Die. Respawn. Repeat.

There are a few more loose ends I need to tie up before risking a reset, which means I spend most of the trip interrogating Gheraa and trying to understand the intricacies of the loop. He's a lot more free with information now that he doesn't have to hide what he's doing from the rest of the Integrators, but it's also surprising to me how much he doesn't know.

"We have no idea what's causing the Anomaly," he confesses when I try asking about it. "It doesn't match any event in any other Trial that I know of. Hestia is the only planet that's reacted negatively to the Integration process." He frowns a little. "Though it's not the only Heart to try fighting back."

"Sounds like the planets don't like being Integrated," I say mildly. Gheraa is silent for a moment before he nods in reluctant agreement.

"Integration gives the Interface control over the planetary Heart," he says. "It is not a pleasant process for them."

I can imagine. I say nothing in response to this, though Ahkelios and Guard both exchange glances with one another. Ahkelios in particular I can sense is itching to ask about what happened to his planet; the only reason he hasn't is because he's waiting for me to be done.

I gesture for him to ask. May as well get it over with.

"Do you know what happened to my planet?" Ahkelios asks immediately.

Gheraa frowns at him. "Which planet is that?"

I wince. Somewhat predictably, Ahkelios looks offended. "Yotun," he says, and his expression falls when there isn't even a flicker of recognition in Gheraa's face. "You don't know, do you?"

"I cannot possibly know the status of every planet that has been Integrated," Gheraa says defensively.

"Do you know what your people are doing to these planets?" Ahkelios demands. "You could at least do the courtesy of remembering!"

I consider stepping in, but something about Gheraa's expression stops me—the defensiveness melts away into a mixture of guilt and resignation, and when he speaks again, it's... well, it's a start.

"As you have already surmised, the threat of planetary destruction when we first begin Integration is a lie," the former Integrator says, his voice a little quieter. "Planets destroyed in the process of Integration are few and far between, and every Integrator knows of them. I do not know the exact status of Yotun, but I can assure you it still exists."

Ahkelios's relief is palpable through our bond. He nods at Gheraa, not yet forgiving him but still appreciating the response.

I probably should have considered this possibility. Ahkelios and Guard may have been on board with my mission to bring Gheraa back, but he's still an Integrator. He's part of the species responsible for the uprooting of their entire lives. As much as he's done for us, they only really have my word to go on, and I can tell they don't entirely trust him yet.

For me, trusting him is a simple, binary choice—one I made the moment I saw what he'd done for us. For them... well, hopefully fighting together will help, but I suspect this is the type of problem only time can remedy.

Ironic, that.

"Gheraa," I say. He looks up at me, still tense. "I need to know what you know about the loops. What's going to happen when we reset? Both you and Ahkelios aren't really supposed to be here. Ahkelios used to be a product of Temporal Link, but now he has his own fully realized body. You're a walking paradox. Neither of you exist at the start of the loop. What's going to happen if I die? Or if Ahkelios dies?"

"Um," Gheraa says, evidently thrown by the sudden change in topic. Some of that tension bleeds away, though, and he seems thankful to have something else to focus on. "I'm not sure? Wait, hold on."

I raise an eyebrow at him. He huffs indignantly. "Wait," he says. "I'm thinking!"

We walk in silence for the next few minutes. Gheraa curses every so often when he steps too deep into mud or stumbles into a branch—he does not seem used to existing in a physical environment, and more than once I catch him waving at a tree as if he can dismiss it from existence with a thought.

Ahkelios nudges me, looking nervous. "You don't think I'm going to die, do you?" he asks worriedly. "If the loop resets, I mean."

"As if I'd let that happen," I say, nudging him back.

Guard makes an agreeing sort of hum. "I would not allow this, either," he says. He sounds surprisingly sure of himself—the phase shift and the soulbond have both done a lot for him, it seems.

"I've got it!" Gheraa announces. I blink and turn to him only for him to immediately walk into a tangle of vines.

Somehow, he ends up both restrained and dangling upside down. His attempts at waving his cane around only serve to tangle him up further.

"You need help over there?" I ask, amused.

"No," Gheraa says stiffly. He pauses. "Maybe."

"Can't you burn these away with your Firmament?" I ask, reaching up to pull him free.

"Well, yes," he admits. He dusts himself off the moment I manage to free him enough for him to land on the ground, looking affronted by the dirt that managed to get on his coat. "But then I would be doing a poor job of acclimating. Imagine if I vaporized a door instead of opening it!"

"I feel like you know how to open doors," I deadpan. I can't entirely fault the logic, though. It makes a certain practical sense.

At the same time, though... I eye him for a moment. I'm pretty sure a good amount of his clumsiness has been genuine, butthis one feels deliberate. Gheraa doesn't quite meet my eyes, which only confirms my suspicions.

I don't say anything about it, though. We'll have plenty of time to talk in the future. In the meantime, if nothing else, both Ahkelios and Guard seem cautiously amused.

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"You were saying?" I prompt. Gheraa takes a moment to come back to himself.

"Oh! Yes." He twirls his cane and then plants it into the ground. "I am reasonably certain that a reset will cause a metastable tumor to form within the temporal boundary of the loop."

"In plain terms, please."

Gheraa sighs dramatically. "A reset will put both me and your friend into a stable version of the Tears I'm sure you've encountered by now. All we have to do is break out. Or you may have to break us out. One or the other."

"And you believe this because?" I ask.

"This," he says, gesturing to Ahkelios and himself, "is the first time entire beings external to the loop have been introduced to it after its inception. But it is not the first time an object has been introduced to the loop. In the first few iterations of this Trial, dungeons and Hotspots would both reward physical objects to the Trialgoer that completed them."

"I'm guessing there was a problem with that," I say dryly. Gheraa's explanation reminds me of the Chromatic Threads I received from the first Hotspot I completed—I still haven't really had the time to practice using them, and without practice they're so impractically deadly that I'd more or less forgotten about them.

Now that I think about it, though, Guard fights with his chains in the same way I'd like to fight with the Threads. Maybe he can give me some tips? It feels like a waste not to use them otherwise.

"Firmament, like energy, can neither be created nor destroyed," Gheraa says, catching my attention again. He shoots me a dirty look. "You should be aware that placing objects within the Empty City for preservation was not an intended use of the dungeon portal. Every loop iteration costs the Interface a fraction of its Firmament to preserve those objects."

"Unfortunate," I say, not meaning it at all. The well-being of the Interface isn't high up on my list of priorities. Gheraa seems to recognize this, because he just smirks a little at my words.

"It was a clever workaround," he allows. "Something we'll likely patch out in the next Trial—well," he frowns, correcting himself. "Something the Integrators would patch out. If there was another Trial."

He shakes his head. "This is beside the point. Because Firmament cannot be destroyed, a new object existing within Hestia's temporal boundary causes a Tear to form. That Tear preserves the object into the next loop. The same should happen to me and your friend."

"Ahkelios," Ahkelios supplies, narrowing his eyes slightly. Gheraa pauses.

"Ahkelios," he amends. The mantis nods in satisfaction.

"In other words, you're pretty sure you're both going to be inside a Tear, but you don't know how easy it will be to break out from the inside," I muse. "Do you know where it shows up?"

"Near the loop anchor's spawn point," Gheraa says immediately. "That's you."

"Good to know." I nod in satisfaction. Getting them out shouldn't be a problem, then, assuming they can't get out of it themselves. That's one major worry out of the way. "You don't think Ahkelios getting his Interface back will complicate things?"

There's a long pause. When I turn to look, Gheraa has stopped in his tracks and is staring at me. "He has what?"

I pause. "...Maybe we should catch you up on things while we walk," I suggest. Now that I think about it, he has missed a lot. Especially if his memories of being a dungeon are foggy, which they appear to be. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Gheraa nods slowly. "That... sounds prudent," he manages.

It takes a while before Gheraa figures out how to speak again once we get him caught up. In that time, we decide that whatever we find in the Quiet Grove, we'll use the opportunity to take a break as well—in part to give Gheraa a moment and in part because... well, because we need a break.

We're all feeling the effects of battle after battle, escalation after escalation. As much as we'd like to throw ourselves headfirst into the next problem, the more we talk about everything we've been through, the more we realize how much we need to take some time to ourselves.

Evidently, the planet itself recognizes this, because when we arrive, we see that the Quiet Grove has changed. It's as quiet as ever, but miniature cabins sit in the middle of the grove.

Four of them, in fact.

"Not just a gift for me, then," I say. There's a part of me that's worried that this is a trick, but the closer we get, the more sure I am that this is in fact the Heart's doing. There's no hint of foreign powers or interference here—just a thick fog of temporal Firmament that sticks to each cabin and hovers over the grove. A hot spring, of all things, sits in the middle.

Her way of helping us, I suppose. Or maybe her way of telling us we need to take a break. Time itself is dilated here, and my read of the Firmament here tells me that it's stretched enough for us to spend days here with only an hour passing outside.

Maybe it's safe to rest properly for once.

"I'm going to go process everything you just told me, and then I'm going to barge into your cabin with a number of questions," Gheraa tells me. Then he walks off without another word, claiming the rightmost cabin and shutting the door behind him. I watch him, a little bemused.

"I think perhaps we should all get some rest," He-Who-Guards says, a little more measured. "I must speak with Aris and determine what she wishes to do."

"I'm going to train," Ahkelios announces. "Or sleep. Maybe both!"

I chuckle and watch them head into their respective cabins. I pick the last one and blink at the room that greets me. It's nothing alike, but at the same time, the way everything is placed...

It kind of looks like my old room. On Earth.

I take a few steps in, closing the door behind me and breathing in the scent. It smells like fresh wood—nothing like home—but a wave of nostalgia washes over me nonetheless.

There's a photo frame by the dresser, but no photograph in it. I pick it up, frowning slightly.

This used to hold a picture of my family. Instead, there's a note.

"Hi Ethan!" it reads. "We don't know why you asked us to build all this, but we owe ya, so here you go! Hope you like it. Lots of people helped! Even Bimar, even if she grumbled a lot. And some big bird guy? Also an old bird guy. And a scary bird lady. And a different scary bird lady, but she's not as bird-like. Hey, do you know a lot of birds for some reason?

"Thaht says I gotta stop rambling. Okay, uh, training! We have some training facilities we built according to the specs the scary AI lady gave us. She says it should work with the Interface and it'll get you prepared for the Fracture, which is confusing, because I thought you already—

"What do you mean I'm not supposed to—

"I am not writing down everything I'm say—okay, no, I am. Force of habit! Anyway, we hope this helps? A lot of people are here and want to sign this, but apparently that's not okay either and I wasn't supposed to write some of the stuff I already wrote. Oops."

The handwriting abruptly changes.

"We hope this helps, Ethan. Do what you need to do, no matter what that is. We'll be with you."

Two signatures at the bottom. Thys and Thaht, scrawled messily across the note. I chuckle a little at the phrasing, but more importantly...

This isn't just a resting spot, huh? It's something Hestia brought forward for us. Something I'll apparently ask the kobold brothers for in the future.

I glance at the trapdoor in the ground. That's definitely not in my original room.

"Sounds like a lot of people are counting on me," I muse out loud. Strangely enough, for once, I feel confident about it. Not angry, scared, or lost.

I know who I am now. And the Sunken King—Kauku, Rhoran, whoever is in control and whatever name he goes by?

He'll just have to learn.