Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Gheraa stared at the destruction before him.

There was a whole section of the dungeon that was just... obliterated. He could feel it like a physical pain in his chest. Which was unusual and deeply unpleasant in and of itself, but not quite as unusual or as unpleasant as the hands he saw dragging themselves through the rubble.

His hands.

Well, sort of. They were clearly meant to be his hands—they had the same pattern of golden Firmament sealed into the back, even if it was kind of an ugly rendition of that pattern.

Except his hands didn't look like that. He'd put some real work into his hands! This was just a mockery of all the work he'd put into sculpting them. Claws instead of fingers, digging into the walls and floors with all the elegance of the inept supervisor he'd been forced to work under as an Integrator.

They were making an absolute wreck out of what remained of his soul, too. That was probably the bigger problem here. He was a paradox-existence pulled out of time by the living embodiment of Hestia herself, but that paradox rested on Ethan bringing him back via his dungeon. If the dungeon was destroyed, he'd fade away with it.

Even now, he could feel the damage these things were doing. It wasn't significant—not yet—but if he allowed these things to run rampant...

Gheraa let out an aggravated sigh. He was going to have to take care of this infestation, wasn't he? That was annoying. He'd been looking forward to seeing Ethan again, and now it turned out the disturbance he'd sensed was just a bunch of corrupted hands.

It was worrying, too, because outside interference with a dungeon shouldn't have been possible. The Interface had protections around that kind of thing. His dungeon might not have fully formed yet, but this looked like an intrusion from outside the Trial.

More evidence of this Sunken King. That feeling of dread was beginning to grow. Gheraa didn't particularly like it.

Hopefully this wouldn't take too long. They didn't seem to be exceptionally powerful, at least—they were about Rank A or so by Interface standards, if he had to guess. Even weakened as he was, they wouldn't pose a problem for him.

Unless there was a boss of some kind. He frowned at the thought. That was how the Interface tended to do things, wasn't it? But he couldn't sense any particularly strong monsters in front of him...

Elsewhere in the dungeon, perhaps. This wasn't the only disturbance he sensed. Gheraa hummed, trying to cheer himself up. Maybe one of those would be Ethan?

In all fairness, Gheraa thought, a little exercise before meeting up with the human wouldn't be the worst idea. It'd be their first real meeting, and it wouldn't do to embarrass himself. And if there was a boss, he could show up at the last minute and rescue him, like one of those Earth shows he'd watched during pre-Integration.

Alright. He was feeling better. There was nothing Gheraa liked more than the chance to show off. He grinned, cracking his neck.

"Alright, then," he said. "Time to throw some hands!"

Rhythm. I have to follow the rhythm.

It's getting harder. I've narrowed my focus until there's nothing left but me and the Hand—dodging, moving, twisting, dancing around one another. I'm doing what damage I can, but the reality is that attacking it is mostly pointless. It doesn't really even slow down to heal.

No. Right now, it's more important that I keep it distracted and try to minimize the damage it does to everything around me. That, at least, isn't difficult—it seems to have a particular vendetta for me. I don't think it even tried to follow Guard and Ahkelios when they left.

Even with that advantage, though, I worry. The more damage it does, the more of the dungeon it consumes. It shouldn't be anywhere close to doing enough damage to affect Gheraa's resurrection, but that doesn't change the fact that it's trying. It doesn't change the fact that every time it strikes a piece of the dungeon, my odds of bringing back my friend grow a little worse.

It doesn't change the fact that it might not be alone.

I try not to think about that part. If I had the concentration to spare, I might have been able to expand the range of my Firmament sense to detect any other disturbances within the dungeon—I'm almost certain that some of the flickers I see in the pattern might be from something and someone else.

Problem is, I don't have time to analyze it. It takes everything I have to keep a mental grip on the fight and on the flow of Firmament around me, and that's something I have to do without losing track of the repairs on the second layer of my core.

I duck beneath one blow, dodge past another, then sense a twisted burst of Firmament that I only barely manage to leap past. Some kind of skill? There's a hissing, burbling sort of sound as it burns into the walls of the dungeon, but I can't spare the focus to look behind.

The Knight is doing its best to help, at least, but even then there's only so much it can do. A full transformation with my core still under repair would undo all my progress and might permanently ruin my ability to use Firmament. ṙ𝘢Νǒ𝐛ƐꞨ

So I keep moving. I use the ruined environment to my advantage, hiding behind and between chunks of rubble, keeping the Hand in the center of its own destruction as much as I can.

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I'm lucky it's not more intelligent. If it were, it might have figured me out—realized that I'm stalling. Instead, it just roars at me and keeps going.

I smile a grim smile.

Hopefully Guard and Ahkelios won't be much longer. In the meantime, I keep layering those threads of Firmament into the second layer of my core, ignoring the burning pain it ignites with every sealed crack.

Almost done. Just a little more before I can fight with everything I have.

Ahkelios felt his core tremble. He sat at the precipice of the third layer—the Firmament in the Intermediary was suffocating, but he'd drawn it in and held it until he was full to bursting. Now all he needed was a moment to sit...

...and he found himself in his core once more, a question burning at the forefront of his mind.

What is your truth?

He was a second-layer practitioner. He'd answered the questions posed to him by both the first and the second layer—defined them according to who he was and who he wanted to be. Exactly like he was supposed to.

There was just one problem with that.

Ahkelios had changed.

When he'd given his answers for those initial phase shifts, things had been different. At the time, he'd been overwhelmed by everything he needed to do—trapped in an endlessly repeating world with increasingly powerful monsters that tore him apart when he tried to fight them. When he was finally given the opportunity to grow, he'd cared only about survival. About becoming the person he thought he needed to be to pass his Trial.

I am a wielder of the Sword. I will become that which can cut through anything.

They felt right at the time, and they'd certainly lent him power, but they didn't feel right anymore.

Which meant Ahkelios had a problem. Those answers were embedded thoroughly within the first and second layers of his core; he couldn't change them now, no matter how much he might have wanted to. Any answers given during a phase shift became a permanent part of who you were.

Even if he was more than that now. Even if he wanted to be more than a blade, more than a force to be wielded.

This moment—this third phase shift—it would be his final chance to refine who he was.

He needed a Truth that did more than represent who he was. It needed to represent everything he could be and everything he wanted to be. A Truth was the final element that could impact the answers he'd already given. It was the vehicle through which those answers were interpreted, after all. If he chose right, if he chose well...

His Truth would be the reason he wielded his Sword. It would define what it meant to cut.

Ahkelios couldn't change the answers he'd given, but he could choose what those answers meant.

A Truth like Ethan's would have made it easy. "Change." It was the sort of Truth that could recontextualize and redefine by default. Try as he might, though, Ahkelios couldn't resonate quite as deeply with the concept. Ethan may have been the closest friend he'd ever had, but he wasn't driven to change things the way he was.

More to the point, Ahkelios suspected that there were very few individuals out there with one-word Truths. So that was out of the question.

Ahkelios felt a lance of pain thread through his core and winced.

Time was ticking down, even now. He didn't have an infinite amount of time to find an answer, not only because Ethan was counting on him but because of the nature of the third shift. Firmament was flooding into him, his core was straining, and it demanded an answer. If he let this keep going without providing one...

Ahkelios took a deep breath.

It didn't change anything. He couldn't give an answer that was less than perfect even if he wanted to—whatever Truth he chose needed to resonate with his core enough to cause a coalescence. The third shift wouldn't work without an answer he believed in, completely and utterly.

And although he'd had time to think, he still wasn't sure what that answer was.

Something about art and beauty might have been right a long, long time ago. Back when he'd been a scientist and an artist and life had been all about taking what he learned and putting it to canvas. The memories were precious to him still, and he hoped his home and his paintings still stood, but...

Those things didn't represent him. Not anymore. It wasn't that it mattered to him any less—learning to see the inherent beauty in the world again had been an integral part in building his new understanding of himself.

It just wasn't the whole picture.

Ahkelios thought. He felt the strain grow, felt the tiniest of cracks begin to form. Pain began to radiate from his chest. Ahkelios felt it, but it was nothing in comparison to—

—to what Zhir had experienced.

Something within him sparked at that. A memory of his encounter with Zhir and the one factor that had sealed his victory over his more nihilistic counterpart. They both missed their home, but Ahkelios was the one between the two of them that remembered why that still mattered.

Old memories surfaced. Memories of exploring crystalline mountains, glowing oceans, moving forests. Memories of leaving small pieces of his home behind and finding small pieces left behind by others, piecing together a history of places he'd never seen and people's he'd never met.

New memories surfaced, too. Exploring Hestia with Ethan and now Guard—learning to again feel the wonder that had once been practically bursting out of him. The Cliffside Crows, the shard-citadels of Istahnok, the crater that was Carusath.

"I want to see it all," Ahkelios said. It felt right to say it out loud, even if there was no one here to hear him; he was within the confines of his own core, after all. "And I don't just want to explore. I want to see what's underneath."

Something in his soul rang with those words, but he wasn't done.

Once upon a time, he'd relied on his eye to find the beauty in things. He saw so many colors that no one else could see, and when that was taken away from him... even with all the ways in which he'd changed, he'd thought it was over. It was the catalyst that made him give up on his Trial and on the loops.

"Everything has a story," he said, more to himself than to anyone else. "Every home, every landmark, every person. That's my Truth, isn't it? That no matter the person or place or thing, there's something that lies beneath. Something that matters."

His soul rang again, solidifying. Firmament drew into his core, wrapping around itself over and over, coalescing.

"My Truth is the heart that lies beneath," Ahkelios said quietly.

A sword could be wielded to protect a heart. It could be used to pierce it, if need be. And Ahkelios did not mind if he was the blade that cut to the truth of things, that unveiled the beauty or the horror that lay within.

He was still a wielder of the Sword, but now that Sword had meaning.

Ahkelios stood, opening his eyes back within the reality of the Intermediary. Reddish-gold Firmament bled away from him as he did, and he flexed his fingers, marveling at the ease with which the movement came. His body felt... more his own, somehow.

Guard looked at him. The automaton was practically bleeding raw Firmament, pulses of pure energy reverberating off of him. He'd completed his shift too, then.

"Let's go," Ahkelios said. Guard nodded at him.

They went.