"Ow," Vex said dully.

Everything hurt. He wasn't really sure why everything hurt, but he did know that everything hurt, and he knew that it hurt in a way that was wrong. Like deeply, badly wrong. In a "he probably needed immediate medical attention" sort of way, not that there was anyone around to provide him with said medical attention.

It took him a moment to figure out where he was and what was happening.

One, he was alive. He'd been a little afraid for a moment that he might have died trying to cast the spell. It would've been embarrassing, for one thing, but he also just... didn't want to leave Derivan like that. And the rest of his friends, of course. They were a factor too.

Two, he wasn't sure he was going to stay alive for very long. Something felt like it was twisted the wrong way inside him. If he had to put a name to the feeling, he would've said it was his soul, cracked and broken in places it should never be cracked and broken.

The system was holding him together? It felt like the system was holding him together. How did he know that?

[ Danger: Extreme soulstrain detected. System failsafes initiated. Please see a cleric as soon as possible. ]

Oh. That was how he knew that. Vex stared at the text floating in the air in front of him. It wasn't even in a neat little box; it just floated there, like it was waiting for him to acknowledge it.

He poked it. It went away.

"Huh," he said.

Soulstrain was probably a bad thing.

Anyway.

He was somewhere in the streets of Enkiros. He knew this because of the pristine marble that surrounded him, though the kingdom was oddly empty. Vex was almost certain that the spell he cast should've brought back the kingdom and everyone in it. Maybe he was just in a particularly empty sector, or it was a bad time of day?

That didn't make any sense. There weren't any signs of the streets being worn down from use—if Vex didn't know any better, he would've guessed that these streets had never been used. He'd seen something like that in some distant possibilities where Enkiros had been built but never used...

But that couldn't be right. That wasn't the possibility he'd chosen to bring back. He thought back to the spell and to the time he'd spent trying to process the chaotic rush of information, wondering if he might've made a mistake—

"Ow," Vex said again, a little more emphatically this time. Thinking hurt. More than that, though, thinking about the spell he'd cast brought back some of his memories with a sharp clarity. He remembered the sensation of something fracturing within him.

To a lesser extent, he remembered the spell fracturing along with it. He just didn't know what that meant. How it had affected the outcome of the spell. The idea that he might have failed weighed heavily on him. If all he'd succeeded in doing was bringing back an empty version of Enkiros and push himself into a state where he was quite literally dying...

...Well, he didn't know what he'd say to the others.

Whenever he found them again, anyway.

Vex slowly pushed himself to his feet. As comfortable as the marble streets were—and they were surprisingly comfortable—he needed to start moving, at least. To try to make his way back to his friends. Maybe there were some people here in this empty ghost-town of a kingdom that would be able to help him, too. Always good to be optimistic.

"But first," Vex said out loud. Mostly to hear the sound of his own voice than anything, though it was a small comfort when he heard how weak and frail he sounded compared to the usual. "Gotta see if I can talk to my friends and tell them where I am."

Vex opened the system—

PAIN.Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

—then closed it again, gasping, staggering backward and leaning against the nearest wall. His eyes were wide, and he felt the cold grip of fear slowly begin to curl around him.

Nothing quite like being unable to access the system to make everything sink in.

"Fuck," he said, which was about as eloquent as he felt like he was capable of being. Vex stared down at his trembling hands, and then out toward the empty streets.

A thought struck him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force it out of his head.

It snuck in anyway, an insidious whisper: what if he didn't get to see his friends again?

What if he didn't get to see Derivan again?

He wasn't sure he could bear the thought.

"Derivan?" Misa asked worriedly. She'd never seen the armor so... distant, though distant wasn't the right word for it. Distracted, perhaps. It was the closest thing to vulnerable as she'd ever seen him. She could practically feel the worry emanating from him, the anxiety as his gaze traced the streets of Enkiros.

"I am here," Derivan said automatically, then paused, looking at Misa. "...I cannot deny that I am concerned. I am trying to stay focused."

"It's okay to be worried, you know," she said. Derivan went still, then slowly shook his head.

"...No," he said. "There is no time for it."

"Derivan—"

"I cannot allow him to be lost when I am able to find him," Derivan said. He sounded tired. "Please. Allow me to focus."

Misa sighed and said nothing.

She knew how Derivan felt, truth be told. This was nearly identical to how she'd felt back when they'd lost their first real fight against Irvis. She understood the feeling of helplessness, the thought that nothing you did could help. There was nothing she could say here that would help.

All she could do was be there.

It wasn't like she wasn't worried herself. Her concern for Derivan was one thing, but whatever was happening to Vex left a cold feeling coiling in her gut. Vex was a lot like the little brother she'd never had.

Come to think of it, maybe she was in the same boat as Derivan. It wasn't like she was doing any better at pushing back her own fears and worries.

"You said you can find him," Misa said. "You know where he is?"

"He carries a piece of me within him." Derivan said, his voice soft. "Yes. I know where he is. But he is Shifted too many layers away, and the residual magic around him is constantly and repeatedly Shifting him—finding him will not be easy. And..."

Derivan hesitated briefly, then glanced at the air, presumably at a system screen. He sighed.

"...and I suspect that the Prime Anchor of Enkiros has decided that these circumstances are worthy of its dungeon," he said quietly. He sent a system window over to her for her to see, and Misa stared at it, her heart sinking.

[ Activation conditions for the bonus room <The Bridge Between> has been met.

Transportation not required. Participants already within bonus room.

The kingdom of Enkiros has been split into a multitude of infinitesimal fragments of itself, each harboring a different possible future. Find the fragment at the core of the restoration spell to repair the broken Primordial Glyph. ]

The broken Primordial Glyph...?

"Oh shit," Misa said. She stared up at the sky, where a river of mana not unlike that in Teque hung in the sky. It took her a moment to recognize it for what it was. A small piece of a massive glyph.

But... it was the wrong piece. She didn't even need [Intuitionist] to tell her it was the wrong piece. Something about the river of mana above screamed at her like it was wrong. It belonged to a fragment of reality that had never been here, and the mana above reflected that fact—like it had been twisted through a funhouse mirror.

"In a dungeon again, huh?" Misa muttered.

"Every fragment has an entrance and several exits," Derivan said. "I cannot Shift us to the right fragment immediately—the Prime Anchor itself is holding these fragments in place now. To fight it would be to destroy the anchor."

"So we're in a maze," Misa said.

"Of sorts," Derivan agreed. "I believe the exits are conditional. They are tied to different objectives. I can sense these with Patch, to a degree."

"And you know how to get us to Vex?" Misa asked.

Derivan seemed to focus for a moment, and then he nodded. "He is close to the core fragment," he said. "A few fragments away, at most. We are at the edge. It will take us time to get to him. Do we have time?"

Misa thought back to Sev's parting words as he helped her strap the potions onto her body. "With the system's failsafes, it should be at least a day before his soul is strained to the point where it's irrecoverable."

"Then let us act quickly." Derivan didn't waste any time—he strode off, and Misa hurried to catch up with him. Novice and Exvhar had been left behind, mostly because Exvhar didn't seem to want to enter this twisted maze of his former home, and Novice felt he had to take care of the poor dragon. They were waiting just outside.

There were a lot of people counting on them for this. Misa might not be able to see them herself, but she could feel them right on the edges of her perception—like a whole kingdom's worth of people were holding their breath, Vex among them.

[You probably can't see this,] Misa sent. [But just in case you can... hold on. We're coming for you.]