Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 149: Book 3: The Empty City

Rhoran's mind was fragmented, but he was slowly gathering himself.

It was nothing unexpected. The Integrator—former Integrator—was held in place only by the meager mental structures he'd created for himself before this transition, and the trip through the broken Intermediary had maimed those structures even more than he'd been prepared for. If Lhore had given him a little more time, if any of the others had fought for him, he might have been able to build something more secure. More able to handle the torment of the dimensional phase.

Of course, no one had seen fit to give him any additional time. Typical. They blamed him for what Gheraa had done and for what Ethan had been able to accomplish through him. Not Lhore, who had been there when Gheraa programmed the Interface to send Ethan those damnable skills. Not Nhava, who had been the one to suggest they send the damn asteroid after Ethan in the first place.

Him. Because he'd been the Overseer in charge of Gheraa. Because he was supposed to have caught on to what the slimy bastard was doing behind his back. It wasn't his fault Gheraa had betrayed the entire Integrator cause! What, just because he'd been a little rough with him? He'd deserved it, with all his snide jokes and comments and that remark about the size of his Firmament.

You were prodding him first.

Rhoran decided to ignore that stray thought; it was nothing more than the product of his fragmented mind. Subconscious and conscious melting together because there was no more structure to hold it together. He'd only barely managed to find something he could take control of—though even then, his control had been suboptimal—and then that thing had torn it to pieces.

He didn't even know what it was. There was no record of any such creature on Hestia. He didn't know why it stirred that deep and terrible hate within him, either. That was supposed to be reserved for the Trialgoer.

Who was nearby. He was sure of it. But there wasn't anything nearby he could take, and without first doing that, he couldn't see what was around him. He could barely feel what was around him other than powerful sources of Firmament, and the biggest ones had too much of an identity for him to be able to overwrite them.

Rhoran would have scowled if he could have. It rankled at him that he was stuck like this, little more than a viral sequence of Firmament with occasional bouts of lucidity. He was far from weak; there was enough identity embedded into his Firmament that he could survive like this for centuries, if he needed to.

More than that, this was one of the only forms he could achieve that would both survive the broken Intermediary and camouflage him from Ethan's ridiculous senses.

He still wasn't sure it was worth it. Being trapped like this in what felt like nothing, only able to sense piles of Firmament, with a mind that was barely kept together...

Something flared nearby—a source of Firmament—and Rhoran dove for it instinctively, his entire being narrowing down into a sense of hunger and greed. He needed a body. Needed to be again. He felt his identity override the identity of whatever he'd touched, rewriting it so that he was in control.

Finally. Physicality. Stability. If he gave himself another moment for his identity to fully take hold, he would be able to plan something to end this farce of a Trial and turn the Earth into something useful.

Rhoran paused. The leaves on the forest floor seemed larger than usual. He reached out a small, delicate paw, then stared at the fuzzy limb he was moving with confusion.

Wasn't this one of Hestia's prey species? What was it doing with enough Firmament to host him?

Before he could complete the thought, jaws clamped around him. All his power did nothing when he wasn't prepared to wield it. He felt the bones of his new body crunch, his heart pulp into little more than useless flesh, and—

—and...

His mind stuttered.

Who was he? What was he?

He'd died. He remembered that much. He remembered pain.

Pain, death...

Reset. Mind torn again. He needed recuperation. Needed to mend. Needed to find... target.

Hatred. There was hatred within him at the idea of a "target."

And there was a direction for that hatred.

He moved toward it, past the corpse of the fluffy thing on the ground, past the larger cat-like creature devouring its pieces, and past a rim of golden Firmament.

Whatever strangeness I felt is gone by the time I step through the doorway. "It's safe," Guard calls back to me, though I can see from the way he's looking around that he's still tense. I take a look around the room that serves as an entrance to the Empty City—or at least at what should have been a room.

It's not one anymore. I frown and step forward, nearly stumbling when a loose rock crumbles beneath my feet; Guard catches me by the elbow and pulls me back before I plummet off the top of the building we're on.

"Careful," he warns.

"Thanks." I lean down and pick up a fragment of the rock, my brows furrowing. It looks like a normal stone, but... even the slightest application of pressure makes it crumble like dust. I can sense that it's hollow, the natural Firmament that would normally be within it drained of its color.

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So is everything else around us, save for the things I tossed in. It's mostly a scattering of preserved food, the Firmament sink I've built, and various other odds and ends I've tossed in in case it might be useful. I reach down to pocket the Firmament sink.

"Is it just me, or does this place look different?" Ahkelios asks, looking around.

"I don't think the portal ever opened on top of a building." I frown a little, poking at the rooftop with my foot. It looks like concrete, but it's almost disturbingly soft.

"So why's all your stuff here?" Ahkelios hops off my shoulder to poke at the food. "Shouldn't it be... wherever the room was?"

"I don't know." I don't even know where that room might have been. I pivot in place, scanning the horizon and taking in the sights of the Empty City. The name certainly fits—it looks desolate and abandoned, full of crumbling towers and decayed homes. It actually looks a little like an Earth city, and I feel a pang of something like homesickness as I stare down at it.

But something else stands out to me. What I remember of the logs about this place tells me that it should be, that the Firmament infestation here should have destroyed nearly everything.

And it's not that it hasn't. Color Drain Firmament—although now that I'm here, it doesn't feel the same as the Color Drain skill I used to have—has more than certainly sucked the life out of almost everything. The buildings, the streets, and even the signs all make me feel like I'm staring at something on an old black-and-white television set.

But there are... plants. Colorful plants. Wildlife has grown over most of the decaying buildings, and not all of that wildlife seems subject to the same phenomenon. I see massive flowers attached to the sides of decaying buildings, blooming with so much color that a glance at it almost hurts my eyes. It feels like I'm staring at something impossible.

The whole landscape is dotted with plants like that. Not all of them are flowers, of course; there are vines, mushrooms, wooden-looking roots that crack through buildings and shine with multicolored pustules. Looking at them sends a crack of foreign disgust through me, like something inside me is rebelling at the sight of it.

I'm not the only one. Guard makes a low noise of discomfort, a robotic hum as he takes a step back from the edge. "This place is strange."

"It's overtaken by a type of Firmament that went haywire, according to Kauku. Color Drain Firmament." The words taste strange even as I say them—like something about them aren't quite right. I don't have the full picture, and I won't until I figure out what went wrong here.

"I have not heard of Firmament... 'going haywire' like this, as you put it." I can hear a frown in Guard's voice. "Those plants in the distance—my sensors tell me they're dangerous. We should avoid them."

"Dangerous how?" I try to take another look, but almost immediately wince again, my senses overloaded. It's like they're oversaturated streaks in the otherwise bland landscape, and I can't tell if it's because everything else is dull or if it's a specific side-effect of the Firmament that caused all this.

"They are sensory dangers," Guard murmurs softly. There's a click from his body, and I notice a pulse of Firmament radiate outward. "But the larger flowers are also... hiding something, I believe. It's difficult for me to tell."

I close my eyes entirely, reaching out through my Firmament sense instead to try to sense whatever it is the robot can. My range is so much farther than it was before, but even then, the flowers are right on the edge of them. I can sense a core of what feels like inverted Firmament, and then behind that, something...

I mutter a curse under my breath. "I don't think we can."

Guard glances at me. "There's something important there?"

"I don't know." I hesitate. It does feel like there are important things hidden within the flowers, but I can't tell what they are—in fact, the only reason I can tell they're there at all is because the way Firmament warps and twists around them. But the way that Firmament is warping...

Kauku mentioned he was looking for a memory. That the Empty City was full of memories. If there's anything right now that screams to me that it's a memory, it's whatever these things are—the Firmament that interacts with it is twisted to intense color, intense emotion.

And I agreed to help Kauku find a memory, so I'm going to have to sort through these. I grimace. Now that I think about it, he never specified what memory he was looking for. I'm not ready yet to trigger one of the waiting Inspirations to speak to him again—the Knight is still settling within me, and I doubt using it is going to be much easier even with the Inspiration on my side.

"I think we'll at least have to check them out," I finally say. "It's a lead, and we're short on those. The dungeon doesn't exactly come with directions."

Guard gives me a slightly doubtful look, but nods. "You decide where to start, and I will lead the way."

I glance down the building. "We can probably start down there," I say dryly. There's an enormous blue blossom right at the base of the building we're in. Just looking at it cuts me to my core with something that feels like sadness—whatever emotion is in that memory, it's not a happy one.

Ahkelios makes a noise behind me. "Something feels weird," he says, climbing back up onto my shoulder. I glance at him.

"Something about the food?" I ask. He's been inspecting the food for the past few minutes. Ahkelios shakes his head.

"It felt weird for a bit, but I don't think so?" he says, rubbing one of his arms nervously. "It just feels like we're being watched. I don't like it."

I glance at Guard, and he shakes his head slightly. I frown—I don't sense anything strange either, at least not anything like what Ahkelios is talking about. But if he senses something...

"Keep an eye out," I tell him. "Let's not let anything catch us off guard."

Ahkelios nods, and Guard begins to lead the way down from the roof. I follow after him, lost in thought.

Memories. The closer we get to the flower, the more I remember. It's been some time since I read that opening entry to this city's final logs, but the first entry blooms in my mind, suddenly crystal clear.

It is the 4,625th day of Awakening.

I am afraid.

The Elders tell us that all will be well, that the Record we are creating is merely educational — but I can feel in the Firmament that there is a great change coming. I do not know what that change is, but I fear it will spell the end of everything I hold dear, and I am afraid.

Perhaps this is irrational of me. I have little evidence to support these thoughts. The Seers have sounded no alarms, and our people are all healthy. My two sons flourish in their classes. They excel with the Firmament, creating wonders previously unheard of. Perhaps the fear I feel now is simply the fear of an old woman, and yet...

Every day, the trees seem a little more dead. Every day, the sky loses a little more color. I have been to the Healers, and I have been told that my eyes are fine; all three of them are perfectly functional.

I do not know what I am seeing. I do not know why I am the only person that sees it. The Awakening could be the cause, and yet I show no other signs of being Awakened. My Firmament levels remain stable, and there is no hint of a phase-shift or any of the associated phenomena. I have to assume what I feel is mere paranoia, and yet...

And yet.

Only time will tell.

The Empty City is supposed to be the remnant of an Integrator corpse, isn't it? It gives me the same feeling Gheraa's death does—that sense of something being rotted into the world, a death so profound it's warped reality around it. If that's true, then those logs I read are almost certainly from the person who died.

But those logs don't seem to be from the perspective of an Integrator.

What am I missing?

A notification floats into my vision.

[Ritual: The Empty City has begun. Each Ritual stage will be linked with your loops. Progress within the Empty City will be saved after each Ritual stage.

Ritual stages may reveal more about your connection with your Firmament.

Current Ritual stage: 1/5]