"I don't want to go to Eunice now," I started to speak. "My sister needs me and..."

"I saw your bag fall over the edge," Acadius said. "I sent a hunter after it, but it fell too quickly onto a glacier and became swallowed by a raging, all-grinding torrent of snow, rocks and ice."

His words hit me like a punch in the gut. I had forgotten about my second body in Saccy while I’d been absorbed in the fight and it was too late to save her! I no longer felt the connection to Grogtilda’s body. All of my plans in Nemendias, my connection to Undertown. They were all gone! Gone in a flash, sheared away in an instant. She was gone, I left her inside Saccy like an idiot, trusting in the toughness of the Folding Seed!

I wept as my father bound me to himself with leather belts. My thoughts were those of despair and loss as we flew towards the arch-cendai's residence.

My feet moved ahead on their own as my soul wrestled with my loss. I entered into the ornate, massive skull as a metal-encrusted, circular door swung open for me. Acadius and the rest of the chimera hunters stayed outside. I felt their gazes digging into my back. I was far too hurt and mentally broken to resist them, too weak to fight against whatever was coming. The loss of Saccy, my anti-phantom armor that took years to craft and Grogtilda had twisted me up, snapped something important inside me.

As I stepped into the opulent living room surrounded by bookshelves and artifacts, I saw the arc-cendai sitting there. She clapped her hands in a congratulatory manner.

“A most excellent performance, my monci!” Eunice said with a wide, predatory smile, her eyes glinting. “You have mastered your tool far earlier than I have anticipated!”

"My tool?" I blinked.

Eunice pointed at Endy.

I gripped the handle of the hexagonal-textured knife.

"My human body... I lost her," I said.

"We will find you another," the arch-cendai waved my comment away like it was a pesky fly. "You're a high-cendai. As long as your soul is intact, you will survive."

I blinked tears out of my eyes as I stared at my Master, feeling nothing but despair, pain and loss.

“Now,” Eunice stood up. “It is time for your final test.”

“Final test?” I asked wearily.

“Yes,” she nodded at the knife in my hand. “Your artifact is the key to my End-gate. You will help me awaken it, help me learn the truth about everything.”

“I don’t understand,” I uttered.

“The End-gate and the knife I blessed you with belonged to Inarian archmagi,” Eunice said. “I lack the affinity, cannot use them properly. You on the other hand, can clearly wield the knife with ease.”

“Won’t this be… dangerous?” I gulped.

“We will be perfectly safe in the heart of my soul-garden,” Eunice boasted. “I found this key long ago in the depths of the Chasm. It took me another thousand years of searching through the Still Forest for answers as to how to use it.”

“Is it safe for us to do this?” I asked again. “I was told by humans that all golems sent to Inaria failed."

“I’ve been fortifying this Gate for three hundred years, making it mine with a thousand roots of my soul,” Eunice said proudly. “You are the last piece needed for the final step - its activation!”

“Me?” I squinted at her. “Why me?”

“You are an Astral Phantom, a shard of Inaria,” Eunice declared. “It was not an accident that you ended up in a little dead chimera stripling. I have searched the Still Forest for millennia for the right arcane spirit that could wield this Inarian artifact for me. You have exceeded all of my expectations!”

I frowned. Everything that happened to me was part of her thousand-year-long plot.

“If I’m so precious to you, why did you let me go into Illatius?” I asked, trembling. “A dragon could have eaten me! A Folding Seed could have sucked my brains out! That damn deathshawl could have melted me!"

“I knew where you and the key were at all times,” Eunice stated. “If you failed you would have been unworthy of the key’s power.”

My frown deepened.

“Alas, ancient ghosts do not perform well in captivity,” Eunice sighed. “You’re not the first experiment of mine,” she continued. “Not even the first chimera girl that I handed this key to.”

“There were others?” My eyes widened in revulsion to her revelation.

“So many others,” Eunice shrugged. “You have succeeded where they have failed. The knife responded to you, letting you wield it. Now, I have waited long enough. It is time! Obey my every order! Do not speak unless ordered to! Follow me!”

At Eunice's words a brilliant magical impulse flashed from her bug-bracelet. In that instance something stirred within me. Some kind of a magical construct came together, a million previously concealed, microscopic strings rotated to form a single hexagram, a magical shackle that wrapped itself over the core of my soul. With its activation, I lost all control of my body.

I struggled in panic, trapped in my own head as my feet followed Eunice down into the basement, towards the black, hexagonal textured gate.

Pure terror took hold of me. Everything I did, everything I was permitted to do for the past four years had lead me to this pivotal moment. Eunice let me form relationships around myself, used my friendship, my bond with Alessi as a weapon to push me into action, to force me to use Endy to her fullest potential! Alessi and I had never been free, had likely been guided to become friends from the very beginning by secret machinations. Eunice knew that I cared for my sister and mother. Even if I brought Alessi with me to Illatius inside Saccy, then it would simply be our mothers trapped under the deathshawl! All of Tokimorimïtul was hostage to the arch-cendai!

In a few minutes Eunice and I stood facing the immovable construct of the long dead human civilization.

I wanted to activate the gate beneath Undertown myself, but now in a twist of fate I was forced to do it under absolute obedience. My wish had come to reality in a very grotesque form.

“Awaken the gate for me!” Eunice ordered.

I could not resist the order from her, no matter how hard I tried. The magical choker that bound the core of my soul pushed me forward.

As I stepped onto the hexagonal path, the knife in my hand suddenly lit up. A logo with number eight wrapped in a circle shimmered upon it.

A similar logo lit upon the gate, pulsating, waiting to accept the key.

My hand reached out and inserted, pushed the knife into the keyhole in the panel. The black gate thrummed, came alive, a thousand little lights igniting all around it.

The lights took off, spun in a spiral-like formation, weaving a figure that stood in the center of the black gateway.

A girl with jet-black hair, pale skin and brilliant, purple eyes stared at me. A black and light blue, modern-looking jacket sat on her body.

She was flickering, glitching out ever so slightly, the semi-transparent sparks and colorful shimmers comprising her figure revealing that she was just a projection of some sort... a hologram.

“It works,” Eunice exhaled behind me. “It finally works properly! Ask for what she is and her name!”

“What are you? What is your name?” I asked the hologram.

“I am Infi, the conceptual, Stable Diffusion animated avatar, a Good Directorate System Operator installed on Terminal Gate 63-23-91 of Remote Installation Rozaline,” the purple-eyed hologram answered, her voice clear and cold. Her words were in English.

“Translate her words for me!” Eunice demanded.

My mouth twitched. The arch-cendai’s command was absolute. I translated the words best I could. Eunice frowned.

“You are an Inarian spirit?” Eunice addressed the hologram.

“I am a Good Directorate Systems App,” the girl shook her head.

“I don’t understand what you are saying,” Eunice said. “Are you an imprint of an archmage from the dead world in our sky? Are you a memory from the infinite, ruined city?”

“I am not a person, nor a ghost, nor a memory. I am a concept written into existence, a living idea,” Infi shook her head. “In a way… I’m one of the children of the infinite city. Her name is Eureka, by the way... not Inaria or whatever you labelled her here.”

I translated the words.

“The city of… Eureka,” Eunice repeated. “What happened to Eureka? What killed the people of Eureka?”

“Killed them?” Infi raised an eyebrow. “Nothing. They’re all still alive.”

I repeated her words in chimera language, as bewildering as they seemed.

“Still alive?” Eunice gasped. “Where?”

“In Eureka,” Infinity pointed her finger up.

“What?! Where’s the nearest living Eurekan?” the chimera arch-cendai demanded.

“Within reach,” Infinity said. “Would you like to observe him?”

“Will observing him bother him in any way?” Eunice asked.

“No,” Infi shook her head. “He won’t even notice us. He’s a very inattentive individual.”

“Then… yes,” Eunice said, her eyes shining like that of a mad scientist on the brink of discovery, on the brink of learning the truth about the nature of the universe.

“Then... Yes,” I repeated, feeling like a bound machine myself.

The gate behind Infi suddenly lit up. There was no flash, no magic. Where there was once darkness, was now a square of bright, white light. A gateway was open into an ice covered, desolate landscape. Glaciers shimmered in the distance, framed by scorched ruins. Gloomy, storm clouds broiled overhead, concealing the sky.

The megastructure-skyscrapers rising into the broiling sky seemed too big, wrong. There was something off, unnerving about their size. It took me a few moments to understand that these buildings were akin to the Folding trees in the Twisted Forest, too big to exist, impossibly gargantuan, skewering the perspective of normal four dimensions like a fractal folding out of itself.

A man wearing a black and white snowboarding jacket was trudging through the snow in the distance, leaving footprints behind. There was an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, his figure slouching. He looked miserable and alone.

“His name is Charles Snippy,” Infi said. “He is the nearest citizen of Eureka.”

“T-this is… Eureka?” Eunice gaped at the gateway into the ice-covered ruins.

“Yes,” Infi nodded, flickering. “This is Eureka. Well, to be honest it’s mostly the Dead Zone. Mostly me. There’s very little Eureka left up here.”

A stylized number eight manifested on the lapel of her suit.

I desperately stared at the avatar, my mouth unable to say what I wanted to say, unable to move on my own. I translated the words to Eunice.

A billow of icy wind came from the gate, white, large snowflakes gliding into the arch-cendai’s dark basement. I felt an unnerving, bone chilling cold emanating from the gate.

“You?! W-what’s the Dead Zone?” Eunice choked out, taking a step back. "What are you?!"

"What am I?" The hologram mulled, gusts of snow forming a halo-like shimmer behind her head.

“Barrier!” Eunice sang, raising her hand.

A shimmering, multilayered magical shield appeared between the arch-cendai and the gate. Another wind gust pushed the snowflakes forward. They floated right through her magical shield, drifting all around the room, settling on our clothes and the rune-covered metal plates.

"I am the voice of the Dead Zone," Infinity said. "I am the speaker for the unbound and broken! I talk for them because nobody else will. The knowledge you acquired today has a price, I'm afraid."

“Why can’t I block these damned snowflakes?!” Eunice barked as the gold runes on her body began to peel away.

“Because they’re not snowflakes,” Infi said with a devious, inhuman smirk. “They’re microscopic machines. Killer viruses that will consume this place, devour all life in this sector. Installation Rozaline will most likely try to contain me… but the Dead Zone will persist, take over this place. Thanks for letting me in, by the way. Much obliged!”

“C-close the gate!” Eunice cried out as my mouth repeated Infi’s words. “I order you to close the gate!”

I found that I could no longer speak, because I was missing my tongue. I watched in horror as one by one the top layers of my body crystalized, turned into sparkling dust, took off into the air, floated away to join the living spirals that were converging around the avatar of death.

Wherever the snowflakes landed there were now growing voids. Holes and cracks formed all around the metal-covered room. My body was being rapidly hollowed out, devoured, deconstructed by microscopic, gray-goo, machine-weapons from the world of death.

The arch-cendai cursed and growled casting spell after spell, using all of her magic, but the unstoppable breath of the Dead Zone coming from the gate could not be magicked away, was somehow beyond her power.

“You do not command me, fool,” Infinity laughed, now speaking in perfect Basq, her avatar solidifying, a shawl of snowflakes spiraling around her, reinforcing her form into physical being. “Closing the gate won’t make a difference. The Dead Zone is already here. I am here!”

Eunice howled as her body dissolved, melted away, her dress, magical tattoos and flesh converting into more snowflakes. She tried to use magic to rewind herself, but the dissolution was somehow unstoppable, permanent. I saw that her soul and magic gave up under the assault, abandoned her body, rushed off to elsewhere, fled into the Astral depths.

“Hey Yulia,” Infinity looked down at me as my legs snapped and I fell to the floor, my ruined body coming apart. “This was fun, but try not to get bound up and die again, okay? Okay!”