Tareth did not sleep.
He drifted—consciousness thinning and thickening in uneven waves—but true rest never arrived. Every time his thoughts loosened, something tugged them taut again, a reminder that the weight he had taken had not vanished.
It had settled.
The ruin lay quiet around them, its brief relevance already fading. Symbols dulled. Cracks softened. The place was becoming forgettable again, slipping back into the category of locations the world preferred not to explain.
Iscer sat nearby, back against a broken pillar, watching him with open concern they made no effort to hide.
"You're burning," they said quietly.
Tareth opened his eyes. The sky above felt too close, clouds pressing downward as if curious. "No," he replied. "I'm… carrying."
"That's worse."
He didn't argue.
When he pushed himself upright, pain flared immediately—raw, unfiltered, running along nerves that had never been allowed to scream before. His body shook once, instinctively trying to correct, to align.
He stopped it.
The pain remained.
So did he.
Iscer stood quickly, steadying him. "You can't keep doing this," they said. "Redirecting systemic pressure into yourself isn't bravery. It's erosion."
Tareth breathed through clenched teeth until the shaking passed. "Erosion takes time."
"And you think you have it?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that time is what I just bought."
They left the ruin before the land could decide to remember them again.
Walking was… difficult.
Not because his legs failed him, but because each step felt counted. The world resisted less than before, but every movement tugged at something deep inside him, as though the weight he carried wanted to stay centralized.
He was becoming an anchor.
By evening, they reached a stretch of low hills where the ground rose and fell without pattern. No roads. No markers. Just land that had never bothered to explain itself.
They stopped there.
As Iscer gathered dry brush for a fire, Tareth sat alone, sword laid across his knees. The blade was warm—uncomfortably so—its surface faintly veined with light that pulsed in no rhythm he recognized.
"You're angry," he murmured.
The sword ticked.
Once.
Not denial.
"Fair," Tareth said.
He closed his eyes and listened—not inward, not outward, but around. The weight within him hummed, a low, pervasive tension that threaded through muscle and bone. It wasn't qi. It wasn't power in any sense Kaelvar doctrine would recognize.
It was unresolved accounting.
He felt it now—connections forming unintentionally. Distant places tugged faintly at his awareness. Not visions, not knowledge, but pull. As if the weight sought equilibrium by stretching toward similar fractures elsewhere.
That scared him.
When Iscer returned and lit the fire, they studied him in silence for a long moment. "You feel different," they said.
"I am."
"No," Iscer corrected. "Different from before."
Tareth considered that. "Before, the world bent around me," he said. "Now it bends through me."
Iscer grimaced. "That's not an improvement."
"It's honest."
The fire crackled softly. For once, the flames behaved—no flaring, no hesitation, no odd distortions. Even chaos, it seemed, appreciated clarity.
"Do you know what you intercepted back there?" Iscer asked.
"A balancer," Tareth replied. "A decision that hadn't chosen a victim yet."
"Yes," Iscer said. "And now that decision is… delayed. Carried."
They hesitated. "Those things don't like being postponed."
"I know."
"They escalate."
"I know."
Silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken conclusions.
Finally, Iscer asked, "Why do this? Really."
Tareth stared into the fire. Images flickered across his mind—not memories exactly, but records. The crater. The city tightening itself around fear. Doors that refused to open until someone apologized. A child's toy hovering, embarrassed by its own delay.
"Because systems lie," he said quietly. "They call their ceilings absolute and their costs necessary. They erase what doesn't fit and call it balance."
Iscer said nothing.
"I was raised to remove deviation," Tareth continued. "To cut error out cleanly and pretend nothing was lost. But deviation is just… information someone didn't want to handle."
The sword warmed slightly.
"I don't want to break the world," he said. "I want it to admit what it's doing."
Iscer watched him with an expression caught somewhere between fear and reluctant admiration. "You're going to draw attention," they said. "Not just auditors. Not just constructs."
"I know."
"Kaelvar will notice," Iscer added. "So will Myrr. And the Demon Realm doesn't ignore things that make reality hesitate."
At that, something inside Tareth shifted.
A faint echo stirred—ancient, distant, attentive.
"Yes," he said. "I expect it won't."
The fire dimmed suddenly, flames lowering as if bowing to an unseen draft. The night deepened, stars sharpening overhead.
Far away—far deeper than distance normally allowed—something turned.
Not amused.
Not hungry.
Alert.
Tareth felt the weight inside him respond, tightening slightly, like a held breath.
Iscer felt it too. They stiffened, eyes scanning the dark. "That wasn't an auditor."
"No," Tareth agreed.
The sword ticked.
Once.
Slow.
Heavy.
Not warning.
Recognition.
Beyond the hills, beyond the borderlands, beyond even the quiet math of the auditors, something older than systems and far less patient had felt the shift.
The world had gained a variable that refused to resolve cleanly.
And some things preferred their chaos honest.
Tareth stared into the dark, pain steady, weight present, choice intact.
Whatever was coming next would not ask for permission.
But neither—
He realized—
Would it arrive without consequence.