The world moved again.
Not eagerly. Not freely.
Cautiously.
Morning finally arrived as something earned rather than given. Light seeped across the borderlands in thin bands, illuminating ground that looked subtly rearranged, as though it had been reconsidered overnight. Stones rested where they hadn't before. Old cracks had widened just enough to matter. The land remembered the conversation.
Tareth felt it immediately.
Not pressure this time.
Afterpressure.
The kind left behind when something vast withdraws but does not forget where it stood.
He rose slowly, muscles stiff, fatigue threading through him in a way qi had once corrected without permission. Now his body had to negotiate with itself like everything else. Pain was no longer erased. It was allowed.
Iscer watched him closely. "You look worse."
"I feel honest," Tareth replied.
"That's not better."
"No," he agreed. "But it's real."
They began walking east, away from the city, toward roads that no longer pretended to be maintained. Iscer chose their route carefully—not by maps, but by listening. They avoided places where the land felt too certain, too reinforced. Certainty was expensive.
As they walked, Tareth became aware of something new.
Distance no longer softened his impact.
Before, the further he moved from people, the less the world reacted. Now the effect stretched with him, subtle but persistent. He wasn't just a local anomaly anymore.
He was a mobile reference.
"That's bad," Iscer muttered, sensing his tension. "You feel it too, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Observation changes things," Iscer said. "They're factoring you into future projections now."
"Good."
They stopped walking.
Iscer turned sharply. "That's not a normal response."
Tareth met their gaze. "If I'm going to be counted," he said, "I'd rather be counted early."
Iscer stared at him for a long moment, then shook their head. "You really were Kaelvar."
"I was," Tareth corrected. "I'm not sure I still am."
They continued on.
By midday, they reached a ruin that should not have existed.
It wasn't old enough to be ancient, nor recent enough to be remembered. Broken pillars lay half-sunk into the ground, carved with symbols that didn't belong to any known script. The air around the place felt thinner, like reality had learned not to linger here.
Iscer slowed. "This wasn't here last year."
"It was," Tareth said quietly.
Iscer frowned. "No. I would've remembered."
Tareth knelt, touching the stone. The moment his fingers made contact, the symbols sharpened, lines deepening as though the stone had been waiting to be noticed properly.
"It existed," he said, "but it wasn't relevant."
Iscer went still. "That's worse."
The ruin responded to him—not by moving, not by adjusting, but by clarifying. Broken walls aligned just enough to suggest former purpose. A central platform emerged from beneath debris, its surface smooth despite centuries of erosion.
A place of settlement.
Not demon.
Not Myrr.
Something else.
"This is where the crater came from," Iscer whispered.
Tareth looked up. "The one you mentioned."
They nodded slowly. "This is what's left after they settled everything at once."
Tareth stood. The sword at his side ticked—once, low and uneasy.
"So this is the cost of efficiency," he said.
The air shifted.
A presence pressed lightly against the edges of the ruin—not hostile, not benign. Aware.
Iscer's hand dropped to their blade again. "We're not alone."
"I know."
From the far side of the platform, something unfolded.
Not a body.
A function.
Lines of light bent inward, forming a shape that suggested limbs without committing to them. It did not touch the ground. It did not cast a shadow.
An auditor-adjacent construct.
Not sent to speak.
Sent to measure.
Tareth felt it begin immediately—probabilities tightening, outcomes narrowing. This was not conversation. This was calibration.
Iscer swore. "That's a real-time balancer. They don't send those unless—"
"Unless observation isn't enough," Tareth finished.
The construct pulsed.
The ruin reacted violently.
Stone cracked. Old symbols flared, then burned out entirely, as if erased for interfering with the math. The ground trembled, reality attempting to reconcile incompatible records.
Tareth stepped forward.
"No," Iscer snapped. "Don't—"
Too late.
Tareth placed his hand against the platform.
This time, he did not stay still.
He chose.
Not movement.
Direction.
The pressure collapsed inward, folding toward him like fabric being drawn through a ring. The construct faltered, its lines stuttering as assumptions failed to resolve.
Tareth felt the weight slam into him—expectations, calculations, unfinished conclusions. His knees buckled. Pain flared, sharp and unfiltered.
He did not correct it.
He accepted it.
The sword screamed.
Not in sound.
In protest.
Steel heated at his side, vibrating as if resisting a verdict it did not agree with.
The construct recoiled, light fracturing, its form destabilizing as the ruin ceased trying to reconcile itself.
Instead—
It waited.
The pressure did not vanish.
It parked.
Deferred.
The construct withdrew, not defeated, but unresolved. Lines unraveled, folding back into the air until nothing remained but scorched ground and silence.
Tareth collapsed to one knee, gasping.
Iscer rushed to him, gripping his shoulder. "Are you insane?! That wasn't negotiation—that was interception!"
Tareth coughed, tasting blood. "It was… deflection."
"You can't just catch that!"
"I didn't," he rasped. "I… redirected it."
Iscer stared at him, horror dawning. "Into yourself."
"Yes."
"Do you have any idea what that does to a person?"
Tareth looked up at the ruin, now quiet, inert, irrelevant again.
"I'm not sure I'm a person," he said softly. "At least not in the way they mean."
The world around them settled uneasily.
Far away, bells rang—not in sequence, not in count.
Error tones.
The ledgers were struggling.
And somewhere beyond the horizon, something ancient took note—not with amusement, not with hunger—
But with concern.
Because for the first time since systems learned to pretend they were eternal,
Someone had chosen to bear the weight—
And walk away with it.