Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 163: Book 3: Burned Into the World

The actual process of getting our papers done takes only a few minutes, partially because Naru's presence right there makes every one of his guards snap to attention. They get everything approved and signed in record time—in large part because Naru is there to immediately sign them off—and I tuck the papers I've received into my pocket.

I do note that Versa wasn't kidding about the guards being draconian. They are, both metaphorically and in a literal sense. They're probably the closest thing I've encountered to actual humanoid dragons on Hestia. Each of them are enormous—at least seven feet tall—and have tails long and heavy enough to dig into the ground they walk on.

And that's just the men. The women are all at least nine feet tall. It's been a while since I've felt this physically small, though they all give me enough distance that I can tell they're aware which one of us would win in a fight.

It's almost a pity. I wouldn't mind brawling with a few of them. Or that might be the Knight within me—it's been largely quiet within my core so far, but strangely, I can feel it stirring at the presence of these guards.

I'll leave them alone. I have no particular desire to start a fight, at least for now.

I make Naru spend the next minute or two signing off on the papers of everyone else who's waiting at the guard post. He looks uncomfortable with the process, and the reason why is clear: I don't think he's ever actually been down here. He sends his orders from afar and gets all the paperwork sent to him, or sometimes not sent to him, depending on how his guards are feeling that particular day. He's never had to look people in the eye while rejecting them for entry into the city.

Not that I know why anyone would want to get into Carusath to begin with. The place is blisteringly hot, and the sounds of fighting haven't abated. He-Who-Guards shifts uncomfortably in place, like he wants to interfere, and I don't blame him—the only reason we don't is because... well, the loops would cancel out any good we do, and any problems Carusath has is systemic. I doubt I'd be able to fix its issues just with my fists, as tempting as it is to try.

My heart breaks as I listen to the pleas, though. Because there are things about the Great Cities that I've been entirely unaware of until now.

Anyone who's part of any Great City is technically, by Trialgoer agreement, allowed to travel between them—they're citizens of all the Cities, in effect. Of course, that's not how it works in practice: each Trialgoer in charge of a Great City has their own arbitrary entry requirements, and even if those requirements are met, they can arbitrarily decide to veto an entry.

Normally, travel between the Cities isn't so common that this would be a problem. But from what I'm hearing now...

It sounds like when the Trial started, the Integrators saw fit to shuffle civilians around.

There's a couple standing in front of Naru, nearly begging him to sign their approval papers—they've been given the runaround for days. Apparently, their child's in Carusath. Alone. They don't know anything about where he is or how he's doing except that he's here; that's all the information the Integrators decided could be made public.

There's a pair of... teenagers, at a guess. I'm not great with ages, and I'm not familiar with the species. But the Interface translates their whispers for me, and I can hear what they're saying—they're looking for their third sibling, their older brother. For all they know, their older brother is also looking for them, but this is the best lead they have.

Almost everyone that's queued up at the guard post is like this. There aren't that many of them. Ten papers to sign at most. But the reason for that, I learn, is that a lot of them have largely given up trying to get into Carusath; there are camps and villages set up outside, consisting mostly of people who hope to see their family if they happen to leave the City.

"Why didn't I see any of this back in Isthanok?" I murmur quietly. Naru doesn't hear me—he's too busy staring at the couple in front of him and doing his best to pretend he doesn't care, as best as I can tell, even as he roughly signs the papers and barks at the guards to let them in—but He-Who-Guards does, and he responds.

"For all her faults, She-Who-Whispers is efficient," he says. "Everyone with family in Isthanok was allowed in, or those who did not meet the requirements were allowed contact with their family so they could determine alternate living arrangements. Not all of the Great Cities are nearly as organized."

I can see how Whisper's skills might work to her benefit with this, too. With her ability to listen in to the entire city, it wouldn't have taken long for her to find the families of any given person.

"Great doesn't seem like the right word to describe this," I say.

Guard shakes his head. His voice is quiet, but no less resolute. "It is not."

At least this answers the question of why people would want to get into Carusath. I glance away from the guard post, toward where all the nearby camps are supposedly set up. It's tempting to visit, to find a way to help.

That the loops would render any help useless is only a small comfort.

Whatever discomfort I feel at the sight of people begging to be allowed into the city, Naru's discomfort is worse. He says nothing as we make our way back to the Tear, but his mood is clearly a stormy one. Any attempt to make small talk is deflected with a grunt or with particularly angry steps toward our destination.

It's hard to make out what's going through his head. I can't tell if he's angry that I made him go through with signing the papers or if he's just upset with the situation at the Carusath borders. Now isn't the time to talk about it, though, and like it or not I think I've exhausted his willingness to have a conversation until at least after we've dealt with this threat to his borders.

So I step into the Tear. The Hotspot, as the Interface calls it.

My senses are a lot more refined than the last time I stepped into one of these. It's not just Firmament Sight—it's the fact that I have a much stronger version of Temporal Fragment. It's the fact that I'm now at my third layer, my third phase shift, and my depth of understanding with Firmament is that much deeper.

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Which means I can tell almost immediately that this Tear is a distortion of a past moment in time.

It's not even the first time I've encountered phenomena like this. It's just that most of the time, they're contained. As monsters, for example. Or as echoes in time, like the past copy of Ahkelios I once met. This Tear is closer to what the Empty City is, though it isn't formed out of the death of an Integrator. It's not a solidified memory.

It's just calcified time.

'Just'. Like the calcification of time is a simple thing. I can feel the way it digs into the Firmament around me, the way it's eating into everything in the area like a cancer spreading in the air. Naru, He-Who-Guards, and Ahkelios all follow me into the Tear, and as they do, it seals itself around us, almost like it knows we're here.

The traces of blood on the ground I saw before? They begin to rise.

It's a subtle thing at first. No real change in the Firmament around us, but wisps of energy begin collecting, begin solidifying. I watch it silently, waiting for the Tear to give us its challenge.

The first one I encountered was what allowed me to obtain the Color Drain skill. I remember the way color oozed out of everything within the Tear, collecting into pools of iridescence on the ground; I remember the way those pools reacted to Firmament by turning into monsters that threw themselves at me. I remember the obelisk at the center of the Tear, sending out ripples of expanding Firmament that acted like a timer. The longer I took, the more of those pools would turn into monsters and attack, and the more those expanding ripples threatened to reach and obliterate me.

This Tear is different. The Firmament collects into the pools of blood and slowly begin to expand. Naru takes a step forward, his feathers bristling and a growl beginning low in his throat, but I reach out a hand to stop him.

These aren't our enemies. Not yet.

"Are you sure they'll let us in?" An older teen talking to his mother. It's a specter made out of blood and time, another species I don't quite recognize. He looks a little bit like a spotted gecko, if I had to make a comparison. His mother's hand rests on his back, and although she looks nervous, she doesn't let it come through in her voice.

"I'm sure they will," she says quietly. They're waiting at the ruins of the guardpost—and as I watch, more Firmament begins to rise from the dirt, and the building itself is reconstituted before our eyes. It's made out of a reddish, translucent Firmament, just like the people in front of us.

"Dad's in there, right?" the teen asks. "Dad and the baby?"

"Yes, little one." Her hand rubs the back of his head gently.

The scene fasts forward. I have a sneaking suspicion I know what this is. There's a certain poetic justice to it, and yet...

"You don't have approval," a guard tells her. He's wearing a smirk on his face—it's clear he doesn't actually care. I begin to walk closer, Ahkelios sitting on my shoulder and watching with a solemn look on his face; Guard and Naru follow me, the former with resolute steps and the latter with no small amount of uncertainty.

"But you said the papers would be signed," the mother argues. There's a note of desperation in her voice—she looks noticeably thinner than before, and her son isn't there with her. I notice him leaning against the wall just outside of the guardpost, half-curled in on himself.

"Naru's a busy guy," the guard says with a shrug. "Can't expect him to get your papers signed immediately."

"What is this?" Naru hisses at me. I raise an eyebrow at him.

"Haven't you dealt with this Tear already?" I ask.

"I do not have access to my notes," he growls. "I don't remember dealing with it."

"Obviously," I say.

Guard's already walking over to the guardsman's desk. I'd had the same thought, but I let him rifle through the papers himself. This might be a Firmament simulation, but everything that's here has undeniably happened. It might not be precise, though. I can feel the way Temporal Link chafes against the Tear, the way a multitude of different scenarios are condensed into one.

This specific mother probably doesn't exist. Neither does that specific child, or that specific guard. But a variation of this has happened often enough across loops—across Trials—that it's been etched into time.

The Tear is just repeating it. Taking the excess Temporal Firmament floating around and funneling it into the grooves of this particular scenario.

Which is why I'm not surprised at all when Guard pulls out a set of papers that very distinctly resemble both the mother and her child, shoved into a corner of the desk and entirely unsubmitted.

"We should kill them and get this Tear over with," Naru blusters defensively. I can feel him gathering Firmament.

"Do that and I'll kill you," I tell him calmly. Pointedly. Naru stares at me, taken aback by the threat—I've yet to threaten him properly even once. Even when we were making our way here and Naru made some not-so-subtle remarks clearly meant to needle me, I took them with grace.

But not now, not here, and especially not in front of all this. I'm not going to help Naru play into his delusions. He believes he isn't responsible for all this. Even now, I can practically feel the gears in his mind turning, telling him that this isn't his fault, that the guards didn't submit the papers.

He knows what's going to happen next. What we're going to see next. I bet it's the whole reason this Tear keeps expanding—because Naru keeps playing into it, following the narrative he's previously created, killing all the blood specters the Tear spawns as if that's the solution to the Tear.

There's only one problem.

"Please," the mother tells the guard. "Just—check on our papers, at least. Or tell my husband that we're here. We can't make the trip back to Nisi. We don't have enough supplies."

"Not my problem," the guard shrugs. "There are merchants on the outskirts. You can get some supplies from them."

"We gave you all the money we had for the admittance fee!" the mother protests.

Then I see a flash of a knife. I sense the movement of the Interface. I feel the Tear's atmosphere become suddenly oppressive as the Firmament within it thickens into a slurry.

Premonition flickers—dull at first, then a blaze of warning. "Guard!" I bark. He realizes what's happening the same time I do and darts to my side a second before I construct a Crystallized Barrier in front of all of us.

Even with all that skill has grown—even with me pouring a third of my Firmament into it, even with me explicitly using the fight against the Seedmother to empower it—it cracks against the force of a single knife.

The mother stares at us, her eyes suddenly ablaze with Firmament.

As I've said, there's only one problem. I can feel it now through the power of my Temporal Link, through the connection it's made with the Tear.

Killing the blood specters is what it wants. Because the Trials are made not only to test us, but to warp us. Because if I play its game and close it, I etch its history further into time. It may not reappear in any of my loops, but it will for the next Trial set on Hestia. Or when I win, and the Trial ends.

But I have a Truth, don't I? One that's baked into the second layer of my Firmament. I've refused to be defined in almost every other way so far, but in that belief I am unshaken.

It's worth being kind. Even when the logical, rational thing to do is to play the game. To slaughter the monsters, take my points, and ignore the blood I leave behind.

I pledged back then to gain enough strength to choose kindness and mercy and still drag victory from the jaws of all the disadvantages that may grant me.

Which means I'm going to have to find a way to do things my way.

I'm going to close this Tear for good.