Die. Respawn. Repeat.

I try to put that last revelation out of my mind. Adeya and the others, thankfully, understand the reason behind the delay once I explain what happened. "Just let us know next time," is all she asks.

"Will do," I agree.

They'd figured something had happened pretty quickly when I didn't immediately pop back in through the portal, and rather than wander around, they had chosen to take something of a break. It's been a while since the last time they've been able to eat, so by the time I get back into the Sewers, I find them with small mats laid out on the ground, chatting to one another while forcing down rations.

I just pull out what remains of the supplies I keep within my Soul Space. Things brighten up pretty quickly, after that. I manage to find a seat with Novi and her children and use that time to learn a little more about them; Ahkelios and Gheraa, likewise, quickly find company in the scattered groups.

One thing stands out to me, however.

"There was something strange that happened," Varus says thoughtfully. Juni reaches over to take his hand and squeeze it slightly, and I see the larger scirix give him a grateful look. "I think a building almost fell on me. I get a lot of nightmares about it, and Novi tells me I'm lucky it didn't kill me."

"Nightmares, huh?" I repeat, brow furrowed slightly. I'm not sure why this stands out to me as significant, but the Threads around me are reacting—the Thread of Insight, specifically. Novi gives me a small nod.

"It is strange," she says. "My Sight tells me that he should have died, and it is also certain he was not meant to die. Perhaps you have insight into this?"

"I'm afraid I don't," I admit, although my mind is already whirring. It's an oddity. Novi has some sort of precognitive ability with her Path, I believe, even if she hasn't told me that directly. Interference with precognition would normally imply some sort of temporal anomaly, but...

The presence of Tears in the Sewers aside, there shouldn't be any temporal anomalies in the Empty City. I frown a little, turning the thought over in my head.

I know that Rhoran was here. I know that actions taken during the Ritual stages can impact things further down the line. If a building almost killed Varus, then I can assume that's a result of Rhoran's meddling.

But if he didn't die... that means someone saved him. Someone that's an external factor the same way I am. The same way Rhoran is.

I have no idea who that someone might be. No one else has access to the Empty City, as far as I know, so it can't be another human. The idea that another Firmament anomaly might have made its way into the dungeon seems like a stretch. Teluwat might be able to reach into it with his Talent and alter things, but why would he care about the Empty City?

No. It feels like I'm missing something, but try as I might, I have no idea what that might be. Kauku's the only other entity I know that even knows about the Empty City, but as far as I know, he needs me to navigate it for him. That and I can't see any particular reason he would care about saving Varus.

I shake my head again after a moment. "Yeah, I have no idea," I say. Novi gives me a thoughtful glance, but says nothing. "Why don't you catch me up, though? What happened since the last time I was here?"

Yarun enthusiastically takes over. He talks about how he's been studying to be a doctor—Novi gives him a proud smile as he goes into a spiel about a medical technology he apparently invented, a Firmament-imbued ointment that works to seal wounds even across species.

Juni nudges his brother playfully. "You didn't tell him about the time you set yourself on fire testing the ointment," he says.

"Wha—he doesn't need to know that!" Yarun says, turning red and folding his arms across his chest. "I put too much Firmament into it, that's all."

Juni smirks. "Yeah, turns out that stuff acts weird if it has too much Firmament," he says. "Fire's the least embarrassing of what happened with it. You should've seen the time he tried to apply some to an Elder—he got chased out of the room very quickly. And then the Elder called in his wife..."

Yarun makes a mortified sound and covers his face in his hand. Juni, on the other hand, is clearly enjoying this far too much. "He ordered new supplies of ointment every month for a year after that, until they split up for unrelated reasons."

"You did not have to tell him that," Yarun mutters.

"No, but it was fun." Juni grins.

Varus rolls his eyes. "You tease him too much. One of these days he's going to get you back, and I'm not gonna be here to help you."

"Oh, please." Juni tugs Varus closer. "You're always gonna be here to help me."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I just laugh at their antics, turning to Novi. I see her smiling at the three of them with a soft sort of smile.

Once again, though, I catch a glimpse of something in her expression that looks a little too much like grief.

It vanishes before I can say anything about it. I find myself frowning.

The first time, I thought I imagined it. Now...

There's something she knows. Something she isn't telling me.

What I can't figure out is why.

It feels almost like she's trying to protect me.

It's not long before everyone's done with their meals and we decide to move on once more. Admittedly, it takes us a while to find a rhythm, in large part because I haven't finished the cycle of deaths needed to get to the next valve chamber. That's a whole conversation and a half I end up spending with Ghost to explain the current plan and what we're doing. To my surprise, he's absolutely delighted by it.

He has a lot more personality when he isn't depressed and on the verge of death, it turns out.

Without the ability to get all the way to Isthanok until my next set of deaths is complete, Ghost entertains himself by testing his ability to resist the resets as well as their effect on his skills. Like Aheklios when I first created our Link, Ghost is no longer able to call up or use his Interface, but he does have a few skill constructs that linger within his core.

And some of the skills he's managed to retain are fascinating. Timeskip, for example, is the skill he used to dodge Anomaly 006 and survive the planet's destruction. It doesn't allow him to dodge the temporal reset, but it does allow him to catch a glimpse of what I now see every time the world rewinds.

I'm mostly grateful for the first part of that. I can't imagine how complicated things would start getting if he could somehow find a way to persist in the previous loop. Ghost, by contrast, seems disappointed... but very quickly cheers up when he discovers that he can borrow my skills and test them.

"There is much to discover!" he tells me through our link. "My people will appreciate the data once I restore my connection to them."

"Just be sure to let me know when you're about to use a skill so we don't end up debilitated from usage conflict," I say dryly.

It does solve a problem for me, though. I can't freely test skills while I'm inside the Empty City because of the limitation imposed by Firmament saturation; Ghost, on the other hand, can. And I have a number of new skills that could use some rigorous testing before I start actively using them in battle. Inspect tells me a lot about each skill, but it doesn't give me the whole picture.

And Ghost is very thorough with his experimentation. Eternal Moment is, unfortunately, too difficult for him to use on his own—it costs an exorbitant amount of Firmament, and in the end, the tests he can do on it without draining me are limited. He does manage to find out that the skill can selectively 'pause' multiple moments at once, but that a moment has to be defined as an action.

Simply attempting to freeze a plant, for instance, doesn't work. But he can stop an attack in its tracks. He can stopseveral attacks in their tracks, in fact, although each simultaneously held moment costs exponentially more Firmament to do so. I have him stop before he gets too engrossed in insect battles on Hestia's surface, though I'm inwardly amused by how entertaining he found it.

While he does all this, I start bringing him up to date with everything that's happened on Hestia. I didn't have much of a chance, before—I hadn't known I'd be seeing him again. Now I tell him about the Tears, about the other former loopers I've met, about the fact that this will likely be the last Trial Hestia hosts, no matter how it goes.

Before long, we get to the third valve chamber and Tear. We more or less know what to expect, at this point, so there's not much fanfare as I step through. Then I just wait for the Tear to activate, holding on to the surrounding Firmament as I do so.

There's been enough time for Firmament saturation to drop down to 70%, surprisingly. That... should be enough.

Hopefully.

He-Who-Guards sat beside his son and talked about nothing.

It was, perhaps, the closest thing he'd experienced to torture. Worse than even all of Whisper's experimentation and attempts to keep him alive, as much physical pain as that put him through. This was a whole other kind of pain—to finally learn that he had a son, that his son had been abducted by a Trialgoer who seemed incapable of sticking to any one idea or story...

Fending off Teluwat was becoming exhausting, even with the Void's help. It wasn't because he didn't have the power to do so. It was because he needed to stay on alert all the time, to keep an eye out for even the slightest whisper of Firmament that might breach his defenses. The fact that this was apparently a Talent made it even more difficult for him to fend off.

Most of the time, what Teluwat did was just a skill, but every so often he would imbue that skill with a little bit of his Talent, and that required a lot more of Guard's effort to subvert. He needed to draw on a Concept to do it, to wield it like a shield.

Thankfully, he'd had some practice with that. The Concept of Life permeated his being.

In the meantime, knowing that his son was alive and with him...

It would have to be enough.

"Be swift, Ethan," he whispered through the link. "I cannot hold forever. But your distractions are working."

If nothing else, Teluwat's growing frustration with the constant resets was almost worth everything else.