It took all of five seconds. The End’s influence through me came to an abrupt end, Acasiana extended a hand toward Keratily, and Moricla went for Acasiana with as much raw hatred as I’d seen on the fake god. Which was a whole lot, considering how she’d reacted to seeing me the first time.

Inopsy grabbed me and threw himself between me and Keratily. I didn’t even have time to register that her target had shifted to me, and her arm pierced his chest straight through. Crystal veins snaked through every inch of him in a heartbeat, but his coal-smoke shattered them all at great personal cost. Her arm severed at the elbow. He blew into head-sized chunks.

I tried to ignore all the blood that splattered on me. {Okeria! Help!}

No answer.

“Fucking hell.”

The End’s influence must’ve scoured away the Okeria-pill. Or it had a much shorter duration than I thought. I switched my weapon into a shield and slammed it into the ground to try and absorb the blow from one-armed Keratily to no avail.

The material creaked and strained for a split second, petal-scales falling by the hundreds. Her fingers splayed out like she was flicking water from her fingertips and sheared my shield into five distinct pieces with crystalline claws. I could feel her starting to drain my everything again. A glimmer of overwhelming darkened pink alerted me to the pillars that had risen from all the corners of the room.

Moricla let out a cry like she’d just seen her child killed before her very eyes. It was so raw and filled with emotion that all of us snapped to look, including Inopsy’s severed head, and witnessed a display I wouldn’t ever be forgetting.

A god on her knees, both arms severed and sparking with… some kind of liquid light as Acasiana gently pressed two fingers to Moricla’s forehead.

The god begged.

Acasiana offered no mercy.

It started as an orb of growing light within one of Moricla’s eye sockets. She pleaded, screamed her throat raw, and tried everything she could to get away from Acasiana’s fingers. Slashes of nonexistence battered my newest recruit, cutting so deep into her that they should’ve killed her instantly. Acasian’s shining spheres of horrible power rewrote the damage so that it had never happened in the first place.

Horrible understanding flowed into me in the form of exactly one of Acasiana’s core functions. It was something I shouldn’t know, the absolute most private thing a person could ever have, and I didn’t see something like this with Mortician. Acasiana was different somehow. Terrifying, powerful, vengeful, and different.

//STRANGLING PERFECTION.

//EXPEND BATTERY FOR ANOTHER CHANCE. NO REFUNDS.

That was all it said. Simple, to the point, and fucking terrifying. It finally settled in just how much Acasiana had tried to overcome her own desires for the better of everyone, but was so burned by already doing that that she physically couldn’t. There was a quiet madness simmering in the mind of this forgotten woman, and I’d unleashed her upon the all-world once more.

It was my responsibility to ensure she worked for the good of everything. Unfortunately for Moricla, that didn’t involve saving a false god who had tried to kill me.

The orb in her eye socket dimmed. Moricla’s voice instantly cut out, and her body fell limply to the ground. Keratily took a step back in utter terror, allowing me to shift my weapon into a dagger and dart away. She looked down at her hands as they grew darker yet pinker at once, and as Acasiana’s light dimmed ever so slightly.

“What did you do to me?” She summoned an obelisk of crystal that would’ve pierced Acasiana if she hadn’t casually stepped out of the way at the last second. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?”

Acasiana tilted her head to the side and laughed. “I thought you wanted to rule. You didn’t specify over what, though, so enjoy this abyss-forsaken wasteland. I retire.”

I blinked, then found my tongue. {Say I retire, Inopsy. We’re done here.}

“I retire.” Inopsy said instantly, though the blood in his mouth seriously garbled his pronunciation.

My turn. “I retire.”

“What?...NO!” Keratily screamed and lunged for Acasiana, but the woman disappeared before she could be hurt. “NO! PLEASE! NOT LIKE THIS! YOU DROWNED WOR–”

The world disappeared and darkness took its place. I took a deep breath, gently patted my chest, and laughed. Just like that. Just… wow. It was done. The threat of Keratily was contained until further notice.

“It’s done.” I whispered into the void, which was taking a… strangely long time to open. “Hello? Archivist? The End? Overseer? Acasiana? Inopsy? Anyone there?”

My interface forced itself open. I flinched away, then leaned in when it was obvious nothing had happened. Everything was horrifically dark. All the tabs, all the items, all the descriptions… melted into the darkness as if I’d completely forgotten them. A lump grew and grew in my throat until it threatened to form into a sob of hopelessness, but just as I was about to let it out, I saw a light.

A triangular light that cut through the darkness so completely and utterly that I couldn’t look away. I pressed on whatever it was, and was greeted by a pyramid spinning lazily in the void. A trinket I’d almost forgotten about in all the chaos, and that I’d never managed to get to do a single thing.

//THE BLASTED RUINS OF PROPHECY DELIGHT AS A PROPER PRISONER IS TAKEN.

//TWO DOORWAYS GIVE YOU THEIR EVERYTHING.

//USE THIS RESPONSIBILITY WITH THE LIGHT TOUCH AND DELICACY IT REQUESTS.

I blinked the text from my eyes, and it tumbled into the abyss like stones down a deep, dark well. The pyramid ripped itself from my interface, gently floated above my hand, and split. Waterfalls of brilliant blue cascaded as far as existence went. Strands of white knit together every fiber of everything. The eyes that remained opened wide, staring at me, waiting for something.

//THE MEMORIES OF THE WEEPING DROWNED HEEDS YOUR COMMAND.

//CONTROL THAT WHICH IS CREATED AS YOU SEE FIT, YOUNG ENVOY.

Two sides of the pyramid emitted an oily sheen. The first became a stone archway seeping with Slyk oil. The second became a simple hole in the ground. And between the two, in a strange mess of sinewy white, lay a simple tear in reality. A sensation of overwhelming fertile nature emanated from the tear, underlined by a horrifically metallic undertone that cut though my concentration to sharpen it infinitely.

The world bowed its head under my knife. Within the constraints I saw, I had utter control. I realized that the three hazards–the floodforest, the oilsea, and the blasted ruins–were malleable. Their position in the world was not physical, and they were anchored to it by something so metaphysical and magical that it had no form to manipulate. The weeping drowned showed me the path.

Peeling away the hologram for the blasted ruins felt like peeling the pelt off a small animal with my fingernails alone. I shuddered at the horrible sensation as the last of the hologram came free, and underneath it, I could see the mountain. The hazard it connected to.

I gulped and carefully did the same for the floodforest’s hologram. This one came away like the papery skin of an onion–fragile yet strong and hiding something far more valuable beneath. Something significant drained away from me, yet was instantly filled by something of equal yet different significance. I gulped around a throat thick with saliva, then carefully as I could possibly manage, I switched the holograms.

Reality hitched. Something flickered, and for a split second, I saw two holes. Then one hole and one tear. And finally, two tears. They each emanated vastly different sensations, yet with such a familiar privacy. A world that only existed for Jun and I. One where nobody else could intrude.

A world where Keratily would be trapped, alone, until we found some way to permanently deal with her.

I briefly considered not giving Keratily’s hazard an entrance. To trap her in limbo for the rest of existence. My mind gently informed me that that would not work, as every hazard had to be accessible in some way. If I didn’t give it an entrance, it would make another for itself. And some other poor schmuck could inadvertently release Keratily to the world. She could make the clear condition as easy as she wanted, after all.

The entrances shivered and shifted until I couldn’t see the hazards through them at all. Two tears now existed where only one had before, and if the thing had actually worked, there was now an entrance to the floodforest not an hour from Rainbow Basin.

“God I hope that didn’t just mess everything up.” I chuckled nervously as the pyramid slowly closed itself, becoming inert in the process.

Falling out of the hazard felt like it took an eternity. The Ossuary never showed up for some reason, but that didn’t bother me. The pyramid emitted something that assured me it was because I’d used it, and for no other reason. I could confirm the second I was free, anyway.

Colour returned to my vision. My shoulder slammed into the ground, followed by the rest of my right side, and I yelped in surprise as I took in my surroundings. For a split second I was terrified I’d somehow swapped the entrances and ended up back where the floodforest was, but then Rainbow Basin came into view. Or… well… not quite.

It was more vibrant than before. The air shimmered with hidden colour like a rainbow over a waterfall, and I took a deep breath of the air filtered through my armor. There shouldn’t have been a difference.

But there was.

Everything was… fresher. Clearer. Fuller. Like the smoke from a wildfire had finally lifed, and even though I’d gotten used to it, not having it there was such an unbelievable relief. And one woman was responsible for all of that. One woman that I’d just trapped in a hazard far away and through an entrance only Jun and I–and probably Mortician–had access to.

Inopsy pulled himself together right next to me and silently patted me on the shoulder. His fingers were tense, and he twitched far more than he normally did. Whatever he was fighting, we needed to get him to safety sooner than later. For both him and us.

Yet we couldn’t bring ourselves to move just yet. There was something far more important going on right before our eyes.

Acasiana’s armor fell away as she fell to her knees. She whispered soft words of nothing, gently feeling the ground with her bare hands as she took in deep breaths of air that were stifled by the quiet tears of joy that ran down her cheeks.

Lightning crashed down from the empty sky as a reminder that in a few minutes, it was back to war. I tapped my helmet and made the briefest of contact with The End to confirm that nothing was wrong, and it replied with a single word of confirmation. Almost like it could feel exactly why I was being so concise.

“Thank you.” Acasiana whispered as she scraped her fingertips through the stone, grass, and dirt. “I never really believed I’d get out of there. You… I’ll follow you until the end of everything.”

She stood up and offered me the most joyous grin I’d ever seen, untainted by the war in the city or the fact that we’d have to tell everyone how we’d sealed Keratily. But for the moment, all she could see was the future. After years of living in fearful darkness, it must’ve been blinding.