Flames encompassed everything.

They razed and consumed the land, darkening the sky as if cursing it for its distance yet longing for its peacefulness. Screams of pain and anguish and despair filled the air like smoke as scorched bodies lay strewn across burnt ground, a testament to the merciless fury of fire. Malice saturated the atmosphere like a thick blanket as a malevolent red light poured out like liquid fire. Scarlet tongues of flame flickered, caressing and striking at one another like snakes wanting to devour everything, even themselves, as the massive inferno threatened to devour everything.

And it was there, in the wafting odor of sulfur and brimstone, that she stood.

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Not really,” her companion muttered. The other person—a child, based on voice and size—wore a dark hooded robe covering her entire form. “But for someone with your aspirations, this is the only way forward.”

“Someone of my aspirations…” she muttered, her emerald eyes reflecting the crimson embers around as she peered into the flames. “You failed to mention that it involves walking through Vikahl itself.”

“You wish to stand in defiance of the God of Fire, and yet here you are, trembling before this?” the child mocked.

To be looked down upon as inconsequential… To be treated like vermin…

The very notion made her insides boil.

“What must I do?”

The renewed strength in her tone gave the child pause.

“Only a fire may devour another. Asshur burns brightly in the sky. Fire that gives life, provides warmth, brings hope in even the direst of situations. That is the nemesis you have claimed for yourself. One might even consider it an impossible task.”

She exhaled, biting back a retort. Appearing to be a child or not, she knew who the figure beneath the robes truly was. Or at least, what she had once been. It would not do to burn the one bridge she could latch onto at the moment.

Not until she managed to defeat Asshur.

A mortal defeating a god. The very thought brought a smile to her lips.

“To do so,” the child continued, “you must be the flames that burn in darkness. The jaws that consume life. The fire that pollutes, purges, and destroys. The Vikahl Ashlands are merely a stepping-stone in fulfilling that dream.”

Dream.

Oh how she loathed having her ambitions reduced to merely a “dream.” As if they were merely figments of her imagination and would remain as such.

She would not stand for this.

Silently, she disrobed. Her manacles went first. Then her vest. The cloth around her neck fell next. And finally, her waistguard. These were all earthly possessions that would be consumed and turned to ash in the flames.

“What happens if the flames are stronger?” she asked the child.

“You will learn to overpower them.”

The answer was cryptic, but was she really expecting anything else?

So be it, she told herself, staring into the flames once more.

Contending with fire was a fool’s errand, which was precisely what made it such a dangerous weapon. She had always used Kinetomancy to wield it, but here, in the heart of fire, she wondered if it would save her from becoming scattered ashes.

A small, nervous smile flickered on her face as her hands lightly twitched with a few nervous little gestures. Then, clenching her jaw, she gathered her courage and strode through the passage, her body completely unclothed and unprotected.

Great walls of flame rose to meet her, as if they had an awareness all their own, crashing upon her like waves on a shore. Motion writhed around her, deflecting the incoming barrage and recoiling into a web all around her as miniature typhoons of flame rose to consume her whole. She grunted as the primordial force crashed against her own might. For this was not just fire—it was consumption given form. She could save herself from the searing flames, but the mental pressure of the situation was almost enough to shatter her will to pieces.

No matter how much she poured out, the flames devoured it all.

No matter how much she deflected, there was always more.

No matter how much she struggled, there was no path forward.

But such was the precise line of thought that would ensure her failure. She needed to save herself, and to do so, she needed to survive. To survive, she needed power. And for power, she needed to step forward.

And so she did.

The flames continued to lash around like the tentacles of a ravenous beast. It was all too terrifying, as every single emotion within begged her to escape. To save herself and run away from the inferno before it consumed her.

But escape was no longer an option. To continue forward, she needed to stop feeling.

And so she did.

When she became too scared to move, she stopped feeling her fear. When the burns became too great a challenge, she stopped feeling pain. When she was unable to push back against the force, she stopped her very own thoughts.

With every new step, she left a piece of herself behind. With every step, she became less than she was before.

With every step, the flames coalesced around her. Purging her, unmaking her, adding to her, breaking her, strengthening her.

And when it was all over, the pain vanished.

The pressure faded.

And bright emerald eyes sprang open in the darkness.

Lukas’s eyes snapped open, as he struggled to gather his wits through a familiar pounding headache, piecing together fragments of memories and perceptions he had just seen, waiting for the dizzying rush of clarity to return. It was almost customary at this point—visiting Inanna’s memories ended with him feeling his head had gained twice its weight.

His heart started to thud hard into his chest, as the sheer fear from the dream made his limbs feel cold.

“That—”

“Another facet of my life,” the goddess murmured, “one predating my rise as the Supreme Queen. A quest to achieve power enough to eclipse a god’s own, seized by a mortal.”

“Mortal?”

“I too was mortal once,” Inanna said wistfully. “Every god that exists once was."

Lukas frowned, pushing himself up. “I don’t get it. If you—if gods are immortal, then how did you kill them?”

“I said immortal, not eternal,” she corrected. “Power of a certain variety, in the right hands, is capable of ending everyone, even myself.”

“Like the flames in the…Ashlands?”

“The Vikahl Ashlands are truly ancient, even for divinity. A power that only exists to purge others. A power that was the antithesis of Asshur’s Truth. I embraced it. For a time. For a price.”

Price. Lukas shuddered at the thought. He had seen—no, he had been Inanna in that dream. The feeling of slowly throwing away pieces of his humanity at every step he made into the flaming valley wasn’t something he was going to forget any time soon.

“Is that why you always refer to me as ‘mortal’? To remind yourself that you aren’t?”

“A bit of advice, mortal. Do not speak so much. That way, you sound less ignorant.”

“Funny,” Lukas scoffed good-naturedly, still wondering how Inanna was able to use those flames. Not as a goddess, but a mortal. One would think that he finally had some answers. But in reality, he had only crossed a small hill and found a mountain behind it.

Sighing to himself, Lukas checked his schema. He had been sauntering through the tunnels for quite some time now, fighting monsters and, should they have a useful skill, trying to assimilate them into his Array. So far his successes on that front had been few, though each and every one of them had ended up granting him some pretty unique skills. Whatever benefits Solana would have gotten by the destruction of this crypt, sending him to do the job was only amplifying his power and growth by a mile a day.

He wondered how she would react upon finding that out.

Speaking of which—

“There’s this…thing that’s kind of bugging me. Soul Siphon. It’s not killing these monsters. It’s stealing them. I’m stealing them. I’m just surprised this crypt hasn’t taken it personally. I know I’d have.”

“Does the concept of strategy evade you?”

“They’re monsters,” he drawled, as if that explained everything. Strategy was a human element, or at the very least, reserved for beings with greater sapience. Not that animals were incapable of strategizing, but the monsters he had faced so far attacked him out of territorial instinct, not in a drawn-out manner to test his strengths and weaken him.

“That is because you’re mistaking the trees for the forest.”

Lukas froze. Had he? He was an anomaly, and he had access to some prototypes. But while he’d use them for his benefit, he didn’t care for them individually. He was only interested in his own growth.

If he applied the same concept to this crypt—

“You’re telling me that monsters are nothing but lab rats.”

Confusion ebbed from her.

“Lab rats. Guinea pigs. It’s a human thing. We run our tests and experiments first on verm—on rats, to check if a product is working and safe before releasing it for people.”

“Is that not the role every lesser being is born to play?”

No, Lukas wanted to say. But he’d only showcase his own hypocrisy at that. One didn’t think of a cockroach’s feelings before spraying pesticide at it. One didn’t ponder a cow’s feelings when feasting on grilled steak. They were lesser species, and thus, they didn’t count.

Really, what did it mean to be human?

Why was it that humans placed importance on themselves above all things? Societal reasons? Religious? Was it simply a facet of evolution and survival across the ages? Or was it the developed concepts of morality? Humans didn’t want to hurt others because they didn’t want to be hurt in turn.

It was simple.

Except in this world, that was where problems began to emerge. Inanna was a goddess, an entity so far beyond human reach that in her eyes, a human was little more than a cockroach that could speak. Hell, even he himself couldn’t be considered human anymore. It was like comparing a saber-toothed tiger to a tabby cat.

An unfair comparison, some would argue, but the results spoke for themselves. With the power of lifeforce flooding his veins, he could smash his way through a modern-day infantry. His top speed, coupled with Shatterpoint Intuition, could evade suppressive bullet fire. He could launch fire with the same efficacy as a modern-day flamethrower. And he healed at levels that were downright miraculous.

Considering everything, he may as well be compared to a god amongst humanity.

“Your world was an isolated system. A puddle of water separated from the endless ocean. For all your claims about morality, systems, and values, the truth is that your pathetic kind was the most powerful, so you took the world and shaped it in your image.”

“That’s not—”

“Is it not?” Her surprised, innocent tone reeked of mockery. “Do enlighten me. Did these…guinea pigs choose to be ruled by you and yours?”

Silence was the only thing he could offer.

The goddess laughed at his face. “Did you believe your kind ruled the world because of mortal superiority?”

“No,” he mumbled. “It’s survival of the fittest.”

“Precisely. A dragon does not concern itself with the opinion of lizards. It steps on them. Being ruled is the natural state of the weak. Subjugation is the prerogative of the strong.”

“No,” Lukas staunchly protested. “Even the weak are living beings. Even they have rights.”

“Rights?” The word rolled off her tongue as if completely foreign to her. “What are rights?”

“A product of civilization. A group of fundamental tenets we recognize all living beings to possess.”

“I see. And who guarantees these rights?”

“The government.”

“Your masters, you mean to say.”

“Elected officials,” he argued, “not masters we blindly serve. We elect them by exercising our rights—”

Inanna’s peals of laughter silenced him. “Not only do you obey your masters, but you also exercise your freedom to unequivocally choose a master to obey?” Her burgeoning laughter reverberated throughout his mind. “Man, woman, or monster, nobody has rights. No one. Nowhere. It is nothing more than a fantasy.”

Lukas vehemently shook his head. No matter what his argument was, Inanna was hell-bent on twisting his words to serve her own outdated views instead of seeing sense.

“I assure you, I am not,” she argued. “Tell me, do these guinea pigs have rights? The same rights that you enjoy?”

Silence.

“You live in a world where entire species exist that are to you what your humanity once was to guinea pigs. No longer are you at the apex of the food chain. There will be time for morality once you reach it.”

Lukas gritted his teeth and tried to summon a salvo of snark. It wouldn’t come. Inanna had hit the right buttons—and with good reason to back it up.

“Your attitude is disappointing. Did you learn nothing from my memory of the Vikahl Ashlands?”

“No, but I did get a nice headache out of it.” He frowned. “Speaking of which, I think there’s actually something wrong with my mind. I used to think it was a fluke, but—it’s like every time I think about a—”

Gooseflesh erupted all over his body. Palpitation rose. Lukas looked around wildly, his sensation of unease blossoming into mounting dread and fear despite his best efforts to ignore it.

His heart throbbed faster and faster, even worse than it did when using tachypsychia. Every passing second, he was reminded with frightening certainty that something was coming in response to his thoughts.

“About what?”

Lukas kept his lips sealed. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say it. If he did, something alien and taboo and wrong would come. Something utterly, utterly beyond his understanding. With focused, controlled breaths, he focused on prime numbers. Then multiples of fourteen. Then fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and so on.

“Mortal?” Inanna stressed.

One thirty-six. One fifty-three. “It’s something that I have to actively not think of.” One seventy. “Or I feel like I’ll die of a heart attack or an aneurysm or something,” he said frustratedly. One eighty-seven.

“I see,” Inanna replied very quietly. “You should have told me this before.”

“…What?”

“Tell me, mortal, do you ever wonder about…how your world ended?”

That did it.

Lukas felt a sharp pain in his hand. Then on his knee. Then his waist. Shoulders. Wrist. Ankles—it kept increasing, both in location and intensity. But he persevered.

“I did. I do, but whenever I—I—”

He became aware of a familiar, intense humming that grew louder and louder with each passing second—

“Back when you asked me about anomalies, there was something else you—”

But Lukas wasn’t listening. His knees gave away. Convulsing, he fell down to the floor, putting a hand on each side of his head as something horrifying began to ERUPT OUT OF THE FRACTURES IN EVERYTHING AND—

The last thing he remembered was hearing the goddess mutter something, and then the world shifted.

He was standing there in the cavern. Not where he currently stood, but someplace absolutely familiar. Maybe he had seen this place in the past? As in, this was a memory, right? Then—but why was he seeing a memory?

Wait. Whose memory was this?

Inanna’s mocking laughter resounded in his ears. “It was enjoyable squabbling with you, mortal. We should do it again.”

That was it. That was why this place had seemed so familiar. He had been here. He had walked this path. It was just after he had unlocked Prophylaxis for the first time, and Inanna had proved what a trickster she was.

But why did her voice sound so…distant?

“Somehow, I knew you had something planned.”

Lukas stilled. Because those words—his words—had not come out of his mouth. It had come from—

He looked to his right. At himself. At a different Lukas Aguilar.

Was this his own memory? It must have been. He was still wearing the tattered shirt and pants, before he’d been captured by the yokai and made to fight the kasha buck naked. Before he had unlocked Soul Siphon. That Lukas was scary in his ignorance, in his confidence and willingness to believe that he would return to his planet someday, and all this would go away as a demented dream.

The Other-Lukas leaned against the wall. “In the spirit of good sportsmanship, would you at least tell me one final thing?”

“I may.”

But why was he revisiting this memory? He knew what was about to happen.

“How did my world end?”

…

…

Wait. That was wrong. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This hadn’t happened. He tried to ask about—something, but he’d have a panic attack—and then—

“Keep watching,” came Inanna’s voice, this time from his own ears. Lukas staggered in surprise. “Do not panic. It is only me.”

“But—but this—”

“Keep watching.”

Other-Inanna’s distant chuckle became a quiet, rolling laugh. “Stars,” Other-Inanna replied, “You’re adorable.”

“Just answer the question.”

“No.”

“Why?” Other-Lukas demanded. “You’re oath-bound to answer any question related to my existence as an anomaly.”

“Not quite,” Other-Inanna replied. “I am only oath-bound to tell you about the effects the omphalos can have upon you, and validate your theories about its nature. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“Knowing about how this came to be would only help me theorize better.”

“Then you should have worded your bargain differently. Do not blame me for your own shortcomings. Besides, even if you did, I’d advise you not to ask that of me.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you are only mortal. Perceiving an event spawning across dimensions greater than you can comprehend will break you. It will shatter your mind.”

“Or it wouldn’t. You don’t know for sure. Maybe things will work differently and I’ll get to know what happened.”

“You will not. It is enough that you are alive. Knowing the fate of your world will bring you neither happiness nor satisfaction. It would damage you in ways you cannot comprehend.”

“Maybe you’re right, but you’re not the one that’s pulled away from their world. I think I deserve to know, and if stuff happens because of that, I fully deserve what happens to me. We can make a bargain out of it if we must.”

Lukas jerked back in shock. He—the other him—was he really desperate enough to invoke another bargain? He’d already acted hastily once, demanding information about the omphalos within him in return for a spell of Inanna’s choice. That this Other-Lukas was anxious enough to force a second bargain was downright alarming.

“What is this?” he couldn’t help but ask. “This didn’t happen to me. I didn’t make any new deals. Hell. We never had this conversation. Then—how?”

“Keep watching.”

The Other-Inanna’s voice reverberated all around him. “A bargain is made when both sides have something to gain. Handing someone a piece of misfortune willingly is hustling, but a bargain. Fine, this is on your head. If you must witness the End of your World, then so be it.”

Then he felt it.

There was a sudden, horrible pressure, a whole-body agony. The force of her memory pressing against his own was like trying to hold off the weight of a tide. But the sea had tried to wash his mind away before now, and he knew the secret of facing the power of incomprehensible sensations. He might be nothing but a grain of sand on the shore of that ocean. But while the ocean could pound it across shores over and over, after the tide was gone and the waters receded, the grain of sand would remain.

So he took the pressure. His head felt like someone was trying to squeeze it through his nose and ears, but he kept his will focused on trying to survive it. Alpha Condition rose to his aid. His training with psionics raised mental barriers but the force came in anyway.

Lukas saw light.

Darkness.

Wind.

Lightning.

Shadows.

Fire. Water. Ground. Living, non-living, trees, animals, insects—a hundred thousand impressions sandblasted against him. It was like someone had taken a bag of sand and smashed against his face repeatedly. He could smell the mud and the fish and animals and trees and—and Life.

He felt Life. Ferocious wind and cloudy storms tore across the sky. Vicious magma erupted out of the crust, cloaking the world with smoke and inky blackness. Wet drops of rain fell upon his cheeks, while searing heat threatened to charr his skin to ashes.

The roar of power came next. Wild, crimson and golden light emanated from one direction, followed by choking, searing heat that threatened to overwhelm his entire existence. Cold, horrible, deathly powers followed suit—winter and frost made manifest—soared up at full strength to meet their nemeses, colliding in the middle. No matter what Lukas tried, he couldn’t make heaven or hell out of these abstract senses as they thrashed his entire existence around. One force pulled at his emotions, making him weep and cry in happiness and despair, while another made him want to rage and annihilate everything in his path. He was like an ant in between two brawling elephants, with the jungle itself suffering the wrath of the behemoths. It was the kind of power that cowed mortals and made them believe in the demonic and the divine. Powers too great for their feeble minds to even begin to comprehend, lest they be driven insane just by being in their very presence.

His mouth fell open, his eyes gazing starkly at the sight. He hadn’t even known when his knees had given away—when he had fallen down to the ground, curling into himself like a newborn and weeping tears of joy and sadness, of hatred and remorse. Every word he tried to express came out as gibberish. Every thought he conjured shattered like a raindrop hitting the earth from above.

He screamed.

And in the middle of it all was the Earth itself. Not the beautiful and familiar world he knew all too well, but the real Earth—a wellspring of potential now swamped with corruption and death, slowly sinking into the inky blackness of its own creations. Dark emotions—greed, lust, hatred and rage—hung over it like a thick shroud, covering it, engulfing it, distorting it. Every single inch of space was filled with extreme malevolence and a burning tar-like substance that threatened to suck in light and life and leave cataclysms in its wake. Ghosts, wraiths and restless spirits soared everywhere, and skulls of all shapes formed entire mountains as far as the eye could see. It was a ghastly sight, the likes of which he could never have imagined in his worst nightmares.

His eyes burned like coals as his taut muscles strained even further, silent screams escaping his throat. His mind recoiled at the horrors he was witnessing, and they never stopped.

This was Death. Solid, tangible, real death draped atop the world around him. Death by fire, death by penalty, death by betrayal, death by murder, death by burning and death and death and death and—

SNAP!

A powerful, radiant orb of power manifested before him. It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was down on his knees, blood crawling out of his eyes and nostrils, while Inanna—the real deal—stood in front of him, golden motes of power exuding from her form. Even in such a despicable state, he couldn’t help but feel how grand she was.

Like watching a snow-capped mountain from afar.

Or a volcano during an eruption.

The goddess lifted her hand, the gesture elegant, and pointed forward at the orb with one finger.

It exploded with light that tore at his eyes and sound that clawed at his ears, a nauseating ripple in the air caused by so much energy being unleashed before him, and a clap of thunder.

And then it was gone.

Just like that.

“What was that?” Lukas gasped.

Inanna turned to face him. “I warned you. Perception of that magnitude would shatter your mind. And it did. I was forced to step in and seal the memory, but the damage was done. The panic and trauma you suffer are the scars that remain.”

“But…I just saw the memory.”

“What you saw is a mere reflection of your original experience. And look at what it did to you.”

“Then why show it?”

“You were losing control. The restraints on the memory were buckling because of your constant curiosity. This was the only way forward. Be warned, if you unseal the memory, you will die.”

“R—right,” Lukas stammered. “Good to know.”