"—so when you manipulate reality, does it feel like pushing or pulling? Because when I amplified it yesterday it felt like—"
Arie blinked.
Keisha was sitting across from him in the inn's common room, a cup of tea untouched in front of her, her expression caught mid-thought as she noticed he had drifted somewhere else entirely.
"Are you listening?" she asked.
He looked at her.
The room settled into place around him. Morning light angled through the windows. Rosh's voice carried faintly from the counter. The smell of breakfast hung in the air, familiar and unremarkable.
Everything was exactly where it should be.
This morning, he thought. The morning before.
He knew it instantly. He always did.
The date, the time, the exact position of everything in the world around him—every detail slotted into place with the quiet certainty of something he had already lived through once.
He had died in the evening.
Now he was back in the morning that came before it.
Everything that had happened between this moment and his death was ahead of him again.
The building, murals, the fourth wall and the
three letters he could no longer reach.
Something was different.
He ran through a quick internal check, the way he always did.
Power—intact. Responsive. Stable.
Memories—first life, second life, everything up to—
He reached for it.
The basement.
He knew he had been there. He could feel it with absolute certainty. The shape of the memory was there, clear and defined, but the contents were gone. Like running a hand over a scar where something used to be.
The fourth wall. The text. The name.
He had read something.
Three characters. Maybe four.
Something that started with—
Nothing.
Just absence.
A clean, deliberate absence.
They took it, he thought.
Whatever I read, they took it back.
He let that settle where it needed to settle and came back to Keisha.
She was still watching him, waiting.
"Sorry," he said, his voice easy and steady. "What were you asking?"
"My question about your power," she said. "Does it feel like pushing or pulling?"
He looked at her properly this time.
This version of the morning.
The version where she hadn't seen the field test yet. Where everything was still in front of him instead of behind.
I have to live all of it again.
The thought didn't feel heavy.
It didn't feel frustrating.
If anything, it felt—
Interesting.
He has more time, more room.More that can be done.
That was new.
He noted it, quietly, and answered her.
The horned figure came an hour later.
Not physically this time.
There was no clearing, no sudden appearance in front of him. Just a presence forming somewhere behind his thoughts, the quiet weight of something that had always been there deciding to be noticed.
Then the voice arrived.
Not heard but placed.
You found something you weren't supposed to find.
Arie didn't move.
Not outwardly.
You're going to want to find it again. That's understandable. Don't.
A pause followed, deliberate.
You matter to what's coming. More than you currently understand. But what's in that building will end you before you're ready.
Another pause.
And you are not ready.
The presence lingered for a moment longer before withdrawing, not disappearing so much as choosing to become unnoticeable again.
Arie sat with it.
You matter to what's coming.
Second time, he thought. You've said that twice now.
And you knew I was going to find that place.
You let it happen.
He stood up, stretched, and let the morning continue like it was just another morning.
The field test played out almost exactly the same.
That was the strange part about regression. Knowing what was coming didn't make it feel repetitive. It felt like watching something familiar from a slightly different angle, where the structure stayed the same but the details shifted depending on where you stood.
Keisha's amplification hit him the same way it had before.
His power expanded outward, the ceiling lifting, the seams in reality becoming clearer and more distant all at once.
He adjusted immediately.
Handled the creatures cleanly.
Held himself at sixty percent.
Let them see what he wanted them to see.
All of it matched.
Until the last engagement.
Three creatures from the north line.
Same pattern and same timing.
This time, he didn't hesitate.
The old thought—the one that measured everything—never came.
Is this too much?
Is this too visible?
Is this the right amount to show?
It simply didn't appear.
The creatures went down in four seconds instead of eight.
Nobody commented.
But Demi noticed.
Of course she did.
He caught her watching him afterward, pen paused above her notebook, her expression shifting into that quiet recalculation he had seen before.
He met her gaze briefly.
Gave her the same open, unguarded expression.
She looked back down and started writing again.
Good, he thought.
That was new too.
The old version of him would have treated her attention as something to control.
This version didn't.
He let her notice. Let her build her pattern.
Let her come to him when she thought she understood.
He was curious what she would decide.
That evening, he sat alone on the inn's roof.
The Capital stretched out below him, quiet in the way cities became when most people had finally gone inside and the noise settled into something distant and manageable.
He thought about the building.
The murals.
The fourth wall.
The name he couldn't remember.
The horned figure had told him to stay away.
That was the sensible choice.
The safe choice.
He turned the thought over slowly.
Examined it. Rejected it.
Everyone in this is ahead of me, he thought.
The organisation knows my name.
The horned figure knows my name.
They all know something about me that I don't.
And the answer was on that wall.
I read part of it.
And I died for it.
The conclusion came together cleanly.
They wanted me to find it.
They wanted me to read it.
They wanted to see what would happen after.
A small pause.
They're studying me.
He felt nothing about that.
There was no fear or urgency.
Just clarity.
Fine.
I'll study back.
He stayed on the roof until the city quieted completely, then went inside and slept.
He expected to dream of basement, murals or a cryptic name but nothing happened.
Only one thing lingered clearly in his mind as he drifted off.
Whatever he had seen down there—
it was still there.
And whatever had been watching it
was still watching.