A younger version of Gust’s father took a step forward and in one graceful motion, displayed the swordsman within. His gray robes were covered in purple stars, with a moon on the back, but even as he moved, the robes did not stir. Nor did the jet-black hair which fell to his shoulders, or the sharp beard that covered his jawline.

Gust stared into familiar gray eyes and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He went to his father’s funeral. He knew this was not the same man. And yet, he couldn’t explain it.

Gust flinched backwards as a ghost walked toward him, but Saith suddenly withdrew his sword and held it at his side. The gesture gave the distinct impression of ‘you’re safe… for now.’

“Where did you get that coin?” The man’s voice was cold as ice, and he gripped his sword a little tighter.

Gust reached up to the spot of blood on his neck. “From you,” he muttered.

He pulled the item out of his pocket without even checking whether it was there. It was always there. Gust held it out toward Saith and the man looked down with a horrified expression.

Gust continued. “I started carrying it around with me after you… were gone. It let me enter this world, this school. And now…” Gust waved his arms around at the extravagant library.

The slim sword disappeared in a faint flash of light as Saith’s hand released it. He took a few slow, resigned steps forward, and pressed one finger against the golden coin. Immediately, he sighed and lowered his head.

A moment later, he put his hands on Gust’s shoulders. His eyes lost the ice in them. Instead, they were pleading. “I feared this day would come eventually. I, uh,” Saith cleared his throat and had some difficulty getting out the following words, “failed, then?”

Gust eyed him warily and tried to stay calm. Was this a clone, an alternate version, or something else entirely? “You never actually told me what you were doing. Master Ephraim said you came to my world for help, but… it didn’t seem like you found any.”

The swordsman shook his head slowly. “He’s a Master now, is he? I’d call that a waste, but there’s little honor to go around on this side of the world. You were my disciple?”

Gust nodded. Though it was a lie, it wasn’t far from the truth.

The swordsman stepped back and sighed. He started shaking his head, eyes closed, teeth clenched tight. Soon, a tear dropped from one eye. A second later, both shot open, and they were clear as day.

“Alright, so I gave you the coin,” he nodded, accepting the information and absorbing its implications as he began changing his plans. His eyes darted around the room to a dozen different places before they finally landed on Gust’s face. His voice was resigned as he muttered the words, “A mere novice… what was I thinking? Demons progress quickly, but it will still be far more difficult this way.”

“What will? And what is this place, anyway? How are you still alive?”

Saith stared back for a few long moments. Then he begrudgingly admitted, “I’m not. Your former master forged a sliver of his Starsoul into this sword many years ago. You’ll need to do the same if you ever wish to unlock it’s full powers.” He pointed toward the wall of windows which revealed a storm raging in utter darkness. “And this… is the space within the sword. It’s a lot bigger than it looks,” he mused.

Gust blinked a few times. “Hold on. Inside the sword?” He reached up to massage his temples. “How the fuck does that work?”

Saith cracked a slight smile, but his voice held no mirth. “Geometry is a funny thing. Very simple, yet very powerful. When you form a Starsoul, you’ll learn to take advantage of such unseen dimensions, but just now I pulled you in here myself. How do you think your world’s layer could sit right on top of this one, without affecting the majority of either world’s inhabitants?” Gust didn’t bother answering, that was still a topic he strained to wrap his head around. “Geometry,” the man said simply.

“If my layer sits on top, though, why do they call it the underworld? And you never answered my question: What will be more difficult?”

Saith shook his head and glanced upward. “These fools think they’re ascending toward the heavens, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. Your world frightens them, as it should have frightened me. The deeper layers hold greater concentrations of spiritual energy. It was a simple bit of manipulation to fool people into thinking that meant they were getting closer to their Grand Patronage of Gods.” His expression soured. “Your people are born without a cultivation base. This led to the misunderstanding that you don’t have a soul, and are therefore demons dwelling in the underworld, but you are simply mortal. Your soul is void of qi, so there is nothing to see. Did I not explain all of this to you?”

Gust already had a response prepared for that. He shook his head and frustration leaked into his voice. “You had bigger things on your mind than paying any attention to me. We hardly spent any time together.”

The man’s eyebrows wrinkled as he nodded and continued to wonder what his self had been thinking. The two of them had discussed countless scenarios and prepared contingency plans for all of them, so what could have gone so wrong?

Saith continued his explanation. “You see, in a certain way, the layers mirror each other. As qi becomes denser, the world within each layer becomes more… wild. They get taken over by beasts and spirits and worse. This layer’s qi field is weak, and so it is dominated by weak men who live at relative peace. The next isn’t much worse, though there are far more dangers in the less-ventured parts of the world. But the next?” Saith shook his head. “Your elders wouldn’t last a single night where I’m from.”

Gust listened with awe. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have believed a word of that, but right now he was standing inside a sword. So, yeah, he was ready to accept the existence of a multi-dimensional earth with more layers than an onion, and the fact that his father was a millennia-old swordsman who split his soul into pieces and forged one of them into a sword.

Okay, maybe he was still having some trouble accepting it all.

“So, you’re from a world two layers deeper than this one… and don’t you mean mana? They don’t like the word ‘qi’ around here.”

Saith rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, they call it mana, alright. That’s not unique to this layer. Plenty of western cultivators use the same terminology. Mana, though it is nonsense, isn’t even the worst. Wait until you meet the fools who call it ‘sacred breath.’” Saith scoffed. His head waved back and forth like it was on a swivel.

“Spiritual energy has long been attached to religion in the west, and philosophy in the east. Generally speaking, that is. Some of these westerners believe that a certain level of devotion to their gods is required to reach every subsequent stage of cultivation, and for some reason, they don’t see an atheist like myself as proof they are wrong. Your sect is not the worst I have come upon, but even their foundations are as weak as a butterfly with a broken wing.”

Saith gritted his teeth and blew out a long breath. “Oh, I know exactly what they thought of me. If I wasn’t several stages beyond them, the fools would have attacked me on sight for the ‘heathen’ I am.” He laughed bitterly and shook his head again. “And so, I left behind everyone I’ve ever known and loved just so I could carry a message no one would listen to and try to complete a quest that would kill me before I’d even begun. My oldest friends must have assumed me dead hundreds of years ago. And now…” he shook his head.

“Hundreds of years? How old was he, exactly?” Gust waited a few seconds, trying to wrap his head around it all.

Finally, he prodded, “You were explaining something about layers?”

“Right, right. See, when you get to the bottom, you find the Patrons locked away in their prison. They live as gods within their own pieces of the realm, turning everything and everyone into a factory, producing ever more qi to feed themselves. If they succeed in collapsing the remaining layers, billions will face enslavement, if not death. I had thought your home would contain similarly powerful beings led by the concept of order as a counterpoint to their chaos. Evidently, I was wrong.” Those words fell out of his mouth with a tangible weight.

Gust couldn’t shake a feeling of inadequacy. The man had expected to find godlike power, and all he got was a disappointing son. Gust feared that, if he told the truth, this version of his father would treat him no differently than the other.

Saith thought for a moment, then his eyes darted up and met Gust’s. “You must pick up where I left off,” he said, conviction re-entering his tone. “I chose you for a reason, boy. I may not know what it is, but I must trust in the decisions I’ve made. The Patrons are devils, not gods, and they must be destroyed. Every. One.”

With wide eyes, Gust tried to step back, but he couldn’t shake loose from the man’s iron grip. Everyone, from the Masters, to the other students, to this sliver of his father’s soul, could overpower him as easily as a child. How was he supposed to help anyone when he couldn’t even protect himself?

In the past few weeks, Gust had learned what this world was truly like.

Outside of the various cultivation schools, it was relatively peaceful. Countries generally sorted out their issues by pitting their best mages against each other and in that way the violence tended to remain hidden from view.

Behind that veil, however, was a cutthroat society with limited resources and a very weak source of power. Natural cultivation was a slow process, after all.

This truth pressured ambitious cultivators to turn on each other. They hoarded resources, cheated, enslaved, and stole from their own brothers and sisters for mere pulp from a spiritual fruit.

This world was dangerous for everyone, but no one was in a worse position than the feeble mage with an inheritance he couldn’t protect.

Gust was one of the weakest people in the world, and yet this shadow of his father wanted his help slaying the gods. The most powerful beings that ever lived. Gust’s arms were already trembling from the immense weight on his shoulders.

On top of all that, Gust still couldn’t stop thinking of his family. As much as he wanted to know more about his father, and the reasons behind the man’s actions, Gust worried about the mother he left behind. “How long have you been doing this?” he asked in a somber tone.

It was a vague question, but Saith knew exactly what he meant. He sighed and looked up at the chandelier. “Oh, four thousand years? They start mixing together after a while.”

Gust fought desperately to keep his expression mild, but his knees buckled. Four thousand? The man could have been exaggerating, but even if he was off by a factor of ten that was still a huge amount of time. If the journey was that long and Saith still hadn’t finished, Gust’s family would surely be long gone before he ever had the chance to return.

Gust sighed and looked out one of the dark windows as a bolt of lightning lit a world of nothing. He wanted to say yes, to take on some epic quest and become the most powerful mage that ever lived. Who could spend their entire life playing video games, then pass up such an opportunity?

But Gust’s mother, sister, and brother needed him too. Seth Perry’s death came as a surprise to them all, and none dealt with it well. Cleo spent her time drawing, Jason spent his time playing video games, and Sarah Perry worked as many hours as she could. Gust tried to hold them all together, but he could barely manage himself.

What would they do if he never came back?

Tears filled his eyes as Gust shook his head. “I don’t know if I can. I couldn’t even decide what to major in, and that only lasts four years! Never mind four thousand. I was… a failure, Saith. My friends left town and found better things to do with their lives, but I stayed. They took chances, dated, had jobs, played sports. All I did was stay inside and read or play video games. Between that and weed, I was content. You don’t want someone like that,” he muttered, thinking of his real father as he said so.

Saith studied the young man and shook his head. “What I wanted didn’t exist. I did find you, however. I chose you, Augustus. Doesn’t that mean something?”

Gust chewed on his lip and fought back tears. He didn’t want to tell the truth: that Gust’s father was too disappointed in him to trust him with anything. Sure, it would have meant something if Gust’s father had truly sent him there, but he didn’t. He died and Gust, like the rest of his family, didn’t know what to do. He carried around a few mementos of the man he barely knew, as if they might change something.

And then they did.

Gust couldn’t do anything about his relationship with his father, and this soul sliver wasn’t quite the same, but it was the closest thing to family Gust had left, even if this version of Saith had no idea who he was. If it was all true, how could Gust return home after everything he’d learned?

Given the choice between breaking his mother’s heart and abandoning the work that stole his father's life, Gust knew what he had to do. As he nodded and muttered, “Okay. I’ll try,” he just hoped that he would be good enough.