Max came down the mountain as the sun was setting.
The descent felt different from the previous days — not physically, just in quality, the way the same road feels different depending on what you're carrying when you walk it.
He was carrying something new alongside everything else.
The dance. The source layer. The path his body had found and now knew existed even if it couldn't walk it perfectly yet.
He felt good.
Which lasted until Vista said something.
They were walking through the edge of town, blue flowers closing for the evening on both sides of the road, when she spoke.
"You should know," she said, "that what you accessed today changes things."
"Good things," Max said.
"Complicated things."
He glanced at her.
Her expression was the careful one. The one she used when she was choosing words with more precision than usual.
"Say it properly," he said.
"At full source level expression," Vista said, "Worio cancellation doesn't just opt out of individual gifts. Its the foundation of the gift system itself."
"Elder Soo explained that."
"Elder Soo explained the general principle," Vista said. "He doesn't know the specific implication for you specifically."
Max stopped walking.
"Which is what," he said.
Vista stopped beside him.
She looked at him with the expression she used when she was about to say something she'd been not saying for a while.
"The silver blessing," she said. "My gift integrated into your biology at resurrection. It's connected to the source layer in a way that normal gifts aren't. Because I'm a Mother of despair. my gift comes from a level closer to the source than anything a human practitioner generates."
"Okay," Max said slowly.
"When you access source level with full Worio expression," Vista said, "you're not just touching the foundation of the gift system generally. You're touching the specific layer where my blessing lives."
Max looked at her.
"You knew this," he said.
"Yes."
The word landed simply.
Max stood on the road in the evening light and felt something shift inside him — not the grief, not the love underneath it, not the source layer underneath that.
Something colder.
"From the beginning?" he said.
"From when I understood what you actually were," Vista said. "Which was before the resurrection."
"You knew I was Worio."
"I knew you were Soma's son," she said. "Yes."
"And you resurrected me anyway. Knowing that Worio cancellation at full expression could touch the source layer of my own blessing."
"Yes."
"Which could mean—" He stopped.
He thought about what Elder Soo had said.
At complete expression someone at source level could theoretically undo any expression built on the source.
Including the ones that keep the world functioning the way it currently does.
Including Vista's blessing keeping him alive.
"You gave me a gift that I could theoretically undo," he said. "From the inside."
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me."
Vista met his eyes.
"No," she said.
Max started walking again.
Not toward the inn.
Just walking because standing still wasn't working for what he was feeling.
Vista followed.
They went through the town without speaking, past the market that was closing for the evening, past the inn where warm light came from the windows, through to the small park beside the river that Max had found on his second day.
He sat on the bench beside the water.
Vista sat beside him.
"Why," he said.
"Because you needed to find the source layer before the information would mean anything," she said. "Telling you before you understood what the source layer was would have been—"
"Don't," Max said.
His voice came out harder than he'd intended.
Vista went quiet.
"Don't tell me it was for my benefit," he said. "Don't tell me you were protecting me or managing what I could handle or timing the information for maximum comprehension." He looked at the river. "Just tell me the real reason."
Silence.
Long enough that Max turned to look at her.
Vista was looking at the river.
Her expression had dropped the careful precision she'd been using and become something simpler.
Something that looked, for the first time since Max had known her, genuinely uncertain.
"Because I was afraid," she said.
He waited.
"If you knew from the beginning that full Worio expression could reach the level where my blessing lives — that you carried something that could theoretically undo the gift keeping you alive — you would have spent everything trying not to access it properly." She kept looking at the river. "You would have held back. Permanently. Because you're the kind of person who would rather stay weak than risk hurting the people connected to your power."
"That's my choice to make," Max said.
"Yes," Vista said. "It is."
"You took it from me."
"Sorry," she said.
The river moved.
A Lily Kingdom river, going where it chose.
"What actually happens," Max said. "If I access full Worio expression at source level. To your blessing specifically. What actually happens."
Vista was quiet for a moment.
"Honestly," she said. "I don't know exactly. The Worio clan was destroyed before anyone could document what full expression actually produced. The theory exists. The practice—" She paused. "The practice was eliminated before it could be recorded."
"So you don't know if it kills me."
"Yes I don't."
"You don't know if it kills you."
"Yes."
"You don't know what it does."
"Yes."
Max sat with this.
"But you resurrected me anyway," he said. "Knowing the uncertainty."
"Yes."
"Why."
Vista finally turned to look at him.
Her expression was the most honest he'd ever seen from her — not the wit or the complaints or the carefully managed warmth.
Just Vista. Whatever Vista actually was underneath all of that.
"Because you died trying to protect your sister," she said. "Giftless. Completely powerless. You died anyway because the alternative was leaving her unprotected and that wasn't acceptable to you."
She held his eyes.
"I've watched a lot of people die," she said. "Across a very long time. Most of them fighting to survive. Fighting for power. Fighting for kingdoms and ideals and their own continuation." She paused. "You weren't fighting for any of that. You were just trying to make sure Lila was okay."
The river moved.
"I made a choice," Vista said. "Possibly a selfish one. Possibly one that costs both of us something significant down the road. But I made it and I would make it again and I should have told you sooner and I'm sorry."
The last two words came out simply.
No performance.
Just sorry.
Max looked at the river for a long time.
He thought about everything that had happened since the resurrection.
The White Lions. The training. Jax and Kael and Elara and everyone who'd mattered. The Violet Kingdom and Golina and the Zinkai. Shadow Utopia and Akio and Rei saying we're brothers now after three hours of acquaintance. Valentine holding his gaze for exactly three seconds before stepping back from the window.
All of it built on a choice Vista had made with incomplete information about what it would produce.
The same way he made choices.
The same way everyone made choices.
"You should have told me," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Earlier than this."
"I needed to know."
He let the yes's sit.
Then he said: "What does it feel like. When I access the source layer. From your side."
Vista was quiet for a moment.
"Like something getting very quiet," she said. "The blessing — it's not loud usually, I don't experience it as a constant sound. But there's a frequency to it. Presence. When you touch the source layer it gets—" She searched for the word. "Still."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Does it feel like ending."
Vista considered this honestly.
"It feels like the moment before something," she said. "Not ending. Before."
Max looked at her.
At the Mother of Despair sitting on a bench beside a Lily Kingdom river looking more human than divine and more uncertain than ancient.
"If accessing it properly means I might undo what's keeping me alive," he said slowly, "then the Vision—"
"The man who kills everything including the Mothers," Vista said quietly.
"If that man accessed source level completely—"
"He wouldn't need to kill us directly," Vista said. "No. He wouldn't."
They sat with that.
The weight of it.
The specific terrible logic of it.
Max thought about what Elder Soo had said about the Vision's man being consumed by anger and hate.
About what the source layer felt like when he accessed it.
Grief built on love built on presence.
Not anger. Not hate.
Something else entirely.
"I'm not him," Max said.
"I know," Vista said.
"But someone could be," Max said. "Someone with Worio blood and enough anger and enough —"
He stopped.
Thought about Lila.
Still at the church in Rose Kingdom.
Still waiting.
Still the person he'd died trying to protect.
"Lila," he said.
Vista looked at him.
"She's Worio too," he said. "Last . She has the same bloodline. The same potential access to the same source layer."
Vista was very still.
"Has anyone been teaching her," Max said. "Has anyone even told her what she is."
The silence that followed was the specific silence of two people arriving at the same understanding simultaneously.
"She's in the Rose Kingdom," Vista said carefully. "At the church. With no knowledge of her heritage. With no training. With—"
"With everything that's happened in the past months to someone connected to me," Max said. "With a kingdom that just attacked a peaceful place. With Star Generals who already destroyed the Worio clan once."
He stood up.
"I need to get to her," he said.
"Max—"
"Not right now," he said. "I know. I'm not leaving tonight.
He looked at the river.
"But soon," he said. "Before someone else realizes what she is."
Vista stood beside him.
The argument had gone somewhere neither of them had planned when it started.
The way honest arguments did.
"I should have told you everything from the beginning," Vista said.
"Yes," Max said. "You should have."
A pause.
"Are we—" she started.
"We're fine," he said.
Not immediately. Not effortlessly.
But honestly.
"We're fine," he said again. "But Vista."
She looked at him.
"No more waiting for the right moment to tell me things," he said. "Whatever you know. Whatever you're uncertain about. Whatever you're afraid telling me will change."
He met her eyes.
"Tell me."
Vista held his gaze.
"Okay," she said.
Simply. Without qualifications.
They stood beside the Lily Kingdom river while the evening completed itself around them, blue flowers fully closed now, the water moving with its particular intention through the darkening air.
Max thought about Lila at the church.
About the dance he'd finally learned today.
About source layers and uncertain implications and a Mother who had made a choice with incomplete information and would make it again.
About thirty-something chapters of story still ahead and a prophecy that was either about him or about someone who hadn't been found yet.
He breathed.
The source layer was there.
Quiet. Available. The ground beneath all grounds.
He stood on it and let it hold him.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Tomorrow," Vista said.
They walked back to the inn together through the closed flowers and the river sounds and the specific warmth of a town that showed you what you were actually feeling whether you wanted to see it or not.
End of Chapter