Sera was putting her utmost effort into keeping calm. Panic was a dangerous emotion to rely on in most situations, and the spontaneous disappearance of an Otherworlder was no exception. It was at times like this that Sera fell back to her training to dampen her emotions, to allow her to focus on the task at hand without overreacting, but it was proving to be quite difficult.

It wasn’t that Jamie’s disappearance was a more stressful event than what she was used to, but more that she just realised that she couldn’t recall a time where she’d ever had any training. She tried her best to recall any memories of what sort of training she went through to become a Mediator, but she couldn’t recall what she had done, or who she had been taught by.

A small part of her wanted to believe that she was just being forgetful, but she knew it would be foolish to even consider the possibility.

“Stoney. Tenna,” she said, turning to each of them. “I’m sorry, but I need to verify a few theories I have. I’m going to have to kill you a few more times.”

Tenna flinched at the claim, and his fingers twitched for his belt in response, but he stopped himself before he could do anything. Stoney simply frowned and nodded.

“Do what you feel is necessary,” he said. “Do you need Marten as well?”

Though more data points would’ve been better, Sera wasn’t willing to waste the precious seconds trying to talk to the stubborn man.

“The two of you will do fine for now,” she said. “What was the name of your trainer when you first started to learn to be a Mediator?”

Though Tenna seemed confused by the question, Stoney’s eyes narrowed and both of the other Mediators died on their feet. Sera grimaced, but when life returned to their eyes a few seconds later, Sera asked another question.

“When was your last mission?”

“How many missions have you been on since joining the Mediators?”

“How many years did it take for you to be promoted to a Grunt?”

“How much do you get paid?”

“How do you get paid? What currency?”

“Do you have any friends or family outside of the Mediators?”

Sera didn’t bother keeping count of how many times she indirectly murdered her two peers with her questions. In between each question, with the Mediators taking a couple of seconds to come back to life after each time they died, Sera began to get more and more uncomfortable with each question.

She didn’t know whether it was because each death made it harder and harder to deny the possibility that her life was built on lies, or if it was because she wasn’t as comfortable with death as she originally assumed. How many times had she actually seen someone die?

“Why did you become a Mediator?” she asked.

“An Otherworlder destroyed my tribe,” Stoney said.

“An Otherworlder killed my parents,” Tenna added. “I wanted revenge.”

Sera paused, unable to hide the grimace from appearing on her face. She didn’t know whether to be glad or upset by the fact that her peers hadn’t died in front of her again. The fact that Stoney and Tenna were able to speak of their memories matched her own ability to remember the death of her own family, but she still failed to remember their names and faces.

“What were their names?” she asked. “Of your family, that is.”

Though Stoney’s expression turned cloudy, before the blankness of death took over. Immediately, Sera felt a sharp pang of pain in her chest. She didn’t know whether it was appropriate to mourn a family that might never have existed in the first place, but she chose to believe that she had once had one, and that some unknown power had ripped her away from them, and them away from her memories, preferring that to the alternative.

When Stoney and Tenna returned to life, something in Sera’s expression must’ve given her thoughts away, or they must have come to their own conclusions, because their expressions remained dour, refusing to return to the impassive mask that the Mediators usually wore.

“Fuck!” Tenna shouted, before stomping away, out of the basement.

Neither Sera nor Stoney moved to stop him. Stoney simply stared at Sera with a frown on his face, unmoving, until Tenna’s footsteps faded far away.

“Are we even real?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Sera responded.

“I know you don’t,” Stoney replied, with an uncharacteristic sigh. “Just thinking out loud.”

Sera considered giving the moment an appropriate amount of respectful silence, but she suddenly felt afraid of the idea. After being alone in a room with two dead men, on and off, for the past few minutes, she felt the irrational worry that if she was the one to let it fall into silence, she would be the one to die this time. The rational Mediator side of her told her to ignore the thought, but she didn’t have much trust in that part of her at the moment.

“There are some strange inconsistencies I noticed,” she said, possibly a little too quickly.

“And what would those be?” Stoney replied, just as quickly. Sera wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.

“Neither you or Tenna could answer how you get paid, and neither can I. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything, so it matches up, but Marten has a severe gambling addiction. How can he gamble without money?”

“Most people with gambling addictions don’t have money,” Stoney replied. “It’s a common symptom.”

“Marten’s not indebted to loan sharks,” Sera replied. “He thinks he has money. I do too, despite any evidence towards the contrary, and I assume you do too. I just can’t recall exactly how much I have, just the vague idea that I have a king’s salary, whatever that means.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“But he has been gambling,” Stoney said. “With non-existent money. Money that is vaguely enough to fill a king’s wallet.”

Stoney’s mouth lips pulled down into a sharp frown as he died for a few seconds. She wondered what he had tried to remember that caused his death. She couldn’t imagine how horrifying it was for Stoney to not be able to trust in his own mind, to know that a single errant thought could potentially kill him, even if it was painless and temporary. A moment later Stoney came back to life, his expression betraying nothing.

“Marten is rich,” he said. “We all are. Marten isn’t the only one of us who spends his wealth. How does the world function when so much of its economy is based on money that isn’t real?” He looked up at Sera. “Does Astranta even have a king?”

“Yes,” Sera said, as fast as she could, if only to let Stoney know that he wasn’t about to kill himself by trying to remember him. “King Arman the Fifteenth. I can remember the rest of the world leaders too.”

“That’s surprising to hear,” Stoney said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because,” he said, hesitating a bit before continuing. “I can’t think of a single thing that any government in the world has done for the past two thousand years, good or bad.”

It took Sera a moment to process the implications of what that meant.

“How much of our world is actually real?” she asked.

Even though she hadn’t meant for it to be a question for Stoney, he gave her a response in the form of a grimace.

“What should we do?” he asked.

“You think we can do something about this?” Sera asked back.

“No,” he said. “But as Mediators, it’s our duty to try everything we can. Our job description just got a little more difficult, but we’re used to dealing with world-ending threats.”

“But we aren’t,” Sera said. “Those memories aren’t real.”

“They might not be. But I still have my pride.”

“That pride might not be real either.”

“It feels real to me,” Stoney said. “I might not even be real, so I’ll take what I can get at this point.”

With nothing she could say to argue against that, Sera sighed.

“You have a plan?”

“Maybe. What do you think of consulting the Founder?”

Sera frowned. She had forgotten about the Founder up until that point, but with so little to remember about the man, it wasn’t too surprising that she had. She tried to recall anything she could about him, but other than the fact that he was male, and that he was supposedly an elf that had founded the Mediators, she could remember nothing. Though she had a vague feeling that he was real, and not some figment of her imagination despite having no memory of ever seeing him in person, the lack of certainty that she had surprised her.

Why was she allowed to doubt the Founder’s existence, just as much as she didn’t? Why could she be so certain that he was male, but not that he was an elf? Though she had no ideas as to who or what had tampered with her mind so thoroughly, it was powerful enough that such a strange inconsistency stood out to her. She didn’t know what it meant yet, but it was clear that the Founder couldn’t be trusted.

“That’s a terrible idea,” Sera said.

“You don’t trust the Founder?” Stoney asked, sounding more surprised than she would’ve expected.

“No,” she said. “Not in the slightest.”

“That’s… concerning. I can’t possibly fathom why you would ever say that. Every part of me is screaming at me to disagree with you, and the only reason why I’m not is because I can’t think of a single reason why you should trust him.” Stoney frowned. “Not that you shouldn’t. Some things simply transcend logic.”

Sera frowned. If there was any doubt that consulting the Founder was a bad idea before, it was gone now.

“If I continue to voice my mistrust against the Founder, will you attack me for it?” Sera asked, resting her hand on the knife on her belt.

“I likely wouldn’t,” Stoney said, though he hesitated slightly. “But you should stop talking about him, just to be safe. Do you have any other ideas outside of consulting the Founder? Even if we have the obvious solution to all of our problems, we have a responsibility to consider all angles, no matter how absurd they may seem.”

Though Stoney’s face was twisted into a nearly violent grimace, Sera wasn’t sure if it was because pushing against his ingrained loyalty to the Founder was actually hurting him in some way.

“We consult with Jamie,” she said.

“Why?” Stoney asked. “Aside from the fact that he’s obviously a worse choice compared to the Founder, why do you trust him at all?”

“You sound like Marten.”

“And he did have a point. You seem to be implying that I’m being manipulated into putting any amount of trust in the Founder, but as ridiculous as the idea is, you don’t seem to be suspicious of Jamie doing the same thing. You may think the boy has our best intentions at heart, but how can you be sure you actually trust him, or if that’s just what he wants you to think?”

Sera grimaced, though perhaps not for the reason that Stoney might’ve expected.

“Do you trust Jamie?” she asked, before answering the question herself.

“No,” he said. “While he seems like a likeable kid, I also don’t know anything about him. I can’t, in good faith, trust him with a problem of this magnitude.”

Sera nodded. “And that’s why I suspect he’s not manipulating my mind. Because aside from the fact that I don’t think he’s likeable in any way, I agree with you.

“Ah. I see,” Stoney said. “And that makes him the better choice?”

“It makes him the only choice,” Sera said.

“Aside from the Founder,” Stoney replied.

“Of course.”

Stoney didn’t offer a response, grimacing at Sera’s lie. She watched him go through an obvious internal struggle, but he seemed to manage to either convince himself that she hadn’t been lying, or that it wasn’t worth berating her about not putting her full trust in the Founder.

A few seconds passed before Stoney clicked his tongue and his lips formed an angry scowl.

“I figured out what’s been bothering me about Jamie’s name,” he said. “He’s the only Otherworlder that has one.”

It took Sera a moment to figure out what Stoney was talking about, but when she quickly tried to recall the other Otherworlders that she knew about, all she could recall were their monikers. The Plague King. The Harem Lord. The Breaker. They were vague concepts that floated on the edges of her mind, which made them feel more real than most of her memories, but they were still too incomplete to be true.

Sera let out a sigh. She didn’t know what this actually meant for them, but at this point, one more apocalyptic discovery wasn’t her greatest concern.

“We should try to find Jamie,” she said, rubbing her temple. “Hopefully, once we find him, some of this shit will start to make more sense.”

She knew that the hope of that happening was feeble, but Stoney simply nodded. She didn’t know if his mind was wired in a way that made it impossible to focus on his missing memories without dying, or if he was simply clinging onto what hope he could.

“How do you suggest we try to do that?” he asked.

Sera frowned. “Standard search procedures,” she said. “We’ll just have to hope he hasn’t gone far.”

“I’ll gather the team, assuming they haven’t already defected,” Stoney said. “Start the search first. We’ll follow your lead.”

Sera nodded. She turned around and immediately ran up the stairs and out of the house, passing by Marten who scowled at her from the dining table. She ignored him as she ran outside.

Feeling more lost than she had ever been in her life, she chose a direction and started running, summoning her mana to enhance her speed and her eyesight.

As her eyes darted around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Jamie’s familiar form, she tried not to think about how easy it was for her to return to a state of general calm, despite everything that she’d discovered. She tried not to focus on how unnatural it was, for a young girl like her to be able to be so clinical and unfeeling, when most people in her situation would be having a mental breakdown at this point.

Though she kept most of her focus on searching for Jamie, a part of her wondered what she would’ve been like if she were a normal girl.