Nic’s leg regenerated underneath him as he walked. The palace of the sand devils was a bleak, utilitarian place, the walls carved from blank stone and smoothed until they shone like a walkway of black mirrors. He watched himself crawl, then stumble, then stand, a series of reflections like the progress of man out of the dark prehistoric oceans.

He was flanked by Ascended devils. The normal, new-hatched ones were no longer any threat to Nic, but if he had to guess, these would be the best of them. The ones who’d acquired good Shards by hunting and had grown strong.

They might be able to hold him, all eight of them at once.

But he was more concerned by where he was going. By the growing, screaming sense of threat echoing down the tunnels, coming from whatever lay ahead.

They entered into what was unmistakably a throne room. A massive chair built into a column reaching up towards the ceiling sat at the head of a long flight of shallow stairs. Other columns stood along the edges of the room, creating shadowed spaces at the edges.

There were ghosts here.

The spirits of Heretics stared at him from the shadows, their forms blurred and distorted.

The woman on the throne was a ghost as well. She had pale, green-mist skin, and long flowing black hair. Her hands extended into claws, and her glass-green figure was pale and nude, cloaked only by the vague fog that hung around her body.

But what stood out to Nic was the golden half-mask she wore. It was the mask of an angel, although only partially complete.

Threaded through her green body was a skeletal system of gold and brass, with ticking gears and flowing rivers of light, a machine built around a soul…

“You are Nicolas Winterhome?” She asked.

“Yep.” Nic spat, as the elven sand devil glared at him.

“Unusual for one of the System’s beasts to reach so far. Not unheard of, but, impressive…” Her fingers tapped at the edge of the throne. Like her hair, they were ink black at the edges. “I am Seoona. You knew my daughter?”

“You…” Something clicked. “You mean Sula?”

“Yes…” She smiled, dimly, like a very old woman remembering some distant summer. “Yes, Sula. You know, I was on the verge of forgetting her name…”

She gestured to the mask.

“I nearly lost everything I was.”

“Definitely feeling that, right now.” Nic coughed. “So, what? I freed you. Me and Sula, together. Any chance that means we’re not enemies.”

“You killed her.” The unadorned half of the woman’s face grimaced, teeth showing beneath her dark lips. “And yes, you freed me. The life of my daughter. My eternal soul…”

“What is owed, on both accounts?”

“What does a queen owe to the world? Justice? Or simply fear of her wrath?”

Oh boy… Nic sighed.

When Sula talked about her mother, she left out the delusions of grandeur and the psychotic rage. Or maybe those were new? Maybe Sula, after so long, would have barely recognized her mother within this warped creature…

“You have no patience for grandeur, I see. But I’ve learned that it’s everything. The dignity to hold your head up high. The ability to cast one’s own shadow over the earth, to speak one’s own name and hear it echoed with respect…” She rose from her throne. “These are things the torturers will try to take from us. That is why they matter.”

“Yeah, you’re not exactly talking to the System’s biggest fan here. And for the record, Sula was already dying. I just…” He grimaced. “Helped her pull the trigger on one hell of a going away present.” And if she had survived?

Nic didn’t know.

Probably, he would’ve still had to kill her. In a way, it was a mercy it went down like it had.

They had gone out a note of understanding, if not friendship.

“Yes, you let the nuclear fire out of is cage.”

“Gonna be honest…” Nic just shrugged. “I didn’t have a clue what it’d do.”

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“Nobody did, I imagine. Even the System seemed to be blindsided by the fury unleashed; there are planets that follow the way of technology, the cold circuit and the thinking machine, but none I know of that pursued it to a such a terrible and consuming end. These humans, they have much to be proud of.”

She was talking.

Nic liked talking.

Talking meant she was getting used to having him around, letting down her guard…

Giving him chances to turn this around.

“Y’know what’s funny?” Nic said. “They might be the softest people I’ve ever met. None of them prepared, not really, for what the System is. But somehow they made the only weapon I’ve ever seen that could make the System blink.”

“A paradox.” She agreed. “I look forward to ruling this planet. I will be kinder, I promise you, than the System. There will be peace under my reign. Peace through submission, but peace.”

“Okay okay…” The problem with talking, of course, was that Nic had a smart mouth. “Are you seeing where, from where I’m kneeling, that’s a bit of a hard sell?”

She smiled viciously. “I see. But do you understand, poor thing, what will happen to this planet if I don’t intervene? The ruin and hollowing-out. The slow draining of resources. The System will take a few chosen children and leave behind a husk, drained-dry to allow for those lucky few to ascend… This has happened before, a million times…”

“Yep.” Nic said bluntly. “But the way I’m looking at things, it seems like you just want to make yourself one of those lucky few.”

“I want to flay you alive for what you did to my daughter, and take the runes from your skin.” She replied in a venomous spit. “Do not ask me what I want. This is about what must happen.” Stepping down the stairs, she looked at him.

“I have a chance…”

“Thin, but a chance…”

“To break away from the System.”

Nic tilted his head. “Y’know what? Go on. I’m listening.”

“It’s not impossible. There are worlds beyond System control. Beautiful worlds, with their own methods of cultivation. The Shards you possess… The evolutions you undergo in the Bloodline Sea... These are not native to the System itself, but remnants, all that is remembered of other cultures the System consumed.”

“Wait…” Nic paused, thinking.

It was…

Sickening, in a way, to think he’d lived all his life without knowing this. But it made sense. Shards and evolutions each had their own logic, their own rules…

They were part of the System, but not native to it…

“Yes.” She smiled. “Now you understand. The System isn’t just consuming worlds. It is consuming the nature of cultivation. But take hope. Here is the truth…”

She raised her hand and a map appeared. It was a map full of stars, some marked brightly, others dull and grayed-out. The map spun and expanded outwards, into a galaxy-spiral. And further out. Until that one galaxy was just the arm of a greater cluster of spiral starfields, and the sky was so bright with specks of starmatter that it was one great glowing whole– and even that, Nic suspected, was not all.

“The System is still tiny.”

“It occupies less than a whole galactic arm. The space it does not control dwarfs it as an ocean of salt drowns a single drop of blood.”

“What you are seeing is the Bone-Titan Wildlands, our known territory. To say this map alone could make a Heretic of its possessor is an understatement. The System despises letting anyone know there is even an outside to escape to. Enemies to ally with. Other powers that fight against it…”

“So…” Nic was fumbling at the new information, trying to fit it into place. “You don’t have to beat the System. You just have to find a way out, find someone else to shelter you…”

“Where is Earth?”

She smiled slowly, and the map spun in.

A lonely world.

And it stood at the very edge of a glowing, dark-red line that Nic knew, with sudden hope, was the edge of all his troubles. The point where all the suffering he’d experienced, the burdens heaped upon him, would cease to matter.

Earth was no more than a cosmic inch from the edge of the System. Only three solar systems stood between it and the border.

“You see it now. Happenstance has placed us on the edge of escape- the very outer fringe of the System’s expansion. The powers beyond are threatened. They know the System encroaches and are building their defenses for a great clash…”

“A traitorous faction would only need to send them a message. To create a beacon. Something that can send ripples through the nature of that thing all pathways to cultivation share, the Dao…”

“Nuclear fire.” Nic breathed.

“Yes. Enough to destroy a smaller planet. I dislike the red one in the sky- that would make a fine pyre with which to draw the eye of the foreign powers.”

“Admit it.”

“The scope of the plan appeals to you. The fact that you finally, now and perhaps never again, have a chance to escape this System that so despises you…”

“We do not have to fight. I will allow you to join my army, despite your crimes. In truth I cannot afford to throw you away.”

Nic was silent for a long moment. His mind was racing. She was right.

She was right and he was still going to say no.

Because he was a stubborn, useless, spiteful fuck, and because he knew he couldn’t trust her not to slaughter half the planet to make good on her own escape. Even if they never clashed, it would mean watching as she took countless lives…

Blew up a damn planet…

Did every evil thing it took.

He looked up. “I want to say yes. But it’s hard. Can I have more time to think?”

She nodded shortly, and gestured to the guard. “Take him back to the prison. Give him a day to make up his mind.”

Nic’s eyes were fixed on her hand. On the small token of gold in the shape of a lily that had projected the map.

That.

That was the key to salvation.

That was escape from the System, if only he could seize it.