Page 132
“You might not be able to.”
“I will try.”
The simplicity of that almost undoes me again.
Sira steps closer to the pedestal. “The route is stabilizing.”
The silver line through the lattice brightens, then drops vertically through the chamber floor. Black stone parts beneath it, revealing a circular descent shaft lined with luminous glyphs. Warm air rises from below, carrying the smell of deep water, ionized metal, and something vast sealed away for an age beyond imagination.
The chamber’s gravity shifts gently toward the opening.
The ruins are inviting us down.
Or pulling us.
Possibly both.
Brakk adjusts his cutter and checks the strap supporting Sira’s weight. “Anyone else feel like we’re walking into the punchline of existence?”
I close the archive case and lift it against my chest. “Yes.”
“Great. Group bonding.”
Ghar moves to the shaft entrance first, though he glances back before stepping inside. He looks at me, then at Sira, then at Brakk, measuring whether we can continue. His wound has not stopped hurting; I can see the tension in his shoulders. He will keep going anyway.
Because of me, part of my mind whispers.
No.
Because of all of us.
Because Sira deserves rescue, Teren deserves more than a bloody case and a joke, and the truth deserves witnesses careful enough to fear it.
I step beside Ghar at the shaft entrance.
The glyphs brighten.
The descent begins forming beneath our feet, a spiral stair uncoiling downward from solid air. Each step appears only when the previous one accepts weight. Far below, a dark glow pulses like the pupil of an eye slowly opening.
Sira inhales softly. “Reality is thinning here.”
Brakk pauses with one foot above the first stair. “I need you to explain that in a way that makes me less likely to vomit.”
“I cannot.”
“I respect the honesty and hate the content.”
We descend.
The first twenty steps behave normally.
After that, the universe begins to misbehave in earnest.
My left hand leaves a faint trail of afterimages when I move it. Brakk swears as his voice arrives half a second before his mouth opens. Sira briefly appears three steps below herself, then the duplicate collapses into silver dust. Ghar reaches for the wall, and his fingers pass through it until he pulls back with a sharp breath.
The air thickens with possibility.
That is the only word I have for it. Every sound seems to contain other sounds that might have happened instead. Every step suggests alternate angles. The scent of ancient water becomes rain on my childhood colony, then hospital antiseptic, then smoke from Teren’s death, then Ghar’s skin in the small chamber after the kiss. My memories are not playing in order. They brush against the present as if time has become crowded.
