We’ve been traveling in the void for several hours now. Ash assured us that he had a destination in mind and we weren’t traveling aimlessly, but he couldn’t give us an estimate of how long the journey would take.

“I don’t believe in sleeping,” Ash remarks, suddenly reaching behind and tagging me on the chest. Vitality bursts around my heart and nearly gives me a heart attack.

Ash hasn’t yet let me die, which is unexpected. I thought that the embargo on using the breathing artifact was a sure indicator of impending death. That doesn’t mean that Ash has let me get comfortable. While giving me periodic infusions of Life energy, Ash has also been directing Maria on how to create End oaths without a physical medium.

“Stop it,” he snaps, extinguishing a thin spindle of flame twisting from her finger. “It’s trivial to write an oath with fire. That’s not what I’m teaching you.”

Maria keeps her composure, but I sense a cloud of frustration through our bond.

We need to operate on his level, I remind her. I’ve never seen End practitioner back home create complicated oaths out of fire, so I’m guessing it’s not trivial like he says. But we’re in Eternity now.

I know.

After a few hours of traveling in darkness with minimal plane breaks, I wonder if Ash is testing our personal thresholds for annoying behavior. He keeps making random statements while repeatedly slapping me with Life energy and correcting Maria.

“Before I ascended, the longest I went was three years,” Ash says out of the blue, providing no context.

I succumb to my curiosity. “Three years doing what?”

“Not sleeping.”

“Was that back when you were conquering your world?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “I could sleep as much as I wanted when the world was mine. Nobody was there to wake me and nobody cared.”

“Why did you...” I trail off.

“Why did I place the global populace under my dominion?”

“That’s one way to phrase it.”

“We’d reached a critical practitioner capacity of ten percent of the population. The world was a dark place, full of violence and oppression. Every day the world became slightly worse, edging toward oblivion. I needed time to think–time to freeze the descent.”

“People always abuse power, but there are others to keep them in check,” Maria says. “The powerful police the powerful. Why did that fail on your world?”

“Why did it fail on yours?” Ash asks, though doesn’t wait for an answer. “Ten percent of my world were practitioners, but the distribution of affinities was not equal. Those with the power to hurt grew, those with the power to create dwindled. All affinities can be used toward violent ends. A natural mechanism exists to drain the violence from mortal worlds, removing the most powerful souls from the cycle of rebirth–ascension. But this system doesn’t do anything to balance the inequity of the masses.”

There’s a lot to unpack in his response, but Maria brings the conversation back to his first rebuttal. “What do you mean, why did it fail on ours?” Ash knows about Achemiss and Ari’s death, but I’d be surprised if he knew about our world’s difficulties.

“I was curious why Karanos would have leverage over you when all he had to offer was a return beacon. So I asked Crystal, who informed me about your world’s Infinity Loop problem. Suddenly the conflict with Achemiss–and Ari’s death–made sense.” He pauses. “Do you have an answer?”

“For why checks and balances have failed, and our world stands at a crossroads that may lead to apocalypse?” I say. “I don’t know. Human nature.”

“And how do you stop human nature?” he asks.

“You can’t.”

Ash cocks his head. “You can, by stripping it away, by removing their agency and controlling them.”

Maria purses her lips. “But in the end, who is the controller? You, a human are as beholden as the rest of them.”

Ash grins savagely. “Most would never speak so candidly with me–it’s refreshing. But am I really human?”

“You seem like one to me,” I reply.

His smile fades, replaced by an expression of melancholy. “What were we talking about again? Oh right, sleep. I wouldn’t expect to be getting very much of it over the next few months.”

Without warning, he reaches forward and swipes, peeling the veil like old wallpaper. A temperate forest world lies beyond. Is this another breathing pit stop or our destination?

Maria and I follow Ash across the forest to a large lake.

He gives us an appraising look. “Before we go much further, you should both take an hour to rest. Take care of anything that needs taking care of.”

I decide to call Eury.

—

Euryphel woke up in a sweat. He held his wrists against his forehead, his hands still tender from his injuries.

Even before founding the Darkseers, he hadn’t been sleeping well. But after establishing the secret organization and assuming responsibility for their momentous task–literally saving the world from the Infinity Loop–he’d been plagued by insomnia.

As he stared up at the ceiling in quiet dismay, Ian appeared behind him.

“Eury?” Ian whispered, walking around the side of the bed.

The Crowned Executor jolted up, sitting against the headboard. His hair was a mess and he combed it down with fingers of wind. “I’m awake. How are you?” It had been about a week since Ian had called down.

“Things are okay on my end,” he said.

“How was meeting Karanos’s faction?”

Ian rubbed his jaw. “It was...interesting.”

Euryphel snorted. “That’s all you have to say?”

He held up his hands defensively. “A lot happened, most of it irrelevant to our purpose, though not all. Another ascendant has spirited me and Maria away for a few months.”

Euryphel narrowed his eyes. “Against your will?”

Ian considered for a moment. “No. I don’t think we had a choice, but the man who took us away is incredibly powerful and seems genuinely interested in helping us develop our affinities further.”

“Everyone in Eternity is incredibly powerful, Ian,” Euryphel pointed out.

Ian averted his gaze. “This man... he’s what they call an ancient. Someone who’s mastered more than two affinities. Even in Eternity they’re rare. He’s the only one I’ve met.”

Euryphel’s eyes widened slightly. “And he’s helping you? What’s his angle?”

“That’s just it. I don’t fully understand his motivations, just that he’s taken an interest in me and, to a lesser degree, Maria. By performing well in one of his challenges, he owed us a prize, but personal tutelage for half a year is well beyond what a normal reward would be.”

“Am I right to be concerned?” Euryphel asked, sighing.

Ian sighed back. “Maybe. How have things been on your end?”

“Exhausting. We haven’t conducted any new operations in the past week.” Most of what they were doing now was information gathering–tracking down where all existing Infinity Loops were located and determining where documentation and blueprints on how to create them was stored. Ian was up to date on those activities.

Ian sat down on the end of the bed, his eyes probing. “Why exhausting, then?”

Euryphel was too tired to blush under the necromancer’s intense gaze. “We should be doing more operations. We already know we’re racing against the clock. And yet I can’t think of anything. We conduct meetings but nobody has suggestions except for what we’ve already come up with.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the current plan, Eury,” Ian murmured. “Wait for people in your information network to find leads, then act on them, investigating and tracking the location of discovered Infinity Loops. It’s a strategy that demands patience.”

“It’s too slow,” the executor growled. “I feel like I have this incredible weight pressing down upon me. But there’s nothing I can do to remove it. I just stand and bear the burden.”

“You’re not alone,” Ian reminded him.

He smiled sadly. “I know. Now tell me of your latest adventures–I need a distraction.”

—

After the call with Eury, Maria uses the transmission beacon to contact Kaiwen. With our affairs in order, we let Ash know that we’re ready to proceed.

“Good,” Ash says, “follow after me.” He runs lazily up to an outcropping on the side of the lake, then jumps off the edge, falling over fifteen feet to the water’s surface and kicking up a massive, ten foot wave in all directions. It’s not like he belly flopped; the man swan dived with excellent form. There shouldn’t be more than a small ripple.

I guess that’s one way to use ascendant energy, Maria says.

She and I exchange a look, then follow his trail of vitality as it descends into the murk. The lake is deep enough that I can’t sense the bottom when standing on the surface. Aquatic plants and fish stand out like white etchings as we descend.

Where Ash has stopped at the bottom is a large slab of rock. He runs his hand across it, sending bits of sand falling to the sides. Nodding to us, he lifts the rock with two hands, hoisting it to the side to reveal a submerged cavern.

We follow him into the gloom for another two minutes when I feel my lungs starting to protest. We’re not in the void, but at this depth, pressure is a serious concern and the water is ice cold. Where are we going?

The further we go, the more the walls seem to close up around us. I resist the urge to turn tail and return to the surface. The worst that will happen is that you drown, or kill yourself before you get to that point. Maria will pick up your belongings so nothing will be lost.

I shudder and wrap myself in tight bands of Death energy. The ascendant energy that travels along them seals out the cold, but my body is already frigid. I hadn’t known we’d be diving in the water for an extended period of time.

Then suddenly, Ash disappears. One second he’s in front of us, the next, his vital signature is absent.

He reappears a moment later–but only his head. “It’s just a rift. Come.”

Swimming in front of me, Maria follows first. It’s as he says, a rift, she exclaims. Like the kind we have back home.

Like the kind that has riftbeasts? Before she has a chance to answer, I swim forward to see for myself, my head hazy from the lack of oxygen....and I slam face-first into a tree stump.

Sucking in a breath, I curse and get to my feet, rubbing my nose. It isn’t broken, but pain radiates across my face. Looking around, I see that there’s a wound in the sky between two trees, an opaque, oily window framed by branches: the rift’s exit.

“I didn’t know Eternity had actual rifts,” I say softly, shuddering from the residual cold of the water that’s soaked into my vestments.

Ash stands in a nearby clearing, a violet wildflower held up to his nose. He’s woven a string of white wildflowers into his hair. He doesn’t bother raising his voice to be heard and continues to use the modified interrogation array to communicate. “Rifts need specific conditions to form. In Eternity, most are so unstable that they dissociate seconds after forming. A small minority are stable and persistent.”

Maria and I walk into the clearing. Heat from her affinity dries my clothes and body, immediately improving my mood.

I want to know how this rift was detected, Maria transmits. The Eastern Rift Detection System we have back home might have been able to find it, but the ERS is a massive piece of machinery not easily transported. It’s at least as big as the planar crane that created a long-range passage to Cadivu, Cayeun Suncloud’s domain.

Someone must have been hunting for rifts deliberately, I reply. And I think we’re going to learn why.

“Ash,” I begin, “why have you brought us to a rift?”

He breathes deeply through his nose, scenting the flower in hand. “This is a special kind of hybrid rift that’s aligned to the ethereal Sun and Beginning affinities and the nethereal Remorse and End affinities. It has a day-night cycle where the energy swells, so during the day cycle, like now, the energy of the Sun and Beginning affinities will be strengthened, and likewise during the night cycle for Remorse and End.”

He smiles, his fangs and chitin armor glinting in the light of the golden ethereal energy swells above. “It’s the perfect place for an experiment.”