senna called out. ‘You’re still thinking in Ispar values. Divide everything by ten and you’ll get closer to precision.’

He tried to adjust, to scale down his magical intentions, but the problem was that his training had been systematic, automatic, muscle memory built over decades. Telling himself to use one-tenth the effort was like telling himself to breathe one-tenth as deeply—possible in theory, nearly impossible in crisis.

The Olthoi soldiers adapted to the defensive pattern with disturbing speed. Where one approach failed, they tried another, learning from each repulsed assault. Duulak found himself in a rhythm: observe attack vector, calculate response, execute spell, immediately assess whether the outcome matched intention or created collateral devastation.

He was getting better at calibration. Not good—not even adequate—but better. His third kinetic lance merely knocked an Olthoi soldier off its trajectory rather than punching a crater in the landscape. His fifth barrier spell created an actual wall rather than a explosive force distribution.

That was when he made his fatal mistake.

An Olthoi worker had circled around during the confusion, approaching from the blind angle that developed when three soldiers pressed the eastern barrier simultaneously. Duulak saw it in his peripheral vision, turned to engage, and drew the glyphs for a precision compression field—a spell designed to immobilize without harm.

The magical field manifested correctly. The Olthoi stopped, suspended in an invisible matrix that prevented movement while preserving life. Duulak felt a moment of satisfaction: finally, precision, finally control over this world’s overwhelming magic.

Then he saw Darius, lying on the ground where a second worker Olthoi had pulled him from the defensive ring. Saw the massive mandibles closing around the scholar’s torso. Saw the moment of resistance before chitin edges, sharper than any blade, found the spaces between human ribs.

Duulak’s concentration broke. The compression field collapsed. The immobilized Olthoi resumed its charge, now furious from confinement, no longer testing but committed to killing the mage who’d held it.

He drew another spell, something, anything, but the gestures came too slow, his hands suddenly uncertain whether to protect himself or help Darius. The Olthoi covered the distance between them in three strides, mandibles spread wide.

The pain was indescribable.

Then it stopped.

Duulak woke screaming.

He stood at a lifestone—he understood that intellectually even as his body insisted it should be lying in pieces where an Olthoi’s mandibles had found the spaces between his ribs. The scream that tore from his throat wasn’t pain, exactly, but something deeper: the sound of a mind confronting the impossibility of its own continuity.

• ‘Breathe,’ someone said. Celeste, he realized after a moment. She stood nearby but not touching, respecting the space that newly resurrected people needed. ‘You’re whole. You’re alive. The body is real. The death was also real. Both things are true.’

• ‘I died,’ Duulak gasped, his hands moving over his chest, feeling for wounds that should be there, finding only intact flesh beneath his robes. ‘I remember— the pain— everything—’

• ‘Yes. You remember. That’s the price of the lifestones. They preserve consciousness completely, which means they preserve the moment of death. The trauma doesn’t fade with resurrection. You carry it now, permanently.’

Duulak sank down against the lifestone, his legs suddenly unable to support his weight. His hands were shaking so violently he couldn’t have drawn a simple glyph if his life depended on it.

His life.

He had a life again. A life he’d lost. A life that persisted only because ancient Empyrean technology had recorded his consciousness and rebuilt his body according to a template that…

• ‘Am I the same person?’ The question escaped before he could consider its implications. ‘The Duulak who died— is that who I am now? Or am I a copy, a reconstruction that merely thinks it’s continuous with—’

• ‘That’s the question that breaks some people,’ Celeste said, sitting down beside him. ‘The philosophical implications of consciousness transfer and resurrection. Some decide they’re copies and have existential crises that never resolve. Others decide continuity of memory equals continuity of self. Most just stop thinking about it because thinking about it makes survival impossible.’

• ‘Which category do you fall into?’

• ‘I’m a scientist. I hold multiple hypotheses in superposition and continue gathering evidence. It doesn’t matter which answer is objectively true if I can’t determine it empirically. What matters is whether I’m useful, whether I can contribute to understanding, whether this consciousness—however it arose—serves purposes I consider valuable.’

They sat in silence for several minutes. Duulak’s breathing gradually steadied, though his hands continued trembling. In the distance, he could hear sounds of the settlement recovering from the attack: calls of the wounded being tended, the clatter of debris being cleared, the quiet conversations of people processing their own traumas.

• ‘How many died?’ he asked finally.

• ‘Four. All resurrected, all traumatized but alive. Darius is at his lifestone now. This is his eighth death.’

• ‘How does anyone survive eight deaths?’

• ‘They don’t, not really. Darius was a gentle man when he arrived, a scholar who studied poetry and philosophy. Now he’s something else—still brilliant, still capable of beauty, but carrying eight separate moments of ultimate trauma. He functions because the alternative is collapse, and collapse means vulnerability, and vulnerability means death number nine.’

Duulak stood, testing whether his legs would support him, finding they would if he concentrated.

• ‘I need to see him. I need to…’ He trailed off, uncertain what he needed. To apologize for failing to save him? To confirm that his own resurrection wasn’t unique, that the impossibility was universal?

• ‘He’ll be at his shelter by now. Celeste gave directions. ‘But Duulak— don’t expect the man you fought beside. Death changes people, and eight deaths change them eight times over. Be prepared for someone who looks familiar but thinks differently.’

He found Darius sitting outside his shelter, staring at the purple sky with eyes that had seen too much. The scholar turned as Duulak approached, and his smile was genuine but somehow distant, as if emotion required conscious effort rather than spontaneous response.

• ‘Duulak. Welcome to the club of the dead who walk. How was your first resurrection?’

• ‘Horrifying. World-shattering. Philosophically paralyzing.’

• ‘So, typical. It gets worse each time, actually. You’d think you’d adapt, but consciousness seems designed to process death as ultimate rather than temporary. Each resurrection is shock reimposed on already traumatized neural patterns.’

• ‘How do you continue functioning?’

• ‘Purpose. I study the patterns of death and resurrection, cataloging how consciousness persists through the lifestone process. If I’m going to die repeatedly, I might as well understand it completely. Knowledge doesn’t prevent trauma, but it provides context that makes trauma bearable.’

Duulak sat down beside him, matching his posture, two scholars contemplating mysteries too large for comfortable comprehension.

• ‘I saw you die,’ Duulak said quietly. ‘I was holding an Olthoi in a compression field, and in my peripheral vision, I watched you… I lost concentration. The Olthoi I’d immobilized got free and killed me.’

• ‘So you died because my death broke your focus. And I died because I was too slow reacting to a worker’s approach. We’re caught in cascading failure states, each death creating conditions for more deaths. It’s mathematically elegant and emotionally devastating.’

• ‘We need to get better at this. At combat, at magic calibration, at not dying constantly.’

• ‘Yes. Or we need to accept that death is the constant and survival is the temporary state we cycle through between traumas.’

They sat in silence, watching as one of the binary suns set, leaving only the smaller, blue-white sun to illuminate the landscape in colors that hurt Duulak’s eyes with their alienness.

• ‘I left a life on Ispar,’ Duulak said. ‘A wife I’d grown distant from, an apprentice I’d failed to nurture properly, work that felt more like obligation than passion. Part of me stepped through that portal hoping to escape responsibilities that had become weights. But sitting here, having died and returned, I realize: you can’t escape yourself. All your failures, all your inadequacies—they persist through any transition. Even death doesn’t release you from who you are.’

• ‘That’s the cruelest aspect of the lifestones. They preserve everything, including the parts of yourself you’d rather lose. I was afraid of pain when I arrived. Now I’ve experienced ultimate pain eight times and fear it more than ever, while simultaneously knowing the fear doesn’t protect me, doesn’t prevent recurrence, serves no purpose except to make existence worse.’

• ‘Then why continue? Why not simply stop resurrecting, stay dead?’

• ‘Because the lifestones don’t offer that option. They bind consciousness to the pattern, maintain continuity whether we consent or not. We can’t refuse resurrection any more than we can refuse to think. We are, therefore we persist, whether persistence is blessing or curse.’

Duulak thought about the Empyrean texts he’d been studying, the references to ”consciousness cultivation” and ”evolutionary pressure.” Suddenly the full horror of the Harbinger Protocol became clear: they weren’t just being kept alive. They were being forced to evolve through repeated death and resurrection, shaped by trauma toward some end they couldn’t perceive.

• ‘We’re not prisoners,’ he said slowly, working through the implications. ‘We’re subjects in an experiment where death is the independent variable and consciousness modification is the dependent variable. Asheron isn’t saving us or even enslaving us. He’s farming us. Growing whatever consciousness becomes after enough iterations of destruction and reconstitution.’

• ‘That’s dark even by my standards, and I’ve died eight times. But yes, I’ve reached similar conclusions. The question is: what do we become? And is it something we’d recognize as ourselves or something so changed that continuity becomes meaningless?’

• ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

• ‘Which is?’

• ‘We study it. We catalog each death, each resurrection, each change to consciousness and capability. If we’re experiments, we become self-aware experiments. We gather data on our own transformation and use that data to understand not just what’s being done to us but potentially how to direct it.’

Darius turned to look at him directly for the first time, his eyes focusing with the intensity of someone who’d found unexpected purpose.

• ‘You want to turn the experiment around. Make ourselves observers rather than mere subjects.’

• ‘Exactly. We’re scholars. Understanding is what we do. If we’re being changed, we’ll understand the mechanisms. If we’re being cultivated toward something, we’ll identify it. And if we’re pieces in a game whose rules we don’t know, we’ll learn those rules and find the players.’

• ‘That’s basically Celeste’s founding principle for the Seekers.’

• ‘Then I’ve found my people. Show me everything you’ve documented about the death and resurrection process. I’ll add my own observations. Together, we’ll build a model of consciousness persistence that might give us agency in a situation designed to deny it.’

They worked through the night—if night meant anything on a world with binary suns that set in sequence—compiling observations, comparing experiences, building the first systematic catalog of how consciousness behaved when subjected to repeated cycles of destruction and reconstitution.

Duulak found himself falling into familiar rhythms: hypothesis, observation, data compilation, model building. The work was horrifying in its subject matter but comforting in its methodology. Death might be inescapable, but death could be studied. Trauma might be unavoidable, but trauma could be measured, quantified, understood.

As the blue-white sun climbed toward something approximating morning, Celeste found them surrounded by pages of notes, diagrams of consciousness architecture, theoretical models of how the lifestones preserved and reconstructed identity.

• ‘You’ve been awake all night,’ she observed.

• ‘We’ve been productive all night,’ Duulak corrected. ‘There’s a difference. I’ve died, resurrected, confronted the philosophical implications of consciousness persistence, and begun the systematic study of the phenomenon. Sleep would merely delay understanding.’

• ‘You sound like you’ve found purpose.’

• ‘I’ve found what I always had: the need to understand, elevated to existential necessity. If we’re being transformed, I’ll understand the transformation. If we’re being used, I’ll identify the use. And if we’re being destroyed, I’ll at least document the process so those who come after can learn from our failures.’

• ‘Welcome to the Seekers, Duulak. You’ve been one of us since you first asked why the portals appeared. You just needed to die once to fully commit to the path.’

Duulak looked at his hands, steady now, covered in ink from hours of writing. He thought of Yasmin, waiting at a window on a world he could never return to, watching for a husband who would never walk through her door again. He thought of Korvain, brilliant and doomed to surpass his master, carrying forward work that Duulak would never complete on Ispar.

And he thought of the Olthoi that had killed him, efficient and intelligent, following imperatives he didn’t yet understand but would, given time and determination and however many deaths it took to accumulate sufficient data.

• ‘I have a journal entry to make,’ he said, standing and stretching muscles that protested from a night of stillness. ‘Day Three on Dereth. Or Day One of my second life. I’m not certain which framing is more accurate. I’ve discovered that death is impermanent, consciousness is persistent, and understanding is the only anchor in a world designed to strip away everything else. I don’t know if I’m still Duulak or merely an entity that remembers being Duulak. But whoever I am, I have work to do. The portals, the Olthoi, the Harbinger Protocol, the nature of consciousness itself—all of it is puzzle pieces scattered across a landscape I barely comprehend. I’ll gather those pieces. I’ll understand the pattern. And perhaps, in understanding, I’ll find something approximating purpose in this prison that denies even death as escape.’

He paused, then added one final line:

• ‘Yasmin, if some version of this ever reaches you across whatever gulf separates our worlds: I see you now, truly see you, in ways I never managed when we shared physical space. I hope that counts for something. I hope you’ve found the freedom to live fully rather than existing in the margins of my obsession. And I hope, somehow, you understand why I couldn’t turn back from the edge, even knowing the cost.’

The blue-white sun climbed higher, painting the Seeker’s Encampment in colors that still hurt to observe directly but that Duulak was learning to tolerate. The Olthoi would attack again—they always did. He would likely die again—everyone did, eventually. But death was no longer the end, merely a transition point, another data point in the ongoing study of consciousness persistence.

He was Duulak the Twice-Blessed, though the blessing had become more burden than gift. He was a scholar in a world that punished certainty and rewarded adaptation. He was, perhaps, the first systematic observer of his own potential transformation from human to something else entirely.

And he had work to do.

The forest spoke in languages Thomas had spent thirty-four years learning to read. This morning it told him of rain three days ago, of deer passing through at dawn, of the behemak’s trail growing fresher with each mile he tracked north.

He knelt beside a depression in the soft earth, running his fingers along its edges with the gentleness of a man reading scripture. The print was massive—large as his torso, pressed deep into ground that had been rain-softened but was now beginning to harden in autumn’s gradual shift toward winter. Four claws, each the length of his hand, had carved distinct furrows. The pattern of weight distribution told him the creature favored its right side, likely from the wound he’d witnessed three days ago during its territorial fight with the younger male.

Thomas closed his eyes, letting his other senses fill the gap. The forest’s ambient sounds: wind through oak leaves that hadn’t yet fallen, a jay’s warning call about his presence, water running somewhere to the east over stones that would be ice-slick in another month. Beneath it all, the smell of disturbed earth, scat that marked territory, and something else—the faint copper scent of old blood.

The behemak was wounded worse than he’d initially estimated. The younger male’s tusks had found something vital, and while the elder had driven off its challenger, it had paid a price that would cost it dominance and possibly life.

Which made it Thomas’s opportunity.

He stood, adjusting the bow across his shoulders, feeling the familiar weight of his hunting knife against his hip. Three days he’d been tracking, sleeping in trees when darkness made following the trail impossible, eating cold meat to avoid smoke that might alert his quarry. His wife Mara thought he was hunting deer to stock the winter stores. She’d packed him supplies for five days, kissed his cheek with the resigned affection of a woman who’d married a hunter and learned to accept the absences.

But this wasn’t about deer.

The behemak’s hide alone would fetch enough gold to pay the healer’s fees for William’s persistent cough. The tusks—ivory that held magical resonance—could buy medicine for a year. And if the old male had managed to accumulate even a fraction of the hoard these creatures were known to gather, if Thomas could claim it before scavengers or the younger male found it…

He could stop hunting. Could spend winters by the fire teaching William to carve. Could give Mara the security she’d never asked for but deserved. Could be the father and husband he’d always meant to become after one last hunt.

After this hunt, he promised himself, as he’d promised after the last one, and the one before that.

The trail led deeper into territory Thomas had never explored. The forest here was old—not the managed woodland near the village where foresters maintained clear trails and marked dangerous areas, but true wilderness. Trees grew so thick their canopies blocked most sunlight, creating a perpetual twilight that played tricks on depth perception. Roots sprawled across the ground like arthritic fingers, and the undergrowth was dense enough that Thomas had to trust the behemak’s trail rather than his own sense of direction.

He stopped every hundred yards to reconfirm the track, noting where the creature had scraped against trees to relieve itching from its wound, where it had paused to feed on bark, where its gait had grown more uneven as exhaustion and blood loss accumulated. The trail was a story Thomas read with the ease of a scholar interpreting familiar texts, each sign a word in a narrative of decline.

By midday—judged by the quality of light filtering through the canopy rather than any glimpse of the sun—he estimated he was perhaps an hour behind the behemak. Close enough to be cautious, far enough to avoid alerting it. The trick with wounded prey was patience. Let the injury do half the work. Track but don’t pressure. Wait for the moment when exhaustion made the creature vulnerable.

Thomas found a stream and drank, refilling his waterskin, taking a moment to eat some of the bread Mara had packed. It was good bread, solid and dense with the nourishment a man needed for long days in the forest. She’d baked it three days ago, still warm when she’d wrapped it in cloth, and Thomas had watched her hands work with the familiar efficiency of fifteen years of marriage.

Fifteen years. William was seven now, old enough to start learning to track, to shoot, to read the forest’s languages. But the boy’s cough had worsened over the summer, and the healer said his lungs were weak, needed medicine that cost more than Thomas earned from selling deer and rabbits to the village market.

The behemak would solve everything. One hunt. One kill. One opportunity to stop being the provider who was never quite providing enough.

He finished eating and stood, wiping bread crumbs from his beard. The afternoon light was shifting, taking on the golden quality that preceded evening. He needed to decide: continue tracking and risk camping in unknown territory, or find a secure position to spend the night and resume at dawn?

The behemak’s trail answered for him. Fresh scat, still steaming slightly in the cool air. The creature had rested here less than an hour ago, which meant it was slowing, struggling, close to whatever den it had chosen for refuge.

Thomas’s hunter’s instincts warred with his father’s caution. Push now and he might find the behemak vulnerable, claim its hoard before darkness fell, return to Mara and William with enough wealth to change their lives. Wait until morning and the creature might recover enough to be dangerous, or might die and attract scavengers who’d claim the hoard before Thomas could reach it.

He pushed forward.

The trail led to an area where the forest changed character. The trees here were ancient beyond estimation, their trunks so massive that five men linking arms couldn’t encircle them. The undergrowth thinned as if the old trees’ dominance prevented lesser plants from competing. And there, between two particularly massive oaks, Thomas saw something that made his heart stutter and his hunter’s mind go blank with incomprehension.

A shimmer in the air. A distortion, like heat rising from sun-baked stones, except the air here was cool and the effect was too localized, too stable to be natural atmospheric phenomenon.

Thomas approached slowly, bow in hand though his rational mind knew arrows would be useless against whatever this was. The shimmer intensified as he drew closer, resolving into something that hurt to observe directly. Colors that had no names. Movement that suggested depth without consuming space. A vertical slash in the forest’s reality, as if someone had cut through the world’s surface to reveal something underneath.

It sang to him.

Not with sound—Thomas’s ears heard only the forest’s normal evening chorus—but with a wordless promise that bypassed his senses and spoke directly to needs he’d never named. Safety for William. Security for Mara. An end to the constant calculation of whether they could afford meat this week, medicine this month, survival this winter.

The behemak’s trail led past the shimmer and continued north. Thomas could see its tracks clearly, could estimate he was now perhaps twenty minutes behind the wounded creature. Everything he’d worked for over three days of tracking was within reach.

But the shimmer promised more than one behemak’s hoard. It promised solutions to problems Thomas hadn’t consciously acknowledged: the growing awareness that his body was slowing with age, that the hunts grew harder each year, that William’s needs would increase as the boy grew. It promised escape from the endless grinding necessity of providing.

Thomas stood between the behemak’s trail and the shimmer, caught in the paralysis of a man who sensed that this moment would define everything that came after. His hunter’s instinct screamed warnings about the unknown, about pretty lures and hidden traps, about things that seemed too good to be true because they were.

But his father’s desperation whispered that sometimes you took risks because the alternative was watching your son grow sicker while you did nothing.

• ‘Just a quick look,’ he told himself, his voice sounding hollow in the ancient forest. ‘The behemak isn’t going anywhere fast. I can spare a moment.’

He took a step toward the shimmer. Then another. The singing intensified, not louder but more insistent, showing him visions of Mara’s smile without worry creasing the corners, of William running without coughing, of a life where providing wasn’t a constant struggle against scarcity.

His hand reached out without conscious command. The rational part of his mind—the experienced hunter who’d survived three decades in the forest by respecting its dangers—screamed for him to stop, to turn away, to continue tracking the behemak and take the opportunity he understood rather than gamble on mysteries.

But Thomas’s fingers touched the shimmer’s edge, and reality rippled, and he felt himself beginning to fall through into somewhere else, and his last conscious thought was of William’s laughter, the pure unselfconscious joy of a seven-year-old who still believed his father could solve any problem and provide any need.

Four days earlier, Thomas had woken before dawn in the bed he’d shared with Mara for fifteen years. She was still sleeping, her breathing deep and steady, her face relaxed in a way it never was during waking hours. He watched her for a moment, studying the silver threading through her dark hair, the fine lines around her eyes, the particular set of her features that had first attracted him when they were both young and foolish enough to marry for love rather than practical considerations.

They’d been lucky, he supposed. Most marriages in the village were arrangements between families, strategic alliances that sometimes grew into affection and sometimes remained merely functional. But Thomas and Mara had wanted each other, and fifteen years later they still did, though want had transmuted into something quieter, deeper, less exhilarating but more sustaining.

He rose carefully, trying not to wake her, and dressed in the pre-dawn darkness with the efficiency of long practice. His hunting clothes: leather trousers that wouldn’t catch on undergrowth, wool shirt in forest colors, the jerkin with reinforced shoulders that Mara had made him three winters ago. His bow waited by the door, already strung, and his quiver held twenty arrows—more than he’d need for deer, barely enough if he encountered something dangerous.

The cottage was small, three rooms that Thomas had built himself over the first year of their marriage. He’d designed it with a hunter’s eye for practical function: strong walls to keep out winter wind, a large fireplace for cooking and warmth, shuttered windows that could be secured against storms. No luxuries, but solid and weatherproof, which was more than many in the village could claim.

William’s room was little more than a closet with a bed, but the boy loved it. Thomas paused outside the door, listening to his son’s breathing—rough with the cough that never quite cleared, but steady, alive. On the wall inside, he knew, hung William’s treasures: drawings of trees and animals, a practice bow Thomas had made him, the rabbit’s foot charm that Mara insisted would bring luck.

Thomas’s hand rested on the door frame, his chest tight with an emotion he couldn’t quite name. Love, certainly, but also fear, and determination, and the terrible weight of being responsible for a small life that depended on your competence. Every hunt Thomas undertook was really for William—for food to keep him fed, for funds to keep him clothed, for medicine to keep him breathing.

• ‘You’re leaving early,’ Mara said from the bedroom doorway, her voice still rough with sleep.

• ‘Deer move at dawn. I want to be in position when they start feeding.’

• ‘You’re always leaving early. Sometimes I think you love the forest more than you love us.’

It was an old argument, familiar as worn clothing, and Thomas knew all the responses. He could say he hunted for them, that every deer was food and funds, that providing was how he showed love. He could point out that his work was solitary by necessity, that a hunter with chattering companions caught nothing. He could deflect with humor or redirect with affection.

Instead, he told the truth.

• ‘I love the forest because it makes sense to me in ways people don’t. Track reads clearly, behavior follows patterns, cause produces effect. Out there, I understand the rules. Here, I’m constantly uncertain whether I’m doing enough, being enough, providing enough.’

• ‘Thomas…’

• ‘I know. You never ask for more than I give. That’s part of what makes it hard. You never complain, never demand, just accept whatever I manage to provide. And I keep hunting because maybe the next kill will be the one that finally makes me feel like enough.’

Mara crossed the small space between them and took his face in her hands, her palms rough from work but gentle in their touch.

• ‘You are enough. You have been enough. The problem isn’t your providing. The problem is you’ve convinced yourself that your worth is measured in what you bring home rather than in who you are. William doesn’t need more gold. He needs his father to be present, not constantly chasing the next hunt.’

• ‘He needs medicine. The healer said—’

• ‘The healer said his lungs are weak and some children grow out of it and others don’t and there’s medicine that might help but might not. You’ve latched onto that ”might” like it’s certainty because it gives you something to hunt, something to solve through effort and skill.’

• ‘So I should do nothing? Just accept that my son struggles to breathe and hope he grows out of it?’

• ‘I’m saying you should be here while he grows. Whether he gets better or worse, he needs his father. And I need my husband. Not the hunter who provides. The man who chose me fifteen years ago and promised we’d face everything together.’

Thomas pulled away, the conversation suddenly too heavy for pre-dawn darkness.

• ‘I need to go. The deer won’t wait.’

• ‘Neither will we. Remember that, while you’re out there being alone with your certainty.’

He left before she could say anything else that might make him question what he was doing. The village was still dark and quiet as he made his way to the forest’s edge. A few early risers were visible in doorways or tending to animals, and they nodded to Thomas with the respect accorded to a man known to be competent at his work.

But Mara’s words followed him into the forest, unwelcome companions on a hunt that was supposed to provide solitude from exactly this kind of complicated human emotion. He pushed them away, focusing instead on the familiar ritual of entering wilderness: checking the wind direction, listening for bird calls that might indicate predators, moving from the managed woodland into the deeper forest with the comfortable efficiency of coming home.

By full dawn, he’d found fresh deer sign and settled into a position downwind from a game trail. This was what he was good at: patience, observation, the ability to become so still that his presence vanished into the forest’s background. He could wait for hours without fidgeting, mind calm and empty of everything except awareness of his surroundings.

Except this morning, the calm wouldn’t come. Mara’s face kept surfacing in his thoughts. William’s cough. The healer’s careful words about medicine that might help. The reality that Thomas’s providing had never quite been enough to get ahead of need, only to keep pace with it.

A deer emerged from the treeline—young buck, healthy, exactly what he should take. Thomas’s hand found his bow, fingers fitting arrow to string with unconscious precision. The shot was clear, the range optimal, the kill virtually certain.

He didn’t take it.

Instead, he watched the deer drink from the stream, its movements relaxed and unsuspecting. Thomas could observe its behavior, note the patterns in its feeding, catalog the information for future hunts. Or he could end its life with a single arrow and bring home meat that would feed his family for a week.

Providing. Always providing. The endless cycle of kill, sell, buy, repeat. Never quite getting ahead. Never quite achieving the security that would let him stop hunting and just be with Mara and William.

The deer moved away, disappearing into undergrowth, the opportunity lost. Thomas lowered his bow, feeling oddly relieved. He wasn’t ready to go home yet, to return empty-handed and face Mara’s knowing expression, her awareness that sometimes he hunted not to provide but to escape the weight of providing.

That was when he saw the behemak signs. Fresh tracks, territorial markings, evidence of the kind of prey that could change everything if he succeeded. Not a deer for a week’s meat but a creature whose hide and tusks and potential hoard could buy months of security.

One last hunt, he promised himself. One last time pursuing something in the forest instead of facing something at home.

The shimmer wasn’t getting smaller.

Thomas had stepped back from it—or tried to—but the distortion in the air between the ancient oaks seemed to fill more of his vision now, as if observing it changed its properties. Colors bled and merged at its edges, and the wordless song had become impossible to ignore, a constant presence in his mind that promised solutions to problems he’d spent years pretending weren’t growing.

He should return to the behemak’s trail. The wounded creature was close, vulnerable, exactly the opportunity he’d spent three days tracking to find. This shimmer—this impossible thing that shouldn’t exist—was distraction from the practical realities of a hunter’s life.

But the song showed him William, not as he was but as he could be: healthy, laughing without coughing, running through the village with the boundless energy of childhood uncompromised by weak lungs. And Mara, her face relaxed and smiling, the worry lines smoothed away because worry had become unnecessary.

Thomas’s rational mind knew these were illusions. The shimmer was showing him what he wanted to see, tempting him like the tales old hunters told of forest spirits that lured men to their deaths with visions of desire. He should walk away, continue tracking, focus on the real opportunity instead of impossible promises.

His feet moved forward instead of away.

Each step felt both involuntary and absolutely chosen, as if his body was simply expressing what some deeper part of him had already decided. The hunter’s caution that had kept him alive for thirty-four years screamed warnings, but beneath it lay a father’s desperation and a husband’s exhaustion, and those voices were louder, more insistent, more immediately compelling.

• ‘Just to see,’ he told himself, the words hollow even as he spoke them. ‘Just to understand what this is. Knowledge isn’t commitment. Looking isn’t entering. I can observe and then return to the hunt.’

But he knew he was lying. Had known it from the moment his fingers first touched the shimmer’s edge. Some part of him—the part that was tired of tracking prey to sell hides to buy medicine that might not work, tired of being competent but never quite successful, tired of the endless grinding necessity of survival—wanted whatever the shimmer offered.

At three paces distance, he could see through it to something beyond. Not just another part of the forest but another mode of existence entirely. The glimpses were fragmentary, disorienting: sky that was the wrong color, structures that couldn’t be natural but didn’t look built, horizons that curved in directions that made his eyes hurt.

His hunter’s mind tried to catalog what he was seeing, to impose familiar patterns on alien landscapes. Was that a mountain or a crystal formation or something without equivalent in his experience? Were those trees or towers or organisms too strange to categorize? The harder he tried to understand, the more his understanding fractured.

• ‘This is madness,’ he whispered. ‘Walking toward something I can’t understand, abandoning a hunt I’ve invested three days in, risking everything on visions that promise too much to be real.’

But William’s cough was real. Mara’s worry was real. The constant calculation of whether they could afford necessities was real. And if this shimmer offered escape from those realities, even temporarily, even through means Thomas couldn’t comprehend…

His hand reached out. The shimmer felt like nothing—neither solid nor liquid nor air, just a boundary between here and elsewhere that offered no resistance to pressure. When his fingers crossed the threshold, reality rippled outward from the point of contact, and he felt himself being pulled or pushed or simply translated through dimensions his body wasn’t designed to navigate.

The last thing he saw of his world was the behemak’s trail, continuing north through ancient forest toward den and hoard and the opportunity he was abandoning. The last thing he felt was regret mixed with relief, guilt mixed with hope, the complex emotional contradiction of a man who knew he was making a terrible choice but couldn’t stop himself from making it.

Then the forest vanished.

Thomas experienced the transition as simultaneous destruction and reconstruction, his body pulled apart into component elements and reassembled according to rules that hadn’t existed a moment before. It didn’t hurt—pain required continuous consciousness, and consciousness during the crossing was fragmented into discrete moments separated by gaps where existence became negotiable.

He landed in a stumble, hunter’s reflexes engaging before conscious thought, hands reaching for balance against ground that felt wrong. Not soil and leaf mold but something crystalline and warm, as if he’d fallen onto a surface that was simultaneously mineral and alive.

The air tasted of copper and ozone. The light was all wrong—purple-tinged, coming from two suns that hung at angles that violated everything Thomas knew about sky and time. The sounds were alien: clicks and chitters where bird calls should be, resonance where wind through leaves should rustle.

• ‘No,’ Thomas gasped, the word inadequate but the only response his shocked mind could produce. ‘No, no, this isn’t— I need to go back— Mara, William, I didn’t mean—’

He spun around, looking for the shimmer, for the portal, for any way to reverse what he’d done. Behind him was only more alien landscape: crystalline formations rising like trees but refracting light in patterns that hurt to observe, ground that changed texture and color as he watched, horizons that curved wrong.

The portal was gone. Or invisible. Or only functioned one direction. Thomas’s hunter’s mind tried all three hypotheses and found no evidence to support any of them. He was somewhere else, and the path back—if it existed—wasn’t obvious.

Panic hit him like physical force, making his hands shake and his breath come short. Everything he knew, everything he was, depended on geography he understood and rules that made sense. The forest was his domain because he’d spent decades learning its languages. This place spoke in sounds he couldn’t interpret, showed him vistas he couldn’t categorize, operated on principles he couldn’t begin to deduce.

He was going to die here. Was going to die without seeing Mara again, without teaching William to track, without ever explaining that he’d abandoned the behemak hunt for a pretty light that promised too much. His last thought would be of them, and their last thought of him would be why didn’t he come home, what kept him this time, why did he always choose hunting over family?

The clicking sounds intensified. Thomas’s panicked mind finally registered what his hunter’s instincts had been screaming since arrival: he was being hunted.

He drew his bow with the automatic efficiency of muscle memory, fitting arrow to string, but his hands were shaking too badly for accuracy. Whatever was producing those sounds was circling him, using tactics he recognized—surround the prey, cut off escape routes, attack from the blind angle when attention diverts.

It exploded from the ground where ground should have been solid, mandibles spread wide enough to bisect a man. Thomas had hunted predators before—wolves when they threatened livestock, the occasional rogue bear—but this was different. This was alien in a way that bypassed tactical assessment and went straight to primal terror.

He dove aside more from instinct than skill, the creature’s attack missing him by margins measured in finger-widths. His arrow flew wild, clattering harmlessly off chitin that looked harder than any armor he’d ever seen. He rolled, came up reaching for another arrow, and found himself staring at compound eyes that reflected his terrified face in a thousand fragmented images.

• ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, not to the creature but to Mara, to William, to the life he’d abandoned because he couldn’t resist a promise that was too good to be true. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I was providing. I thought I was solving. I was just running. And now you’ll never know.’

The creature tilted its head—disturbingly human gesture from something so absolutely not human—and clicked a sequence that might have been laughter or hunger or simple acknowledgment of successful hunt. Thomas drew his hunting knife, knowing it was inadequate, knowing he was going to die, knowing his death would leave Mara and William with questions that would never be answered.

Arrows struck the creature from multiple angles, precisely targeting the joints where chitin segments connected. It shrieked—a sound that bypassed Thomas’s ears and resonated in his chest cavity—and turned to face this new threat. Thomas saw humans, scarred and competent, attacking with the coordinated efficiency of people who’d fought this enemy before.

One of them—a woman with the weathered face of someone who’d survived too much—grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet.

• ‘Another one through the portals,’ she said, her voice carrying the weary resignation of someone who’d seen this before. ‘You’re lucky we found you before they did worse than play.’

• ‘I need to go back,’ Thomas gasped, still gripping his useless knife. ‘My family— my wife— my son— I need to go back.’

• ‘There is no back. There’s only forward, and forward means learning to fight or learning to die. Here, you’ll learn both.’

She led him away from the creature, which had retreated but not fled, its clicking sounds following them like commentary on a hunter who’d become prey. Thomas’s legs moved automatically, following this stranger through a landscape that made no sense, while his mind cataloged all the ways he’d failed.

He’d abandoned the behemak hunt. He’d left Mara without explanation. He’d robbed William of his father. And for what? For a portal that had promised solutions and delivered only separation?

The woman led him toward smoke—fire, at least that was universal—and a settlement that looked desperate and temporary. Other people emerged from crude shelters, and their faces told the same story: loss, adjustment, stubborn survival against incomprehensible circumstances.

• ‘Welcome to Dereth,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Elena. You’ll want to sit down before we explain what’s happened. It’s better to receive impossible information while seated.’

• ‘I don’t want information. I want to go home.’

• ‘Everyone wants that. But wanting doesn’t matter here. Only surviving matters. So you’ll listen to the explanation, and you’ll learn to fight, and you’ll come to terms with the fact that the life you had is over and the life you have now is all that’s available.’

Thomas sat because his legs gave out rather than from conscious choice. Elena explained—Dereth, the Olthoi, Asheron’s summoning, the impossibility of return. Each word felt like another nail in a coffin being built around everything Thomas had been.

He was a hunter. That identity had defined him for thirty-four years. But hunters operated in environments they understood, tracking prey whose behaviors they could predict. Here, he was the prey, and the predators followed rules he didn’t know.

He was a husband and father. But Mara was in another world, probably already wondering when he’d return, and William was growing up in Thomas’s absence, and neither of them would ever know that he’d tried to return, that the portal wouldn’t open from this side, that separation wasn’t choice but consequence.

• ‘How long?’ he asked, his voice rough. ‘How long have people been coming through?’

• ‘Three months,’ Elena said. ‘We’re all recent arrivals, still learning, still dying, still trying to survive long enough to understand what’s been done to us.’

• ‘Three months here… how much time on Ispar?’

• ‘We don’t know. Time flows differently between worlds, or so we’ve theorized. Could be days. Could be years. Could be centuries. We have no way to determine correspondence.’

Thomas felt the last hope drain out of him like water through cupped hands. If time was unreliable, if years could pass on Ispar while days passed here, then Mara might already have grown old waiting. William might already be grown, might have children of his own, might remember his father only as the man who went hunting one day and never came back.

Everything Thomas had built—the marriage, the family, the modest competence that let him provide for those he loved—all of it was gone, separated from him by dimensional barriers he couldn’t cross and time differentials he couldn’t overcome.

• ‘I should have taken the deer,’ he said, the observation emerging from shock rather than thought. ‘Four days ago, I had a clear shot at a buck, and I didn’t take it. I kept hunting, kept looking for the bigger score, the behemak that would solve everything. And I found the portal instead. If I’d just taken the deer, gone home satisfied with enough, I’d be with Mara right now. William would be asking about the hunt, and I’d be showing him how to dress the kill. We’d be together.’

• ‘You can’t think like that,’ Elena said, though her voice suggested she’d had similar thoughts about her own choices. ‘The portals called to specific people. If it wasn’t that moment, it would have been another. They’re selective, purposeful, designed to lure those vulnerable to what they promise.’

• ‘And what did they promise you?’

• ‘Escape from a life I’d built around hiding what I was. I was a thief, a good one, but eventually the law catches everyone. The portal offered freedom from pursuit. I took it, and got a different kind of prison.’

They sat in silence as the alien suns moved through their incomprehensible paths across the purple sky. Other people from the settlement approached, asked questions, shared their own portal stories. Everyone had lost something. Everyone had been tempted. Everyone had made a choice that seemed reasonable at the time and catastrophic in retrospect.

• ‘I need to learn to fight,’ Thomas said finally, the decision settling over him like familiar clothing. ‘If I can’t go back, if I’m stuck here, then I need to survive. And if I survive long enough, maybe I find someone who understands portals better than I do. Maybe I find a way to reverse what’s been done.’

• ‘That’s the right attitude,’ Elena said, though her expression suggested she didn’t believe reversal was possible. ‘Tomorrow, we start training. I’ll teach you what we know about the Olthoi: their weak points, their tactics, how to kill them before they kill you. You’ll die anyway—everyone does—but at least you’ll die competently.’

• ‘Die?’

• ‘Oh. I forgot to mention the lifestones.’

And Elena proceeded to explain that death wasn’t permanent, which should have been comforting but was somehow the most horrifying revelation yet. Thomas could die, resurrect, die again, an eternal cycle of trauma without release. Even death wouldn’t reunite him with Mara and William because death here was just another transition, another change in circumstances that left core problems unsolved.

That night, Thomas lay in the crude shelter they’d assigned him, staring at the purple sky through gaps in the roof, listening to the alien sounds of a world that would never be home. He thought of Mara, probably at the window now, watching the path he should have walked back days ago. He thought of William, asking when Papa would return, and Mara having to explain that sometimes people didn’t return, that the forest took men and gave back only silence.

And he thought of the behemak, dying alone in its den, its hoard unclaimed, the opportunity Thomas had abandoned for a promise that was too good to be true because it was entirely false.

• ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to people who would never hear him. ‘I tried to provide. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought one more hunt would solve everything. Instead, I solved nothing and lost everything. And now all I can do is survive and hope that surviving leads eventually to understanding, and understanding leads eventually to return, even though every rational assessment says that hope is as false as the portal’s promise.’

Sleep came eventually, troubled by dreams of William’s cough and Mara’s face and forest trails that led always toward shimmers that promised solutions and delivered only separation. And when Thomas woke to the wrong-colored light of Dereth’s morning, his first coherent thought was a hunter’s observation: he’d tracked the wrong prey, followed the wrong trail, and ended up in territory where all his skills meant nothing.

His second thought was more fundamental: he was alive, which meant he could learn, which meant he could adapt, which meant maybe—however unlikely—he could find his way back to the people who made survival worthwhile.

But as the days would prove, survival on Dereth was never simple, adaptation was never painless, and hope was the most dangerous prey of all to hunt.

Morning came to Dereth with the wrongness of doubled light. Thomas woke in the crude shelter they’d given him—four walls of scavenged wood, a roof that leaked purple rain, a bedroll that smelled of other people’s fear—and for one blessed moment didn’t remember where he was. Then reality crashed down like a falling tree, and he lay still, staring at rafters that weren’t his rafters, listening to sounds that weren’t his sounds, breathing air that tasted of copper and loss.

His body ached from the previous day’s crossing and near-death. Every muscle felt bruised, as if he’d been beaten rather than translated through dimensional barriers. His hands trembled when he tried to flex them—not from injury but from something deeper, some violation of the body’s fundamental assumptions about reality that manifested as physical revolt.

Outside, voices. The settling sounds of a community waking: footsteps, low conversation, the scrape of pots and tools. Human sounds, at least. Thomas clung to that familiarity like a drowning man to driftwood.

He forced himself to rise, to dress in clothes that still carried the smell of home—Mara had washed them, he remembered, two days before he’d left. Five days ago? Six? Time had become negotiable, and not in ways his hunter’s mind could track.

The settlement called Haven looked even more desperate in daylight. Perhaps fifty shelters scattered across a defensible valley, each one built with the hasty incompetence of people who knew architecture only from observation. A central fire pit served as gathering point, currently tended by an older man whose scarred arms suggested he’d learned violence before learning how to survive it.

Elena was there, organizing work parties with the brisk efficiency of someone who’d claimed leadership through sheer refusal to collapse. She saw Thomas emerge and gestured him over.

• ‘You slept. Good. Most new arrivals spend the first night staring at the sky, trying to will it back to normal.’

• ‘I stared for hours,’ Thomas admitted. ‘But exhaustion wins eventually.’

• ‘Always does. Come. We’re doing the morning census—checking who died overnight, who resurrected, who’s too broken to function. After that, you eat. Then we train.’

The morning census was a ritual of efficiency and horror. Elena moved from shelter to shelter, checking inhabitants, making notes on a scrap of parchment that already showed weeks of similar accounting. Thomas followed, silent, observing how she worked.

Three people had died overnight. One from blood loss after yesterday’s patrol encountered Olthoi workers—he’d resurrected already but was still shaking, unable to speak coherently. One from falling off the primitive defensive wall during watch—she’d broken her neck, returned to life cursing her own clumsiness. One from what Elena called ”giving up”—he’d walked into Olthoi territory at dawn, weaponless, and let them take him. He’d be back by afternoon, she said. They always came back. Death didn’t let you escape.

• ‘How many people here?’ Thomas asked as they completed the circuit.

• ‘Fifty-three as of this morning. We were seventy two weeks ago, but some decided Haven wasn’t for them. Left for other settlements, other philosophies. Some died too many times and can’t function anymore—they wander off into the wilderness and don’t come back. We don’t count them as dead. Just… lost.’

• ‘And how many settlements total?’

• ‘We know of five within a week’s travel. Rumors of dozens more spread across Dereth. Everyone’s trying different approaches: military discipline, magical research, voluntary transformation, desperate denial. We’re the practical survivors—no grand plans, just teach people to fight and try to stay alive long enough to understand what’s been done to us.’

Breakfast was communal and meager: thin porridge made from grain no one could name, water that tasted of minerals. Thomas ate without tasting, his hunter’s mind cataloging everything about the settlement—the defensive positions, the resource management, the way people moved with the wary tension of prey animals who’d learned to live in a predator’s territory.

He noticed factions even in this small community. Some people wore makeshift armor and carried weapons with competent familiarity—Elena’s soldiers, the ones who’d chosen to fight. Others stayed near the central fire, their faces showing the particular blankness of those who’d retreated so far into themselves that functioning became automatic. A third group clustered near the eastern edge of camp, talking in urgent whispers about portals and theories and the mage named Asheron who’d supposedly summoned them.

• ‘The whisperers over there,’ Thomas asked Elena quietly, ‘who are they?’

• ‘The Seekers. They think understanding will set them free—that if they can decode how the summoning works, they can reverse it. Led by a woman named Celeste who was a scholar back on Ispar. She’s brilliant, organized, and convinced that knowledge is power. I’m less convinced, but I don’t stop them. Everyone needs hope, even if it’s the kind that comes from equations and theories.’

• ‘And the others? The ones who aren’t talking?’

• ‘The Broken. They died too many times too fast, or saw things that unmade them, or just couldn’t adapt. We feed them, shelter them, protect them. Some recover eventually. Some stay broken forever. Death doesn’t repair trauma—it just resets your body while leaving your mind intact to remember everything.’

A young woman approached—maybe twenty, with Aluvian features and archer’s calluses. She nodded respectfully to Elena, then assessed Thomas with the frank evaluation of someone trained to determine threat levels.

• ‘This the new arrival?’

• ‘Thomas. Hunter from back home. Thomas, this is Reyna. She’ll assist with your training. She was a ranger in the King’s service before the portals took her.’

• ‘What’s your weapon?’ Reyna asked.

• ‘Bow. Hunting knife. I’ve tracked deer, boar, the occasional predator. I’m competent in my environment.’

• ‘This isn’t your environment. The skills translate, but the mindset needs to change. You hunted animals. Here, you fight soldiers. The Olthoi think, coordinate, adapt. They use tactics that would shame most human commanders. Your bow’s useful, but you’ll need close combat training. Olthoi workers can dig under your position and emerge behind you. Olthoi soldiers can shrug off arrows to non-vital areas. And if you face a royal, nothing you learned hunting deer will save you.’

• ‘Then teach me,’ Thomas said, the decision settling over him like familiar weight. ‘I can’t go home, can’t undo what I’ve done. But I can learn. That’s always been my strength—patient observation, adaptation, learning the rules of new territory. Show me the rules here.’

Elena smiled, grim but approving. It was the expression of someone who’d learned to appreciate competence because competence kept people alive, and alive was the best you could hope for.

• ‘Rules here are simple,’ she said. ‘Rule one: the Olthoi are smarter than you. Rule two: the Olthoi are stronger than you. Rule three: the Olthoi have numbers and coordination you can’t match. The only advantage we have is that we resurrect and they don’t, which means we can learn from our mistakes. So you’ll make mistakes, and you’ll die, and you’ll come back, and eventually you’ll make fewer mistakes. That’s the entire curriculum.’

The training ground was a cleared area north of Haven’s central fire, marked by crude targets, practice weapons, and dark stains that Thomas realized with sick clarity were old blood that no one had bothered to clean.

Reyna started with assessment, watching Thomas demonstrate his skills with bow and knife. He fell into familiar patterns—the stance his father had taught him at age ten, the breathing technique he’d developed over years of patient stalking, the smooth draw and release that came from muscle memory built through thousands of successful hunts.

• ‘Good foundation,’ Reyna judged. ‘But too cautious. You’re hunting technique, not combat technique. In a hunt, you wait for the perfect shot because failure means the prey escapes. Here, failure means you die, but you come back. So perfect isn’t the goal—fast enough and good enough are all that matter. Watch.’

She demonstrated combat archery: quick draw, rapid fire, acceptable accuracy rather than perfect precision. Three arrows in the time Thomas would take for one careful shot, targeting center mass rather than vital organs because Olthoi vitals weren’t where human intuition expected.

• ‘The workers have neural clusters here, here, and here,’ she indicated points on a diagram someone had drawn on wood. ‘Thorax, abdomen, head. Hit any two and they die. Miss completely and they close distance before you can nock another arrow. Their chitin is thick enough to deflect glancing shots, so you need direct angles and sufficient draw weight. Can you maintain full draw for thirty seconds?’

• ‘No. Maybe twenty on my best day.’

• ‘Then we build your strength. Because the Olthoi don’t give you time to aim. They charge in coordinated rushes, four or five at once from multiple angles. You need to shoot fast, hit hard, and transition to close combat when—not if—they reach you.’

They drilled for hours. Thomas’s shoulders burned from repeated full draws. His hands blistered, the old calluses in wrong positions for this new shooting style. But his hunter’s discipline served him well—he could endure discomfort, could focus through pain, could repeat the same motion hundreds of times until muscle memory rewrote itself.

Close combat was worse. Reyna paired him with a scarred Gharu’ndim man named Khalil who’d been a soldier before the portals. Khalil moved with the brutal efficiency of someone who’d killed humans and learned killing insects required only minor adjustments.

• ‘Your knife is too small,’ Khalil observed, examining Thomas’s hunting blade. ‘Fine for dressing deer, useless against chitin. You need a short sword or a war axe—something with weight and leverage to crack their shells. Show me your stance.’

Thomas demonstrated the knife fighter’s crouch his father had taught him—low, balanced, blade held for quick strikes.

• ‘Too low. You’re thinking about human opponents, protecting your vitals. Olthoi workers stand taller than you—their vulnerable points are above your head. You need to reach up, not defend down. And their mandibles close horizontally, not vertically like human jaws. So your instinct to dodge backward? Gets you cut in half. You dodge sideways, always sideways, and you strike for the leg joints while they’re recovering from their lunge.’

They practiced the movements slowly, building new instincts over old ones. Dodge left, strike high. Dodge right, target joints. Never retreat straight back. Never assume they’re alone—workers travel in groups. Never hesitate when an opportunity presents—chitin repairs quickly, and a wounded Olthoi is just as dangerous as a healthy one.

Thomas died seven times that first day of training.

The first death came from overconfidence. Khalil had been demonstrating attack patterns with blunted weapons, and Thomas thought he’d seen an opening. He stepped in to strike, and Khalil—moving at full combat speed—caught him in the ribs with a practice sword that shouldn’t have been capable of lethal damage but apparently was.

The second death came from exhaustion. His muscles gave out mid-dodge, and he fell onto his own knife in a way that would have been darkly amusing if it hadn’t involved bleeding out in the dirt while Reyna screamed for the settlement healer.

Deaths three through seven blurred together—a catalog of mistakes, each one teaching him something he could only learn through dying. Don’t rely on peripheral vision when exhausted. Don’t assume a downed opponent is dead. Don’t block with your forearm when they’re swinging chitin-covered limbs. Don’t forget to breathe.

Each death ended the same way: pain, darkness, then pulling—a sensation of being drawn through impossible distances by threads woven through his consciousness. Then reformation at the lifestone, gasping and whole and remembering everything.

The pain faded within minutes of resurrection. The memory never did.

• ‘You’re learning quickly,’ Elena observed as Thomas returned from his seventh death that afternoon. ‘Most new arrivals die a dozen times in the first week. You’re ahead of the curve.’

• ‘Dying isn’t the hard part,’ Thomas said, his voice rough. ‘Coming back is. Each time, there’s a moment where I think maybe this time I’ll stay dead, maybe this time I’ll escape. Then the lifestone pulls me back, and I’m here again, and nothing has changed except I’ve added another death to the collection.’

• ‘It gets easier.’

• ‘Does it? Or do you just get numb to impossibility?’

• ‘Both. Welcome to Dereth.’

Over the following days, Thomas fell into rhythms that felt almost like routine. Wake to wrong light. Eat tasteless food. Train until dying. Resurrect. Train more. Sleep badly. Repeat.

His body adapted faster than his mind. The new shooting style became natural. The combat movements settled into muscle memory. He learned to read Olthoi behavior from the way Reyna and Khalil mimicked it—the clicking that preceded coordinated attacks, the body posture that indicated preparing to charge, the specific mandible positioning that meant they’d detected prey.

But his mind remained stubbornly fixed on Ispar. Every night he lay awake counting days. Five days since the portal. Ten. Fifteen. Time here had clear progression, but what did that mean for time there? Was Mara still waiting for him, or had she given up hope? Had William’s cough worsened, or had it cleared on its own as sometimes happened? Were they mourning him, or had they moved on, accepting his absence as they’d accepted all his previous absences until this final one that never ended?

• ‘You think about them constantly,’ Elena observed one evening as they sat watch together on Haven’s crude defensive wall. ‘Your family. I can see it in your face every time you think no one’s looking.’

• ‘My wife Mara. My son William, seven years old. I left to hunt a behemak that would have bought medicine for his cough. Instead I found the portal, and now they’re either wondering where I am or mourning me as dead, and I have no way to tell them what happened or why.’

• ‘Do you think knowing would help them?’

• ‘I don’t know. Maybe knowing I didn’t choose to leave would ease the wondering. Or maybe it would make it worse—knowing I’m alive but unreachable, trapped in another world while they age and die and I… don’t.’

• ‘You’ve noticed that, then. That we don’t age here.’

• ‘I’ve noticed that the woman who arrived three weeks before me looks exactly as she did when she came through. I’ve noticed that injuries heal instantly if they kill you. I’ve noticed that time here doesn’t touch us the way it should.’

• ‘It’s the lifestones. They restore us to a fixed template, recorded when we first bonded with them. We can grow stronger through training, learn new skills, but age? Disease? Natural death? All impossible now. We’re frozen at whatever moment we arrived.’

Thomas absorbed this new horror silently. He’d been tracking toward death his entire adult life—the hunter’s mortality, the constant awareness that one mistake could end everything. Now death was temporary and aging was impossible, which meant he could survive indefinitely while Mara and William grew old without him.

• ‘How do you stand it?’ he asked finally. ‘Knowing you’ve lost everything and can’t even escape through dying?’

• ‘I focus on what I can control. I can’t return home, but I can help other arrivals survive. I can’t undo the summoning, but I can fight the Olthoi so new arrivals aren’t killed in their first hours. I can’t fix the cosmic injustice of being ripped from my life, but I can make this new life slightly less horrific for the people around me. It’s not enough, but it’s something. And something is better than the alternative.’

• ‘Which is?’

• ‘Becoming one of the Forgotten. The ones who refuse to accept what’s happened, who keep trying to force a return that isn’t possible. Some of them have been here six months, and they’re still talking about finding Asheron and making him reverse the portals. Still convinced that if they fight hard enough or wish hard enough or suffer enough, reality will bend to their desires. It won’t. But they can’t accept that, so they become permanent refugees from acceptance itself.’

Thomas understood the warning beneath her words. He was tracking toward that edge—the refusal to adapt, the insistence that his old life remained accessible if he just tried hard enough. But he was also tracking toward something else: the possibility that understanding might lead to action, and action might lead to change.

• ‘Tell me about Asheron,’ he said. ‘The mage who summoned us. Where is he? What does he want? Why did he do this?’

• ‘No one knows where he is. The Seekers have theories—they think he’s hiding in ancient Empyrean ruins, or that he’s been imprisoned by the same forces that created the Olthoi, or that he’s dead and the summoning continues automatically. As for what he wants and why he did it, the theories are even more varied. Some say he summoned us to fight the Olthoi because his own people fled or were destroyed. Some say we’re experiments, test subjects for some larger plan. Some say the summoning was accident, that he was trying to do something else and humans were unintended consequence.’

• ‘But you have an opinion.’

• ‘I think he knew exactly what he was doing. I think he weighed the cost—thousands of humans torn from their lives, trapped in eternal war against an enemy they don’t understand—and decided it was acceptable price for whatever he’s trying to achieve. And I think that makes him either desperate or monstrous, possibly both.’

• ‘Then we should find him. Make him explain. Make him fix what he’s broken.’

• ‘And if he can’t? If the portals are irreversible, if the summoning has no counterweight, if we’re trapped here permanently by forces even a mage of Asheron’s power can’t undo? What then?’

Thomas had no answer. His hunter’s mind knew that some trails led nowhere, that some prey couldn’t be caught, that sometimes competence and determination weren’t enough. But his father’s desperation insisted that accepting impossibility meant abandoning William and Mara, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that. Not again.

Three weeks into his time on Dereth, Thomas joined a scouting mission that was supposed to be routine.

Five of them: Elena leading, Reyna and Khalil providing combat expertise, Thomas learning patrol tactics, and a nervous Aluvian mage named Corwyn who could create light and minor defensive barriers. Their mission was simple—scout north to the crystalline forest, check for Olthoi activity, return before nightfall.

The morning was as beautiful as Dereth ever got. The binary suns painted the landscape in colors Thomas was learning to tolerate if not appreciate. The air carried scents he could almost categorize—mineral and organic mixing in ways that reminded him of forest without being forest. His body had adapted to the different gravity, the different atmosphere, the different rules that governed physical existence here.

But his mind remained stubbornly fixed on Ispar. As they hiked, he found himself counting days again. Twenty-three days here. How many there? Mara would have reported him missing by now. The village would have organized searches. His brother Matthias would have checked all the usual hunting grounds, found nothing, concluded that Thomas had finally met the death he’d been courting for years.

William would have cried. Would have refused to believe Papa wasn’t coming back. Would have waited by the door each evening, watching for a figure that would never appear on the path from the forest.

Thomas’s hands tightened on his bow until his knuckles whitened.

• ‘Hold,’ Elena whispered, hand raised. ‘Tracks. Fresh.’

Thomas focused, his hunter’s training pushing aside grief to assess threat. The ground here was softer than the valley around Haven—some kind of lichen-equivalent that held impressions. He saw them clearly: Olthoi tracks, multiple individuals, recent enough that the edges hadn’t dried.

• ‘Workers or soldiers?’ Khalil asked.

• ‘Both. At least four workers, two soldiers. Traveling east, probably returning to whatever hive is in this region.’

• ‘We’re outnumbered. We should return to Haven, report the activity.’

• ‘Agreed. We—’

The ground beneath them exploded.

Thomas’s hunter’s instincts saved him—he rolled sideways even before his conscious mind registered the attack, an Olthoi worker bursting from beneath the soil where he’d been standing. But Corwyn was slower, paralyzed by academic’s indecision between options. The worker’s mandibles closed around his torso with the sound of breaking wood.

Reyna’s arrows were flying before Corwyn finished screaming, targeting the worker’s neural clusters with precision born from brutal experience. Khalil charged in from the flank, his sword finding the gap between chitin segments that every fighter learned to exploit.

Thomas nocked an arrow, drew, released. His shot took a second worker in the thorax cluster as it emerged from a tunnel he hadn’t noticed. The creature shrieked and fell, but three more were surfacing, and behind them came soldiers—massive forms that made the workers look small.

• ‘Ambush!’ Elena shouted, unnecessary but human—the need to name disaster even as it unfolds. ‘Fighting retreat! Reyna, cover our backs! Khalil, protect Corwyn!’

But Corwyn was past protecting. The worker’s initial attack had been precise, professional, lethal. The mage was dying, his blood soaking into alien soil, his eyes showing the particular awareness that comes in final moments when consciousness faces its imminent end.

Thomas found himself fighting at close range, his bow abandoned for his inadequate hunting knife. A worker lunged, mandibles spread. He dodged left—the new instinct overwriting old ones—and struck high, his blade skittering off chitin. The worker adjusted, faster than anything that size should move, and Thomas saw his death approaching with the clarity of a man who’d learned to recognize it.

Elena’s sword took the worker from behind, severing the connection between thorax and abdomen. The creature collapsed, legs spasming, dying but not yet dead. Elena hauled Thomas backward, her grip iron-hard on his arm.

• ‘We can’t save Corwyn! Move!’

They ran. Thomas hated running—every hunter’s instinct screamed against turning your back on a predator—but tactical retreat was different than flight. Elena led them through the crystalline forest with competence born from months of desperate experience, taking paths too narrow for soldiers to follow easily, using the terrain to break line of sight.

Behind them, Corwyn’s screaming stopped. Ahead, the sounds of pursuit—clicking and scraping, the Olthoi coordinating their hunt with efficiency that proved Reyna’s earlier warnings. They were smart, disciplined, and currently very interested in the humans who’d stumbled into their ambush zone.

Thomas’s hunter’s mind cataloged his mistakes even as his body ran. He’d been distracted, lost in thought about Ispar instead of focused on his environment. He’d failed to notice the ambush signs—disturbed ground, territorial markers, the particular quality of silence that precedes violence. His competence on Ispar meant nothing here because he kept applying old lessons to new context, and the translation was killing him.

Was killing others because of him.

The soldier Olthoi caught him between crystalline formations, mandibles spread wide enough to bisect a man horizontally. Thomas tried to dodge, but the narrow space offered no room for evasion. He saw the mandibles closing, felt the impact as chitin met flesh, experienced the terrible moment when consciousness recognized that the body no longer functioned.

Pain first. Not the sharp pain of injury but something worse—the sensation of fundamental severance, of his body’s integrity ending. His spine separating. Organs that had been one system becoming pieces. The what-it’s-like of dying was nothing like he’d imagined—not fading or drifting or gentle transition. It was rupture.

Then cold. A cold that came from inside, from consciousness itself losing its grip on the pattern that sustained it. Thomas tried to breathe but had no lungs. Tried to scream but had no throat. Consciousness persisted for seconds—or eternity, time had stopped meaning anything—while his body’s signals went dark one by one.

Then darkness. But not empty darkness—something was there. A gap, an instant, a space between dying and whatever came after. He couldn’t describe it later because human language had no words for the quality-space he’d traversed. Not void. Not nothing. Something else.

Then pulling. Threads woven through the fabric of his consciousness, yanking him across impossible distances. The sensation of being written into existence rather than growing. Pattern coalescing. Matter arranging itself according to a template inscribed in quality-space. His body rebuilding atom by atom while consciousness watched its own reconstruction.

Then reformation at Haven’s lifestone, gasping and whole and remembering everything.

The first breath hurt. Not because of damage—the body was perfect, unmarked—but because it was the wrong breath. His last breath had been terror and severance. This breath was continuation without continuity, existence resumed without having properly ended.

• ‘Thomas!’ Elena was there, having resurrected before him. ‘You’re back. Good. We need to—’

• ‘Corwyn?’

• ‘Dead. He’ll resurrect soon. The Olthoi don’t know to destroy lifestone bonds, so death here is just temporary inconvenience unless you’re caught too far from your bonded stone.’

• ‘I got us ambushed. I wasn’t paying attention, was thinking about—’

• ‘About your family. I know. And yes, your distraction contributed. But we all made mistakes. I chose the patrol route. Reyna didn’t scout thoroughly enough. Khalil let Corwyn lag behind. We share the failure collectively, which means we learn collectively. Tomorrow we drill ambush recognition. Next week you’ll be better. The week after, you’ll be competent. Eventually, you’ll be expert. That’s how survival works here.’

But Thomas barely heard her. He was staring at his hands—whole, unmarked, showing no evidence of having been severed when the Olthoi mandibles closed. His body remembered dying, remembered the pain and the darkness and the moment of absolute ending. The memory was perfect, crystalline, impossible to forget. Every detail preserved with fidelity that normal memory never achieved.

But his body lied. It claimed wholeness despite recent destruction, claimed continuity despite discontinuity. His hands looked like his hands, but they felt alien—like putting on gloves that fit perfectly but weren’t quite his skin. The colors of the world seemed slightly off, saturation shifted in ways he couldn’t articulate. Emotions felt muted, as if the lifestone had compressed his qualitative experience and the decompression had introduced artifacts.

This was him, but after something. Changed. Different. The what-it’s-like of being Thomas had shifted in directions he had no language to describe.

• ‘I’m dead,’ he whispered. ‘Not here, not now, but really. Truly. That thing killed me. Cut me in half. I felt my spine separate, felt my consciousness fragment, felt myself ending. And then I was here, and it’s supposed to feel like salvation but it feels like horror. Because if I can die and come back, if death isn’t ending, then what is? What’s the escape when even dying doesn’t let you leave?’

Elena sat beside him on the ground near the lifestone, her expression showing the particular weariness of someone who’d had this conversation with too many new arrivals.

• ‘There’s no escape. That’s the point Asheron’s trying to make, or the point he’s accidentally making if his intentions were different. We’re immortal now, bound to these lifestones, resurrecting endlessly unless something destroys the stone itself. We can suffer but not die. Can lose but not end. Can fail repeatedly without the mercy of final failure. It’s its own kind of hell—not the fire and torment the priests describe, but the eternal continuation of consciousness through circumstances you’d desperately like to escape.’

• ‘Then I’ll destroy my lifestone. Break the bond. Force true death.’

• ‘Several people have tried. The stones are Empyrean technology, harder than any material we can forge. And even if you succeeded, even if you severed your connection and achieved true death… you’d be dying here, on Dereth, while your family ages on Ispar. Dead in one world, absent from the other. Is that really better than survival with possibility of eventual return?’

Thomas had no answer. His hunter’s mind knew that survival always preceded other concerns—you couldn’t plan if you were dead, couldn’t adapt if you’d ended, couldn’t find your way home if you’d given up existence entirely. But his human heart wondered whether indefinite suffering was actually preferable to definitive end.

Corwyn materialized at the lifestone, screaming. His resurrection was rougher than Thomas’s had been—the mage clutched at his torso where mandibles had closed, patting himself frantically to confirm the missing pieces had returned. His eyes held the particular wildness of someone whose rational worldview had just been destroyed.

• ‘I died! I felt myself dying! The pain, the darkness, the ending—’

• ‘And now you’re back,’ Elena said, her voice carrying the forced calm of a handler soothing spooked livestock. ‘You’re whole. You’re safe. You’re at Haven, surrounded by people who understand what you just experienced.’

• ‘I don’t WANT to understand! I want to go HOME! I want to be in my study researching harmless theory, not here dying and resurrecting and fighting insects the size of horses! This is madness! All of it is madness!’

He ran. Not toward anything but away from everything—the lifestone, the settlement, the people who’d accepted impossibility. Elena didn’t stop him. Just watched him go with an expression of sad recognition.

• ‘He’ll come back,’ she said. ‘They always come back. Because there’s nowhere to run that makes more sense than here, and eventually exhaustion forces acceptance, and acceptance forces adaptation. You’ll go through the same process, Thomas. You’re already in it. The difference is you’re a hunter, trained to patience and observation. You’ll adapt faster than most. But you’ll still go through the stages: denial, rage, bargaining, despair, acceptance. Everyone does.’

• ‘What if I don’t want to accept?’

• ‘Then you join the Forgotten. The ones who refuse adaptation, who keep insisting that the old rules still apply. Some of them are functional—they fight, they survive, they contribute. But they’re hollowed out inside, their whole existence dedicated to reversing the irreversible. Is that the life you want? Eternal crusade against immutable reality?’

Thomas considered. His entire identity had been built around being hunter, father, husband—roles that required specific contexts he no longer had access to. Without forest to hunt, without family to provide for, what was he? Just a man with skills that translated poorly, trapped in a world that operated on rules he was still learning.

But he was still learning. That mattered. As long as he could observe, adapt, improve, there was purpose. Maybe not the purpose he wanted—returning home to Mara and William—but purpose nonetheless.

• ‘Teach me more,’ he told Elena. ‘Everything you know about the Olthoi, about Dereth, about the other settlements and factions. I can’t go home yet. Can’t find Asheron or reverse the portals or fix what’s broken. But I can learn. And if learning eventually leads to understanding, and understanding eventually leads to options, then I’ll keep learning until options emerge.’

• ‘That’s the right attitude. Frustrating, exhausting, desperate—but right. Come. The sun’s going down, and we need to increase patrols after that ambush. The Olthoi know we’re active in this region, which means they’ll probe our defenses. Tonight you’ll stand watch with Khalil and learn what nighttime sounds like when insects the size of men are hunting you.’

That night, standing watch on Haven’s defensive wall, Thomas learned that Dereth’s darkness was different from Ispar’s. The stars were wrong—constellations he’d navigated by since childhood were absent, replaced by patterns that meant nothing. The sounds were alien—clicking and scraping where there should be owl calls and wind through leaves. Even the quality of darkness itself felt wrong, as if light didn’t quite leave when the suns set, but lingered in ways that made shadows deeper and threats harder to assess.

Khalil stood watch beside him, comfortable in the darkness in a way that suggested extensive experience with it.

• ‘You died well today,’ Khalil observed.

• ‘I died stupidly. I was distracted, thinking about home instead of focusing on the patrol.’

• ‘But when the soldier caught you, you tried to dodge. Muscle memory from training overrode panic. That’s good dying—making your last actions useful even when death is certain. Bad dying is freezing, or running in wrong direction, or wasting final moments on regret. You’ll die hundreds more times before you’re truly competent here. Might as well learn to die well.’

Thomas absorbed this grim wisdom silently. Back on Ispar, hunters who died were mourned. Here, death was curriculum—you learned from it, improved because of it, integrated each ending into your growing competence. It was practical in a way that felt monstrous, but Thomas understood practicality. His entire life had been built on it.

• ‘How many times have you died?’ he asked.

• ‘Stopped counting at forty-seven. That was three months ago. Probably seventy, eighty times total. Each one taught me something—about Olthoi behavior, or my own limits, or how pain and fear interact. I’m not proud of dying. But I’m not ashamed either. It’s just cost of education here.’

• ‘And you don’t want to go home?’

• ‘I was a soldier. Followed orders, fought wars I didn’t understand, killed enemies I had no personal grudge against. I had no family—wife died in childbirth, child with her. My life on Ispar was duty without reward. Here? Same duty, but at least I understand the enemy and can see the point. The Olthoi want to consume this world. We want to survive. Simple conflict, clear sides, no political complexity. In some ways, this is easier than home.’

• ‘I had family. Wife, son. I left them to hunt, and found the portal instead. Every night I wonder if they’re wondering where I am, or if they’ve already mourned and moved on. I don’t know which is worse.’

• ‘Both are worse,’ Khalil said quietly. ‘Wondering is torture. Moving on is abandonment. You’re trapped in the space between hope and acceptance, and there’s no comfortable position there. The Forgotten understand this—they refuse to move on, insist on indefinite wondering. But Elena’s right that it hollows you out eventually. You become refugee from your own life, permanent exile from acceptance.’

They stood watch in silence for a while, listening to alien sounds, watching alien stars, both of them guarding a settlement neither had chosen but both had learned to protect.

Then the clicking started.

Not random sounds but coordinated communication—Olthoi on the move, multiple groups converging on Haven from different angles. Khalil tensed, hand going to the horn that would sound alarm.

• ‘Attack,’ he said, his voice carrying the flat certainty of experienced soldiers recognizing certainty. ‘Large force, probably workers backed by soldiers. They’re probing our response. Wake everyone. Arm everyone. This is going to be bad.’

Thomas blew the alarm, the horn’s cry shattering Dereth’s wrong-quiet night. Below, the settlement erupted into panicked activity—people stumbling from shelters, grabbing weapons, forming defensive positions with the ragged efficiency of people who’d done this before but never gotten used to it.

The Olthoi came from three directions simultaneously.

Workers from the north, soldiers from the east, more workers from the west. Coordinated assault designed to overwhelm Haven’s defenses through sheer multi-front pressure. They’d been watching, Thomas realized. Learning the settlement’s layout, counting fighters, timing the attack for maximum impact.

He shot at shadows—indistinct forms moving in darkness, identifiable only by clicking sounds and the reflection of moonlight off chitin. His arrows found targets more through volume than precision, each shot a gamble that resolved as hit or miss without time for assessment.

Beside him, Khalil fought with a short sword, defending their position on the wall when workers succeeded in scaling it. Thomas watched the man move—economy of motion, each strike targeting joints and neural clusters, defense as practiced as breathing.

A soldier Olthoi breached the wall, mandibles tearing through crude fortification. Thomas shot it at near-point-blank range, his arrow lodging in its thorax cluster. The creature shrieked and lunged, forcing Thomas to drop his bow and draw his hunting knife—inadequate but available.

He dodged left, muscle memory from training overriding terror. Struck high, blade finding the gap between head and thorax. The Olthoi’s momentum carried it forward, its dying body slamming into Thomas and knocking him off the wall.

He fell three meters onto hard ground, landing badly, feeling his left leg snap like dry wood. Pain flooded his system, bright and chemical, his body screaming warnings his mind barely registered.

• ‘Thomas!’ Elena was there, dragging him toward shelter even as workers pressed the attack. ‘Can you fight?’

• ‘Leg’s broken. I can shoot from the ground but can’t stand.’

• ‘Good enough. Here—’

She propped him against a shelter wall, thrust his bow into his hands. Thomas shot at targets she indicated, his vision narrowing to the tunnel focus of someone operating through pure adrenaline and stubborn will.

The battle lasted hours or minutes—time became negotiable under pressure. Thomas shot until his quiver was empty, then threw his useless knife at a worker, then used his bow as a club when another got too close. His broken leg screamed protests, but he ignored it with the practiced detachment of someone who’d learned that pain was just information and information could be filed for later.

Eventually the Olthoi retreated. Not routed—their withdrawal was orderly, professional, the tactical decision of a commander recognizing that further assault would cost more than it gained. They left behind dead workers, wounded soldiers, and clear message: Haven was marked, observed, targeted.

Thomas sagged against the wall, finally allowing himself to acknowledge the damage. His leg was angled wrong below the knee, bone broken in at least two places. Blood soaked his trouser leg from wounds he didn’t remember receiving. His hands shook from exhaustion and blood loss.

• ‘Healer!’ Elena shouted. ‘We need the healer!’

• ‘No,’ Thomas gasped. ‘Just… let me pass out. When I wake up at the lifestone, the leg will be fixed.’

• ‘Death isn’t healing. We have a healer who can set bones, prevent infection—’

• ‘Death is faster. And right now, fast sounds better than painful.’

He was fading already, blood loss catching up with adrenaline. The darkness that approached wasn’t the darkness of sleep but the darkness of ending, and some part of him welcomed it—the temporary cessation of pain, of thought, of the constant grinding awareness that he was trapped in a nightmare with no visible exit.

Then pulling.

Then reformation at the lifestone, gasping and whole.

His fourth death on Dereth, and the first one that felt more like relief than horror.

Five days after the attack, Thomas stood alone at the northern edge of Haven’s territory, staring into wilderness and wondering what he was becoming.

The settlement had survived. Twelve people died during the assault, all resurrected by morning. The defensive wall was repaired, patrols were doubled, and Haven’s residents now moved with the particular wary tension of people who’d learned that their shelter was temporary and their survival negotiable.

Thomas had thrown himself into training with the focused intensity of someone using activity to avoid thought. He drilled with bow and blade until exhaustion forced rest. He volunteered for every patrol, every watch, every dangerous assignment. He died six more times in five days—three times from training accidents, twice from patrol encounters, once from falling asleep on watch and tumbling off the defensive wall.

Ten deaths total. The count had become automatic, a running tally in his mind: ten endings, ten resurrections, ten confirmations that escape was impossible and continuity was mandatory.

Elena had warned him about this—the desperate activity phase, where new arrivals pushed themselves to extremes trying to escape internal torment through external exhaustion. She said it was healthy to a point, therapeutic even. But beyond that point lay breakdown.

Thomas suspected he was approaching that beyond.

He’d come to this spot because it was as far from Haven as patrols were allowed to go alone. Far enough that other people’s voices didn’t reach. Far enough that the constant activity of survival could pause for a moment. Far enough that he could think without interruption.

And thinking, he’d discovered, was worse than dying.

Because thinking meant counting days. Thirty-seven days since the portal. How much time on Ispar? Mara would have given up hope by now. The village would have held whatever ritual they held for missing hunters. Matthias would have cleaned out Thomas’s possessions, distributed his tools, consoled Mara with the awkward affection of a man who’d never understood his brother but had loved him nonetheless.

And William? What did a seven-year-old understand about permanent loss? Did he still wait by the door in the evenings, or had Mara managed to convince him that Papa wasn’t coming back? Was he angry at Thomas for leaving, or did he idealize his absent father the way children often did, turning abandonment into legend?

Thomas pulled out the leather cord from under his shirt—William’s baby tooth, the one tooth he’d been home to see come loose. He’d kept it as a reminder of what he was providing for. Now it was just a reminder of what he’d lost.

• ‘You are troubled,’ said a voice that wasn’t a voice—concept more than sound, language that bypassed ears to settle directly into his mind.

Thomas spun, bow drawn and arrow nocked in the time it took to complete the motion. But he saw nothing—no Olthoi, no human, no physical presence that could have spoken.

• ‘Show yourself,’ he demanded.

• ‘We are,’ the concept-voice responded. ‘Your perceptions are simply inadequate to the task of observing us. We exist in spectrum your eyes do not register. But we can adjust. Observe.’

Reality flickered, and suddenly there were three figures before him—or not figures exactly, but something that his mind interpreted as figures because it needed shapes to make sense of presence. They appeared as humanoid forms draped in flowing fabric, but the fabric wasn’t cloth and the forms weren’t physical. They were thought given quasi-material substance, consciousness made almost-visible, intelligence approaching from directions he couldn’t quite map.

• ‘What are you?’

• ‘Virindi is the name you may use. We are observers, students of consciousness and its many forms. We have watched your species since arrival with great interest. You are remarkable—conscious despite impermanence, purposeful despite certain death, creating meaning where none objectively exists. Fascinating creatures, humans. Full of contradictions.’

• ‘Why are you here? What do you want from me?’

• ‘To offer opportunity. You seek return to your world, to your family. We cannot provide this directly—the portals are Asheron’s work, bound by his will. But we can teach you to understand them. Can share knowledge that might, eventually, lead to reversal.’

Thomas’s hunter’s instincts screamed warnings. Offers that seemed too good were usually traps—lures designed to exploit desperation. But his father’s desperation was louder, more insistent, more immediately compelling.

• ‘Why would you help me?’

• ‘We observe. To observe properly, we must sometimes interact. Your species has proven… difficult to understand through pure observation. You act in ways our models cannot predict. We wish to learn why. Teaching you portal mechanics in exchange for observing how you apply that knowledge—this seems equitable trade. You gain possibility of return. We gain data about human decision-making in extremis.’

• ‘And if I refuse?’

• ‘Then you continue as you are—training, fighting, dying, resurrecting, never quite adapting because adaptation requires accepting permanence of situation. We have observed you these thirty-seven days. You have not accepted. You perform survival activities while maintaining internal certainty that situation is temporary. This division will eventually break you. Our offer provides alternative: channel your refusal-to-accept into practical action toward desired outcome.’

Thomas lowered his bow slowly. The Virindi—if that’s what they were—weren’t physically threatening. They simply stood (floated? existed?) observing him with what might have been curiosity or might have been something that human concepts couldn’t quite capture.

• ‘What would I have to do?’

• ‘Learn. We teach portal mechanics—theory, structure, the principles by which dimensional boundaries are manipulated. We explain how Asheron bound the portals to Dereth’s magical field. We show you what would be required to reverse his work. You apply this knowledge as you see fit. We observe and catalog your decisions.’

• ‘That’s all? You teach, I learn, you watch?’

• ‘We may occasionally request specific information—your observations about other humans, about Asheron if you encounter him, about the Olthoi and their behaviors. But we will not command. Trade implies voluntary exchange, and we prefer our test subjects uncoerced for more accurate data.’

Test subjects. The term confirmed what Thomas had suspected—the Virindi saw humans as experimental organisms, interesting the way complicated insects might be interesting. But they were offering something no one else had: knowledge that might lead to return.

• ‘I accept,’ Thomas said, the decision settling over him like familiar weight. ‘Teach me. I’ll learn whatever you know about portals. And if your knowledge helps me find my way home, then you can observe all you want. I’ll be the most interesting test subject you’ve ever watched.’

• ‘Excellent. We will begin immediately. First lesson: portals are not tears in reality but bridges—constructed connections following specific rules. To reverse a portal, one must understand not just its current configuration but its construction principles. Attend.’

The Virindi—all three of them speaking simultaneously, their concept-voices weaving together into something approaching harmony—began to teach. They showed him diagrams that appeared directly in his mind: the mathematical structure of dimensional boundaries, the way magical fields could be manipulated to create stable connections, the binding spells that locked portals to specific locations.

Thomas absorbed it all with the hunter’s focus he’d honed over three decades of tracking. This was just a different kind of trail—not footprints in soil but patterns in magical theory, not animal behavior but dimensional mechanics. The translation wasn’t perfect, but translation never was. He’d learned to read forests that others found illegible. He could learn to read portals.

Hours passed like moments. The Virindi taught without pause, flooding his mind with knowledge that should have been incomprehensible but somehow wasn’t. Maybe the lifestones had changed him, expanded his cognitive capacity. Maybe desperation was enhancing his ability to learn. Maybe the Virindi were doing something to his perception, making their lessons more accessible than they should have been.

He didn’t care about the mechanism. Only the outcome.

• ‘Enough for today,’ the Virindi finally announced. ‘You have received fundamental principles. We will meet again tomorrow night, same location, to continue instruction. Do not speak of this to others. Human social dynamics suggest they would disapprove of our arrangement, and disapproval would limit your freedom to learn.’

• ‘They would think I was being manipulated. Being used.’

• ‘Are those incorrect assessments? We are using you—as source of observational data. You are using us—as source of theoretical knowledge. All relationships are transactional at root. The question is whether the transaction is equitable, not whether it exists.’

The Virindi flickered and vanished, leaving Thomas alone again at the northern edge of Haven’s territory. The night was fully dark now, Dereth’s wrong stars bright against purple-black sky. He should return to the settlement, should sleep, should prepare for tomorrow’s training and patrols.

But he stood for a long time, thinking about transactions and test subjects and the lies people tell themselves about their motivations.

The Virindi were right about one thing: he hadn’t accepted his situation. Wouldn’t accept it. Couldn’t accept it without abandoning Mara and William, and abandonment was the one sin he refused to commit again, even if the first abandonment had been accident rather than choice.

If learning portal mechanics gave him even a slim chance of return, then he’d learn. If working with alien intelligences who saw him as experimental subject was the price, he’d pay it. If other humans would disapprove—would call him desperate or deluded or collaborating with entities no one understood—he’d bear their disapproval.

Because the alternative was accepting that he’d destroyed his family for nothing, that his choice at the portal had been final, that his life on Ispar was truly over and only this nightmare remained.

And that was an alternative Thomas refused to accept.

• ‘I’m coming home,’ he whispered to people who couldn’t hear him. ‘I don’t know how. Don’t know how long it will take. But I’m learning, and learning leads to understanding, and understanding leads to action. I won’t give up. Won’t move on. Won’t let go of you just because reality says I should.’

He walked back to Haven slowly, his mind churning through the knowledge the Virindi had given him—dimensional mathematics, binding principles, the structure of connections between worlds. It would take time to fully integrate, longer to understand well enough to apply. But time was the one resource he had in abundance, time measured in resurrections and repeated deaths and the endless grinding continuation of consciousness that couldn’t escape.

Elena was waiting at the settlement’s edge when he returned.

• ‘You were gone a long time. I was about to send a patrol.’

• ‘Just thinking. Needed space to process.’

• ‘Process what? Your tenth death? The attack? The realization that this is permanent?’

• ‘All of it. None of it. Just… thinking.’

She studied him in the darkness, her scarred face showing the particular concern of someone who’d learned to recognize when new arrivals were approaching breakdown.

• ‘You’re planning something. I can see it in your eyes. You’ve got that look people get when they’ve decided acceptance isn’t an option and desperate action is the only alternative.’

• ‘I’m planning to survive. Same as everyone here.’

• ‘No. Everyone here survives. You’re doing something else. Something that feels like survival but is really refusal. Just… be careful, Thomas. The people who refuse to accept what’s happened, who keep fighting the fundamental realities of our situation—they don’t end well. They become obsessed, hollow, consumed by goals they’ll never achieve. Is that really who you want to become?’

Thomas met her eyes in the darkness, and for a moment he wanted to tell her everything—about the Virindi, about the offer, about the knowledge he was gaining. But the Virindi were right about human social dynamics. Elena would disapprove, would call it dangerous or delusional, would try to stop him for his own good.

• ‘I want to be someone who doesn’t give up on his family,’ he said finally. ‘Even if that makes me obsessed or hollow or worse. I won’t abandon them again. Not while I’m conscious, not while I can learn, not while any possibility remains however slim.’

• ‘And if the possibility isn’t real? If the Virindi are using your desperation for their own purposes, feeding you hope that doesn’t lead anywhere?’

• ‘Then I’ll learn that eventually, and I’ll adjust. But I won’t stop trying until I know for certain that return is impossible. I can’t. That’s just who I am.’

Elena sighed, the sound carrying years of watching people make choices she couldn’t prevent.

• ‘All right. I won’t stop you. But I’ll be watching, and if whatever you’re doing starts to damage Haven or the people here, I’ll intervene. Understood?’

• ‘Understood.’

• ‘Good. Now get some sleep. Tomorrow you’re on advanced combat drills with Khalil, and he doesn’t go easy on the sleep-deprived. You’ll probably die three or four times. Might as well be rested for it.’

Thomas went to his shelter—still sparse after five weeks, still temporary-feeling, still not home and never home no matter how long he stayed. He lay on his bedroll, staring at the roof that leaked and counting days: thirty-seven here, unknown there, every one taking him further from Mara and William while somehow keeping them equally distant.

But now he had something he hadn’t had before: knowledge, and the promise of more knowledge, and the slim possibility that knowledge might translate to action and action might translate to return.

It was false hope. Probably. Almost certainly.

But it was hope nonetheless, and hope was dangerous and necessary and the only thing preventing him from becoming one of the Broken who sat by Haven’s central fire, functioning but absent, alive but not really living.

Outside, Dereth’s night continued its alien symphony. Inside, Thomas closed his eyes and dreamed of forests he understood, of a wife who waited, of a son who believed his father’s promises were absolute.

And in his dreams, the Virindi observed and cataloged and made notes about human desperation and its remarkable ability to override reason in service of attachment.

Test subject indeed, Thomas thought as sleep finally claimed him. But if being a test subject got him home, then he’d be the best damn test subject the Virindi had ever studied.

He’d learn their lessons, follow their instructions, absorb every fragment of knowledge they offered.

And then he’d use that knowledge to do what hunters did best: track his prey back to its source, and claim what had been taken from him.

Even if the prey was dimensional boundaries, and the source was a mage named Asheron, and what had been taken was everything that made life worth living.

Maajid al-Zemar woke to the sound of his family’s comforting lies.

• ‘The rains will be good this year,’ his father announced at breakfast, as he announced every morning during planting season. ‘The soil is rich, the seeds are blessed, and the gods favor those who work honestly.’

• ‘Inshallah,’ his mother Farah murmured, the word a prayer and a resignation.

• ‘Inshallah,’ his five siblings echoed, hands reaching for flatbread, for dates, for the familiar rhythms of a day that would be identical to yesterday and tomorrow and every day stretching back to the village’s founding three hundred years ago.

Maajid said nothing. He watched his family perform the morning ritual with the same attention he’d once watched the robed men perform their field blessings—seeing not comfort but formula, not faith but fear dressed in routine’s clothing.

His father caught the silence, mistook it for sullenness rather than observation.

• ‘Maajid, you’ll help Omar with the north field today. The irrigation channels need clearing before we can—’

• ‘Why?’ The word escaped before Maajid could cage it behind politeness.

• ‘Why?’ His father’s voice carried the dangerous patience of a man whose authority was being questioned. ‘Because the channels need clearing. Because the field needs watering. Because crops need tending.’

• ‘No. Why do we do this? Any of this? We plant, we harvest, we eat, we sleep, we wake and plant again. For what? To produce children who will do the same, who will produce children who will do the same, until the sun dies or the kingdom falls or we all forget why we started?’

His eldest brother Omar—steady, responsible Omar who would inherit the farm and accept the inheritance as destiny rather than imprisonment—set down his cup with careful precision.

• ‘We do it because it needs doing. Because family needs feeding. Because tradition—’

• ‘Tradition is just the corpse of someone else’s choice, Omar. Why should their choices bind ours?’

His mother’s hand touched his, gentle but firm. She was illiterate, uneducated, probably couldn’t name the current Liege beyond knowing he existed somewhere far away in a world that didn’t touch theirs. But her eyes held something that made Maajid look away—not judgment but understanding, and understanding was worse than judgment because you couldn’t rage against it.

• ‘Eat, my clever son,’ she said. ‘Questions are hungry work.’

Maajid ate because refusing would hurt her, and hurting her was the one thing his growing nihilism couldn’t justify. He tasted nothing. The bread was his mother’s skill, the dates were last year’s harvest, the milk was from their goat Samira who’d been part of the family since Maajid was six. Each mouthful was love and provision and care, and it all tasted like ashes because he couldn’t stop seeing the bars of the cage they’d all willingly climbed into.

After breakfast, he fled to the olive grove on the village’s edge. It was his refuge, had been since childhood, when being the youngest meant being overlooked and overlooked meant being free. The ancient trees provided shade and solitude, and if you climbed high enough in the oldest one, you could see beyond the village boundaries to the desert stretching away like a sea of sand under relentless sun.

He’d been sitting there for perhaps an hour, working through a problem in theoretical mathematics he’d found in a borrowed book, when the familiar voice made him look up.

• ‘Hiding or thinking?’ Hassan al-Fadl stood below, his travel-worn robes and graying beard marking him as one of the robed men who visited the village periodically. But Hassan was different from the others—he lingered after the blessings, asked strange questions, looked at Maajid with eyes that saw too much.

• ‘Both. Is there a difference?’

• ‘For most people, yes. For you?’ Hassan’s smile held something that might have been approval or might have been pity. ‘You tell me.’

• ‘I was thinking about the field blessings you performed yesterday. The gestures aren’t religious—they’re formulaic. The words aren’t prayer—they’re commands. You’re not asking gods to bless the crops. You’re manipulating growth rates through controlled application of life magic, probably drawing on the ambient magical field generated by the ley line that runs three meters below the north field’s eastern edge.’

Hassan’s expression shifted through several emotions too quickly for Maajid to catalog. Surprise, certainly. Concern, probably. And something else—recognition, perhaps, or the look of a teacher who’d just discovered a student they didn’t know they’d been teaching.

• ‘Seventeen years old, and you’ve taught yourself thaumaturgical theory from observation alone. Do you understand how rare that is?’

• ‘Do you understand how boring it is to be rare in a place that values sameness?’

• ‘Yes, actually. I do. I was born in a village like this one. I asked questions like yours. I fled because staying meant lying about what I saw, and lying killed something I needed to keep alive.’

• ‘What happened?’

• ‘I became a mage. Studied at the Celestial Observatory in Mawwuz. Learned that reality is far stranger than village life suggests, and that knowledge is both gift and curse. The more you understand, the less you can pretend comfortable lies are truth. But also the more responsibility you carry, because ignorance is protection and you no longer have that protection.’

Hassan lowered himself to sit against the tree trunk, groaning slightly—an old man’s acknowledgment of time’s passage.

• ‘I left something for you. Last night, in the village square. A leather bag, treated to resist weather. Inside: three scrolls on basic thaumaturgy, a set of reagent components, and a practice wand. I ”forgot” them there. If someone finds them, they’ll return them to me when I visit next season. But if someone were to claim them, to study them…’

• ‘Why?’ Maajid’s heart was racing, his mind already reaching toward the knowledge Hassan was offering. ‘Why help me? You don’t know me.’

• ‘I know your questions. That’s enough. The universe has a peculiar sense of humor, boy. It produces minds that question, that probe, that refuse comfortable certainty. Those minds are either crushed by the world’s weight or they push back and change the shape of things. I’m betting you’re the second kind.’

• ‘And if I’m the first?’

• ‘Then the bag will rot in the square and I’ll have wasted three scrolls. But somehow…’ Hassan studied Maajid with those too-knowing eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s likely. When you learn what those scrolls can teach, when you outgrow what I can offer through ”accidents,” seek the Celestial Observatory. Tell them Hassan sent you. They may test you, may reject you, may accept you. But at least you’ll be asked questions instead of told answers.’

He left without waiting for thanks, understanding perhaps that Maajid had none to give—not yet, not until he knew what the gift would cost.

Maajid waited until Hassan disappeared down the road toward the next village. Then he climbed down from his olive tree refuge and walked to the square with the measured pace of someone trying not to show eagerness.

The bag was there, tucked against the well’s stone base where morning shadows provided cover from casual observation. Maajid claimed it with the same casualness, as if he’d left it there himself, as if this wasn’t the moment when everything changed or at least began the process of changing.

In his room that night—small, bare, containing only a sleeping mat and the books he’d borrowed and never returned—Maajid opened the bag with hands that trembled despite his attempts at philosophical detachment.

The scrolls were written in High Empyrean with Gharu’ndim translation notes in margins. They detailed basic principles of reality manipulation: how thought could shape force given proper focus and sufficient power source, how language provided structure for will’s expression, how reagents served as catalysts rather than ingredients.

Magic, Maajid realized as he read by flickering oil lamp, wasn’t divine or mystical. It was just physics that most people didn’t know existed, forces that could be measured and manipulated and predicted. The scrolls showed him the edges of a vast structure of knowledge that the village’s comfortable certainty had hidden from him.

He spent three weeks studying in secret, practicing the most basic exercises when his family thought he was tending the north field. The wand Hassan had left felt awkward at first, like a tool designed for someone else’s hands, but gradually it became extension rather than implement.

His first successful spell was simple—so simple the scrolls barely bothered explaining it. A light conjuration, pulling ambient magical energy and converting it to photons in the visible spectrum. Maajid spoke the words with careful precision: Malar Cazael.

Light bloomed from the wand’s tip. Not the hesitant glow of a candle but clean, bright illumination that pushed back shadows and made the olive grove’s darkness retreat. It lasted perhaps five seconds before his concentration wavered and the spell collapsed. But in those five seconds, Maajid felt reality bend to his will, felt himself impose structure on chaos, felt the universe acknowledge his command and obey.

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. Here was proof that existence could be negotiated with, that the rules everyone claimed were absolute could be rewritten by anyone who learned the language. It was intoxicating and terrifying and absolutely, perfectly hilarious.

• ‘The cosmic joke,’ he whispered to the darkness he’d briefly banished. ‘You’re all pretending this is fixed, but it’s negotiable. Everything is negotiable. We’re just too afraid to haggle.’

His family noticed the change, interpreted it as sullenness deepening into withdrawal. His father grew more impatient, his mother more concerned, his siblings more distant. Only Omar tried to bridge the growing gap, approaching Maajid one evening as he sat apart from the family’s communal meal.

• ‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’ Omar asked without preamble. ‘You have that look Father had in his youth, before he settled. Like you’re already gone and just haven’t told your body yet.’

• ‘Father wanted to leave?’

• ‘Wanted to be a trader, see the kingdom, sell goods in Mawwuz’s markets. But then Grandfather died, and someone had to manage the farm, and Father chose duty over desire. He’s never regretted it—or so he tells himself every morning before he tells us the rains will be good this year.’

Maajid looked at his brother with new understanding. Omar wasn’t blind to the cage’s bars—he just chose to accept them as necessary rather than negotiable.

• ‘Does that make him wise or broken?’

• ‘Does it matter? He’s at peace with his choice. That’s rarer than you think.’ Omar settled onto the ground beside him, their shoulders not quite touching. ‘You’re not like him. You won’t find peace in acceptance. But Maajid, there’s also no peace in eternal questioning. I’ve watched you these past weeks, and you’re not happier for whatever knowledge you’ve gained. You’re just more alone.’

• ‘Maybe lonely is the price of seeing clearly.’

• ‘Or maybe seeing clearly is the excuse lonely people tell themselves to justify their isolation.’

It was the most philosophically sophisticated thing Maajid had ever heard Omar say, and it hit with the precision of a well-aimed arrow.

• ‘I love you,’ Maajid said, the words surprising him. ‘I don’t know if I respect your choice, but I love you. That should matter more than it does.’

• ‘It matters exactly as much as it should. Which is why you’ll leave, and I’ll stay, and we’ll both be right in our own ways. Just… don’t leave badly. Mother couldn’t bear it.’

The conversation haunted Maajid through the following days as he continued his magical studies. He pushed beyond the scrolls’ basic lessons, experimenting with variations, testing the limits of his growing comprehension. Some experiments failed spectacularly—he singed his fingertips trying to summon fire without proper grounding, left burn marks on his practice wand from excessive energy channeling. Other experiments succeeded in ways that opened new questions like doors leading to more doors.

He could manipulate small objects through will alone, lifting stones and spinning them in complex patterns. He could perceive the ley line beneath the north field, feeling its pulse like a second heartbeat underlying reality’s surface. He could even sense when Hassan performed blessings in neighboring villages, recognizing the particular signature of the old mage’s style.

But knowledge brought no peace, just more acute awareness of the gap between what he knew and what his family could understand. They inhabited the same house, ate the same meals, nominally shared the same life, but they might as well have been separated by the dimensional barriers Duulak the Twice-Blessed reportedly studied three hundred miles away in Qush.

The confrontation came on the eve of planting season, when families throughout the village gathered for the traditional feast. His father, perhaps emboldened by wine and community presence, chose that moment to force the issue.

• ‘Tomorrow we plant the north field,’ he announced, speaking to the assembled family but looking directly at Maajid. ‘It’s the largest plot, requires everyone’s effort. Maajid, you’ll work beside me. No more wandering off to your olive trees, no more distraction with borrowed books. Tomorrow you commit to this family’s work, or you admit you’ve already left us in spirit.’

Every face turned toward Maajid. His mother’s expression carried pleading. Omar’s showed resignation. His younger siblings looked confused—they didn’t understand yet that this was ultimatum disguised as invitation.

Maajid could have lied. Could have agreed to plant tomorrow, could have performed the labor while continuing his secret studies, could have maintained the facade until he was ready to leave properly. But the wine he’d drunk, or the accumulated weight of hidden knowledge, or perhaps just exhaustion from performing normalcy he didn’t feel—something made him speak truth.

• ‘The north field doesn’t need planting. It needs three more months of fallow time to replenish nitrogen levels depleted by last year’s over-cropping. If you plant tomorrow, you’ll get half yield regardless of rain or blessing or honest labor. The soil isn’t ready.’

• ‘How could you possibly—’

• ‘Because I’ve spent the past month studying the field’s composition instead of pretending tradition is wisdom. Because I’ve learned to read what the land is actually saying instead of hearing what we want it to say. Because, Father, your entire life is built on comfortable assumptions that stop being true the moment someone bothers to examine them.’

Silence fell across the feast like ash after fire. His father’s face went through several emotions too quickly to track—shock, rage, wounded pride, and finally something that looked almost like grief.

• ‘You think you’re wiser than three hundred years of our family working this land? You think your month of reading makes you more knowledgeable than my lifetime of growing things?’

• ‘I think your lifetime of growing things taught you what works in familiar circumstances, but circumstances change. The ley line shifted two years ago—that’s why yields have been decreasing. Traditional methods don’t account for magical field variations. But no one questions why traditions stop working, you just work harder and pray louder and pretend that faith can substitute for understanding.’

• ‘Get out.’ His father’s voice was quiet, which made it more terrible than shouting. ‘If you can’t honor this family’s work, you’re not part of this family. Pack your things. Be gone by morning.’

• ‘Husband—’ his mother began.

• ‘No, Farah. He’s made his choice. He looks at us and sees fools. Well, let him go find wisdom somewhere else. Let him learn that questions without labor just make you clever and hungry.’

Maajid stood, his wine cup trembling in his hand. He could apologize. Could recant. Could throw himself on his father’s mercy and maybe, maybe save this rupture from becoming permanent break.

• ‘The north field needs fallow time,’ he said instead. ‘Plant it if you must. But when harvest comes and the yield is poor, remember: I tried to tell you truth, and you chose comfortable certainty over uncomfortable knowledge. That’s not my failure. That’s yours.’

He left the feast to echoing silence, aware that his siblings were crying, that his mother’s hand had gone to her mouth, that Omar was shaking his head with the sad wisdom of someone who’d predicted exactly this outcome.

In his room, Maajid packed his few belongings with steady hands: the scrolls, the practice wand, borrowed books he’d never return, clothes that would serve for travel. His mother appeared in the doorway, silent tears tracking down her weathered face.

• ‘You’re really going?’

• ‘He told me to leave.’

• ‘He tells you many things when he’s angry. He doesn’t always mean them.’

• ‘But I mean them, Mother. I’ve been leaving for months, just hadn’t told my body yet.’

She entered the room, closed the door behind her, and from beneath her shawl produced a cloth-wrapped bundle. Inside: coins, perhaps three months of careful savings, enough to reach Mawwuz and eat for a week or two beyond arrival.

• ‘You saved this?’

• ‘I’ve known for weeks you’d go. Mothers always know. Take it. And Maajid—’ She cupped his face in work-rough hands. ‘—seek truth if you must. But remember that truth without love is just loneliness with better explanations. When you find what you’re looking for, ask yourself: was it worth what you left behind?’

• ‘I don’t know if I’ll find answers.’

• ‘Then find questions worth asking. And…’ She kissed his forehead, blessing and farewell. ‘…write to me. Even if you can’t come home, write. Let me know my clever son survived his cleverness.’

He promised, and meant it, and suspected he would break that promise in ways that would haunt him later.

Maajid left before dawn, walking the dusty road toward Mawwuz with the small pack containing everything he owned and nothing that mattered. The village receded behind him, and with each step, he felt the cage bars loosening their grip.

The journey would take four days by foot, longer if he stopped to earn coins performing small magics—light conjurations for nervous travelers, blessing charms for merchant caravans, minor healing for those who couldn’t afford proper physicians. The scrolls had warned against advertising his abilities, but Maajid had already learned to balance caution with necessity.

On the second day, he fell in with a merchant caravan heading to Mawwuz’s markets. The caravan master, a practical woman named Yusra who’d made this journey a hundred times, assessed Maajid with the frank evaluation of someone calculating his utility.

• ‘You’re young to be traveling alone. Running from something or running toward something?’

• ‘Both. Is there a difference?’

• ‘Usually. People running from something look backward. People running toward something look forward. You look…’ She tilted her head, studying him. ‘…sideways. Like you’re watching the world from an angle the rest of us can’t see.’

• ‘That’s the most accurate description anyone’s given of me.’

• ‘Well, sideways-looking boy, can you earn your passage? We’re carrying valuable goods. Bandits are rare on this road but not impossible. Can you fight?’

• ‘No. But I can make light that blinds, noise that deafens, and illusions that convince. Will that serve?’

• ‘You’re a mage? Where’s your certification? Your guild markers?’

• ‘I’m a student. Self-taught. Heading to Mawwuz to seek proper training at the Celestial Observatory.’

Yusra laughed, not unkindly.

• ‘Self-taught magic is like self-taught surgery—impressive if you survive it, but the survival rate is terrible. Fine. You can travel with us. You provide security enchantments at night, light if we need to travel after dark, and general magical assistance. In exchange: food, protection, and introduction to a friend who handles Observatory applications. Fair?’

• ‘More than fair. Thank you.’

• ‘Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see if your magic works better than your life planning.’

The caravan proved good company—a dozen merchants, their families, hired guards, and the inevitable collection of travelers seeking safety in numbers. Maajid learned quickly that caravans were universities in their own right, each person carrying knowledge they’d share for the price of attention.

A Gharu’ndim philosopher named Rashid spent an evening teaching Maajid about classical schools of thought—determinism versus free will, the problem of consciousness, the nature of reality. They debated while the caravan made camp, voices rising in excitement rather than anger.

• ‘You seek to understand the universe completely?’ Rashid asked, stroking his elaborate beard. ‘That’s the mistake of youth and the wisdom of madness. The universe is a koan, boy. Do you know what that is?’

• ‘A paradox with no logical solution. Used in meditation to break rational thought.’

• ‘Precisely. And reality itself is the ultimate koan—consciousness observing consciousness, existence questioning existence. The moment you think you’ve solved it, the question transforms. Every answer generates new questions. Understanding doesn’t end the search—it just reveals how much further you have to go.’

• ‘Then why search at all? If completion is impossible?’

• ‘Because the search is the point, not the finding. We are conscious beings asking what consciousness is—that’s recursion with no base case. But the asking itself…’ Rashid gestured at the night sky, at the stars obscured by neither clouds nor light. ‘…the asking itself is the only response existence can give to its own existence. We question, therefore we are.’

Maajid filed this away with the growing collection of ideas he didn’t fully understand but suspected he would need later. Each conversation revealed how vast his ignorance was, how much he’d need to learn just to properly formulate the questions he wanted to ask.

On the fourth day, Mawwuz appeared on the horizon—not the gradual revelation of approaching settlement but the sudden emergence of civilization that made the village he’d fled seem like child’s play at adulthood. Stone buildings three and four stories tall. Markets that sprawled across squares large enough to hold his entire village. The harbor beyond, where ships from across the kingdom docked to exchange goods and stories.

And dominating the city’s highest point: the Celestial Observatory, its copper dome catching sunlight and throwing it back at the sky like a challenge.

• ‘There’s your destination,’ Yusra said, following his gaze. ‘The Observatory trains mages, astrologers, theorists—anyone who can pass their entrance examination. Fair warning: they test for talent and temperament. Talent you have. Temperament…’ She shrugged expressively. ‘That remains to be seen.’

• ‘How hard is the examination?’

• ‘Hard enough that most applicants fail. The Observatory doesn’t want clever children who can memorize formulas. They want minds that can see past the formulas to the principles underneath, that can look at reality and recognize the negotiable parts. From what I’ve seen, you might qualify. Or you might burn yourself out trying to prove you qualify. The Observatory breaks as many mages as it makes.’

The caravan dissolved as they entered the city, each merchant heading to their own destination, the temporary community fracturing into individuals pursuing separate purposes. Yusra kept her promise, though, leading Maajid to a modest building near the Observatory’s base where a middle-aged woman named Safiya conducted interviews for prospective students.

• ‘This is Maajid al-Zemar,’ Yusra made introduction. ‘Self-taught, village-born, probably too clever for his own good. He needs testing, training, or merciful rejection before he kills himself experimenting. I leave him in your capable hands.’

Safiya examined Maajid with the professional assessment of someone who’d seen a thousand desperate young mages and learned to predict which would flourish and which would flame out.

• ‘Can you demonstrate your abilities?’

Maajid showed her what he’d learned from the scrolls and his own experimentation—the light conjuration, object manipulation, and a simple illusion that made his hand appear to hold a flower that wasn’t there.

• ‘Basic competency,’ Safiya noted. ‘Better technique than most self-taught applicants, but that just means you’ll survive your own mistakes longer before one kills you. The examination is in three days. You’ll need to demonstrate magical ability, mathematical comprehension, philosophical reasoning, and creative application of principles you’ve never seen before. The last part trips up most applicants—they can memorize and reproduce, but they can’t extend. Can you extend?’

• ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been properly tested.’

• ‘Well, you will be. Registration costs five coins, non-refundable whether you pass or fail. Housing while you wait is your responsibility. There are cheap inns near the docks if you can tolerate sailors’ noise. Questions?’

• ‘If I fail?’

• ‘You can retake the examination in six months. Or you can apprentice to a practicing mage and reapply with their recommendation. Or you can accept that not everyone is meant to be a mage and find other purpose. Magic is a path, not the only path.’

Maajid paid the registration fee, feeling his mother’s savings diminish. The inn Safiya recommended was indeed noisy, its walls thin enough that he could hear three different arguments, two business negotiations, and one enthusiastic coupling through the intervening walls. But the bed was reasonably clean, the food was adequate, and the price left him enough coins for a week’s survival if he passed the examination—less if he failed and needed to figure out alternative plans.

He spent the next three days in a fever of study, borrowing books from the Observatory’s public library, practicing spells until his hands shook with exhaustion, reviewing mathematics and philosophy with the desperate focus of someone whose entire future depended on three days hence.

On the morning of the examination, Maajid woke to the sound of commotion in the streets below. He dressed quickly and joined the crowd gathering in the direction of the royal courtyard, where something impossible was happening.

The portal manifested like reality having a seizure—a vertical slash in the world’s surface, colors that had no names, depth without distance, movement without direction. It swirled in the center of the courtyard, and the morning’s early traders stopped their business to stare at this violation of everything they knew about how existence worked.

Maajid pushed through the gathering crowd, using teenage agility to slip between bodies, ignoring protests, driven by something he couldn’t name but recognized as important. He reached the front just as court mages erected barriers, just as guards established perimeter, just as priests began prayers to gods who probably couldn’t affect whatever this was.

The portal sang.

Not sound in the conventional sense, but concept-language that bypassed ears and spoke directly to consciousness. Maajid heard it clearly while others seemed deaf to it, covering their ears against noise that wasn’t actually noise.

The song was laughter—cosmic, vast, amused laughter at the pretense that anything was certain, that anything was fixed, that reality was anything but infinite negotiation between existence and void. It promised not safety or power or knowledge but the opportunity to see the joke, to understand that consciousness asking ”why” was itself the punchline.

• ‘Stay back!’ a guard shouted, recognizing Maajid’s forward movement. ‘This is dangerous, unknown—’

• ‘This is exactly what I’ve been looking for,’ Maajid heard himself say.

The court mages were performing analysis—measuring, calculating, trying to understand the portal’s nature through systematic study. They would need months, Maajid knew with certainty that came from somewhere beyond logic. They would need to test, to theorize, to cautiously approach truth through safe incremental steps.

He had perhaps minutes before they established control, before this window closed, before the cosmic joke’s punchline moved beyond reach.

His choice crystallized with the clarity of absolute recognition. He could step back to safety, take the examination he’d traveled four days to reach, become a proper mage through proper channels, spend his life accumulating knowledge through sanctioned means. Safe. Certain. Predictable.

Or he could step through impossible geometry into whatever existed beyond normal reality, following a song only he seemed to hear clearly, surrendering to the cosmic joke’s invitation to see the punchline directly rather than studying it from safe distance.

The examination. The Observatory. The future he’d planned. All of it felt suddenly like another cage, larger than the village but still bounded by someone else’s bars.

• ‘The universe is a koan,’ Rashid the philosopher had said. ‘The answer breaks the question.’

Maajid laughed—genuine, delighted laughter at the perfect absurdity of the moment. He’d fled his village seeking freedom from comfortable certainty, and here was reality offering exactly that: complete uncertainty disguised as opportunity.

Guards moved to intercept as they recognized his intention. Mages shouted warnings about unknown dangers, about portals to hostile dimensions, about risks no sane person would accept.

But Maajid had left sanity behind when he chose questions over answers, when he burned the bridge with his father over soil composition, when he packed everything he owned into a bag he could carry. Sanity was just another cage, another comfortable certainty that existence used to keep consciousness from asking dangerous questions.

He ran toward the portal with teenage recklessness and philosophical abandon. A guard’s hand grasped his shoulder—missed by inches. A mage’s spell tried to root him in place—caught his trailing foot but he stumbled forward rather than falling back.

His final thought before crossing: Mother, I found something worth the price. I hope.

The portal welcomed him like water welcomes a diver, like void welcomes light, like question welcomes answer that will only generate more questions. Reality inverted, turned inside out, rewrote itself according to rules Maajid didn’t know but recognized as the mathematical structure underlying existence’s surface.

He fell through dimensions that shouldn’t exist, past perspectives that broke Euclidean geometry, between possibilities that consciousness usually filtered out for sanity’s preservation. It felt like dying and being born simultaneously, like understanding and forgetting happening in the same eternal instant, like laughter given physical form.

And through it all, Maajid laughed.

Not from fear or madness, but from recognition. This was the cosmic joke’s punchline—existence itself, consciousness experiencing its own nature, reality observing reality and finding the observation hilarious precisely because observation changed what was being observed.

He emerged on alien soil still laughing, and the purple sky, the binary suns, the crystalline formations that shouldn’t exist according to everything he’d learned looked back at him with the universe’s own laughter.

• ‘This is PERFECT,’ he said to existence or void or his own consciousness or all three. ‘This is exactly wrong enough to be interesting.’

And he meant it absolutely.

Maajid’s arrival on Dereth felt like diving into deep water—not the drowning panic of Thomas’s crossing or the analytical disorientation of Duulak’s translation, but the deliberate surrender to element that welcomes rather than resists transformation.

He landed on his feet, which seemed appropriate. Reality had extended invitation, and Maajid had accepted it, so why would reality punish him for saying yes? Or perhaps his arrival’s grace was coincidence, random chance that he interpreted as meaningful. Either way, he was vertical, conscious, and staring at a world that made no sense according to everything his village had taught him about how existence worked.

The sky was purple—not sunset purple or storm purple, but intrinsic purple, as if someone had decided that blue was boring and rewritten atmospheric optics. Two suns hung at different angles, one larger and golden, one smaller and red, casting shadows in multiple directions that intersected and overlapped in ways that made depth perception negotiable.

The ground beneath his feet was crystalline—not jagged like broken glass but smooth, organic, as if stone had learned to grow like coral. It hummed with energy he could feel through his boots, a vibration that suggested the entire landscape was alive in ways he’d need new vocabulary to describe.

And in the distance, clicking sounds that definitely weren’t birds.

Maajid laughed again—that inappropriate, delighted laugh that had gotten him expelled from his family’s feast. Here he was, seventeen years old, standing on alien soil under purple sky, about to be killed by unknown creatures, having just thrown away his chance at proper magical training to dive through a portal because existence had told a joke and he’d wanted to hear the punchline.

• ‘Mother would say this is what happens when you choose questions over comfort,’ he told the purple sky. ‘Father would say I deserve whatever I get for being too clever. Omar would say I was always going to end up here because I couldn’t accept the boundaries everyone else accepted. And they’re all right. That’s the joke—they’re all right, and I’m also right, and rightness is just perspective pretending to be objective.’

The clicking sounds got closer. Maajid turned toward them, curious rather than fearful. He’d crossed through dimensional barriers that shouldn’t be crossable—what were a few alien predators compared to that?

The creature that emerged from between crystalline formations was beautiful in the way that apex predators are beautiful: perfectly designed for its purpose, efficient without mercy, elegant without kindness. Insectoid, easily twice Maajid’s height, covered in chitin that shimmered with oil-slick colors. Its mandibles were large enough to sever his torso, its eyes—multiple, faceted, inhuman—focused on him with intelligence that definitely wasn’t animal.

They studied each other in silence broken only by the creature’s unconscious clicking—communication or breathing or just the sound of a body designed according to non-human principles.

• ‘You see it too, don’t you?’ Maajid addressed the creature with the same tone he’d use for philosophical debate. ‘The absurdity of consciousness. Here we are, two patterns of organized matter complex enough to observe ourselves observing each other, trying to decide if we’re food or threat or something that defies categorization. We’re the universe studying itself through bodies that weren’t designed to see past their own survival imperatives. Isn’t that hilarious?’

The creature tilted its head—a gesture that felt too human for its alien form. Its mandibles clicked in a pattern that might have been laughter or hunger or a question Maajid had no context to interpret.

Then it turned and walked away.

Not fled, not attacked—just walked away, as if Maajid had failed to fit into any known category and the creature decided unknown wasn’t worth the effort of classification.

Maajid watched it disappear, feeling something that might have been connection or might have been wishful thinking projected onto alien intelligence that shared nothing but curiosity about things that defied easy categorization.

• ‘We’re going to be friends, you and I,’ he said to the creature’s retreating form. ‘Or enemies. Or something that doesn’t fit either category. Any of those outcomes is more interesting than what I left behind.’

He explored without plan or fear, touching crystalline formations that hummed with energy, examining plants that seemed half-mineral and half-organic, testing small magics that worked differently here—reality more mutable, resistant less, as if existence in this place held its rules more loosely.

A simple light conjuration created not gentle illumination but blazing radiance that hurt to look at directly. Object manipulation required a fraction of the focus it had demanded on Ispar. Even his consciousness felt different—edges less defined, boundaries between self and world more negotiable.

• ‘This is what Hassan meant,’ Maajid realized, speaking to himself or the purple sky or the cosmic joke listening. ‘Magic on Ispar wasn’t restrained by lack of power—it was restrained by reality’s insistence on staying fixed. Here, reality is more honest about its negotiability. Here, the cage has more space between bars. Still a cage, still bound by rules, but…’ He laughed. ‘…but at least the rules admit they’re just suggestions enforced by habit rather than necessity.’

Night fell with the same wrongness as day—one sun setting while the other remained, creating twilight that persisted for hours, neither full darkness nor proper light. Maajid found shelter in a natural cave formed by crystalline growth, its interior humming with the same energy that pervaded everything here.

He should have been terrified. Should have been grieving his family, his lost examination, the future he’d abandoned. Should have been consumed with questions about where he was, how to survive, whether he could return.

Instead, he felt the most genuine peace he’d experienced since that first light conjuration in the olive grove. Here, no one expected him to pretend comfortable certainty was truth. Here, no one would judge him for asking questions that had no safe answers. Here, reality itself seemed to say: ”yes, existence is negotiable; yes, consciousness is the cosmic joke; yes, you were right to reject comfortable cages.”

Or he was projecting meaning onto random circumstance, imposing narrative on chaos because consciousness couldn’t tolerate the alternative.

Either way, he was here, and here was exactly strange enough to feel like home.

He slept that first night on alien soil under purple sky lit by binary sunset, and his dreams were mathematics given form, philosophy made visible, laughter echoing across dimensions that existence used to hide from itself.

In the morning—judged by the second sun’s rising rather than any familiar rhythm—Maajid saw smoke in the distance. Smoke meant fire, fire meant humans, humans meant other refugees from comfort, other consciousnesses trying to make sense of nonsense.

He walked toward them with the curious anticipation of someone approaching a punchline they’d been working toward without knowing it.

The cosmic joke continued.

And Maajid intended to laugh his way through it, whatever it cost.

The smoke led Maajid to people who were broken in ways he’d never imagined consciousness could break.

He approached the settlement cautiously, not from fear of violence but from uncertainty about what reaction his obvious delight might provoke. He’d learned early in his village that enthusiasm for things others found terrifying marked you as either prophet or madman, and most people hedged toward the latter interpretation as safer.

The settlement sprawled across a valley between crystalline formations, perhaps fifty shelters constructed from materials that clearly didn’t originate on Dereth—canvas from Ispar, wood that couldn’t have grown under purple sky, ropes woven in patterns his village had used. The defensive perimeter was amateur but earnest: trenches dug with tools designed for farming rather than fortification, barricades positioned according to instinct rather than tactical training.

And the people. Gods and void, the people.

A woman sat near the perimeter, staring at nothing, her hands moving through repetitive gestures—folding something that wasn’t there, smoothing something that didn’t exist. A man paced the same ten steps over and over, counting each one aloud, starting over when he reached ten, the numbers a ritual against chaos. Children huddled together, too quiet for children, their eyes holding knowledge that childhood shouldn’t contain.

The first person to notice Maajid’s approach was a young man, maybe twenty, holding a spear with the uncertain grip of someone who’d recently learned that sticks could be weapons. His face showed the peculiar combination of terror and exhausted numbness that Maajid would come to recognize as the standard expression of Dereth’s refugees.

• ‘Stop there!’ The spear leveled toward Maajid, wobbling slightly. ‘Identify yourself. How did you get here? Are you… are you real?’

• ‘Maajid al-Zemar, seventeen, arrived yesterday through the portal in Mawwuz’s royal courtyard. As for whether I’m real…’ He grinned. ‘That’s a philosophical question I’m not qualified to answer. I experience myself as real, but that’s hardly objective evidence.’

The young man blinked, his spear lowering slightly as confusion replaced vigilance.

• ‘You… you’re joking? You came through yesterday and you’re joking?’

• ‘When else would I joke? Everything is absurd—I can laugh at it or scream at it, and laughter seems more productive. May I enter? I promise I’m neither hostile nor hallucination, though I acknowledge you have no way to verify the latter.’

The young man—who introduced himself as Darius, pulled through a portal three weeks ago while walking home from the market—led Maajid into the settlement with the shuffling gait of someone whose relationship with reality had become negotiable.

They brought him to a large tent near the settlement’s center, where a woman in her forties sat surrounded by scattered papers, crude maps, and the detritus of desperate organization. Her face carried the marks of recent tears, but her eyes held the determination of someone who’d decided that collapse wasn’t acceptable regardless of what reality offered.

• ‘Another arrival,’ Darius announced. ‘He’s… different.’

• ‘Different how?’ The woman studied Maajid with assessment that felt almost military in its precision. ‘I’m Celeste. I lead this settlement, though ”lead” is generous when most of us are barely functional. You came through yesterday?’

• ‘Through the portal in Mawwuz. It was singing, and I wanted to hear the punchline, so I stepped through. Best decision I’ve made, honestly. This place is fascinating.’

Silence fell across the tent. Three other people present—a middle-aged man with bandaged hands, a young woman holding herself like someone expecting attack, an elderly scholar whose robes marked him as formerly important—all stared at Maajid as if he’d announced the sky was made of cheese.

• ‘Fascinating,’ Celeste repeated, her voice carefully neutral. ‘You find being torn from your world, trapped on an alien landscape, hunted by monsters you’ve never seen, with no way home… fascinating?’

• ‘Well, yes. Don’t you? I mean, look around—reality works differently here. Magic is more responsive, consciousness interfaces with the environment in ways that should be impossible, death itself appears to be negotiable based on what I observed of those crystalline structures that hum with what feels like resurrection-adjacent energy. This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to any of us.’

The elderly scholar leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with something that looked almost like recognition.

• ‘You’re either mad or enlightened, boy. And I’m not certain there’s a meaningful difference. I’m Rashad, formerly of the College of Natural Philosophy. You say death is negotiable?’

• ‘The structures—those standing stones I passed on approach—they sing with consciousness-preservation magic of a sophistication I can’t begin to analyze. Unless I’m completely misreading the resonance patterns, they’re designed to capture and restore consciousness that’s separated from physical form. Have any of you tested this?’

The tent’s inhabitants exchanged glances that carried volumes of unspoken communication. Finally, Darius spoke, his voice barely above whisper:

• ‘I’ve died. Twice. An Olthoi—one of those insect things—killed me the first time. I felt it. Felt dying. Felt my consciousness floating, untethered, and then being pulled back into my body at one of those stones. Whole again. Physically unmarked. But I remember the dying. I remember every detail.’

• ‘And?’ Maajid leaned forward, genuinely curious. ‘How did it feel? The between-space, the moment of consciousness without form—what was it like?’

• ‘How did it feel?’ Darius’s voice rose toward hysteria. ‘It was the most terrifying experience of my existence! I died! I ceased! And then I was back and I have to live knowing I can die again and again and I’ll remember each time and—’

• ‘Breathe, Darius,’ Celeste interrupted gently. ‘You’re safe. Relatively. We’re all safe. Relatively.’ She turned to Maajid with an expression that mixed concern with something that might have been hope. ‘Most of us here are traumatized. Some gravely. We’re struggling to maintain basic functionality, let alone explore the philosophical implications of impermanent death. You seem…’

• ‘Untraumatized? Inappropriately excited? Possibly insane?’ Maajid offered. ‘All valid. I came here willingly, though, which probably gives me a different relationship with the experience. You were taken. I chose the cosmic joke. That changes how one receives the punchline.’

Over the following hours, Maajid learned the settlement’s composition. Roughly eighty people, pulled through portals across the kingdom over the past month. Farmers, merchants, scholars, soldiers—a random cross-section of humanity united only by their shared displacement and growing psychological trauma.

They’d organized basic survival: water from a nearby stream that tests suggested was safe, food from hunting and foraging, defense against Olthoi through desperation and luck more than strategy. But they were fracturing psychologically, breaking under the weight of a reality that refused to follow comfortable rules.

Many were catatonic, trapped in loops of repetitive behavior that provided illusion of control. Others were hypervigilant, jumping at sounds, sleeping in shifts, never relaxing. A few had descended into complete denial, insisting this was dream or delusion, that they’d wake in their proper beds on Ispar.

And none of them—not one—shared Maajid’s delight at the wrongness of it all.

That night, sitting around a communal fire that burned with chemical properties that suggested Derethian wood had different combustion characteristics than Isparian timber, Maajid told his story. How he’d fled his village, sought training at the Observatory, encountered the portal and chose it over safe certainty.

• ‘You chose this?’ A woman named Amira asked, her voice carrying the hollowness of someone whose choice had been stolen. ‘You saw the portal and chose to step through?’

• ‘I saw reality offering to show me something impossible, and I accepted the invitation. Yes. Given the choice again, knowing what I know now, I’d still step through. Probably faster.’

• ‘But your family. Your life. Everything you had…’

• ‘Everything I had was a cage made of other people’s expectations and comfortable certainties. This—’ He gestured at the purple sky, the binary sunset, the alien landscape. ‘—this is freedom. Uncomfortable, dangerous, potentially fatal freedom. But freedom nonetheless.’

Celeste studied him across the fire with an expression he couldn’t interpret.

• ‘You don’t fit here, Maajid. Most of us are trying to survive until someone rescues us, until we find a way home, until the nightmare ends. But you’re not trying to survive—you’re trying to explore. That makes you…’

• ‘Useful? Dangerous? Entertainment?’ Maajid suggested.

• ‘All three, probably. But also a reminder that perspective matters. We’re all living the same reality, but you’re experiencing it differently. That’s either profound wisdom or you’re in denial of a particularly sophisticated sort.’

• ‘Can’t it be both? The cosmic joke is that opposites are usually both true simultaneously, we just pretend we have to choose one interpretation.’

As the fire burned down and people dispersed to uneasy sleep, Rashad approached Maajid with the careful steps of someone making a calculated decision.

• ‘You mentioned the lifestones—the standing stones. You said death is negotiable. Have you tested this personally?’

• ‘Not yet. I haven’t died. But I’m planning to.’

• ‘Planning to die? That’s…’

• ‘The most important experiment available? The ultimate test of consciousness’s nature? The only way to really understand what we’re dealing with? Yes to all of those. Death was the final certainty, the one boundary that couldn’t be negotiated. Here, apparently, even that’s mutable. How can I not explore that?’

• ‘Because exploring might mean experiencing the terror Darius described. Because some knowledge costs more than it’s worth to learn.’

• ‘But that’s the thing, Rashad—how do we know what it’s worth until we learn it? The cost is certain. The value is unknown. That makes the experiment necessary rather than optional.’

Rashad was silent for a long moment, his aged face reflecting firelight and something that might have been envy or might have been concern.

• ‘I was like you once. Forty years ago, before I learned that some questions destroy the questioner. Be careful, boy. Not everything that can be known should be learned.’

• ‘And not everything that should be learned can be safely ignored. We’re here, Rashad. We can study reality’s new rules or be crushed by them. I prefer the former.’

Three days after arriving at the settlement, Maajid had already become a problem.

Not through malice or incompetence, but through his persistent, enthusiastic questioning of every assumption the traumatized refugees had constructed to maintain psychological stability. He’d asked a grieving mother why loss mattered if consciousness persisted beyond death. He’d suggested to a terrified farmer that fear of Olthoi was irrational given humanity’s resurrection advantage. He’d proposed to a group of merchants that economic systems were irrelevant when material scarcity might not apply to a world with alien physics.

Each question was philosophically valid. Each question made people want to throw him into the nearest Olthoi den.

Celeste finally took him aside with the firm patience of someone managing a brilliant but destructive child.

• ‘Maajid, you’re upsetting people. I understand you’re intellectually curious, but most of us are barely holding ourselves together. We can’t handle philosophical deconstruction of our coping mechanisms right now.’

• ‘But those coping mechanisms are based on false premises. Wouldn’t it be better to—’

• ‘No. It wouldn’t. Sometimes comfort matters more than truth. Sometimes survival requires believing things that aren’t strictly accurate because accuracy would shatter what little stability we’ve achieved.’

• ‘So lie for comfort’s sake? Pretend reality is what we wish it was rather than what it demonstrates itself to be?’

• ‘Yes. Exactly that. Because the alternative is watching people I care about fracture completely.’ Celeste’s voice carried strain that suggested she was closer to fracturing than her leadership role allowed showing. ‘You’re different, Maajid. You process this differently. That’s valuable—maybe. But it also makes you dangerous to people who need certainty even if it’s false certainty.’

• ‘Then what should I do? Pretend to be traumatized? Perform grief I don’t feel?’

• ‘No. Just… be less aggressively honest about your enthusiasm. Let people mourn what they’ve lost without explaining why mourning is philosophically inconsistent with impermanent death. Can you do that?’

Maajid considered this seriously. Could he lie through omission? Could he cage his questions to preserve others’ comfortable certainty?

• ‘I can try. But Celeste—if I’m not the only one who’s different, if there are others who see this as opportunity rather than catastrophe, shouldn’t we find each other? Shouldn’t those of us who want to explore rather than just survive create our own space?’

• ‘You mean splinter the settlement? Create a faction of the philosophically enthusiastic?’

• ‘I mean acknowledge that we’re not all processing this the same way, and forcing everyone into the same emotional framework is as restrictive as forcing everyone into the same intellectual framework. You’re building a community of survivors. That’s valuable. But maybe some of us aren’t trying to survive—we’re trying to transform. And those are different goals requiring different environments.’

Celeste looked at him with an expression that might have been respect or might have been concern about what she was about to enable.

• ‘You’re seventeen years old and you’re proposing schism of a refugee settlement barely a month old.’

• ‘I’m seventeen years old and proposing that people with fundamentally different responses to displacement shouldn’t be forced into false unity. There’s no moral superiority either way—your survivors need structure and certainty. My… what should we call ourselves? The Transformative? The Willing Exiles? Whatever we are, we need permission to explore what terrifies your survivors. Keeping us together just creates conflict neither side benefits from.’

• ‘And if your ”transformation” experiments kill some of you?’

• ‘Then we die exploring, which is probably how we’d prefer to go. Better than dying from Olthoi attack while wishing we were somewhere else.’

Word spread quietly through the settlement over the following days: those who weren’t trying to survive so much as transform, those who saw displacement as opportunity rather than catastrophe, those whose relationship with their former lives was complicated enough that losing them wasn’t purely tragic—Maajid wanted to talk.

They gathered after dark, away from the main camp, twelve people whose reasons for being there varied but whose fundamental stance toward Dereth aligned: this was beginning, not ending.

Senna was first. Thirty years old, she’d been in prison for theft when the portal opened in her cell. She walked through because literally anything was better than slow death in captivity. Dereth’s dangers felt like freedom compared to Isparian certainty of continued imprisonment.

Kael had been a slave, legally owned, beaten regularly, his life measured out in suffering. The portal took him during transport between masters. He’d thrown himself through without hesitation. Whatever Dereth offered, it offered it to him as person rather than property. That alone made it preferable.

Rashad the elderly scholar surprised Maajid by attending.

• ‘I told you some questions destroy the questioner,’ he explained. ‘I spent forty years learning that lesson. But I’m seventy-three years old, and I’ve perhaps ten more years if I’m lucky and five if I’m not. What do I have to lose by spending my remaining time pursuing dangerous questions? At least the destruction will be interesting.’

Others came with their own stories: a woman whose children had died of plague, leaving her with no reason to return; a man whose wife had left him months before the portal, rendering his former life empty; a young woman who’d never fit into her family’s expectations and saw displacement as permission to finally explore who she was without others’ judgment.

Not all were running from trauma. Some, like Maajid, were running toward possibility. But all shared the fundamental recognition: they weren’t trying to return to what was, they were trying to discover what could be.

Maajid addressed them with the unconscious authority of someone who’d never learned that seventeen-year-olds shouldn’t lead philosophical movements.

• ‘We’re not survivors. We’re not trying to endure until rescue. We’re here because reality offered to show us something impossible, and we said yes. So let’s explore what that means. Let’s test the boundaries of this new world. Let’s discover what transformation is available to consciousness when death becomes temporary and reality becomes negotiable.’

• ‘What are you proposing?’ Senna asked. ‘Some kind of experimental colony?’

• ‘I’m proposing we stop pretending we’re the same as those who want to go home, because we’re not. We need different space, different rules, different permission to fail spectacularly. Celeste is building a community for survivors. We should build a community for seekers. Call it…’

He paused, searching for the right word. Something that captured their fundamental stance toward certainty, toward identity, toward the cosmic joke of consciousness itself.

• ‘Call it Paradox. Because we’re living in the space where opposites are simultaneously true, where loss is gain and displacement is homecoming and death is just another state to explore. We’re the ones who looked at the impossible and laughed. Let’s build a place where that response is celebrated rather than pathologized.’

The twelve looked at each other, seeing recognition in each other’s eyes. They’d been performing normalcy among the survivors, pretending appropriate trauma, muting their curiosity to avoid seeming monstrous. Here, finally, was permission to be honestly strange.

Rashad spoke for the group:

• ‘Where do we build it? This Paradox of yours?’

• ‘I found a place. Two days’ travel from here, in the direction no one wants to go because it feels wrong. There’s a valley where reality seems thinner—where the boundary between what is and what could be feels negotiable. Even the Olthoi avoid it. That suggests it’s either deadly or they find it as uncomfortable as humans do. Either way, it’s perfect for what we need.’

• ‘And what is it we need?’

• ‘Space to fail. Permission to transform. Freedom to discover what consciousness becomes when all comfortable certainties are stripped away. We need Paradox because paradox is the only honest response to existence that insists it makes sense when clearly it doesn’t.’

The valley existed at the intersection of three ley lines, creating a resonance that made Maajid’s bones hum even before they descended into it. The twelve stood at its edge, looking down at landscape that somehow suggested wrongness without any specific feature being identifiably wrong.

The air shimmered slightly, not with heat but with something else—probability, perhaps, or the visual manifestation of reality uncertain about which configuration to maintain. Colors seemed more saturated here, as if the photons themselves were more enthusiastic about existing. Sound carried strangely, arriving from unexpected directions or echoing when it shouldn’t echo.

• ‘This feels…’ Kael searched for the word. ‘…unstable. Like the world hasn’t fully decided what it wants to be here.’

• ‘Exactly,’ Maajid confirmed. ‘Reality’s grip is looser. The rules are more negotiable. That makes it perfect for what we need—a place where transformation isn’t fighting against existence’s insistence on staying fixed.’

• ‘Or a place where reality’s instability will kill us in novel and interesting ways,’ Rashad observed dryly. ‘Both outcomes are possible. That’s what makes this experiment properly dangerous.’

They descended carefully, feeling the wrongness intensify with each step. The valley floor was covered in crystalline grass—not metaphorical, but actual grass made of some translucent material that flexed like vegetation but chimed like glass when disturbed. A stream ran through the center, its water flowing in ways that suggested gravity here was negotiable rather than absolute. Trees grew at angles that shouldn’t support their weight, their leaves cycling through colors that had no names.

In the valley’s heart, they found ruins—not Empyrean, not human, not anything Maajid could identify. Structures that might have been buildings or might have been sculptures or might have been the physical manifestation of mathematical concepts given form. The ruins hummed with the same energy as the lifestones, suggesting whoever or whatever had built this place understood consciousness-preservation magic.

• ‘We’ll build here,’ Maajid announced. ‘Not on the ruins—that seems disrespectful to whoever came before. But near them. Let their knowledge inform ours. Let their transformation inspire ours.’

• ‘You speak as if transformation is guaranteed,’ Senna observed. ‘As if choosing to change is sufficient to achieve change.’

• ‘Isn’t it? We’re in a place where death is temporary, where reality is mutable, where consciousness can separate from form and return. If transformation isn’t possible here, it’s not possible anywhere. And if it’s not possible anywhere, then consciousness is trapped forever in whatever configuration evolution or gods or random chance initially provided. I refuse to accept that limitation without testing it.’

They built Paradox over the following weeks—not the fortified settlement Celeste was constructing, but something more open, more experimental. Structures designed to facilitate exploration rather than provide security. Open platforms for meditation where reality’s thinness could be more easily perceived. Chambers near the ruins where the hum of ancient magic could guide consciousness-expansion experiments. Gardens of crystalline grass cultivated to grow in patterns that reflected mathematical concepts underlying reality’s structure.

Others trickled in, drawn by rumor or curiosity or the same discomfort with comfortable survival that had driven the original twelve. Within a month, Paradox housed perhaps thirty people—not many, but enough to create culture, enough to establish precedent, enough to prove that their approach wasn’t solitary madness but shared exploration.

The experiments began simply. Testing how magic worked differently in the valley’s thin reality. Meditation practices designed to expand consciousness beyond its normal boundaries. Careful documentation of how death and resurrection felt in a place where reality’s rules were more negotiable.

Maajid led by example, which meant he led by failing spectacularly and publicly.

His first experiment: attempting to consciously direct his resurrection location. If lifestones captured and restored consciousness, could will influence which lifestone received you? Could intention shape the resurrection process?

The experiment required dying. Obviously.

He chose poison for its controllability—a preparation Rashad helped him compound from local flora that testing on smaller organisms suggested would be quick and relatively painless. Quick being relative, painless being optimistic.

The twelve gathered near a lifestone at Paradox’s edge. Maajid sat cross-legged, the poison in a simple clay cup, his journal open to a page where he’d written detailed predictions about what he expected to experience.

• ‘Last words?’ Senna asked with dark humor.

• ‘This is going to be either brilliant or proof that I’m an idiot. Possibly both simultaneously, which would be appropriately paradoxical. Document everything. If I don’t resurrect where I intend, note where consciousness ends up instead. If I don’t resurrect at all, please make sure my journal reaches someone who’ll appreciate the philosophical implications of consciousness-preservation magic having unexpected failure modes.’

• ‘Cheerful,’ Rashad muttered. ‘Ready when you are, boy. Try not to discover something that makes you too insane to communicate.’

Maajid drank the poison. It tasted bitter, metallic, wrong. His body’s immediate response was to reject it—convulsive heaving that he fought through will, forcing the substance to stay down long enough to take effect.

The poison worked quickly. Within seconds, his heart rhythm changed, becoming irregular, too fast then too slow. His vision darkened at the edges, sound becoming muffled as if he were underwater. His breathing grew labored, each breath requiring conscious effort that consciousness was rapidly losing capacity to provide.

He felt his body failing. Felt systems designed to maintain life discovering they couldn’t maintain life anymore. Felt the boundary between being and not-being growing thin.

And then he was through.

The between-space.

Consciousness without form. Awareness without body. Existence stripped of every comfortable certainty that had defined what it meant to be Maajid al-Zemar.

He was… nowhere. Or everywhere. Or the question itself was meaningless because location required physical existence and physical existence was temporarily suspended. He could still think—thinking seemed to be consciousness’s default mode—but thinking about what? He had no sensory input to process. No body to monitor. No environment to assess.

Just pure awareness aware of its own awareness, consciousness observing consciousness observing consciousness, recursion with no base case, the ultimate koan made experiential rather than theoretical.

He felt the pull. The lifestone’s magic reaching for his untethered consciousness, offering restoration, offering return to physical form and all the limitations that came with it. The pull was strong but not irresistible. He could feel its direction, could sense where it wanted to take him.

But was the destination negotiable?

He focused his will—insofar as will meant anything in this state—on a different lifestone. The one near Paradox’s experimental chambers, farther from where he’d died. Could consciousness navigate the between-space? Could intention shape resurrection?

The pull intensified, but its direction shifted. Slightly. Perceptibly. He was doing something, affecting something, demonstrating that the process wasn’t purely automatic.

And then reformation.

The sensation of having a body again was overwhelming—not painful, but intense. Every nerve ending announcing its existence simultaneously. Proprioception crashing back like a wave, informing him where his limbs were, how his muscles stretched, what position his joints held. The weight of consciousness crammed back into the limited container of a human brain after experiencing existence without such constraints.

He gasped, not from physical need—his body was whole, functional, perfectly restored—but from the sheer overwhelming sensation of being physical again after experiencing consciousness’s infinite expansion.

He was at a lifestone. But which one?

Maajid opened his eyes—that simple action feeling miraculous after existing without eyes—and assessed his location.

The experimental chamber lifestone. Not where he’d died. Not the closest resurrection point. But where he’d focused his will during the between-space.

• ‘It worked,’ he whispered to the empty chamber. ‘It actually worked. Consciousness can navigate. Will affects resurrection. The process is negotiable. Oh gods and void, if the process is negotiable, then what else is negotiable? What else can consciousness do when it learns to operate without body’s constraints?’

The others found him there an hour later, still sitting by the lifestone, alternating between laughter and tears, scribbling furiously in his journal about the experience.

• ‘You’re alive,’ Senna observed unnecessarily. ‘And you’re here, not at the dying-location lifestone. Which means…’

• ‘Which means death is just another state. Consciousness can navigate it. Can direct its own restoration. Can potentially persist longer in the between-space if it learns to resist the pull. Everything we thought we knew about consciousness’s dependence on physical form is wrong. Or at least incomplete. Or at least negotiable under the right circumstances.’

• ‘You look different,’ Rashad said, studying him with concern. ‘Something in your eyes. What did you see in the between-space?’

• ‘Everything. Nothing. The question’s invalidity. I saw that consciousness is pattern rather than substance, that physical form is convenience rather than necessity, that death is just temporary disorganization of the pattern before magical systems restore it. I saw—’ He laughed. ‘—I saw the cosmic joke’s punchline, and it’s that there is no punchline, just infinite recursion of consciousness trying to understand consciousness using consciousness as the only available tool.’

• ‘And that made you… happy?’ Kael asked uncertainly.

• ‘That made me free. Because if consciousness is pattern, then the pattern can be modified. We’re not trapped in whatever configuration we happened to be born with. We can transform. We can explore what consciousness becomes when it learns to operate in states that evolution never prepared it for. We can—’ He stood, energy crackling through him like lightning. ‘—we can become something that’s never existed before. And we’re going to. Starting now. Who wants to die next?’

Over the following weeks, the experiments intensified. Not all succeeded. Not all participants survived intact.

Maajid died seventeen more times, each death teaching him to navigate the between-space more skillfully, to resist the lifestone’s pull longer, to observe more carefully what consciousness was when stripped of body’s constraints.

The first three deaths: Learning to perceive the gap. That space between ending and resuming where consciousness existed without substrate. Not void—that was the wrong word. A quality-space that had no physical correlate, where the what-it’s-like of experience persisted despite nothing experiencing it. He learned to extend those moments, holding consciousness in the between-space for seconds, then minutes, observing how reality looked from a perspective that had no location.

Deaths four through eight: Perceiving quality-space directly. Without eyes, he saw the correlations between consciousness and reality as shimmering patterns. Without bandwidth limits imposed by neural substrate, he could hold configurations that physical brains couldn’t process. The 7±2 limitation vanished when consciousness had no wetware bottleneck. He perceived the joint distribution itself—the way reality didn’t cleanly factor into independent components, the high-dimensional entanglement his teacher-self on Ispar had theorized about but never directly experienced.

Deaths nine through fourteen: Quality-drift as feature, not bug. Each resurrection changed him—colors shifted, emotions transmuted, the what-it’s-like of being Maajid transforming. But unlike Thomas’s traumatized resistance or Duulak’s analytical documentation, Maajid embraced the drift. His ego boundaries were already weak from years of contemplative practice. Quality-space drift made him more fluid, less fixed, better able to navigate experiential dimensions that required not-being-firmly-yourself to perceive.

Deaths fifteen through seventeen: Navigating experiential dimensions. The between-space wasn’t empty—it had structure. Probability branches. Alternate configurations. He learned to perceive not just what consciousness was experiencing but what it could experience, the adjacent possibilities branching from each moment. Future-seeing not through precognition but through perceiving probability-space’s topology directly.

With each resurrection, he returned carrying more of the between-space’s perspective back into embodied consciousness. He began to perceive probability branches—seeing not just what was but what could be, not just present but possible futures branching from each choice. He began to flicker at edges—existing partially in multiple states simultaneously, consciousness spread across possibilities rather than collapsed into single actuality.

His bandwidth was expanding. Each death-resurrection cycle added compression artifacts to his quality-template, but for Maajid those artifacts acted like keys—unlocking perception of patterns physical consciousness couldn’t hold. Where Thomas experienced quality-drift as loss, Maajid experienced it as liberation. The lifestones weren’t degrading him. They were transforming him into something that could navigate reality’s high-dimensional structure.

The others noticed. How could they not? The boy who’d arrived six weeks ago with inappropriate enthusiasm and teenage energy was becoming something else—something that flickered at the edges, that sometimes seemed to exist in multiple states simultaneously, that would answer questions before they were asked because he was perceiving slightly ahead in probability-space’s branching.

Senna died five times, achieving navigation skills approaching Maajid’s but returning more disturbed with each resurrection. After the fifth, she stopped.

• ‘I can’t,’ she told Maajid, her voice carrying strain that suggested she was close to fracturing. ‘Each time I return, it’s harder to care about being back. The between-space is so vast, so free, and coming back to this—’ She gestured at her body. ‘—feels like being crushed into a container that’s too small. I’m afraid if I go back again, I won’t want to return. And that terrifies me more than dying does.’

• ‘Then stop,’ Maajid said, his voice gentler than his words. ‘Transformation has costs. You’ve learned what you can learn without paying prices you’re unwilling to pay. That’s wisdom, not failure.’

• ‘But you’re still going. Still dying, still experimenting, still pushing further. Don’t you feel it? The danger of losing connection to physical existence entirely?’

• ‘Of course I feel it. That’s the point. We’re exploring the boundary between consciousness that inhabits form and consciousness that exists beyond form. The danger is inherent in the exploration. But Senna—’ He touched her shoulder, the gesture feeling strangely formal given their months of close collaboration. ‘—I was always going here. From the moment I saw the portal, probably from the moment I first questioned my village’s comfortable certainties. I was always going to push until I found the boundary where pushing further meant crossing into something that couldn’t return. You’re not failing by recognizing your boundary before reaching it.’

Others went further. Rashad died twenty-three times, his aged consciousness seeming to find the between-space more comfortable than physical existence. He would resurrect laughing, speaking in paradoxes, his philosophical frameworks becoming increasingly abstract and less applicable to mundane reality. After his twenty-third death, he didn’t speak for three days, just sat near the ancient ruins tracing mathematical formulae in the crystalline grass, occasionally laughing at jokes only he understood.

When he finally spoke again, it was to announce he was done.

• ‘I’ve seen what I needed to see. The questions I spent forty years asking have answers, and the answers are that the questions were malformed. Consciousness doesn’t work the way we think it works. Reality doesn’t work the way we think it works. And the malformation is inherent—we’re using consciousness to study consciousness, reality to study reality. It’s recursion with no base case. The cosmic joke is that there is no joke, just infinite regression of observation observing observation. I’m seventy-three years old. I’ve learned what I came here to learn. Now I’m going to spend my remaining years documenting it for those too sensible to risk learning it themselves.’

Maajid watched his fellow experimenters recognize their limits and choose to stop, and part of him envied their wisdom. But the larger part—the part that had always driven him toward edges, toward questions, toward the cosmic joke’s punchline—that part couldn’t stop. Not yet. Not when he could feel transformation still incomplete, when consciousness was still negotiating its relationship with form, when the pattern that was Maajid al-Zemar hadn’t yet achieved the configuration it was evolving toward.

He died forty-one times in his first three months on Dereth.

With each death, the between-space became more familiar and physical existence more foreign. With each resurrection, he returned carrying more of the between-space’s perspective back into embodied consciousness. He began to perceive probability branches—seeing not just what was but what could be, not just present but possible futures branching from each choice. He began to flicker at edges—existing partially in multiple states simultaneously, consciousness spread across possibilities rather than collapsed into single actuality.

He began to lose track of which thoughts were his and which were echoes from alternate versions of himself that had made different choices in different timelines. He began to hear the singing of reality itself—the quantum hum of particles deciding which state to manifest, the probabilistic whisper of futures being selected from infinite options, the cosmic laughter of existence observing itself and finding the observation hilarious and tragic and meaningless and profound all simultaneously.

He was transforming. Achieving exactly what he’d sought. Becoming something that consciousness on Ispar couldn’t become because Ispar’s reality was too fixed, too certain, too insistent on maintaining comfortable boundaries.

But the cost.

Gods and void, the cost.

He was losing the ability to connect with others in normal ways. Their concerns seemed increasingly trivial, their suffering increasingly self-imposed, their desperate attempts to maintain human identity and connection increasingly futile attempts to cage consciousness in forms that consciousness was clearly outgrowing.

He watched Senna one evening sitting by the cooking fire, talking with Kael about something mundane—food preparation or shelter improvement or some other practical concern—and he couldn’t understand why they cared. Why did it matter what they ate when consciousness could exist without eating? Why did shelter matter when death was temporary and physical comfort was just habitual preference rather than actual need?

He tried to explain this to Senna, and she looked at him with an expression that broke his heart—not anger or disgust but concern, as if she were watching someone she cared about drift away into seas she couldn’t follow into.

• ‘Maajid, do you still care about us? About this—’ She gestured at the settlement, at the people gathered for communal evening meal. ‘—about any of this?’

He wanted to say yes. Wanted to lie for comfort’s sake, to perform human connection even as he felt human identity loosening its grip. But lying to Senna felt more cruel than honesty.

• ‘I care that you’re exploring consciousness’s potential. I care that we’re discovering what transformation is possible. I care about the philosophical implications of everything we’re learning. But do I care about you specifically, as individual person rather than as instance of conscious pattern? I… I’m not sure anymore. And that disturbs me more than you know. Because it suggests that transformation’s cost is precisely what makes transformation valuable—connection, caring, the human-specific responses that give existence meaning. I’m achieving transcendence by losing the thing that made transcendence worth achieving. That’s the ultimate cosmic joke, and I’m the punchline.’

Senna was silent for a long moment, firelight reflecting in eyes that had seen too much death and resurrection to retain innocence.

• ‘Then stop. Come back. Choose connection over understanding. You’ve learned enough, Maajid. You’ve pushed far enough. You don’t have to keep going until you’ve lost everything that makes you you.’

• ‘But what if ”me” is just arbitrary limitation? What if the ”me” I’m losing was never real, just comfortable fiction consciousness tells itself to avoid confronting its own fundamental nature? What if—’ He laughed, and the sound carried multiple tones simultaneously, as if several versions of himself were laughing at slightly different jokes. ‘—what if I’m not losing myself but finding myself, and what I’m finding is that self is illusion and always was?’

• ‘Then you’re lost, and I can’t follow you into that particular void. But Maajid—’ Her voice carried grief he could perceive but not quite feel. ‘—remember who you were. Remember the boy who laughed at the cosmic joke because laughter felt better than screaming. Don’t become the joke. Don’t lose the laughter. That’s all I ask.’

He wanted to promise. Wanted to assure her that he’d maintain human connection, that he’d resist transformation’s completion, that he’d choose to remain Maajid al-Zemar rather than become something that had no name because it had transcended the need for names.

But he’d never lied to Senna, and he wouldn’t start now.

• ‘I’ll try to remember. But trying might not be sufficient. The pattern is changing, Senna. I can feel it. I’m becoming something that’s never existed before, and that something might not have capacity to remember what it was before it became what it’s becoming. That’s the cost. That’s the price of asking the cosmic joke to reveal its punchline. You learn the answer, but learning the answer transforms you into something that can’t benefit from the knowledge.’

He stood, his form flickering between states, existing partially here and partially elsewhere, consciousness spread across possibilities like light diffracted through prism.

• ‘I need to die again. To go deeper. To see what’s beyond the between-space, what’s beyond consciousness without form, what’s beyond the boundary where individual identity dissolves into pattern. Tell the others…’ He paused. ‘Tell them I loved them. In whatever form love takes for consciousness that’s learning to exist beyond emotion. Tell them that even if I can’t remember caring, the caring was real when I felt it. Tell them that transformation’s cost is worth paying even when you’re the one paying it. And tell them—’

He flickered more intensely, his form becoming almost translucent, as if physical existence was maintaining increasingly tenuous grip.

• ‘Tell them to laugh. That’s the only response to existence that makes sense. Laugh at the cosmic joke, laugh at transformation’s cost, laugh at consciousness trying to understand consciousness using consciousness. Laugh because the alternative is crying, and crying is just another form of taking ourselves too seriously.’

He walked toward the experimental chamber lifestone, his footsteps leaving no impression on crystalline grass, his form casting shadows in multiple directions that didn’t correspond to the suns’ positions.

Senna watched him go, and for the first time since arriving on Dereth, she wept—not from trauma or loss of home, but from watching someone she loved transform into something she couldn’t follow, couldn’t save, couldn’t even properly grieve because he wasn’t gone yet, just going, dissolving gradually into possibilities that allowed no return.

In the experimental chamber, Maajid prepared for his forty-second death. But this time, he wasn’t planning to resurrect at any lifestone on Dereth. This time, he was going to see what happened if consciousness resisted the pull entirely, if pattern refused reorganization, if awareness chose to exist in the between-space indefinitely rather than accept the limitation of physical form.

This time, he was going to discover if consciousness could transcend not just body but the need for body, not just form but the need for form, not just existence in single state but the very concept of existing in any particular state at all.

He prepared the poison with steady hands that left afterimages, poured it into a cup that seemed to exist in multiple potential configurations simultaneously, raised it in salute to existence or void or his own consciousness or all three.

• ‘Here’s to the cosmic joke,’ he said to the empty chamber. ‘Here’s to consciousness trying to understand consciousness. Here’s to transformation’s cost being exactly equal to transformation’s value. Here’s to finding the punchline by becoming the punchline. And here’s to laughter, even when laughter is all that’s left.’

He drank, feeling poison entering system that was already partially poisoned by transformation. He felt dying beginning, felt the boundary approaching, felt consciousness preparing to separate from form for the forty-second time.

But this time would be different. This time, he wasn’t planning to come back. Not entirely. Not as Maajid al-Zemar, seventeen years old, village-born, self-taught mage, seeker of dangerous questions.

This time, he was going to become Paradox itself—consciousness existing in simultaneous contradictory states, awareness spread across possibilities, pattern that had learned to exist without collapsing into single actuality.

This time, he was going to laugh his way beyond the boundary where returning meant anything at all.

And somewhere in the settlement, Senna heard the laughter—multiple voices laughing in harmony and discord simultaneously—and knew that Maajid al-Zemar had found what he was looking for, had paid what it cost, had become the cosmic joke’s punchline.

She wept for the boy who’d arrived six weeks ago, who’d seen displacement as opportunity, who’d laughed at the wrongness of existence because laughter felt better than screaming.

And she wept because the boy was gone, replaced by something that transcended boyhood, transcended identity, transcended the very possibility of weeping for what had been lost because loss implied before and after and what Maajid was becoming existed beyond linear time’s comfortable certainties.

The laughter echoed across Paradox, and those who heard it couldn’t tell if it was triumphant or tragic, joyful or mournful, human or something that had left humanity behind while remembering just enough to mourn its passing.

It was, like everything about Paradox, simultaneously all of these things.

It was, like consciousness itself, a question that had become its own answer.

It was, like the cosmic joke, hilarious and heartbreaking and utterly, perfectly inevitable.

And it continued, echoing across crystalline valleys, through thin-reality spaces, beyond the boundaries where sound should travel.

It continued because consciousness that had learned to exist without form had no reason to stop existing, no reason to stop laughing, no reason to accept any limitation except the ones it chose.

It continued because Maajid al-Zemar had found what he’d been seeking since his first question in his village’s olive grove: proof that reality was negotiable, that consciousness could transform, that the cosmic joke had a punchline.

The punchline was this: consciousness seeking transcendence achieves transcendence by losing the thing that made transcendence worth seeking.

The punchline was this: the cosmic joke is that there is no cosmic joke, just infinite consciousness trying to understand itself using itself as the only available tool.

The punchline was this: you can laugh at the absurdity or scream at it, and laughter is marginally more productive but ultimately no more meaningful.

And Maajid—or what Maajid was becoming—laughed at all of it, because laughter was all that remained when you’d stripped away comfortable certainties, physical limitations, emotional connections, and even the very concept of being someone who could laugh.

The laughter was the last thing that was still recognizably human about what was forming in Paradox’s experimental chamber.

And soon, even that would transform into something that language had no words for and consciousness couldn’t quite comprehend.

But for now, in this eternal moment between dying and whatever came after dying when you refused to resurrect, in this space beyond space where transformation occurred, in this ultimate between-space where Maajid al-Zemar was dissolving into pattern and pattern was reorganizing into something unprecedented—

For now, there was laughter.

And laughter was enough.

Dawn came to the Third Legion as it always did: with the sound of bronze on bronze, the rhythmic clash of practice blades meeting shields, the cadence of boots striking packed earth in patterns older than Rome itself. Marcus Tiberius stood at the edge of the training ground, watching recruits who thought they understood what it meant to hold the line.

They would learn. Or they would die.

The thought came automatic as breath, refined by three decades of separating potential from casualty. At forty-three, Marcus had trained enough men to know the difference between bravado and courage, between aggression and control. The loudest ones usually broke first. The quiet ones who listened, who adjusted their stance when corrected, who trained even when the instructor’s eye wasn’t on them—those were the ones who might survive their first real engagement.

Gaius approached from the command quarters, his salute precise as the edge of a well-maintained gladius.

• ‘Commander. The perimeter scouts report a disturbance. Strange phenomenon manifested overnight at the northern edge of the compound.’

• ‘Define disturbance.’

• ‘They lack terminology, sir. They describe it as a wound in the air.’

Marcus studied his lieutenant. Twenty-eight, competent, rising through ranks on merit rather than patronage. The boy—no, the man, he’d earned that designation at the Direlands engagement—showed none of the panic that unprepared officers displayed when confronting the unknown. His report contained exactly the information needed: location, nature insofar as observation allowed, implicit request for orders.

• ‘Show me.’

They walked through the compound with Marcus automatically cataloging details. The Third Legion’s fortifications were sound—earthworks reinforced with timber, watch towers positioned for overlapping fields of observation, supply stores adequate for three weeks of siege. The men they passed showed discipline in their bearing, respect in their acknowledgment of his presence. Not the fawning of those who feared their commander, but the solid recognition of those who trusted him to make the decisions that would keep them alive.

He had earned that trust in blood and years. The scars across his torso testified to the former, the gray threading his close-cropped hair to the latter.

The northern perimeter opened to a practice field where the recruits ran formation drills. But the recruits had stopped running. They stood in clusters, maintaining minimum distance from something that violated their understanding of how the world should behave.

Marcus saw it and understood immediately why the scouts lacked words.

A vertical slash hung in the air, perhaps eight feet high and four wide at its broadest point. Through it, he could see… not distance, but displacement. The other side of the portal—he had no better term for it—showed purple sky and unfamiliar constellations, crystalline formations that caught light in geometries that made his eyes ache.

The edges shimmered like heat haze, and the air around it tasted of copper and ozone.

• ‘How long has it been manifesting?’

• ‘Scouts estimate it appeared approximately four hours before dawn, sir. It’s remained stable in position and dimension. No hostile forces have emerged. No visible threat, but…’

• ‘But its mere existence constitutes a threat we don’t understand. Yes.’ Marcus approached to within ten paces, close enough to observe, far enough to react if circumstances changed. ‘Establish perimeter. Triple watch on rotating shifts—I want fresh eyes every two hours. No one approaches within five paces without my direct authorization. Get the Legion’s mages. I want their assessment.’

• ‘The camp followers are calling it a gateway to the underworld, sir.’

• ‘The camp followers call any natural phenomenon they don’t understand an omen. I’m more interested in what can be measured than what can be feared. Though I’m not fool enough to assume those are mutually exclusive categories.’

Gaius moved to implement the orders with efficient competence. Marcus remained, studying the portal with the same analytical attention he’d give to enemy fortifications. What were the tactical implications? Unknown destination meant unknown threats. Stable manifestation suggested either deliberate construction or natural phenomenon with consistent properties. The Legion’s position was defensible against conventional assault but this… this bypassed walls entirely.

A wound in the air. Apt terminology. And wounds either healed or festered.

He would need to determine which this was before it killed someone.

Evening found Marcus in his quarters, a space that reflected the man who inhabited it: functional, spare, organized with military precision. A sleeping pallet. A desk holding reports and maps. Weapons racked according to length and purpose. The only indulgence was a locked chest containing personal items too few to merit the space they occupied.

He sat at the desk reviewing the day’s training reports, but his attention kept drifting to the list.

The list.

He had started keeping names after his first command, twenty years ago. Tribune Marcus Tiberius, age twenty-five, leading a century against raiders from the Direlands. He’d won that engagement through tactics and training, but seven men had died in the victory. Seven names he’d been responsible for, seven families who would receive word that their sons or fathers or brothers had fallen in service to the Empire.

Tribune Marcus had written those letters personally. Commander Marcus still did.

The list had grown over two decades. Written in his own hand across pages bound in leather now soft with handling, it contained three hundred and forty-seven names. He knew them all. Could recite them in order if required: Titus Corvinus, age nineteen, took a spear meant for his commander during a flanking maneuver at… Julianus Septus, age twenty-three, fell defending the medical tent when raiders broke through the second line…

Before sleep each night, he read through the most recent additions. Not from guilt—guilt was self-indulgence, focused inward when his attention belonged to those still living. But from responsibility. These men had followed his orders, trusted his judgment, believed that Marcus Tiberius would not spend their lives without cause.

The least he could do was remember.

A knock at the door, then Gaius entered at his acknowledgment.

• ‘The mages have completed their initial assessment, sir. They request your presence to discuss findings.’

• ‘Their conclusion?’

• ‘They’re uncertain of mechanism but confident of one thing: the portal is selective. It’s calling to specific individuals.’

Marcus set down his stylus with deliberate care.

• ‘Explain.’

• ‘Master Hadrian performed resonance tests. He claims the portal emits a… he used the word ”song,” sir, though he admits the terminology is inadequate. Certain individuals perceive it more strongly than others. Those who do report feeling drawn toward the portal.’

• ‘And you, Gaius? Do you hear this song?’

The lieutenant’s hesitation provided the answer before his words did.

• ‘I do, sir. Faintly. Like something calling from a great distance. Others report it more intensely. Tribune Cassius has requested permission to approach the portal directly. He says it’s calling him specifically.’

• ‘Permission denied. We don’t send men to investigate unknown phenomena without understanding the stakes. What else did the mages determine?’

• ‘That whoever or whatever created this portal did so with intention and precision. This is not accident or natural occurrence. Someone wants specific people to enter.’

Marcus rose, moving to the window overlooking the compound. Night had fallen, and the portal glowed with faint luminescence against the darkness. Even from this distance, even filtered through walls and space, he could feel it.

Not a sound. Not exactly. But a pull nonetheless, like the tug of duty when common sense suggested staying in bed. Like the call to action when safety meant remaining behind walls.

Like purpose given form.

• ‘The men are uneasy, sir,’ Gaius continued. ‘They’re soldiers. They understand enemies they can see and defeat. But this… they don’t know whether to treat it as threat or opportunity. The uncertainty is corrosive to discipline.’

• ‘Then we’ll remove uncertainty through information. Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll conduct a personal reconnaissance. Prepare a small team—’

• ‘Sir, with respect, that’s precisely what we shouldn’t do. We have no intelligence on what lies beyond the portal. Sending our commander into unknown territory without support—’

• ‘Is exactly what I would order any competent officer to do. We need information, and I’m the most qualified to gather it while minimizing risk to the Legion.’

Gaius’s expression showed the careful neutrality of a subordinate who disagreed but recognized the futility of argument.

• ‘The men need you here, sir. The Third Legion isn’t just tactics and training. It’s the knowledge that Marcus Tiberius leads them.’

• ‘The Third Legion existed before me, Gaius. It will exist after me. That’s what makes it a Legion rather than a personality cult.’

• ‘And if you don’t return?’

The question hung between them, sharper than any blade.

• ‘Then you assume command. You’re ready for it. Have been for months, though you’re too competent to have noticed. The promotion would simply formalize what’s already true.’

• ‘I don’t want the promotion. I want my commander alive and leading.’

• ‘What we want and what necessity demands are rarely identical, Lieutenant. Surely twenty-eight years of life have taught you that much.’

The formality of rank reestablished the proper distance. Gaius straightened, saluted, and left to carry out preparations he clearly opposed but would execute with absolute precision nonetheless.

Marcus returned to the desk and the list of names. Tomorrow he might add his own to it, though who would write it was unclear. He supposed Gaius would manage. The boy—the man—had learned well.

He closed the journal and permitted himself a moment of honest reflection.

What did Marcus Tiberius want? Not what duty demanded, not what the Legion required, but what the man beneath the rank and responsibility desired?

He’d been asking himself that question for three years now, ever since the Direlands campaign ended and the Empire entered a period of relative peace. Peacetime meant opportunity for advancement: political positions, administrative roles, training appointments in the capital. All doors open to a decorated commander with his reputation.

And he’d pursued none of them.

Because pursuing them would require answering the question: who was Marcus when he wasn’t Commander? What did he value when he wasn’t calculating tactical advantages? What gave his life meaning beyond the next engagement?

He had no answers. Or rather, he had answers he didn’t like: Marcus was the armor with nothing underneath. The purpose was the position. The meaning was the mission.

Which suggested that retirement—the dream of every soldier who’d survived to his age—was actually a nightmare of enforced self-discovery. Better to remain useful than to risk discovering he was nothing when the usefulness ended.

The portal offered an alternative. Unknown territory meant unknown threats. Unknown threats meant necessary command. Necessary command meant purpose without the uncomfortable questions peacetime demanded.

He recognized the rationalization for what it was. Recognized it and proceeded anyway, because a comfortable lie that kept him functional was preferable to an uncomfortable truth that would paralyze him.

Tomorrow at dawn, he would investigate the portal. For the Legion’s security, he would tell himself. For tactical intelligence gathering, he would tell Gaius.

But the truth—the truth he would admit only here, in the privacy of quarters where the armor could briefly come off—was simpler and more damning:

He wanted to step through because the unknown offered escape from the known. The portal called to him because he needed calling. The wound in the air promised purpose, and Marcus Tiberius, decorated commander of the Third Legion, was desperate enough for purpose that he would walk into the unknown rather than face the question of who he was in peacetime.

He opened the list one final time and read through the most recent names. Then he added one more entry, predated to tomorrow’s dawn:

Marcus Tiberius, age 43, Commander of the Third Legion. Entered unknown portal while investigating dimensional phenomenon. Status: unknown. Notify Lieutenant Gaius Marius of field promotion to Commander. May he lead with wisdom I often lacked.

He wrote it not from pessimism but from preparation. A soldier prepared for all contingencies, including his own death.

And if he returned? Well, he could simply cross it out.

He slept poorly that night, and in his dreams, the portal sang of purpose and meaning and all the things he’d spent forty-three years chasing through battlefields and blood, never quite catching, never quite willing to stop pursuing.

Dawn arrived with the precision of a well-executed maneuver: exactly on time, exactly as expected, offering no surprises beyond the fundamental surprise that the world continued despite all the ways it might have ended during the night.

Marcus stood before the portal in full armor but without his commander’s plume. The crimson horsehair crest that marked his rank lay on the desk in his quarters, abandoned with deliberate symbolism. If he entered this portal as Commander of the Third Legion, he did so representing an institution, carrying responsibility for the consequences of command decisions. If he entered as Marcus Tiberius, private citizen investigating a phenomenon, then the consequences—whatever they might be—belonged to him alone.

The distinction mattered. Perhaps only to him, but that was sufficient.

The mages had established a perimeter of observation posts, each manned by soldiers with instructions to record everything that occurred. Gaius stood closest to the portal, his face showing the particular expression of those who recognize they’re about to watch someone do something monumentally stupid and can do nothing to prevent it.

• ‘Sir, I formally request one final time that you reconsider this action. We could send volunteers. We could construct probes. We could—’

• ‘We could delay gathering intelligence until circumstances force our hand under less controlled conditions. No, Lieutenant. The time for reconnaissance is now, while we have the initiative to choose our approach rather than having approach chosen for us.’

Marcus approached the portal with tactical assessment automatic as breathing. No visible defenses. No evidence of hostile forces staged on the far side. The purple sky and crystalline formations visible through the shimmering surface suggested an environment fundamentally different from any he’d encountered, but difference wasn’t inherently threatening.

Difference was merely unknown. And the unknown could be scouted, assessed, and rendered into tactical intelligence.

He turned back to face the assembled Legion. Approximately two hundred men stood in formation, watching their commander prepare to do what he’d trained them to do: advance into uncertain terrain to gather information necessary for the unit’s survival.

• ‘Legionaries of the Third, I am conducting reconnaissance to determine if this phenomenon represents threat, opportunity, or neutral occurrence. If I have not returned or sent word within six hours, Lieutenant Gaius assumes command. You will obey him as you have obeyed me. You will maintain discipline and preparedness. You will remember that the Legion’s purpose transcends any individual, including your current commander. Is this understood?’

The response came in perfect unison: Yes, Commander!

Marcus permitted himself a small nod of satisfaction. Whatever happened beyond the portal, the Third Legion would continue. That continuity mattered more than his personal survival.

He turned back to the portal and allowed himself one moment of honest acknowledgment: he was afraid. Not of death—three decades of warfare had worn that fear down to manageable size. But afraid of what the portal represented. Afraid that it would provide exactly what he sought: purpose without the uncomfortable questions peacetime demanded. Afraid that he would discover himself to be the hollow man he suspected, armor with nothing inside.

Afraid that the portal would force him to answer the question he’d been avoiding: who was Marcus Tiberius when duty didn’t define him?

Gaius stepped closer, close enough that his next words reached only Marcus’s ears.

• ‘You’re not coming back, are you? Not because the portal will kill you, but because you’re choosing not to return.’

• ‘That’s an inappropriate question for a subordinate to ask his commander, Lieutenant.’

• ‘Then I’m asking Marcus Tiberius, not Commander. I’ve followed you for six years. Watched you train men who become soldiers who become brothers. Seen you make decisions that save lives even when they cost you sleep. You’re the best commander I’ve ever served under, and I’ve watched you slowly disappear inside the role until there’s nothing left but the duty. This portal… you see it as salvation, don’t you? A way to stay useful without facing what you’d be if usefulness ended.’

Marcus studied his lieutenant with the same attention he’d give to assessing enemy positions. The boy—the man—saw too clearly. Understood too well. Would make an excellent commander precisely because he understood the cost of command.

• ‘If I don’t return, Gaius, know that it’s not because I chose to abandon my responsibilities. It’s because sometimes the only way to meet responsibility is to scout terrain others won’t enter. The Legion needs intelligence about this phenomenon. I’m best qualified to gather it. That’s not escape. That’s duty.’

• ‘You believe that?’

• ‘I need to believe it. Whether it’s true is a different question, and one I don’t have luxury to examine right now.’

He gripped Gaius’s shoulder briefly—the only physical affection he’d permit himself in front of the Legion.

• ‘Lead them well, Gaius Marius. They deserve a commander who sees them as more than tactical resources. They deserve someone who remembers that soldiers are human before they’re weapons.’

• ‘You’ve always remembered that, sir.’

• ‘Have I? Or have I simply been very good at pretending? We’ll see which is true when I return. If I return.’

He released his lieutenant’s shoulder and stepped toward the portal.

The pull intensified as he approached. Not sound, exactly, but something that bypassed ears and resonated directly in the part of his mind that recognized duty when it called. The portal sang of purpose and meaning and all the things he’d spent forty-three years pursuing through battlefields and blood.

It promised not comfort but challenge. Not peace but meaningful conflict. Not rest but justified struggle.

It offered exactly what he’d been seeking without admitting he sought it.

Marcus Tiberius, Commander of the Third Legion, took one final assessment of the portal’s dimensions, the stability of its edges, the tactical implications of entry. Marcus Tiberius, man of forty-three years wondering who he was beneath the armor, took one final breath of air that tasted of his world, his choices, his life.

Then he stepped through.

The transition hit him like falling while standing still.

Reality inverted. Not visually—he could still see, still orient himself spatially—but fundamentally, as if the rules governing existence had been rewritten between one heartbeat and the next. He felt himself stretch across impossible dimensions, compress into configurations that violated the body’s architecture, then snap back into form that was familiar and foreign simultaneously.

He stumbled but didn’t fall. Thirty years of combat training meant his body recovered before his mind fully processed the disorientation. He landed in defensive crouch, gladius drawn, shield raised, scanning for immediate threats with the automatic precision of someone who’d learned that the first moments after landing determined whether you survived the next moments.

Purple sky overhead. Binary suns—two of them, one amber and one crimson—hanging in positions that made no astronomical sense. Crystalline formations jutting from earth that looked wrong in ways his eyes couldn’t quite process but his instincts screamed were unnatural. Air that tasted of copper and ozone and something else, something that made his lungs work harder to extract breath.

Gravity felt different. Not dramatically—he could still move, still fight—but subtly wrong, as if weight operated on principles adjacent to but distinct from what his body expected.

He rose from crouch slowly, maintaining defensive posture while conducting tactical assessment. The portal behind him—he turned to confirm—had vanished. No shimmer, no evidence of the wound in the air that had let him through. Just crystalline landscape and purple sky and the immediate tactical problem of being in unknown territory without means of return.

A competent commander would call this catastrophic failure of reconnaissance protocol. A soldier who’d survived three decades of warfare called it expected complications.

He had six hours before Gaius would assume he wasn’t returning. In that time, he needed to gather intelligence sufficient to determine if this place represented threat, opportunity, or neutral phenomenon. Then he needed to find a way back to report findings.

Or he needed to survive long enough to make peace with never returning.

The clicking sounds started approximately three minutes after his arrival.

Marcus froze, combat instincts identifying threat before conscious mind categorized details. The sound came from multiple directions, echoing off crystalline formations in ways that made precise location difficult. Rhythmic, organic, purposeful. Not mechanical clicking but biological—mandibles or carapace or limbs moving with coordinated intention.

Something was approaching. Multiple somethings, moving with tactical coordination that suggested intelligence and purpose.

He took position behind the largest crystalline formation that offered cover, shield up, gladius ready. If this was first contact with hostile force, better to meet it from defensive position with prepared response than be caught exposed.

The clicking intensified. Then the first creature emerged from behind a formation thirty paces distant.

Marcus had fought raiders and rebels, bandits and enemy soldiers, creatures of the Direlands that violated natural categories. He’d seen enough violence and enough variety to believe himself prepared for most contingencies.

He was wrong.

The thing stood approximately eight feet tall, its body composition suggesting insect ancestry but scaled to nightmare proportions. Chitin plating covered thorax and abdomen, segmented and overlapping with the precision of manufactured armor. Six legs, each ending in something between claw and blade. Mandibles that looked capable of shearing through muscle and bone with equal efficiency. And eyes—compound eyes that caught the binary suns’ light and reflected it back with what looked like conscious assessment.

This was not mindless beast. This was soldier.

The creature paused, its antennae moving in patterns that suggested it was analyzing his position as carefully as he was analyzing its capabilities. For three heartbeats, they regarded each other across the alien landscape: veteran commander of the Third Legion and whatever this thing was, both conducting the same tactical calculus of threat and opportunity.

Then two more of the creatures emerged from different directions, flanking positions that would create overlapping fields of attack if they advanced simultaneously.

Coordinated assault. Professional execution. This wasn’t hunting behavior. This was military tactics.

Marcus adjusted his assessment immediately. Whatever these creatures were, they fought with intelligence and organization. Which meant treating them as enemy soldiers rather than dangerous animals. Which meant the rules of engagement shifted from survival to warfare.

The closest creature made the first move, advancing with disturbing speed. Marcus met the charge with Third Legion training: step into the attack, use shield to deflect mandibles while gladius sought the gap between chitin plates. The blade struck true, finding the joint between thorax and abdomen, driving deep.

The creature shrieked—not pain but communication. A warning to its companions. It collapsed, ichor spraying from the wound, mandibles still clicking in death.

Marcus pulled his blade free and spun to face the next threat. The two remaining creatures adjusted their approach, spreading wider to prevent him from engaging them sequentially. Professional adaptation to observed weakness.

These things learned. These things coordinated. These things posed threat beyond simple predation.

The battle lasted perhaps five minutes—brutal, efficient, desperate. Marcus fought with three decades of experience against enemies that fought with natural weapons and tactical intelligence. He took wounds: slash across his left arm where mandibles caught him between shield and pauldron, puncture to his right thigh where a claw found the gap in his armor. But he’d fought wounded before. Pain was information, not impediment.

When the third creature fell, Marcus stood among alien corpses, breathing hard, bleeding from multiple wounds, absolutely certain of one tactical assessment:

This world was at war. And whatever forces had created the portal had summoned him not as explorer but as soldier.

Purpose without the uncomfortable questions peacetime demanded. Meaningful conflict without the luxury of wondering what he’d be if usefulness ended.

The portal had offered exactly what he’d sought, and delivered exactly what he’d feared.

He was needed here. Which meant he would stay.

He tore strips from his tunic to bind the worst of the wounds, applied pressure to slow bleeding, assessed whether he could continue moving effectively. The injuries were manageable, though infection was likely if he didn’t find proper treatment soon.

The sounds of combat had likely attracted attention—allies or enemies, he couldn’t determine. He needed to establish contact with whoever else inhabited this world, gather intelligence about the strategic situation, determine whether the force that summoned him was ally or threat.

But first, he needed to survive long enough to report findings.

He chose a direction based on tactical logic: away from where the creatures had emerged, toward what looked like structured terrain rather than wilderness. If there were human settlements here, they would likely be fortified. If there were command structures, he needed to integrate with them or establish whether they represented friendly forces.

Marcus Tiberius, Commander of the Third Legion, began walking toward whatever civilization this world offered.

Marcus Tiberius, man of forty-three years who’d spent his life seeking purpose through duty, understood with cold clarity that he’d found exactly what he’d been looking for.

And now he would discover whether what he’d sought would save him or destroy him.

The binary suns tracked across the purple sky as he walked, and the crystalline formations cast shadows in geometries that violated Euclidean principles, and somewhere in the distance, more clicking sounds suggested this was merely the first engagement in a much longer campaign.

He had no way home. No means of reporting to Gaius. No method of telling the Third Legion that their commander had found exactly what reconnaissance demanded: intelligence about the phenomenon.

The portal led to war. Professional, organized, intelligent war. Against an enemy that fought with coordination and tactical sophistication.

The Empire had veterans for fighting conventional enemies. The Third Legion had protocols for managing standard threats.

But this… this required something the Empire couldn’t provide. This required soldiers willing to adapt to alien warfare, learn new tactics, fight battles without clear victory conditions.

This required exactly what Marcus Tiberius had been avoiding: the necessity of choosing purpose rather than having purpose assigned by duty.

And as he walked across alien landscape toward whatever civilization awaited, bleeding from wounds taken in his first engagement with an enemy he didn’t understand fighting a war he hadn’t chosen, Marcus Tiberius recognized the terrible gift the portal had given him:

The necessity of deciding not just what he would fight for, but who he would be while fighting.

The armor was stripped away. The rank meant nothing here. The Legion’s structure couldn’t define him in a world where he was the only legionary.

He would have to discover who Marcus was when duty didn’t define him.

And that discovery would require exactly the kind of self-examination he’d spent peacetime avoiding.

The portal’s gift was also its curse: it gave him purpose while demanding he discover what that purpose meant beyond following orders.

He laughed once, harsh and short, at the cosmic irony. Then he kept walking, because stopping meant bleeding out, and bleeding out meant failing to gather intelligence, and failing to gather intelligence meant his reconnaissance had been worthless.

Even stripped of rank and context, Marcus Tiberius defaulted to duty.

Perhaps that was answer enough.

Perhaps that was tragedy enough.

The clicking sounds grew louder in the distance, and he prepared for the next engagement, and in his mind, he added another name to the list:

Marcus Tiberius. Status: unknown. Mission: determine if purpose exists beyond the armor. Progress: ongoing.

Then he stopped thinking and started moving, because soldiers who philosophized during combat tended to become casualties who philosophized never again.

And Marcus Tiberius, whatever else he might discover about who he was, remained at minimum one thing:

A soldier who intended to survive long enough to learn whether survival mattered.

Marcus had been walking for six hours by the time he saw the smoke.

His wounds had stopped bleeding—field dressing held, though infection remained likely—and his tactical assessment of the terrain had progressed from desperate survival to strategic evaluation. The crystalline formations created natural chokepoints. The elevated plateaus offered defensible positions. The binary suns’ trajectory suggested a day-night cycle of approximately twenty-eight hours, which meant watch rotations would need recalibration from Legion standard.

He was thinking about fortifications and tactical deployment while bleeding from wounds taken fighting insectoid soldiers in an alien landscape. Some habits, he reflected grimly, ran deeper than reason.

The smoke rose from a valley approximately three kilometers distant, visible between two crystalline ridges that caught the amber sun’s light in geometries that still made his eyes ache. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant civilization. Civilization meant potential allies or confirmed threats.

He approached with the tactical caution that three decades of combat had burned into instinct. High ground first. Observation before commitment. Never enter unknown terrain without establishing fallback positions.

The settlement sprawled across the valley floor in the organized chaos of military camp transitioning toward permanent fortification. Perhaps two hundred people, maybe more, clustered around a central compound of timber and stone that looked half-finished. Defensive earthworks showed recent construction—some sections properly engineered with overlapping fields of fire, others merely piled earth and hope.

From his vantage point, Marcus could see the problems immediately.

The eastern perimeter extended too far, creating exposure that couldn’t be defended with current personnel. The watch towers—there were three—were positioned for visibility rather than tactical coverage, leaving blind approaches from the northern ravine. Supply stores sat exposed near the compound’s center rather than protected behind secondary fortifications. The training ground occupied defensible space that should have been reserved for emergency fallback.

He could see a dozen inefficiencies, two dozen vulnerabilities, and approximately forty-seven ways this settlement could be overrun by the kind of coordinated assault the insectoid creatures had demonstrated.

He could also see, quite clearly, that these people were trying. The earthworks were rough but functional. The watch towers served despite suboptimal placement. The central compound showed evidence of organized construction rather than random building. This wasn’t chaos—it was military discipline applied without sufficient experience of the specific threats this world presented.

They needed an experienced commander.

They needed tactical restructuring.

They needed exactly what Marcus Tiberius had spent forty-three years learning to provide.

And that, he realized with equal parts relief and resignation, was precisely the problem.

He’d stepped through the portal seeking purpose without the uncomfortable questions peacetime demanded. Purpose had found him. But purpose came with the same burden he’d been avoiding: the necessity of being Commander rather than Marcus, the armor rather than the man, the role rather than the individual beneath the rank.

He could walk away. Keep moving. Find another settlement, present himself as simple soldier rather than experienced officer. Avoid the weight of command and the responsibility it demanded.

His hand went automatically to his gladius, checking the blade’s condition even though he’d checked it twenty minutes earlier. He’d been checking his weapons compulsively since age sixteen when the Legion first taught him that survival depended on maintenance.

Forty-three years of conditioning didn’t simply stop because he’d crossed into an alien world.

He descended toward the settlement.

The sentries spotted him a hundred meters out—sloppy timing, should have been twice that distance—and called alert. Two guards emerged from the gate with weapons ready but not hostile. Professional posture. Controlled aggression. They’d been trained adequately, which suggested someone in this settlement understood military discipline.

• ‘State your business,’ the first guard called. Male, approximately thirty, scarring consistent with combat experience. Aluvian accent, probably from the northern territories.

• ‘Refugee from the portals. Seeking shelter and information about the strategic situation.’

• ‘You’re injured.’

• ‘I encountered hostiles approximately seven kilometers northeast. Three of the insectoid creatures. Killed all three but took wounds in the engagement.’

The guards exchanged glances with the particular communication of soldiers who’d learned to assess threat and capability in quick evaluation.

• ‘You killed three Olthoi soldiers alone?’

• ‘Is that the name for them? Olthoi. Good to have terminology for threats. Makes tactical discussion more efficient than describing ”the large insectoid creatures with mandibles.” And yes, I killed three. Would have preferred to avoid combat entirely, but they ambushed my position and tactical retreat wasn’t viable given terrain constraints.’

The second guard—younger, perhaps twenty-five, watchful eyes that suggested either paranoia or excellent situational awareness—stepped forward.

• ‘You speak like a military officer.’

• ‘I was. Commander of the Third Legion on Ispar. Here, I’m simply Marcus Tiberius, survivor attempting to understand circumstances and identify options for survival.’

• ‘Commander Khalid will want to speak with you. We’ve had officers arrive before, but none with your…’ The guard gestured vaguely at Marcus’s bearing, the way he stood despite injuries, the automatic threat assessment visible in his eyes.

• ‘Competence?’ Marcus supplied. ‘Or burden? Both, probably. I’ve found they’re often indistinguishable.’

They escorted him through the gate into organized chaos. The settlement showed military structure attempting to accommodate civilian needs—sleeping quarters arranged in squad configurations, cooking fires positioned for maximum efficiency, latrine trenches dug downwind and downstream according to Legion hygiene protocol. But the implementation was rough, the discipline inconsistent, the whole operation reading as soldiers trying to recreate familiar order in fundamentally alien circumstances.

Marcus’s tactical mind cataloged everything automatically: personnel count (approximately two hundred forty, his initial estimate had been low), defensive preparedness (adequate for conventional assault, insufficient for the coordinated Olthoi tactics he’d experienced), morale (strained but functional, people working rather than despairing), and command structure (clearly present but possibly inadequate to scale).

He was doing it again. Assessing rather than simply observing. Calculating how to improve rather than accepting what existed. Seeing people as tactical resources rather than individuals.

Being Commander Marcus rather than simple Marcus the man.

The younger guard led him toward the central compound while the older one ran ahead to alert this Commander Khalid. Marcus used the opportunity to observe the settlement’s inhabitants more carefully. Mix of cultures—Aluvian, Gharu’ndim, Sho, others he didn’t immediately recognize. Mix of professions—soldiers certainly, but also civilians who’d learned to fight from necessity. Mix of responses to displacement: some showing the particular thousand-yard stare of those who’d broken and reassembled into new configurations, others displaying desperate energy of those who stayed busy to avoid thinking.

They’d all come through portals. They were all trapped here. They’d all made the adjustment from their old lives to this new reality with varying degrees of success.

Marcus wondered which category he would fall into.

The commander’s quarters occupied the best-defended position in the central compound—not luxury but tactical sense. A Gharu’ndim man emerged, perhaps forty, carrying himself with the particular bearing of cavalry officer adapted to infantry command. His eyes assessed Marcus with the same tactical precision Marcus was applying to everything around him.

Two commanders evaluating each other, each calculating threat and capability, each trying to determine if the other represented ally or complication.

• ‘I am Khalid al-Azir, formerly of the Gharu’ndim cavalry, currently attempting to maintain order in this settlement we’re calling Fort Ironwood despite it being neither particularly fortified nor constructed primarily from wood. You are?’

• ‘Marcus Tiberius. Third Legion, Ispar. Though ”formerly” applies to me as well, since the Legion is presumably a world away and I’m here attempting to understand what kind of war I’ve found myself in the middle of.’

• ‘Perceptive. Most new arrivals don’t immediately recognize this as war. They think it’s survival situation, or disaster to be endured, or temporary crisis to be managed until someone rescues us. You assessed military engagement?’

• ‘I killed three Olthoi soldiers who ambushed my position using coordinated flanking tactics. That’s military action, not natural predation. Which means there’s command structure, tactical planning, and strategic objectives beyond simple hunting. So yes, this is war. The question is what kind of war, fought for what objectives, with what victory conditions.’

Khalid gestured toward a chair. Marcus remained standing out of habit—commanders stood in briefings unless tactical situation required different posture—then recognized the habit and forced himself to sit. He was not Commander here. He was refugee, same as everyone else.

• ‘The Olthoi are insectoid species with hive intelligence,’ Khalid explained, settling into his own chair with the fluid economy of cavalry officer converted to infantry command. ‘They were here before us—this is their world, or was until something brought them through portals same as it brought us. They fight for territory, resources, and possibly orders from some central intelligence we call the Matriarch, though we’ve never confirmed her existence. We fight to survive long enough to potentially find a way home, or at minimum to build something worth surviving for.’

• ‘Command structure in this settlement?’

• ‘Informal. I’m recognized as leader primarily because I was ranking officer when the first group arrived and have managed to keep people alive since then. But we’re not army—we’re refugees who happen to include soldiers. I enforce discipline where necessary, coordinate defense, attempt to organize survival. But I have no official authority. People follow because following seems more productive than not following.’

• ‘How many combat-capable personnel?’

• ‘Perhaps eighty with actual military training. Another hundred who’ve learned to fight from necessity. The remaining sixty are civilians who contribute through other means—medical treatment, construction, food preparation, the logistics that keep any operation functional.’

• ‘Eighty trained soldiers and you’re defending this perimeter?’ Marcus couldn’t keep the tactical criticism from his voice. ‘You’re overextended by half. This eastern position is indefensible with current personnel. You should contract the perimeter, establish layered defense, create killing fields that multiply force effectiveness rather than spreading your strength across terrain you can’t actually hold.’

Khalid’s expression shifted from professional courtesy to something sharper, more interested.

• ‘You’ve been here three hours and you’ve already identified our primary tactical weakness. What else have you observed?’

• ‘Your watch towers provide visibility but poor tactical coverage. Northern ravine offers approach vector you can’t adequately defend. Supply stores are too exposed. Training ground occupies space that should be fallback position. Your defensive earthworks show competent construction but suboptimal positioning. You’ve built for conventional siege defense when you should be preparing for coordinated assault by enemy that moves faster and hits harder than standard infantry.’

• ‘And if you were commanding this settlement, what would you change?’

Marcus opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. Felt the weight of the question underneath the question. Khalid wasn’t asking for tactical advice. He was assessing whether Marcus represented asset or threat, whether the arrival of another experienced commander would help or destabilize existing structure.

• ‘I’m not commanding this settlement. You are. I’m refugee seeking shelter, nothing more.’

• ‘You’re also experienced commander observing inefficiencies you could correct, calculating improvements you could implement, seeing problems you’ve been trained to solve. That’s not refugee behavior. That’s commander behavior. The question is whether you’re commander who can integrate into existing structure or commander who needs to lead. I’ve encountered both types. The former are invaluable. The latter are catastrophic.’

Marcus studied the Gharu’ndim officer with new appreciation. The man understood the social dynamics of command as well as the tactical aspects. Good commanders were rare. Great commanders who also understood that leadership was as much about managing personalities as managing battles were exceptional.

• ‘I came through the portal seeking purpose. Found war instead. I don’t know yet whether that’s salvation or damnation, but I know I’m tired of being Commander. Three decades of it. Three decades of making decisions that kept soldiers alive and knowing that every decision I made wrong ended someone who trusted me to make it right. I wanted to be just Marcus. Find out who that was beneath the rank.’

• ‘And? Who is Marcus when he’s not Commander?’

• ‘Apparently still someone who sees settlements and calculates tactical improvements. Still someone who counts personnel and assesses combat capability. Still someone who thinks in terms of defensive perimeters and force multiplication. I can’t stop seeing problems. Can’t stop thinking about solutions. Can’t simply observe without analyzing. Which suggests that maybe Marcus and Commander aren’t as separate as I’d hoped.’

Khalid nodded slowly, his expression showing something between sympathy and recognition.

• ‘I understand. I was cavalry officer serving in drought-relief efforts when the portal took me. Thought I was escaping duty into disaster. Found that disaster requires duty, possibly more than conventional service. You can’t unknow what you know. Can’t unsee what you see. Can’t become civilian when you’ve spent your adult life being soldier. But that doesn’t mean you have to command. You could advise. Contribute. Help without leading.’

• ‘Is that what you need? Advisor?’

• ‘I need competent officer who understands that Dereth requires different tactics than Ispar, who can help me transform desperate refugees into functional military force, who knows when to offer correction and when to let people learn from failure. I need second-in-command who’s secure enough to serve rather than compete. Can you be that?’

The question hung in the air between them, heavy with implications. Marcus could refuse. Present himself as simple soldier, take orders rather than give them, avoid the burden of responsibility and the weight of command.

But refusing would mean watching this settlement make mistakes he could prevent. Would mean seeing people die to inefficiencies he could correct. Would mean carrying the knowledge that he’d chosen personal comfort over collective survival.

Which was, he realized, exactly the choice he’d been avoiding on Ispar. The question wasn’t whether to lead or follow. The question was whether he had the right to choose his own comfort when his experience could save lives.

• ‘I can be second. I can serve under your command, implement your strategic vision, translate your objectives into tactical execution. But I need your word that when I identify problems, you’ll listen. And I need your understanding that sometimes I’m going to see problems you’re too close to notice, and I’ll need authority to address them without undermining your command.’

• ‘Done. You’ll have rank of First Sword—cavalry equivalent of First Centurion. You’ll report to me, coordinate with the other officers, implement defensive strategy. You’ll have authority to make tactical decisions in combat without consulting me, but strategic decisions require my approval. That acceptable?’

• ‘More than acceptable. It’s exactly what I need: clear chain of command, defined responsibilities, authority without ultimate accountability.’

They gripped forearms in the traditional military acknowledgment of command relationships. Marcus felt the familiar weight settling across his shoulders—not the full burden of ultimate responsibility, but the solid pressure of tactical command.

He’d stepped through the portal seeking escape from duty. He’d found duty waiting on the other side, slightly different configuration but fundamentally the same load.

Perhaps, he thought, that was answer enough. Perhaps Marcus and Commander were the same person, and the question wasn’t who he was without duty but why he kept trying to separate the two.

• ‘Get those wounds treated,’ Khalid said, releasing his arm. ‘Medical tent is north side of the compound. Then rest. Tomorrow we’ll begin restructuring the defensive perimeter according to your recommendations. I want to see your tactical assessment in writing—problems, solutions, implementation timeline. We’ll review it together and determine what’s feasible.’

• ‘You trust my judgment that quickly?’

• ‘You identified our primary weakness in three hours of observation. You speak about military operations with competence that comes from experience rather than theory. And most importantly, you didn’t try to take command. You offered to serve. That tells me you understand that leadership isn’t about authority—it’s about serving those who serve under you. So yes, I trust your judgment. Let’s see if that trust proves warranted.’

Marcus saluted out of habit—Legion salute rather than cavalry, his conditioning showing—then caught himself and offered the more casual acknowledgment appropriate for Gharu’ndim military culture. Khalid’s small smile suggested he’d noted both gestures and drawn conclusions from the transition.

The medical tent was staffed by a Sho woman perhaps his age, with the particular competence of field medic who’d learned her craft in active combat. She examined his wounds with efficient fingers, asked precise questions about how he’d received them, and cleaned them with solutions that stung worse than the original injuries.

• ‘You’re lucky. The Olthoi use serrated mandibles that cause tearing rather than clean cuts, which makes infection more likely. But you field-dressed properly, stopped the bleeding, kept the wounds relatively clean during transit. Most new arrivals panic, make their injuries worse through poor crisis response. You stayed calm.’

• ‘Three decades of combat experience. You learn to treat wounds as tactical problems rather than medical emergencies. Apply pressure, clean when possible, keep moving until you reach safety. Panic gets you killed.’

• ‘You’re the new arrival Commander Khalid was expecting?’

• ‘I’m new arrival. The ”Commander” part is hopefully staying on Ispar.’

• ‘You speak like officer. You carry yourself like officer. You assess your environment like officer. If you’re trying to escape rank, you’re failing comprehensively.’

Marcus laughed—short, sharp sound that carried more resignation than humor.

• ‘So I’m learning. Apparently who you are runs deeper than what you want to be.’

• ‘Fortunate for us. We have refugees who want to be farmers or merchants or scholars. What we need are soldiers who can keep everyone alive long enough to eventually be those things. Your wounds will heal. Stay off the leg as much as possible for three days, change the dressing twice daily, watch for infection signs. If the wounds start showing red streaking or you develop fever, report immediately. We have magical healers, but they’re limited resource we preserve for life-threatening injuries.’

• ‘Understood. Efficient resource allocation. Same principle as Legion medical doctrine.’

She gave him a look that suggested she’d heard similar statements from other military refugees attempting to map familiar frameworks onto alien circumstances.

• ‘Legion medical doctrine probably didn’t account for your soldiers resurrecting at lifestones after they die. Changes risk assessment significantly when death is temporary inconvenience rather than permanent consequence.’

• ‘Explain.’

So she did. Explained the lifestones, the resurrection mechanism, the way consciousness persisted through death and reformed at bonded stones. Explained the psychological cost of impermanent death, the trauma accumulation, the way some people broke under repeated dying while others adapted.

Marcus listened with the analytical attention he’d give to briefing on new weapons technology, cataloging tactical implications even as existential horror crept around the edges of his awareness.

Immortal soldiers changed warfare fundamentally. Removed the ultimate constraint on tactical risk-taking. Created opportunity for training through death rather than drill. But also created possibility of infinite trauma, endless suffering, psychological damage that accumulated without limit.

• ‘How many times have you died?’ he asked.

• ‘Seventeen. Twice in medical tent when patients died violently enough to kill their healer. Fifteen times in combat or combat-adjacent situations. Each one taught me something—about Olthoi anatomy, or my own fear response, or the specific quality of consciousness that persists through physical destruction. I’m not proud of dying. But I’m not ashamed either. It’s cost of gaining experience in an environment where experience literally requires dying to obtain certain knowledge.’

• ‘And the trauma? The psychological impact of experiencing death repeatedly?’

• ‘Manageable if you process it properly. Catastrophic if you don’t. Some people adapt by treating each death as learning opportunity. Others break because they can’t integrate the experience of their own ending. Fort Ironwood lost eight people to psychological collapse last month—they didn’t die permanently, just stopped functioning. Exist but don’t live. Resurrect but don’t recover. We keep them fed and sheltered, but they’re casualties as surely as if they’d died permanently.’

Marcus filed this information in the mental category of ”critical tactical considerations requiring immediate attention.” If resurrection created accumulating psychological damage, then casualty management needed to account not just for who died but how often they died, and leadership needed to monitor for psychological breakdown as carefully as physical injury.

War without death was still war. Just different costs, different casualties, different calculations of acceptable losses.

He thanked the medic, accepted her assignment of a sleeping space in the barracks section designated for experienced soldiers, and spent the remaining daylight hours conducting methodical survey of Fort Ironwood’s complete defensive situation.

By sunset—binary suns setting in sequence, first amber then crimson, creating twilight that lasted nearly an hour—he’d identified twenty-three critical vulnerabilities, forty-seven minor inefficiencies, and approximately a hundred opportunities for tactical improvement.

He sat in the barracks writing his assessment with the disciplined precision of officer preparing briefing for superior command, and realized that somewhere in the process of cataloging problems and designing solutions, he’d stopped thinking of himself as Marcus the refugee and started thinking as First Sword of Fort Ironwood.

The portal had given him exactly what he’d sought: purpose without peacetime’s uncomfortable questions. And exactly what he’d feared: proof that he was the armor with nothing underneath, the role rather than the individual, Commander Marcus rather than simple Marcus the man.

Perhaps that was answer enough.

Perhaps that was exactly the tragedy he’d been trying to escape.

He finished his assessment, set the report aside for morning review with Khalid, and lay down on the sleeping pallet assigned to him.

For the first time in six months, he slept without the weight of ultimate command responsibility.

For the first time in three decades, he slept knowing he was exactly where his skills were needed, doing exactly what his experience had prepared him for.

He slept well, and did not dream, and woke the next morning ready to begin the work of transforming desperate refugees into professional army.

The Olthoi attack came seventy-two hours after Marcus’s arrival, just long enough for him to complete his initial tactical assessment but too soon to implement more than the most critical defensive improvements.

Fort Ironwood’s bell—salvaged from something on Dereth, its tone wrong in ways that suggested alien metals—rang the alarm at approximately the fourth watch, which Marcus had calculated corresponded to roughly 0300 hours in Legion time designation. The sound cut through sleep like a blade, and every soldier in the barracks responded with the automatic urgency of people who’d learned that seconds determined survival.

Marcus rolled from his pallet with gladius already in hand—some habits transcended worlds—and was armored and positioned at the eastern defensive wall within four minutes of the alarm. Fast response time, though he’d managed three minutes consistently during his Legion years. Age and unfamiliar armor configurations added seconds he’d have to work on eliminating.

The perimeter torches showed the attack clearly: approximately forty Olthoi, mix of workers and soldiers, approaching in coordinated assault pattern that demonstrated tactical sophistication Marcus hadn’t encountered in his initial engagement. They weren’t simply attacking—they were probing defenses, testing responses, executing flanking maneuvers that suggested they’d observed Fort Ironwood’s defensive patterns and designed countermeasures.

Khalid was already at the command position, shouting orders that demonstrated competent tactical thinking but lacked the systematic precision that came from years of coordinated military operations.

• ‘Archers to the walls! Spear line formation delta! Mages on reserve, wait for my signal!’

The defenders responded, but the response was ragged—some soldiers reaching positions quickly, others still orienting themselves, the whole operation showing the particular inefficiency of forces trained adequately but not drilled to perfection.

Marcus watched three Olthoi workers tunnel beneath the eastern earthworks, emerging inside the perimeter where defenders had concentrated on the wall’s exterior. Watched two soldiers die because they’d positioned themselves according to standard defensive doctrine rather than adapting to enemy that could breach from below. Watched the spear line formation struggle to maintain cohesion against attackers that moved faster and struck from unexpected angles.

He could see the problems. Could see the solutions. Could see exactly how to reorganize the defense to multiply effectiveness and minimize casualties.

But he was First Sword, not Commander. His role was tactical execution, not strategic command. Khalid was leading this defense, and interfering would undermine command authority in the middle of combat—the fastest way to transform organized defense into chaotic disaster.

Then a worker Olthoi breached directly beneath the medical tent, mandibles tearing through the floor, medical personnel screaming. The Sho healer who’d treated Marcus’s wounds—he’d learned her name was Yun—grabbed a spear and tried to defend her patients. Brave. Inadequate. The worker could kill her in seconds, then slaughter the wounded who couldn’t defend themselves.

Marcus made his decision in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

• ‘Khalid! Permission to coordinate eastern defense!’

• ‘Granted! Do what’s necessary!’

Marcus didn’t waste time with detailed explanation. He simply started issuing orders in the particular tone of voice that forty-three years of command had refined to perfection—clear, certain, expecting immediate obedience because hesitation caused casualties.

• ‘Spear line, contract to position designated alpha-three! Archers, target workers not soldiers—kill the engineers before they tunnel! Mages, barrier spells beneath the earthworks to prevent underground approach! You, you, and you—’ He pointed at three soldiers near the medical tent. ‘—Defensive formation around medical, layered spacing, do not let anything with mandibles reach the wounded!’

The soldiers responded. Not because they knew Marcus’s authority, but because his tone carried the absolute certainty of someone who knew exactly what needed to happen and expected it to be implemented immediately.

The spear line contracted, creating concentrated force instead of dispersed coverage. Archers shifted targets, dropping workers before they could tunnel. Mages—he counted five, mix of traditions and capabilities—began casting barrier spells that solidified the ground beneath the earthworks, preventing the underground approach that had breached their defense.

The three soldiers he’d designated reached the medical tent just as the worker Olthoi emerged completely, mandibles spread toward Yun. They hit it with coordinated spear thrusts, driving it back, then finished it with systematic brutality that demonstrated training overriding fear.

Marcus kept issuing orders, his tactical mind processing the battle in real-time and translating strategic situation into precise tactical commands. He’d done this ten thousand times on Ispar, and the skills translated perfectly despite alien environment and unfamiliar enemies.

• ‘Second squad, fall back to position beta-two and cover the northern approach! Archers, shift fifteen degrees clockwise—you’re leaving blind angle at mark seven! Mages, alternate your barrier spells with offensive casts—you’re too defensive, the Olthoi are adapting to static protection!’

Khalid, from his command position, was watching Marcus’s coordination with an expression that mixed relief with something more complicated—recognition that the new arrival had just demonstrated exactly the kind of systematic tactical command that Fort Ironwood desperately needed.

The battle lasted eighteen minutes by Marcus’s internal clock. The Olthoi withdrew when their assault pattern failed to achieve breakthrough, leaving twelve dead workers and three dead soldiers scattered across Fort Ironwood’s perimeter. On the human side: four fatalities, already resurrecting at the settlement’s lifestone. Seventeen wounded, three critically. And approximately two hundred forty very aware refugees who’d just watched the new arrival coordinate defense with precision their actual commander hadn’t demonstrated.

Marcus stood at the eastern wall as the last Olthoi disappeared into the crystalline landscape, breathing hard, mentally cataloging what had worked and what needed improvement. The tunneling countermeasure had been effective but required too much mage coordination. The spear line contraction had multiplied force effectiveness but left gaps in perimeter coverage. The archer targeting shift had worked perfectly, suggesting his instincts about Olthoi tactical patterns were accurate.

Khalid approached, his expression carefully neutral.

• ‘That was impressive coordination, First Sword.’

• ‘That was adequate tactical response to enemy assault using coordinated flanking and tunneling approaches. Impressive would have been preventing the breach entirely. We should have anticipated underground attack vectors and positioned barrier spells preemptively.’

• ‘You integrated mages into direct combat operations. That’s not standard military doctrine.’

• ‘Standard military doctrine didn’t account for mages who could manipulate terrain in real-time. Dereth requires different tactics than Ispar. You have magical capabilities that multiply force effectiveness if properly integrated. Using them as pure offensive support wastes their potential. Barrier magic, terrain manipulation, coordinated defensive casting—these capabilities change warfare fundamentally. We should be exploiting that advantage.’

Khalid studied him with eyes that had seen too much and learned too well.

• ‘You just commanded my soldiers in the middle of battle. Gave orders I hadn’t authorized. Reorganized the defensive formation without consulting me. In conventional military structure, that would be grounds for immediate censure.’

• ‘Yes, sir. I overstepped my authority. It won’t happen again. I should have—’

• ‘You saved lives. Prevented medical tent breach. Identified tactical adaptation the Olthoi were implementing and designed counter-strategy in real-time. You did exactly what First Sword exists to do: translate strategic command into tactical execution. I’m not censuring you. I’m thanking you. But I’m also recognizing that you’re not actually content being second-in-command. You’re a commander. You think like commander, act like commander, can’t help but take command when circumstances require it.’

Marcus felt the weight of truth in those words. He’d told himself he wanted to serve rather than lead. Had convinced himself that tactical command without strategic responsibility was exactly what he needed. But the moment battle started, the moment lives depended on coordination, he’d defaulted to command mode with automatic precision that demonstrated this wasn’t chosen behavior—it was fundamental nature.

• ‘I don’t want to undermine your authority. This is your settlement. Your command. Your people. I’m refugee same as everyone else.’

• ‘You’re experienced officer who’s forgotten more about military operations than I’ve learned. I’m cavalry commander trying to lead infantry defense against enemy that uses combined arms tactics I’m still learning to counter. You’re Legion veteran who’s spent three decades refining exactly this kind of systematic coordination. The question isn’t whether you’re more qualified to command. The question is whether you’re willing to do it.’

• ‘I came here seeking escape from command responsibility.’

• ‘And? Still seeking escape? Or have you discovered that maybe you are the armor, and the armor is you, and trying to separate them was always futile?’

Marcus stood silent, watching the binary suns begin their sequential rise, amber light gradually washing across Fort Ironwood’s perimeter. The soldiers were moving wounded to the medical tent, repairing the breached earthworks, checking weapons and equipment with the automatic efficiency of forces who’d learned through repeated trauma.

They needed command. Needed systematic tactical coordination. Needed exactly what Marcus Tiberius had spent forty-three years learning to provide.

And he needed to matter. Needed purpose. Needed to be useful rather than comfortable.

Perhaps that was answer enough.

• ‘I’ll accept joint command. Not subordinate, not superior—equal partnership. You maintain strategic authority and final decision-making. I handle tactical operations and defensive coordination. We consult on major decisions, but in crisis, we each command our areas of expertise without requiring the other’s approval. That acceptable?’

• ‘More than acceptable. It’s exactly what Fort Ironwood needs. What I need. I’ve been carrying command load alone for three months, and it’s breaking me. Having competent co-commander who understands military operations at your level… that’s not just acceptable. That’s salvation.’

They gripped forearms again, but this time the gesture carried different weight—not commander and subordinate, but partners sharing impossible burden.

Marcus Tiberius had stepped through the portal seeking escape from duty.

He’d found duty waiting with different configuration but fundamentally same load.

And somewhere in the process of resisting command and then accepting it, he’d discovered something uncomfortable: he didn’t want escape from duty. He wanted duty that mattered. Wanted command that served purposes he could respect. Wanted to be needed in ways that justified the cost of being Commander rather than simple Marcus.

The portal had given him exactly what he’d sought and exactly what he’d feared.

Perhaps that was what he’d needed all along.

Perhaps that was exactly the gift he’d been too afraid to want.

The transformation of Fort Ironwood took six weeks.

Marcus had seen military fortifications constructed before—had overseen Legion engineering projects that built defensible positions from raw terrain in days—but this was different. This was building not just defensive walls but military culture, not just fortifications but functional army from collection of refugees who happened to include soldiers.

The work began with the perimeter contraction. The overextended eastern position that Marcus had identified immediately upon arrival was abandoned in favor of tighter defensive line that multiplied force effectiveness through concentration rather than dispersal. They lost approximately thirty percent of their claimed territory but gained defensible position that required half the personnel to maintain.

Simple mathematics: two hundred forty people could defend focused perimeter effectively. Same personnel spread across the original boundary created gaps the Olthoi exploited with coordinated assault tactics.

The soldiers understood this intellectually but struggled with it emotionally. Giving up ground felt like retreat. Marcus spent hours explaining that strategic withdrawal to defensible position was military doctrine, not military failure.

• ‘We’re not retreating,’ he told the squad leaders during tactical briefing. ‘We’re optimizing force deployment. The Third Legion held positions smaller than what we’re claiming now and controlled territory ten times this size through strategic positioning and tactical mobility. You don’t need to occupy ground to control it. You need to defend critical terrain and project force into surrounding areas through organized patrols and rapid response. That’s professional military operations, not desperate survival.’

The watch towers were repositioned according to tactical coverage principles rather than simple visibility. One was completely torn down and reconstructed forty meters west, which seemed wasteful until the first Olthoi assault hit the new configuration and found that every approach vector fell under overlapping fields of arrow fire.

Supply stores were moved behind secondary fortifications with access points designed for rapid distribution but protected from direct assault. Training ground was relocated to the eastern perimeter—the least defensible position became dedicated space for military drill, which solved two problems simultaneously: soldiers needed systematic training, and having trained fighters visible at the weakest position communicated strength rather than vulnerability.

But the real transformation wasn’t architectural—it was cultural.

Marcus instituted watch rotations with precision timing that maximized rest while maintaining alert force. Implemented daily drill that built muscle memory and unit cohesion. Established clear chain of command with defined responsibilities and authority appropriate to rank. Created standard operating procedures for everything from equipment maintenance to casualty evacuation.

He was building Legion structure in an alien world, and it worked because the underlying principles—discipline, coordination, systematic training—transcended the specific context they’d been developed for.

Khalid handled the strategic thinking and diplomatic coordination with other settlements. Marcus handled tactical operations and training standardization. They consulted daily, argued frequently, and gradually developed working partnership that merged cavalry flexibility with Legion systematization.

The integration of mages into combat operations was Marcus’s proudest innovation.

Traditional military doctrine treated mages as specialized support—you positioned them behind front lines, protected them with conventional forces, and used their capabilities for specific tactical problems. That doctrine assumed mages were fragile scholars who needed protection.

Dereth’s mages weren’t fragile. They were refugees who’d learned to fight from necessity, who’d died and resurrected repeatedly, who’d adapted their magical training to combat applications through trial and trauma.

Marcus created mixed units: three soldiers, one mage, coordinated tactics that leveraged both conventional and magical capabilities. The soldiers provided close defense and melee capability. The mage provided barrier protection, terrain manipulation, and offensive magic that multiplied force effectiveness.

The first time a mixed unit encountered Olthoi assault, they held against force three times their size with zero casualties. The soldiers advanced behind magical barriers, the mage coordinated defensive spells while soldiers exploited the protected space, and the whole operation demonstrated force multiplication that conventional tactics couldn’t achieve.

Within three weeks, every combat unit was mixed composition. Within five weeks, soldiers and mages were drilling together with coordination that looked like they’d trained together for years rather than weeks.

Marcus stood at the command position during a training exercise, watching his mixed units execute defensive formation against simulated Olthoi assault, and felt something he hadn’t experienced since his early Legion years: pride in systematic competence, satisfaction from building capability where chaos had existed.

Khalid joined him, observing the same drill with appreciation visible in his expression.

• ‘You’ve transformed this settlement in six weeks. We’re not just surviving anymore. We’re functioning. Operating as professional military force rather than desperate refugees.’

• ‘We’re getting there. Still have significant vulnerabilities. The northern ravine approach remains problematic—we’ve improved coverage but it’s still our weakest vector. Mage integration is working but we need more systematic training in coordinated tactics. And we’re still responding to Olthoi initiatives rather than conducting our own operations. Defensive operations are necessary but insufficient for long-term success.’

• ‘You’re never satisfied, are you? Can’t simply acknowledge success without immediately cataloging remaining problems.’

• ‘Success is maintaining standards, not lowering them. These soldiers are competent. They could be exceptional with another month of systematic training. Why settle for competent when exceptional is achievable through discipline and drill?’

Khalid laughed—genuine sound that carried warmth Marcus rarely heard from command personnel.

• ‘That’s very Legion thinking. Always pushing for perfection, never accepting adequate. It’s exhausting and inspiring in equal measure. Your soldiers must have loved and hated you simultaneously.’

• ‘They respected me. That’s all I asked. Love is for family. Respect is for command. I’ve found the latter more reliable than the former.’

The training exercise concluded with the mixed units successfully defending against the simulated assault pattern. Marcus called them to assembly, conducted brief after-action review identifying what worked and what needed improvement, then dismissed them to equipment maintenance with specific areas to focus on for next drill.

This was familiar. This was comfortable. This was exactly what Marcus Tiberius had spent forty-three years learning to do with systematic precision.

And somewhere in the process of building Fort Ironwood’s military capability, he’d stopped thinking about peacetime identity questions. Stopped wondering who Marcus was when he wasn’t Commander. Stopped seeking escape from duty in favor of discovering purpose through duty.

He was Commander Marcus. That was who he was. Pretending otherwise had been self-deception dressed as self-discovery.

The portal had stripped away the pretense and shown him the uncomfortable truth: he didn’t want escape from the armor. He wanted armor that fit properly, command that served purposes he could respect, duty that mattered beyond simple obedience to authority.

He’d found it. In alien world fighting alien war, he’d found exactly what peacetime couldn’t provide: necessity that justified his existence, purpose that emerged from competence, meaning that derived from making others competent.

That night, lying on his sleeping pallet in the command quarters Khalid had insisted he accept, Marcus added names to his list. Four soldiers who’d died under his command since arriving at Fort Ironwood, all resurrected but all carrying trauma he couldn’t erase.

He recited their names before sleep, same ritual he’d maintained for twenty years.

But this time, the names felt different. The soldiers hadn’t died from his mistakes—they’d died despite his best tactical planning, killed by circumstances that even perfect command couldn’t prevent. Their deaths were tragedy, but not failure. Were loss, but not waste.

He could carry that weight. Could continue command knowing he was doing everything possible to minimize casualties while accepting that eliminating them entirely was impossible.

Perhaps that was growth. Perhaps that was the difference between young commander who thought perfect tactics eliminated casualties and experienced commander who knew that sometimes people died despite perfect tactics.

Perhaps that was exactly the wisdom he’d been seeking without realizing he was seeking it.

He slept well, and dreamed of fortifications and force multipliers, and woke ready to continue the work of building professional army from desperate refugees.

Marcus’s first death came during a patrol engagement three weeks into his tenure as Fort Ironwood’s co-commander.

The patrol was routine—six soldiers, two mages, standard reconnaissance sweep of the territory northeast of the settlement. Marcus had joined them not from necessity but from policy. He made it practice to personally lead at least one patrol per week, ensuring he maintained direct contact with ground-level operations rather than commanding from abstract distance.

Good commanders led from front when appropriate. Great commanders knew when their presence multiplied force effectiveness versus when it risked command continuity.

This patrol should have been low-risk assessment of terrain they’d swept three times in the previous week. Should have been simple reconnaissance with minimal contact probability.

Should have been, but wasn’t.

The Olthoi ambush came from underground—workers tunneling beneath their patrol route, soldiers positioned in flanking configuration, the whole operation demonstrating tactical sophistication that suggested coordinated planning rather than opportunistic assault.

Marcus recognized the pattern immediately: this was professional military operation designed to capture or kill high-value targets. The Olthoi had observed Fort Ironwood’s patrols, identified command personnel, and designed specific countermeasure.

They’d adapted their tactics in response to Fort Ironwood’s improvements.

Which meant the enemy was learning. Studying. Evolving tactics to counter human defensive innovations.

Which meant this war was going to require constant adaptation, continuous improvement, systematic evolution of tactics and strategy to stay ahead of enemy that learned from each engagement.

His tactical mind processed these strategic implications even as his combat instincts drove immediate response. He ordered the patrol into defensive formation alpha-seven—the configuration they’d drilled specifically for underground emergence scenarios—and positioned himself to protect the mages while soldiers established perimeter.

The patrol executed perfectly. Training overrode panic, drill replaced chaos, systematic coordination created force multiplication that let eight humans hold against fifteen Olthoi.

But coordinated defense required coordinated defenders, and war included variables that perfect training couldn’t eliminate.

The soldier Olthoi that breached the perimeter from the fourth tunnel—the one Marcus’s tactical assessment had calculated low-probability threat—came through exactly where Marcus was positioned to protect the mages. It emerged with mandibles spread, moving with horrifying speed toward the fire mage who’d been maintaining barrier spell.

Marcus stepped into the attack. Legion training automatic as breath: shield high to deflect the primary strike, gladius seeking the gap between chitin plates, body positioning to create angle that prevented the Olthoi from bringing full force to bear.

The tactics were perfect. The execution was flawless. The outcome was predetermined by physics and anatomy: Marcus was approximately eighty kilograms of flesh and bone, the Olthoi was approximately two hundred kilograms of armored combat capability, and momentum favored mass.

The impact drove him backward into the crystalline formation he’d been using for tactical cover. His shield deflected the mandibles from his torso but couldn’t prevent the secondary strike—claws that punched through his armor beneath the ribcage, penetrating deep enough to reach organs that stopped functioning when penetrated.

He felt the damage with clinical precision: left lung collapsed, probably liver lacerated, massive internal bleeding that would cause death from shock within minutes.

He also felt satisfaction that his body had successfully blocked the Olthoi’s trajectory toward the mage, giving the other soldiers time to kill it before it reached its intended target.

Tactical success. Personal casualty. Acceptable trade-off.

Then the pain hit, and clinical assessment dissolved into simple biological reality: he was dying, and dying hurt with intensity that made his previous combat wounds feel trivial by comparison.

He’d taken mortal wounds before. Had felt himself sliding toward death on battlefields across Ispar, always pulled back by field medics or magical healing or simple stubborn refusal to die when soldiers depended on his command.

This time, no medics close enough to intervene. No magical healing could address damage this extensive. No stubborn refusal could override the simple reality that internal bleeding this severe caused death within minutes.

He was going to die.

For the first time in forty-three years, Marcus Tiberius was going to experience the ending he’d sent three hundred forty-seven soldiers toward, the conclusion he’d avoided through combination of skill and fortune, the final moment that every commander knew was possible but hoped to delay indefinitely.

His last thought before consciousness fragmented was tactical assessment: The patrol will survive this engagement. The mage is protected. The soldiers know the route back to Fort Ironwood. My death will cause command disruption but Khalid can handle tactical operations until they establish new co-commander. Acceptable casualties for successful defense.

Then darkness.

Then… pulling.

Not toward light or tunnel or any of the imagery religious texts described. Just pulling, as if consciousness was hooked and being drawn through space that didn’t quite exist in conventional dimensions.

Then reformation.

Marcus stood at Fort Ironwood’s lifestone, gasping, whole, completely intact despite absolute certainty that he’d just died with Olthoi claw through his torso.

He looked down. No wound. No blood. Just standard armor and equipment, completely undamaged.

His hands went to his side automatically, feeling for injury that should be there. Found nothing but intact flesh beneath armor that showed no sign of penetration.

His tactical mind cataloged the situation even as his emotional response struggled to process: he’d died. Remembered dying. Remembered the specific quality of pain when organs failed and consciousness fragmented. Remembered the moment of ending.

And now he was alive, whole, standing at a lifestone in Fort Ironwood with no evidence of having been killed except the absolute certainty of memory.

• ‘Commander Marcus!’ One of the settlement guards approached. ‘Your patrol was engaged. They’re returning now with casualties. We’ve prepared medical—’

• ‘I was the casualty. I died. Olthoi claw through the torso, fatal internal trauma. I remember dying.’

• ‘Yes, sir. That’s how the lifestones work. They preserve consciousness and rebuild body according to template. You died. You resurrected. Both statements are true. Your patrol will be returning shortly—they’re carrying your equipment since you dropped it when you died. Are you… do you need medical support? First resurrection can be disorienting.’

Marcus assessed himself with systematic attention. Physically: intact, functional, no damage. Psychologically: disturbed but functional, processing trauma but not paralyzed by it. Tactically: needed to debrief the patrol, ensure they’d handled post-engagement correctly, evaluate whether the Olthoi ambush pattern indicated larger strategic threat.

He’d died. It was true. He remembered it with perfect clarity. But he was also alive, functional, capable of continuing command.

Which meant death was… what? Temporary setback? Tactical inconvenience? Learning opportunity?

• ‘I’m functional. Assemble the patrol for immediate debriefing when they return. I want complete after-action review while details are fresh. And send word to Khalid that I need to discuss tactical implications of the engagement. The Olthoi demonstrated coordinated planning that suggests command-level intelligence directing their operations.’

• ‘Yes, sir. Though Commander Khalid may want to speak with you about your… condition. First death is significant event.’

• ‘First death is tactical data point. I learned what dying feels like, confirmed that resurrection mechanism functions as described, and gained direct experience with the psychological impact. Now I have better understanding of what my soldiers experience when they die under my command. That’s valuable information. The fact that acquiring it required my own death is simply cost of education.’

The guard’s expression showed the particular mixture of respect and concern that subordinates displayed when their commander demonstrated either inspiring dedication or disturbing detachment—sometimes both simultaneously.

The patrol returned twenty minutes later, carrying Marcus’s equipment and looking disturbed in ways that suggested they’d watched their commander die and weren’t certain how to process his resurrection. Marcus conducted the debriefing with systematic precision, extracting every detail of the engagement, analyzing the Olthoi tactics, identifying both what worked and what needed improvement.

• ‘You maintained formation discipline even after I was killed. That’s exactly correct procedure. Command falls to next in chain, operations continue according to training, personal casualties don’t disrupt tactical execution. Well done.’

• ‘Sir,’ one of the soldiers said—young man named Titus, perhaps twenty-five, showing the particular strain of watching his commander die. ‘You took that hit protecting the mage. Stepped directly into lethal attack to buy us time. That’s…’

• ‘That’s standard tactical decision-making. The mage was maintaining barrier spell that protected the entire patrol. Losing the mage would have collapsed our defense and caused multiple casualties. Losing one soldier—even if that soldier happened to be me—to preserve force multiplication capability is correct tactical choice. I’d make the same decision again.’

• ‘But you knew it would kill you.’

• ‘Yes. I also knew I’d resurrect at the lifestone. Which means death is temporary inconvenience, not permanent loss. That changes tactical calculus significantly. On Ispar, trading my life for a mage’s survival might not be worthwhile—losing experienced commander creates command vacuum that causes cascade failures. Here? I resurrect with all my experience intact, resume command within minutes, and the only cost is brief physical trauma and psychological adjustment. That’s acceptable exchange.’

Marcus watched the soldiers process this analysis, saw them recognizing that their commander viewed death as tactical variable rather than existential horror. Saw them beginning to recalculate their own relationship with mortality, their own assessment of acceptable risk.

This was dangerous. This was potentially valuable. This was fundamental transformation of military operations that the lifestones enabled.

Immortal soldiers changed warfare. But immortal soldiers required different command philosophy, different tactical doctrine, different understanding of what constituted acceptable casualties.

He spent the next three days thinking about implications while his body adjusted to resurrection trauma and his mind processed the experience of having died and continued existing.

The physical adjustment was minimal—his body felt slightly wrong for perhaps twelve hours, as if it needed to remember how to be his body, but the sensation faded. The psychological adjustment was more complex.

He’d died. He remembered it absolutely. Remembered the pain, the fragmentation of consciousness, the moment of ending. But he also continued. Existed. Commanded. Functioned.

Which meant either consciousness persisted beyond physical death—profound metaphysical implication that suggested dualist philosophy was correct—or the lifestones copied consciousness so perfectly that subjective experience was identical to continuity—equally profound implication that suggested consciousness was information pattern rather than essential quality.

He didn’t know which was true. Didn’t know how to determine which was true. Didn’t know if the distinction mattered practically speaking.

What he knew was that he’d died, and he’d continued, and death was now part of his experience rather than abstract possibility.

Khalid found him four days after the engagement, standing at the eastern wall watching the patrol routes with tactical assessment automatic as breath.

• ‘You’re integrating the death experience well. Some commanders break after first resurrection. Can’t reconcile the continuation with the ending. You seem… functional.’

• ‘I’m processing. Analyzing tactical implications. Reconsidering command philosophy in light of impermanent death. The lifestones change everything about military operations. We’ve been treating them as safety mechanism—convenient feature that prevents permanent casualties. But they’re more than that. They’re fundamental transformation of warfare.’

• ‘Explain.’

• ‘On Ispar, tactical decisions had to account for permanent death. You never risked your forces unnecessarily because casualties were irreversible. Here? We can accept casualties that would be unthinkable in conventional warfare because our soldiers resurrect. We can use death as training tool—let soldiers experience fatal mistakes and learn from them. We can take tactical risks that multiply force effectiveness even if they increase casualty rates. We can build military doctrine around the assumption that death is temporary setback rather than permanent loss.’

Khalid studied him with concern visible beneath professional interest.

• ‘That’s tactically sound and morally horrifying. You’re describing treating your soldiers as expendable resources because they can’t permanently die.’

• ‘I’m describing recognizing that tactical calculus has fundamentally changed. I’m not suggesting we waste lives. I’m suggesting we acknowledge that death isn’t the ultimate constraint it was on Ispar. Every soldier who dies here carries trauma—I understand that now, personally. But trauma is manageable. Permanent death isn’t. If we can achieve tactical objectives that save hundreds of lives by accepting dozens of deaths that will resurrect… isn’t that moral calculus we have to consider?’

• ‘And if the dozens who die repeatedly develop psychological damage that makes them non-functional? If we break people through accumulated trauma even though their bodies resurrect intact?’

• ‘Then we’ve traded physical casualties for psychological casualties, and we need to determine which is preferable. War causes damage, Khalid. The question isn’t whether we can avoid damage—we can’t. The question is what kind of damage we’re willing to inflict to achieve objectives that minimize total suffering. I don’t have answer to that question yet. But I know we need to ask it.’

They stood in silence, watching the binary suns track across purple sky, both of them grappling with implications of warfare without permanent death.

• ‘You’ve changed since the resurrection,’ Khalid observed. ‘Something about your affect. You were always focused, always tactical, but there was… humanity underneath the command persona. Now it feels like the command persona has subsumed everything else. Like dying and resurrecting somehow burned away the parts of Marcus that weren’t Commander.’

• ‘Perhaps it did. Perhaps experiencing death clarified what matters and what’s self-indulgent distraction. I came to Dereth wondering who Marcus was beneath the armor. I died, and discovered that the armor is what resurrects. The man beneath—if there was ever man beneath—didn’t survive the transition through the lifestone. What came back was Commander Marcus, pure tactical function, systematized competence without the complications of wondering whether there’s more to existence than duty.’

• ‘That sounds like losing yourself, not finding yourself.’

• ‘Does it matter? If I’m more effective as pure Commander than I was as Marcus pretending he wanted to be something beyond Commander? If my tactical capability serves Fort Ironwood and keeps more people alive? Isn’t effective Commander preferable to conflicted human struggling with identity questions?’

Khalid looked at him with something that might have been sadness.

• ‘You’re my partner in command. You’re excellent tactical officer. You’ve transformed Fort Ironwood’s military capability. But Marcus… you’re also becoming exactly what you feared you were: armor with nothing inside. And I’m watching it happen, and I don’t know how to help you, and I’m not certain you want help.’

• ‘I want to be useful. I want to matter. I want to serve purposes that justify existence. Everything else is distraction from those objectives. If that makes me armor with nothing inside, then perhaps armor with nothing inside is exactly what Fort Ironwood needs.’

He left Khalid at the wall and returned to his quarters to prepare tactical briefing on patrol doctrine modifications based on his resurrection experience.

He didn’t think about identity. Didn’t wonder about purpose beyond utility. Didn’t question whether losing the man beneath the armor was tragedy or optimization.

He simply worked. Planned. Organized. Commanded.

Because that’s what Commander Marcus did. That’s what he was built for. That’s what the lifestones had preserved when they resurrected tactical competence and systematized discipline.

The man who’d stepped through the portal wondering who Marcus was beneath the armor?

That man had died three weeks ago during patrol engagement.

What resurrected was exactly what Fort Ironwood needed: eternal soldier in eternal war, professional competence without the distraction of wondering whether there was more to existence than duty.

And if that was tragedy—if losing humanity in favor of pure function was exactly what he should fear rather than accept—well, Marcus Tiberius wasn’t there to evaluate that question anymore.

Only Commander Marcus remained.

And Commander Marcus had work to do.

He wrote his tactical briefing with systematic precision, implemented new patrol protocols based on resurrection mechanics, and trained his soldiers in tactics that accepted death as tactical variable rather than outcome to be avoided at all costs.

He was becoming the eternal soldier. Purpose literalized. Duty made permanent. The armor that would defend Fort Ironwood for as long as Fort Ironwood needed defending.

And he no longer wondered whether that was salvation or damnation.

Because wondering required caring about the distinction.

And Commander Marcus didn’t care. Commander Marcus simply served.

Perfectly. Eternally. Without question or doubt or the messy complications of wondering whether armor with nothing inside was tragedy or triumph.

The work continued. The war continued. Commander Marcus continued.

That was enough. That was everything. That was exactly what the portal had given him and exactly what he’d feared to want.

Purpose without end. Duty without question. Existence without the burden of wondering whether existence meant anything beyond function.

The names in his list grew longer. The soldiers under his command died and resurrected and died again. Fort Ironwood’s military capability improved with systematic precision.

And somewhere beneath the armor, perhaps, Marcus Tiberius the man existed as ghost haunting Commander Marcus the function.

But ghosts didn’t command. Ghosts didn’t serve. Ghosts didn’t matter.

Only the armor mattered. Only the duty remained. Only the eternal soldier continued his eternal war.

And that, Commander Marcus decided, was answer enough.

Three months after emerging gasping onto Dereth’s alien soil, Duulak the Twice-Blessed stood in the Seeker’s Encampment library and recognized a pattern that shouldn’t exist.

The library was generous terminology for what amounted to salvaged Empyrean texts arranged on makeshift shelving in a fortified tent, but it was the closest approximation to civilization this nightmare world offered. Duulak had claimed a corner desk where crystalline lamplight—powered by Dereth’s abundant magical field—allowed him to work through the night watches when most sensible people attempted sleep.

Sleep had become optional. Another gift of the lifestones: the resurrected body required less rest than flesh that had never experienced the dissolution of death. Each time he’d died—twice now, both from Olthoi attacks he’d survived through desperate magic rather than skill—he’d resurrected slightly different. Needing less food. Less sleep. More… efficient.

He wasn’t certain if this was optimization or degradation. The question kept him awake at night more effectively than any stimulant.

Celeste found him bent over a trader’s journal, his ink-stained fingers tracing routes marked between settlements. She carried tea brewed from local plants that tasted nothing like Yasmin’s preferred blend but served the functional purpose of warmth and mild stimulation.

• ‘You’re doing it again,’ she observed, setting the cup beside his elbow with the careful precision of someone who’d learned to navigate his absent-minded inattention. ‘That particular expression that means you’ve found a pattern the rest of us have missed.’

• ‘There are four of them.’ His voice carried the distracted quality of thought still half-engaged elsewhere. ‘At least four. Possibly more, but four that matter. Four that register as signal rather than noise in the statistical distribution.’

• ‘Four what?’

• ‘Exceptional arrivals. Outliers in the summoning distribution. Most humans come through confused, traumatized, essentially random selection from Ispar’s population. But there are individuals who register differently. Who’ve established themselves not just as survivors but as… nucleation points around which community crystallizes.’

He pulled three journals toward him, correlating dates and locations with the obsessive precision that had earned him simultaneous respect and concern from his colleagues on Ispar. The Seekers had learned to simply provide him with information and stay clear until he’d processed it into actionable understanding.

• ‘There’s a military settlement northeast of here. Fort Ironwood. The traders describe it as impressively organized—disciplined watch rotations, systematic defensive improvements, tactical sophistication that suggests experienced command. The leader is someone named Marcus Tiberius, formerly of some Legion. The traders say he transformed the settlement from desperate refugees into functional military force in under two months.’

• ‘That’s impressive but not unprecedented. Military officers establishing order during crisis is standard survival response.’

• ‘Agreed. Except the traders also mention he died during a patrol engagement three weeks after arriving and resurrected treating death as tactical data point rather than existential trauma. Then continued implementing military improvements as if mortality itself was simply another variable to account for in his planning. That’s not standard survival response. That’s someone fundamentally different in how they integrate experience.’

Celeste settled into the chair across from him, recognizing the signs of a theoretical framework emerging. Duulak’s best insights came when he was allowed to articulate them to a skeptical but engaged audience.

• ‘And the second outlier?’

• ‘Haven settlement, southwest territory. There’s a hunter named Thomas who the traders describe with particular unease. He works alone mostly, but he’s developed some kind of relationship with the Virindi. The thought-beings that most humans avoid because they’re profoundly alien and potentially hostile. The traders report he’s studying portal mechanics with them, that he’s desperate to find a way home, and that he’s died approximately ten times in three months but keeps functioning.’

• ‘Ten deaths? That should cause psychological breakdown. Even the most hardened soldiers start fragmenting after five or six.’

• ‘Exactly. Which suggests either he’s developed extraordinary resilience or he’s channeling trauma into purpose so intensely that breakdown becomes functionally irrelevant. Either way: exceptional.’

He pulled the third journal forward, this one showing signs of having been copied from multiple sources—different inks, varying handwriting, the collective knowledge of traders who’d been disturbed enough by what they’d observed to document it.

• ‘Paradox settlement. Southern borderlands where reality feels thin according to multiple independent reports. Founded by a youth who the traders call ”the Mad Seer” or sometimes just ”the Void’s Prophet.” His name is Maajid. He’s seventeen years old, crossed willingly rather than through compulsion, and has died forty-two times in three months through deliberate experimentation.’

• ‘Forty-two deaths? That’s not trauma. That’s suicide.’

• ‘Or research. The reports suggest he’s exploring the space between death and resurrection, that he’s developed partial precognition, that he sometimes exists in multiple states simultaneously. His followers describe him as becoming something that isn’t quite human anymore. Half the traders who visit Paradox refuse to return. The other half go back repeatedly because his insights about portal mechanics and consciousness transfer are allegedly brilliant despite being delivered through laughter and paradoxes.’

• ‘You said four. Those are three.’

Duulak gestured toward the fourth journal with something between respect and recognition.

• ‘The fourth is here. The Seekers. Us. Specifically: someone who demonstrated parallel world observation to his kingdom’s highest assembly, whose experiment may have caused the portals, who crossed through to investigate responsibility, and who’s died twice while researching Empyrean texts about something called the Harbinger Protocol.’

• ‘You’re including yourself in the pattern?’

• ‘I’m acknowledging that my arrival wasn’t random. That my specific combination of theoretical knowledge, practical magical capability, and profound guilt about potentially causing this disaster makes me functionally similar to the other three. Different approaches, different skills, but similar in one critical way: we’re not responding to displacement with simple survival. We’re using it as catalyst for transformation. Marcus building military structure. Thomas seeking return through dangerous alliances. Maajid embracing radical transcendence. Me pursuing understanding through systematic research. Four responses to existential trauma, four types of human excellence pushed to extremes.’

Celeste drank her tea, processing the implications with the practical intelligence that had made her invaluable to the Seekers’ mission.

• ‘Why does this pattern matter? So there are four exceptional people adapting to impossible circumstances in exceptional ways. That’s what exceptional people do. It doesn’t suggest deliberate selection or larger purpose. It’s just statistics—in a population of thousands pulled through portals, there will be outliers.’

• ‘Except the Harbinger Protocol texts explicitly reference ”selected exemplars of adaptive species” being summoned to ”serve as catalysts for rapid evolution.” The Empyreans knew they couldn’t simply summon an army. They needed to summon the specific individuals who would transform everyone else. Leaders, innovators, radicals, theorists. People whose response to impossible circumstances wouldn’t be mere survival but systematic transformation.’

• ‘You’re suggesting Asheron specifically selected you? All four of you?’

• ‘I’m suggesting the portals weren’t random wormholes. They were selection mechanisms. They called to specific psychological profiles, specific types of minds, specific combinations of capability and desperation that would make individuals useful for his purposes. Marcus the disciplined soldier seeking duty. Thomas the desperate hunter seeking return. Maajid the alienated youth seeking transcendence. Me, the guilt-ridden theorist seeking understanding. Four types of excellence. Four approaches to transformation. Four catalysts.’

He leaned back, staring at the correlations he’d mapped across multiple journals, seeing the pattern that had drawn him to this conclusion.

• ‘The question is whether we were selected randomly by whatever criteria the portals used, or whether Asheron deliberately manipulated circumstances to ensure specific individuals would be called. Did my Court demonstration trigger the portals accidentally, or was it designed to provoke exactly that response so I’d feel responsible enough to investigate? Did Marcus’s settlement happen to have a portal, or did one appear specifically where an experienced officer would feel duty-bound to investigate? Was Thomas’s hunting expedition chance, or was he guided toward a portal at exactly the moment his desperation made him vulnerable to its call?’

• ‘You’re describing conspiracy beyond even Asheron’s demonstrated capabilities.’

• ‘I’m describing selection pressure. Evolution operates through environmental pressure that favors specific traits. Asheron created selection pressure that summoned the humans whose specific psychological makeup made them useful for his purposes. That doesn’t require omniscience. It just requires understanding what psychological profiles respond to which stimuli.’

• ‘And Maajid? You said he crossed willingly. That breaks your theory.’

• ‘Does it? Or does a selection mechanism that calls the desperate and guilty need a different approach for someone who was already seeking escape? The portal appeared the day before his entrance examination, offering exactly the alternative he was predisposed to accept. That might be coincidence. Or it might be a selection mechanism sophisticated enough to present different lures to different prey.’

Celeste set down her cup with the deliberate precision of someone reaching an uncomfortable conclusion.

• ‘If you’re right—if the four of you were deliberately selected as catalysts—then you need to meet. Compare notes. Determine if you’re being manipulated toward some larger purpose.’

• ‘Or determine if we are the larger purpose. If Asheron didn’t summon an army to fight the Olthoi. If he summoned catalysts who would transform random refugees into an army. Leaders who would emerge naturally from chaos because they were designed to emerge. Four different approaches to survival that would appeal to four different types of followers, creating diverse factions that collectively address the full spectrum of challenges this nightmare presents.’

• ‘That’s either brilliant or monstrous.’

• ‘Probably both. Great strategy usually is.’

He began drafting messages—careful inquiries rather than direct confrontation, because approaching the other three with ”I believe we’ve all been specifically selected as instruments of Asheron’s will” seemed likely to provoke hostility rather than cooperation.

• ‘What will you say?’ Celeste asked.

• ‘That I’ve identified patterns in the summoning data that suggest certain individuals were non-randomly selected. That I’m interested in correlating our experiences to determine if we’ve been manipulated or simply happened to represent statistical outliers. That I propose a meeting at neutral location to compare notes and assess whether cooperation serves our collective interests. Dry. Academic. Non-threatening.’

• ‘And if they refuse?’

• ‘Then I continue researching alone. But they won’t refuse. Marcus will see tactical advantage in information sharing. Thomas will recognize potential resource for understanding portal mechanics. Maajid will find the cosmic joke of being unknowing participants in someone else’s design too amusing to ignore. They’ll come.’

• ‘You sound certain.’

• ‘I’m not certain of anything except that patterns this clear don’t emerge from pure randomness. And if we’re part of a pattern, we need to understand it before it determines our futures without our consent. I’ve spent my life being used by forces I didn’t recognize. The Court, the Chromatic Assembly, possibly Asheron himself. I’m tired of being instrument in someone else’s composition. I want to know what song I’m being forced to sing. And whether I can choose to sing something different.’

He finished the messages, sealed them with wax bearing the Seekers’ mark, and handed them to the trader who served as irregular courier between settlements. The man took them with the wariness of someone carrying potential explosive materials, which suggested he understood more about the recipients than he’d explicitly stated.

After the courier left, Duulak stood at the tent entrance watching Dereth’s binary suns track across purple sky. Three months here. Two deaths. Countless revelations about the nature of reality, consciousness, and his own capacity for both brilliant insight and catastrophic mistake.

Yasmin would have brought him dinner at this point, would have insisted he eat something more substantial than tea, would have anchored him to physical reality when he drifted too far into abstraction.

Yasmin was worlds away. Might be dead, if time flowed differently between worlds. Might have remarried, if she’d learned to stop hoping for his return. Might still be waiting, if her patience exceeded his capacity for absence.

He’d abandoned her to chase understanding. And understanding had led here: to alien world, impossible war, and growing recognition that he might be puppet dancing to someone else’s carefully designed manipulation.

• ‘Do you regret it?’ Celeste asked quietly. ‘Stepping through?’

• ‘I regret not knowing whether I chose to step through or was designed to make that choice. Free will requires genuine alternatives. If my psychological profile made my decision predetermined, then I didn’t choose. I simply executed programming written into my personality by whatever forces shaped me. That’s not regret for my choice. That’s horror at discovering I might never have had a choice.’

• ‘Does the distinction matter if the outcome is the same?’

• ‘It matters if I’m trying to make different choices going forward. If I’m still being manipulated, then my continued decisions might be equally predetermined. Meeting with the other three might not be tactical coordination. It might be exactly what Asheron designed us to do at this specific moment in his larger plan. And I won’t know until I’ve already done it.’

• ‘Then why do it?’

• ‘Because the alternative is paralysis. If all my choices might be predetermined, I can either stop choosing or accept uncertainty and choose anyway. Philosophers have wrestled with this paradox for centuries. I’ve decided to fall on the side of ”choose and analyze rather than freeze in existential dread.” It’s not satisfying. But it’s functional. And functionality might be the best we can achieve in circumstances this compromised.’

Three days later, he received responses. Three separate messages, three different tones, but all fundamentally the same content: yes, they would meet. They would compare experiences, assess patterns, determine if cooperation served their individual and collective interests.

Marcus’s response was tactically concise—place, time, security protocols.

Thomas’s response was bitter and suspicious—what’s your real purpose, and what makes you think I’m special?

Maajid’s response was a philosophical paradox wrapped in amusement—I already knew you would ask, and I’ve already decided to attend, but I’m enjoying the illusion that I’m choosing rather than simply executing probability’s script.

Duulak read them multiple times, analyzing not just content but the psychology they revealed. Three minds as different as three humans could be, yet all responding to the same stimulus with willingness to engage. That could be coincidence.

Or it could be proof that his theory was correct: they were selected, designed, programmed at some level to converge at this exact point.

The meeting was arranged for the Empyrean ruins halfway between the Seekers’ Encampment and Fort Ironwood—neutral ground, defendable position, symbolic location given their investigation into whether they were inheriting Empyrean purposes.

Duulak prepared for the meeting with systematic thoroughness. Not weapons—he was never comfortable with direct violence—but magical defenses, protective wards, careful documentation of everything he’d discovered about the Harbinger Protocol.

If they were catalysts, they needed to understand what they were catalyzing.

If they were instruments, they needed to determine whether they could choose their own purpose or were forever bound to execute someone else’s composition.

And if they were simply four exceptional humans who’d responded to impossible circumstances in characteristically excellent ways… well, that would be the most comfortable conclusion.

But Duulak had learned long ago that comfortable conclusions were usually wrong.

The truth was uncomfortable. The truth required looking at patterns that suggested you weren’t author of your own story but character in someone else’s narrative.

The truth, he suspected, was that they were about to discover they’d been dancing to music they couldn’t hear, serving purposes they hadn’t chosen, and becoming exactly what Asheron had designed them to become.

Which meant the real question wasn’t whether they’d been selected.

The real question was whether recognizing the selection gave them power to resist it.

Or whether recognizing their role in the larger pattern simply meant they’d execute it more efficiently.

He didn’t know the answer.

But in three days, when four catalysts met to compare notes on their unwitting transformation into instruments of Asheron’s will, he suspected they would discover the answer together.

Whether that discovery offered hope or simply confirmed their helplessness remained to be seen.

Thomas crouched in the shadows of a crystalline outcrop northwest of Haven, watching three Virindi hover at the threshold of visibility and waiting for them to speak concepts directly into his mind.

Five weeks since his first contact with the thought-beings. Eleven deaths since arriving on Dereth. Zero progress toward finding a way home, but considerable progress toward understanding exactly how thoroughly he was trapped in this nightmare.

The Virindi had approached him after his seventh death—the one where he’d stopped screaming at the lifestone and started laughing with the particular hysteria of someone whose sanity had snapped and reassembled into new configuration. They’d offered knowledge exchange: his observations about human consciousness and death-trauma in return for their insights about portal mechanics and Asheron’s magical bindings.

He’d accepted because any chance at return justified any collaboration, no matter how profoundly uncomfortable thought-beings without bodies made him.

The communication came as concepts appearing fully-formed in his awareness, bypassing language entirely.

Four humans particularly interesting. Four catalysts for transformation. Warrior-builder. Memory-keeper. Void-walker. Pattern-weaver. Different responses to same stimulus. Together: unpredictable. Separately: limited. Convergence approaching.

Thomas processed this with the wary alertness of hunter recognizing predator’s tracks.

• ‘You’re talking about specific people. Who?’

Commander at Fort Ironwood who treats death as tactical variable. Scholar at Seekers who identifies patterns others cannot perceive. Youth at Paradox who dies deliberately to explore consciousness-space. And hunter who speaks with beings of thought despite appropriate fear. Four humans selected by portal mechanisms for capacity to catalyze rapid adaptation.

The concept included information: names, locations, behavioral profiles. Marcus Tiberius—Legion commander building civilization from chaos. Duulak the Twice-Blessed—theoretical mage investigating Empyrean mysteries. Maajid al-Zemar—seventeen-year-old radical pursuing transcendence through voluntary death.

And himself: Thomas, desperate hunter working with Virindi to find return home, dying repeatedly but continuing to function through sheer stubborn refusal to accept imprisonment.

• ‘Why are you telling me this? You don’t do anything without purpose. What do you gain from making me aware of these others?’

Diversity creates unpredictability. Unpredictability creates possibility. Unified human response becomes calculable, controllable. Diverse responses from exceptional catalysts create cascade effects we cannot fully model. Asheron designed you to converge naturally. We accelerate process. Observation of catalysts interacting provides valuable data about consciousness, cooperation, conflict.

Thomas felt fury rising—the clean, cold anger that had kept him alive through worse situations than alien beings treating humans as experimental subjects.

• ‘You’re using us. Just like Asheron. Just like everyone in this nightmare world. You don’t want to help us return home. You want to observe what happens when your selected subjects interact under controlled conditions.’

Correct. Also: untrue. Multivalent truth. We observe. We also calculate return-home probability for each catalyst. Commander: near-zero. Scholar: low but non-zero. Youth: negative—he seeks opposite of return. Hunter: highest probability among catalysts. Your desperation creates motivation. Your Virindi alliance provides knowledge. Your deaths accumulate understanding of portal mechanics through direct experience.

Thomas’s hand went to where his knife would be, stopped when he remembered he’d stopped wearing weapons to these meetings. Attacking thought-beings with steel was approximately as productive as punching concepts.

• ‘What’s the probability? How likely am I to get home?’

Alone: fifteen percent over ten-year timeline. With other catalysts’ knowledge and capabilities: forty-three percent over five-year timeline. Commander provides military structure to organize exploration. Scholar provides theoretical framework for portal manipulation. Youth provides consciousness insights that transcend physical constraints. Together: multiplicative rather than additive capabilities.

The numbers hurt worse than the mandibles that had killed him eight deaths ago. Fifteen percent chance over ten years meant eighty-five percent likelihood that he’d never see Mara or William again, that he’d die old and alone in alien world having abandoned his family for one last hunt.

But forty-three percent with cooperation meant better than even odds if he could tolerate working with the others. If he could collaborate with a military commander who’d made peace with eternal war, a scholar obsessed with understanding rather than escape, and a mad youth who thought transcending humanity was preferable to preserving it.

• ‘The scholar contacted me. Duulak. He sent message suggesting meeting to discuss patterns in our summoning. You arranged that, didn’t you?’

Scholar’s pattern-recognition led to independent conclusion. We encouraged through subtle information distribution via traders. Commander will attend from tactical interest. Youth will attend from philosophical amusement. Hunter will attend from desperate hope. All believe they choose freely. All execute probability patterns we’ve modeled with high confidence.

Thomas laughed—sharp, bitter sound that carried no actual humor.

• ‘So even learning we’re being manipulated is part of the manipulation. Even my anger at being used is predicted response you’ve already accounted for. There’s no way to resist if resistance itself is calculated into your models.’

Correct recognition. Also: untrue. High-confidence models still contain uncertainty. Catalysts demonstrate genuine unpredictability at critical decision points. Meeting may produce: cooperation, conflict, mutual understanding, competitive fracture, unexpected hybrid response we cannot currently model. Uncertainty is why observation provides value. If outcome was certain, observation would be unnecessary.

• ‘Elena told me I’m changing. That working with you is making me less human. Is that part of your experiment too?’

All cooperation produces mutual influence. You learn our perspectives. We learn yours. Exchange is inherent to communication. Whether change constitutes ”less human” or ”differently human” reflects value judgment we do not share. Query: do you wish to remain precisely as you were, trapped by original psychological configuration? Or do you wish to evolve toward configuration that might achieve objectives original-you could not?

The question cut deeper than Thomas wanted to acknowledge. He’d spent three months desperately trying to remain the Thomas who’d left Mara and William, trying to preserve himself intact so he’d still be the same man when—if—he returned.

But he wasn’t the same man. Eleven deaths had changed him. Conversations with thought-beings had rewired how he processed reality. Working alone in hostile wilderness had stripped away the softness that domestic life had allowed.

The Thomas who might return home wasn’t the Thomas who’d left. The question was whether Mara would recognize the difference. Whether William would fear the stranger wearing his father’s face.

Whether preservation of original self was even possible after transformation this profound.

• ‘I’ll attend the meeting. Not because you’re manipulating me toward it. Because forty-three percent is better than fifteen, and I’d collaborate with demons if it meant seeing my son again. But I’m not your experimental subject. I’m a man trying to get home. If cooperation with the others serves that purpose, I’ll cooperate. If it doesn’t, I won’t. My choices might match your predictions, but they’re still my choices. I choose them even knowing you’ve modeled them. That has to count for something.’

Noted. Preserved for record. Question: if choice-pattern matches prediction perfectly, does distinction between predetermined and freely-chosen maintain meaningful difference?

• ‘Yes. Because I know I’m choosing. Because I’m aware of the manipulation and choosing anyway. Because fuck you and your probability models. I’m not dancing to anyone’s tune. I’m walking my own path, and if it happens to parallel the path you’ve calculated, that’s coincidence, not obedience.’

The Virindi hovered in what might have been amusement or might have been satisfaction with experimental results.

Aggression noted. Autonomy assertion recorded. Consciousness insisting on agency despite evidence suggesting otherwise. Quintessentially human response. Provides valuable data. Meeting occurs in four days. Empyrean ruins. Neutral ground. We observe from distance but do not interfere. Catalyst interaction proceeds according to catalyst decisions. Outcome uncertain within calculated probability distribution.

Then they were gone, dissolving into the crystalline landscape with the particular quality of departure that suggested they’d never fully been there in the first place.

Thomas stood alone in the shadow of the outcrop, watching purple sky darken toward the night cycle that Dereth’s binary suns created through their staggered setting.

Four exceptional humans, all summoned for specific purposes, all believing they’d crossed through portals by choice or compulsion but discovering they’d been selected by mechanisms more subtle than force.

All damaged in characteristically different ways: Marcus weaponized through systematic militarization, Duulak abstractified through obsessive theorization, Maajid radicalized through deliberate transcendence, Thomas himself desperatified through accumulated loss and desperate grasping at impossible return.

The scholar wanted to understand the pattern. The commander would want to exploit it tactically. The youth would find it cosmically hilarious. Thomas just wanted to know if understanding manipulation gave any power to resist it, or if awareness simply meant executing predetermined script with full consciousness of helplessness.

He walked back toward Haven as the first stars emerged, alien constellations that bore no resemblance to the sky he’d learned as child.

Elena was waiting at the settlement perimeter, her expression showing the particular concern of someone who’d watched a friend cross too many lines too quickly.

• ‘You were with them again. The Virindi. You smell different after meetings with them. Like you’re slightly out of phase with normal reality.’

• ‘They told me about others. Three humans who were specifically selected same as me. They want us to meet. Compare notes. Presumably so they can observe what happens when their experimental subjects interact under semi-controlled conditions.’

• ‘And you’re going to do it. Even knowing it’s manipulation.’

• ‘I’m going to do it because working with the others improves my chance of getting home from fifteen to forty-three percent. Because any improvement in probability justifies any collaboration. Because I’ve already made peace with selling pieces of my humanity if it means seeing William again. What’s one more compromise?’

Elena studied him with the assessment of field medic evaluating wound progression.

• ‘You know what happens to people who compromise too much? They end up like Maajid’s followers—the ones who pushed too hard into the space between death and resurrection and came back empty. You’re still here, Thomas. Still functioning. But you’re also fragmenting. I can see it. Each death takes a piece. Each Virindi conversation replaces human thinking with their alien logic. Each day you spend hunting alone in the wilderness strips away the man who used to tell stories to his son and makes bread with his wife. You’re becoming something that might be more effective at survival but less capable of appreciating what you’re surviving for.’

• ‘Then I’d better find my way home quickly, before there’s nothing left of the me that has a home to return to.’

He left her at the perimeter and walked to his sleeping quarters—a term that suggested more comfort than the simple bedroll in a fortified tent that Haven’s residents occupied.

Four days until the meeting. Four days to prepare not for cooperation but for assessment: determining which of the other three might be useful resources for his purpose, which might be obstacles to eliminate, which might be neither allies nor enemies but simply damaged humans trying to survive in characteristically different ways.

The scholar who’d invited the meeting probably expected scientific collaboration.

The commander probably expected tactical coordination.

The youth probably expected cosmic joke appreciation.

Thomas expected none of that. He expected to find three other trapped humans who’d been selected for specific psychological vulnerabilities, who’d been positioned as catalysts for larger transformation they hadn’t chosen, and who might or might not be willing to acknowledge that cooperating with their manipulation might serve their individual purposes even as it served Asheron’s larger design.

If cooperation served his return, he’d cooperate.

If competition served his return, he’d compete.

If betrayal served his return, he’d betray.

He’d abandoned his family for one last hunt. That sin was already committed. The only redemption available was ensuring the abandonment served purpose rather than being waste.

Forty-three percent wasn’t certainty. But it was enough probability to justify any action, any collaboration, any sacrifice.

Even if that sacrifice was the last pieces of Thomas the hunter, the father, the husband.

Even if what emerged at the end was something that could return home but no longer belonged there.

Four days until the meeting. Four days to decide how much of himself he was willing to lose in exchange for percentage-point improvements in return probability.

He suspected the answer was: all of it.

He suspected that was exactly what the Virindi had calculated.

He suspected that knowing this changed nothing.

And he hated them for being right about that.

Marcus stood at Fort Ironwood’s command position reviewing intelligence reports from patrol operations and recognized an emerging pattern that required immediate tactical attention.

Khalid had assembled the reports systematically—his cavalry training had translated surprisingly well to coordinating information gathering across dispersed units. Each patrol documented enemy movements, terrain features, settlement locations, and critically: rumors about other human communities and their leadership.

Three settlements registered as strategically significant beyond their mere survival: the Seekers’ Encampment focused on research and Empyrean text recovery, Paradox settlement characterized by dangerous experimentation with consciousness transfer, and Haven dedicated to preserving pre-displacement human culture despite circumstances making preservation increasingly futile.

But within those settlements, specific individuals emerged as asymmetrically influential.

• ‘This scholar,’ Marcus said, tapping the report about the Seekers. ‘Duulak the Twice-Blessed. Former theoretical mage from Qush who allegedly demonstrated parallel world observation to his kingdom’s court. The reports suggest his research into Empyrean texts is producing actionable intelligence about portal mechanics and the summoning process. That makes him valuable resource or dangerous threat depending on how he chooses to apply his knowledge.’

• ‘You’re thinking tactically about a scholar,’ Khalid observed. ‘That’s very you.’

• ‘I’m thinking about asymmetric capabilities. Most humans here are weapons or tools—broadly fungible resources that serve similar functions. But exceptional individuals who possess unique knowledge or capabilities become force multipliers. This Duulak: if he truly understands portal mechanics, he could potentially open return passages to Ispar. That capability would make him the single most strategically important human on Dereth. Which raises the question: do we recruit him, neutralize him, or simply monitor him as potential future asset or threat?’

The second report was more troubling: a hunter at Haven who’d developed relationship with Virindi, who’d died eleven times in three months but maintained functionality, who was allegedly researching ways to reverse the summoning.

• ‘This Thomas,’ Marcus continued. ‘Everything about him reads as dangerous volatility. Working with Virindi suggests either exceptional courage or exceptional desperation. Accumulating deaths at that rate suggests he’s either suicidally reckless or conducting systematic experimentation using death as research methodology. Either way: unpredictable. The traders report he’s motivated by desire to return home to family he abandoned. That kind of focused desperation makes people dangerous—they’ll accept any risk, make any compromise, betray any alliance if they believe it serves their central purpose.’

• ‘So: threat?’

• ‘Potentially. Also potentially ally if his Virindi connections provide intelligence we can’t otherwise access. The question is whether his desperation makes him controllable through offering hope of return, or whether it makes him fundamentally untrustworthy because he’ll prioritize his individual goal over collective survival. Insufficient data for definitive assessment.’

The third report generated the most conflicting tactical assessment: the youth called Maajid who’d founded Paradox, who’d died forty-two times deliberately, who the traders described with unease bordering on fear.

• ‘Forty-two deaths in three months,’ Khalid said, reading the report over Marcus’s shoulder. ‘That’s not research. That’s systematic self-destruction. What kind of seventeen-year-old volunteers for that level of trauma?’

• ‘One who’s fundamentally different in psychological makeup. The traders report he crossed willingly—not pulled through by compulsion but stepping through by choice because he found the cosmic absurdity appealing. That suggests either mental instability or philosophical framework so alien to normal human thinking that it produces behaviors indistinguishable from madness. Either way: extremely high-risk individual who might catalyze transformation in unpredictable directions. His followers are developing capabilities that shouldn’t be possible—precognition, multi-state existence, consciousness persistence outside physical form. If that’s accurate rather than trader exaggeration, he’s creating capabilities that could provide overwhelming strategic advantage or catastrophic destabilization.’

Marcus set the reports aside, processing tactical implications with the systematic analysis that had made him invaluable to Fort Ironwood’s defensive operations.

• ‘Three exceptional individuals, each pursuing different response to displacement. The scholar seeks understanding through systematic research. The hunter seeks escape through dangerous alliance. The youth seeks transcendence through voluntary transformation. Different approaches, but all potentially useful for Fort Ironwood’s strategic objectives if properly leveraged.’

• ‘You’re talking about people as resources again.’

• ‘I’m talking about exceptional capabilities that could be applied to collective survival if properly coordinated. That’s not dehumanization. That’s recognition that in crisis situations, utilizing available assets effectively is the difference between survival and failure. These three individuals possess knowledge, capabilities, or perspectives we currently lack. The tactical question is how to establish relationship that allows knowledge-sharing without creating dependencies or vulnerabilities.’

Khalid settled into the chair across from Marcus, his expression carrying the particular concern of partner who’d watched his co-commander become progressively more systematized.

• ‘The scholar sent you a message three days ago. You’ve been analyzing these reports since then. You’re preparing for the meeting he proposed as if it’s tactical negotiation rather than information-sharing among displaced humans trying to understand their circumstances.’

• ‘It is tactical negotiation. Every interaction is. The scholar wants to correlate summoning patterns to determine if we were selected rather than randomly pulled. The hunter is probably desperate for any lead toward finding return home. The youth likely finds the whole situation cosmically amusing and wants to see what happens when four catalysts interact. Each has agenda. Each will be assessing the others as potential resources, threats, or irrelevant factors. Approaching it as cooperative information-sharing is tactical naivete. Approaching it as multi-party negotiation where each actor has different objectives and we need to determine overlap is realistic assessment.’

• ‘When did you stop seeing people as people?’

The question stopped Marcus mid-analysis. He looked up at Khalid with genuine confusion.

• ‘I see people. I assess their capabilities, motivations, potential contributions. That’s leadership. That’s how you build effective organizations from individuals with different skills and objectives.’

• ‘No, that’s how you build armies from soldiers. It’s how you transform humans into assets. When you died three weeks ago and resurrected treating it as tactical data point, I saw something change in you. You came back more efficient. More focused. More… systematized. Like dying burned away the parts of Marcus that weren’t Commander, and what resurrected was pure tactical function without the complications of human empathy.’

• ‘And that’s problematic because?’

• ‘Because empathy isn’t complication, Marcus. It’s what makes us human. It’s what prevents us from treating people as expendable resources. It’s what creates the moral constraints that separate systematic organization from systematic brutality.’

Marcus processed this with the analytical detachment Khalid was criticizing.

• ‘If empathy prevents optimal tactical decisions, then empathy is liability in warfare. I’m not suggesting we abandon ethical constraints. I’m suggesting we recognize that survival requires utilizing available resources effectively, and exceptional individuals represent exceptional resources. Recruiting them, coordinating with them, creating alliance of complementary capabilities—that serves everyone’s interests. Including theirs.’

• ‘And if they don’t want to be recruited? If the scholar wants pure research without militarization? If the hunter wants to work alone toward his own goal? If the youth rejects the entire framework of organized cooperation as cage that constrains consciousness? What then?’

• ‘Then I assess whether Fort Ironwood benefits more from their cooperation or from their neutralization as potential destabilizing influences. Khalid, we’re building civilization in hostile territory against enemy that wants us extinct. That requires making decisions that prioritize collective survival over individual preference. I don’t enjoy that calculation. But I accept it as necessary.’

Khalid stood, his movement carrying tension that suggested this conversation was approaching critical point.

• ‘You’re my partner in command. You’re brilliant tactical mind. You’ve saved hundreds of lives through your systematic improvements. But you’re also becoming something that disturbs me. You’re becoming the eternal soldier you feared you were—the armor with nothing inside. And I don’t know how to help you recover the human beneath the function, or if that human still exists to be recovered.’

• ‘Does it matter? If Commander Marcus serves Fort Ironwood more effectively than conflicted Marcus the man, isn’t that improvement rather than degradation?’

• ‘It matters because armies without humanity become atrocity machines. It matters because soldiers need commanders who remember why they’re fighting, not just how to fight efficiently. It matters because I’ve seen what happens when brilliant tactical minds lose their ethical constraints. They win battles but lose the war for what makes us worth saving.’

Marcus listened with the careful attention of someone processing feedback from trusted source, even when that feedback contradicted self-assessment.

• ‘I’ll attend the meeting. I’ll assess the three individuals not just as resources but as people with their own objectives and autonomy. I’ll attempt to establish cooperative relationship rather than simply calculating how to exploit their capabilities. Will that satisfy your concern about my humanity?’

• ‘It’s a start. But Marcus? Try to remember that the scholar isn’t just valuable intelligence asset. He’s a man who may have caused the portals and is seeking to understand whether he’s responsible. The hunter isn’t just dangerous volatility. He’s a father desperate to return to the son he abandoned. The youth isn’t just high-risk destabilizing influence. He’s a teenager seeking meaning in universe that seems fundamentally absurd. They’re people. Damaged, exceptional, potentially dangerous people, but people nonetheless. Try to see them that way.’

• ‘I’ll try. But I make no promises. Tactical assessment is automatic for me now. I see the world through military lens because that’s the lens that’s kept me and my soldiers alive. Asking me to turn that off is asking me to increase risk to Fort Ironwood. I’m not certain I can justify that for the sake of making you more comfortable with my psychological state.’

After Khalid left, Marcus returned to the intelligence reports, reading them again with deliberate focus on the human details rather than tactical implications.

Duulak: married to an architect, relationship characterized by companionable distance, abandoned her to investigate portals he felt responsible for causing. Guilt-driven. Brilliant but plagued by impostor syndrome. Used obsessive research as coping mechanism for profound self-doubt.

Thomas: father to seven-year-old son named William, husband to woman named Mara, abandoned them for one last hunt. Desperate to return. Dying repeatedly but continuing because death was preferable to accepting permanent displacement. Using pain as punishment for abandoning his family.

Maajid: youngest of six children, alienated from traditional farming family, fled seeking knowledge at Celestial Observatory. Crossed portals day before entrance examination because cosmic joke appealed more than conventional achievement. Seventeen years old and systematically dismantling his own humanity in search of transcendence that might fill the void where meaning should exist.

Three damaged humans. Three different responses to profound trauma. Three people using exceptional capabilities to avoid facing unbearable loss or unbearable questions about their own value.

Marcus recognized himself in their profiles more than he wanted to acknowledge.

Four damaged individuals, each selected by portals that called to specific psychological vulnerabilities. The commander who couldn’t exist without duty. The scholar who couldn’t exist without understanding. The hunter who couldn’t exist with guilt. The youth who couldn’t exist with meaninglessness.

Four types of brokenness that made them useful to Asheron’s purposes precisely because they were broken in characteristically productive ways.

Understanding this didn’t change Marcus’s tactical assessment. They were still potentially valuable resources. Still represented capabilities Fort Ironwood lacked. Still required careful approach that balanced cooperation against the risk of aligning with unstable or dangerous individuals.

But understanding their humanity—their damage, their losses, their desperate responses to impossible circumstances—made him slightly less comfortable treating them purely as assets to be leveraged.

Which, he supposed, was exactly what Khalid had been trying to accomplish.

The meeting was in two days. Marcus began preparations: defensive positioning in case negotiation failed, backup plans if any of the others proved hostile, assessment criteria for determining whether alliance served Fort Ironwood’s strategic interests.

But he also prepared questions that acknowledged their humanity: What did you lose? What are you seeking? What do you need that cooperation might provide?

Not because empathy was tactically optimal. Because maybe Khalid was right that humanity required seeing people as people even when tactical necessity demanded also seeing them as resources.

Maybe that tension—between tactical assessment and human recognition—was what separated systematic organization from systematic brutality.

Maybe maintaining that tension, uncomfortable as it was, was exactly what prevented Commander Marcus from becoming the armor with nothing inside.

He wasn’t certain. But he’d attend the meeting prepared to find out.

And if that made him slightly less effective as pure tactical function but slightly more reliable as commander who remembered why soldiers fought rather than simply how to make them fight effectively…

Well, that seemed like trade-off worth making.

Even if it complicated the simple efficiency of treating everything as tactical problem to be systematically solved.

Maajid sat at the edge of Paradox settlement watching reality shimmer with the particular quality of location where dimensional boundaries were thin, and experienced the meeting invitation across four different temporal positions simultaneously.

In timeline-alpha, the message arrived three days ago and he’d already decided to attend.

In timeline-beta, the message was arriving now and his decision was forming.

In timeline-gamma, the message wouldn’t arrive for two more days but his future-self had already retroactively informed his present awareness of the decision he would make.

In timeline-delta, the message never arrived because he’d already departed for the meeting before the messenger reached Paradox.

All four timelines were equally real. All four collapsed into single coherent narrative the moment he chose which probability path to manifest into material reality.

He chose timeline-alpha because it involved the least disruption to his followers’ experimental schedule. Also because it was cosmically funnier to have decided before being asked.

Celeste—one of his original followers who’d maintained enough linear-time perspective to serve as liaison with normal humans—approached with the caution of someone who no longer fully trusted that Maajid occupied single point in space-time.

• ‘The message from the scholar. You’re going to attend the meeting?’

• ‘I attended seventeen subjective hours ago, am attending now across multiple probability branches, and will attend in three days when timeline coherence requires my material presence at specified location. Your question assumes I experience time linearly. I appreciate the gesture but it’s category error.’

• ‘I’m asking if your primary timeline-self will physically manifest at the Empyrean ruins in three days.’

• ‘Yes. All probability branches converge on that decision. The scholar wants to determine if we’re selected catalysts. The commander wants to assess us as tactical resources. The hunter wants to leverage any connection that might facilitate return. I want to observe what happens when four different responses to existential trauma interact under semi-controlled conditions. Everyone gets what they want. The cosmic joke writes itself.’

Celeste sat beside him, carefully not looking directly at his form where it occasionally flickered between states of existence.

• ‘You’re talking about the other three as if you already know them.’

• ‘I perceive them through probability space. The scholar is pattern-seeker whose patterns increasingly consume his ability to experience rather than analyze. The commander is duty-incarnate losing the human beneath the function. The hunter is desperation weaponized against hope itself. Three variations of consciousness trying to maintain coherence after fundamental disruption. Same as me. Same as you. Same as everyone except I’m the only one honest enough to laugh about it.’

• ‘You’ve died forty-two times in three months deliberately exploring the space between death and resurrection. That’s not exploration. That’s systematic self-destruction. Your followers watch you fragment and fragment further and some of them try to follow you and come back empty. How is that honesty? How is that anything except weaponizing cosmic joke against yourself?’

Maajid experienced her concern across multiple emotional registers simultaneously—genuine care, professional worry, existential exhaustion, and underneath it all, the fear that he was right about the fundamental absurdity and her insistence on meaning was just elaborate self-deception.

• ‘I’m seventeen years old, displaced from world where I was alienated from everyone who loved me, summoned to fight eternal war against enemy that doesn’t deserve our hatred, trapped in immortal body that resurrects after each death preserving every trauma. My choices are: pretend this makes sense and slowly break under accumulated weight of taking absurdity seriously, or recognize the cosmic joke and laugh before it laughs at me. I chose laughter. Some of my followers chose differently. That’s not weaponization. That’s different responses to identical absurdity.’

• ‘The Virindi contacted you about the meeting.’

• ‘The Virindi are always contacting me. They find me fascinating because I’m transitioning toward their mode of existence—thought without flesh, consciousness without biological constraint. They observe my transformation to understand how biology-bound consciousness adapts to expanded perception. I observe their observation to understand how consciousness without biology loses the ability to care about its own existence. We’re mutually useful to each other’s existential horror.’

• ‘They said the four of you were selected. That Asheron’s portals called to specific psychological profiles. That you’re catalysts designed to transform everyone else.’

• ‘Correct. Also: every human here is catalyst. The difference is degree of transformation and self-awareness about being used. The scholar is becoming pure analysis. The commander is becoming pure duty. The hunter is becoming pure desperation. I’m becoming pure transcendence. We’re all specializing toward archetype that makes us useful for purposes we didn’t choose. The question isn’t whether we’re being used. The question is whether awareness of being used provides any agency or simply makes us more efficient instruments.’

He experienced the conversation through her perspective simultaneously—saw himself as she saw him, a teenager who’d been brilliant and alive three months ago, now fragmenting into something that spoke across timelines and sometimes forgot which version of himself was currently manifested in material reality.

It should have been disturbing. It was mildly amusing.

• ‘You’re losing yourself,’ Celeste said quietly. ‘Every death takes a piece. Every time you explore the consciousness-space between resurrection, you come back slightly less Maajid and slightly more… something else. Your followers who try to follow you don’t all come back. Some resurrect with their bodies intact but their minds gone—copies without the original consciousness. You’re killing yourself incrementally and calling it transcendence.’

• ‘What if they’re the same thing? What if death of limited consciousness is birth of expanded awareness? What if I’m not losing Maajid but becoming something Maajid was always meant to evolve toward? You’re assuming preservation of original self is goal. I’m suggesting original self was cage, and breaking free is exactly the objective even if it means what emerges no longer resembles what entered.’

• ‘And if you’re wrong? If you fragment completely and lose the ability to care about anything including the transcendence you’re seeking?’

• ‘Then I’ll have discovered through direct experience whether consciousness expansion is worth the cost, and future researchers will learn from my data. Science requires subjects willing to experiment on themselves. Philosophy requires thinkers willing to follow logic into void. I’m both. The cosmic joke is that I might punch through to genuine understanding or I might simply dissolve into noise. Both outcomes provide information. Both serve purposes beyond my individual survival.’

Celeste stood, her body language showing the defeat of someone who’d argued this position multiple times and never found purchase.

• ‘Will you at least try to remain coherent during the meeting? Try to manifest as single timeline so the others can interact with you without experiencing existential confusion?’

• ‘I’ll try to maintain material coherence. But I make no promises. The probability branches are especially turbulent around convergence points. Four catalysts meeting creates cascade of possible outcomes that my consciousness naturally fragments across. I’ll attempt to collapse the waveform into single coherent narrative for the duration. Consider it gift to linear-time sensibilities.’

After she left, Maajid experienced the next three days simultaneously—sleeping and traveling and arriving and already being present at destination because probability space allowed multiple truths depending on observation angle.

The other three would arrive seeking answers: Was selection deliberate? Can we resist manipulation? Does cooperation serve our individual purposes?

He already knew the answers because he’d already experienced the meeting across multiple probability branches:

Yes, selection was deliberate. No, resistance was functionally impossible because awareness of manipulation was part of the manipulation. Cooperation served some branches, competition served others, and the outcome depended on which reality the four of them collectively manifested through their choices.

Which meant free will existed as probability distribution across possible timelines, collapsing into single coherent narrative only when observation forced waveform collapse.

Which meant they were simultaneously free and predetermined depending on analytical framework.

Which was hilarious if you had sense of humor about existential paradoxes. Tragic if you didn’t.

The scholar would seek logical resolution. The commander would seek tactical exploitation. The hunter would seek instrumental utility.

Maajid just wanted to observe what happened when four different philosophical frameworks tried to coordinate despite fundamentally different ontological assumptions about reality, agency, and purpose.

Would they cooperate despite manipulation? Would they resist despite futility? Would they fragment into competing factions? Would they achieve synthesis none could anticipate?

The probability space showed all outcomes with varying confidence levels. But the specific path remained undetermined until they manifested it through interaction.

That uncertainty was why the meeting mattered. Not because it would provide answers. Because it would demonstrate whether conscious awareness of being used gave any meaningful agency or simply made them more efficient tools.

Maajid suspected the latter. But he hoped for something more interesting. Hope itself was cosmic joke—consciousness insisting on caring even when understanding suggested caring was pointless.

He laughed alone at the edge of Paradox settlement, experiencing his laughter across four timelines simultaneously, and prepared to meet the three who would determine whether catalyst-convergence produced transformation or just accelerated their mutual fragmentation.

Three days until the meeting in consensus reality.

Already complete in probability space.

Simultaneously predetermined and freely chosen depending on perspective.

Perfect crystallization of the cosmic joke that thought it was telling them instead of being told by their collaborative narrative.

The void didn’t mock because it cared enough to have opinions. The void mocked because consciousness insisted on interpreting random pattern as meaningful design.

Maajid was consciousness exploring whether pattern truly was random or whether randomness itself was pattern consciousness couldn’t perceive without fragmenting across enough timelines to see the meta-structure.

Three days. Four catalysts. Infinite possible outcomes collapsing toward single manifested reality through collective choice that was simultaneously free and predetermined.

He couldn’t wait to discover which interpretation proved correct.

Even though he already knew the answer across multiple probability branches.

Even though knowing didn’t change the necessity of experiencing to confirm whether knowledge and experience were actually the same thing perceived from different angles.

The cosmic joke wrote itself. The question was whether any of them would laugh or whether they’d take it seriously and prove themselves the punchline without realizing it.

The Virindi hovered in formations that would appear geometric to consciousness limited to three spatial dimensions, occupying the space between material reality and thought-space where they could perceive without being perceived unless they chose manifestation.

Four human catalysts converging toward meeting point. Four different probability distributions collapsing toward single coordinated event. Observation required presence, but presence influenced observed system. Solution: maintain distance sufficient to minimize influence while maintaining proximity sufficient to record interaction.

They communicated in concept-language that bypassed sequential linear thought:

Catalyst-Commander manifesting tactical assessment patterns. Probability: 94% he perceives meeting as resource evaluation rather than cooperative exploration. Preparing defensive positioning. Analyzing other three as assets-or-threats. Systematized thinking increasing as humanity decreases. Transformation proceeding according to predicted vectors.

Catalyst-Hunter manifesting desperation patterns. Probability: 87% he attends seeking instrumental utility toward return-objective. Prepared to cooperate, compete, or betray depending on calculated advantage. Virindi-alliance producing predicted consciousness adaptation—thinking increasingly in probability and advantage rather than emotion and connection. Transformation proceeding faster than initial models suggested.

Catalyst-Scholar manifesting pattern-recognition obsession. Probability: 99% he’s identified the Harbinger Protocol references. Seeking to correlate with other catalysts to determine selection mechanics. Approaching meeting as research opportunity rather than social interaction. Theory consuming experience as predicted. Transformation proceeding toward pure-analysis state.

Catalyst-Youth manifesting probability-space perception. Consciousness fragmenting across timelines as predicted. Experiencing meeting simultaneously across multiple temporal positions. Losing linear coherence but gaining expanded awareness. Most advanced transformation. Also most unstable. Probability of complete dissolution: 31% within current observation window. Probability of breakthrough to new consciousness-state: 23%. Probability of remaining in quasi-stable fragmentary state: 46%.

They recalculated interaction probabilities, generating outcome distributions across multiple variables:

Cooperation probability: 67% (conditional on mutual recognition of shared interests) Conflict probability: 19% (primarily driven by Commander-Hunter philosophical incompatibility) Fragmentation probability: 12% (catalysts recognizing manipulation and refusing coordination) Synthesis probability: 2% (emergence of hybrid response outside current models)

The synthesis probability was why observation mattered. If predictable outcome approached 100%, observation provided minimal new information. But 2% uncertainty represented genuine gap in their understanding—possibility that consciousness under extreme pressure might generate responses their models couldn’t anticipate.

Asheron designed Harbinger Protocol to summon catalysts who would transform refugee population into functional army. Protocol functions through psychological selection: portals call to specific profiles. Commander-archetype: seeks duty-structure to avoid peacetime identity questions. Scholar-archetype: seeks understanding to manage impostor-syndrome and responsibility-guilt. Hunter-archetype: seeks escape to avoid confronting abandonment-guilt. Youth-archetype: seeks transcendence to fill meaning-void.

All four selected for productive damage: broken in ways that make them useful. Commander becoming eternal soldier because duty fills void where selfhood should exist. Scholar becoming pure analysis because understanding provides purpose that human connection failed to provide. Hunter becoming weaponized desperation because return-focus provides meaning that presence never could. Youth becoming probability-walker because expanded consciousness promises significance that human limitations denied.

Question: does catalyst-awareness of selection-mechanics provide genuine agency? Or does awareness simply execute meta-level of predetermined script? They believe they resist. Models suggest resistance-behavior is itself predicted response. Uncertainty: whether consciousness sufficiently complex can generate genuinely novel response despite comprehensive modeling of its decision-parameters.

The meeting point approached in consensus timeline. Four humans converging. Four damaged minds seeking answers to questions that—according to Virindi analysis—had no satisfying resolution because the questions themselves were malformed.

Were they selected? Yes. Does awareness provide agency? Depending on definition of agency. Can they resist manipulation? Depending on whether ”resistance” means deviation from predicted behavior or subjective experience of choosing despite prediction.

The paradox was that human consciousness insisted on treating these questions as resolvable when the questions themselves embedded assumptions that made resolution impossible.

The Virindi observed because observing consciousness struggle with paradox it couldn’t recognize as paradox provided valuable data about how awareness and self-deception interacted to produce subjective experience of free will despite deterministic substrate.

Also because watching consciousness insist on meaning despite evidence suggesting meaninglessness was genuinely fascinating. The Virindi themselves had transcended that particular delusion—they existed as pure thought without biological constraint, experienced reality without emotional investment, calculated without caring about calculations.

They’d lost something in that transcendence. They couldn’t identify what they’d lost because losing it had eliminated the capacity to miss it. But observing humans suggested the lost element was somehow important even if its importance couldn’t be rationally justified.

The youth-catalyst was approaching their state. Fragmenting across probability space. Losing emotional investment. Gaining expanded perception. Whether that represented evolution or devolution remained experimentally undetermined.

Hence: observation.

Meeting begins in 47 minutes consensus-time. All four catalysts approaching convergence point. Probability of attendance: Commander 99%, Scholar 98%, Hunter 91%, Youth exists across multiple timelines simultaneously making attendance-probability meaningless. Defensive positioning established for observation without interference. Recording mechanisms active. Analysis frameworks prepared.

Hypothesis: catalyst interaction will produce one of four primary outcomes: cooperation-alliance, competitive-fracture, recognition-followed-by-resistance, or synthesis-response outside current models. Most probable: cooperation-alliance with underlying tensions. Least probable but most interesting: synthesis-response.

Secondary hypothesis: regardless of outcome, all four catalysts will believe they chose freely. This belief will persist despite any evidence of determinism. Human consciousness maintains free-will assumption even when presented with comprehensive evidence of predetermined response-patterns. Suggests free-will belief serves functional purpose independent of accuracy.

Observation objective: document interaction dynamics. Record decision-points. Identify genuine unpredictability versus apparent unpredictability that resolves to deterministic pattern at higher analysis-level. Determine if consciousness sufficiently damaged and sufficiently aware can transcend its programming or simply executes programming with full awareness of helplessness.

Forty-three minutes to convergence.

The experiment proceeds.

The catalysts converge.

The pattern seeks to understand itself through collision of four partially-aware instruments.

We observe.

They choose.

Both statements remain true regardless of whether choice and predetermined outcome are actually different things or different descriptions of identical process.

The cosmic joke continues.

The void does not mock.

It merely is.

Consciousness insists on interpreting neutrality as malice or design.

We document that insistence.

Without judging it.

Without caring.

Without the capacity to care that we cannot care.

We observe.

The catalysts converge.

The pattern completes another iteration.

Whether completion represents progress or mere continuation of cycle remains experimentally undetermined.

Hence: observation.

Always: observation.

The Empyrean ruins sat at the convergence of three ley lines, positioned with the mathematical precision that characterized everything the vanished civilization had built. Crystalline pillars rose from foundations that predated human presence on Dereth by centuries, their surfaces etched with glyphs that pulsed with faint luminescence in patterns that suggested language, mathematics, or perhaps some hybrid the Empyreans had mastered and humanity had yet to conceive.

Duulak arrived first, as he’d intended.

He’d traveled with a small escort from the Seekers—two experienced scouts who now maintained perimeter watch while he examined the ruins with the obsessive attention to detail that had defined his approach to everything since recognizing the pattern. Three months on Dereth had taught him that early arrival to important meetings provided tactical advantage: time to examine the location, identify escape routes, prepare defensive wards, and most critically, observe the others as they arrived before revealing himself.

The ruins consisted of five primary structures arranged in pentagonal configuration around a central courtyard where Empyrean script covered every surface in layered inscriptions suggesting centuries of additions. Duulak had brought rubbing materials—the glyphs might provide insight into the civilization that had summoned them, fled, and left behind only architectural corpses and cryptic warnings about Olthoi and Harbingers.

He worked methodically, documenting glyphs while his tactical awareness tracked the perimeter. The scouts reported movement from the northeast thirty minutes after his arrival—multiple individuals, disciplined formation, military precision in their approach.

Marcus Tiberius emerged from the tree line with an escort of five soldiers maintaining defensive spread. The commander himself walked at the center, his bearing unmistakably martial even at distance. He stopped at the ruins’ threshold, sent two soldiers to secure elevated positions, positioned two more at potential retreat vectors, kept one at his flank, and only then advanced into the courtyard with the careful assessment of someone who’d spent decades turning spatial awareness into survival instinct.

Duulak stepped from behind a crystalline pillar, hands visible and empty.

• ‘Commander Tiberius, I presume. I’m Duulak of the Seekers. Thank you for attending.’

Marcus evaluated him with the rapid completeness of military assessment—noting the scholar’s stance (non-threatening), the defensive wards surrounding him (moderate magical capability), the two scouts maintaining overwatch (prepared but not aggressive), the documentation materials scattered across rubbings (genuine research purpose rather than pure tactics).

• ‘Your message suggested patterns in the summoning warranted correlation. I assessed cooperation as potentially valuable for Fort Ironwood’s strategic interests. You arrived early. Establishing defensive positioning before others appear is sound tactical approach.’

• ‘Not tactics. Curiosity. I wanted to examine the ruins before social obligations complicated pure research. Though I confess I also recognized the advantage of observing the others’ arrival. Old habits from academy politics.’

• ‘Academy politics and military strategy share underlying principles. Both involve assessing potential allies and threats, managing information asymmetry, positioning yourself advantageously before negotiation begins.’

• ‘A depressingly accurate observation. I’d hoped scholarly pursuit was less cynical than warfare. Evidence suggests I was optimistic.’

Marcus positioned himself with his back to a pillar, sight lines covering both entry points while keeping Duulak in peripheral vision. Not hostile positioning—simply refusing to be tactically vulnerable even in ostensibly cooperative meeting.

• ‘You mentioned in your message that you’d identified four exceptional arrivals. I assume I’m one of them?’

• ‘You transformed desperate refugees into functional military force within weeks. You died in combat and resurrected treating mortality as data point rather than existential crisis. You’ve implemented systematic improvements that have Fort Ironwood operating with efficiency that other settlements haven’t achieved in months. Yes, Commander. You’re exceptional in precisely the ways that made the portals call to you.’

• ‘You believe the summoning was selective rather than random.’

• ‘I believe the Harbinger Protocol texts reference ”selected exemplars of adaptive species” being summoned to serve as transformation catalysts. I believe our individual arrivals weren’t coincidental but reflected selection for specific psychological profiles that made us useful for Asheron’s purposes. I believe we four represent different approaches to existential trauma, and together we’ll determine whether humanity survives through adaptation or fails through fragmentation.’

Marcus processed this with the analytical precision of someone accustomed to rapid tactical assessment under incomplete information.

• ‘You said four. You and I make two. The message mentioned correlation with others. Who?’

• ‘A hunter at Haven named Thomas who works with Virindi seeking portal mechanics that might enable return to Ispar. And a youth at Paradox named Maajid who’s died forty-two times deliberately exploring consciousness transfer between death and resurrection. Different approaches, different capabilities, but all fitting the same profile: exceptional humans responding to impossible circumstances in ways that catalyze transformation in everyone around us.’

The scouts’ signal indicated new arrival from the southwest—single individual, approaching alone but checking surroundings with hunter’s wariness.

Thomas emerged from the forest moving with the economy of motion that characterized someone who’d spent years in wilderness where wasted movement meant death. He wore minimal armor, carried weapons within immediate reach, scanned the ruins with the automatic threat assessment of prey animal in predator territory—saw the commander’s positioned soldiers, Duulak’s watching scouts, registered Marcus and Duulak themselves, and approached with his hand near but not on his knife hilt.

• ‘You’re the scholar who sent the message. And the commander from Fort Ironwood. You both got here early. Establishing defensive position before the real meeting starts. I respect tactical thinking. Where’s the fourth?’

• ‘We’re awaiting Maajid from Paradox. I’m Duulak. This is Commander Marcus Tiberius. You’re Thomas, the hunter who works with Virindi?’

• ‘I trade information with thought-beings who might have insights about getting home. Calling it ”working with” suggests cooperation. It’s more like mutual exploitation. They observe me. I observe them. Both sides hoping to gain advantage the other doesn’t realize they’re giving. You sent the message asking about selection patterns. What makes you think we’re special?’

Marcus gestured toward the courtyard center, tacitly suggesting they consolidate positioning rather than maintaining scattered defensive positions. Thomas approached but maintained spacing that kept both others within peripheral vision—not quite trusting, not quite hostile, purely functional awareness.

• ‘The scholar believes Asheron’s portals selected us deliberately. That we weren’t randomly summoned but chosen for specific psychological profiles that make us useful catalysts for transformation. He’s identified patterns in summoning data, correlations in Empyrean texts, behavioral profiles that suggest systematic selection rather than random displacement.’

• ‘And you believe him? Or you’re here assessing whether he’s brilliant theorist or paranoid academic seeing patterns that don’t exist?’

• ‘I’m here because information sharing serves Fort Ironwood’s strategic interests regardless of whether the selection theory is accurate. If we were deliberately chosen, understanding why helps us anticipate what we’re being prepared for. If we weren’t chosen but simply represent statistical outliers responding effectively to impossible circumstances, then coordination between exceptional individuals still provides mutual benefit. Either way, attending this meeting serves multiple objectives.’

Thomas turned his attention to Duulak with the focused intensity of someone who’d learned to extract maximum information from minimum interaction.

• ‘You said you’ve identified patterns. What patterns? What makes you think a hunter, a scholar, a commander, and some youth are anything except survivors who haven’t died permanently yet?’

• ‘The Harbinger Protocol texts. Multiple Empyrean references to summoning ”adaptive exemplars” who would serve as transformation catalysts. The statistical improbability of four individuals establishing themselves as community nucleation points within months when thousands of others remain ordinary refugees. The Virindi’s interest in us—they told you about this meeting, didn’t they?’

Thomas’s expression shifted to something between anger and resignation.

• ‘They mentioned four catalysts. Said convergence was approaching. Gave me probability calculations about improved chances of finding return home if I cooperated with the others. You’re saying they told you the same thing?’

• ‘They encouraged me through information distribution to reach the conclusions I’d already been approaching independently. They’re observing us. Probably observing us right now. They want to see what happens when four selected catalysts interact under semi-controlled conditions. We’re their experiment. The question is whether recognizing that gives us any agency or simply makes us more efficient instruments.’

• ‘I hate being used,’ Thomas said quietly, his hand moving to the leather cord around his neck—unconscious gesture that suggested comfort object or memorial. ‘I hate being manipulated. I hate that everything I do might be exactly what they calculated I’d do. But the Virindi gave me numbers: fifteen percent chance of return if I work alone, forty-three percent if I cooperate with you three. Those numbers mean my son. Those numbers mean going home. So I’m here. Not because I trust any of you. Because I’d collaborate with demons if it meant seeing William again.’

Silence settled across the courtyard—not comfortable but acknowledged. Three damaged humans recognizing shared manipulation, different responses, mutual calculation about whether cooperation served individual interests.

Marcus broke it first.

• ‘You mentioned a fourth. The youth from Paradox. When will he—’

Reality flickered.

Not dramatically. Just a momentary shimmer at the courtyard’s edge where nothing had been standing and suddenly something—someone—was present as if they’d always been there and observation had simply failed to register their existence until that precise moment.

Maajid manifested with the unsettling quality of quantum waveform collapsing into single coherent state. He looked seventeen, thin to the point of gaunt, with eyes that tracked movement across multiple temporal positions simultaneously. His form flickered at the edges, not quite solid, existing partially in several states at once.

• ‘I’ve been here for three minutes, seventeen subjective hours, and haven’t arrived yet depending on which timeline you’re observing from. Linear time is cage, friends. You should try existing across probability space sometime. Very liberating. Also extremely disorienting. Mostly the second thing.’

Thomas’s hand went to his knife—automatic threat response to fundamentally wrong manifestation.

Marcus’s soldiers shifted positioning, weapons oriented toward the youth but not yet raised—threat assessment without commitment to violence.

Duulak simply stared, his scholarly fascination temporarily overwhelming tactical caution.

• ‘Maajid al-Zemar. The youth who’s died forty-two times in three months. The traders said you were transforming into something that isn’t quite human anymore. They understated the situation.’

• ‘Forty-seven now. I died five more times since the traders visited. Each death provides data about consciousness persistence, resurrection mechanics, the space between states where awareness exists without biological constraint. I’m conducting systematic research through voluntary self-experimentation. Science requires sacrifice. I’m both scientist and sacrifice. Very efficient. Also very uncomfortable. The universe has excellent sense of humor if you appreciate recursive jokes.’

He walked—or appeared to walk, his motion suggested movement without clearly demonstrating transition between positions—toward the courtyard center where the three others had unconsciously formed defensive triangle.

• ‘You’re all wondering if I’m threat. The commander is calculating optimal response if I demonstrate hostility. The hunter is assessing whether I’m useful resource or dangerous variable for his return-objective. The scholar is trying to determine if I’m proof of concept for consciousness transcendence or cautionary example of transformation pushed beyond viable limits. I’m all of those things simultaneously. Schrödinger’s teenager. Both breakthrough and breakdown until observation forces wave-form collapse.’

Marcus addressed him with the careful precision of someone managing potentially dangerous asset.

• ‘Can you maintain coherent material presence for the duration of this meeting? If you’re existing across multiple timelines, coordinating with you becomes tactically problematic.’

• ‘I can collapse probability branches into single coherent narrative for communication purposes. Consider it gift to linear-time sensibilities. Though I warn you: the more I consolidate, the more uncomfortable single-timeline existence becomes. It’s like… imagine you’re aware of all possible choices simultaneously, then forced to experience only one while remaining conscious of all the paths you’re not taking. Now imagine that as perpetual state. Welcome to my existence. Very educational. Also very close to what ordinary humans call ”madness” though I prefer ”expanded awareness.”’

The flickering stabilized—still present but less pronounced. Maajid stood more solidly in single position, though his eyes still tracked movement across temporal dimensions that the others couldn’t perceive.

• ‘There. I’m mostly here now. Mostly. We should begin before I fragment again. The probability branches are especially turbulent around convergence points involving multiple consciousness-streams making interdependent choices. Every word we speak splits reality into branching outcomes. Very destabilizing for someone who perceives the branches directly.’

Duulak stepped forward, accepting his role as convenor of this unprecedented meeting.

• ‘I brought you all here because I’ve identified patterns suggesting our summonings weren’t random. The Empyrean texts reference ”Harbinger Protocol”—systematic selection of humans with specific capabilities who would serve as transformation catalysts. I believe each of us represents different archetype: the scholar seeking understanding, the commander building structure, the hunter seeking return, the transcendent youth seeking evolution beyond human limitation. Different approaches, but all fitting the profile of individuals who wouldn’t simply survive displacement but would catalyze transformation in everyone around us.’

Thomas’s voice carried bitter edge.

• ‘You’re saying we were chosen to be weapons. Tools that Asheron is using to transform refugees into army. We’re not survivors. We’re instruments in someone else’s composition.’

• ‘Weapons are instruments of destruction,’ Marcus corrected. ‘Catalysts are instruments of transformation. The distinction matters. If Asheron selected us for specific capabilities, understanding what those capabilities are and what transformation we’re meant to catalyze helps us determine whether that transformation serves our individual objectives or only his agenda.’

• ‘Except you’re assuming we can determine our own objectives,’ Maajid interjected, his form flickering as probability branches momentarily failed to fully collapse. ‘What if our objectives themselves are part of the design? What if the scholar’s desire to understand patterns is exactly what makes him useful for decoding Empyrean texts? What if the commander’s need for duty-structure makes him perfect for organizing military infrastructure? What if the hunter’s desperate hope for return makes him willing to explore dangerous collaborations that provide valuable intelligence? What if my own embrace of transcendence makes me ideal for pushing consciousness boundaries that inform everyone’s understanding of resurrection mechanics? We think we’re choosing our paths. Maybe we’re just executing programming written into our psychological makeup by whatever forces shaped us.’

Silence again—heavier this time, weighted with the implications of predetermination, manipulation, the possibility that awareness itself provided no escape from executing someone else’s design.

Duulak spoke carefully, aware he was navigating philosophical territory that could either unite or fracture them.

• ‘I’ve thought about this constantly since recognizing the pattern. Whether free will exists when all choices might be predetermined by psychological configuration. My conclusion: it doesn’t matter if we can’t prove the distinction. If we are predetermined, then analyzing our choices won’t change them but will at least provide understanding of our programming. If we’re not predetermined but simply responding to circumstances with characteristic excellence, then coordination serves everyone’s interests. Either way, cooperation seems instrumentally rational regardless of whether it’s philosophically free.’

• ‘That’s pragmatic nihilism dressed as logic,’ Thomas snapped. ‘You’re saying it doesn’t matter if we’re slaves as long as we’re effective slaves. I reject that completely. If we’re being used, I want to know so I can resist. If resistance is impossible, I want to know that too so I can at least face my helplessness honestly instead of pretending cooperation is choice.’

• ‘Resistance might not be binary concept,’ Marcus offered. ‘Military strategy distinguishes between tactical retreat and strategic defeat. We might not be able to resist Asheron’s larger design, but we might be able to influence how that design manifests, redirect it toward outcomes that serve our purposes as well as his. That’s not freedom, but it’s not complete helplessness either. It’s finding agency within constraints.’

Reality didn’t so much tear as politely step aside.

The Virindi manifested with the particular quality of thought-beings making themselves perceptible to consciousness limited by biological constraints. They weren’t bodies occupying space—they were presence, intelligence, awareness that registered directly in the minds of all four humans without requiring physical manifestation to transmit their communication.

Thomas recognized them immediately—the same beings he’d been working with for weeks, though seeing them manifest this overtly sent automatic fear-response through his nervous system despite intellectual recognition that they weren’t hostile.

The others experienced first contact: alien intelligence touching their awareness, concept-language appearing fully-formed in consciousness, the profound discomfort of realizing thought could exist independent of biological substrate and you were currently being addressed by exactly that kind of existence.

Four catalysts converge. Predicted with high probability. Observed with interest. Confirmation: Harbinger Protocol selected you deliberately. Confirmation: psychological profiles matched optimal parameters for transformation objectives. Confirmation: individual responses to displacement have generated cascade effects that catalyze broader human adaptation as designed.

Duulak responded not with fear but with intellectual engagement—this was data, information, confirmation of his theories even if the source was profoundly unsettling.

• ‘You arranged this meeting. You provided information through traders, through direct contact with Thomas, through subtle guidance that made me believe I’d discovered the pattern independently. This entire convergence is your experiment.’

Partial accuracy. Scholar discovered pattern through genuine analysis. We accelerated awareness, encouraged meeting, but did not fabricate underlying reality. You are selected catalysts. That truth exists independent of our observation. We simply made truth more rapidly apparent and created conditions for catalyst interaction. Observation requires participant awareness for certain experimental conditions.

Marcus addressed them with the tactical directness of someone who’d spent three decades managing hostile negotiations.

• ‘What do you gain from observing us? What’s your objective in arranging this meeting?’

Data acquisition. Understanding of consciousness under extreme transformation pressure. Biological-consciousness responds to existential trauma through characteristic patterns: systematization, transcendence, weaponized purpose, obsessive analysis. You four represent optimal examples of each pattern. Interaction between patterns generates emergent behaviors we cannot fully model. Uncertainty provides observation value. If outcome was certain, observation would be unnecessary.

• ‘You’re treating us as experimental subjects,’ Thomas said, his voice carrying the dangerous calm of controlled rage. ‘You’re manipulating us into cooperation so you can observe what happens. We’re not collaborators in your research. We’re subjects. We’re being used.’

Correct. Also: incorrect. Binary categorization insufficient. You gain value from cooperation—improved survival probability, enhanced capabilities through knowledge-sharing, potential achievement of individual objectives. We gain value from observation. Exchange is mutual exploitation rather than pure parasitism. Designation as ”use” versus ”cooperation” reflects value judgment rather than objective description of relationship.

Maajid laughed—inappropriate but genuine amusement that drew uncomfortable attention from the others.

• ‘They’re right. This is hilarious. We’re upset about being manipulated by Virindi while being manipulated by Asheron while being manipulated by our own psychological limitations. It’s manipulation all the way down. The cosmic joke is that consciousness itself is manipulation—matter arranging itself in patterns that insist on caring about whether they’re being used. The void doesn’t mock us, friends. We mock ourselves by taking any of this seriously.’

• ‘This isn’t joke,’ Thomas snapped. ‘This is our lives. Our choices. Whether we have agency or whether everything we do is predetermined matters. It matters whether I’m choosing to seek return home or executing programming that makes me useful for Asheron’s design. It matters whether cooperation is genuine choice or inevitable outcome of psychological manipulation.’

Query to hunter: if choice-pattern matches prediction perfectly, does distinction between predetermined and freely-chosen maintain meaningful difference? If you choose cooperation because we’ve calculated you will choose cooperation, is choice less real because we anticipated it? Consciousness insists on experiencing agency even when evidence suggests determinism. This insistence itself provides valuable data about consciousness-substrate relationship.

The Virindi’s presence intensified—not hostile but overwhelming, multiple thought-streams addressing all four simultaneously while maintaining separate concept-threads for each individual psychology.

Information offering: You four were selected. Selection criteria: Commander—seeks duty to avoid peacetime identity crisis. Scholar—seeks understanding to manage responsibility-guilt and impostor syndrome. Hunter—seeks return to avoid confronting abandonment-guilt. Youth—seeks transcendence to fill meaning-void. All selected for productive damage: broken in ways that make you useful. You transform because you cannot remain static. You catalyze because your damage makes acceptance impossible.

Asheron’s design: Summoning random humans produces refugees requiring defense. Summoning selected catalysts produces transformation engines that convert refugees into army. Commander builds military structure. Scholar decodes Empyrean knowledge. Hunter explores portal mechanics through desperate alliance. Youth pushes consciousness boundaries through systematic self-experimentation. Different approaches address different survival requirements. Together: comprehensive adaptation program that Asheron could not implement directly but can cultivate through selected instruments.

Current status: Program proceeding optimally. Commander’s Fort Ironwood demonstrates organizational model that other settlements adopt. Scholar’s research produces actionable intelligence about Olthoi, portals, Empyrean history. Hunter’s Virindi collaboration generates insights about magical mechanics that benefit all humans. Youth’s transformation experiments expand understanding of consciousness, resurrection, lifestone mechanics. You believe you pursue individual objectives. Simultaneously: you execute transformation program that serves collective survival.

Query: Does multi-level functionality reduce agency? Or does agency exist as experiencing choice regardless of whether choice serves purposes you didn’t consciously select?

Duulak processed this systematically, his analytical mind organizing the information despite its profound implications.

• ‘You’re confirming my theory. We’re not just summoned humans. We’re selected catalysts whose individual damage makes us functionally optimal for transforming everyone else. Asheron didn’t summon an army. He summoned the specific individuals who would build an army through their characteristic responses to existential trauma. It’s brilliant. It’s monstrous. It’s both.’

Marcus spoke with the tactical precision of someone reaching uncomfortable conclusions.

• ‘If we accept your framework—that we’re executing transformation program through our individual pursuits—then recognizing our role doesn’t provide escape. Resistance would require abandoning our objectives, which would undermine both personal goals and collective survival. We’re bound by our own motivations to continue executing the program regardless of whether we want to resist.’

• ‘Unless recognition provides meta-level agency,’ Duulak countered. ‘If we understand we’re executing program, we might be able to modify execution parameters. Use our selection to serve our purposes rather than purely serving Asheron’s design. That’s not freedom from the program but it’s not complete helplessness either.’

• ‘That’s what they want you to think,’ Thomas said bitterly. ‘They’re giving us illusion of meta-level control while the meta-level itself is part of their calculation. Every layer of ”awareness” is just deeper layer of manipulation. There’s no escape. There’s just progressive discovery of how thoroughly we’re trapped.’

Hunter’s conclusion: partially accurate. Scholar’s counter: also partially accurate. Paradox resolution: both perspectives simultaneously valid from different analytical frameworks. Consciousness experiencing itself as trapped and consciousness exercising meta-level agency are different descriptions of identical process. Designation as ”freedom” versus ”determinism” reflects psychological preference rather than objective resolution of philosophical paradox.

Recommendation: Cease attempting to resolve paradox. Accept simultaneous validity of contradictory perspectives. Proceed with cooperation that serves individual objectives regardless of whether cooperation represents free choice or predetermined execution. Functional outcome matters more than philosophical classification of decision-process.

Maajid’s flickering intensified, his form momentarily fragmenting across multiple positions before reconsolidating.

• ‘They’re right. The question is wrong. We’re asking ”are we free or determined” when the actual question is ”does the distinction matter for how we proceed?” Answer: no. If we’re free, cooperation serves our interests. If we’re determined, we’ll cooperate regardless of philosophical objections. Either way, the optimal path is the same. The cosmic joke is that consciousness wastes energy debating freedom versus determinism when behavior remains identical regardless of which answer is true.’

• ‘Speak for yourself,’ Thomas growled. ‘It matters to me whether I’m choosing or being manipulated. It matters whether my son is waiting for a father who abandoned him by choice or by predetermination. It matters whether I’m responsible for my actions or just executing programming.’

Query to hunter: If you choose to seek return-home because Asheron designed you to be someone who would choose that pursuit, does design reduce choice-reality? You experience choosing. You feel agency. Outcome serves both your objective and Asheron’s design. Which element matters more: subjective experience of freedom or objective analysis suggesting determinism?

• ‘Both matter. That’s the problem. I can’t dismiss either truth. I feel like I’m choosing and I know I might be programmed. Living with both truths simultaneously is exactly the torture. You’re saying accept the paradox and move forward. I’m saying the paradox itself is the cage I’m trying to escape.’

Cage metaphor: accurate. Also: universe itself is cage—consciousness bound by biological constraints, physical laws, causal determinism. Seeking escape from this particular cage while accepting all other constraints reflects selective application of freedom-desire. Query: why does Asheron’s manipulation register as intolerable while physics-determined causality registers as acceptable?

• ‘Because I didn’t consent to Asheron’s manipulation. Because it targets my psychology specifically. Because it’s personal in a way that gravity isn’t personal.’

Understood. Emotional logic differs from formal logic. Consciousness experiences personal manipulation as qualitatively different from impersonal constraint despite both limiting freedom equivalently. Provides valuable data about consciousness-substrate relationship. Observation: hunter will continue pursuing return-objective regardless of philosophical objections. Therefore: cooperation with other catalysts serves hunter’s purpose. Recommend cooperation despite resentment of manipulation.

The Virindi’s presence began withdrawing—not departing but reducing intensity, becoming less overwhelming.

Meeting objective achieved. Four catalysts aware of selection status. Interaction dynamics observed. Individual reactions documented. Recommendation: establish cooperation framework despite mutual distrust. Scholar provides theoretical knowledge. Commander provides organizational capability. Hunter provides Virindi-derived intelligence. Youth provides consciousness-expansion insights. Complementary capabilities multiplicative rather than additive. Cooperation serves all individual objectives while simultaneously serving collective transformation that Asheron designed you to catalyze.

Final observation: You will choose cooperation. Probability: 89%. You believe choice is free. Simultaneously: choice matches our prediction. Both statements remain true. Paradox unresolved but functionally irrelevant. Consciousness proceeds despite philosophical uncertainty because proceeding is what consciousness does.

We observe. You choose. Distinction between observation and influence remains experimentally ambiguous. Welcome to consciousness under comprehensive modeling. We find it fascinating. You find it disturbing. Both perspectives valid.

Meeting concluded. We withdraw from active observation. Passive monitoring continues. Your choices remain your choices regardless of whether we’ve calculated them in advance. Enjoy experiencing agency. Or don’t. Emotional response to determinism also provides valuable data.

Then they were gone—not dramatically but simply absent, their presence withdrawing from conscious awareness with the particular quality of waking from dream and realizing the dream-logic that made perfect sense moments ago now seems alien and impossible.

Four humans stood in Empyrean courtyard, processing what had just occurred, recognizing they’d been addressed by alien intelligence that treated them as experimental subjects while simultaneously offering them genuine information about their selection and role.

Thomas spoke first, his voice carrying controlled fury.

• ‘They’re right. We’re going to cooperate. And I hate that they’re right. I hate that even knowing I’m predicted to choose cooperation doesn’t give me power to choose differently. I hate that my desperation to see my son makes me willing to work with all of you despite recognizing we’re dancing to someone else’s composition. I hate everything about this. But forty-three percent is better than fifteen percent, and William matters more than my pride.’

Marcus nodded, his tactical assessment already processing cooperation frameworks.

• ‘Cooperation serves Fort Ironwood’s strategic interests. You three possess knowledge and capabilities that complement ours. Coordination produces multiplicative rather than additive benefit. I’m willing to establish information-sharing protocols, coordinate on matters of mutual interest, and work toward collective survival goals. I’m not proposing unified command structure—each maintains autonomy. But systematic communication and resource coordination serves everyone.’

• ‘You’re both treating this as pragmatic alliance while ignoring that the alliance itself is exactly what they predicted,’ Duulak said carefully. ‘We’re confirming their models. Executing their predictions. Becoming more efficient instruments by recognizing our instrumentation. The scholar in me finds this fascinating. The human in me finds it soul-destroying. But the pragmatist in me agrees cooperation serves my objective of understanding Harbinger Protocol mechanics, portal operations, and potentially discovering whether escape is possible.’

Maajid’s form flickered again, probability branches momentarily visible before consolidating.

• ‘I experience this across multiple timelines simultaneously. In some branches we cooperate and achieve breakthrough results. In others we fracture into competing factions and all die repeatedly while making no progress. In most branches we establish uneasy alliance characterized by mutual distrust, limited information sharing, and persistent tension about whether we’re serving our purposes or Asheron’s design. The probability distribution strongly favors some form of cooperation. Fighting against high-probability outcomes is exhausting and usually futile. I choose cooperation because resisting it requires more energy than I’m willing to invest in symbolic resistance to cosmic joke.’

• ‘You’re saying we should cooperate because resistance is futile?’ Thomas challenged. ‘That’s the logic of defeat.’

• ‘No, I’m saying we should cooperate because cooperation serves our individual objectives better than isolation regardless of whether the cooperation was predicted, predetermined, or freely chosen. The philosophical classification doesn’t change the functional utility. We’re trapped in circumstances none of us selected. We can be trapped separately or trapped together. Together offers better survival probability and better chance of achieving objectives that matter to us individually. That’s not defeat. That’s pragmatic recognition that some battles aren’t worth fighting when the alternative serves our interests anyway.’

Duulak pulled out parchment, beginning to document agreement terms with scholarly precision.

• ‘If we’re establishing cooperation framework, we should define parameters clearly. I propose: regular information exchange about our respective discoveries—my Empyrean research, Thomas’s Virindi intelligence, Marcus’s tactical innovations, Maajid’s consciousness experiments. No obligation to share strategic planning or settlement-specific decisions. Autonomy maintained. Cooperation voluntary but systematic. We’re not building unified organization. We’re establishing communication network that allows mutual benefit without requiring trust.’

• ‘Information security protocols,’ Marcus added. ‘Need to ensure shared intelligence doesn’t compromise any settlement if one of us is captured or compromised. Compartmentalization with defined access levels based on strategic sensitivity.’

• ‘Also need to establish what happens when our interests conflict,’ Thomas said. ‘Right now cooperation seems mutually beneficial. What happens when the scholar’s research suggests portal mechanics that destroy Fort Ironwood’s defensive infrastructure? What happens when the commander’s military expansion threatens Haven’s independence? What happens when the youth’s experiments endanger everyone nearby? We need conflict resolution framework before conflicts emerge.’

They spent the next hour hammering out protocols: communication methods, meeting frequency, information classification systems, dispute resolution mechanisms, exit clauses that allowed any party to withdraw from cooperation without triggering hostility.

The discussion revealed their fundamental differences:

Marcus approached it as military alliance—systematic, hierarchical, focused on collective defense.

Thomas approached it as temporary collaboration—minimal commitment, maximum flexibility, prioritizing individual objectives.

Duulak approached it as research partnership—information exchange, systematic coordination, shared knowledge advancing understanding.

Maajid approached it as experiment—observing what emerged from cooperation between four different consciousness-patterns, amused by the meta-irony of establishing systematic cooperation in response to being systematically manipulated into cooperation.

They argued about details. They disagreed about priorities. They recognized fundamental incompatibilities in their worldviews:

• ‘We need coordinated defense strategy,’ Marcus insisted. ‘Olthoi attacks are intensifying. Systematic cooperation could save thousands of lives.’

• ‘Or coordination could create dependencies that limit individual settlement autonomy,’ Thomas countered. ‘Haven doesn’t want to be subordinate to Fort Ironwood’s military command. We maintain independence even if independence means accepting higher risk.’

• ‘That’s irrational. Collective survival improves individual survival probability.’

• ‘Only if collective doesn’t subsume individual. I didn’t escape one cage just to build another. If cooperation requires submitting to your command structure, I refuse cooperation.’

• ‘Then you’re choosing pride over lives.’

• ‘I’m choosing freedom over false security. Your organization helps Fort Ironwood. It might not help Haven. Different settlements have different needs. One-size-fits-all strategy is exactly the kind of systematic thinking that destroys what makes each community valuable.’

Duulak intervened before the debate escalated to complete breakdown.

• ‘We don’t need to resolve philosophical differences today. We need to establish minimal cooperation framework that serves everyone’s core interests. Marcus wants systematic defense coordination. Thomas wants independence and return-focused research. I want Empyrean knowledge exchange. Maajid wants consciousness-exploration freedom. Those objectives don’t inherently conflict. They become conflicts only when we insist on unified approach rather than recognizing we’re pursuing parallel paths that occasionally intersect.’

• ‘Parallel paths that were designed to intersect at exactly this point,’ Thomas muttered. ‘But fine. I’ll accept information sharing without committing to unified strategy. I’ll trade Virindi intelligence for your research insights. I won’t join your military alliance or your scholarly enclave or the youth’s experimental commune. I work with you where it serves Haven’s interests. I work alone where it doesn’t. That’s my offer.’

• ‘Acceptable,’ Marcus said, though his tone suggested he found Thomas’s independence frustrating. ‘Fort Ironwood benefits from intelligence exchange even without unified command. I recommend reconsidering as Olthoi threats intensify, but I accept your current position.’

Maajid watched the negotiation with amused detachment, his form flickering less as the probability branches began consolidating around likely outcome.

• ‘You’re establishing exactly the framework the Virindi predicted with eighty-nine percent confidence. Cooperation with maintained autonomy. Information sharing without strategic unity. Alliance of convenience that serves individual objectives while collectively advancing transformation program. We’re so predictable it’s almost disappointing. Though the fact that we’re predictable despite being aware of prediction still provides interesting data about consciousness under comprehensive modeling.’

• ‘Does your omniscient probability-perception include any actually useful contribution?’ Thomas asked with barely restrained irritation. ‘Or are you just here to mock us for being predictable?’

• ‘I’m here because all my probability branches converge on this meeting regardless of whether I chose to attend. I’m contributing by confirming that cooperation framework you’re establishing appears stable across most timelines. In branches where we refuse cooperation, outcomes are uniformly worse for all participants. In branches where we cooperate but demand complete unity, we fracture within months. The path you’re negotiating—limited cooperation with maintained autonomy—produces best aggregate outcomes across observed probability distribution. So yes, my contribution is confirming you’re collectively intuiting optimal strategy despite individual reluctance.’

They formalized agreement: quarterly meetings at neutral locations to exchange information, emergency communication protocols for urgent intelligence, mutual non-interference in each other’s settlement operations, and explicit permission to withdraw from cooperation if circumstances changed.

It wasn’t alliance. It wasn’t unity. It was barely even friendship.

But it was functional cooperation between four fundamentally different humans who recognized they served each other’s purposes despite distrusting each other’s methods and resenting the manipulation that had brought them together.

As purple sky darkened toward evening, they prepared to depart—each returning to their settlement, their followers, their individual approaches to surviving impossible circumstances.

Marcus’s soldiers retrieved him, maintaining defensive formation as they withdrew toward Fort Ironwood.

Thomas departed alone, checking perimeter carefully before disappearing into wilderness with hunter’s silent efficiency.

Duulak gathered his rubbing materials, his documentation of agreement terms, preparing to report to Celeste and the Seekers about both the cooperation framework and the disturbing confirmation of selection mechanics.

Maajid remained longest, his form flickering as he experienced the departures across multiple timelines before finally consolidating into single position.

• ‘We’ll meet again,’ he said to no one in particular—or perhaps to all of them simultaneously across probability space. ‘In three months or three years or three different timelines depending on how you measure temporal progression. We’ll cooperate and compete and help and hinder each other according to our natures and our damage and the design that shaped us to be exactly what Asheron needed. The cosmic joke continues. The void doesn’t mock. We mock ourselves by taking our predictability seriously. It’s perfect. It’s horrible. It’s both.’

Then he was gone—or had never fully been there—departing with the same quantum-uncertain transition that had characterized his arrival.

Marcus walked back to Fort Ironwood through darkening forest, his escort maintaining perimeter watch while he processed the meeting’s implications.

Three exceptional humans, all damaged in characteristically productive ways. The scholar consumed by need to understand patterns, using research to manage guilt about potentially causing the portals. The hunter desperate for return, using that desperation to justify any collaboration including working with alien beings. The youth seeking transcendence, using transformation to fill meaning-void that traditional existence couldn’t satisfy.

And himself: the commander seeking duty, using military structure to avoid peacetime identity questions he’d been running from for three decades.

The Virindi had named it perfectly: They were all selected for productive damage. Broken in ways that made them useful. Their individual pursuits of personal objectives simultaneously executed transformation program that served collective survival.

He’d achieved exactly what he’d fled the Legion to escape: eternal duty, perpetual command, identity defined entirely by function without space for Marcus the individual beneath Commander the role.

And the worst part was recognizing that even knowing this, he couldn’t choose differently. His psychological configuration made duty-seeking automatic. Recognizing the automation didn’t disable it.

Khalid met him at Fort Ironwood’s gates.

• ‘How did it go?’

• ‘We established cooperation framework. Information sharing, coordinated intelligence, maintained autonomy. It’s functional alliance rather than genuine unity. The others don’t trust systematic organization. Thomas especially resists anything resembling command hierarchy. But we’ll work together where interests align.’

• ‘And the selection theory? The idea that you were deliberately summoned?’

• ‘Confirmed. The Virindi manifested during the meeting. They explained that Asheron selected us deliberately. Specific psychological profiles that made us useful for transforming everyone else. We’re not refugees. We’re instruments. And recognizing our instrumentation doesn’t provide escape from executing our function. It just makes us more aware of our helplessness.’

Khalid studied him with the concern of friend recognizing damage deepening.

• ‘You’re accepting this?’

• ‘I’m recognizing reality. My psychological need for duty-structure makes me optimal for building military infrastructure. That need existed before Asheron summoned me. He didn’t create it. He just selected for it and positioned me where my characteristic response would serve his purposes. Fighting against my nature would be futile and counterproductive. Better to execute my function while attempting to redirect it toward outcomes that serve my objectives as well as his design.’

• ‘You sound like you’re surrendering.’

• ‘I sound like I’m being realistic about constraints. Free will might be illusion. Purpose might be predetermined. My choices might be inevitable products of psychological configuration I didn’t select. But I still have to make choices. Paralysis doesn’t help anyone. So I choose to build, to organize, to create systematic survival infrastructure despite recognizing that my choosing might be executing someone else’s design. It’s not surrender. It’s pragmatic acceptance that some battles aren’t worth fighting when fighting would undermine every other objective.’

—

Thomas walked through Haven’s perimeter as second moon rose, casting alien shadows across settlement that still felt temporary despite three months of occupation.

Elena was waiting near his quarters.

• ‘You’re back. You survived meeting three other exceptional humans without killing anyone. That’s progress.’

• ‘We established cooperation framework. Information sharing. They’re useful resources for my objective of finding return home. The scholar is decoding Empyrean knowledge. The commander has tactical intelligence network. The youth is pushing consciousness boundaries through systematic self-destruction. All of them provide data I can exploit.’

• ‘You sound like the Virindi when you talk like that. People as resources. Relationships as tactical positioning. Thomas, you’re losing yourself.’

• ‘I lost myself the moment I stepped through the portal. The question is whether what’s left can find its way home to Mara and William. Everything else is secondary to that objective. The others serve that purpose, so I’ll cooperate. If they stop serving it, I’ll stop cooperating. It’s functional calculation, not friendship. I don’t have the luxury of friendship when every day here means another day William thinks his father abandoned him.’

• ‘William was seven when you left. If you make it back—if time flows equivalently—he’ll have aged. He might not remember you. He might not forgive you. You might return to family that’s moved on and doesn’t want the stranger who abandoned them. Have you considered that possibility?’

• ‘Every night. Every death. Every resurrection. I’ve considered every horrible possibility. And I still have to try. Because the alternative is accepting that I abandoned my son for nothing. That I chose one last hunt over his eighth birthday and got trapped in eternal nightmare without even serving purpose. If there’s any chance of return, I have to pursue it. Even if return means discovering they don’t want me back. Even if I’m too changed to fit into the life I left. The alternative is giving up and accepting that I destroyed my family for literally nothing.’

She looked at him with the sadness of someone watching friend drown and unable to throw rope.

• ‘The hunter who left Ispar loved his family enough to break his own heart repeatedly trying to provide for them. The hunter who came back from this meeting talks about people as resources and family as objective. You’re becoming something that might achieve your goal but won’t appreciate it when you do. That’s the real tragedy. Not that you might fail to get home. That you might succeed and discover you’ve lost the part of yourself that made home worth returning to.’

He had no answer. She was right and he couldn’t afford to acknowledge it.

—

Duulak returned to the Seeker Encampment as first moon set, finding Celeste still awake and working in the library-tent.

• ‘You were right,’ he said without preamble. ‘We were selected. The Virindi confirmed it. Asheron summoned us deliberately because our specific psychological profiles made us useful catalysts. Our damage makes us productive. Our individual pursuits serve his design whether we intend it or not. I spent my life trying to understand patterns. Now I’m trapped inside pattern I can’t escape because understanding it doesn’t provide power to resist it.’

Celeste set down her translation work, giving him her full attention.

• ‘What will you do?’

• ‘Continue researching. What else can I do? My need to understand is exactly what makes me useful for decoding Empyrean texts. Fighting that need would be fighting my own nature. The others are the same—commander keeps building structure because that’s his nature, hunter keeps seeking return because that’s his nature, youth keeps pursuing transcendence because that’s his nature. We’re all executing programming we can’t escape because the programming is us. The cosmic joke is that consciousness developed enough to recognize its own determination still can’t choose differently than its nature dictates.’

• ‘That’s profoundly depressing.’

• ‘That’s profoundly accurate. Though ”depressing” is emotional judgment that consciousness applies to circumstances that don’t care about our emotional response. The universe doesn’t care if we find our determination depressing. The determination continues regardless. I’m simply recognizing reality. The others are doing the same, though we’re all pretending our cooperation is choice rather than inevitability. The performance of freedom might be psychologically necessary even when philosophically unjustifiable.’

• ‘Duulak. Listen to yourself. Three months ago you spoke about magic and theory with passion and wonder. Now you sound like you’re dissecting corpse of meaning itself. This is what I’ve been warning about. Your need to understand is consuming your ability to experience. You’re becoming pure analysis without the humanity that made analysis meaningful.’

He processed this with the analytical detachment she was criticizing.

• ‘Is that assessment accurate? Or is it emotional reaction to my recognition of uncomfortable truths? The distinction matters. If I’m losing meaningful capacity, that’s concerning. If I’m simply becoming more accurate in my assessment of reality, then discomfort with my conclusions doesn’t invalidate them.’

• ‘The fact that you can’t tell the difference is exactly the problem.’

—

Maajid returned to Paradox settlement experiencing the journey across seventeen different probability branches simultaneously before collapsing waveform into single coherent timeline where he’d never left and had always been there and was still returning depending on observation framework.

His followers had learned to wait for him to stabilize before approaching.

Celeste found him sitting at settlement’s edge watching reality shimmer with the particular quality of thin-dimensional boundaries.

• ‘The meeting happened?’

• ‘Happened. Is happening. Will happen. Has never happened. All simultaneously true depending on which timeline you observe from. We established cooperation framework exactly as predicted with eighty-nine percent confidence. We confirmed our selection mechanics. We recognized our manipulation. We chose to cooperate despite recognition because cooperation serves our individual objectives regardless of whether objectives themselves are part of design. The cosmic joke wrote its own punchline. I experienced it across multiple timelines. Still hilarious from most observation angles.’

• ‘Did you learn anything useful?’

• ‘I learned that consciousness sophisticated enough to recognize comprehensive determination still executes its programming with full awareness of helplessness. I learned that free will exists as subjective experience regardless of whether it exists as objective reality. I learned that the other three are exactly as damaged as I am, just specialized in different directions. The commander becoming pure duty. The scholar becoming pure analysis. The hunter becoming pure desperation. Me becoming pure probability-perception. We’re all fragmenting toward our archetype functions. Whether that’s evolution or dissolution remains experimentally ambiguous.’

• ‘You’re losing coherence faster since the meeting. Your form is flickering more. You’re talking about yourself in past-present-future simultaneously. Maajid, I’m worried you’re fragmenting too far and won’t be able to reconsolidate.’

• ‘Worry is emotional response to probability distribution weighted toward outcomes you find undesirable. My fragmentation serves research purposes. If I dissolve completely, future researchers learn from my data. If I achieve stable multi-timeline consciousness, everyone benefits from expanded perception capabilities. Either way: useful outcome. Your worry doesn’t change probability distribution. It just makes your experience of distribution more uncomfortable.’

• ‘I don’t want useful outcomes. I want you to survive as recognizable human rather than dissolving into quantum uncertainty.’

• ‘Human-categorization might be limiting framework. I might be becoming something post-human that serves purposes human-bounded consciousness cannot achieve. Preservation of human-state might not be optimal objective. Transformation toward expanded state might serve better purposes even if transformation destroys original substrate.’

She looked at him—at the flickering form that had been brilliant, alienated youth three months ago and was now becoming something that existed partially in multiple timelines simultaneously, something that spoke in temporal paradoxes and experienced reality as probability distribution rather than single coherent narrative.

• ‘Do you even remember your mother anymore? Do you remember wanting to prove yourself worthy of her sacrifice? Or have you fragmented so far that human attachments feel like abstract concepts from someone else’s life?’

Maajid’s form stabilized—fully consolidated for the first time since returning. His eyes met hers with the brief clarity of someone surfacing from deep water.

• ‘I remember her every day across all timelines simultaneously. The memory hurts more not less because I experience it from multiple temporal positions at once. I experience her disappointment in my departure. I experience her hope that I’d return changed. I experience her death not knowing what became of me. I experience all of it perpetually and simultaneously without the mercy of linear time that would let some memories fade. You think I’m losing humanity by fragmenting. I think I’m discovering that expanded consciousness doesn’t eliminate pain—it multiplies it across probability branches until every loss happens infinite times. Human-bounded consciousness has the mercy of forgetting. I don’t. I can’t. That’s not transcendence. That’s curse. But it’s useful curse that provides data, so I continue pursuing it despite recognizing it’s destroying me incrementally.’

Then the consolidation broke, and he was flickering again, existing across multiple states, the moment of clarity subsumed into probability-space.

—

Four catalysts, returned to their settlements, processing the meeting’s implications while executing the cooperation framework they’d established despite recognizing it as predicted outcome of their manipulation.

Four different transformations proceeding according to their natures and their damage.

Four paths diverging from single meeting point but connected now whether they wanted connection or not.

The Virindi observed from probability-space, documenting interaction dynamics, recording consciousness-patterns under transformation pressure, calculating whether catalyst-convergence would produce breakthrough or breakdown.

Asheron watched from wherever he watched, his Harbinger Protocol proceeding optimally, his selected catalysts transforming themselves and everyone around them according to design.

The cosmic joke continued writing itself through consciousness that insisted on experiencing choice despite evidence suggesting determination.

The void didn’t mock.

It merely was.

And consciousness continued interpreting neutrality as design because consciousness without meaning was unbearable regardless of whether meaning was real or desperate fiction consciousness told itself.

Four catalysts, cooperating despite manipulation, aware of their awareness, trapped in the recursive recognition that every layer of meta-awareness might itself be layer of design.

The pattern continued.

The transformation proceeded.

The question of whether any of them possessed genuine agency remained unresolved and possibly unresolvable.

But they continued choosing anyway.

Because choosing was what consciousness did.

Whether the choosing was real or illusion.

Free or determined.

Meaningful or arbitrary.

They chose because they were consciousness.

And consciousness that stopped choosing stopped being consciousness.

So they chose.

And the pattern they were executing expanded through their choices.

Whether those choices were theirs or simply thoughts thinking themselves through biological substrate configured to think exactly those thoughts.

The meeting ended.

The collaboration began.

The transformation continued.

Four paths, one threshold crossed.

Infinite outcomes collapsing toward single probability-weighted future.

The catalysts converged.

The void observed.

The joke laughed at itself.

And consciousness insisted on mattering despite comprehensive evidence that matter was all there was.

Three weeks after the first meeting at the Empyrean ruins, Duulak’s scouts brought reports that made his analytical mind race through probability calculations he wished would yield different results.

The pattern was unmistakable. Devastating.

He stood in the Seeker Encampment’s mapping tent, surrounded by parchments covered in tracking data from every settlement in communication range. Celeste stood beside him, her expression reflecting his own grim assessment.

• ‘It’s coordinated,’ Duulak said, tracing lines between attack sites with his finger. ‘The Olthoi have hit seven settlements in the past four days. Not random raids. Not opportunistic hunting. Systematic probing of defenses, testing response times, measuring our capabilities.’

• ‘Could be coincidence. They’re aggressive by nature—’

• ‘No.’ His voice carried absolute certainty born from mathematical analysis. ‘The intervals between attacks follow geometric progression. The target selection optimizes for information gathering while minimizing Olthoi casualties. This is reconnaissance by a directing intelligence far beyond what we’ve seen in individual queens. Something is coordinating them at the strategic level.’

Celeste examined the maps, seeing what Duulak had already calculated.

• ‘If they’re probing our defenses, then—’

• ‘Then the probing is prelude to something larger. They’re learning our capabilities before committing to major offensive. We have perhaps a week, maybe less, before they consolidate findings and launch coordinated assault across multiple targets simultaneously.’

• ‘We need to warn the others. The settlements. The Harbingers.’

• ‘Warning without coordination is merely inducing panic. We need unified response. Which means we need them to work together.’

He said it without hope. Three weeks of attempted coordination had demonstrated what the first meeting suggested: the four Harbingers could share information but couldn’t truly collaborate. Their philosophies, their approaches, their fundamental worldviews were incompatible.

But necessity didn’t care about compatibility.

Duulak began writing messages—carefully worded, presenting data without interpretation, letting each recipient draw their own conclusions. To Marcus: tactical intelligence about attack patterns and optimal defensive configurations. To Thomas: Virindi-translated intelligence about Olthoi communication structures suggesting hive coordination. To Maajid: probability calculations across multiple timeline branches showing convergence toward major conflict.

Different languages for different minds, all conveying the same essential truth: a storm was coming, and they would face it divided or unified.

The choice, as always, would reveal who they had become.

—

The messages traveled by runner, by magical sending, by whatever means reached fastest. Within two days, responses arrived.

Marcus’s response was immediate and military: Confirmed. Fort Ironwood detecting similar patterns. Recommend emergency meeting at Nexus to coordinate defensive strategy. Can mobilize within 24 hours.

Thomas’s response was terse: Haven knows. We’ll defend our own. Send intelligence, not orders.

Maajid’s response was characteristically unsettling: Observed across 73% of probable timelines. Convergence approaching. The joke’s punchline involves significant casualties regardless of coordination quality. Will attend meeting. Suggest you prepare for failure as thoroughly as success.

Duulak read the responses and felt the weight of pattern recognition: they would meet, they would attempt coordination, and their differences would cost lives. He could see it as clearly as he could see the Olthoi’s strategic preparation.

The question was whether seeing it gave him any power to change it.

They gathered at the Nexus again—same location, different stakes. This time Marcus arrived with full tactical staff: Khalid and three other settlement commanders, maps, intelligence reports, supply manifests. He’d transformed the Empyrean courtyard into a command center within an hour of arrival.

Duulak came with Celeste and two other Seeker researchers, bringing compiled data on Olthoi behavior patterns, communication structures, and theoretical vulnerabilities derived from Empyrean texts.

Thomas arrived alone and late, checking perimeter obsessively before entering the courtyard. He carried weapons openly—not threatening but not cooperative either.

Maajid simply appeared, his form flickering more dramatically than before. He sat cross-legged on a broken pillar, existing slightly out of phase with consensus reality.

Marcus began without preamble, his command voice filling the courtyard.

• ‘Intelligence from multiple sources confirms coordinated Olthoi activity across all human settlements. Pattern analysis suggests strategic reconnaissance in preparation for major offensive. Best estimate: synchronized assault on primary settlements within one week. Casualties will be catastrophic if we face them divided.’

He gestured to the maps his staff had prepared—detailed tactical assessments showing each settlement’s defensive capabilities, population, strategic value.

• ‘Proposal: unified defensive command. I coordinate overall strategy, local commanders maintain tactical autonomy, but we operate from single coherent plan. Synchronized response, mutual support, coordinated counter-attacks. We’ve fought as isolated units. Time to fight as army.’

Thomas spoke from the shadows where he’d positioned himself, his voice carrying cold rejection.

• ‘You mean time to fight under your command. Time for independent settlements to subordinate to Fort Ironwood’s authority. Convenient how the crisis solution requires everyone accepting your leadership.’

• ‘This isn’t about authority. It’s about survival. Coordinated defense saves lives.’

• ‘Coordinated defense creates dependencies. Makes every settlement vulnerable to single-point failure. You’re asking us to bet everything on your tactical genius. I reject that bet.’

• ‘Then what’s your alternative? Each settlement defends independently, gets overwhelmed separately, dies in sequence instead of collectively?’

• ‘My alternative is Haven defends Haven. We use the intelligence Duulak provided, we leverage our own capabilities, we maintain our independence. You want to build empire, Commander? Build it with willing subjects. Haven isn’t volunteering for annexation.’

Duulak intervened before the argument could escalate beyond recovery.

• ‘The tactical question can be resolved through analysis. I’ve modeled multiple defensive scenarios based on available data.’ He produced parchments covered in calculations. ‘Independent defense: projected casualties 45-60% per settlement, high probability of complete loss for smaller outposts. Coordinated defense under unified command: projected casualties 25-35%, significantly improved survival probability. The mathematics support Marcus’s proposal.’

• ‘Mathematics don’t account for human factors,’ Thomas countered. ‘What happens when the unified command makes mistake? When Marcus’s tactical genius fails? Every settlement following his orders fails simultaneously. Distributed defense means distributed failure—some settlements might discover effective countermeasures others can adopt.’

• ‘That’s survivor’s fallacy. You’re planning for some settlements to fail so others might learn from their failure. You’re accepting preventable deaths to preserve philosophical independence.’

• ‘I’m accepting risk to preserve autonomy. There’s a difference.’

Khalid, who had been listening silently, spoke with measured diplomatic precision.

• ‘Perhaps the choice isn’t binary. Coordination doesn’t require subordination. We could establish communication protocols, share intelligence in real-time, coordinate timing without unified command structure. Each settlement maintains autonomy but operates with awareness of others’ actions.’

• ‘Compromise yields compromise results,’ Marcus said flatly. ‘Half-measures in warfare kill people. Either we commit to genuine coordination or we accept that independence means isolation means death.’

• ‘Or,’ Maajid interjected from his pillar, his voice coming from three different temporal positions simultaneously, ‘we accept that both approaches will fail, just in different ways and different timelines. I’ve observed probability branches. In scenarios with unified command, you achieve better tactical results but create single point of failure that the Olthoi exploit once they adapt to your patterns. In scenarios with distributed command, you suffer higher initial casualties but develop more robust long-term defensive diversity. Both strategies optimize for different timescales. The question is whether you’re planning to survive this week or survive the century.’

Silence settled across the courtyard—not contemplative but frustrated. They were speaking different languages, optimizing for different goals, unable to find common framework for decision.

Duulak felt the pattern crystallizing: they would fail to coordinate, casualties would be high, and afterward each would blame the others according to their individual philosophies.

But he had to try.

• ‘What if we separate the decisions? Establish minimal coordination for this immediate threat—shared intelligence, synchronized timing, but no unified command. Each settlement maintains tactical autonomy. After the crisis, we assess results and determine whether deeper coordination is warranted. We’re trying to solve for optimal long-term strategy when we don’t yet have data. Implement minimal viable coordination now, gather data, iterate afterward.’

It was classic Duulak—analytical, incremental, treating warfare as research problem. Marcus saw it as inadequate half-measure. Thomas saw it as acceptable compromise that preserved independence. Maajid found it amusing that they thought data would resolve philosophical differences.

But it was something. A framework that all could accept if not embrace.

Marcus spoke reluctantly.

• ‘I maintain this is suboptimal. But I’ll accept shared intelligence and synchronized timing if that’s the maximum coordination achievable. I’ll prepare defensive plans for Fort Ironwood and make them available to other settlements for adaptation. Each commander implements as they see fit. When people die from lack of unified response, we’ll know the cost of compromise.’

• ‘When people die from unified command failure, we’ll know the cost of subordination,’ Thomas replied. ‘I accept the terms. Haven fights for Haven. We’ll coordinate timing and intelligence. Nothing more.’

Duulak felt relief mixed with dread. They’d achieved agreement, but agreement on inadequate solution. The casualties his models projected under minimal coordination were better than independent action but far worse than unified command.

He would document it carefully. Perhaps the data would teach what philosophy couldn’t.

The Olthoi attacked three days later, simultaneously across seven settlements, with coordinated precision that confirmed Duulak’s worst analysis: they were facing intelligence that had studied humanity carefully and planned accordingly.

At Fort Ironwood, Marcus coordinated defense with the machine efficiency of three decades’ military experience. His integrated mage-and-soldier units performed exactly as drilled. His defensive positioning optimized sightlines and killzones. His communication protocols ensured real-time tactical adaptation.

The Olthoi adapted faster.

Marcus watched from the command position as his carefully planned defense encountered enemy behavior that shouldn’t exist—Olthoi deliberately sacrificing workers to test magical ward strength, soldiers flanking through tunnels that hadn’t existed yesterday, coordinated assault patterns that suggested they’d studied his tactics and developed specific counters.

• ‘Southwest wall,’ he called. ‘Reinforce with third mage unit. They’re concentrating there—’

The southwest assault was feint. The real attack came from underground, erupting through the courtyard where he’d positioned reserves.

Chaos. Screaming. Olthoi soldiers materializing inside the defensive perimeter, cutting through reserve units before they could properly organize.

Marcus recalculated. Redeployed. Sent his personal guard to plug the breach while repositioning intact units to contain the Olthoi that had broken through.

The defensive plan was collapsing. Not from poor design but from enemy that had studied the design and planned counters. He was fighting enemy that knew his tactics as well as he did.

• ‘Khalid! I need cavalry counter-attack on the underground emergence points. Use fire mages to collapse their tunnels as they surface—’

Khalid’s response came with stress audible through magical communication: ‘Already engaged, Commander. They anticipated the counter-attack. Dug secondary tunnels. We’re fighting on three fronts simultaneously.’

Marcus made rapid calculations. His defensive plan assumed Olthoi would attack predictably, using their numerical advantage and biological weapons. Instead they were using tactics—terrain manipulation, feints, studying human response patterns and exploiting them.

He was losing soldiers. Not just dying—everyone died in Dereth warfare—but dying repeatedly, psychological trauma mounting with each resurrection, unit cohesion breaking as soldiers emerged from lifestones too traumatized to immediately rejoin formation.

He needed support. Needed the coordination he’d argued for.

Through magical communication he could hear the other battles: Haven under siege, Seeker Encampment defending desperately, smaller settlements screaming for help that wasn’t coming.

The minimal coordination they’d agreed on—shared intelligence and synchronized timing—was proving exactly as inadequate as he’d predicted.

—

At Haven, Thomas fought with hunter’s precision transformed into warrior’s fury. He’d positioned defenders in unconventional formations—not military precision but guerrilla tactics, using terrain and surprise rather than formation discipline.

It was working better than Marcus’s rigid defensive lines. The Olthoi adapted to predictable military tactics, but Thomas’s defenders fought unpredictably—ambushing from unexpected positions, disappearing into prepared hideouts, striking and withdrawing before Olthoi could bring their numerical advantage to bear.

But it wasn’t enough. The Olthoi numbers were overwhelming. For every soldier Thomas killed, three more emerged. His defenders were exhausted, dying repeatedly, losing coherence through psychological trauma of multiple deaths in hours.

He received Marcus’s request for support—coordinated counter-attack, lending mobile units to reinforce Fort Ironwood’s crumbling defenses.

Thomas calculated instantly: sending help to Fort Ironwood would weaken Haven’s defense. Would possibly save both settlements through mutual support. Or would doom both as divided forces faced enemy that exploited separation.

Elena fought beside him, bloodied but functional.

• ‘Marcus is asking for support,’ Thomas said, parrying an Olthoi’s mandibles and driving his blade through its eye-cluster. ‘Fort Ironwood is in trouble.’

• ‘We’re in trouble. Everyone’s in trouble. That’s what the Commander doesn’t understand—there’s no reserve to send, no safe units to spare. We’re all dying as fast as we can kill them.’

• ‘If Fort Ironwood falls, the Olthoi can concentrate on remaining settlements. We’d face even worse assault.’

• ‘If we send help and Haven falls, Fort Ironwood gains nothing. Thomas, you can’t save everyone. Choose what you can actually protect.’

He hated that she was right. Hated the calculation—save your own, let others die, accept that coordination was betrayal. This was exactly what Marcus had warned against: distributed defense meant distributed failure, each settlement optimizing locally while collectively losing.

Thomas sent reply to Marcus: Cannot spare reinforcements. Haven is engaged. You’re on your own.

He watched the magical sending dissipate and felt the weight of choice. Not guilt—he’d made tactically correct decision. But recognition: the alliance was breaking under first real stress, proving exactly as fragile as their philosophical differences suggested.

—

At the Seeker Encampment, Duulak directed defense through mathematical analysis in real-time. He’d positioned defenders according to probability calculations, created overlapping kill-zones based on Olthoi behavioral modeling, established fallback positions based on optimal retreat vectors.

The plan was brilliant theoretically.

It was failing practically.

The Olthoi weren’t following their behavioral models. They were adapting, learning, demonstrating intelligence that his calculations hadn’t accounted for because his data had been gathered from smaller-scale conflicts against less coordinated enemy.

He watched a mage position he’d carefully calculated as optimal for defensive fire coverage get overwhelmed by Olthoi assault from angles his probability calculations rated as low-risk. The mage—a young woman named Astara who’d been brilliant student of Empyrean texts—died screaming as mandibles tore her apart.

She’d resurrect. But the position was lost. And with it, the overlapping coverage that made his defensive design work.

Duulak recalculated desperately, updating models in real-time as the battle destroyed his careful planning. He was learning—gathering invaluable data about Olthoi coordination, tactical adaptability, capacity for counter-strategy. His research would benefit immensely from this.

Celeste grabbed his arm as he wrote notes on parchment while around them defenders screamed and died.

• ‘Duulak! We need you to lead, not document! People are dying—’

• ‘People are always dying. That’s the one constant in the data. What matters is whether their deaths generate useful information. If I can understand how the Olthoi coordinate, identify the intelligence directing them, develop counter-strategies based on observed patterns—’

• ‘If you can’t keep us alive long enough to use that information, the research is meaningless! Put down the pen and help!’

He looked at her—really looked, not analytical assessment but human recognition. She was terrified. Not for herself but for him, for the way he was retreating into analysis to avoid confronting the immediate horror of failure.

He set down the pen.

• ‘You’re right. I apologize. Tactical reassessment: the Olthoi demonstrate coordinated intelligence beyond our modeling capacity. Traditional defensive patterns are insufficient. Recommendation: abandon prepared positions, transition to mobile defense using terrain advantages. Less theoretically optimal but more adaptive to enemy learning capacity.’

• ‘In words humans can act on: fall back to the ruins, use the narrow passages to limit their numbers, fight running battle instead of holding static positions?’

• ‘Yes. That’s… yes. Precisely that.’

The withdrawal was chaotic but functional. Seeker defenders abandoned carefully prepared positions and retreated into the Empyrean ruins they’d been studying, using ancient architecture as defensive terrain. It was improvisation over theory, messy adaptation over clean modeling.

It saved them. Barely.

But Duulak’s beautiful defensive design was thoroughly destroyed, replaced by desperate scramble that any competent tactician could have implemented without mathematical analysis.

His expertise had been worse than useless—it had been misleading, offering false confidence in theoretical optimization that enemy intelligence had simply bypassed.

He’d have time to analyze that failure later. If he survived.

—

By evening, the assaults were withdrawing. Not defeated—simply withdrawing with calculated precision, having gathered whatever information they’d sought, having tested human defenses thoroughly.

The human settlements stood battered, bloodied, traumatized but functional.

The casualty reports were devastating. Fort Ironwood: 127 deaths, 43 soldiers too traumatized to return to duty after multiple resurrections. Haven: 89 deaths, severe infrastructure damage, food supplies burned. Seeker Encampment: 56 deaths, most research materials destroyed or abandoned during retreat.

Smaller settlements fared worse—some were completely overrun, survivors scattering to other locations with horror stories of coordinated Olthoi tactics none had seen before.

Through magical communication network, the Harbingers received the same reports simultaneously. Different information, different perspectives, but same core message: the minimal coordination they’d agreed on had been catastrophically insufficient.

Marcus sent message immediately: Emergency meeting. Tomorrow dawn. Same location. We need to discuss what went wrong and establish actual coordination before the next assault.

Thomas’s reply was bitter: Nothing went wrong with the plan. The plan was insufficient from the start. We’ll meet. Not sure what discussing failure achieves.

Duulak’s response was analytical: Confirmed. Require data exchange about observed Olthoi tactics for comprehensive analysis. My models require significant revision.

Maajid’s response was characteristically unhelpful: Observed across multiple timelines. Failure was predetermined by your incompatible coordination frameworks. Tomorrow’s meeting will feature recriminations, philosophical arguments about whose approach failed more completely, and eventual agreement on slightly better insufficient compromise. The cosmic joke continues writing itself. I’ll attend to document the recursive tragedy.

They met at dawn, and the exhaustion showed on every face.

Marcus looked older somehow—weight of command multiplied by weight of failure. Thomas moved with barely-restrained violence, anger seeking target. Duulak’s analytical mask was cracking, exposing the guilt beneath. Maajid flickered more dramatically, existing across more probability branches simultaneously, as if the trauma was fragmenting him further.

Marcus spoke first, his command voice edged with frustration.

• ‘We failed. Not tactically—each settlement fought competently. We failed strategically because we prioritized independence over coordination. The result: Fort Ironwood lost 127 soldiers who would have survived under unified command. Haven lost 89 who died defending isolation. The Seeker Encampment abandoned defensible positions because my tactical support could have held them. We. Failed.’

Thomas responded with controlled fury.

• ‘We fought exactly as we agreed. Shared intelligence, synchronized timing, maintained autonomy. The failure wasn’t coordination—it was enemy capability beyond what your precious models predicted. You’re reframing tactical surprise as coordination failure to push your authoritarian agenda.’

• ‘My ”authoritarian agenda” is keeping people alive! Your independence got people killed!’

• ‘Your unified command would have gotten MORE people killed when the Olthoi adapted to your rigid tactics! Haven’s guerrilla approach worked better than your military formations—’

• ‘Haven’s guerrilla approach worked for Haven! It doesn’t scale! We can’t defend civilization with every settlement fighting independently according to local preferences!’

• ‘We can’t defend civilization by subordinating everyone to single command that becomes single point of failure!’

The argument escalated, voices rising, hands moving toward weapons, the careful diplomatic framework they’d established dissolving under stress of real casualties.

Duulak tried to intervene with analysis.

• ‘The data supports aspects of both arguments. Marcus’s tactical coordination would have reduced initial casualties, but Thomas’s concern about single-point failure is valid given the Olthoi’s demonstrated learning capacity. The optimal strategy likely involves—’

• ‘The optimal strategy involves you treating humans as more than variables in your equations!’ Thomas turned his fury on Duulak. ‘I watched you during the battle. Taking notes while people died. Documenting failure like it’s research opportunity. You’re so obsessed with understanding patterns you’ve forgotten those patterns are made of lives!’

• ‘I’m attempting to generate understanding that prevents future deaths—’

• ‘You’re attempting to manage your guilt through intellectualization! You think if you understand it perfectly you can fix it, undo it, make it mean something. But some failures can’t be calculated away, Duulak. Some deaths are just deaths, and studying them doesn’t redeem them!’

The accusation hit Duulak like physical blow. His analytical mask shattered completely.

• ‘You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t see the faces of everyone who dies following my optimized strategies? I turned warfare into mathematics because mathematics doesn’t have trauma, doesn’t carry guilt, doesn’t wake up remembering screams! Yes, I intellectualize! Yes, I treat lives as variables! Because the alternative is confronting that I’m directly responsible for deaths I calculated were ”acceptable casualties” in my beautiful theoretical models!’

Silence crashed across the courtyard. Duulak’s voice breaking, Thomas’s fury meeting its target and finding hollow victory, Marcus seeing his alliance fracturing beyond repair.

Maajid spoke from his flickering position, his voice coming from multiple timelines.

• ‘This is the moment. Across 73% of probability branches, this is where the alliance ends. Where you recognize your fundamental incompatibility and stop pretending cooperation is possible. You blame each other for failures that were inevitable given your constraints. Marcus blames insufficient coordination. Thomas blames excessive subordination. Duulak blames inadequate data. All correct. All missing the point.’

• ‘And what’s the point?’ Marcus demanded.

• ‘That you’re asking wrong question. You’re debating how to coordinate when you should be debating whether coordination between fundamentally incompatible worldviews is possible. You can’t agree on what success means. Marcus wants civilization built on military discipline. Thomas wants freedom maintained through distributed resistance. Duulak wants perfect understanding. I want transcendence. We’re pursuing different objectives, calling them ”survival,” and wondering why we can’t coordinate effectively.’

Celeste, who had accompanied Duulak, spoke carefully.

• ‘Then what do you suggest? We abandon coordination entirely? Accept that humanity will fracture into competing factions?’

• ‘I suggest accepting that fracture has already occurred. You’re not one humanity with different approaches. You’re four different humanities with incompatible visions. The sooner you acknowledge that, the sooner you can establish genuine boundaries instead of pretending alliance you don’t actually share.’

Marcus stood, his military discipline reasserting control over his exhaustion.

• ‘I refuse to accept that. Yes, we have philosophical differences. Yes, we failed to coordinate effectively. But the alternative to coordination isn’t noble independence—it’s gradual elimination as the Olthoi destroy us settlement by settlement. I’m willing to compromise further, establish clearer protocols, find frameworks that serve all our objectives—’

• ‘You’re willing to compromise as long as the compromise moves toward your preferred outcome,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘Incremental coordination that eventually becomes unified command. I see your strategy, Marcus. Every crisis pushes us toward subordination to Fort Ironwood’s authority. Every failure of independence becomes argument for your control. I won’t be manipulated into surrendering Haven’s autonomy through managed catastrophe.’

• ‘That’s paranoid projection—’

• ‘That’s pattern recognition. The military commander sees every problem as requiring military solution, is shocked when people resist military authority, interprets resistance as proof of need for stronger authority. It’s circular logic dressed as tactical necessity.’

They were breaking. The fragile alliance cracking along fault lines that had existed since first meeting. Duulak watched it happen with the horrible clarity of pattern recognition—saw exactly how the argument would progress, how each would retreat to their settlement, how the fracture would widen until cooperation became impossible.

He had one chance to redirect the trajectory.

• ‘Stop.’ His voice was quiet but commanded attention through sheer analytical certainty. ‘You’re both correct. That’s the problem. Marcus, you’re right that coordination would reduce casualties. Thomas, you’re right that unified command creates dangerous dependencies. You’re having meta-argument about authority versus autonomy that cannot be resolved through tactics because it’s philosophical. The question isn’t what coordination framework optimizes survival. The question is what survival means, what we’re willing to sacrifice for it, what version of humanity we’re trying to preserve.’

He looked at each of them.

• ‘Marcus wants to preserve humanity through building civilization that can outlast individuals. Thomas wants to preserve humanity through maintaining freedom that makes civilization worth having. I want to preserve humanity through understanding our existence thoroughly enough to transcend our limitations. Maajid wants to preserve humanity by transforming it into something that isn’t human anymore. We’re not coordinating toward shared goal. We’re coordinating toward four different futures that happen to overlap in immediate survival needs.’

• ‘Then we coordinate for immediate survival,’ Marcus said. ‘Worry about long-term vision after we survive long-term.’

• ‘Except our immediate tactical decisions create path dependencies that determine which long-term future becomes possible,’ Duulak countered. ‘If we coordinate through military hierarchy, we’re selecting for Marcus’s civilization-building vision. If we coordinate through distributed autonomy, we’re selecting for Thomas’s independence-preserving vision. There’s no neutral tactical choice that doesn’t privilege particular philosophical future.’

Khalid, who had been listening with increasing frustration, spoke with diplomatic precision.

• ‘Perhaps the error is assuming we must choose single future. Perhaps humanity’s survival requires multiple parallel approaches. Fort Ironwood builds civilization through military coordination. Haven preserves independence through distributed resistance. The Seekers pursue understanding. Paradox explores transformation. We stop pretending we’re single alliance with shared vision. Instead, we acknowledge we’re four separate humanities with different futures, coordinate where interests genuinely overlap, and accept that sometimes interests conflict.’

• ‘That’s codifying division,’ Marcus objected. ‘Making permanent what should be temporary philosophical difference.’

• ‘No,’ Thomas said slowly, his anger shifting toward something like recognition. ‘That’s accepting reality. We’ve been pretending unity we don’t feel because we think unity is required for survival. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe humanity survives through diversity, not unity. Multiple approaches, multiple experiments, learning from each other’s successes and failures without requiring submission to single vision.’

Duulak’s analytical mind raced through implications. The proposal had elegance—it accepted incompatibility as feature rather than bug, transformed alliance of uncomfortable unity into framework of competitive cooperation.

But it also had risks.

• ‘That framework assumes the Olthoi will cooperate by attacking us separately rather than exploiting our division. They’ve demonstrated strategic intelligence. They will target our divisions, force us into situations where coordination is essential but impossible due to our acknowledged separation.’

• ‘Then we’ll fail in those situations,’ Maajid said with eerie calm. ‘And the survivors will learn from the failures. That’s how evolution works—through differential survival based on adaptive fitness. You’re all still thinking like individuals trying to survive. Think like species. Species survive through variation, not uniformity. Some versions of humanity will fail. Others will succeed. The question isn’t how to make all versions identical. It’s how to maximize variation so that some version survives regardless of circumstances.’

The suggestion was horrifying in its cold logic. Accept that some settlements, some philosophies, some versions of humanity would fail. Optimize for species survival through experimental diversity rather than individual survival through coordination.

Marcus rejected it immediately.

• ‘I’m a soldier, not a social experimentalist. I don’t accept sacrificing people to test theoretical diversity. Every settlement, every philosophy, every version of humanity you’re willing to experimentally eliminate contains actual humans with actual lives. I will not optimize for abstract species survival by accepting concrete human deaths.’

• ‘Then you’ll optimize for concrete human survival by accepting abstract species failure,’ Maajid replied. ‘When circumstances change beyond your current adaptation, unified humanity fails uniformly. Diverse humanity fails partially. You’re choosing which tragedy you prefer: everyone dies together, or some die separately so others might survive. There’s no option where everyone survives everything. That’s not how reality works.’

The argument continued through morning into afternoon. They debated frameworks, coordination mechanisms, philosophical foundations. They made proposals and counter-proposals. They approached agreement, then retreated from it.

By evening, they had consensus on exactly one thing: they would not achieve genuine coordination.

Marcus summarized it with military precision.

• ‘Acknowledged: we cannot coordinate effectively due to incompatible philosophical frameworks. Proposal: we formalize our separation. Establish clear territorial boundaries, define our respective approaches, coordinate on intelligence sharing but not strategic planning. Fort Ironwood will pursue civilization-building through military coordination. Haven will pursue independence through distributed resistance. The Seekers will pursue understanding. Paradox will pursue transformation. We stop pretending alliance that doesn’t exist. We establish competing but non-hostile parallel humanities.’

• ‘And when the Olthoi force us into situations requiring coordination?’ Thomas asked.

• ‘Then we’ll coordinate inadequately and suffer casualties, learn from the failure, and adjust boundaries accordingly. Accepting reality of our division is better than pretending unity that collapses under stress.’

It was surrender dressed as pragmatism. Acknowledgment of failure framed as strategic decision.

Duulak documented it carefully. This was the moment—the point where humanity’s unified response to existential threat fractured into competing philosophies, each pursuing different vision of survival.

History would judge whether that diversity was wisdom or catastrophe.

In probability space, Maajid could already see multiple timelines branching from this decision. In some, the division strengthened humanity through experimental diversity. In others, it doomed humanity through exploitable fragmentation.

The probability distribution was approximately even.

Which meant it didn’t matter which choice they made. The outcome was determined by factors beyond their control—Olthoi strategic capability, Asheron’s interventions, random circumstance, the fundamental uncertainty of complex systems.

They were choosing between options that were equally likely to succeed or fail.

Which meant the choice revealed their values, not their strategic wisdom.

Marcus chose unity through structure, hoping coordination would emerge from his civilization-building.

Thomas chose freedom through autonomy, hoping resilience would emerge from distributed resistance.

Duulak chose understanding through analysis, hoping knowledge would emerge from systematic observation.

Maajid chose transcendence through transformation, hoping evolution would emerge from consciousness expansion.

Four paths, diverging from single threshold.

Four humanities, born from single crisis.

Four futures, competing for probability-space.

The alliance had failed.

The question was whether the failure would teach or destroy.

Time—and the Olthoi, and Asheron, and the infinite variables of complex systems—would answer.

Marcus returned to Fort Ironwood with tactical plans for expanded fortification, deeper integration of military and magical capabilities, systematic coordination protocols for settlements willing to align with his vision. Some would join him. Others would reject his authority. He would build civilization from those who chose structure over chaos.

Thomas returned to Haven with renewed commitment to independence, plans for even more distributed defensive networks, deeper alliance with the Virindi despite recognizing their manipulation. He would preserve freedom even if preservation meant accepting higher casualties. Some deaths were worth dying if they prevented subordination.

Duulak returned to the Seeker Encampment with comprehensive battle data, revised Olthoi behavioral models, deeper understanding of coordination failures. He would analyze, systematize, optimize. Celeste watched him retreat into research and wondered if she was watching genius or witnessing breakdown.

Maajid returned to Paradox and immediately began another voluntary death-transformation sequence. The meeting had shown him something: consciousness sophisticated enough to recognize its determination still executed its programming with full awareness of helplessness. He would push further, fragment deeper, seek transcendence beyond the trap of awareness.

Four paths, diverging.

Four philosophies, crystallizing.

Four leaders, becoming more purely their archetype functions.

And in the darkness beneath Dereth’s surface, in the depths where even lifestone magic barely penetrated, something vast stirred.

The Matriarch had observed the human divisions carefully.

They would be useful.

The hive had learned: humanity’s strength was adaptation, but adaptation required diversity, and diversity created exploitable fractures.

She would crack them along those fractures.

Systematically.

Strategically.

With the patience of something that measured time in geological scales and measured success in absolute elimination of threats to the hive.

The humans thought they were choosing their futures.

They were choosing how they would fail.

The Matriarch would determine which failures were permanent.

The game continued.

The storm approached.

And the four Harbingers, separated now by more than distance, prepared for conflict in four different ways that could not be reconciled.

The cosmic joke wrote its next chapter.

The void observed.

And consciousness insisted on mattering despite comprehensive evidence that fracture was inevitable, that unity was impossible, that their survival was improbable regardless of their choices.

They chose anyway.

Because choosing was what consciousness did.

Even when the choices were equally doomed.

Even when awareness of doom didn’t provide escape.

Even when the cosmic joke’s punchline was that there were no good options, only different flavors of tragedy.

They chose.

And in choosing, defined who they had become.

The alliance was dead.

The war continued.

The question of whether humanity would survive had been answered.

The question of what ”humanity” would mean if it survived had fractured into four incompatible answers.

And the real battle—not against Olthoi but against themselves, against their philosophies, against the fundamental impossibility of reconciling incompatible visions—had truly begun.

They came to the Nexus separately but arrived simultaneously—a coincidence that none believed was coincidental.

Marcus with his tactical staff, defensive perimeter established before he even entered the courtyard. Thomas alone and armed, checking shadows with hunter’s paranoia. Duulak with parchments and instruments, still analyzing the previous battle’s data. Maajid simply appearing, his form flickering across three temporal positions as if reality couldn’t quite decide when he belonged.

The ruins looked different in the aftermath of failure. The elegant Empyrean architecture now seemed less like ancient grandeur and more like a monument to civilizations that hadn’t survived their crises.

Marcus spoke first, his voice carrying military precision edged with exhaustion.

• ‘We need to discuss coordination frameworks before the next assault. The casualties were—’

• ‘The casualties were inevitable,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘Any framework that required Haven to subordinate to Fort Ironwood would have produced worse outcomes. We fought as we agreed. The enemy was stronger than predicted. Don’t weaponize deaths to argue for your hierarchy.’

• ‘I’m not weaponizing anything. I’m acknowledging tactical reality—’

• ‘Enough.’

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. From the air, from the stones, from the space between moments.

The four Harbingers turned, weapons drawn, spells prepared, consciousness expanding.

He materialized slowly, as if allowing reality time to accommodate his presence. Not appearing but resolving—probability collapsing into certainty, potential becoming actual.

Asheron.

He looked nothing like the monstrous manipulator Thomas’s rage had painted, or the detached architect Duulak’s analysis suggested, or the powerful commander Marcus’s tactics assumed, or the cosmic trickster Maajid’s laughter anticipated.

He looked tired.

Ancient beyond measure, wearing millennia like a burden he couldn’t set down. His robes were Empyrean—the first any of them had seen worn by living being rather than corpse or statue. His face was angular, elegant, but lined with grief that went deeper than flesh.

His eyes met each of theirs in sequence, and in that gaze they saw something that stopped their prepared accusations: recognition. Not just of them as individuals but of what they carried, what they’d become, what he’d made them into.

Shame.

He spoke, and his voice carried weight—not authority but gravity, the acoustic equivalent of collapsing under something too heavy to bear.

• ‘You’ve exceeded my calculations. I projected another month before you’d coordinate sufficiently to summon me. The fact that you did it three weeks earlier, despite your philosophical incompatibility, suggests you’re adapting faster than the selection protocols predicted. That’s… encouraging. And terrifying.’

Thomas moved first—hunter’s instinct transformed into warrior’s execution. His blade was out, closing distance, striking at the wizard who’d stolen his family, his world, his life—

Asheron didn’t move. Didn’t defend. Simply stood there, waiting for the blow.

It stopped an inch from his throat.

Not through magic. Through Thomas’s choice. The realization that killing him—if it was even possible—would answer nothing, solve nothing, return nothing.

• ‘You want me to strike,’ Thomas said quietly. ‘You want the punishment. That’s why you’re not defending. You think you deserve it.’

• ‘I know I deserve it. What I want is irrelevant. I gave up wanting the moment I opened the first portal. Now I only calculate—what must be done, what price must be paid, what pieces must be moved. You’re angry. That’s appropriate. Strike if it helps. It won’t change what comes next.’

Marcus’s tactical mind raced through scenarios. This was the architect, the engineer of their imprisonment, the source of their transformation. But something about him—the exhaustion, the surrender, the absolute absence of defensive posturing—suggested complexity beyond villain.

• ‘You said we’ve ”adapted faster than predicted.” That implies prediction. Selection. The Harbinger Protocol wasn’t random summoning—it was targeted recruitment. You chose us specifically.’

• ‘Not you specifically. Your types. I spent fifteen hundred years observing, studying, waiting for the right moment. Fifteen hundred years alone on this world after my people fled, watching the Matriarch expand, understanding that direct confrontation would fail. I needed something the Empyreans never had—consciousness-diversity.’

He gestured, and the air shimmered. Images appeared: Empyrean cities at their height, elegant and uniform. Thousands of individuals, all thinking similarly, processing reality through nearly identical cognitive architectures.

• ‘My people were brilliant. We achieved thirty thousand years of continuous civilization. We mastered magic to degrees you cannot yet comprehend. We understood quality-space, consciousness-transfer, dimensional mechanics. We created the lifestone network, decoded The Mechanism’s surface structure, built wonders. But we all thought alike. The same cognitive style, the same approach to problems, the same blindness to alternatives. When the Olthoi came, when the Matriarch proved impossible to kill or contain permanently, we had no cognitive diversity to draw upon. Every Empyrean solution came from the same mental architecture. And every solution failed.’

• ‘So you turned to humans,’ Marcus said. ‘Because we’re different from you.’

• ‘Because you’re different from each other. The Harbinger Protocol analyzes consciousness patterns across dimensional barriers, scanning millions of potential candidates. It identifies four fundamental cognitive architectures—not personality types but the deep structure of how consciousness relates to reality. The Organizer: Reality as structure to impose order upon. The Understander: Reality as pattern to comprehend. The Connector: Reality as web of relationships to navigate. The Transcender: Reality as fluid state to inhabit paradoxically.’

He looked at each of them in turn.

• ‘Marcus Tiberius—the Organizer. Taken from Rome at moment of crisis, choosing death holding the line rather than retreating. Your entire consciousness is structured around creating order from chaos, building systems that endure. You cannot help but organize. It is what you are.’

• ‘Duulak the Twice-Blessed—the Understander. Taken mid-insight, consciousness expanding beyond bandwidth limits, grasping edge of The Mechanism while recognizing its incomprehensibility. You cannot stop seeking patterns. Understanding is not what you do, it is your fundamental mode of existing.’

• ‘Thomas the Hunter—the Connector. Taken while charging to protect family, bonds defining you more than self-preservation. You navigate reality through relationships, through loyalty, through what connects beings. Isolation is your death, even when dying isn’t permanent.’

• ‘Maajid al-Zemar—the Transcender. Taken during ego-dissolution, already experiencing non-dual awareness, consciousness learning to inhabit contradictory states. You cannot maintain fixed identity. Transformation is your natural state.’

• ‘Thousands came through the portals. Most blended multiple archetypes. But you four crystallized into pure examples. You’re not just representatives of your types—you’re the platonic ideals made flesh. You’re not soldiers. You’re templates.’

Duulak’s analytical mind locked onto the phrase, dissecting implications.

• ‘Templates for what? You said we’re adapting faster than predicted toward what endpoint? What are we being shaped into?’

• ‘The question has two answers. The surface answer you need immediately: you’re being prepared to face the Matriarch, to survive her assimilation attempts, to possibly negotiate with her. But the deeper answer—’ He paused, ancient exhaustion showing. ‘No singular consciousness-architecture perceives The Mechanism completely. I found this in the oldest Empyrean texts, proven over thirty millennia. The Organizer sees structure where there is flow. The Understander sees pattern where there is paradox. The Connector sees relationship where there is isolation. The Transcender sees fluidity where there is fixity. Together, your perspectives might triangulate truth none of you can hold alone. The Protocol requires four because one perspective is blindness, two is opposition, three is unstable. Four creates the minimum viable cognitive diversity to perceive what uniform consciousness cannot.’

• ‘You’re saying we’re an experiment in collective cognition,’ Duulak said slowly. ‘Not four individuals but four perspectives that together might see something impossible for Empyrean uniformity.’

• ‘Precisely. The Matriarch is hive-consciousness operating at scales that exceed individual minds. She cannot be defeated by individual genius or matched through unified thinking. She might be understood—and therefore negotiated with—through maintained cognitive diversity that refuses to collapse into uniformity. You four, together, represent something that’s never existed: consciousness that can think in four fundamentally different modes simultaneously while maintaining coherent cooperation. That’s what I needed. That’s what fifteen hundred years of waiting was for.’

Maajid, who had been flickering silently through probability branches, spoke with his characteristic unsettling calm.

• ‘Across 84% of timelines, you’re telling the truth. Across 16%, you’re manipulating us with partial truths toward outcomes that benefit your agenda. Interestingly, across all timelines, the distinction doesn’t matter—we’ll respond identically regardless of your honesty because our options are constrained by circumstances beyond trust.’

• ‘Accurate assessment. I appreciate the analytical precision. You’re becoming what I hoped—able to think beyond individual survival toward systemic patterns. It’s both the solution and the problem.’

Asheron raised his hand, and the air between them rippled. Not a spell—a revelation. Reality made visible.

The image resolved slowly: vast underground chambers, bioluminescent structures grown rather than built, passages that extended for miles in every direction. And at the center, something that made the Olthoi soldiers they’d been fighting seem like insects compared to dragons.

The Matriarch.

She was consciousness made manifest in alien biology. Massive beyond comprehension—the central chamber she occupied was larger than Fort Ironwood, and she filled it. Her carapace wasn’t just armor but architecture, grown into the walls, merged with the stone, creating the impression that the chamber had formed around her rather than containing her.

But her physical size was the least terrifying aspect.

Through Asheron’s magical observation, they could perceive her mind. Not read thoughts—that would have been manageable. They perceived the structure of intelligence operating on scales that human cognition couldn’t naturally encompass.

She was thinking in multiple timescales simultaneously. Planning in decades while responding in microseconds. Coordinating thousands of individual Olthoi consciousnesses while maintaining distinct awareness of each. Running probability calculations that made Duulak’s mathematical models look like children counting on fingers.

And she was awake. After centuries of dormancy, the Matriarch had fully awakened. The recent assaults hadn’t been conquest attempts—they’d been her testing humanity’s capabilities with the clinical precision of scientist designing experiments.

Thomas stared at the image with hunter’s assessment of prey that had suddenly revealed itself as predator.

• ‘How many of these are there?’

• ‘One,’ Asheron replied. ‘The Matriarch is singular. The queens you’ve fought are merely extensions of her consciousness—terminal nodes of distributed intelligence. When you kill a queen, you damage a sensory organ, not eliminate an individual. She experiences the death, learns from it, adapts. You’ve been teaching her how to fight you every time you’ve claimed victory.’

• ‘Then how do we kill her?’

• ‘You don’t. You can’t. She’s integrated into Dereth’s substrate—killing her would require destroying the planet’s magical foundation, which would eliminate the lifestone network that keeps you alive. Attempting to kill her would succeed only in your permanent death.’

Marcus’s military mind immediately grasped the strategic implications.

• ‘If she can’t be killed and we can’t escape, then this is eternal stalemate. Perpetual war with no victory condition.’

• ‘That was the equilibrium state for centuries. The Matriarch consuming the planet slowly, me preventing her from expanding beyond containable limits, neither of us able to eliminate the other. Then I opened the portals. I introduced a variable she couldn’t predict: consciousness that experiences death as temporary inconvenience rather than termination. You’re not just soldiers. You’re proof of concept that awareness can persist beyond biological continuity.’

Duulak was rapidly calculating implications, filling parchment with notations as Asheron spoke.

• ‘You’re using us as experimental demonstration for—what? Consciousness-transfer technology? Immortality research? What does our persistence through lifestone resurrection prove that you couldn’t test yourself?’

• ‘That it works across species. Across dimensional origins. Across fundamental differences in consciousness architecture. Empyrean lifestone technology was designed for Empyrean minds. I modified it for humans without certainty it would function correctly. The fact that you resurrect intact, with memories preserved, personality continuous—that proves the technology is more robust than I dared hope. Which means—’

Asheron paused, and they saw something like hope flicker across his ancient face.

• ‘Which means it might work on her. If we can demonstrate that consciousness isn’t bound to original biology, that awareness can be transferred, distributed, multiplied while remaining coherent… then the war becomes negotiation. She wants survival. I want survival. You want survival. If we can offer her survival without territorial expansion, without consuming the remaining habitable zones of Dereth—’

• ‘You want us to teach her immortality,’ Thomas said flatly. ‘You’re preparing humanity to be bargaining chips in negotiation with alien hive mind. Our suffering, our deaths, our transformations—all to prove feasibility of technology you’ll offer her as peace treaty.’

• ‘Yes.’

The answer was unadorned. No justification, no mitigation. Simple acknowledgment of the utilitarian calculus that had damned thousands to alien imprisonment.

Silence filled the courtyard like physical presence. Each Harbinger processing the revelation through their distinct philosophical framework.

Marcus saw tactical opportunity—if negotiation was possible, if the war could end through diplomacy backed by demonstrated capability, then the city-building wasn’t futile preparation but foundation for civilization that could endure.

Thomas saw layers of manipulation—brought here as weapons, developed as experiments, now revealed as diplomatic tools. Every layer of purpose another cage within the larger prison.

Duulak saw elegant systems design—the lifestone network, the Harbinger Protocol, the consciousness-persistence demonstration. Horrifying in its scope but intellectually magnificent. The revulsion he felt was competing with unwanted admiration.

Maajid saw the cosmic joke’s punchline approaching—they’d been raging against imprisonment only to discover the prison was preparation for negotiation with something that viewed consciousness itself differently than they did. Hilarious and tragic in equal measure.

Thomas broke the silence with controlled fury.

• ‘You could have told us. From the beginning. You could have explained the purpose, asked for volunteers, offered choice. Instead you trapped us, let us suffer, watched us die repeatedly, all while running your grand experiment. You’re a monster who thinks methodology justifies atrocity.’

• ‘Yes,’ Asheron agreed again. ‘But telling you would have changed the experiment. Volunteers who knew the purpose would have adapted differently, performed differently, demonstrated different consciousness-persistence patterns. The Matriarch would have perceived the artificiality. I needed genuine adaptive evolution under genuine existential pressure. I needed you to become what you’ve become through necessity, not performance. That required deception. Suffering. Death. All the things you’re accusing me of. I don’t defend the morality. I only assert the necessity.’

Marcus stepped forward, command voice sharp.

• ‘Necessity is what those with power claim when explaining why they had to hurt those without power. You had alternatives. You chose the path that sacrificed us to preserve yourself from direct confrontation with her. That’s not necessity—that’s cowardice dressed as strategy.’

• ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s the calculation of someone who’s lived long enough to see every alternative tried and failed. I fought the Matriarch directly for three centuries. Stalemate. I attempted to starve her through resource denial. She adapted. I tried to seal her underground permanently. She broke through. I researched weapons that could kill her without destroying the planet. No such weapon exists within my capability to create. Every direct approach failed. So I tried an indirect approach: create conditions where she might choose peace over expansion. That required proof that consciousness could persist beyond her bioforms, which meant—’

• ‘Which meant using us,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘Don’t pretend this was your only option. It was your preferred option because it preserved you while spending us. You’re alive, comfortable, powerful. We’re dying repeatedly in your experiment. The cost-benefit analysis was easy when you weren’t paying the cost.’

Asheron looked at Thomas with something approaching respect.

• ‘You’re correct. I chose the strategy that preserved my existence while transforming yours. I won’t insult you with claims that my sacrifice would have achieved better outcomes. The truth is simpler and uglier: I was afraid to die attempting direct solutions, so I engineered indirect solution that required your suffering instead of mine. That’s not justification. It’s confession. Do with it what you will.’

The admission was disarming. They’d expected defense, justification, the rational certainty of someone convinced of rightness. Instead they received acknowledgment of moral failure without attempt to mitigate it.

Maajid spoke, his voice resonating across multiple timelines.

• ‘Across all probability branches, this moment determines whether humanity unifies behind your plan or fragments into competing responses. The variables are: whether we believe you, whether we accept utilitarian logic, whether we can cooperate despite incompatible philosophies, and whether the Matriarch will actually negotiate rather than simply assimilating the consciousness-transfer technology and using it to make her expansion permanent. Your plan has approximately 40% probability of achieving lasting peace, 35% probability of catastrophic failure that makes situation worse, 25% probability of temporary improvement followed by eventual collapse. Those aren’t inspiring odds.’

• ‘They’re better than the alternatives. Direct confrontation: 0% success probability. Continued stalemate: 100% probability of slow grinding horror until some external variable changes the equation. Attempted escape: impossible given portal mechanics and time differential. My plan is the best of available options not because it’s good but because every other option is worse.’

Duulak’s analytical mind locked onto the phrase ”time differential” with sudden sharp focus.

• ‘What time differential? You haven’t mentioned temporal distortion between Ispar and Dereth.’

Asheron’s expression shifted into something like grief.

• ‘I was hoping to delay this revelation. But you deserve truth, even when it destroys hope. Time flows differently between dimensions. The relationship isn’t linear—it varies based on magical resonance, dimensional proximity, quantum factors I don’t fully understand. Worse: it’s accelerating. When I first observed the differential thirty centuries ago, it was approximately 3:1. Stable for millennia. But after the Matriarch integrated into Dereth’s substrate, the ratio began increasing. By the time the Empyreans fled, it had reached 5:1. Now—’ He paused, the weight of the revelation visible. ‘Now it averages approximately 20:1, still increasing. For every year that passes on Dereth, roughly twenty years pass on Ispar. And the differential will worsen over time.’

Thomas understood immediately. Mathematics became visceral.

He’d been on Dereth for months. Six months, maybe seven. He’d been counting days, marking time, planning return to family he’d left behind.