A voice calls like the tide, in and out, frothing on a shore of mist and haze.

“Dunai!”

I am the ocean, and the voice crests my waves and pierces my heart. In and out. Out and in.

“Dunai...Dunai...dunaidunaidunai...”

Dunes of sand...floes of ice...and the arrows piercing everything, like a net, as though to scoop me from the depths.

The wind moans; the sky begins to rainlessly thunder. Something stirs within me, an undertow, a sense of wrongness...a treasure sinking in the sea, falling out of reach...

“Ian!”

The last visible light from the surface is thin, a sliver of gold that pierces down and illuminates the fallen treasure, a golden pearl, a sun, a soul...

Me.

The world snaps, yanking me backward like a fish caught on the line.

The uneven scrubland presses up against my bare back. I cover my nudity in a robe of Death, then open my eyes and turn on my side, breathing roughly. I choke and cough, spitting up saliva tinged by pink blood.

I feel like I’ve just drowned, though technically my body isn’t in too terrible shape. The only part of me that’s really injured is my bitten tongue. But my ethereal body is weak, far weaker than I’ve ever seen it, like a perforated plastic bag, stretched out and half dissolved by wear.

I close my eyes and let my vital vision take over. Crystal and Maria are on either side of me. Sah is a bit further away, though his head is angled squarely on my position. Crystal is as expressionless as ever, though I can feel the fluttering of her elevated heartbeat.

“Ian...” Maria says, her eyebrows raising. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I rasp. “I thought I died. Why didn’t you guys just kill me if I couldn’t finish the job?”

Her expression falls. “You’ve died over eighty times over the past day.”

Wait...what? My eyelids fly open and I prop myself up onto my arms. “Over the past day? How long have I been out?”

“Just about a day,” she says dryly.

“Twenty-three hours,” Crystal chimes in.

But Karanos–

“His arrival is imminent,” the fish continues. “Maria entered the desert and saw his arrow a few hours ago; she began sensing his arrow from this plane thirty minutes ago. At the rate he is traveling, we expect him here in the next two hours. Your main focus needs to be recovering to face him.”

Crystal’s words are a punch to the gut.

Maria narrows her eyes at me. “Look, Dunai, you couldn’t have anticipated this. Stay in the current moment; move forward or die.”

I inhale deeply. “Your array,” I murmur. “It worked, at least.”

She gives me an disbelieving look. “I’ll say; it certainly incapacitated you for a spell. But I can’t cast it alone–whatever you did at the end, you’re going to need to repeat on Karanos’ soul.”

Trepidation jolts through my body, goosebumps rising on my skin. I acutely feel the weakened state of my soul. Even in full health, successfully using my ethereal body against Karanos is a long shot. Karanos is older and seems to be stronger that Ari–I have no idea how strong his ethereal body is and whether I’ll be able to assert myself against his passive defenses.

Moreover, to enter someone’s else’s ethereal body and manipulate their soul, I’ve always needed to be in very close proximity to them. Karanos has shown himself to be a ranged fighter, obliterating the terrain with light beams from afar.

“But there is one easy way to get close to Karanos,” Crystal says. “He cannot blast you from afar forever. Eventually he will come in close to collect you, possibly after killing you more than once. That will be the moment of reversal.”

Maria nods along, indicating that she’s heard Crystal’s thoughts as well.

“Can the array stay up for a few minutes?” I ask.

“Once I activate it and it locks in on Karanos, I think two minutes is my absolute limit,” she replies, her gaze stony. “It took effort to keep it going when it was just you, and I have to assume it’ll be even harder against Karanos. We’d be fools to assume he has no protections against hostile End arrays. The faster you make his soul susceptible to my arrows, the better.”

“Great.” A lot seems to be riding on Karanos lacking proper protections against our skills. Going into the final stretch, it’s clear we’re not in a good position.

If I hadn’t fallen unconscious for a day...maybe we’d have a better chance.

“It was not your fault,” Crystal interjects. “You tried something new that we all recognize as dangerous. The only failure would have been in dying a true death, but I do not believe that was a possibility.”

A thought suddenly comes to mind. “What if we visited Floria? Perhaps with the array, I could speed up the degradation of her soul.”

“But what would we receive in return?”

I pause. “She said that if I found a way to help, she’d let me back into her hangar. I presume she’d give some kind of payment.”

“So no concrete reward, just the suggestion of a vague payoff,” Maria concludes.

I shoot her a tired look. “I suppose, but the possibility of securing the help of an old ascendant is better than nothing.”

“If we had time, perhaps,” Crystal points out. “But there is no time to visit the ascendant: She’s practically on the other side of the plane.”

“I think the best plan is to stick with what we know,” Maria says. “Heal up.”

There’s a striking aloofness to the way she turns around and lopes over to the back of my lizard-tortoise, sitting in a meditative pose. She’s barely more than a speck on its distant back.

“She worries for you.”

I turn my gaze to the fish. I’m worried for myself–I need to assess the damage done to my ethereal body.

Crystal stares at me blankly. “If she worried for herself, she would worry about lasting damage to your soul and your ability to successfully incapacitate Karanos.”

What are you trying to say?

“If you fail here, we may all die–aside from yourself. She does worry for all of us, but she worries for you, too.” With that, the sapient inclines her head and pads off toward Sah.

I don’t want to fully consider what Crystal is trying to imply. There’s just me, Maria’s array, and Karanos. Anything else is just a distraction.

Though she’s too far to see clearly with my eyes, I sense Maria starting some kind of martial sequence that involves holding poses for seconds at a time. She’s doing a good job distracting you, I think caustically.

Need to calm my jitters. I force my pulse to slow and take in a deep breath, then exhale. I peer down at my chest and swallow, apprehension snaking through my intestines and up through my lungs, squirming under my skin. I close my eyes and focus inward. Threads of ethereal energy stretch and waft away from the mass, all of them under my control. I send them out from the center of my Ethereal body toward some of the most damaged regions.

But I soon realize I’m not sure what I should be doing. Soolemar never taught me anything about healing a severely damaged ethereal body–for me, that was exactly what he didn’t want to do, even if he could, because of the enhanced offensive implications of my shredded soul.

Unfortunately, all things are good in balance. One might assume that sustaining even more damage would further increase my soul’s offensive capabilities at the cost of defense, but I can tell that’s not how it works. It’s like sharpening a pickaxe blade: When thick and dull, the blade has little piercing power. You can grind it down to be sharper, but there’s a critical point that must not be reached where the object becomes too thin, losing its structural integrity and growing brittle. With a single strike, the pickaxe crumbles.

How would someone fix a broken pickaxe? I suppose someone could pick up all of the pieces and try to recreate the crumbled section of the pickaxe, but it wouldn’t be the same. For most people, the tool would be sold as scrap–it’s easier to replace entirely than to figure out a way to repair the axe’s broken head.

When something’s sold as scrap, it can be melted down and made anew, recycled. That’s how you’d really fix a broken pickaxe: reforge it.

But can I reforge my soul, my ethereal body?

My mind suddenly gravitates to the image of Soolemar slurping up a soul on our flight over Yurusi Canyon. I always assumed he ate the soul because he was eccentric, but maybe he had a valid reason for what he did. What if his state of existence continuously grates away at the stability of his soul, and requires some form of maintenance?

I can’t know the truth without asking him directly, but my gut says I’m on the right track.

Soon I’m floating above the city of souls once again. It takes longer to arrive there without Karanos’ assistance, but still less than the hours it originally took Maria and I to cross the landscape, back when we moved carefully to avoid waking the Oculus or other slumbering dangers.

So, how do I do this exactly? I reach out and nab one of the closest souls, one that’s an unusual mix of turquoise and neon orange. Frowning and feeling like a fool, I draw the orb to my lips.

Soolemar just...bit into it and sucked, I’m pretty sure. Simple.

The soul doesn’t feel like anything in my fingers; it’s beyond the physical realm of sensation. I simply sense it the way I sense vitality all around me. But when I bite into it, it’s like the soul is suddenly corporeal and full of juice, liquid bursting out and dribbling down my chin.

I recoil in shock, feeling for the splatter I felt on my cheek–but nothing’s there.

That was so visceral, I muse, somewhat at a loss. But to be honest...the sensation wasn’t bad. It felt like biting into a ripe peach, the flesh caving effortlessly beneath my teeth, nectar swelling in my mouth.

Did it have a taste? There’s no way, right?

I pull the soul back to my lips, noting that the bite marks from before have disappeared. After a moment of hesitation, I bite down again.

The soul jiggles between my teeth, like soft gelatin. Shuddering, I try to focus on the other sensations. Liquid fills my mouth like before, though I know it’s not a real liquid–it can’t be.

Tendrils of ethereal energy work their way up into my jaw. When they reach the disembodied soul liquid, they begin to soak it up like thin sponges. They can’t absorb much, but when they've become engorged, the tendrils merge back with main shreds of my ethereal body. The shreds immediately thicken.

Amazing. And this is from simply biting into the soul. What if I make this more deliberate? I try to suck the soul down like drinking through a straw, but nothing happens. It’s a soul, not a smoothie. I can’t physically drink a soul–but my ethereal body clearly can.

How does food normally enter the stomach? Through the esophagus, its muscular walls directing food to the stomach through peristalsis. I can do something similar with my ethereal body, expanding parts of it to fill my throat and pull the soul’s membrane deeper into my body.

The soul’s innards are like one never-ending oyster as they slide down my throat, distending like wet dough. I nearly gag due to the unfamiliarity of the sensation. Filaments of my ethereal body both stretch and lap up the stream of liquid, delivering it all over the tattered landscape of my partially-corrupted soul.

The soul rapidly depletes, its twin vibrant colors sucked away. Soon all that’s left is an empty sac.

Soolemar ate his souls in their entirety, I recall. Already came this far–can’t stop now. What was it that Maria said? Move forward or die.

I push the soul’s baggy surface into my chest. Immediately the shell dissipates, my ethereal body pulling it apart and repurposing it.

A quick final inspection shows that my ethereal body is in much better shape than it was a few minutes ago. I’m not sure if what I’m doing is a permanent fix for my damaged soul, but all I need to do is get in fighting condition to entrap Karanos.

Still, the state of my soul is diminished. I gaze calculatingly at the souls around me. Not for long.

—

I pop the empty membrane of my fourth soul into my chest, then conduct another inspection. Before Maria’s End array injured my soul, it was already piecemeal, stretched out like a knotted spool of yarn. Now looking at it, my soul is still splintered, but there are less pieces than before. Some shreds have merged together, becoming thicker and tougher, more elastic. The central-most piece of my soul, always the largest shred of the bunch, is thicker than it’s ever been before; it’s big enough to be a standalone soul without any of the other soul shards.

It’s possible I went too far in healing my soul. Regardless, my time here in the city of souls is done; it’s time to return to Maria and Crystal and await Karanos’ return.

I soar over the city and collect a string of souls, grabbing ten for good measure. They bob behind me like lanterns as I fly back to the site of the veil vulnerability. Getting closer, I see Maria and Crystal on opposite sides of Maria’s pentacle, with Sah watching apprehensively a few feet off to the side.

“Welcome back,” Crystal says.

You both need to leave; Sah, too, I mentally reply. When Karanos appears, who knows what he’s going to do.

“I’m putting the final touches on the array,” Maria says, Crystal forwarding the practitioner’s thoughts to my mind.

But Karanos is coming any second.

I sense Maria turn around and look toward my direction, her lips curving downward. “We can’t afford failure. I’m going to do everything possible to increase the chance that this array will succeed at breaching Karanos’ defenses. I’ve been trying to plan for every defense I can think of. It probably won’t be enough, but at least it’s something.”

I dismount on the lizard-tortoise and rear the construct around, its curved claws reshaping the hills into steep dunes. The construct bows down on its forelegs, angling so that the oculus’ eye is squarely facing the veil vulnerability.

A few minutes pass. Finally, Maria kneels down on one knee and bows her head. “Alright. This is as far as I go—my array will either work or it won’t. Crystal, we should leave.”

The fish paws at the ground. “Very well. I will stay close enough to communicate with you, Ian. Good luck.”

Crystal mounts Sah and flies into the distance, Maria following behind on twin gouts of flame. Their party exits the range of my ability to sense vitality, leaving me alone on my construct in darkness.

I’m not sure if it’s anticipation or my enhanced perception, but the seconds pass like sand dripping down from an hourglass with a too-thin bottleneck. Karanos could appear at any time, and when he does...I need to react immediately and decisively. I can’t lose focus.

The sky suddenly erupts in a pillar of heat, exploding outward in a disorienting dazzle of lights that leaves the sky crackling and broken like it’s been struck by lightning. At the center of the radiant maelstrom is a single figure, his hands forming a gesture in front of his chest.

Karanos.