My heart pounded hard with the news, a rhythm quickened not by shock but anticipation. It wasn’t exactly a surprise. After all, we'd all known this was coming. Still, it stirred something inside me. Not dread or urgency. It felt more like the anxious energy just before stepping onto a stage. The tight, humming tension that coiled beneath the surface.
“How many can go?” The question burst out of me before I could think.
She hesitated, her expression troubled, then exhaled slowly and nodded. “It’s not a problem if you all come, but…” Her eyes sharpened. “This will be more serious than before. There will be no speaking from non-champions at the match grounds.”
She turned her gaze to Elric and Thea, a silent weight behind the words.
I followed her glance, meeting theirs. Both looked resolute and ready, but as I let the thought settle, I knew deep down: if I failed, if things truly went sideways, neither of them would just stand by. Not that this match was expected to pose a real threat, but Serith's guarantees weren't exactly on my highest level of trust.
My next question came just after. “What about healers? Anyone like that?”
“This is a planned match, so yes, there will be some,” she replied, but then her tone dipped. “Still, none of them compare to Elric. His ability…” She paused, flicking a quick, sideways glance in his direction. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I shifted my gaze between Elric and Thea again, back and forth. A silent decision forming. I gave a small shake of my head. “You two should stay.”
Thea’s eyes widened. She started to protest, but I cut her off before she could speak.
“You can both make progress here while I’m away. Griffith will go with me,” I explained, trusting that the man who’d spent a lifetime around royalty could manage himself with restraint when it counted.
Thea’s jaw tightened, unconvinced. But then Elric surprised me.
“You’re sure?” he asked, voice low, eyes narrowing with quiet concern.
I nodded once.
His shoulders tensed, lifted, then gradually fell as he released a breath, yielding. “Alright. I’ll stay and train, then.”
Griffith stepped up, placing a steady hand on Thea’s shoulder. “Nothing will happen to Peter while I’m with him,” he said with quiet conviction. His gaze moved to Serith—the guardian he sometimes seemed to revere. “As long as everything is fair and laid out, I’ll behave. But if not... there’s nothing I won’t throw myself into.”
His words jolted something in me. That kind of devotion wasn’t something I was used to hearing. The weight of what he said didn’t slip past me.
Thea let out a quiet grumble, clearly not thrilled, but she didn’t argue further. Her gaze dropped, then rose briefly to meet mine. Just for a second. “Come back quickly, okay?”
I gave her a crooked smirk. “No problem.”
Griffith fell into step beside me just as Serith approached.
“Are you ready?” she asked, placing a hand gently against each of our backs.
I already dreaded what was coming. Portal travel still threatened to turn my insides out, but I nodded anyway, eyes locked on Elric and Thea. “I’ll see you guys in a bit.”
The world convulsed, twisting violently. Colors melted into one another. The vibrant greens of forest canopy tangled with the browns of bark and fallen leaves. The charred soil seeped into the swirl, curling around flickers of red-laced snake scales.
Sound warped next. Voices collapsed into wind, and the wind into the roar of a distant storm. My companions’ faces vanished, leaving only the distortion of movement.
Then, that all-too-familiar nausea rushed through me. A swarm of butterflies fluttering wildly in my gut, colliding with a landslide of stone dropping into my throat.
Still hate this. Every damn time.
Gotta train this up. Start with the boat again. Baby steps.
Thankfully, it didn’t last long. Motion dissolved into blurs of streaks of light stretching across a void of darkness, and then, gradually, color and sound returned, settling back into something that resembled reality.
But it wasn’t the reality I expected.
I took a few steadying breaths as the queasiness faded, using the pause to survey the world we’d landed in.
Towering buildings loomed around us, their facades carved from precise, cleanly cut stone. A sidewalk stretched out beneath my feet, its surface so flawlessly smooth it could only be some advanced form of cement or concrete. And rising above it all, the sky-rise, an elegant spire that pierced the heavens. Its clear, glassy windows catching the light like polished gemstones.
“Impressed?” Serith asked, her smile teasing. “Just a quick stop before we head off.”
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Griffith was struck silent, his breath catching audibly as something sleek and fast zipped by along a wide channel to our right. The road it traveled shimmered with deep black pavement, a stark white line slicing down its center like a surgical mark.
I… wasn’t impressed.
Surprised, yes. Startled, even. But impressed? Not quite. And honestly, even surprise didn’t capture what I was feeling. “It’s my…” I couldn’t finish the thought. I was too busy staring at the manicured green patches of lawn and the meticulously trimmed shrubs. Details that, oddly, made everything feel familiar.
Just then, a woman strolled across a crosswalk, and vehicles halted automatically to let her pass. That’s when my first assumption fell apart completely.
This wasn’t my world. Of course it wasn’t. It was theirs. The Engineers’ home. This sleek, hidden city of theirs tucked in a curtain of things resembling my own world. With a name like theirs, of course they were more advanced. This did seem extreme though.
Her left arm caught my attention first. Sleek and angular, crafted from a gunmetal-gray alloy with a narrow stream of glowing blue energy pulsing up its side. She moved with ease, her stride casual, as if her augmented body were no more out of place than a pair of gloves. Her mechanical eye pulsed red with a soft blink, tracking independently from her organic one, scanning the path ahead.
“I don’t understand,” I breathed, the words slipping out in quiet awe.
Serith gave a shrug, unfazed. “That’s totally normal. This kind of stuff isn’t meant to make sense to you.”
She clearly hadn’t caught what I meant. It wasn’t the technology that rattled me, though the tech was astonishing. The Engineers had once lived alongside them, they existed in the same world. Or… had, back before the Shattered Expanse was torn apart. When Serith still existed more presently in the world.
“How could all this be so... hidden from your domain?” I asked.
She blinked, thoughtful for a few moments before replying. Beside me, Griffith was still utterly stunned, not even scribbling in his notebook. “No interference,” she finally said. “I have neither the ability, nor the authority, to force knowledge to be shared. I don’t govern them.”
Her gaze flicked toward Griffith. “He and the others can only see this because of you. This is an exception. Under normal circumstances, you would never be exposed to any of this.”
She said it plainly, with a kind of detached finality. Then, with a small gesture, “Now... shall we enter the building?”
I reached out and shook Griffith’s shoulder, trying to snap him out of his daze. It took a couple of firm nudges before he blinked back to life, his mind slowly catching up with what his eyes had been feeding it.
Serith waited patiently. Once we were ready, she turned toward the massive, ornate tower gleaming with elegance and quiet power. As we approached the main doors, they parted smoothly on their own, sliding open in response to our presence.
Griffith had finally pulled out his notebook, mesmerized, and I had to start tugging on his arm to keep him moving. Serith didn’t seem to mind which was a relief, but I figured we shouldn’t linger.
The lobby looked like what I imagined most modern office buildings did, but my frame of reference wasn’t exactly vast. Had just finished high school, so I never really got a chance to be in one. A clean, open space. A neat waiting area. A central welcome desk positioned perfectly in sight, easy for any visitor to find.
Behind the desk stood a man, or at least something that resembled one. His body was sleek and metallic, so thoroughly augmented that he looked more android than human. Closer to Nova’s design than to the woman we’d seen outside. Smooth grey plating covered him from jaw to fingertips, glowing blue veins running through the seams like arteries of light.
We approached the desk, but Griffith veered off course, drawn toward a decorative plant that looked suspiciously synthetic. He reached out, fingertips brushing the leaves, likely trying to feel the fake veins crafted into the plastic.
This place is freaky, Luna murmured inside my mind. Why would you make fake plants? They look weird.
I smirked inwardly. She couldn’t see the way I did, which made me wonder what weird looking even meant to her. Then again, plenty of people found dolls unsettling. Maybe this was her version of that. An uncanny imitation of life that didn’t quite pass the test.
“May I help you?” the man behind the desk asked, his voice deep and composed. Despite his entirely cybernetic appearance, his tone held no mechanical distortion. Just calm, human resonance. His eyes glowed red, watching us with eerie precision.
“We’re here to see Ancestor Amei,” Serith replied with a polite nod. “She’s expecting us.”
Behind the desk came a series of crisp beeping tones, keys tapped on a sleek digital interface. But I barely noticed the sound. My focus snagged on the name. Amei. It struck a chord, hauntingly familiar, though I couldn’t quite grasp where I’d heard it before. It danced just out of reach, hovering at the edge of recognition.
Before I could chase the thought further, the receptionist spoke again.
“Please proceed to the gate behind me. The one on the far left,” he said, his tone warm and polite. “The Ancestor will be there when you arrive.”
We followed the instructions, circling the desk and heading toward the rear of the lobby. As we walked, I took in more of the building’s pristine interior. The deeper we went, the stranger it felt. Not a single other person occupied the floor. Just us. White-paneled flooring stretched beneath our feet, gleaming under soft golden light that poured from the ceiling in a gentle, ambient glow.
The rooms on either side were sealed off behind polished wood and glass doors, elegant and modern, but empty.
Griffith finally caught up with us, still scribbling notes with wide-eyed fascination. I sent a quiet prayer skyward as we stopped before the set of doors. They looked just like any another gate.
The receptionist had called it a “gate,” and my gut twisted with suspicion even before the doors slid open. I wasn’t optimistic about the results of my prayer.
And sure enough, my hope was misplaced.
This wasn’t an elevator. It was a gate, in the worst sense of the word. The kind that jolted you through space in that same disorienting, body-bending way that always left me reeling. I grit my teeth and endured.
Thankfully, the transition only lasted a few seconds. The moment the door clicked open, relief rushed in.
“Serith? You’re a bit early,” came a bright and clear voice from the room ahead. At that moment, it was unmistakable.
I knew that voice.
She had spoken so little in the vision. Just one moment of worry, her name said in passing. She’d been at the hidden council, sent to a meeting with Jerim’s homeland.
But I remembered her now. The woman I saw when I touched the dragon vein. Her name echoed in my mind like a bell toll.
Amei.