Pyhra wakes up on an incredibly uncomfortable couch. It’s ribbed and made of some stiff, harsh fabric that leaves red lines on his skin. It smells like people he doesn’t recognize, and faintly of sage.

“You’re awake,” Clay says, sitting in a plush armchair across from him. She’s got one leg crossed over the other, red eyes boring into him. There’s a wooden baseball bat leaned against the legs of the chair.

They’re in some sort of living room. It has a coffee table in the center that’s covered in a liberal amount of paper mess, and there’s some sort of plastic box across from where Clay is sitting, one with a panel of glass in the front. There’s a couple of framed photographs on the walls, mostly of the three people he recognizes, but a few of some more. A man who looks like a lot like Clay, and a woman who looks like none of them, with pale skin and black hair.

“Unfortunately,” Pyhra quips, rubbing at his eyes. “Was kind of hoping this was all a really weird dream.”

“That would be too easy.” She pauses, considering him. “I guess you’d want an explanation.”

“That would be nice,” he grouches. “Since you guys seem to know more about this than I do.”

“I only know it secondhand; you need to talk to Asseya.”

As if summoned by the mentioning of his name, Asseya appears in the doorway. He gives Pyhra a winning smile and a jaunty wave as he walks in the room proper. He sets a steady, comforting hand on Clay’s shoulder, who doesn’t visibly react; her shoulders do untense, though.

“I believe you’re from another plane. Sort of like,” he taps his chin thoughtfully. “Another universe. Or another dimension.”

Pyhra tries to process this. It doesn’t work. “Okay.”

“I think this because I’m also from another plane!” Asseya says cheerfully, smiling brightly. “I came here through a rift.”

“…A rift.”

Asseya smoothly sits on another plush chair, folding his hands in his lap. “Planes are connected by threads. It’s hard to explain… very theoretical. But my home plane and this one were connected by a particularly strong thread, so when my sister and I accidentally opened the rift, and I went into it, I followed the threads here.”

“The sky opened up,” Clay adds. “He fell from it.”

“Yep!” Asseya shoots her a happy expression. “A rift is a tear, of sorts, in the reality that separates the physical world,” he gestures to the room around them. “from the Void, where all the threads are.”

Pyhra is getting a feel for this, actually. It makes no sense but it also makes a ton of sense. The tear in the air, the pulsing, the skinny lines stretching on infinitely. “And you think I was pulled into a rift and brought here.”

“It would explain why everything is so different from what you know. You said you saw something like that— a tear?”

“I did.” Pyhra says, feeling numb, thinking of Lune’s anguished face as he was dragged further and further away. “It sucked me through.”

Asseya’s brow crunches in confusion. “Sucked you through?”

“Yeah, me and half the woods. I’ve never seen wind so violent!”

Asseya frowns. It looks foreign on his face, which has been pulled into a smile so often. “Weird.”

Clay leans forward. “What is it, Asseya?”

“When my sister and I opened the rift… it wasn’t like that. It was… stable, I guess. I had to walk into it to get here.”

Pyhra thinks again of Lune, bleeding and despairing. “How do you make a rift?”

Asseya shakes his head.

Pyhra bristles. “Didn’t you just say—“

“My sister and I were children playing with things that no one should play with. I have no idea how we did it, nor do I think I could replicate it.”

“So you have no idea?”

Asseya sighs. “My sister… she can make the impossible, possible. The unlikely, likely. When I was brought back to my plane as a teenager, I enlisted her help to open another rift.”

“…how?”

Asseya smiles sadly. “A complex set of machinery, a kind of fuel that doesn’t exist in this plane, and my sister’s powers.”

Something in Pyhra is shriveling. “If I got here, there must be a way back.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Asseya agrees. “Even if we could open a rift, though, I’m not sure you would be able to make it home. The threads… aren’t for us mere mortals to understand, nor could we if we tried.”

Pyhra leans back against the sofa, pitching his face towards the ceiling. “So I’m fucked.”

“Nothing is impossible. But if there’s a way for you to get back, I don’t know it. I’m happy to help, though!”

Pyhra pinches the bridge of his nose. Panic is starting to spark through him, and he leans forward in an attempt to shake it off. It doesn’t work. “What am I even gonna do? I don’t know how this world— plane— whatever works. Do you use currency? If you do, I totally don’t have any of it. Where the fuck am I gonna live—?”

“You’ll stay with us,” comes the voice of Lilith. She glides into the room with a bowl of something that smells deliciously savory. She sets it on the coffee table in front of him. “We’re connoisseurs of the weird and unexpected. We have a habit of adopting strays anyway. If you get your feet under you and decide you want to leave, that’s fine too. But you’re free to stay with us while you figure this all out. We have an extra room; we discussed it while you were asleep.”

That is kind of them. Pyhra is not used to kind people.

“Really? No strings attached? That’s awfully trusting of you.”

“You’ll work in the shop,” Clay interjects. “In exchange for free meals and a place to sleep. You’ll help with chores. And no illegal drugs in my house. I don’t care what you do outside of here, but if you get caught with that shit here, I get in trouble.”

“Okay.” Pyhra accepts this all easily enough. It’s a more than fair arrangement. If anything, it’s the kindest thing anyones ever done for him. It’s making him a little nauseous, so he says, “How do you know I’m not like, a serial killer or something?”

Clay points to the baseball bat. “Then you get to meet my friend, here.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re that confident?”

She smirks faintly. “More than.”

Pyhra did not manage to land himself a Capital Bounty just for this bitch to smirk at him like that. Pyhra’s abilities are second only to Stella’s. He can crush anyone he wants underneath his bootheel like a bug.

He’s not gonna do anything bad; just startle her a bit. His favorite joke would work perfectly for this, he decides. He lets a small smile curl on his lips as he leans back on the sofa, crossing one leg over the other in a perfect mirror of her. He shifts his face to match hers, red eyes and all. Then it’s his body, giving himself broad shoulders and defined muscles and breasts. Finally, he casts an illusion ability over his clothes, making his a perfect mirror of hers; black cargo pants, a jean jacket with a fur lined collar, and thick brown work boots. “That so?” He says, raising an eyebrow just like she is.

She doesn’t react. None of them do.

Pyhra let’s the act drop and sits forward, confused. He shifts back into the face he’d been wearing when he came here, except—

Nothing happens. He can feel it, the lack of change, now that he’s paying attention. He tries Crow’s face, and nothing. Remy’s is more of the same. Then he tries some of his favorite personas; Abigail, with red hair and redder lips; Jean, with a bob and thick glasses; Jack, the most milquetoast man he can do. None of it does anything. His face does not change.

He staggers up from the couch, gasping out, “Bathroom?” They have mirrors in their bathrooms in this stupid place, don’t they?

Lilith points him in the direction and he scurries away. He slams into the room, small and tiled. He rests his hands on the sink, staring into his own reflection.

This face is his favorite to wear. Quicksilver, he’d named it so many years ago. Pale skin that turns red easily, covered in freckles and sunmarks and a few scars here and there. His hair is a snarled mess, frizzed ends curling around his jaw and shoulders, and his eyes are sunken, his skin pale. He looks wrecked.

He tries to summon an image of his actual face, the one he was born with. Long silver hair and bright green eyes and sharp chin. All sharp edges, Crow had described it once, letting her knuckles brush over the bell of his cheek fondly. Pretty, is what Remy calls it, always with that dopey smile on their face. All Pyhra can see when he looks at that face is a man with too many pale, hairline scars for comfort and deep, purple bruises underneath his eyes. He summons that image and demands to become him.

Nothing happens.

Pyhra has been able to shift since he was ten years old. Since he walked out of that house, covered in ash and blood and a lifetime’s worth of confusion, Lune’s hand clutched in his own. He remembers it vividly, how he’d changed his face for the first time, smiling down at Lune and saying, it’ll all be okay.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It was a lie. Because that was what Pyhra did, what his soul was made for, what his core is. What his Ability is built around.

“It’s deception,” Crow had said once, wording it much more kindly than Pyhra ever had. “Not just lies. It’s lies with a purpose.”

Pyhra had always taken point in their heists. Turning himself into anyone the three of them could dream up. He would go in, play distraction or frontman or sneak in; whatever he needed to do. Crow was the one who worked behind the scenes, hacking into their tech and hijacking their magic. And then Remy was who they sent in when they needed everything to burn.

He’d tricked too many people to count. Had turned his face into that of a million people who didn’t exist until he donned their skin like a pretty costume, smiling all charming and grifting the elite of everything they held dear. It was as easy as breathing.

And now he’s standing in the bathroom mirror of an unfamiliar house surrounded by unfamiliar people and he can’t shift. He’s been in so many situations that were dangerous and terrifying and chaotic and hellish, but it was always—

As someone else.

Now he’s just himself. Except that he’s not just himself, he’s Quicksilver, his oldest and most precious persona. It feels like more of a lie than it ever had before.

He leaves the bathroom feeling worse than he entered it. He’s pressing a hand to his forehead as he stumbles back into the living room, bracing his other hand on the doorway to fight against the sudden dizziness that’s come over him. “My Ability doesn’t work,”

Three blank expressions face him. Then, Lilith asks, “Are you alright?”

“No!” He shouts. “My— I can’t shift.” He sounds desperate, pathetic.

“Shift?” Asseya cocks his head.

“What’s an ‘ability’?”

“It’s— it’s your core. It’s who you are, and— and what you can do because of it.” He struggles for words. “It’s… it’s everything.”

“Calm down,” Clay says matter-of-factly, and something about the way she says it so simply, like she knows he will calm down, is actually calming him down. “We have no frame of reference; sit down and explain it to us, as blunt as you can.”

He obeys. He isn’t sure why; there isn’t an authority on the godforsaken planet that has made Pyhra do much of anything, before. “Everyone has one, in— in my world, even if they don’t… activate it, or anything. It’s just… something you’re connected to. You use it to… translate.”

“Translate what?”

“Translate energy into action.” Pyhra says, breathing through his nose, feeling himself tremble. “Like, my friend’s Ability is freedom.”

Clay and Lilith are frowning, but Asseya hums thoughtfully. “So if freedom is the energy, then what’s the action?”

“Um, they can turn into predator animals. They can… summon discord. They can break most locks with just their intent.” And Sun above, hadn’t that come in handy.

Clay raises her eyebrows in interest. “So, what’s yours?”

The words are out before he can remember to hide out: “Tricks. Lies. D… deceit.”

Lilith pipes up, “Oh, so when you said shifting—”

“—He meant literally, shifting his appearance.” Clay turns to him. “Is that right?”

He nods.

“That’s pretty amazing.”

“Nothing anyone around here can do.”

“So,” Asseya tilts his head. “You can’t do these Abilities here. I wonder why. What fuels them? How do you create the energy?”

“For everyone, it’s something different. For me, it’s… how much fun I have doing it.”

“Fun…”

“So earlier,” Clay says. “You tried to turn into me. As a joke?”

“Yeah. But. I couldn’t.”

“Hm.”

“Wait,” Pyhra speaks, remembering something he’d been taught what felt like a lifetime ago. His only foray into the world of public school, being taught things they all knew about things that they all dealt with every day. Teacher with thick-rimmed glasses pointing at the chalkboard with a single word on it— belief. “The Abilities only work because we believe that they’ll work. That the person casting and the person being casted on believe in them. But they’re so commonplace… of course everyone believes.”

“Oh!” Asseya brightens. “And so it didn’t, because of course we couldn’t believe in something we didn’t know existed. But, hey, what about now? We all believe you, don’t we?”

The other two nodded. Clay said, “So show us.”

Pyhra closes his eyes, summoning the most vivid image he can of Remy. Remus No-Last-Name, with a bright, sharp, toothy grin and eyes too bright for their face. With wild, windswept hair and scars dotting their skin. Pyhra has traced every scar, memorized every mark, slotted himself into every line and hollow of their body. Pyhra can become Remy and Crow quicker than he can become any other real person. He thinks about how fun it would be to wear Remy’s face, even if just for a moment; like he’s summoning their energy from beyond the pale, to push them forward. It’s always fun looking like Remy.

He opens his eyes. The lack of response says it all.

“Fuck,” he bites at the side of his palm, frustrated.

“Maybe it just doesn’t work here?” Lilith asks nervously.

“It would make sense.” Asseya sighs. “I can do magic from my home world, but, well…”

“Extenuating circumstances.” Clay finishes grimly. “I’m sorry, Pyhra.”

Pyhra lets out a breezy, chittering laugh. “Oh, me? I’m fine. Never been better! I love finding out my skills are completely and entirely useless, especially when I’m trapped in an unfamiliar place and very far away from everyone I love.” He claps excitedly, wiggling in place. “It’s my favorite!”

Silence. The sarcasm did not get rid of the way his heart is hammering in his chest. It never does.

“I hate him.” Clay announces.

Lilith sends her a disparaging look. “No, you don’t!”

“He reminds me of this guy I met in my plane,” Asseya says.

“What guy?”

“He could go really fast, but it made him crazy.” Asseya explains, one hand pawing at his hair as he swivels his gaze to the ceiling, spacey. “But he liked being crazy, so he kept trying to go faster.” Asseya sways in place, gently. “Anyway, eventually he went so fast he collided with the side of the realm and blew himself up.”

“Wow! That is really fucking comforting!” Pyhra slams his palms on his thighs defiantly. “Nobody is blowing themself up! If I’m blowing anyone up, it’s other people!”

Asseya pumps a fist in the air. “Yeah! That’s the spirit!”

Lilith shouts, “Nobody is blowing anyone up!”

“Spoilsport.”

Pyhra tugs at his hair, a habit he thought he’d broken years ago. He picks the soup up from where it’d been left on the coffee table, taking a tentative sip. It’s delicious, meaty and warm. He hadn’t told them the entire truth. Pyhra’s fuel is fun, sure, but like most high-skill Ability users, it’s a million other things, too. It’s the safety he feels having it at his fingertips, the confidence it gives him to be anyone he wants. Abilities— for as much as they’re human’s power to wield— are beyond them. Cosmic, strange. At first, you need that fuel, need to feel it in every way every time you want to get even a small spell off.

But it’s like a muscle, and the better you get at your Ability, the closer you get to that cosmic strangeness from which all Abilities come. Your fuel stops being what you set it as and becomes just the fact that you’re powerful, and the greedy feeling of craving more of it. If you get lost in that… it’s not pretty. Pyhra remembers watching one of the ADF succumb to their fuel, taking down an entire city block in flames, the animals they specialized in summoning running rampant. When Pyhra and Crow had snuck past him, he’d been kneeled on the asphalt, screaming his lungs out about creating something from nothing! It’s not summoning! Creating something from nothing! Nothingness! Absence! And then he’d vomited on the asphalt, and his sick had trembled and swirled until it came alive, turning into a large snake that slithered off deeper into the city.

Everyone has a limit. And it’s every Ability user’s job to never find that limit. You can feel it in you, when you’re brushing the edges of reality, when you’re staring too far into that cosmic strangeness. You can feel it in the buzzing of your skin and the dread that pools in your gut, accompanied with that frenzied lust for more power. They’d had a close call with Remy, once, when Remy had tried to bind themself. A core of freedom didn’t mesh with that, all that well. Crow had held them down as they clawed at their own face, while Pyhra cut the bindings.

Pyhra’s only closest call was when he was fourteen or so, sitting on a curb somewhere deep in the city, wearing the face of someone who didn’t exist and wishing so desperately that it was his face. Wishing, and thinking, mind racing, that maybe he could make it his face. If it was a lie… then he could just, make it true…

And then he’d jerked himself forward, hands dug into his hair and tugging to ground himself. The thought of making lies true makes his mouth taste like copper and his skin prickle with imagined terror.

Pyhra shakes off the memories, focusing again on the present. He has one more pressing question for his new friends. “Hey… why did you think I was a… vampire?” The syllables make little sense to him, but he says them anyway, gauging their reactions.

“You’re wearing a little black goth dress a month and a half before Halloween.” Clay says, in that matter-of-fact tone of voice.

“What’s Halloween?”

Lilith’s face twists in confusion. “You don’t have it? But your outfit is so…”

“We have Hallow’s Eve. And Hollow Day, afterwards.”

“Sounds pretty similar. Basically, people dress up and give out candy and go to parties.”

“Yeah,” Pyhra says, thinking of the pile of candy on the dancefloor the night before, and Remy tearing through half of it with abandon. “That’s about it.” But then he remembers something else from that classroom, the memory faded in sepia. “Except it’s also when the barrier between… the physical and the…”

“It’s when the barrier when the physical and metaphysical is at its thinnest?” Asseya finishes.

Pyhra meets his eyes, meaningfully. “Yeah.”

“Well, that does explain your appearance. If the barriers between our worlds got thin at the same time…”

“It still doesn’t explain what opened the Rift,” Clay argues. “We’ve only heard of them being opened deliberately. It’s not impossible it was a coincidence, but…”

“I don’t think it was,” Pyhra whispers, fisting his hands in his jeans. “I’m not exactly… the most popular guy back home, heh. None of us are.” Understatement of the century.

“An attack? Could your enemies have done that?”

Pyhra shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly up-to-date on what they’re doing either, though.”

“Well, we’re not going to figure it out by talking about it.” Lilith announces. “Did you like the soup?”

He almost withers under her smile, so bright and genuine and expectant, spoon halfway to his face. “Yeah.”

“Good!” Asseya chirps. “I’ll show you our guest room. Worry about working tomorrow, okay? You’ve gone through a lot today.”

Understatement of the century, again.

But Pyhra sets the bowl down, stumbling after him. This world is weird, but he’s dealt with weird things before. This may take the cake, but Pyhra isn’t going to let some bullshit like this kill him. It’s gonna take more than that to do him in.

The bed is soft and the blankets a little threadbare, but he cherishes it for the kindness it is.