I…in my heart, I knew that this couldn’t really be Earth. Only moments ago, I had been standing in a smoky void, speaking to a disembodied skeleton man. And before that, I had been in the middle of a city under siege by a colossal monster. There was no feasible way, after everything I had learned about Precursors, that I had suddenly be returned to Earth.

But it didn’t matter in that moment.

I couldn’t even begin to describe the emotions rolling over me as I numbly stared out at the landscape in front of my eyes.

It was…so, so real. The sights and the smells and even the feeling of the sun and wind on my battle-dirtied skin.

But, gradually, something pierced the shock that had settled over both my outer and core rings.

The sound was off.

Back home, this was a working-class neighborhood. That meant there was always something going on, in the summer that I could feel and smell all around me. Children running to and fro, getting into all kinds of mischief. Parents and regular joes talking in the yard or cooking up a storm over a grill. Teens loitering on the sidewalks, complaining about whatever had managed to blight them that day.

That was the problem. There were no people.

That, finally, managed to knock me out of my near awe. This neighborhood had never been this abandoned in my life.

And right now, it was a near ghost town.

I took a deep breath, and used my one good hand to unsteadily push myself to my feet. As I did so, a sneer worked its way onto my face.

“Almost, Rhazal,” I said, fury growing inside my breast. “Almost, but not quite. You’re not going to break me this way.”

“Is this Terra, then?” I heard a quiet voice speak to me then, in the back of my mind. I almost wanted to instinctually lash out at it in my anger, but I recognized it as Tlazo. I nearly spoke out loud to address his question, but I didn’t dare. Rhazal could be watching me this very moment and I wouldn’t know. That would put the Lich that had already done so much for me at even greater risk. “Surprisingly mundane, for such a mysterious locale. I must say, though, what curious metal carriages you possess.”

I didn’t speak, but I did direct a consternated look at the stave I still held in my right hand. Since he could apparently perceive my surroundings, I was hoping he could see me as well.

He got the point.

“Oh, you can just speak to me in your mind and I’ll hear it,” Tlazo said dismissively. “I think the old boy is a bit rusty, in his dotage. He shaped this space from impression inherent to your soul, and in doing so, he widened the, ah, ‘throughput’, so to speak. This gave me the chance to more directly connect to you, as long as you hold the stave. Such an interaction is only possible here in the depths of the Concord.”

I briefly wondered how a Lich would understand a concept like ‘throughput’, but just chalked it down to Language Adaptation. Instead, I tried to mentally speak to him. “Yes, this is where I grew up,” I projected at him, the anger I couldn’t curb with my missing middle ring coloring the tone of the thought. “But it’s wrong because there are no people.”

“Unsurprising,” Tlazo replied. “A creature like a Godbound was never born, and thus does not understand attachments. It was never swaddled in the arms of mother, or supported by a steady father. It cannot understand or quantify such things, when an engineered being such as Rhazal lives only for the desires of its creator. Thus is it incapable of populating such a location with even facsimiles of people. Just more evidence that Ixiah is an incompetent sculptor, when even Greycton was able to instill the spark of true life into his Sculpted.”

“Why even try then?” I said, a frown creeping its way onto my face, my eyes lingering on a nearby house. I had been friends with that family’s child when I was young, and I was unsettled by how accurate the house was. It was so lifelike that I could even make out the mistakes in the paint job on its brick façade, from when I’d been paid to do it one summer.

“Because it’s trying to unsettle you, of course,” Tlazo said, deadpan. “To what end, I cannot say. I suppose you’ll just have to explore and find out.”

I snorted. “No need. If it’s trying to fuck with me, I know where to go.” Having said that, I took a step forward, the false asphalt under my feet crunching.

As I walked slowly down the road to my destination, I kept my head on a swivel. It was just so eerie to see such a familiar place so still and lifeless. I felt a chill run down my spine when I realized that it reminded me of zombie movies. I half expected old Mrs. Livingston to come shuffling out of her little house, arms extended and moaning about brains.

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I shuddered at the thought and kept moving.

Before long, I had reached the end of the road and entered into the cul-de-sac that I knew was waiting for me. Once I did, I took another moment to stop and just…take it all in.

Yep…there was my home. The house that I had grown up in, and…

Where my father had likely been left to die after I had been spirited away to Vereden.

It wasn’t large, considering my parents' income when they bought it. Only a single story, and constructed in a fairly generic American style, it had, once upon a time, been painted a cheery yellow. The paint had been an idea of my mother’s way back in the day before I had even been born.

But, by the time I had disappeared, it was old and faded. It looked more like a dirty white, than anything.

Even before I’d been spirited away, I had thought it was sad. I just…hadn’t known what to do with it.

I sighed and approached my house using the driveway. As I did, I let my hand ghost along the surface of my car still parked on the pavement, a wry smile crossing my lips as I did so. It wasn’t anything special, just a generically painted silver econobox that I had slaved away at a few dead-end jobs for. But it was mine, and I had loved it for its reliability.

Was. Was mine.

It had probably been junked by now, with my disappearance. It’s not like Dad could use it.

I looked away and kept walking up to the door, with its peeling paint. Once there, I lay my hand on the doorknob and tried it.

Locked.

My eyebrow twitched at the pettiness of it. “Really? Really?” I said out loud, looking up at the false sky. “You’re going to lock the door on me?” I shook my head.

For a wild moment, I considered just breaking the door down. I was certainly strong enough to do it, these days. But the idea of defiling even an illusion of my childhood home in such a manner felt…wrong.

Instead, I let my gaze fall on the doorbell.

I shrugged.

Couldn’t hurt, I suppose.

I pressed the button, and the novelty doorbell that my dad had installed before I was even born rang out inside the house. I think the sound had been from some eighties movie about close encounters with aliens.

Would you look at that. Rhazal had even gotten that right.

I was a little startled when I heard footsteps approaching the door from inside the house. I braced myself, though. That had to be Rhazal. If there was nobody else in the neighborhood, and he wanted to ‘parley’ with me, then this must be how he wanted to do it.

I thought I was ready for his monstrous appearance writ small to be standing in the doorway.

But that wasn’t who was waiting for me.

Instead, it was my father.

Only…

How he had been before the accident that had robbed him of the life he had built.

My father hadn’t been a tall man, and by the time I was eighteen, I had outgrown him by a full head. On his own head, he still had the full head of long, blonde, thinning hair that had fallen out after his accident, pulled back in a ponytail like he had all those years ago. Striking green eyes peered up at me from behind thick, coke-bottle glasses, and a smile graced his thin lips like I hadn’t seen in years. I barely paid any attention to what he was wearing before I shut my eyes and grit my teeth.

Before the replica of my father could even speak, I preempted him. “Is this how you parley with others, Rhazal?” I spoke slowly, doing my best not to lose my temper. I was dearly missing my middle ring right now, because it was a struggle. “You torment them with images of those they have lost? Before this proceeds any further, I demand you assume another form.”

Silence, for a moment.

Then a deep, inhuman voice, a quizzical translation of Rhazal’s inflection from outside from a spiritual one into the physical, rang out. “Does this satisfy then, Precursor?”

I cracked open one eye to see what he’d changed into, only to hurriedly squeeze it back shut. But…not before I caught a glimpse of long brown hair, and a caring, motherly smile.

My grip on Tlazo’s staff tightened. If this had been anything other than an ancient Lich’s staff, I’m sure it would have snapped in half at the force I was applying to it.

“No,” I hissed. “Anything other than those two. Join me in the street when you’re done playing games. I will not treat with you inside this building.”

I refused to sully even an imitation of such a precious place with such a…vile presence, any longer.

At that, I spun around and marched away from my family home into the center of the cul-de-sac. As I did so, I heard Tlazo’s voice in my mind once again.

“As I said,” The Lich said quietly. “He cannot understand his own blasphemy.”

I shouldn’t be surprised, that the dead were more empathetic than the monstrous.

After all, Tlazo had been human.

Once.

After a time spent staring up at the sky and struggling to control my emotions, I heard footsteps approach me from behind. I braced myself before I turned around. If this thing looked like either of my parents, I was prepared to call this entire thing off, consequence be damned. If I caught sight of soft brown hair once again, I would immediately attack, even if it did nothing.

There was only so much I could take.

But, it wasn’t either of my parents waiting for me behind my back.

Instead, it was Grey. The illusionary form of the mentor I hadn’t seen in weeks was standing there on the pavement in his full Order armor, Stellarum sheathed at his waist and Elarux held in his right hand. ‘He’ was leaning on the staff and smiling at me, in that knowing way Grey tended to do.

Irritating, but tolerable.

I suppose this thing thought I was more likely to listen to it if it affected the form of an authority figure in my life.

Hah.

“So, oh son of Rot,” I said, leaning on my own borrowed stave. “You wished to parley. Make your pitch.”

The facsimile of Grey hadn’t blinked once, since it had taken up position in front of me. That didn’t change when an imitation of Grey’s own voice exited its mouth, devoid of all human emotion. “I shall be blunt, blade of the System. Why do you fight for them?”

I blinked at the odd question. “Excuse me?”

“Why do you fight for them?” Grey-Rhazal asked me again patiently. “Why do you involve yourself in the wars of Vereden, when you are alien to them? Why do you champion the causes of a people who you have no stake with?”

“Because…” I said slowly. “I am alien to them. I have no place here but what I make. And I have made a life here, that I am coming to care for.”

A flash of Sylvia’s Mithril face ran through my mind, but I pushed it away.

An expression finally crossed the imitations lips. An almost empty smile. “Exactly. A life, on this world so foreign to you. If it is a life you desire…”

“I, and my mistress, can give you a better one.´