Die. Respawn. Repeat.

It's not exactly easy to fight while layering threads of Firmament into my core, but it's not impossible, either. I rely on Guard and Ahkelios for the bulk of it, thankful that the dungeon's challenges are—at least for the time being—restricted to something that isn't particularly dangerous.

Ahkelios's hand tightens on my shoulder. I feel the telltale flare of Firmament as he activates Distorted Crux, wrapping us both in its power. There's a distortion in the air as more of the dungeon's claw-hands approach and struggle against the skill, slowing from their blistering speed into something more manageable.

My movements are awkward, but I force myself to stagger to the side, taking Ahkelios with me. Before they can course-correct, I grab one of them by the wrist and step forward, yanking it hard to the left and shoving forward with my right arm.

There's an audible crack and then a snap as I rip solid Firmament apart. Ahkelios visibly winces at the sight. "Sometimes you scare me," he mutters, though his hand doesn't leave my shoulder.

"Ahkelios, your primary means of attack..." I groan a bit as the pain within my soul briefly intensifies; my vision goes white, and Ahkelios yanks me out of the way of an attack that would've skewered me through the eye. "...for most of the loops..."

"Ethan, stop trying to be snarky while doing surgery on yourself!" Ahkelios snaps, exasperated. I respond by pulling him down just before another set of hands manages to grab him.

"...has been drilling yourself through the brains of our enemies like a living bullet," I finish. I manage to seal another of the cracks within that first layer as I say this, too, though my voice trembles with the effort.

Ahkelios groans. "Yeah, fair point," he concedes. I can't tell if he's just doing it so I don't press the point, but he gives me an admonishing glare before I can respond. "Now focus," he says. It's his turn again to haul me out of the way of one set of hands before they can tear through my stomach.

This time, I return the favor by spinning him around behind me just before another would have cut through his skull. The blow glances off my forearms instead, cutting through my skin but leaving my bones entirely intact.

Gah. It's a nasty wound, but the pain is nothing compared to the soul-deep one still tearing through my core. It takes effort to balance the fight with the reinforcement—I have to layer each thread of Firmament between every exchange while keeping in place everything I've managed so far.

I'm making progress, I can tell, but that progress is slow.

And so is our progress through the dungeon. He-Who-Guards leads the way, but the walls around us have grown into something of a maze; the signal he's following is apparently distorted through the walls, and every time he arrives at a fork or an intersection he has to pause to identify which way to go.

Unfortunately, every fork and intersection is also where the dungeon usually decides to send more of its hands after us. Kind of a miracle it hasn't tried a different strategy yet, but right now I'll take what miracles I can get.

If I had to guess, the only reason this isn't more difficult is because the dungeon itself still isn't fully developed. It's having to grow around the Intermediary, and the Intermediary is... fighting back, in a way. Trying to rebuild itself at the same time the dungeon is trying to grow.

I force another thread of Firmament into the first layer of my core and grit my teeth against the pain that follows. The sooner I get this done, the faster we should be able to move through the dungeon.

Every move I make is agonizing.

I forge on.

The banter with Ahkelios is a part of it, really. I wield my emotions like a shield against the pain. The anger helps, but where anger fails, there's the joy in the friends I've found. Where joy fails, there's the fear that what I am might not be enough. I'm not afraid to admit to that fear—I have to acknowledge it to be able to set it aside.

With every layer of Firmament I thread into my core, I make myself remember. Joy, anger, fear, regret, hope... the loops have carried me through a lot, but even with time itself as an ally, there's too much at stake for me to lose.

"Guard," I say. "You still have the signal?"

"We are close," Guard agrees. He's getting better at navigating the maze with every moment that passes—we stop for less time and move even faster at every intersection.

"You know the way back, right?" Ahkelios asks nervously. His hand grips at my shoulder a little tighter. "Because I'm kind of lost, and Ethan definitely has no idea."

I manage a scowl. "You don't know that."

"Focus on your thing," Ahkelios says, turning to glare at me. I just smirk at him, though I think my eyes are still hazy with pain—rather than get more annoyed, Ahkelios's expression actually softens a little, and I feel him adjust so I can lean my weight on him a little more.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

It's nice of him. The pain is admittedly still overwhelming, and the closer I get to finishing with the first layer, the worse that pain gets. It's hard to keep track of how far along I am.

"You are almost done reinforcing the first layer," the Knight interjects helpfully. It sounds impressed, if I'm reading it correctly. "In truth, you could move on to the second—"

"No," I respond mentally, shaking my head. "I need every advantage I can get."

The Knight doesn't exactly say anything in return, but I can feel approval radiating through our bond.

I'm not sure how much longer we do this—time's a hard thing to track when inside a dungeon, and doubly so when half my mind is occupied with the equivalent of a soul trance. All I know is that there's a moment where my entire core shivers, followed by a sensation best described by the ringing of a bell coupled with being doused with ice-cold water.

That's the first layer.

Something in my heart unclenches a little, though I'm still shaking from the effort of it all. The risk is far from over, and basic testing tells me I'm not quite able to use my skills yet, but getting this far tells me that this is possible. In spite of our circumstances, in spite of everything that's happening, I'm halfway there.

All I need to do is endure this one more time, fix up the second layer—

—it takes me a second to realize that the shaking I'm feeling isn't coming from me. I glance up in alarm. Ahkelios and Guard have both stopped in their tracks. There's nothing physically there, as far as I can tell, and yet...

The maze around us is trembling, the walls groaning in protest. Something flares bright and sharp in my Firmament sense, a foreign intrusion that feels like it doesn't belong. It takes me a moment to parse it.

A threat, but not entirely of the dungeon. Like something's taken control of part of the dungeon and turned it into something... else. Something broken and wrong. I can feel the dungeon try to fight back, but it's no use—the spread is sharp and rapid, if thankfully limited. Whatever this is isn't strong enough to burn further into the dungeon just yet.

It's a small comfort.

The Interface flickers in front of me.

[This may be the last time you hear from me. Know that I wish you the best, despite our differences. Good luck, O Heir Mine.]

[New protocols downloaded.]

[Warning! Unknown threat detected! Modified ANCHORED HERITAGE protocols initiating...]

[Threat identified. Proceed with caution.]

There's a creature rising up from the floor of the dungeon. It's tearing up the walls to do it—dragging dungeon material into itself, growing larger with every moment that passes.

More than that, though? It's swallowing every drop of Firmament it can from the dungeon. Some of it is just the raw Firmament from the Intermediary, but a lot of it is from the dungeon itself—the building blocks of Gheraa's soul burned into reality and now being... what, repurposed?

It's changing it, somehow. Altering that Firmament in some way that's deeper and more fundamental than what I do when I convert Firmament for my own use. It takes me a second to understand, but the moment I do, something in me grows cold.

Whatever this is, it's taking Gheraa's Firmament and corrupting it with some kind of viral Concept. I can feel his Firmament being forcibly twisted into something it was never meant to be, and worse, it's being done in a way that might prevent me from untwisting it.

This thing... there's a chance this thing was designed specifically to stop me from bringing Gheraa back.

Why here? Why now?

The new protocol in the Interface seems to be a sort of identification function, but if I had to guess, its real purpose is to serve as a warning. The Trials themselves have always stuck to some twisted notion of fairness, but something's been pushing at those boundaries. Making things more dangerous than the Trials would normally allow. There was everything that happened in the Empty City during the last Ritual stage, and now...

Well, now there's this. I stare up at the Interface label now hovering above the still-forming creature, giving it a name and a rank.

[Hand of an Empty Throne (Corrupted) (Rank SSS)]

"Uh," Ahkelios says. "You're seeing that too, right?"

"Do we fight?" Guard's voice is steady. He doesn't take his optic off the threat. I don't respond for a moment, my mind racing as I try to figure out our options.

If this thing wants to kill us, turning our backs on it is going to be deadly. I have no idea how this half-formed dungeon would interact with the loops. It's ripping Firmament away from the dungeon at an alarming rate.

Running isn't an option.

"We fight," I agree. "Don't give it time to finish forming. Guard, start chaining it down. 'Kelios? Throw me."

"Wha—"

"Throw me," I say. I don't have the spare brainpower to spend on maneuvering or any available skills, but...

At the end of the day, my Interface skills don't define my ability to fight. They help, certainly, but I've been a fighter since before the Interface gave me anything. Things are different when it comes to the Trials, of course, but then I have a new advantage, don't I?

My body has changed. The Physical and Astral Pools have altered my ability to fight on a fundamental level—given me raw abilities that no third-layer practitioner should have. And that's not even accounting for the change to my bones that Kauku basically forced on me.

Honestly, I'm not sure how human my body is anymore.

But I know how human my spirit is.

Ahkelios launches me toward the Hand like a spear. I keep one part of my brain focused on threading Firmament into the cracks of my second layer. The other greedily absorbs all the information it can about the fight, even as Guard begins to chain the Hand down and Ahkelios covers one of his arms in my Amplified Gauntlet.

It hasn't finished forming. The layers of Firmament on it are thick, but they're solid. All that distortion on it makes it easier to grab, easier to pull, easier to separate false skin from mimicked bone.

So that's what I do.

The moment I make contact, I begin to tear through.