His consciousness wouldn’t fade. He almost wished it would.

  The creature towering over him was a sanguine unlike any he’d ever seen before. It stood tall like the Red Dukes fighting Ben, but lithe where they were all brute strength—a balance of feminine and masculine features on its face.

  But what truly drew his attention—even with the Singularity pulsing madly in his senses—was the sanguine’s incredibly dense aura. It reminded him of an S-ranker’s presence, if not closer to someone like Silver or Dancer.

  He groaned, shifting painfully to sit up. “You’re the sanguine leader.”

  It turned its gaze from the Singularity pulsing in its palm, a curious expression on its face as it regarded him.

  “I am Lilith, the sanguine matriarch. And you are the Outsider that killed one of my dukes on Earth.”

  Its—no, her—voice was a feminine purr, sparking some primal feeling in the back of Terry’s brain. But he was too close to death’s door to be affected.

  “I did.” He grunted, shifting once more. Something poked into his hip, distracting him. As he traced a hand down, he felt his heart skip a beat. “Silvered and burned the bastard.”

  The sanguine didn’t rise to the bait, her eyes trailing to the Singularity. It smoked and hissed where it touched the flesh of her hand and Terry wondered what she was waiting for.

  Whatever it was, he wasn’t ready to give up without a fight…not just yet.

  He reached a sliver of aura down to the bone charm in his back pocket.

  “You killed one of my weakest dukes,” she hissed. “And now you’ve delivered the Lakarot right into my hands.” She peered over the glowing orb, her eyes boring into Terry with a heavy weight. “I should be thanking you, Son of Bone.”

  Terry chuckled dryly, feeling the bone charm’s sibling resonate in response to his call. The ambient aura kicking off from the Singularity was so intense, he wasn’t even sure if what he was feeling was that response. But he dared to hope it was working.

  “Why not return the Lakarot?” he asked, stalling for time. “You need the Blood too.”

  The sanguine matriarch held the orb up, her fangs parting her lips.

  “With the Lakarot in my possession, I control the flow of Blood. Our numbers will continue to flourish, while the so-called Children wither away into extinction—”

  A connection speared through space, both pieces of the bone charm linking together as a blue-white portal rippled into existence.

  In that moment of shock, Obsidian Blade and Crimson Spear darted forward from the portal, both their namesake weapons cleaving through air.

  But the single half-second of delay as the portal bloomed gave Lilith enough time to dodge. She danced around the chamber, more shadow than creature as the two ghoul leaders attacked. A flash of animated shadow struck out faster than Terry could follow, and Obsidian Blade flew through the air, smashing against the nearby wall.

  Crimson Spear took a defensive stance, holding back the blur that was Lilith, when Juan stepped through the portal. His face was pinched tight like he’d been cringing in anticipation.

  His eyes fell on Terry, a smile forming before he noticed the two figures flashing across the room and Obsidian Blade just rising to his feet.

  Flame blossomed in his hands, lighting up the dim room like a bonfire. The shadows cleared, seeming to sap some small speed from Lilith’s movements. She tried to flee through the exit, but Obsidian Blade stood there, blocking the way.

  A moment later, more ghouls poured through the portal and his heart lifted as he recognized both Bloodsplatter and Fleshripper ghouls filtering through.

  In seconds, the chamber was crammed with ghoul bodies and the sanguine matriarch was cornered. The Singularity pulsed brilliantly in her palm, but Terry realized that she couldn’t absorb the orb into her chest. She had so much power literally at her fingertips, but couldn’t access it.

  With a desperate ploy, she tossed the Singularity away and made a mad dash in the other direction. Terry saw it arcing high in the air, while ghouls chased after her.

  Activating his telekinesis, he redirected its flight subtly, angling it right into the open chute of the bone pedestal.

  As it disappeared from sight, a series of notifications scrolled across his vision.

  Quest Complete: [Restore the Bloodsplatter Clan to their Ancestral Home]

  Reward Pending…

  Bonus Objective Complete: [Restore the Lakarot to Power]

  Reward Pending…

  Quest Complete: [Stronger Together]

  [5 of 5] living.

  Reward Pending…

  “Nice shot, Terry!” Juan cheered.

  Then, everything went black.

  But instead of the comforting oblivion of unconsciousness, he found himself drifting away—no, not drifting…pulled to some other place. The sensation was both familiar and alien, and he knew that he should have been concerned by the experience. It was too close to death not to be concerned.

  And yet…he recognized the location he was being drawn toward. More than that, he recognized who was doing the pulling.

  “Hello, Weaver.” He spoke and was surprised to hear his voice out loud. The surroundings around him suddenly sprang into focus, revealing the office of Feed Wichita’s warehouse—before the Emperor had confiscated it. Tall glass windows overlooked the warehouse floor, but instead of their farm, he saw only dark fog obscuring the view. The desk was on his right as usual, the couch along the far wall—

  Silver—and not Silver—sat there, an arch to his brow that could have been amusement or annoyance.

  “Hello, Terry. How have you been?”

  The innocuous nature of that question—and its supernatural source—caused him to bark out a laugh.

  “How have I been?” He put a finger to his lip in mock thought. “Hmm, let’s see. I had a pretty close brush with a giant bonfire a couple weeks back. Then my enigmatic System had me steal an object way above my paygrade—from my own mom, too. Found myself in prime ski territory surrounded by a pack of wolves and five stranded strangers.” He shrugged casually. “Then we saved an entire species from a slow extinction, while another species actively worked against their own survival to stop us. How have you been?”

  The Weaver smiled; it was Silver’s smile, but not at the same time.

  “I’ve been good.”

  The succinct, casual nature of that reply had Terry guffawing, resting his weight on the desk as a manic sensation seemed to grip him.

  After a moment, he wondered at his own reaction, remembering the first time he’d met the Weaver.

  “You’re not messing with my emotional regulation, are you?” He tried to inject some of the spite he should have felt into that question, but found it too difficult to muster.

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  “Not this time, Terry. What you’re feeling is the hypoxia. You were dangerously close to bleeding out before the Lakarot was restored.”

  That statement managed to pierce through the fog and he stood up straight.

  “Am I gonna die, then?”

  The Silver avatar shook his head. “You are currently bathing in the Blood. You’ll wake up shortly, probably feeling better than you ever have before.”

  “Oh…that’s cool…”

  His thoughts were strange, both urgent and lazy at the same time. He knew there were so many questions he should have had, yet couldn’t seem to prioritize them correctly.

  He decided to leave it to the System to take the lead.

  “So…can you explain like, everything? I’m feeling a little disoriented and don’t know where to start…”

  The Weaver nodded, a wry smile slipping onto Silver’s face for the briefest moment.

  “How about the beginning? Deny the Omega?”

  His mind seemed to orient, a large piece of the puzzle slotting back into place. He nodded matter-of-factly, like it had been his own suggestion.

  “I can imagine that was a difficult decision to make, Terry. I asked you to turn against your own mother, take a leap of faith with hardly any information.”

  Now that you mention it…

  Silver nodded as if the System had heard his thoughts.

  “There were two problems with the White Rose becoming the Omega.”

  Terry felt a thrill in his chest at the realization that the Weaver was actually going to give some answers after the whirlwind of doubt and confusion of the last few weeks.

  As the avatar spoke, he walked over to sit on the couch beside the Silver lookalike. He didn’t need to sit—not in this space that seemed formed from pure consciousness—yet it felt right.

  “The first problem is the Spectral Singularity.” Terry blinked, not expecting that answer. “It’s been infected by outside forces looking to gain a foothold in the Empyrean Covenant.” Silver held up his hand, forestalling the question forming on Terry’s lips. “I’ll come back to that, don’t you worry.”

  He couldn’t help but feel like the Weaver was reading his mind again, though it had stated specifically it was simply reading his aura. Still, he didn’t enjoy the feeling of being exposed without saying or doing anything.

  “Should your mother have succeeded and become the Omega, it is my belief that she would have been corrupted and eventually subsumed by…them. No, I see your question forming. Let me get there in my own way. Please.”

  He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and cross his arms—that sort of disrespect towards what was basically a god seemed a bridge too far.

  “The other problem—which, forgive me, but I’ll have to dance around this—is that the System of whoever becomes the Omega gains status and power as a result. You know a thing or two about your mother’s System, I think.”

  His memory flashed back to his mother’s White Rose, the visions she had stored inside that magical construct, a warning blazing across each of them: Do Not Consume.

  The pain she had endured, the torture at the hands of her System, sparked white-hot rage that made his limbs tremble.

  Silver nodded. “The way you feel right now is…let’s say, appropriate. I feel similarly, though on a different scale.”

  Terry pushed down the anger, feeling it cloud his already rattled thoughts. He needed to think clearly to maximize this rare meeting with the Weaver.

  “So my mother’s System is a bastard—you’ll find no disagreement from me on that front.” He opened his mouth to say more, then hesitated as he tried to find the words for his next question.

  In typical Weaver fashion, it seemed to read his thoughts, translating them before he could put them to words.

  “And how am I any better?”

  On the actual Silver, he would have read a hint of resentment or perhaps hurt in those words. But this eldritch being didn’t mock Terry’s intelligence by mimicking Silver’s mannerisms—which he appreciated.

  “Yep, that’s a good way of putting it.”

  The Weaver nodded, lifting a hand before pausing.

  “Do you mind if I show you a memory? Nothing you haven’t seen before, but…perhaps from a different perspective?”

  There was something eerie about the thought of his memories being manipulated, but then he remembered he was literally in dreamland with a godly being and shrugged agreement.

  His vision shifted, a nauseating kaleidoscope of colors that slowly resolved into a dark, fog-covered street.

  Right away, he recognized it as a familiar boulevard in Wichita, just up the road from where he’d started his club with his team.

  His angle was unusual though, lower than his tall form, practically at waist height as his eyes tracked across the street.

  A crowd had formed, everyone around him large, their bulk and height intimidating to his small body. Someone jostled him, knocking him to the pavement, rattling his already woozy head.

  That was when he felt the gnawing pain in his gut. It felt like a fist was clenched around his intestines, squeezing them, devouring them. Somehow, he knew it was the abject hunger of someone who’d lived on scraps for weeks—even though he’d never personally felt that level of starvation in his entire life.

  As his eyes tracked down to the street, he caught sight of his hands—dirty, black things, the nails chipped and the fingers calloused—and realized that this wasn’t him.

  A hand gripped not-him and he felt the panic of this child like it was his own. Adult hands always meant trouble—a beating…or worse.

  Instincts honed on the streets of Wichita took hold and he bucked and scratched against the grip, his other hand reaching for the tiny knife tucked at his waist.

  When the hand didn’t let go, he moved to stab with a feral cry—only to meet the eyes of a young boy, not a man.

  Terry staggered in shock as the body he was inhabiting stared up…into his own eyes.

  A younger Terry looked down on him, a sad smile on his face. While one hand gripped his shoulder, the other was held out, ready to help the child from where he’d been shoved to the ground.

  “You okay?” he heard his voice ask the child.

  He felt his own distrust flare, even as he recognized that the older boy helping him was the reason he was here now, lining up on the streets when he should have been scrounging for food in the alley dumpsters.

  “I’m Terry. What’s your name?”

  The child hesitated; he’d discovered the hard way that kindness on the streets was always a facade to get his guard down. But this was the one everyone was talking about, the prince handing out food and asking for nothing in return.

  He’d ignored the other boys and girls on the streets who claimed there was free food near the prince’s club, but a bad week of scavenging had pushed him to desperation.

  “T-Timothy,” he whispered.

  Terry—the prince—smiled at him, a street orphan who was two bad days away from starving to death in an alley.

  The grip on his shoulder pulled back, then movement flashed. Where there had been an empty palm before, there now sat the reddest piece of fruit he’d ever seen.

  It was a display of magic that would have seen the Timothy from before clapping his hands in delight. Now, he simply eyed the tomato with iron focus.

  He was about to test his luck and snatch it, make a mad dash through the crowd, when the hand stretched forward.

  “Go ahead, take it,” the prince said.

  Timothy hesitated—was this some sneaky rich kid way of getting me in trouble?

  But the knotted rock in his stomach would not be denied.

  His hand—honed from nearly a year scrounging on the street—snaked forward with uncanny speed, plucking the tomato from the prince’s hand and shoving it toward his face. He took three swift bites—his cheeks chipmunked out—before the prince could try and renege on the offer.

  Instead of being angry as Timothy had expected, the prince chuckled lightly and nodded in a direction obscured by the now thronging adults.

  “Come on, Timothy. Let’s get you truly fed.”

  The streets of Wichita faded at the edges, slowly drawn in until he found himself back in the warehouse office. His thoughts were alien as the dissociation from Timothy began.

  It had felt so real; he had been the young street orphan for a moment.

  When his thoughts became ordered once more, he turned toward Silver.

  “That was real,” he whispered. “I remember that little boy.” He shook his head to clear the lingering sensations of another body. “Why? Why did you show me that?”

  The Weaver didn’t react externally, but Terry felt its aura retracting slowly, pulling back from where it had connected to his own.

  “Do you remember when you Awakened?”

  Terry was thrown off by the oblique line of questioning, but answered anyway.

  “Of course.”

  “And do you remember what I told you about your path?”

  The words came back to him like they had been yesterday, the memory implanted so powerfully he didn’t even have to stretch to reach them.

  “You said I was picking the Resonance. That it was how I would accomplish the most good. You said, ‘The alignment of your perspective, powers, and my own goals.’”

  The Silver avatar nodded. “Yes. You wondered how am I any better? Well, let me answer your question with my own: have I led you astray in any way?”

  The lingering memory of that little boy’s gnawing hunger panged at his stomach. A stone-cold certainty filled him in that moment; that boy would have died without that tomato, and the rest of the food Terry had given him. There had been hundreds of children just like Timothy, and he had fed as many of them as he could.

  His thoughts drifted then, trailing over his journey to Terraform’s Market. Did any of them survive Qui Shen without Terry’s arrival? Did Dancer consume both Terraform and Qui Shen’s Singularities without his System guiding him to Marlon at that exact moment in time?

  He thought of Crimson Spear and the Bloodsplatter Clan, wasting away on the Surface. All the ghoul clans, deprived of Blood and waiting for death to find them once and for all.

  Without the Metaphysical Singularity, perhaps the entire Underworld perished over the next few decades.

  There was the niggling thought that the Weaver was ancient, with a power that he could hardly comprehend. A being like that would surely be capable of playing the long game, of manipulating someone like him who was so eager to be the hero.

  He recognized that need in himself, understood it was an angle that could be leveraged against him.

  But despite the cold logic of that realization, there was an underpinning of rightness to everything he’d done since Awakening. His intuition told him—screamed at him—that he had been doing good, and it was with the powerful support of the Weaver that he had managed to do that good.

  “I think I believe you,” he said slowly. “But I have a simple question and I want the truth. I’ll know if you’re lying.” He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. There was something awakening inside him unrelated to power or magic, some truth unraveling before him that he was beginning to decipher. It was like the layer beneath the surface was finally revealing itself.

  He took a breath, then opened himself, taking in the fullness of the Weaver’s being. It was an overwhelming experience, like trying to take in a mountain range up close. The Weaver stretched into infinity, his perspective too narrow to truly appreciate what stood before him.

  And then…the Weaver opened to him, revealing a piece of itself—a narrow slice in the grand scheme of its entire being—and his throat clenched at the truth he saw there, the answer to his unspoken question.

  His awareness both hovered over and encompassed a small section of Earth in its entirety. He knew everything about that tiny piece—every smell, every sound, every microbe and speck of dust revealed to him in a dizzying, singular sensation that he couldn’t fully process.

  In that little slice of totality, he both saw and was the boy standing behind a folding table, an apron pulled over his head. He was bigger now, his cheeks full, his limbs energized when they had once been emaciated and weak.

  As Timothy doled out a ladle of stew to a little girl holding a bowl, Terry began to weep.

  There was no faking what he was seeing, what he was feeling. No matter how powerful this being was, he knew in his heart of hearts that he was seeing the boy in real time. It was too much stimuli and he was forced to pull away from the Weaver even as he took that sense of hope he’d felt nestled deep in Timothy’s soul and bottled it up inside of him.

  After taking a few moments to recover, he wiped at his eyes, turning them up toward the Weaver in Silver’s form.

  “I believe you…”

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