“Dad!” Leo shouted, racing down the forest path as fast as his legs could carry him. He’d used that very same path to train his cardio at his parent’s insistence just about every day growing up, but never before had he pushed himself to this extent.

  After witnessing the state his house was in, he’d quickly asked Francy to grab Jim and make sure the healer was prepared for anything before all but hurling himself out of the bakery. The townsfolk couldn’t actually get near his house, due to something his parents had done and refused to explain to him regardless of how many times he’d asked over the years. Normally that was more of an inconvenience than anything, but now it meant that if his father had been injured, Leo was going to have to drag him all the way back to town in order to get him help. It was supposed to be a standard safety measure put in place by all Cartographers who took on the role of founder, but now, it was nothing more than a hindrance.

  What did you do? Leo thought, panting as his legs burned and the distance between him and his burning house shrank with every step. I know you’re a bad chef, but nobody is that bad!

  Even now, he prayed to the Planar Lords that he’d spot his father stumbling out of the remains of their house, waving the smoke out of his face and grinning as he admitted to doing something stupid. His mother was the serious, no-nonsense member of their team, and it seemed as though his father took it upon himself to try and balance her out. But despite all his prayers, there remained no sign of his dad.

  “Dad!” he shouted again, sprinting the last bit before coming to a stop. His family house, the home he’d lived in his entire life, stood before him, engulfed in a raging inferno. Something had clearly blasted a good third of the house away, including the kitchen where his father had been cooking when Leo last saw him.

  Leo could do nothing but stare with his mouth open as the wooden beams supporting his bedroom grew weak and collapsed, taking another chunk of the house down with them. A quiet groan unlike any sound he’d ever made before left his lips, and he fell to his knees, too shocked to do much else besides stare into the raging bonfire.

  “Dad…”

  Suddenly, part of the front wall burned and fell away, and Leo gasped as he spotted something. Half-covered by burning debris, he could clearly make out what looked like a human leg. Not hesitating for even a second, Leo scrambled to his feet and turned around, running away from the house for just a moment. Leaping into the lake without a moment’s hesitation, Leo ignored the cold shock before turning and immediately climbing out. Soaked to the bone, Leo sprinted back to the house, shouting as he barreled directly into the roaring flames and began coughing from all the smoke. Dropping low as he’d been taught, he rushed over to where he’d seen the leg, confirming his suspicions.

  “Dad!” he shouted, kicking away the worst of the debris covering his father before grabbing him by the armpits and dragging him back the way he’d come. The flames licked at Leo and burned his flesh with every second, but he didn’t care.

  Whatever state he’d be in after all of this, his father was going to be far worse off.

  Escaping back out into the chill evening air once more, Leo coughed the last of the smoke from his lungs as he dragged his father away from the house. Just in the knick of time, it would seem, as the last of the beams holding up the second floor finally gave way. The top half of the house came crashing down, sending a fresh wave of heat rolling over them.

  “Come on, come on,” Leo muttered, turning his father over and staring in horror at what he found.

  His father’s face was burned nearly beyond recognition. His skin looked like charcoal, cracking and almost blistering to the touch. Only now did Leo realize his own hands had received the worst of the burns, solely from dragging his father’s body out of the house. Still, pain was something he’d been trained to ignore as a child, and he desperately tried to remember his mother’s lessons. Focusing on his breathing, he did his best to slow down his racing heart, thinking about what to do now.

  “Jim can help,” Leo said, remembering the healer Francy was getting ready. “Don’t worry, if I just get you to Jim, he’ll get you good as new!”

  Deep down, Leo already knew what Jim was going to tell him. His parents had taught him basic, and even intermediate first aid, and he was well aware that there were some injuries people simply couldn’t come back from. At least not without the intervention of a gem holder with the appropriate skills. And seeing as his father was the only gem holder in this entire plane…

  “Just hang on, it’ll be okay,” Leo said, talking more to himself than his father as he reached down to start dragging him again. But before he could hook his hands under his father’s armpits once more, something miraculous happened.

  His father’s hand shot out, grabbing his own and holding it in place with shocking strength.

  “Dad!” Leo shouted, staring in wonder at his horribly burned father. “How…?”

  “I can… turn into… fire,” his dad managed, his blackened lips barely moving as he coughed the words out weakly. “Even… dampened… I can do… this much.”

  “Don’t talk, let me get you to Jim! He’ll fix you!”

  “No time,” his father coughed, sucking in a deep breath and sounding like he’d gained strength seemingly out of nowhere. “They came for me. Gem holders.”

  “Wait, what? Gem holders?” Leo repeated, his brow furrowing as he looked between his father and the flaming wreckage of their home. “Why? Why would they do something like this?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “To destroy all our evidence… Ruin our plan… Didn’t think they’d go to such lengths…” his dad muttered, his voice sounding like it was wavering before he focused again. “Leo, listen. The Nexus… it doesn’t have long. If they came for me, they must have gone after your mother as well. Someone needs to know. Someone needs to do something.”

  “Wait, mom’s in danger?” Leo asked, yelping as his father’s hand suddenly tightened down on his own, squeezing the fragile bones hard enough to hurt.

  “She can handle herself, this is more important. A few years ago, we discovered something while we were at the Nexus. The plane is dying. We’re not sure why, or how, but we know for certain. The entire plane is going to collapse. The Planar Lords already know.”

  “Hold on, slow down,” Leo demanded, his head spinning as he tried to take all this in. “The Nexus is a colossal plane. Home to millions of people! If it’s going to collapse, why would the Planar Lords be trying to cover it up?”

  “Within the Nexus, they are gods. Without it… in a plane where they are forced to dampen their souls… they are merely human.” With a cry of anguish, his father forced his blackened neck to turn, facing Leo directly despite the fact that his eyes were all but seared shut. “They don’t want their worshipers fleeing the Nexus and finding new planes to live. They plan to try and keep the plane from crumbling for as long as possible, before fleeing at the last moments. Leaving the millions of souls who live there to their fates.”

  “But that’s…” Leo couldn’t even come up with a word to describe such an action. Evil? Horrific? Was there even a fitting descriptor for anyone who purposefully allowed millions of people to die, just to satisfy their own god-complex?

  “Wrong,” his father finished for him. “It’s wrong, and it’s why your mother and I were working on a plan to save everyone. We were waiting to tell you about this until your first step, but we’re a bit of a bigger deal than we told you. You remember our soul ranks?”

  “Yeah. You have a soul rank of 33, and mom is 34. That’s why she always teases you so much,” Leo said, sniffling as he felt his father’s grip growing weaker with every passing second. “Mom always said she could never be with anyone stronger than her.”

  “That last bit is true,” his father admitted, the barest hint of a chuckle escaping his lips. “But we lied about our ranks. My soul is actually rank 42… your mother 43.”

  “What?!” Leo shouted, almost recoiling from his father before catching himself. “But that would make the two of you-”

  “Famous, for one thing. We didn’t want you growing up with that weight of expectation on your shoulder, which is why we lied. For that, I’m sorry. It must be why the Planar Lords decided to go to such extremes. If our original plan failed, our back up was to simply go public with the information we’d discovered. Nobody would look twice at some random gem holder going around shouting about the end of the Nexus. They’d just assume the person was crazy. But if your mother and I claimed it was so, people would listen. At least some of them. And the Planar Lords couldn’t have that.”

  “I don’t… I can’t…” Leo settled for stunned silence, unable to take this revelation after revelation. The discovery that his parents’ soul ranks were in the forties was almost more shocking to him than learning about the Nexus’ inevitable collapse. “Why would you come here? If you’re that powerful, why dampen your soul so much as to live in a tier 5 plane?” he asked, his eyes finally beginning to water as he looked down at what remained of his father. “You have so much power… Why?! This never would have happened if you didn’t constrain yourself!”

  “We wanted a nice, quiet plane to raise you in,” his father said, squeezing his hand with what little remained of his strength. “I don’t regret our choices in the slightest. But Leo... you need to leave. If the Planar Lords were willing to go this far, they must be planning to collapse this plane as well, just to ensure they didn’t miss anything. I needed to tell you about me and your mother and the Nexus, but now… It’s time for you to go.”

  “What? I can’t take my first step without you and mom!” Leo argued, wiping the tears from his eyes. “I’m not even a gem holder!”

  “Right… Sorry, the pain is a bit distracting.” With jerky, rough movements, his father released his hand, reaching down and gently touching a finger against his chest. When he pulled it away, there was a small gem, no larger than a thumbnail pressed between his fingers.

  “Your other presents are probably little more than ash at the moment… but at least I can do this much,” his father coughed, forcing the gem into Leo’s open hand and closing his fingers around it. “Take this… and flee this plane before it’s destroyed. Tell no one what I told you. Not until you have a way to make the Planar Lords listen, or a new plane you can move everyone to. They’ll be guarding the three rifts connected to this plane, but there’s a secret fourth one we never revealed in our report, hidden down in the center of the lake. You’ll soon learn that when it comes to Cartographers, secrets are our real currency. And one last thing!” his father said, his whole body spasming as though nearly forgetting had caused him physical pain. “There’s a small box hidden beside the rift. Take it, but don’t open it until your soul reaches rank 20. You’ll need it if you want to save anyone. Whatever you do, don’t show the box to anyone. It holds the key to getting everyone out from under the Planar Lords’ noses. You need to… find another… colossal…”

  “I’m not just going to leave you here like this!” Leo said, panicking as his father’s sudden burst of strength started to fade away. “Jim is waiting by the town, just hang in there!”

  “We love you, Leo,” his father whispered, his voice growing weaker with every syllable as his hand went limp. “You’re going to be… a great… Cartographer...”

  “Dad!” Leo shouted one last time, the tears he’d been struggling to hold back finally falling in earnest as he stared down at the charred corpse of his father. As if not wanting to leave any room in Leo’s mind that he was just sleeping, three brilliant gems slowly emerged from his chest, sparkling in the light of the nearby fire. Unlike the tiny gem Leo had been handed, these three were massive. Two were the size of eggs, and the third nearly as large as his fist. Leo wanted nothing more than to grab his father’s gems and cherish them, but he knew from his lessons that was a bad idea.

  Handling gems with higher grades than one’s soul was basically the same as throwing one’s life away. Only his mother would be strong enough to touch these.

  Mom…

  Wiping away his tears, Leo forced himself to his feet, the thought of warning his mother the only thing keeping him upright. She had to know what happened here, otherwise, she might stumble right into some sort of trap set by the Planar Lords. But as he took a step toward town, intending to warn everyone of what was to come, the ground began to violently shake, and he realized he was too late.

  Their plane was already collapsing.