As Nic left the training grounds, Sofia appeared alongside him. The starry otter was floating at her shoulder like a well-trained dog.

“Nicolas, yesterday I mentioned I’ve had your crow informants keeping watch over the Dungeon entrance. Until recently nobody had come through.”

Raising an eyebrow, Nic asked, “Until recently?” He always had the distinct impression Sofia was setting him up to ask questions like these; she moved one step ahead of him most days.

“Until very recently.” She echoed. “This morning, your crows reported that a ghostly creature had come through. Oddly, it was accompanied by an elven male. The elf was very badly burned, and seemed injured internally, but the ghost was supporting it.”

An elf?

Nic could hope they’d escaped back through their portal, but the idea of one surviving in the desert for over a week…

It seemed impossible.

Sofia gestured and a map of the surroundings flickered into view. It was divided into triangles, each formed by the three points of three Dominus Nodes, the territorial markers that beasts and men warred over. The ones Winterhome had conquered were filled in with detail- the ones beyond were blank except for the roughest sketches of hills and rivers.

“Here.” She indicated. “They stopped here to rest. The elf couldn’t continue any further.”

Nic nodded. The whole situation was strange. First no heretics emerged from the desert at all, and now that one did, they were accompanied by a still-living elf.

The only scenario Nic could think of was that the ghostly sinner had somehow sheltered the elf from the poisonous energy.

“I’ll go and see.” He braced, pushing energy down into his legs, and-

Leapt.

It took him straight into the air, high above the city and the treetops. The sheer force his new body could produce in a single upwards kick was more than enough to lift him towards the clouds. As the arc reached its apex, for a moment gravity seemed to lose its grip- the forces pushing him up and pulling him down hit equilibrium, and there was an instant of pure floating bliss before that equilibrium broke apart, ‘down’ winning the argument and sending him plummeting towards the forest below.

He dropped into a crouch as he landed, feet hitting soft soil and pushing down, driving him nearly knee-deep into the earth.

One leap and he’d left Winterhome; the floating city was in the distance behind him.

Another-

- And he landed in the depths of the Luminarch Forest. Since the warriors of Winterhome had brought down the core of the parasitic flowers, they had been slowly dying, the light receding from their luminous blossoms. The forest was healing now, but there were casualties. Nic saw a dead deer, its body covered in glowing veins.

The flowers had been a potent medicine for cultivating, but the Essence they gave came with an addicting drawback. Now that the source was drying up…

There would be casualties.

Nic kicked forward, into the next leap, the next weightless moment-

- He came down in a deep swamp, the water lapping over the worm-like roots of mangrove trees. Sour, rotting fruits that buzzed with flies coming to drink their decaying flesh hung from the branches overhead. Brittle, black vines that seemed to be made of ash wound around the trunks, menacing with thorns that glowed orange like the embers at the bottom of a firepit.

There were muddy fish in the swamp, with stunted little legs that let them crawl up out of one stagnant pool and awkwardly wriggle towards the next one. Massive blue herons spread their wings aggressively at Nic’s intrusion, their sharp beaks as long and deadly as spear-tips.

Nic splashed them all with water as he rocketed down into the lake.

“Sorry.” He said, and leapt before they could decide to attack.

One more flying moment

He landed in the center of the swamp this time. No more mangrove trees- they fell away, and what remained was an endless dark lake the color of obsidian, like a blackened mirror that showed no reflections. Two enormous redwoods rose to either side of the river that fed this lake, their trunks wound with yellow-flowering vines.

Nic froze.

It was precisely the scene he’d encountered when he first stepped into the dimensional pocket beyond the golden gate. The origami world had imitated this exact scene, even the angle he stood at, precisely.

How had it known…?

For a moment his body froze and a trickle of cold fear ran through his mind, carrying his thoughts to dark places. If they could see this far into his future…

No.

He shook the moment of dizzying paranoia off.

His goal was here and now; there was a place along the riverbank where the reeds had been folded down to form a kind of rough tent. It was barely big enough for someone to lie in, and reasonably well disguised. If you needed to hide while you were wounded…

It was the kind of thing you’d want.

He approached slowly, crawling forward. His danger-sense told him nothing. His ears pricked slightly, picking up ragged breathing from within, weak and feverish…

But as he reached out there was a sudden interruption. Out of the lake emerged a swirl of green mist, which quickly took the shape of a strange, hideous being. It had a lower body of trailing tendrils, with two rough arms. Its head resembled a starfish, with five flat-edged ‘petals’ coated in small, wriggling spurs of short wispy tendrils, and a radial mouth at the center, contracting and gulping with every word.

Quite frankly it looked like it had an asshole where a mouth should be.

Nic wouldn’t have assumed it to be intelligent, except for the robes that manifested, drifting loosely around its body. Within the ghostly mist-flesh, he could see golden lines traveling along familiar paths; he could quite literally see the Essence inside its meridians.

“You. Leave the poor sufferer alone,” it said. “I believe your business is with me.”

---

The ghost hovered above the lake, its strange mouth palpitating with gristly motions.

Nic gripped his weapons, but didn’t advance. They held in stalemate. “I’m looking for a heretic.” He said.

“And we both know that’s me, yes.” The strange, abyssal creature let out a shuddering gulp of noise that might have been a laugh. “Or at least, I was branded as such by the System. And do you always follow the System, loyally and without deviation?”

“I don’t think-” Nic started.

The creature laughed again, interrupting him. "Of course not!" It belched out. "In all the worlds I've wandered, among all the prodigies of the System I've met, every single one delved into heretical paths-- every single one sought to cheat the System and get ahead."

"Yeah." Nic admitted. "That may be, but I've seen what it takes to get branded as a Heretic. It comes with a body count."

Lavhin. Sula. The goblinoid mathematician...

"Then ask me, not whether I'm a heretic, but how many I've killed." The starfish-headed creature challenged him.

"How many?"

"Negative one."

Nic lifted an eye. "You're a necromancer?"

"Tomb, no. Necromancy is a grim tool at best- at worst, using it to bring people back creates miserable puppets begging to return to nothing. No, I was a true resurrectionist. I didn't curse some poor fool with a half-existence; I gave life to my liege."

Nic lowered his guard a fraction, letting the tip of Peacemaker slip downwards. "It sounds like you want to talk about this..."

It let out another burping laugh. Nic winced. The creature wasn't exactly hostile, but its strange appearance was deeply gruesome to watch in action.

"I have slipped into a monologue, haven't I? Now there's something we Heretics have in common. Give us a hundred thousand years of captivity and we become *desperate* to tell our stories to someone new..."

"Where are the others?" Nic pressed. "You're the first one to come out in a while..."

"Oh? Who else made it past?" The ghost's distracted aspect snapped away; it looked directly at Nic with its eyeless face. "You should be careful. Some of us are harmless; resurrectionists, mathematicians, priests..."

"But others... Others have earned their ugly reputation."

Nic considered for a moment, then decided to be honest. The ghost probably knew everyone who'd been trapped in the lantern fairly well, and Nic didn't know them at all, giving him little chance of a convincing lie.

"A goblin. I think he was talking about mathematics..."

"Epkereth?" The ghost said, and when Nic didn't respond to the name, shook its head. "It must have been him. Is he..?"

Again, Nic found himself on the edge of honesty or lies. There was no reason to tell the truth...

But a part of it might help.

"He was torturing animals. Trying to shape their flesh into a new body using the Aleph."

"Ahh. A shame. He was one of the better ones, but desperation and pain do ugly things to a soul. By the time we escaped, he was close to breaking..."

"How did a mathematician end up a Heretic anyway? If it’s not a body count, what line did you cross?" He lifted the saber again, making his point clear and literal. "I'm playing nice right now- But I'm asking questions, and I'm not gonna pretend your answers are adding up."

“Ah yes, of course. You want to know what cuts the line between Heretic, capital H, and someone who has merely touched upon heretical things…”

For a long moment the ghost looked at him. Every breeze and gust made its form partially dissolve, unwinding into mist.

“Failure.”

One word.

“Failure is all that divides us, child.” The thing sighed, a sound that burbled from its bizarre mouth. “The System purposefully seeds newly Integrated worlds like these with a thousand heretical spores; when they take root in prodigal talents, it begins to threaten them, to demand they complete task after task or be labeled true Heretics…”

Nic knew that was true for himself; when he created Gwungo, the System used the threat of a Heretical brand to ensure he kept an eye on the strange new creature.

“Inevitably, almost all fail, and become fodder for Logos to create his angels, or seek refuge in Pathos’ laboratories. But what the System is searching for... The reason it allows so many promising young talents to burn their precocious fingers against heretical fires…”

“... is a way to exceed its own limits.”

Once again…

Nic knew it was true. Gwungo wasn’t holding the System’s interest for any of the reasons the little slime was useful to Nic; his amorphous body and ability to devour energies were probably things that existed in dozens of lifeforms.

What made the little blob so fascinating was the simple fact it had been created.

It was a mind born from a mindless vessel of flesh. A soul that existed where no soul had before…

“In the end, the System was born long after the ancient practice of cultivation began to flourish. It understands only certain paths on that road, and its vision is more narrow than you’d imagine. After all... You were born to the System, were you not? You have never seen the true sky of ancient cultivation… You have only seen the System’s imitation, and so, how would you know to see the flaws?”

“Believe me.” Nic snapped. “I see plenty of flaws. And I don’t appreciate being spoken to like a child.”

The ghost paused. “Very well. I will speak to you as a peer, then. A foolish, misguided peer, because hear me now: You are not the rebel you think you are. All the disobedience you thought you kept hidden, all the spite towards the System you have shown, these were allowed. You are deviating from the road the System carved only by the fraction it allows you to…”

“And with time, that leash will tighten on your throat. You will find it harder and harder to walk the narrow path between Heresy and orthodoxy. Until one day, you are called upon to either rejoin the path of the righteous and proper…” Its voice dripped sarcasm. “Or be cast out for good.”

“Either you will bring what you’ve learned into the System, allowing it to consume the world with even greater efficiency, or you will be consumed. There is no devouring the System from within; the System has been defined over a thousand years by its very ability to take souls like you, who would change things if only they had the chance, and dangle that chance above them, keeping them dancing to the tune of false rebellions.”

With each word, a cold wind billowed, growing in force and ferocity. Wind made ripples stir on the face of the lake over which the ghost hovered; wind pulled at its body until it flickered and twisted, like the winding smoke of an extinguished candle.