She was not gone. The mind was nuance, the Selves were obsession, living perspective. It was possible to align without merger or enslavement. The experience made Lyssa feel slightly more complete than before, as if a piece she had not known was missing was filled in. She hated it. With Sethlana in her shoes walking alongside her, Lyssa felt nothing but rage. The emotion she had sequestered away came back to her, undiluted.

This was only the beginning. She needed all of them, or this structure wouldn’t hold.

The other door was in fact a staircase, each step was a metal slat supported by a central column. She ascended. The structure rattled. There was no white cloud spilling out of Eury’s realm. Just greyness and fog.

Only then did Lyssa realize.

“I can’t ignore myself, can I?” She whispered. And then she felt a hot pang of anger, for that should have been obvious. Or was it? Selective ignorance made for saner minds. Healthy human beings remembered the good in their lives more than the bad. So health must be sustained by delusion then.

Lyssa shook her head. She needed to focus. It wasn’t Sethlana giving her angry rebuttals anymore. She was thinking it herself. She wondered if this would get worse as she kept going.

The fog was certainly getting worse. Beads of moisture clung to her skin. She was acutely aware of them. The moisture formed uncomfortable streaks, each one dreadfully long. Dread was the right adjective. The higher she went, the heavier the dread felt. Why? What did Eury really represent? Lyssa’s face flushed with the realization that she never bothered to really care.

It had gotten dark. The fog was becoming denser. Lyssa had force herself up the steps. When she could move no more, she summoned her fire claws and dug her way up like mole. The fog rolled in behind her, ready to clasp on her legs if she was too slow.

She had no idea how much time had passed, here or in real life. She could only hope Izanami was keeping things somewhat on track in the real world. So Lyssa could focus on getting through this ordeal. The fog was an incomplete assignment, and an upcoming test; it was the morning before school knowing how cold the classroom would be, and the afternoon bell, a reminder that home would be colder; it was that moment when the sky caught fire, and the possibility of a slow suffocation. The fog was to drown in what had been and what might be. Lyssa struggled. Even with the fire at her fingertips she could barely see ahead of her. The density had only gotten worse. She was beginning to fear.

What if it catches my feet?

What if I can’t make it through?

What if I’m caught like bug in my own head?

She would surge and roar, her efforts would double as she drove herself forward. But inevitably she would slow again, and thought of failure weighed on her shoulders, cold and unbearably heavy.

What if. What if. What if.

The walls were closing in on her. She knew that already. She had revealed the abnormal nature of her gifts to pretty much everyone. And the Director had done a good job pretending he was too busy to give her his scrutiny. In all likelihood he had understood the potential of Lyssa’s abilities from the moment she had completed the practicum to enter the school. He had been playing her for months and she knew that. But she had also done a good job pretending it wasn’t happening. Now she was feeling its implications. Whitworth didn’t need psychic abilities to manipulate people.

What if.

She had killed a man. A fact she had conveniently forgotten and pushed away. Someone could have found out. What if someone would? The case might not be closed. A detective might have parsed through the ashes and saw two different fire gifts. Lyssa was a killer. In self-defense, sure, but that was a casuistry. She knew how it felt to part a man’s flesh with her claws, to singe him from the inside out, to take satisfaction in it. The truth might get out, eventually.

What if.

Could she have saved grandfather? If she had just mutated the right gift, she might have been able to revive him. If only she had control over this esoteric mechanism in her biology. If only she had tried harder.

Lyssa had stopped. The weight of the fog was too much. Possibility and regret hung on either side of all of her memories. Every moment a missed opportunity. Every future filled with certain doom.

Lyssa began to cry.

How did people function? To know that they could have done better, and that horror awaits tomorrow. Eighty million people lived in New Langshir. Eighty million points on a Gaussian distribution on every behavior metric. On one end, extreme docility. On the other, horrendous violence. This cruel statistic was overlapped on a world where a man who could flatten city blocks might come from anywhere.

Perhaps the baseline protestors were right; gifted out to leave their city. But such an agreement would only enable villainy. Perhaps gifted needed to hold tighter, squeeze harder, around this fragile world all humans share. There was no right answer. All directions led to violence and death. What was the point in moving forward?

Then came the light. It barely lifted the darkness, but it was there. A gentle pinkness, like petals. Lyssa opened her eyes and saw herself in a mirror of energy. Except her reflection was somewhere far, far away.

“Is this where you’ll stop?” She asked.

Lyssa didn’t want to speak.

“Understandable,” the reflection in the cave said. “I didn’t leave this place much better after I left. But don’t you think things could always be better?”

“It will get worse,” Lyssa said. “It always does.”

“But you have friends now. You have a future.”

“They’ll find out. What I’ve done, what I am. They’ll hate me.”

“You can convince them all by being a hero. You chose to apply.”

“It was a bad choice.”

“No. It was the best choice you have ever made. It was an opportunity. Your life could always get worse, but you can steer it in a better direction. There’s always hope.”

Lyssa had no reply. But she felt the heat return to her fingers. The light of her claws glowed again, and she began to dig upward. The Self in the cave disappeared, but not before muttering something. Lyssa did not hear it, but she did not think to look back.