I'm just about to cross the border into the hotspot. The sun is low in the sky; it's the longest I've survived in the loop so far, and the evening sky is painted in shades of blue and silver. It's oddly familiar — the closest thing to home so far.

I don't let myself feel homesick.

There's nothing particularly different about the area in front of me that I can tell. It's just more endless forest. But I trust the map more than I trust my senses, at this point, and so I reach for my skills.

I've had most of them besides Temporal Fragment turned off, just to let myself rest and recover. Now I activate them again, a loose breath escaping me as I feel the power echo through my body.

Mental Acceleration. Triplestep. Tough Body.

Not Firestep. Not yet. I don't feel like setting the forest on fire.

I briefly consider banking some of my points. I have a lot of Firmament credits at this point — enough to grab a Rank C skill, according to Ahkelios' chart. But another eight points will be enough to push me over the edge into the hundred-credit threshold, and I want to see what bonus I get for Firmament.

I'm in a similar situation for Speed and Reflex. I have enough points to break past the hundred-credit threshold, but I'm five points away from a guaranteed Rank C skill for Speed, and eighteen away for Reflex. I don't know exactly what kind of danger I'll be in yet, so...

I'll hold on to the points for now.

I step forward into the hotspot, and almost immediately, the wind picks up. I tense.

Color drains from the world. It starts with the sky, lilac purple physically draining away and leaking down into the trees like it's a two-dimensional canvas. Purple bleeds into vibrant orange, and then the orange trickles down the trunks of each tree, pooling onto the ground in thick, viscous puddles.

Everything is in grayscale. I stare at it for a moment, nonplussed, and glance at Ahkelios.

He's still glowing the light blue of Temporal Fragment, at least, though he seems just as stunned by the sight in front of us.

"I've never seen this before," he mutters.

"Maybe you just don't remember it?" I suggest.

"Maybe," he allows. "Be careful. Those are probably traps."

"Or monsters," I mutter. I take a quick step back, just to see if this is something I can escape; I need to know what my options are. I'm not at all surprised when my back hits a solid wall. I glance behind me to see a deep-red barrier that fades into invisibility as I step away from it.

"Can't get away from hotspots once you enter them?" I ask.

"Sometimes," Ahkelios confirms. He sounds vaguely embarrassed. "Sorry. I didn't remember that detail."

"Eh." I shrug. It's not like I was particularly intending to retreat, but this restricts the amount of space I can fight in.

I take a moment to observe the scene in front of me. Besides the strange puddles of mixed color on the ground, everything else about the forest seems normal. A quick Firestep leaves a trail of bright-orange fire behind me, licking at the leaves and burning them into ash.

I watch it for a moment, just to see if anything happens with the color. As the Firmament leaves and the Firestep becomes ordinary fire, the color drains out of it, oozing onto the ground in a tiny puddle.

I frown. "Only things with Firmament keep their color," I say out loud. "Is this supposed to be some kind of puzzle?"

"Keep going," Ahkelios advises. "There's usually something in the center of a Hotspot. We won't find anything at the edges here."

I shrug. I give the pools of color on the ground a wide berth — I might not know what they are, but it seems foolish to just touch them. I do find a long stick and poke at one of them with it, but all that really happens is that some of the goo comes off onto the stick.

"It's almost like paint," Ahkelios mutters to himself. "I wonder if I could use it to paint something..."

And that statement makes me realize that this particular Hotspot might have more to do with Ahkelios than I had initially thought. Just how closely are the Integrators watching?

The radius of this Hotspot is a large one. Even with Triplestep active, it takes a few minutes for me to start to approach the center — but I don't have to get all the way to the center. The source of the color drain becomes obvious once the trees begin to part. In the center of the clearing is what I can best describe as a massive, obsidian obelisk, absolutely radiating with Firmament.

"Any idea what that is?" I ask, and Ahkelios shrugs.

"Nope!"

Figures.

I watch the obelisk for a while, trying to determine if any part of it is a trap. The Firmament it's radiating isn't consistent — every five seconds or so, there's a near-solid pulse of it that's almost blinding to my senses, so much so that I take a physical step back the first time I see it.

It explains a lot about the clearing, at least. There's almost nothing in about a fifty-meter radius around it. I toss in a stick, just to see what happens, and when the Firmament washes over it...

There's nothing left.

Okay. Avoid the deadly wave of Firmament. Good to know.

I take note of everything I can, just in case I have to do this again. It's fourteen hours and twelve minutes after the start of the loop, according to the timeline tracker on the interface. I can't measure the exact distance from the obelisk, but I can take note of exactly where the dome of Firmament seems to end — there's a half-dissolved tree I can use as a marker. One branch in particular splits off and then immediately ends, the ends of the branches stained a dark black like they were burned by contact with the obelisk's Firmament.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I pause.

Something's strange about the Firmament inside the death-radius.

I narrow my eyes slightly, and try to tap into my senses just a little more. Firmament would be a little more obvious to me, normally, but the obelisk is emitting a level of it that's suffocating my ability to sense anything else in detail.

And yet... there it is. Right next to the obelisk, the faint sense of a pattern, Firmament distributing in branches out above the ground.

It's the herb the doctor was talking about. The Phantom Root. I'm almost certain.

I could try to dash in. The distance doesn't look impossible to cover using Triplestep, and Firestep on top of it should make it relatively safe; I can run in within thirty seconds and make contact with the obelisk. Just retrieving the Root won't be enough — there's that barrier around the Hotspot I need to think about.

But I don't know if the challenge is just to reach the obelisk in time, and I might be toast if I can't get back out of the radius before it explodes again. We'll chalk that particular idea up as 'let's do that if I have no other options'.

I'm not particularly eager to add 'roasted by pure Firmament' to the list of ways I've died.

There is one thing that I fail to notice at first, though.

There are no pools of color around the obelisk.

The absence of something is so much harder to spot than the presence of it. The grayscale world is uncomfortable to look at, but everything about Hestia is so alien that it's harder to pay attention to what should and shouldn't be there. There are some pools that exist just outside the radius of the obelisk, but they're not close enough for the Firmament to touch them.

At first.

The radius is increasing ever-so-slightly with every pulse. I notice it when a branch suddenly collapses, the joint eroded by the obelisk's Firmament — and that same pulse of Firmament marks the moment when the radius is large enough that to brush against one of those pools of liquid color.

In the same moment, Ahkelios stirs on my shoulder, suddenly frightened.

"Hide," he says, and I blink. I open my mouth to question him, but then think the better of it — if he's telling me to do something, he probably has a reason. I dart back into the trees and the foliage, hiding behind one of the tree trunks. It's not the best hiding spot, but it's the easiest one to get on short notice.

A moment later, I feel a presence. Two presences, really.

One of them emerges from the pool of color. The touch of Firmament stirs it up somehow, and the liquid rises, forming into a vaguely humanoid shape. I don't have time to look too closely at it, because a second presence quickly arrives, and that one is...

That one is familiar.

It's a crow. Not one I explicitly recognize, but somehow familiar, nevertheless. He is, rather notably, wingless; powerful-looking, and built with muscle, but if he's ever had wings then he's lost them.

I wonder if I should be sympathetic, but Ahkelios' fear makes me cautious instead.

"This Hotspot is an anomaly," the crow mutters, glancing around. He stands right in the clearing next to the obelisk, and doesn't seem to be bothered by those pulses of Firmament at all — it crashes against his feathers and bounces back, like the sheer solidity of his presence can't be affected by anything as meaningless as the ocean of power pouring out of that obelisk. "Come out, Trialgoer. I know you're there."

A moment passes, and then he adds: "Don't make me look for you."

The threat in his voice is hardly subtle, and I feel Ahkelios cowering against my shoulder. I reach out and dismiss the skill, allowing the Fragment to fade away with something like gratitude echoing down the bond; I'm not sure why Ahkelios reacted so strongly to this crow's presence, but now isn't the time for questions. I can always ask them later.

Then I step out from behind the tree.

"Ah, there you are," the crow says. He looks... bored, for lack of a better word. He gives me a slightly disgusted once-over, then shakes his head. "Really? You're the new Trialgoer? You're so... naked. Where are all your feathers?"

"I don't have any," I answer automatically. My mind is racing, trying to pinpoint who this crow is. He's nothing like the ones at the Cliffside, except he does look familiar, and it only takes me a moment to realize why.

He looks like Tarin.

A younger version of him, but still. I think back to how Tarin had been so cautious with his knowledge about the Interface, and I wonder if this is why.

"Whatever," the crow mutters, shaking his head. The liquid pool of color lets out a guttural sort of roar complete with a wet sort of burble, and charges towards the crow; he glances at it in irritation, then waves a hand at it.

I sense the rapid movement of Firmament, but I don't see what happens to the liquid monster. It's just... gone.

"So!" The crow puts his hands on his hips and stares at me. "You want to tell me how you activated this Hotspot? This shouldn't be here."

"What are you talking about?" I ask. "Who are you?"

The crow sighs. "Making this more troublesome than it needs to be," he mutters, half to himself. I don't like or trust him, partly because Ahkelios doesn't, and partly because of the way he's talking. He looks so much like Tarin that I want to, but that's not a good enough reason to trust him.

Well, the other reason is that Tarin didn't mention him, so I automatically think he's probably an asshole.

"My name is Naru," he tells me plainly. "I am the seventh successful Trialgoer in Hestia, performing basic maintenance for the Integrators. This Hotspot was used in the fifty-seventh Trial, and should not be here. You have done something to the Interface, and I would like to know what, so I can report back. If you make this take longer than it needs to, it will be very unpleasant for you."

I stare at him for a moment, speechless.

He's working with the Integrators.

That much was fairly obvious, I suppose, but he's just so... casual about it. Like there's nothing wrong with it.

"Do you know Tarin?" The words leave my mouth before I think them through, and he freezes.

That's about the moment I realize I've made a mistake. His voice turns low, dangerous.

"What do you know about him?"

"He helped me in the Trials." I should be afraid. Every part of me knows I should be afraid. Naru is beyond me the same way the Interface is — a whole magnitude of scale beyond anything I can reach right now.

But those are the key words, aren't they? Right now. As long as he can't do anything permanent to me... and that's a dangerous assumption to make, so I'm not making that assumption. I probably shouldn't antagonize him.

"Of course he did." Naru rolls his eyes, and the danger fades away from him. It's like he was only worried that I knew too much about him — he doesn't care that I know Tarin personally. "Sentimental old fool. Sometimes I wonder how he's my father."

"He's in a coma," I snap, my words sharp and angry, and he gives me a bored, confused sort of look.

"And?"

Okay. Remember that part just now where I said I shouldn't antagonize him? I've changed my mind.

Crystallized Strength. Firestep. Barrier. Firmament Manipulation.

The last step is improvised. If there's anything I've learned about the loops, it's that anything that happens to your Firmament seems to carry over between loops. It's been true for me, and it's been true for Tarin.

And then I punch Naru in the face, forcing as much Firmament as I can directly into his stupid bird brain.