“Uh,” Caeden looked wildly around himself, completely stunned. He had no idea how, but his body was now inside Blade Forge’s domain. Which…seemed impossible. From what he’d understood about domains, they weren’t exactly physical places.

When Caeden had been making blobs of molten metal, he wasn’t pulling them from the domain; he was pulling Ki from his shroud and manifesting it. Domains were more…pockets of energy out in the endless span of existence or something like that. The researcher hadn’t exactly walked him through all the metaphysical geometry or whatever governed them.

He had no idea how he could be here. And he was here. For half a second, Caeden thought he might have formed some kind of mental construct of his body, but no. He couldn’t even feel his body anywhere but here, something he could do right up until he’d entered this place. No matter how much his consciousness dug into this domain, or even when the researcher pulled his mind onto the soul plane, Caeden could always feel his body back on the Starry Sea. Now, all he could feel was here.

He was trapped.

Or maybe not. Caeden started meditating, throwing his consciousness inside himself. He felt…nothing. Nothing at all. He couldn’t touch his other shrouds here. In fact, he couldn’t touch this shroud. Blade Forge was just as lost to him as Sharp and Physical Enhancement.

But that wasn’t the only thing he could do! Caeden threw his mental will outward, extending it back toward the walls and shoving against them, just like he had to enter.

Nothing happened.

He was trapped.

Caeden refused to accept it. He did everything he could think of. At least he had control of his body in here, able to fly and float at will, moving wherever he wanted. With this in mind, Caeden tried to dig through the walls, then punch his way out; he even tried to eat it after a while.

Nothing worked. While the molten metal and occasional blades didn’t harm him, feeling cool or dull respectively, he couldn’t make the walls budge in the slightest. They were as solid as the bedrock of the Starry Sea, impenetrable. He was surprised he hadn’t hurt his hands by punching them. But nothing seemed to hurt him here either.

Out of ideas, Caeden decided to look around. The space inside his domain was gargantuan, easily tens of thousands of miles in every dimension. It was hard to tell, as the uniformity of the walls in every direction made judging distances difficult. The only marker he had were the blades emerging from the walls.

But that was a poor indicator. Right next to him, massive swords and axes, hundreds of feet long, would emerge right next to daggers smaller than his pinky. But still, judging by what he could tell off in the distance, the swords he thought would be comparable to the largest one he’d seen next to him looked smaller than the smallest dagger. Basically, it was really fucking far.

So, Caeden started moving. He had no idea if there was anything worth finding out there, but he was desperate to find an exit. He had places to be and people he wanted to see. Namely, his friends, especially Lily. He was not going to be stuck here. With that thought firmly locked in his head, Caeden willed himself forward, using whatever strange mechanism that let him control himself in Blade Forge.

Feeling the pressure of every passing second, Caeden decided to push himself, seeing how fast he could move in here. He quickly found that there really wasn’t one. Every time he willed himself onward, his speed increased. Eventually, the walls of the domain and their many rising and sinking weapons became steely grey and burning orange blurs.

His speed exponentially increasing, Caeden crossed from one distant wall to another much faster than he expected. Only a few seconds after starting his acceleration, he had reached the far wall at speeds he could barely understand. Before he could even think about slowing himself down, he slammed into the glowing barrier.

All his speed instantly canceled out. He stopped, not moving the wall by a single inch. Once again, nothing happened to him. Even though one of his legs crashed into an extended blade coming from the wall, causing him to flip as neither his leg nor the blade gave an inch. Instead, he spun around the protruding edge to slam awkwardly into the molten metal with his side.

“That probably wasn’t the smartest choice.” Caeden shook his head. He had misjudged his own speed due to the lack of feedback. There was apparently no air resistance here, so he just kept accelerating without a solid way to judge the increase. He was lucky that he seemed to be just as indestructible as the walls right now.

Unfortunately, his mistake also proved an unfortunate reality. No amount of physical force was going to get him out of here. If colliding at that kind of speed couldn’t bust him straight out of the domain, he couldn’t imagine what would.

“I need to search. There has to be a way out.” Caeden muttered. He refused to believe his own domain could lock him in without an exit.

{}

“Come ON!” Caeden slammed his hand against an axe head dozens of times larger than himself as it emerged from the metal beneath him. He was standing on the bottom of his domain, staring at the swirling mass beneath him.

Hours of searching had revealed nothing. Caeden’s apparently infinite speed, combined with the relatively open and featureless quality of the space, made searching it easy, even considering the vast distances involved. Caeden was guessing, but he figured this space was large enough to contain the very largest of continents from back home. A space that would require months of walking, weeks of flying, or hours of ethership travel to cross.

He had explored from one side to the other and found nothing. Caeden had rapidly learned to control his speed here, finding that he could transition from speeding tens of thousands of miles a second to a dead stop with a thought. In his universe, such a massive deceleration would have liquified and then vaporized his body, even if he was using Physical Enhancement. Here, he didn’t even feel it.

By combining rapid acceleration and deceleration, Caeden had figured out how to essentially teleport, mentally selecting a stopping point for his travel before he started, then commanding himself to get there as fast as possible. The transitions, to his perception, became instantaneous.

It was a rush to experience, but Caeden felt his enjoyment muted by the overwhelming desire to leave. This whole space was fascinating, and he would enjoy being here more so long as he actually had an exit. He had obligations and friends. He didn’t want to be stuck in here forever.

“Hah.” He chuckled, reviewing his own thoughts. “What I wouldn't have given a year and a half ago to have a private space where no one could bother me. All it’s missing is a forge, and this would have been my version of paradise.”

The Caeden, who had decided to hide in a village in the middle of nowhere just to avoid the world’s problems, the man who had no friends and felt no desire to get any, had changed so much. He actually wanted to help. It was no longer something he projected out of a desire to follow Lily’s example. He had helped people, from the town on Black Reach, to the dragons, to even his fellow classmates during the Revolution attack. He’d done more than he ever thought he would.

And now he had further responsibilities, trying to stop an all-out war. If they even could. The Ten Thousand Empires was obviously in contact with the Revolution. Whether or not they knew about all the damage the CA had suffered was up for debate, but war might already be inevitable.

Despite knowing that, Caeden still wanted to try. More than that, if what did come, he was resolved. Caeden would not sit idly by. If for no other reason than to help and protect those that would be caught in the middle of a massive conflict.

But it didn’t seem like Caeden was going to get that choice. He had scoured every inch of this domain, flickering from place to place faster and faster as his control over his own speed improved. But there was nothing to see. He was inside, essentially, an almost perfectly spherical cave formed of molten metal. Weapons emerged from the walls in no apparent pattern or cycle, varying in size and quality from giant towers to tiny needles, from masterworks to scrap barely worth the metal it was made from.

There was no pattern, no gap, no exit. Caeden couldn’t even distinguish the point he’d entered through now that he’d moved. There was no gravity or air, no currents beyond the continuous shifting of the glowing liquid metal. Even that held no apparent pattern.

Caeden searched for anything, anything at all that would indicate even the slightest difference or variation, a pattern he could read into or exploit. Something, anything that would help him make even the slightest sense of this place. But there was nothing.

Out of options and as certain as he could be that there was no physical option for leaving Blade Forge, Caeden sat down to meditate again. If the exit couldn’t be found in the domain’s material reality, maybe he could work the problem from the other side. His mind had gotten him in here; maybe it could get him out.

Starting to meditate, Caeden immediately stopped and floated up roughly five hundred feet after a four-foot-long butcher’s knife poked him in the butt. There were blades that grew this high, but they were few and far between.

Slipping back into his mind, Caeden worked the problem from the back. He once more tried to feel for his shrouds and once again felt nothing. Instead of immediately rushing off, Caeden contemplated how that happened and what it meant.

First of all, he didn’t think his shrouds were actually gone. He was literally inside the domain of one of them, and the apparent invincibility he had here led him to believe he was still connected to it in some way. Plus, both Blade Forge and Sharp were integrated with his literal soul, so he figured that connection couldn't be severed without at least seriously injuring him in a way he would feel. It would probably kill him.

So, he was as confident as he could be that the shrouds weren’t actually gone. Then why couldn’t he feel them? For Sharp and Physical Enhancement, the answer seemed obvious. He was inside another domain. How could those shrouds reach him here? But then, why couldn’t he access Blade Forge? He was literally inside it!

Then again, he was inside the domain. Not the shroud. In fact, he wasn’t on the Starry Sea anymore. So, did that mean he couldn’t use shrouds outside the Starry Sea? No, the researcher had mentioned their universe was cut off from the rest of existence specifically because shrouds worked elsewhere and they were too powerful.

Which left him with two options, really. His shrouds were actually gone, which was terrifying. Or, he was somewhere shrouds wouldn’t work. After all, domains had to be somewhere, right? What if that was the problem? It was a nicer thought than the idea he’d lost his shrouds, but it also didn’t offer any solutions.

Ironically, coming here offered a level of physical power Caeden could hardly imagine, between his speed and invulnerability. But it also placed him in a situation where all the physical power in existence wouldn’t help him.

What was he supposed to do now?

{}

Hours passed as Caeden mentally poked around inside himself. Or maybe days. It was scary how fast his mind had become divorced from time without any indication of its passing. He was not hungry or tired, and there was no day or night here. Everything was completely uniform.

He still breathed, and his heart still beat, but that was the only steady pattern he could follow. But it was hardly a good method to keep track of time. So, within less than a day, Caeden was finding it harder and harder to tell how long he’d been here.

His mental probing had offered no results, though Caeden had become more readily familiar with what he called his ‘internal world’. In fact, he could now easily locate the exact places inside himself where his shrouds should be. In their place, he found a barrier of some sort, preventing him from reaching them.

This interference cemented the idea that he still had his shrouds in him. It seemed that his location prevented accessing them in some way. But again, none of this knowledge helped him leave any faster. He was growing increasingly bored and lonely with every passing heartbeat. No doubt, if he hadn’t missed his next event already, he would soon. His friends would have no idea where he was.

Caeden had only one hope left. The researcher. Eventually, the being would notice his absence, considering his investment in Caeden. Additionally, the extradimensional being was the only person he knew, outside maybe Dave, that would have any hope of finding him. He was completely out of ideas and devoid of options.

Now, all he could do was wait.

{}

In.

34,476,390.

Out.

34,476,391.

Caeden had started counting his breaths. Not for any particular reason but simply to stave off the boredom. And the endless, crushing weight of loneliness weighing on him. He’d cried for a while about ten million breaths ago. It had actually made him feel better for a bit.

Time had lost all meaning. By now, he could feel his mind starting to break down. By now, the Tournament of Powers would be over, for better or worse. The researcher had not come for him. Caeden had given up hope of that happening when he started counting breaths.

He’d given up hope of anything.

Now, he just counted his breaths and stared at the rising and falling weapons as they passed in and out of the walls. He’d searched the entire domain again. Five times. Just in case. He’d explored every inch of his soul. Oh, that had happened. After a million breaths, Caeden had started to feel his soul. Now, it was right with him at all times, as natural as his arms or legs. Just another part of him.

But there was nothing there. It was the same as ever, and he still couldn’t touch his shrouds.

A two-hundred-foot wide wall of iron rose in front of him, a flamberge, with its wavy edges, ascending toward the ceiling. Caeden snorted. 34,476,395. It was a shoddily made weapon, like many that emerged from the endless molten mass. The core of the blade was wavy and bent, the edges either too dull or too sharp in places. It would shatter or chip and fail to cut.

“You call yourself a Blade Forge?” Caeden laughed. 34,476,397. “Give me a hammer, and I’d show you how to make a proper blade.”

He sighed. 34,476,398. First, the counting, and now he was talking to a literal concept like it was a person. He was losing it.

The metal flows shifted and bulged. Another blade was emerging.

But it wasn’t a blade. Caeden watched as a hammer, exactly like the one he had used in his own forge, emerged from the metal morass, rising up to hover in front of him.

He stopped breathing.