Die. Respawn. Repeat.

I sense them before I see them.

The pattern in the Firmament around me changes suddenly, and just like that, the rhythm of the battle is different. Even before Ahkelios's voice reaches me, I can feel the tide of Firmament moving in a new direction—the pulse of action and reaction turned on the Hand. I'm sure it can tell that something's wrong, too, because it swivels toward my friends with what I can only describe as alarm. Splayed fingers and all. It's almost impressive how expressive it is, considering it's quite literally just a hand.

"Ethan!" Ahkelios calls out as soon as he's in range. His voice echoes across the ruined hallways of the dungeon. "You better still be alive!"

"You'd know if I was dead!" I shout back.

The back-and-forth is mostly a distraction. The noise gives me a moment of reprieve—if nothing else, it's apparently enough for the Hand to decide that the freshly-empowered Firmament signatures are more of a threat than I am. I feel it gathering power for an attack, Concept-twisted energy gathering within a finger...

And then it points. A simple gesture.

The skill that erupts from the tip of that finger? Not so much.

A pitch-black beam of nothing streaks through the air with a ear-rending scream—the sound is loud enough to make me flinch backward, and I'm not even particularly close to it. For a moment, I'm worried about Ahkelios. A skill imbued with a Concept isn't exactly trivial to block.

Turns out I didn't need to worry.

Ahkelios pulls out what I can only assume is a piece of junk he found within the Intermediary. It looks like a jagged piece of metal, rusted with age. Then he uses Sword Infusion, and in the next instant, it's a bright-orange greatsword practically bursting with Firmament—imbued with the Concept of the Sword, reinforced with his Truth, and empowered by an Inspiration.

He cuts—

Whatever Ahkelios did, it's strong enough that just watching him almost disrupts my focus. It's like his strike briefly embedded itself into reality. It's not quite at the strength or degree of the Submerged skills I've used before, but it's close.

Close enough that whatever skill the Hand is using can't stand up to it. The beam splits into two, pure energy carved apart like a physical object and crashing into the walls of the dungeon instead. Ahkelios and Guard, meanwhile, stand untouched in the middle.

I watch as stone begins to boil and dissolve where the beam struck and wince. I'm pretty sure the Hand tried to use that exact skill on me more than once while we were fighting—it's a good thing I was able to dodge them, because that does not look pleasant. It explains why half the rubble around me looks like it's melted, at least.

He-Who-Guards flies to my side as Ahkelios distracts the Hand. "Ethan," he says, optic scanning me briefly. "You are uninjured?"

"Just bruised." I rub at my shoulder, feeling dull pain radiate through one of the bruises in question. It's nowhere near as bad as the streaks of pain still lancing through my soul, so I haven't paid much attention to it. "I'm going to need to finish what I'm doing so I can fight. Can you and Ahkelios keep it distracted?"

Guard's fans whir as he looks up at the Hand. I can practically hear him running the simulations. "Yes," he answers after a split second. There's a confidence in his voice that surprises me. "But you must be quick about it. It is still getting stronger."

I frown, glancing at the Hand. It's subtle, but...

"Of course it is," I mutter.

If nothing else, whatever's empowering the Hand is clearly limited—I can feel some kind of influence reaching into the dungeon and trying to infect more of its Firmament, but it's being held back. There's an upper limit on how much the Hand is able to convert at a time, and with so much of the area around us already destroyed...

"I'll only need a few minutes," I say. "It's trying to absorb the dungeon, so try to minimize the damage it's doing. Keep it in the middle of the destroyed area. Should slow down the empowering process."

Guard nods. "Understood," he says. He flicks his wrists—

—my eyes widen slightly.

Thick, heavy chains thud into the ground with enough force to crack it. Guard's always had an incredible amount of Firmament, but now that it's refined, it's gained a level of density and reality that's far beyond anything he could produce before.

Even just at the first layer, his output compares to some of the greatest sources of Firmament I've seen on Hestia. Guard seems to notice me staring—some of the panels on his head twitch slightly, as if pleased. Or maybe he's smirking.

Either way, he shoots off toward the Hand in the next instant, throwing those chains over and between its fingers to shackle and slow it down; in the meantime, Ahkelios harasses it with flashes of those reality-rending cuts, slicing off large chunks of Firmament-flesh.

If the Hand were any weaker, it would already be dead... but even now, it's healing.

Time to do my part.

The second layer of my core is almost fully repaired. I can feel how many cracks are left, even—there are no more than three hair-thin fractures waiting to be filled with Firmament. I take a portion of the dense storm of Firmament surrounding me, force it down into something needle-thin, and feed it into the first.

One.

The crack seals without much of a fuss, although it's accompanied by an intense spike in pain like none of the ones I've felt before. It's strong enough that even the Knight reacts to it—to my surprise, it actually sounds worried. That's never happened before.

"Ethan," it says. "Your repairs are essentially complete. You can re-compress your core and rejoin the battle."

"There are still two more cracks to seal," I say. With the full weight of my mind and focus bent to maintaining this state within my core, I can feel them more clearly than ever.

Stolen novel; please report.

"You do not need this to be perfect, Ethan." The Knight hesitated. "If you continue, your entire core might fracture. This is sufficient."

"What, you think I can't do it?" I ask, my tone more lighthearted than I feel. It's sensing the same thing I am, I suspect. It knows that something's wrong. The closer I get to finishing my repairs, the more my core resists, and at the rate it's going there's a good chance it'll entirely outpace my ability to hold it together.

But it was the one to suggest all this to me in the first place.

"Your capabilities are not in question here," the Knight says. I can tell it's conflicted. There's a not-insignificant part of it that wants to see exactly how far I can take this. In a way, it's touching that it's worried at all—as far as I can tell, it's not in the Knight's nature to worry, so for it to actually be concerned... well, it must really like me. "But the risk—"

"Is greater if we don't do this," I say. "You said it yourself, remember? Short term, we'll survive this challenge. But what about the next? Or the one after that? Something sent this thing here. I got a warning from who knows how far into the future. The time for safe bets is long past."

The Knight makes a disgruntled noise. "You make a good point." It pauses. "Or I did. But you must be aware the risk is greater than I calculated. This has never been done before—I did not expect this... resistance you are facing."

"Then we'll have to figure it out." I can't help but give it a mental smirk, mostly because it actually seems worried for me. "Don't pretend you aren't excited for this."

The Knight hesitates a moment more, then it returns my smirk, a surprising warmth in its voice. "I admit, I cannot deny my curiosity."

"Nice to know we're on the same page," I say, chuckling. "Not that it was ever in question."

I reach out for another dense chunk of Firmament, forcing it down into a thread with sheer will alone; this time, when I feed it into the second-layer fracture, I feel the entirety of my core shuddering in protest, and the pain that accompanies it makes me collapse. I have to hold on to a piece of rubble for support.

The wound heals slowly, like it doesn't want to accept what it's being fed. Like it's full.

But it does heal.

Two.

We're down to the final fracture. I take a breath before feeding any Firmament into it—with how much sealing each of these last few cracks has escalated the strain in my core, just forcing my Firmament in and hoping for the best is the last thing I want to do. I may be taking a calculated risk, but the whole point is that it's calculated. I can't afford to be more careless than I have to be.

Like I told the Knight: we'll have to figure this out. It's right—there's some unknown factor here. Something we didn't account for.

I take my time. I feel out the crack with my Firmament sense, frowning mentally at the sense I'm getting from it. It feels like it's a little wider than before...

That's not a good sign. What's causing this?

The obvious answer is that the more I seal the cracks, the greater the overall strain it's putting on my core. The problem with that answer is that it doesn't tell me why. It can't just be a matter of quantity—if it were, I'd be straining my core every time I draw in Firmament.

So it's something else. The cracks affect the overall quality of my core, according to the Knight, but based on what it said, they're also normal. A natural result of the initial formation of these layers.

What if they serve a function?

I pause at the thought and run back through my memories. This isn't the first time I've worked on a damaged core—I repaired Guard's and performed what was essentially surgery on both Tarin and Naru. At this point I have an intimate familiarity with them. My Firmament sense wasn't so refined at that point as to be able to detect these hairline cracks, but if I think back to those moments...

What do all those cores have in common?

The answer comes to me: they move.

They aren't static objects. A Firmament core moves and flows in subtle ways in reaction to both environment and host. That means that to a degree, the cracks are necessary—they allow an otherwise rigid construct to maintain a certain degree of flexibility. All this increased strain comes from the fact I'm turning my core into a solid, impenetrable object that's too rigid to have that slight degree of flexibility it needs to breathe.

I turn the problem over in my head. There has to be a solution that doesn't involve leaving a bunch of cracks all over my core; that just creates a different kind of vulnerability. What is it? It needs to be able to bend and flex and still be a solid layer of power...

Or, to frame it in a slightly different way, it needs to be able to change.

And that just so happens to be my Truth.

I hope it's as simple as I'm imagining. My Truth is a part of who I am. It infuses the entire third layer of my core, but it's also a foundational part of my Firmament. All I need to do is take that Truth and apply it to the entirety of my being, holding in my mind the picture of what I want my power to be—dense but flexible, able to shift and deform and mold itself as needed.

Like an ocean.

I layer the final thread of Firmament into that hairline crack. This time, there's no pain that accompanies it. Instead, my core accepts that Firmament like it was always meant to be—and where before there was a solid expanse of rigid Firmament, there is instead a gentle ripple.

Just like that, I'm whole again. I can feel my core within me, calm as a lake but ready to boil into an ocean of fury at a moment's notice.

And just below the surface of that ocean, formerly out of reach, are two skills shining bright as suns. I can use them now. They'll exhaust me still, but it won't tear me apart to use them. Not the way they would have before.

I open my eyes. Guard and Ahkelios are doing well—holding off the Hand without faltering, albeit not without injury. One of Guard's hands is hanging loose, wires sparking from the joint; Ahkelios looks like he's missing an antennae. I wince.

"About time!" Ahkelios calls, not turning around. There's a grin in his voice despite the state he's in, and it makes me smile in spite of myself. "I can feel you from here. Ready to join the party?"

"We have got to work on your phrasing," I deadpan. I flex my fingers, watching Firmament surge through them and emerge as solid sparks of blue-gold power. "Alright. Let's do this."

Gheraa hummed to himself, surveying the field of defeated hands in front of him. "Not bad, if I do say so myself," he said cheerfully, turning to leave. "Just gotta find the boss—"

He paused, frowning. Something felt strange. He turned back to the field of defeated hands.

They were dissolving into Firmament. That... wasn't a bad thing, right? It didn't feel like an Interface monster being defeated, though. The dissolved Firmament was still corrupted, and it wasn't dissipating. It was moving.

Gheraa watched as every single one of the monsters he'd defeated turned into a stream of Firmament heading in one very specific direction.

"Okay," he said. "Guess I know where the boss is."

He hesitated and stared for a moment longer, still processing.

"This is really bad, isn't it."

He felt a spark of very, very familiar Firmament.

"Yup. Really bad."

Gheraa felt the dungeon wrapping around him and trying to stop him as he activated a half-dozen Speed skills. The maze was meant to be navigated, not just flown over, but right now, he didn't particularly care.

He just poured more Firmament into his skills, hoping it would be enough.