“How can we know you’re not lying?” Delilah swung an arm out. Her voice trembled with too many emotions for Micah to decipher, but her eyes were clear. “It took me a while to figure it out, but Ms. Denner gave me the clue: the issue with creating simulacra is giving them all you yourself possess. You didn’t give us a boon of knowledge. You projected our minds elsewhere. Who knows what this place is? It could be designed to show us anything!”

Pijeru seemed surprised by her words. The mournful cast to her expression cracked and she lifted her head up with a violent chirp, “I don’t here have to stand, after I you showed how my world died, and to you prove that I the truth tell. I don’t owe you that. If that all is that you care about, you can leave. I wanted to speak with Micah alone anyway.”

“Leave how?” Kyle leaned on his stubbornness. “We’re stuck here.”

“You just have to will it,” Micah gave a distracted reply. His mind churned. He turned that last memory over and over, searching for an answer within it. He glimpsed … some. Far in the distance. He fled from them and searched for ones he didn’t have to be afraid of.

An anxious buzzing in his chest told him to flee in person, but he had more than enough stubbornness of his own.

Just don’t think about it, that mantra echoed in his mind.

I want answers, Micah thought back at it.

If he didn’t do this now, he would lose his chance. It would be the same mistake he’d made with Anne that night.

Delilah vanished.

Kyle hesitated, but Micah reassured him, “She can’t keep me here.” He followed her out, and then it was just Pijeru and him on the terrace. They stood between a glass wall, a few empty bottles of beer, and a dark wicker couch.

“The Dwarf came to you. Could you show me that moment, please?”

A page turned, but the world remained unchanged. Pijeru startled. “It’s not there.”

“What, your memory?” Micah asked. “I thought you came from here? Shouldn’t the moment you left have been recorded as well?”

“Normally, yes. But the Plane of Memories isn’t infallible, nor is it immutable. Someone must have destroyed that moment in history. Maybe wanted they not seen be?”

“Okay, can you tell me what happened instead?”

“Strangers came to us,” Pijeru explained, “three of them. They walked among us like phantoms at first and … stopped the cycle of our history. Somehow. It felt like waking from a dream.”

“What did they look like?”

“They looked human. One of them was a woman with long silvery hair and skin. She was shorter than you are and looked as if she were made of metal or rock at times. At other times, looked she like a projection. Or an old monitor. Different colors of the spectrum put together to emulate white.”

“Did … did she have a beard?” Micah tentatively asked. “I mean, did hair grow from her chin?”

Pijeru cocked her head. “No? But she did wear a fuzzy pelt as a scarf. It was white and brown. I don’t know which animal it came from.”

That was not what Micah had imagined the Dwarf to look like. “And the others?”

“The second was a man who the rain brought. Even on days when it was not supposed to rain. His skin was paler than Kyle’s, he had black hair, and he … behaved himself like a trainee. He spoke very little and looked to other people for his cues.”

Micah had no idea who that was supposed to be. They had a couple of figures in myths and history tied to the rain, but none of them jumped to the forefront of his mind when he heard that description.

“The third man had black skin and hair. He wore faded work dungarees with stains, old and new, as if he’d just come from some job involving paint. I remember that I thought they looked so ordinary. As if they from our world could have come. He was approachable, unlike the others. He knew things about us and spoke with us like old friends.”

Micah didn’t know anyone like that, either, but the description reminded him of Anne.

“And they brought your people to our Tower?”

“Not all of us. Those who could be saved, they cut free from the Plane of Memories and offered a second chance.”

“By which metric did they determine who could be saved?”

“Those who were the most ‘themselves,’ I think. Some barely succeeded—”

“Like Tuhrie?”

“No. She— She has good days and bad days,” Pijeru insisted.

Micah groaned against the onset of a headache and leaned on the railing. He looked over a glass city cast in orange light. Distant engines echoed. A drunk group bawled a lyrical tone as they stumbled through the city.

The questions he had and the answers he was trying to find on his own, in the back of his mind, pulled his thoughts in two different directions. This conversation was only supposed to be a distraction, a way to buy himself time, but he couldn’t help himself from asking, “You said there were millions of you. Three people shepherded millions of people all across the world into portals and appraised your minds?”

“Of course not. They had employees, thousands of them, and they performed rigorous tests on us. Before you ask, not all of those were human.”

He turned. “What?”

“Some looked humans similar but with green skin. Some were aquatic or amphibian. Many were spirits, like the Pretenders who could become whoever they needed them to be.”

“And they were people?”

“Yes?”

The Towers were full of summoned monsters and spirits. Micah would have accepted their presence without batting an eye, but humans? And these other species?

Her description didn’t sound like Northerners, thankfully … Maybe trolls?

“We spent years with them,” Pijeru said as if to defend her statement. “They brought us to an empty city they had built, and they explained what had happened to our world. What had happened in our absence. New settlers came from the spirit world and colonized what they could, though the majority of the planet was a barren desert. We were presented with options where we could go, each with benefits and detriments.

“Many of us went back home to rebuild, or reclaim, the world we had lost.

“Some thought they weren’t the people the Vim remembered them to be, but they weren’t mere copies of those dead souls either. They went to major crossroads on new worlds to search for a fresh start.

“A handful were recruited by the Dwarf herself, along with their friends and families, because she saw something in them. Talent or expertise.”

Pijeru paused. “And some of us … Some of us are patient.” Her eyes were so full of expectations. “You wounded the Pretender. I didn’t think that was possible.”

Micah gave up. Her expression pulled his mind in a third direction, and it was too much. “I thought maybe this could have been your world, and that was why you hated me—us. Like the Northerners? Because you thought we stole your land …?”

He turned away from the city and vented, “Then I thought maybe you were like the unmade, that you were somehow compelled to attack us, but if all they did was cut you free … Why would the Vim remember you as beings that would want to attack us? It can’t be a consequence of leveling either because unmade don’t level either!”

“What do you mean?”

“I still don’t get it! What's the answer? That memory told me nothing.”

“Is it not obvious to you?” she sounded genuinely confused.

“No? Just say it, if it is sooo obvious?”

“It’s because we are made of them. We are not spirits, but we are also not feather and bone. We are made of”—she gestured and made a face—”‘Vim-memorywind’ if you will. Part of that, of being part of them, means that we are made in part of their grudges.”

He laughed. A single quiet note like the beginning or end of hysteria. “So one of those Vim that destroyed your world has a grudge against me?”

“No, not you.“ She shook her head and leaned down to his eye level. “Micah, the part of me that is not me despises the part of you that is not you.”

“I'm just a kid," he whispered. "A teenager."

She wrinkled her eyes. “So was I.”

Something cracked inside of him. It began to spill out.

“I didn’t want to die.”

“Neither did we.”

A river of fire had rushed toward him. A voice had spoken and given him two options.

Swim or drown.

Pijeru placed a hand on the back of his neck and her wing fell over his shoulder. “If it is any consolation, I doubt that I, or any of my people, still own our souls.”

Micah shot up. His knee rammed into the table and his boot caught on the bench as he threaded out from his seat. He almost forgot to grab his belongings.

The scene around him had changed. Mason, Kyle, and Delilah stood in a group with a few newcomers. Adults. “Wait,” Pijeru called out, but Micah turned his back on her and kept his head down as he left.

Before he could get ten steps far, Kyle intercepted him. “What’s wrong? What did she show you?”

“Nothing,” he tried to brush him off but found himself standing still, “we just talked.”

Kyle hissed, “What did she say?”

“Something truthful but hurtful. It’s not important. I’m just done. I’m done with this day. Can we leave?”

“Sure. Uh, I feel the same way. I could use a break. See you tomorrow for the loot distribution?”

Micah looked up in surprise. “You’re not— leaving now?”

“No, I’m …” Kyle trailed off, rubbing at his forehead. He looked as exhausted as Micah felt. The school uniforms helped, but only to keep them functioning.

Kyle had acted like he wanted nothing to do with the avashay a minute ago. Now, he gazed at the crowd around the bonfire with a longing in his eyes, Micah realized. It was something he had never seen in him before.

“I want to stay a little while longer,” he said honestly and covered it up with a joke. “Someone has to make sure Brent doesn’t get himself arrested for treason.”

Micah looked from him to Delilah and Mason. They were watching. When Mason met his eyes, he called, “Get some rest, Micah. You earned it.”

“I— Yeah.” His voice shrunk to a barely audible mumble, “ … tomorrow …”

He gave the crowd a wide berth, hiked up the hill, and stepped through the portal—alone. The evening darkened when he stepped into Hadica. Dark clouds like tattered cloth trickled rain on the city, a remnant of the storm from yesterday.

His conjured school jacket faded away and a chill wind slithered beneath his clothes.

A group of reinforcements headed for the Tower, alongside the first of their own reporters who had sensed something was amiss. Climbers stood in groups on the wet grass, rather than lounging, one hand on the hilt of their weapons and one eye on the portal.

A charge hung on the wind so soon after the storm had passed, like a promise of change.

Micah threaded his way through the outsides of the loot tents to get away from the crowd.

The pitter patter of the rain droplets falling on the tarp drowned out some of the clamor of the crowds. He heard the voice clearly then:

[Skill — Golem’s Grasp lost!]

He was too tired to even question it.

His roommates were out. Two of them had mentioned something about a party, though he didn’t know where Vladi was.

Not in the bathroom, at least. Micah took a long shower, skull resting against the tiles. Images and half-formed thoughts flashed through his head, electrifying him. His body jerked and he involuntarily cursed under his breath as he tried to keep it all in.

The bonfire. The crowd. His friends. The soldiers—alien, new, exciting! “It’s not like I wanted to leave!”

He opened the bathroom door to a dark and silent hallway. His room was empty. Micah stood in the doorway and stared. That longing in Kyle’s eyes had looked so much like his own.

He didn’t want to stand apart from the crowd again. He didn’t want to go back to the way things had been before he had met Ryan— couldn’t go back because he couldn’t delude himself anymore. Tower essence was a lie. It wasn't alive. He couldn't go back to pretending it was his friend. And … and he was a lie.

He saw himself in the mirror and crawled into bed.

That wasn’t him. Not his eyes. Not his leg. That wasn't even his skin.

People kept trying to kill him, and now he knew why—they were trying to correct the choice he had made. Like his parents. They disapproved of all the choices he made. He did, too, on some days. School was one day away and he felt nothing but pressure.

Ryan was fed up with him. Lisa liked Ryan more than him. Anne liked Sion more than him.

He stared at the unlit lamp on his desk. “[Candle] ... please? I don’t want to be alone in the dark anymore. I need light.”

His twisted reflection in the dark surface dipped like molten glass, and a blue flame sparked to life.

[Alchemist level 13!]

[Skills: Lesser Constitution; Controlled Breathing consolidated!]

→ [Skill — Alchemist’s Lungs obtained!]

[Skill — Sympathetic Catalysis obtained!]

[Fighter level 6!]

[Fighter levels ‘6’ consolidated!]

[Fighter Class consolidated!]

[Alchemist levels ‘1’ consolidated!]

[Alchemist level 12!]

[Conditions met: Pact Warrior Class obtained!]

[Pact Warrior level 4!]

[Memory — a Battle, a Pact, a Feast obtained!]

[Skill — Purifying Flame obtained!]

[Skill — Water Carrier obtained!]

[Scout levels ‘2’ consolidated!]

[Scout Class consolidated!]

[Conditions met: Explorer Class obtained!]

[Explorer level 2!]