At the end of the workday, Fassar City’s array station was a hive of human activity.

Kess Elba had never spent much time in the station until seven weeks ago, when the government sent him as a gesture of goodwill to the new Selejo Imperial Federation. It was secret to no one that the federation’s sovereign had been grievously injured in the conflict with the descendant. A lesser man might protest the assignment, stating that there was no reason to send a therapist when the prince really needed Life practitioners and physical therapy, but Elba understood the subtext immediately.

What Euryphel Selejo needed most wasn’t physical, but mental, healing. In the end, while Elba wished there was an easier way to commute to Selejo, he accepted the assignment with grace. Not that he could really refuse. Shattradan had a reputation for being a peacekeeper, but it wasn’t uninvolved or idle. Interventions like these were common, but usually involved more influential nations out east–it was the first time in over twenty years that Shattradan paid a western nation such respect.

A woman in a yellow sweater bumped into him from the side, scattering his thoughts.

If only it was less loud and crowded. Since Ho’ostar’s unification, the transit array from Fassar to Zukal’iss was apparently “busier than ever.” Elba could tell you with a Beginning empowered glance how the station was unsuitable for the demand. He could deconstruct the odd meld of neo gothic architectural style with modern windows and fixtures. And he could probably tell you any factual information about the station you wanted to know–the terminal had projections on many of the walls that explained the terminal’s history, as though people might mistake the terminal as a museum in their boredom. He didn’t particularly want to read the posters, but he subconsciously internalized them, his eyes soaking in everything.

The only sign of Kess Elba’s annoyance was the slight tightening of his lips as he waited in the queue. Eventually he reached the front and in a flash, he was in a completely different terminal. This one had been built more recently and was larger, but even that couldn’t save it from the burgeoning mass of people buzzing through its grounds. He could barely even see the floor.

The dry Fassari air was a distant memory as the tropical humidity of the peninsula melded with the sticky sweat of the crowd. Elba wrinkled his nose in distaste and set off, using his practice to weave through the crowd like a ghost. After exiting the station, he traversed three blocks and entered a side alley, then knocked on an unmarked door next to a dumpster. The door swung open of its own accord and Elba walked along a service hallway until coming to another door on the right. He knocked again, and this time it opened to reveal Euryphel’s sun room.

Elba closed the door softly behind him and walked along the room’s length until he came to his seat–a stool he’d left during the first session. Made of plain wood, it rested inconspicuously next to one of the sun room’s two bubbling fountains. As Elba reposed, one of the parakeets–the green one–cocked its head and cheeped from its perch in the wall tapestries.

Euryphel sat on the divan several feet away at the back of the room. The primary window cast him in shadow, illuminating his eyelashes and the crown of his head. As he turned to face the counselor, Elba heard warning bells in his head. Something’s happened.

Kess Elba’s Beginning affinity worked a bit different than most, giving him less an analytical, predictive understanding of the world but something more...intuitive, instinctive, difficult to explain. Sometimes he wished it gave him just a little more insight into the why, versus just handing him the what. But then you wouldn’t have any work to do.

“Hello Kess,” Euryphel began politely.

“Euryphel. Tell me about the past week.”

The prince complained a bit about some unproductive meetings and mentioned a stroll through the gardens, but didn’t bring up anything out of the ordinary. Still, Elba had a feeling he was hiding something. He hadn’t been seeing Euryphel for very long–it wasn’t surprising the man didn’t feel comfortable sharing everything on his mind.

Eventually Elba moved onto the next part of the session. “Please show me your scenario log.” His green eyes gazed impassively at the Crowned Executor, striking next to the blue fountain on his left. He sat with one leg folded loosely over the other. His back was straight like a rod.

Euryphel wore a false smile and pressed a button on his glossY. A simple log of all the time he spent in scenarios the past week projected out, filling the air between them. Its purpose wasn’t to record what Euryphel did, but the time he spent in scenarios versus in the real world.

Assisted by his affinity, Elba read the entire projection in less than a second, even though from his perspective the text was backwards, facing the prince. What he saw confirmed his suspicions.

“Do you have anything to say?” the counselor asked, swiping a hand through his short brown hair.

“About what?”

“The log. What percent of your waking time did you spend in scenarios last week?”

The sovereign was practiced at masking his emotions. And whether reclining on his divan or perching on the window sill, his posture was flawless in its casual grace and non-threatening, polite dominance. But it takes more than flawless to fool me.

“43%.”

“The past three days you spent over 50% of your time in scenarios,” Elba stated calmly. The end of the week had brought up the total average. “It concerns me.”

Euryphel sighed. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Then tell me this–why were you entering more scenarios than usual? Was it because of what we talked about last time?”

“No. I wasn’t...probing the people around me.” He rested one arm on the arm of the divan. “It wasn’t the paranoia.”

“Then why spend more than half your waking life in scenarios?” Elba continued.

Euryphels eyes glinted in the sun beams. “Something unexpected came up, and I needed time to deal with it.”

Elba raised an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate?’”

The prince looked at him with a neutral expression, not responding.

He looped again, Elba noted, identifying the imperceptive way the prince shifted when snapping back into his present self.

“I confess I did some brooding, and dealt with my panic and frustrations in ways that would be unseemly in the real world. But much of the time I spent drawing up plans and strategies.”

“If you were planning in scenarios, does that mean you were working alone?”

Euryphel showed no signs of discomfort. His eyes were like placid, blue-green pools.

“Look, I know it sounds like I was spiraling,” he finally admitted, sighing. “It’s easy to think the man working alone in the dark is paranoid and unwilling to trust others.”

“I’m not judging you,” Elba replied. “Nor am I calling you paranoid. Did something happen? You mentioned that something unexpected came up.” He kept his posture relaxed and open, inviting.

Euryphel blinked. He didn’t pick at his clothes or fidget, like many others would. He simply stared and thought. “Something happened, but I’m not going to talk about it.”

“Can you share how you felt about it, at least?”

Euryphel’s mask faltered for a moment, his lips trembling involuntarily. Without his affinity, Elba would have missed it.

“Afraid.”

“Go on.”

“I thought I’d be happy. I was so happy, for a moment, but then...fear, dread–they crushed me. I don’t know why good things ruin me.”

Elba concealed his surprise at the show of vulnerability. Rather than asking further questions or prompting the man along, he kept his mouth closed.

Sure enough, the prince continued on his own after a few seconds of contemplation. “I’ve been worried about something important, something bigger than myself or my country. I feel unworthy, incapable.”

The insecurities weren’t new, but the scope of what Euryphel spoke of wasn’t lost on him. He knew the Crowned Executor was growing increasingly involved in international discussions, so he could be referring to that responsibility, but that didn’t feel right.

“Is this related to Ian?” Elba asked, following a whim.

Euryphel innocently brushed a tendril of hair behind his ear. “Ian isn’t here. Why would he come to mind?”

Y’jeni–It’s definitely related to Ian.

—

Euryphel’s expression was grave as he opened the door. “Guardian Urstes.”

Urstes entered the refurbished dungeon in the labyrinthine reaches beneath the castle. No sunlight reached the chamber. Euryphel’s face glowed orange from the only source of light, a small artificial candle on his desk. Neither practitioner relied on mundane sight to see–high-affinity earth and wind elementalism filled the gaps–but it gave their dealings a mysterious air.

“You’ve been using this room more and more of late,” Urstes murmured. He slid into the chair facing Euryphel.

Euryphel cracked a grin. “More people would like to see me dead than I could have ever believed a few months ago.”

“While it’s true the East is uneasy with the unification of the Ho’ostar peninsula, don’t you think this might be a bit...”

“Paranoid?” Euryphel cocked an eyebrow. “Me?”

“Don’t sass me,” Urstes quipped, rubbing the back of his head. “Or give me cause to worry.”

Euryphel sighed. Urstes had been talking back more lately, but he supposed it was fair–he’d been keeping everyone in the dark after Ian’s phantom visit. “I didn’t call you here because of good news, unfortunately. There’s much you don’t know–I’ve been making preparations these past two days.”

The guardian’s brow furrowed. “I thought you promised to stop doing things alone. You have nothing to prove–”

“Not the time, Guardian.”

Urstes breathed deeply, resigned for now. “What have you learned?”

The prince stared at his clasped fingers, the darkness hiding his uncertain expression. Going into the conversation, he’d sworn to himself that he would keep everything in the real world. He didn’t need to worry about framing everything perfectly for Urstes. He didn’t need to optimize his interactions. He didn’t.

But in the end, he couldn’t resist–he had to enter a scenario. Elba’s right that I’m like an addict.

“Ian is returning in five years,” Euryphel announced. It wasn’t the most important piece of information, and he didn’t plan on sharing it first in the real world, but it was the development closest to his heart.

Urstes flinched. “How do you know?”

“He appeared to me.”

Euryphel detected some doubt from the guardian, but the man nodded his understanding. “We already know it’s possible to make contact from beyond, but it’s remarkable to do so, and so soon at that. It’s been two months–what could Dunai have gotten himself involved in so quickly?”

Euryphel flashed him a wry smile. “Ian escaped from the loop and came to us. Within two months, the geopolitical landscape of our world shifted. Are you really so surprised?”

Urstes contemplated this, then snorted. “He really does have a knack for trouble, doesn’t he?”

“And unfortunately, this time it’s the kind of trouble that involves the end of the world.”

Urstes smirked, but his expression fell once he realized Euryphel wasn’t exaggerating. “How is the world in danger?”

Euryphel snapped back and delved into another scenario. “Ian appeared to me using an artifact that he obtained in the ascendant world. How I missed him, Urstes.”

The man’s expression seemed unable to decide what emotion to land on before eventually settling on surprise. “He appeared here? In the flesh?”

“No, as some kind of spatial projection.”

“I presume he had something important to tell you?”

Euryphel barely heard Urstes’ follow up. Even in the scenario, he was embarrassed. “I didn’t know how to face him.”

“He did leave you behind.”

“I suppose so. Though it was for the best–if I had gone, I would have died. Maria did.”

Urstes’ eyes widened. “The Eldemari is dead?”

Euryphel bit his lip. “Not exactly. It’s complicated. But I digress...I didn’t know what to feel facing Ian. This world is long behind him–we’re a small piece of reality, inconsequential before the vastness of the cosmos.”

The guardian looked somewhat amused. “Pretty words, but did Ian actually feel any different? It hasn’t been that long.”

“He was the same,” Euryphel replied. He looked off to the side. He hoped the darkness was enough to hide his blush. Not that it matters–this is just a scenario.

He could feel the seconds counting down–just a few remained until he’d need to start the conversation anew. You could always just hold the whole conversation in the real world, Euryphel chided himself. Growling internally, he killed the scenario and returned to the present. His brow arched slightly with indignation.

This time, in the real world, he decided to start with the actual problem at hand. Ian could come later. “The Infinity Loop experiment was worse than we could have ever imagined.”

“This is about that?” Urstes asked.

“All roads lead to the Infinity Loop,” Euryphel grumbled. “But I’m not even joking. Infinity Loops will literally end the world. I’m not even talking about ending humanity, but destroying the planet and turning it into a lifeless sphere of rock.”

“Not sure how,” Urstes grumbled. “They’re dilation chambers, not bombs.”

“That’s what I thought first as well. Ian told us about soul corruption before he left, and told us to destroy our loop...but.”

Urstes sighed, knowing the gist of what was coming next. “But.”

“Everyone is going to have an Infinity Loop, and the federation would be foolish to give up its head start. That’s what everyone argued. They persuaded even me. Urstes, I–” Euryphel held his face in his hands. “Ian came to me as a projection three days ago. He’s the one who told me that the technology would doom our world.”

Urstes sat, stunned.

“He came to me and told me of the danger. And as he spoke of worlds like ours falling to ruin, passing along the regrets of others who acted too late...I felt like a traitor. He implicitly assumed that I had never stopped trying to destroy Selejo’s Infinity Loop, that I had already been devising plans to destroy Viscero.”

In reality, the Selejo Imperial Federation had given up on thwarting Viscero–the company was well-protected by the Sere Consortium. But more than that, now that multiple countries had gotten their hands on loops of their own, the disease of the Infinity Loop was like a metabolized cancer–there was almost no way to snuff it out. With or without Viscero, it would spread to those with money and power.

Urstes rubbed his thumb along the hilt of the sword at his hip. “Why keep this information to yourself for three days?”

Euryphel shrugged. “After Ian’s visit, I found it impossible to sleep. After the second day I finally crashed.”

“So that’s why you missed all your morning meetings yesterday.”

Groaning, Euryphel leaned back in his seat. “Don’t remind me.”

The guardsman pondered his next question. “Did you ever tell him that the federation voted not to destroy the Infinity Loop in Selejo?”

“No. I looped over and over again but I couldn’t find the words.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it–Dunai is understanding.”

“He is. But even now that I understand the danger the loop poses, what can we do? Three days, Urstes–three days I researched and schemed on my own, only to go in circles. Our influence is bigger than it was, but we can’t touch Sere, let alone Iastra or Citelle. I can’t see a way to win.”

“Executor,” Urstes murmured, leaning forward. “Why do you think the Skai’aren came to you?”

“Because he’s trying to help.”

Urstes shook his head. “It’s because he believes in you as I do. Thank you for not shouldering this burden alone.” He frowned. “Who else are you going to tell?”

“The primes, at least.” They’d earned his trust. “I’ve prepared a report on what I’ve learned from Ian. Once you and the others are briefed, we can discuss the next steps together.”

What Euryphel didn’t mention was the contact information burning a metaphorical hole in his pocket. Ian had given it to him during their time together. Euryphel wasn’t sure whether the right way to approach was from the shadows or in the light–much would depend on how the others reacted to the truth behind the Infinity Loop.

He held the contact’s name in his mind: Ezio Soole Mar.