Jace awoke abruptly. He sat upright, struck his forehead on the back of the bunk above, then rolled out of the bed and fell to his hands and knees. His body was exhausted, and his limbs barely responded to any mental commands. A burning heat filled his chest. Golden sparks fell out of the air and raced towards him. They swirled around his chest and soaked into his skin.

A golden sheet swirled into existence in front of him.

[Quest complete: Kill ten (10) darklings. Reward claimed: 25 Standard Aes Units. DESTINED quests available].

It remained for a few seconds until the last dregs of dust (what wasn’t used in the sheet) dribbled into his chest.

The sheet disappeared for a few seconds, and Jace thought he might have been safe. Then a new one appeared: [Subquest Available: Investigate darkling sightings. Reward: 25 Standard Aes Units.]

“Uh…accept?” Better to accept it and claim the reward than to just let it simmer away uselessly in the back of his mind.

Them the sheet shifted and blazed with a brighter light. It displayed: [DESTINED Quest available: Kill Elder Stenol. Reward: One hundred and fifty (150) Standard Aes Units].

Jace stared at the quest for a second, blinking. “Kill…” he breathed.

Kinfild hauled him upright. “Are you alright? What is the new quest?”

As Jace stood up, the sheet followed him. Stenol was Kinfild’s old mentor, and the Split wanted Jace to kill him? “It’s…telling me to kill Elder Stenol.”

Kinfild’s eyes widened. “It must be a mistake. Accept the quest so it disappears, but do not act on it until we know more.”

Jace nodded slowly, then whispered, “Accept.” He lowered his arms, trying to process what had happened, and to let the adrenaline out of his body.

The cut on the back of his was still there, and still bleeding. Thankfully, none had gotten on his clothes. Then, he rubbed his nose. A trickle of blood ran down onto his lips, and he tasted whispers of iron in his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. It didn’t feel like his nose was broken, just battered. “I’m alright otherwise.”

“What happened in the vault?” Kinfild interrogated.

Jace scowled, then answered Kinfild’s question. “I fought some…vratghouls. I killed them. I killed the larger one, too, and—” He paused, then shook his head. “Then I got sent back here. I woke up.”

Lessa shrugged. “That about sums it up.”

“What are the vratghouls?” Jace asked.

“They’re evolved darklings,” Kinfild provided. “We don’t know exactly what causes darklings to form, but many planets and star systems had distinct races of them. Orcs used to be the most populous class of darklings, but now, most have disappeared.”

Jace nodded slowly, trying to process the information.

Not just zombified animals, then. That’d be too simple. Too easy.

He set his hands on the table, where the medpack still rested. “I better get my hand fixed up before I ruin these clothes.”

His new garments should have been covered in mud and at least the dusty remains of the vratghouls, or at least black blood, but there was nothing. Not even a smear.

Can’t bring anything back that I didn’t have before. Noted.

They walked back over to the table. Jace opened up the medpack, then retrieved a roll of plain white bandages. It wasn’t a deep cut, and it wouldn’t require more attention than that.

While Jace bandaged his hand, Kinfild pulled out a marble-sized blue sphere from the medpack and shook it, then held it against the bridge of Jace’s nose. It was ice-cold. Once Jace was done wrapping his hand, Kinfild let him take hold of the sphere.

Jace and Lessa both sat down on the benches. Kinfild marched into the engine room for a moment, and he grabbed a tray with steaming bowls of soup. It was a pale orange, and mysterious chunks of meat floated in it, but Jace was hungry enough to eat anything.

Kinfild set the tray down, and said, “While you were in the Vault, I had Aur-Six make us dinner. Carratoe stew with brakko…chunks.”

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They each took a bowl and a silver spoon from the tray. Jace lifted up a spoonful with his free hand. It was as bland as it looked, and textureless, too.

“Soooo…” Lessa began. “Foundation, huh? How does that work?”

“There are two phases of the Foundation stage,” Kinfild said. “The first, which Jace is progressing through, is simply a stage of gathering Aes. Then, he will advance into the pillar-formation phase, where he will begin to construct Foundation pillars. The more pillars he forms, the more technique cards he’ll be able to carry inside at once.”

“How many will I be able to hold?” Jace asked.

“There’s no limit to your foundation strength,” Kinfild replied. “As you form more pillars, you will push yourself closer to advancing to the Soul Circle Opening phase. After a certain point, you won’t be able to contain it, and your core will advance whether you want it or not.”

Jace raised his eyebrows. “Not certain?”

“I’m not, no. I have only been a member of the Crimson Table Sect for a decade and a bit. Every detail about your training hasn’t been committed to memory.” Kinfild shut his eyes, then rubbed his forehead. “Elder Stenol will be able to tell us what we need. He is the oldest and most experienced Wielder in the sect.”

And we’re supposed to kill him.

Jace shovelled a spoonful of soup into his mouth as soon as Kinfild was done speaking—that way, he wouldn’t be expected to reply.

But after that, they ate in silence. No matter how bland the meal was, Jace made sure to scrap his bowl clean; he didn’t know when they’d eat next (they had missed breakfast and lunch today) and he wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Once they were all finished, they set the bowls down. Kinfild took the tray away.

“So, you must have gotten a bit of a reward for that, right?” Lessa asked.

Jace stared at her. She couldn’t have meant for eating the soup, right?

“For completing the Vault?” she clarified.

“Uh, yeah.” A puff of golden light had surged into his chest as soon as he had woken up, and the heat had been intense. It had to have been worth something. He willed the sheet of golden light into existence.

First, alerts bombarded him. More unassigned attribute shards, of course. When the full sheet appeared, not much had changed, except now, it listed his advancement progress as twenty-two percent.

But Jace had more questions, and he couldn’t just let them sit. “So there have been worldjumpers before me, right? Where are they?”

Kinfild gulped. “Yes…yes, before I joined the Crimson Table, the Split summoned four other worldjumpers to this galaxy. All former soldiers, like you, and all from your world. They all…disappeared.”

“Former soldiers? I’m…not a soldier.”

Kinfild’s eyes widened and he swallowed. “That isn’t good. Not good at all. Of course such an unconventional target would have…core issues.”

Gnawing on his own lip, Jace leaned back on the bench. It would also explain the ‘Number Five’ written at the top of the status sheet. He pushed his gaze lower down the sheet, where the technique card was listed. “When do I get more cards?”

“When you find one compatible with your core type,” Kinfild said. “I don’t have a library of technique cards, and you can’t take the Wrath’s hypercore activation card.”

“We’re probably going to have to make one for you,” Lessa said, leaning forward. “Hyperspace cards aren’t exactly common.”

The Luna Wrath shuddered and rattled, and a faint beeping noise blared out from the cockpit. Kinfild scrubbed the concern from his face and stood up. “We’re almost there. Buckle down.”

Jace dropped the cold sphere back into the medpack and leapt to his feet, then ran with Kinfild and Lessa to the cockpit. He strapped himself into the copilot’s seat.

Kinfild pulled a lever on the control array, then adjusted the engine speed. The light of hyperspace rolled off the viewscreen in waves.

This time, they had arrived much closer to a planet—so close that it filled the viewscreen almost entirely. They approached the dark side of the world, but that wasn’t saying much. Rigid lines of city-light ran across the planet’s surface parallel to each other, illuminating massive patches of white marble buildings and corroded copper roofs.

“That was close,” said Kinfild. “One day, I’ll install an automatic decelerator, but…I might have to sell a few alchemical ingredients and spirit-enhanced trinkets to make that happen.” Kinfild shook his head. “But I digress. We have arrived.” He swept his free hand out in front of them like an intergalactic tour guide. “Roteac, capital of the Koedor-Terginian Empire.”

Kinfild dragged the control yoke to the side, and the Luna Wrath filed into a column of other starships. There were hundreds of them. Most were small, like the Wrath, but there were others that weren’t so tiny—larger than a cruise-ship, and topped with enormous smokestacks. Spars ran out their sides, but there weren’t any solar sails. (Not that Jace would know what to look for, but he didn’t see anything that made him think of a sail.) The starships chugged out enough smoke that it formed a subtle orbital ring around the planet.

Within seconds, the upper atmosphere of the planet enveloped them. Jace peered through the sheets of smoke, trying to catch a glimpse of the planet below. Was it all one massive city? Was such a thing even possible?

He itched in his seat. A few more minutes passed, and they passed through a layer of clouds. The longer they flew, the more the clouds lightened—they were flying toward the daylight, like they were travelling back in time. When twilight faded to a sunset, they emerged from the clouds.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight.