Rem used his last daily pass to enter challenge four.
He hit stone in the dark. The impact drove the air from his lungs. He lay naked on the cave floor, skin on rock, the ring biting into his finger. Cold seized him at once.
Wind whipped through the wooden barricade wall and slapped across his back.
He forced himself up. His feet skidded on grit. He ran anyway, bare soles striking cracked stone, pain sharp then distant under the cold. The cave mouth opened to night. Black sky. Frozen air.
He reached the glyph controls and stopped so hard his knees almost buckled.
The spheres were missing.
His pulse hammered in his ears. He dropped to his knees and swept his hands along the grooves, as if touch could make them appear. Empty channels. Frost in the cuts. The lake beyond lay locked in ice, dull and white in the dark.
“That’s right,” he said, and the words shook out of him. The second line was elevated on both sides, the natural resting place was in the middle, the stasis point. So as long as they just took the spheres and hid them he should be safe from further de-aging.
Wind shoved him. He caught himself on one hand. His small body trembled hard enough to ruin his breathing. He forced his shoulders down, forced air into his lungs, and shut his eyes.
Essence sight opened.
The frozen lake fell away. Dark water sharpened beneath the ice. Two spheres glowed with essence on the bottom, bright and clean.
Not hidden.
Sunk.
The first straight line control was where it had been when he left, unchanged. The second was—
Rem stood so fast the world tilted. He half-fell down the embankment, palms scraping frozen dirt, then caught his balance and sprinted the shoreline. He needed weight. He needed it now. His hands closed on a stone big enough to hold with both arms. It tore at his palms. Good. He didn’t care.
He stepped onto the lake.
Ice complained under his feet.
He ran toward the middle, breath ripping in short bursts. He kept his eyes on the glow beneath the surface and tried not to think about how thin the ice might be.
“Those damn birds,” he hissed, and his foot slipped.
The stone shot from his hands and skidded away across the ice, spinning. He lunged after it. He stopped himself. One breath. Two. He ran after it on a line, knees bent, arms out for balance, and grabbed it before it slid too far.
Back over the glow.
He lifted the stone overhead. His small arms shook so badly the rock wobbled. He brought it down.
Crack.
The ice barely gave.
Again.
Crack.
The vibration tore through his numb fingers. Cold climbed into his wrists. He tried to lift the stone again and his arms failed halfway. He tried again and it sagged.
“No,” he breathed, and the sound came out thin.
He snarled and summoned his merge domain around the rock. The square formed. The weight vanished inside it.
He drove it down.
The ice split deeper.
Again.
Again.
He hammered without stopping now, wind tearing at his hair, trying to shove him sideways. He adjusted his stance between strikes, feet sliding, toes gripping uselessly on slick ice. Fractures spread out in jagged lines. Dark water pressed up through them.
There—one crack opened into a seam.
He struck it again. Again. The seam widened. A hole broke through, black water breathing up.
He didn’t give himself time to think.
He jumped.
The cold swallowed him whole.
It crushed the breath from his chest. Pain flared across his skin, then vanished into numbness. His mouth opened on reflex and he clamped it shut, jaw shaking. He forced his eyes open and called essence sight.
The lake cleared.
The spheres glowed below him, steady on the bottom.
He kicked.
His legs felt too short, strokes shallow and weak. Cold cinched his knees. He pulled with his arms and felt strength leak out of them, every motion slower than it should be. His chest tightened and stayed tight.
Down.
He kept moving.
Down.
The lakebed rose into view. Stone floor. Silt. The groove of the timeflow line cut across it, straight and deliberate.
It should have been clear.
It wasn’t.
The point of the timeflow groove was filled with stones. Not large rocks, but numerous small stones. Packed in tight. Jammed hard into the channel.
Stasis blocked.
Sphere can’t settle.
Deaging.
No time.
He hit the bottom and dropped to his knees in the silt. His hands closed around the first stone. His fingers barely curved. He tore it free and shoved it aside. Another. Another. The stones fought him, wedged in, slick with algae and grit.
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His fingers bent halfway and froze. The stone slid out before he felt it leave.
“No—” He tried to say it and swallowed water.
He shifted to his merge domain.
The square flared around him, tight and hard. The next stone lifted cleanly and shot away into the dark. Then another. Then another. He worked in sharp bursts, clearing what his hands couldn’t. He aimed them away without looking, just to get them out of the groove.
Every gap revealed another layer pressed deeper. His arms slowed. His legs stopped kicking with purpose. They drifted.
The edges of the square wavered.
He looked at his hands.
Too small. Thick at the knuckles. Fingers shortened. The skin pulled tight over small bones.
Were those his hands?
His lungs convulsed. Air burst from his mouth and raced upward.
His chest jerked, dragging his throat open on reflex.
Water flooded in.
He forced his eyes back to the groove. He forced the domain to hold. One more stone. One more. Clear it. Clear it.
His vision narrowed. The spheres blurred. The groove blurred. Everything blurred.
He shut his eyes.
Just for a second.
He let his essence sight fall away.
Just needed a minute.
Rem realized he was sitting on the edge of a fountain.
Cold stone pressed through the thin gray fabric at his thighs. He knew the curve beneath his palm, the shallow chip along the rim where he and his sister used to brace their heels before kicking into the basin. He ran his thumb along the groove. It was still there. Smooth. Worn by years of hands.
The Arch was gone.
The square lay open and bright. This was the square from before the Arrival.
A shout split the air. A father seized his son by the collar and hauled him toward an alley. Shutters slammed. A crate tipped. Apples rolled across the cobbles. The air carried wet stone and torn fruit.
People were running.
“Bet you’re wondering what’s going on?”
Rem turned.
A man leaned against a storefront post, one boot braced behind him. He held a knife in one hand and an apple in the other. The blade moved in slow, careful strokes. Peel dropped in a red ribbon at his feet. His hair hung long but tied back tight. A crimson leather jacket clung to his shoulders, tassels shifting when he moved.
“They’re running from you.” He pointed the knife at Rem. Steady. Casual. Then he slid a slice into his mouth and chewed. “On account of the last time you paid us a visit, you killed someone.”
Rem studied him. The jacket. The stance. The easy balance.
He lifted his own sleeve. The fabric shifted under the light, gray flashing silver before settling again. It felt cool. Too smooth.
“That’s what you said last time, Remi,” he said.
The man’s mouth tightened. “Baaa. You were more fun when you didn’t remember us.”
“What’s the real reason they’re running?”
He shrugged. “Ask one of the nerds.”
He tossed the rest of the apple over his shoulder. It vanished before it touched stone.
“Ready?” he asked.
Rem pushed off the fountain. His boots struck the ground flat. He brushed at his robes though there was nothing on them. “Lead the way.”
They moved down the main street. Doors shut as they passed. Faces turned. A merchant dragged his cart backward into his stall without looking away from him.
“I’m curious,” the man said. “What did you think would happen when you made a flock of super smart birds and then told them you’d kill them one day?”
“I didn’t say I’d kill them.”
“You said enough.”
Rem’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t think they could do anything. I didn’t think they would.”
Slate-gray warriors stood at attention at the Tower gates. Spears upright. Eyes forward. They did not move when Rem walked between them, but he felt their attention press into his back.
Inside, the air cooled. Dry stone. Echoing steps. Doors opened before them and closed behind.
They wound upward until the corridor widened and spilled into the central chamber.
Seats rose in rings around a hollow floor. Sections divided by color—silver, gold, crimson, blue, orange, purple. More beyond those. Cloth shifted. Boots scraped. Every face turned toward him.
“The Witness,” the man in crimson leather said, bending into an exaggerated bow. “As requested.”
Rem watched him take his place among the others dressed in the same red. Then Rem stepped into the center. The sound of his boots climbed the walls.
“You misjudged the resourcefulness of the ravens and brought calamity on us all!” An elderly man in silver robes rose to his feet, white hair stark against the fabric. His hand shook as he pointed.
“You cannot judge him for that!” A youth in gold shot up across the chamber, voice sharp. Others in gold followed, speaking over the silver.
The far door opened.
A solitary figure entered.
Umbral armor covered him from throat to heel. Dark wisps drifted from the plates and thinned before touching the floor. He walked forward. Each step landed with measured weight. The arguing thinned, then stopped.
Gold lines cut across the black armor. A heavy chain hung at his chest. A large golden key rested against the metal, unmoving.
“The Warden has arrived,” a clear voice called from the purple section. “Quorum is achieved.”
A man in purple robes stood, an encircled star stitched across his chest. “Call to order. Call to order.”
The chamber quieted. Cloth settled. Breathing filled the space.
“Before us is the question of how to proceed,” the purple-robed speaker said. “Leave recriminations for another time.”
“Proceed?” A crimson-robed man rose, a mask embroidered across his chest. “He killed us. What’s there to discuss? Proceed how?”
“We’ve never died before,” said a man in blue, an open book stitched over his heart. He stood slowly, fingers gripping the bench in front of him. “As long as we’ve kept records, we’ve never died.”
“Exciting, isn’t it?” A portly man in bright orange leaned forward, eyes wide. “Imagine what we might discover.” The orange section murmured.
“Dead?”
The voice came from the black armor. It did not echo. It did not seem shaped by breath.
“I don’t feel dead.”
The helmet turned toward Rem.
“Do you feel dead?”
Rem met the dark visor. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “How am I supposed to know what dead feels like?”
“Why are you here?”
The words landed flat and precise. No rise. No fall.
“I must have fallen asleep again,” Rem said. His chest rose too fast.
“What were you doing before you fell asleep?”
His thoughts snagged.
“I was…” He pressed his fingers to his temple.
Water crushed over his head. Cold drove into his ears. His lungs strained.
“I was under the lake trying to—”
“I need to get back there.”
A thin crack split the stone at his feet.
The silver-robed elder faltered. His eyes dropped to the floor. “What—”
Another fracture ran between the rings of seats.
A gold-robed youth staggered as his bench dipped. He grabbed the shoulder beside him. His hand passed halfway through the fabric before catching.
“This isn’t—”
A pillar split with a sharp snap. Dust fell and thinned before reaching the floor.
Voices rose. Not argument now. Confusion.
Rem’s breath shortened. The chamber tilted.
Color drained from a sleeve near him. Threads lifted and dissolved.
Only the Warden remained still.
The fractures stopped short of his boots.
Stone thinned and gave way.
Rem slipped.
Darkness took him.
Rem awoke. Sort of.
Darkness pressed in on every side. No sound. No air moving. No weight against his skin.
He reached with his essence sight.
It opened outward.
The first thing he saw was a dense knot of tangled essence—threads crossing and folding over one another, color layered on color, bright and unstable. Beyond it hung two vast spheres of light, steady and immense. Farther still, dim currents drifted and coiled, a wide field of scattered color turning in slow arcs.
He searched for himself.
There was nothing.
Where his body should have been, there was only more dark.
He turned inward, narrowing his focus. He found microscopic life drifting through fluid, each speck carrying a faint glow of essence. They moved in clusters around the great spheres. Tiny. Numerous. Alive.
But there was no flesh. No bone. No outline of a body.
He paused.
He felt nothing.
No cold. No pressure. No ache in his lungs. No tightness in his chest. No fatigue. No anger. No fear.
The absence registered as fact, not distress.
He understood he should have felt something. Panic, at least. Anger at the loss. A rush of urgency.
Instead there was only awareness.
Detached. Clear.
He widened his sight again.
The cave resolved around him—stone walls slick with moisture, sediment settled in soft ridges along the floor. Beyond the cave mouth lay the fields. Empty. No birds crossed the sky. No wingbeats. The air above the grass held still.
At the exact center of it all hung that tangled mass of essence. Bright. Chaotic. Knotted tight.
His attention settled on it.
The thought moved without sound.
He drew his focus back and pushed.
The tangled mass flared. Essence burst outward in a sharp pulse, threads snapping free before curling back in.
He halted and withdrew.
The surge left no fatigue. No strain. Just motion.
He extended thin filaments of essence, stretching them outward as feelers. They slid through the surrounding fluid and dissolved. No friction. No anchor point. Nothing to brace against. He pulled again. Nothing shifted.
He stilled.
Considered.
He gathered himself inward.
And summoned his merge
