The conduit lanced out past the edge of reality, where it was bolstered by Nym inside the first layer. It leapt ahead, through each consecutive layer, guided by the parts of himself that existed there, all the way through the fifth layer until it plunged into that mirrored surface far past the horizon, at the very ends of mortal existence.

The conduit struck that final membrane, and something struck back. Rather than give way to his conduit, or firmly rebuff it like other membranes had, this one invaded it. It seeped inside like it was arcana itself, and Nym felt an instinctive urge to recoil. He suppressed that and pushed forward.

The membrane felt cold and slimy, like he was sinking into a pit of mud that seeped into everything. That was strange enough by itself, since no other membrane had ever given any feedback like this, but the fact that it felt alive as it wiggled against him triggered some sort of primitive drive in his brain to break contact. Again, he resisted the urge.

Then he was through. His conduit surged out into an empty space past the membrane, a space with no arcana at all. Nym had only a bare instant to realize that whatever was on the other side of that membrane wasn’t a new layer of reality before his conduit started to crumble and break.

Then the membrane shot down the conduit and grabbed Nym by his soul well. It jerked him out of reality and dragged him along the path of his conduit until he crashed into the membrane. So far, nothing was outside of what he’d expected. This was the point where the books got a lot less clear about what was going to happen.

Once he was through the membrane, he needed to survive and reach the sixth layer, but everyone who’d ever managed it had described a different experience. No one had been able to find common threads or any way to predict what kind of challenges the next person to make the attempt would face. He was going in blind.

Nym dove through the membrane and broke out into the other side, where he found nothing waiting except an immense, empty blackness. Pain wracked his body and he watched in horror as it started to break apart into nothingness. In a matter of moments, his physical form was reduced to dust, or less.

But Nym was more than just his body now. He existed in five other realities, and those parts still housed his consciousness. He wouldn’t die from this, but unless he figured out how to cross the endless abyss of darkness beyond the fifth membrane, he would never be able to return to the core reality.

His conduit hung open behind where he used to be, still connected to his insubstantial being. Its ends were frayed and cracked, and didn’t exist beyond the membrane, but the hole was open. As long as he didn’t let it close, he had some sort of presence in the void. He drifted, nothing more than a ghost propelled by desire and intent.

The void pushed back against him, tried to hold him down and tie him in place. Nym fought against it, but it was an insubstantial thing, an opposing effort of will rather than a physical restraint. He didn’t even have a body to be trapped now, but his mind couldn’t will the nothingness he’d become forward.

So he reached back into his conduit, and pulled the part of him that existed in the fifth layer forward. Arcana flooded into the void and the world appeared around him. It was a small, faded copy of that reality, maybe a thousand feet across, but it was something that wasn’t darkness and emptiness. His body formed, exactly as the part of him that used to be an echo remembered it.

As soon as the illusory world appeared around him, it started to break. Nym was racing against an invisible clock, and he had at most fifteen or twenty seconds to act. Arcana rushed through his conduit into the bubble of reality he’d formed around him, and every single parallel process in his mind grabbed hold of it to fuel the spells he shaped.

First came the reinforcements, bulwarks against the void that stopped it from encroaching further. Then came the repairs, spell after spell designed to impose his version of reality on the nothingness. Every crack in reality was filled, every rupture and ripple smoothed over. Only once it was stable and holding did Nym allow himself a moment to think instead of just reacting.

He’d built himself a little bubble, a reflection of the fifth layer of reality, but other than the fact that he could wiggle his fingers and toes again, he wasn’t sure how it helped him. It didn’t help that in this form, he was feeling the full, undiluted personality of his echo. It drove him towards an aggressive course of action, which wasn’t necessarily the correct one. It also made him concerned that if he made a similar bubble with his fourth layer echo in the center, that he’d be trapped inside his own mind, doing nothing for an eternity.

“Okay, what does this get me?” he asked himself. “Other than an extra thousand feet for my conduit.”

If nothing else, it gave him a body to exist in. It wouldn’t last long though. Despite everything he’d done, he could feel the void still eating away at the bubble. The spells he’d cast weren’t designed to hold something like this back, and he couldn’t just beat the darkness back forever. Even if he could, it didn’t accomplish anything. He had to find some way to keep pushing forward, and he had to find some way to escape the void.

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There was no going back, if only because there was nothing to go back to. Going forward was the only way out, and that meant that first and foremost, he needed to figure out where he was even going. He couldn’t see anything but blackness from his fifth layer reality bubble, so Nym gathered up as much arcana as he could, and he cast himself out of safety.

The body was left behind, still a part of him but no longer the primary part, and the arcana was drawn onwards with him. Once again disembodied, he drifted forward until the pressure of the void pulled him to a stop. Then he expelled the arcana from his soul well and formed a new reality around him. This one was modelled off fourth layer arcana, and was in many ways harder to create.

In reality prime, there was little reason to channel fourth layer arcana. It was mostly an obstacle, and ill-suited for use in the core reality. Here, it was the opposite. The fourth layer was almost extra-real, so dense and thick that the void had trouble eating it. It floated there, a sphere barely large enough for him to exist in, and held back the darkness just by its nature.

Nym manifested inside the sphere, now in the shape of his fourth echo. He smiled softly and peered out into the void. There, so far away now that it looked like nothing more than a marble, was the replica of the fifth layer he’d created. Nym wasn’t sure if he’d just gone much farther than he expected, or if he was drifting on invisible currents, or if it was simply a quirk of traditional three-dimensional space not existing here.

He took some time to just reflect on what he’d learned, on how he’d gotten to this point in his life. There was time for that, here. Perhaps there was less than he’d like, but still, some. The void wouldn’t crack this sanctuary any time soon, but as Nym gazed out into it, he saw that his previous sanctuary was not quite so sturdy.

So Nym built a new conduit to it, one that shared the bedrock stability of his own space and stopped the fifth reality bubble from breaking down. It was a slow process, but one that he worked towards diligently and with great care. By the time he finished, both bubbles were capable of withstanding the ravages of the void.

And then it was time to move on, so once again Nym cast himself out into the darkness. His goal was no closer than ever, but he was determined to try again, as many times as it took. With him was another soul well, this one full of arcana from the Astral Sea.

The void stopped him again, and again he built himself a new shelter. Unlike the fifth reality’s sanctuary, which was huge and aggressively fought the void, or the fourth reality with its unshakable core of strength, this new one was wild. It twitched and spun and broke off tendrils of void that tried to slip in and form new cracks. The void simply couldn’t grasp hold of the squirming sliver of reality.

Here, Nym finally caught a glimpse of purpose. He had been throwing himself forward, almost mindlessly, looking for some clue to help guide him. Now he was starting to see the shape of things. His echoes had all been exaggerated reflections of himself, individual pieces of the whole. They were the foundation he would use to rebuild himself, and the new Nym would be strong enough to withstand the void.

No single piece would succeed on its own. Yes, the slice of fourth layer would probably last until the end of time, but it would never do anything. The fifth layer had the drive to overcome obstacles, but lacked the direction to find them. And here in this bubble of third layer arcana, Nym found that insatiable part of himself that was constantly searching for the next horizon, the next new idea.

Once he’d solidified it and connected it to the other two pieces of reality he’d forged, Nym repeated the process again to make a second layer bubble. That one was easy to understand. It was the same as always: purpose. Second layer Nym had a reason to exist, people to protect. He tied the other bubbles together and gave them a shove. He told them which way they needed to go. The four of them worked together, each piece contributing.

There was still one piece missing, of course. He had purpose now, combined with the knowledge and drive to go about fulfilling it, and the bedrock certainty that he could endure no matter how hard it got. What was missing was harder to define. That first layer version was the closest to Nym, the closest to the real world. It lacked the exaggerated personalities of the other echoes.

But Nym built it anyway, out of a sense of symmetry if nothing else. Once he did, it was obvious why it existed. That last little bubble was the key. It led everything else back to Nym, collected it all together, and opened up the gate that he hadn’t even realized existed.

All five realities merged together, one over top the other over top the next, and then his conduit, that one thin lifeline still holding a piece of him anchored to the core reality, burst through and shattered the void. Nym snapped back to himself, all of himself in every dimension, and pushed through until the conduit burst out of the nothingness and into the sixth layer.

It was a world of paradox, gloriously complex while being reduced to a single, pure point, like being swept up in the mind of a god. All was one, and inside the sixth layer, linear time lost its meaning. It was no wonder ascendants considered themselves immortal. Nym experienced so much of everything all at once, his entire life summed up in an instant, and a thousand-thousand spiraling possibilities in every direction, new instants that might never happen except if he chose to turn to those paths.

Nym could get lost forever in what-ifs and maybe futures. He could see every ripple that would echo out from the part of him that existed in the past if he but willed it to move slightly differently. It was overwhelming, and he knew he had to narrow his focus. Nym picked a new future to follow, one in which he once again walked in a mortal body in the core reality.

Just like that, he blinked, and he was standing at the frozen edge of the world, an endless sea stretched out before him, and cold water washing over his feet. Not one single second had passed him by.