I didn't make it much farther down Vanguard's absurdly luxurious hallway before I finally ran into other students.
The uniforms gave them away before anything else. Black fabric fit close to the body beneath gold and silver trim, but the piece everyone recognized was the dark-blue mantle hanging from the left shoulder.
Vanguard.
Two students were coming from the opposite direction.
The first was shorter than me—not *short* short, but enough that I immediately felt obligated to notice. Sharp blue hair spiked outward like somebody had frozen a bolt of electricity halfway through exploding, except for one stubborn cowlick hanging across his forehead.
It should've looked ridiculous.
On him, somehow, it worked.
Mostly because of the face underneath it.
His brows sat in a permanent scowl, and his luminous blue eyes seemed to flicker whenever the light caught them. For half a second, I genuinely wondered whether electricity was moving inside them.
Then he looked directly at me.
Yep.
Definitely the kind of face that suggested electrocution was a reasonable response to inconvenience.
The boy trailing a step behind him couldn't have been more different. He was tall enough that I had to look slightly up as they approached, with dark skin, tightly curled orange hair, and matching eyes that carried none of the hostility of his companion's.
If anything, he looked apologetic.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he followed, wearing the resigned expression of somebody already waiting for the person in front of him to cause a problem.
I slowed.
Something about the pair screamed *delinquent*.
Although that wasn't entirely intuition.
I knew them.
The realization settled just before we crossed paths.
The short one was **Thomas R. Storcaine**.
The taller one was **Flake V. Minera**.
Well.
That explained the feeling.
Knight appeared beside me, his gaze settling on Thomas.
His expression changed almost immediately.
Just enough that I noticed.
I glanced sideways at him.
"Oh?"
Knight didn't answer.
Thomas and Flake kept coming.
And judging by the way Thomas's already unpleasant expression tightened when his eyes landed on me, he'd noticed me too.
Or maybe he'd noticed the state I was in.
My uniform was torn in enough places that calling it a uniform was becoming generous. Dried blood darkened half the fabric, my hair was still a mess from the assessment, and after everything I'd done today, I probably smelled like sweat, blood, and dead flesh.
Thomas slowed.
His nose wrinkled.
Shit.
Time to move.
I dropped my gaze and picked up the pace.
There was absolutely no reason for us to interact.
None.
Thomas was going that way.
I was going this way.
Two strangers passing peacefully in a hallway.
Beautiful.
Simple.
For once, perhaps the universe would—
Thomas stopped.
I walked past him.
Flake's eyes followed me as I went, and for one wonderful second, neither of them said anything.
Three steps.
Four.
Five.
I was almost willing to believe I'd gotten away with it.
Then his voice came from behind me.
"Who are you?"
I kept walking.
"I've never seen you up here before."
My foot hesitated for half a step.
Then kept going.
Nope.
What did he think I was going to do?
Actually respond?
As if.
I was bruised, exhausted, and still had to move everything I owned into a new dorm.
I was **not** getting trapped in unnecessary dialogue with a pompous bastard on top of it.
Behind me, there was a brief silence.
Flake muttered something too low for me to catch.
Thomas's response was considerably louder.
"Hey."
My shoulders tightened.
Keep walking.
"Did you not hear me?"
Yep.
Keep walking.
"I said stop."
Nope.
His voice sharpened.
"Come here. Now."
Nope.
Nope.
No—
"Kamrik!"
Knight's warning came a fraction too late.
**CRACK!**
The sound split through the hallway.
For an instant, the air behind me smelled sharp enough to sting my nose.
Then something slammed into my back.
"Fuck—!"
My feet left the carpet.
The hallway flipped.
I hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled hard onto my back, and whatever breath I'd managed to keep after the assessment burst out of me all at once.
Pain flared through my ribs.
Something hard dug into my side from inside my coat.
The case.
My stomach lurched, but a faint pulse from the suppression ward answered almost immediately.
Still intact.
Thank every god for Tias's paranoia.
Before I could suck in another breath, a boot came down across my forearm and pinned it against the carpet.
I froze.
Thomas stood over me.
The blue-haired bastard had one hand still buried in his pocket.
The other hung loosely by his side.
The faint crackle of lightning still coated his mantle.
Apparently tackling an injured person from behind hadn't required enough effort to justify using both.
His cowlick hung over his forehead as he looked down at me, those strange blue eyes almost glowing beneath the hallway lights.
And there was no curiosity in his expression anymore.
Just disgust.
His boot pressed harder.
I grimaced.
"Oh, fuck off—"
Thomas's face twisted.
"What is a dirty bastard like you doing up here?"
I stopped struggling.
There was something almost offended in the way he looked at me, as though my presence had personally lowered the property value.
His gaze flicked over my ripped uniform before returning to my face.
"Don't you know where you are?"
I stared up at him.
Thomas leaned closer.
"This is **Vanguard**."
For half a second, neither of us moved.
My eyes flicked toward the Vanguard badge still buried inside my coat pocket.
Great.
I growled and twisted my shoulder, trying to get enough leverage to pull my arm free.
"Get off me. Who the hell do you think you are? You can't just attack another student."
Thomas didn't move.
If anything, he seemed offended by the accusation.
He folded his arms across his chest while keeping one boot firmly planted over my forearm.
"That's exactly why I stopped you."
I stared up at him.
"What?"
His mouth pulled into a smug little sneer.
"Only Vanguard students are allowed on this floor."
He glanced over my torn clothes again, taking his time with it.
Then his eyes returned to mine.
"And you very obviously aren't one."
"Oh, fuck you."
Thomas's smile widened.
"You're trespassing in a restricted section of the Combat Tower. Since you clearly don't know the rules…"
His heel shifted slightly against my arm.
"…I suppose someone has to teach you."
There was something uniquely aggravating about being threatened by someone with a cowlick.
I jerked my trapped arm again.
Nothing.
Fine.
I still had the other one.
I grabbed the side of my coat and shook it until something hard slid toward the opening of the pocket.
"Look here, you electric hedgehog."
Thomas's eyebrow twitched.
I ignored it.
After another awkward shake, the badge finally slipped free and landed against the carpet beside my shoulder.
The Vanguard insignia caught the light.
"There."
I bared my teeth at him.
"I'm Vanguard. So get your damn foot off me before I actually get mad."
For the first time since knocking me down, Thomas's expression cracked.
Only slightly.
His eyes dropped toward the badge.
The pressure on my arm eased.
I almost smiled.
Then his boot came down harder.
"Gh—!"
Pain shot up my arm.
I clenched my jaw and glared at him.
"You little—"
"I don't believe you."
Thomas leaned down just enough for the blue cowlick to fall farther across his forehead.
"A transfer into Combat is rare enough."
His eyes moved from the badge to my face.
"But Vanguard?"
He scoffed.
"Good try."
I stared at him.
"You're standing on my arm while looking directly at an academy-issued badge."
"I said I don't believe you."
"That doesn't make the badge disappear!"
Thomas narrowed his eyes and looked at it again.
There was a brief pause.
His scowl deepened.
"…It does look rather real."
I blinked.
Was this bastard serious?
"Because it **is** real!"
Behind him, Flake finally seemed to recover from whatever shock had kept him rooted in place.
"Thomas."
Nothing.
Flake stepped closer.
"Thomas."
Still nothing.
He grimaced, reached out, and grabbed Thomas by the shoulder.
"Hey—hey, come on."
Thomas looked back sharply.
Flake immediately loosened his grip but didn't retreat.
"We don't actually know he's lying."
Thomas glanced toward me.
I raised my free hand and pointed at the badge.
"Thank you!"
Flake gave me an apologetic look before turning back to Thomas.
"He could really be a new student. We haven't been up here all day, and the faculty changes placements whenever they feel like it."
"Not into Vanguard."
"You don't know that."
Thomas's jaw tightened.
Flake shifted between us as much as he could without physically trying to move Thomas's leg.
"Just let him up."
Thomas didn't.
Flake sighed.
"Or at least let's ask a professor before you break his arm and find out afterward that he was supposed to be here."
That seemed to reach him.
Not because Thomas suddenly looked convinced.
His eyes dropped once more toward my badge, then toward the torn combat uniform beneath my coat.
Suspicion remained written across his entire face.
But his foot finally lifted.
I immediately yanked my arm against my chest and rolled away from him.
"Fucking psychopath."
Thomas shoved both hands into his pockets.
"You ran."
"I was avoiding you."
"That's suspicious."
"You attacked me because I didn't want to talk to you!"
He shrugged.
"Also suspicious."
I stared.
Flake rubbed both hands over his face.
"Thomas…"
For the first time since meeting him, I felt genuine sympathy for Flake.
Apparently following this bastard around was a full-time occupation.
Knowing what happened to him later made the sight more uncomfortable than it should've been.
I pushed the thought away.
That was another thing I was here to fix.
One disaster at a time.
Flake let out a breath once Thomas finally backed off, then turned toward me with an apologetic grimace.
"Look, we're sorry."
He bowed his head.
"It's just been a bad day for Thomas, and—"
"Tsk."
Thomas turned away from us, shoving both hands deeper into his pockets.
"Damn Sornarious."
The name came out like he'd bitten into something rotten.
I glanced at him.
He had his back to us now, shoulders hunched and head lowered as he glared down the hall.
Somehow, I could see him brooding even from behind.
Right.
So *that* was what this was about.
Whatever Sornarious had done to him today, apparently I had been lucky enough to become the nearest available target.
Fantastic.
Flake gave Thomas a tired look before turning back to me.
He held out his hand.
"My name's Flake V. Minera. Thomas and I are part of the first-year Vanguard class."
His smile was awkward, but there wasn't anything fake about it.
"What's your name?"
I looked at the hand for a second.
Then at him.
All I could see in his expression was genuine embarrassment over what his friend had just done. There was no superiority or suspicion in it, just the exhausted sincerity of someone who looked like he'd apologized for Thomas more times than he could count.
I took his hand.
Flake's grip tightened, and he pulled me back onto my feet.
"My name's Kamrik."
I brushed at the front of my coat, accomplishing absolutely nothing.
"And, yes, I'll be joining you in Vanguard."
Flake froze.
His eyebrows shot upward.
"Wait."
He stared at me properly this time.
"**You're** Kamrik?"
I sighed.
Great.
Apparently news of the apprenticeship had already spread.
That had taken what?
An hour?
Maybe less?
I opened my mouth, already preparing myself for whatever ridiculous version of *Grand Professor Tias's mysterious new apprentice* had somehow circulated through the tower.
Then Flake said—
"You're the student from the God Tree incident, right?"
I stopped.
"The what?"
"The griffins."
Flake gestured vaguely upward, as though the God Tree itself were hanging somewhere above the ceiling.
"The two students who were taken. You're the one who survived."
...
Huh?
My amusement disappeared.
"How do you know about that?"
Flake blinked.
I looked between him and Thomas.
"I thought the faculty was keeping the whole thing quiet."
That got Thomas's attention.
He stopped brooding long enough to glance back over his shoulder.
"If that was their plan, they did a terrible job."
I frowned.
Thomas turned around fully, some of the earlier hostility draining from his face now that he had something else to be irritated about.
"It was on the news board."
My stomach sank slightly.
"What was?"
"The incident."
He said it like I was stupid for asking.
"A griffin attack inside Valthrune's territory, two students disappearing, one coming back alive..."
His expression darkened.
"And the other one never came back."
The hallway suddenly felt quieter.
Thomas pulled one hand from his pocket and rubbed his thumb against his jaw.
"They listed him as missing and presumed dead. First presumed student death tied to an incident on academy grounds in more than fifty years."
I stared at him.
*Presumed.*
Of course.
There hadn't been a body.
Flake shifted beside me.
"They didn't put everything on the board," he added quickly. "No names at first. Not officially, anyway."
Thomas gave him a look.
"That lasted half a day."
Flake grimaced.
"Yeah."
I barely heard the rest.
Carlos.
Something didn't fit.
The faculty could be irritating, secretive, and spectacularly bad at explaining themselves, but they weren't incompetent.
And Tias definitely wasn't.
She had every reason to keep the incident contained. If one of Manus Fati's informants in the student body heard that Carlos—the intended Fifth Apostle—had vanished after the God Tree incident, that information could eventually crawl its way back to the other Executives.
Tias wouldn't let that happen by accident.
Which meant...
My brows pulled together.
*That bastard.*
Wonderful.
Another problem.
I could practically feel the headache forming behind my eyes.
"Uh... Kamrik?"
Flake's voice pulled me back.
He was watching me with open concern.
I shook my head.
"Yeah. It's nothing."
It very much was not nothing.
"Anyway, I'll see you two tomorrow. I still have to find my room before I fall asleep standing."
Flake opened his mouth.
"Wait, you still haven't—"
"Tomorrow."
I was already moving.
Whatever he wanted could wait. I still had a Soul Dive to survive tonight.
Eventually, I found my dorm.
Of course it was at the very end of the hallway.
The Vanguard rooms were already spaced far enough apart that calling them dorms felt increasingly dishonest, and mine had somehow been tucked even farther away from the others, almost like someone had remembered at the last minute that they needed somewhere to put me.
At least that meant I didn't have any immediate neighbors.
Small victories.
I stopped in front of the door and rested my palm against the dark wood.
A faint buzz ran through my fingers.
I pulled my hand back.
"Huh?"
Thin lines of mana shimmered across the surface for half a second before disappearing again.
Even the doors had wards.
I stared at it.
"These guys get high-tier security too?"
Sleazy drifted up beside me and leaned toward the door as if inspecting it.
"Would you prefer someone simply walk into your room while you sleep?"
"I lived in Studies. We had locks."
"Adorable."
I gave him a flat look.
Then I pulled the Vanguard badge from my pocket and pressed it against the door.
Mana rippled beneath the wood.
**Click.**
The lock released.
I pushed the door open.
And stopped.
"...Woah."
For a few seconds, I genuinely forgot about my ribs.
My memories had not done this place justice.
Calling it a dorm room was criminal.
The space in front of me was easily five times larger than my old room, and that was before I noticed how far it continued beyond the entrance. A long couch stretched across the center of the living area, large enough that I could have comfortably slept on it and still had room to roll over without falling off.
Which was already more than I could say about my old bed.
Paintings hung along the walls between tall shelves and polished wooden cabinets, actual artwork instead of the cheap academy prints Studies used to make a hallway look less depressing.
I stepped farther inside.
My boots sank slightly into another rug.
Of course there was another rug.
Then I noticed the glass doors at the far end of the room. I crossed over and pulled one open.
Cool evening air hit my face as I stepped closer.
There was a balcony.
I slowly turned around.
"I have a fucking balcony?"
Sleazy floated past me and leaned over the railing.
"Nice view."
"What the hell?"
Below us, Valthrune stretched across the fading light, the last traces of sunset painting the distant towers orange.
I looked back into the room.
"Is this where my tuition has been going?"
Bloody walked straight through the closed half of the balcony door.
He looked around once.
His face immediately twisted.
"Pathetic."
I stared at him.
"You're calling *this* pathetic?"
"Too soft."
He kicked experimentally at the couch.
His foot passed through it.
Bloody scowled harder.
"A warrior should sleep somewhere uncomfortable."
"Why?"
"To remain sharp."
"You sleep in my soul."
He paused.
I pointed at him.
"You don't even have a bed."
"That is why I remain sharp."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
"I'm not having this argument."
A noise came from behind me.
I turned.
Lazy had appeared.
Apparently the promise of luxury had finally accomplished what several hours of conversation couldn't and dragged him back from whatever imaginary nap he'd disappeared into.
His gaze moved from the couch to me and immediately back again.
"Mine."
I blinked.
"What?"
He was already floating toward it.
"You have a bedroom."
"You don't physically need furniture."
"Neither does Sleazy. He's still leaning on the balcony."
Sleazy immediately straightened.
"I was appreciating the architecture."
Lazy lowered himself onto the couch and sank halfway through the cushions before adjusting until he appeared to be lying on top of them.
He folded his hands over his stomach.
"Excellent."
I stared at him.
"You weren't even here five minutes ago."
"And yet I've made the best decision of anyone present."
"Get off my couch."
"No."
Bloody sneered.
"Slothful creature."
Lazy didn't open his eyes.
"Yes."
Bloody seemed genuinely annoyed that the insult had failed.
For once, I understood him.
I left them to it and moved farther into the dorm.
A proper kitchen opened to the left—not a sad counter with a sink jammed beside it, but an actual kitchen with cabinets, enough space to prepare real food, a full-sized stove, and an enchanted cooling unit built into the wall.
I opened it.
Empty.
Naturally.
"At least they didn't stock it too. I would've started getting offended."
"Why?" Sleazy called from the balcony.
"Because I've been eating cafeteria food for two years."
"That sounds like a personal failure."
I shut the cooling unit harder than necessary.
Past the living room, three doors opened off a short hall. The first led to a bedroom large enough that the bed alone could probably fit three people comfortably.
I stared at the bed, pictured my old dorm for comparison, and felt personally robbed.
"This is bullshit."
Bloody appeared through the wall beside me.
"What?"
"My entire old room could fit in here."
He looked around.
"So?"
"So I've been robbed."
He clearly did not understand.
The next door opened into a bathroom larger than any student bathroom had a right to be.
The third made me stop.
Another bedroom sat beyond it, smaller than mine but still fully furnished.
I slowly leaned back into the hallway.
"Sleazy."
His head appeared through the wall.
"Yes, Seer?"
"Why do I have a guest bedroom?"
He looked past me.
Then shrugged.
"For guests."
"I know what a guest bedroom is."
"Then I'm glad I could help."
I stared at him.
His smile widened.
I shut the door in his face.
It passed through him.
Right.
Ghost.
"Fuck all of you."
From the living room came Lazy's muffled response.
"No."
I rubbed both hands over my face.
For the first time since entering, I noticed Knight again.
He hadn't said anything.
He stood near the entrance with his arms folded, quietly taking in the room. Unlike Sleazy, Bloody, and Lazy, he had no joke, complaint, or claim to make.
He was just... watching.
I considered asking.
Then decided against it.
If Knight wanted to say something, he would.
Right now, I had more important things to worry about.
I dropped the paperwork onto the kitchen counter, pulled Tias's suppression case from the inside of my coat, and set it beside the papers before carefully shrugging the coat off.
The Vanguard badge landed beside it with a light metallic click.
The room made everything feel uncomfortably official. New cohort, new apprenticeship, and by tomorrow I'd be walking into class with people who had years of experience on me and futures I barely understood.
I looked toward the couch.
Lazy had already made himself comfortable.
Bloody was still insulting the decorations.
Sleazy had somehow found a bottle on one of the shelves and was pretending to read the label despite it being completely empty.
Knight remained silent.
I sighed.
"Alright."
Several heads turned toward me.
My gaze settled on the badge.
"Fun's over."
Lazy's eyes immediately closed.
"I disagree."
"Too bad."
I reached for the paperwork again.
Because there was still one thing I needed to do before tomorrow.
And I had been putting it off since leaving Tias's office.
Soul Diver.
The thought alone made my stomach tighten.
Bloody noticed.
His grin returned.
"Oh?"
I frowned at him.
"Don't."
"You're frightened."
"I said don't."
Sleazy's amusement disappeared a little as he drifted back inside.
Even Lazy opened one eye.
Knight remained exactly where he was.
I looked between them.
Then toward the bedroom.
"I'm doing it before I change my mind."
Sleazy raised both hands.
"It's your decision, Seer."
Lazy nodded from where he floated nearby.
"I concur. We need whatever information we can get about the future."
Then, apparently deciding that was the full extent of his contribution, he reclined backward in the air and folded his hands behind his head.
"Do what you have to do."
I grimaced.
*At least pretend you care, guys.*
I turned toward where Knight had been standing.
He wasn't there.
I frowned.
My eyes moved around the room.
Nothing.
"Weird."
Knight disappearing wasn't exactly unusual. The others came and went whenever they pleased, and I was fairly certain Lazy spent half his existence sleeping somewhere inside my soul.
But this was different.
Usually, whenever I was about to do something spectacularly stupid, Knight was the one hovering over my shoulder telling me to be careful.
*Keep your head.*
*Don't lose yourself.*
Some appropriately old-man piece of advice that I would pretend to ignore and then remember five minutes later when everything inevitably went wrong.
Having him absent now felt...
Wrong.
Bloody hovered above me, arms crossed, a familiar sneer twisting his face.
"If you die, maggot, then I die with you."
I looked up.
"I have already triumphed over death once. I have no desire to repeat the experience because you decided to destroy your own mind."
I blinked.
Wait.
Was Bloody actually worried about me?
Something warm and deeply uncomfortable started forming in my chest.
"Bloody, was that—"
He spat directly at my face.
The glob passed harmlessly through my forehead and disappeared somewhere behind me.
Bloody dragged his tongue across his teeth in disgust.
"Don't misunderstand."
I stared at him.
There it was.
"Yeah. Never mind."
Whatever concern the ghosts did—or very obviously did not—have for me wasn't the thing bothering me anyway.
My attention drifted toward the doorway again.
Knight had been strange ever since we'd reached Vanguard—quieter than usual, distracted in a way I couldn't quite place.
At first, I'd assumed he was nostalgic. Of all the others, Knight seemed to remember his years at Valthrune most clearly, so walking these halls again probably meant more to him than he wanted to admit.
But I didn't know.
And unless he chose to tell me, I wasn't going to know.
Technically, I could find out.
Soul Diver gave me access to the memories attached to each incarnation. If I really wanted to, I could probably dig until I found whatever Knight was hiding.
The thought left a bad taste in my mouth.
No.
There was a difference between using their experiences to save the world and rummaging through someone's life because I was curious.
I wasn't *that* much of a scumbag.
Knight would tell me when he wanted to.
Hopefully.
I crossed into the bedroom and dropped onto the bed.
Then immediately sank several inches.
"Ohhh..."
God, this thing was incredible.
The mattress seemed to mold itself around my body, swallowing every aching muscle in warmth.
For one dangerous moment, I considered abandoning the entire world-saving business and simply going to sleep.
Then I remembered why I'd come in here.
"Right."
Soul Diver.
Wonderful.
I closed my eyes.
Slowly, I reached inward.
Not toward Bloodrend.
Deeper.
Past the warmth that had become so familiar over the last few days. Past that constant hungry presence curled somewhere beneath my thoughts.
I searched for something quieter.
Something that had always been mine.
And let myself fall.
The bedroom disappeared.
Grey stretched beneath me.
An endless sea without waves or wind, its surface so perfectly still that it barely seemed like water at all.
I hovered above it.
For a moment, everything felt exactly as I remembered.
Then I looked up.
My stomach dropped.
"...What the hell?"
Something had changed.
Dark roots stretched across the grey sky.
Not branches.
Roots.
Thick, crooked things that seemed to have forced themselves into my soul from somewhere beyond it. Some were no wider than veins. Others disappeared into the distance, twisting through the emptiness overhead.
Black liquid gathered along their surfaces.
A drop swelled.
Fell.
**Plip.**
The grey sea rippled beneath it.
I grimaced.
"Yeah. That's fucking disgusting."
Corruption.
I didn't need anyone to explain that part.
I could feel it.
The same wrongness that had crawled through my body after swallowing those gifts lingered inside the roots now, oily and foreign.
My gaze followed them.
Most spread outward into nothing.
One didn't.
Far across the grey sea, a much larger root descended from the darkness above.
I slowly floated toward it.
The closer I came, the less it looked like a root and the more it looked like some enormous dead tree had been buried upside down inside me.
Except this one had been restrained.
Pale chains wrapped around it.
Dozens of them.
They weren't metal. Not exactly. They glowed faintly, almost translucent, each link formed from something white and ethereal that made my eyes ache if I stared for too long.
They wound around the corrupted root again and again, pulling tight enough that cracks had formed across its surface.
I slowed.
"I did not do that."
At least...
I didn't remember doing it.
Something hung from the lowest end of the root, a dark mass that tightened my chest the moment I saw it.
I knew that shape.
Or thought I did.
The memory refused to settle: a mouth, laughter, teeth—and somewhere above it, an eye.
My head throbbed.
"Shit."
I pressed two fingers against my temple.
The harder I tried to remember, the more the memory seemed to slide away.
There had been something here.
Something had tried to—
I stopped.
Embedded through the center of the dark mass was a silver spike.
It gleamed against everything around it, clean and completely untouched by the corruption.
I stared at it.
"Who put that there?"
Nothing answered.
Obviously.
But the question bothered me more the longer I looked.
I had barely been a mage for a week when all of this happened. My mana control had been pathetic, I barely understood Bloodrend, and Soul Diver wasn't exactly a spell I could wield with any precision either.
Yet somehow, inside my own soul, an evil god's influence had been chained down and impaled.
By me?
That made absolutely no sense.
"How did I—"
**Keeper.**
The word struck my mind like a hammer.
I stumbled backward.
"Ghk—!"
Pain exploded behind my eyes.
For one instant, the grey sea vanished beneath a flash of white.
Then—
Nothing.
I blinked.
My breathing had quickened.
"What...?"
I rubbed my forehead.
Something had just—
I frowned.
What had I been thinking about?
My eyes wandered toward the chained root.
The silver spike gleamed from inside the dark mass.
I stared at it for several seconds.
...
Right.
No point worrying about that now.
I had come here for something else.
My attention dropped toward the grey sea beneath me.
The first layer.
Even looking at it made my stomach clench.
"I guess it's time to go back into this hellhole."
I flexed my fingers.
"First layer isn't *too* bad."
I drew in one last breath.
Then dove.
The grey surface rushed toward me.
And swallowed me whole.