I was woken up that morning by the sound of a couple of little birds chirping just outside of my window.

A little afterwards, I heard the sound of food being prepared in the kitchen, and I saw Lily resting her head on Aaron’s shoulder, as the young boy cooked up a large meal for the three of us to eat.

Once I had gotten dressed, and headed over to greet them, the three of us spent a while talking in a warm, relaxed manner, as we thought about what to do next. It seemed that each of the children were pretty interested in heading back out to the daycare, and that seemed like a really good idea to me, too, especially while I went off to explore the dungeons. So, after finishing up our meal, and gathering up whatever we might need for the rest of the day, each of us headed out through the door, and towards the town of Westfall.

Once the three of us had arrived there, we saw Praxa waiting outside of the wooden gate, standing by herself in front of the large, stone wall.

A few moments later, she noticed the three of us approaching, and shyly waved hello. Then, Lily went over to greet her warmly, as the four of us talked for a moment, and greeted one another.

Afterwards, Praxa and I took the two kids into the daycare, then made our way back out towards the farmland around the dungeons.

At first, we just engaged in light, easy talk, as we enjoyed the day together, and the feeling of each other’s company.

Afterwards, there was a brief, slightly longer pause, before Praxa at last had the courage to bring up a little of what had happened the day before.

“By the way… thank you for having me over yesterday,” she said. “I really had a great time with the three of you.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m really glad that you came over.”

“I hope that we can do that again, sometime,” she said.

“Honestly,” I said, “you could come over every single night, you know. I wouldn’t mind at all.”

She smiled, and began to walk a little closer towards my side.

“I’d like that a lot… maybe I’ll do that, then.”

After that, the two of us walked together in a warm, comfortable silence. It was just about an hour and a half after the first light of the sun, and the farmlands still had a soft, almost sleepy quality, as the workers began to set about their day. There was hardly anyone else out here right now, and so the two of us felt very much alone, and at peace.

Eventually, we arrived at the entrance to the dungeons, and started up once more from the Tenth Floor.

That day, there was something very calm about the way that we explored together. We fought, of course, and we made quite a bit of progress. But we spent just as much time climbing up to the tops of hills and mountains, or sitting by the side of great, expansive lakes, as we chatted together, and continued to get to know one another, the coming war still far enough away that we were able to enjoy these tender moments, and to relax.

Now that she knew who I was, and where I had come from, I could tell her pretty much everything about myself, and I could speak to her without any reservations. And so, the two of us talked for some time about what what our lives had been like, and what we wanted to do in the future.

She had told me, before, that she had wanted to become a member of the Guild of Knights someday. But I guess that she had been thinking a lot about something that I had told her before – about what Roger had said to me, that “neutrality was a real evil, in times like these” – and I think that was starting to weigh on her, and to make her wonder if joining up with the Guild was really something that she would want to do.

I had the same reservations myself. I hadn’t thought too much about what I would want to do once I became a more powerful adventurer. But when I had, I had found myself really drawn towards the idea of becoming a Knight, and of helping to protect the people in this world from violence. But at the same time, I wondered if there wasn’t something a lot more important that I should be doing. I didn’t know the history of this world all that well, and I didn’t really know what had happened in the past. But I had the strong sense that the City of the Blue Tower was just kind of keeping the world in stasis, if that makes sense, in spite of all of the good that it was doing. Helping to protect the world from monsters was certainly a valuable calling… but at the same time, it didn’t seem like it would really change things, or make this world a better place in the long run.

It was strange to be thinking in that way, and to be wondering about what I might be able to do to help the people around me. These last few years, I had become so indifferent to the fates of other people, and I had grown so detached from the affairs of the world, that I had almost forgotten what it was like to want to do good for others. But, the more that I interacted with the people here, and the more that I spent time with people like Praxa, and Roger, the more that I wanted to be a part of everything that was happening. I was still about as far as you could get from being a hero. But at the same time, I cared about these people, and I wanted to try to make their lives a little better, if I could.

Praxa had asked me a few days ago why I wanted to be a “powerful” adventurer at all, and if I had power, what I would want to do with it. Ever since then, I had been thinking about that question a lot… and the answer that kept coming to my mind was, “I would want to help people.” Of course, there were things that I wanted for myself, too, and I’d had a few idle daydreams about ruling over a kingdom, or discovering the secret to immortality. But even then, if I thought about it a bit more realistically, ruling over a whole nation sounded like a lot of work… but, just spending time with Aaron, and Lily, and Praxa, and growing stronger, and finding things that I could do to help out the people around me, and to contribute to whatever town I happened to reside in… that sounded really nice to me, and like about as good of a life as I could ask for.

Somewhere, in the very back of my mind, I felt like there was an even greater task waiting for me, and that there was something bigger that I could do for the world, and for myself. But I tried not to focus on that too much, as Praxa and I stood up from our rest, and began to push our way further on ahead towards the uppermost floors of the dungeon.

As we continued to make our way on ahead, we each spent a lot of time talking about some of what we had discovered before, and about what could have taken place in the distant past.

It seemed that Praxa had been really excited by everything that we had talked about a few days ago, and that she had spent a lot of hours thumbing through a couple of books of history, trying to see if there was anything that she could discover.

She hadn’t been able to come up with all that much, unfortunately. But, she was able to give me a kind of brief summary of what had taken place in this world so far, at least according to the oldest books that we had access to.

Apparently, according to the records that had managed to survive, there were three “great ages” in the history of the world.

The first was the Golden Age – a period of time in the distant, and long-forgotten past – where each of the races had lived together in peace, and a kind of perfect happiness had reigned throughout the land.

The second age was the Age of Mages. This age began when a powerful magician had become corrupted by his greed, and had enslaved the world, and exploited it for his own advantage. What had happened in this age was really not that clear… but it seemed as if many, many terrible crimes had been committed, which had killed millions upon millions of people, and caused a terrible, lingering suffering for many generations on end.

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The third and final age in the history of this world was the Age of the Divine. This was the age that we were living in now. It began when the Great Prophet Lucian was given the blessings of the God, and used those blessings to bring about the destruction of the great Blood Magicians, and to bring about the end of the Age of Mages. Afterwards, he had founded the City of the Blue Tower, as a bastion for the arts and sciences, and a stronghold for the innocent… and he had also placed very careful restrictions upon the practice of magic, in order to ensure that nothing like what had come before could ever take place again.

That was what the history books had to say about the history of this world, at any rate.

Of course, both of us were fairly skeptical about a lot of the details of that account. In particular, we were pretty dubious that there had ever really been a “Golden Age,” like the books had suggested, and we were also dubious about the existence of the God that Lucian had spoken to, who seemed more like a mythical figure than a reality.

At the same time, however, it did seem like at least some of the account was probably true. Apparently, there had been quite a few contemporaries of Lucian who had written books that had come down to us. So, it seemed quite certain that the prophet had existed, at least, and that he really had brought about the end of the rule of the mages, who had been horrible tyrants.

But, there were no books from any further back than the life of the Prophet, presumably because the mages had destroyed them, and prevented the transmission of information. So, about what had really taken place during all of the years before – and about what the world had been like, back then - there didn’t seem to be anything more to go on than myths and speculations.

Still, even though I was pretty skeptical, I also didn’t want to throw out the account that had come down to us entirely. If any memory of the past had survived, then it was likely that it had survived in the form of a myth. And, even if 99% of what the myths had to say was false, there might still be an important truth or two that was buried there, which might shed some light on the past.

And so, even though I doubted a lot of the details of the story that Praxa had told me, I still thought that there might be some truth to the claim that the world had been a much better place, once – a long, long time ago – and that it had been corrupted somehow. And I imagined that whatever had happened back then, it must all be connected to the question of who Kalia was, and of how she was connected to the Blue Tower, in turn.

Of course, there was still a lot to figure out before I could even hope to be able to answer that question. But it at least felt like we knew roughly where to look, and what questions to start to ask, if we wanted to be able to figure out the truth.

At the same time, there was one more thing that had been bothering Praxa.

The Interlopers were being hunted.

I had been trying to avoid thinking about that too much, or letting it get to me.

But, of course, Praxa had been really concerned about that part of the story, and so she had spent a while trying to figure out what had been happening.

Everything that she told me after that was honestly kind of hard for me to hear.

Every single person who had ever revealed to the public that they were an Interloper had been found dead in a single year – at the most.

Some had been murdered in their homes.

Some had fallen to their deaths.

Some had died of apparently “natural” causes.

But each and every single one of them had died. And this was true for all of the Interlopers who had revealed themselves, and whose lives had been recorded.

Not only that… but their deaths had been spread out over the course of well over a thousand years.

That meant that they were being hunted down, and killed, by a group that had persisted throughout the ages.

The natural question, then, was who was responsible.

The likeliest culprit was probably the City of the Blue Tower, or the Guild of the Pen, or the Guild of Knights. Those were the only organizations that anyone knew about that had existed for that whole length of time, which made them very natural suspects. But of course, it was also possible that there was some sort of secret, and underground organization that might be carrying out the killings in private.

The thought of being hunted down by some sort of secret, cryptic organization was honestly so frightening to me that it was hard to even think about. That was why I hadn’t decided to read too much about it, and why I hadn’t worried about it up until now, or paid as much attention to it as I should. But at the same time, I knew that all of this was too important for me to ignore any longer, and I really didn’t want to seem like a coward in front of Praxa. So, the two of us spent a while talking about all of this, and trying to figure out what was going on… a conversation in which Praxa very much took the lead – even though it was pretty uncomfortable for her, too – and which I just tried to follow along as well as I was able.

Whoever was responsible for the killings, they had to have been acting in secret, and they had to have kept their activities private for a very long time by now. A few of the murders had been pretty high-profile, and had been investigated by the City of the Blue Tower, and by each of the different nations… but the culprit had never been discovered, and the cases had finally grown cold.

That meant that, no matter who was doing this, they had to be operating out of the shadows. Even if they were a part of the Guild of the Pen, or the Guild of Knights, or the City of the Blue Tower, they certainly couldn’t be an official part. They had to be some sort of a secret organization, no matter what.

But still, if they had really existed for more than a thousand years, they had covered their tracks remarkably well… and it was hard to imagine how I would be able to discover them, or to understand who they were.

The next question, then, was why they were killing us.

The only explanation that Praxa and I could come up with was that they didn’t want us to find a way into the vaults. That was the only thing that us Interlopers could really do that other people couldn’t, and so preventing us from doing that seemed like the only reason to hunt us down.

That might also explain why the vaults hadn’t been discovered, too. If there was a secret organization that was trying to keep us from getting inside of them, then that same organization might have done something to prevent each of the vaults from being found.

Of course, if that was true, then it meant that going out into that canyon might be very, very dangerous… but, I decided that I would think more about that when the time came, and I didn’t want to let that fear overwhelm me for now.

The more that we talked, though, the more that we seemed to be confronted by a whole litany of questions. If such an organization did exist, then why didn’t they want the vaults to be opened? Did they know what was inside? If they did, then what was inside, and why had they devoted themselves to keeping the contents of the vaults concealed from the rest of us?

To those questions, however, the two of us really didn’t have any sort of answers. All that I could think of was that the vaults might contain some sort of a weapon, or some sort of a secret, or both. But beyond that, I really couldn’t have told you. And so, we seemed to have gone about as far as we could go in starting to unravel some of these mysteries.

Still… thinking about those things was unnerving, to say the least.

The only real solace that I took was that there were also seemed to be quite a few Interlopers whose true nature had been known by their friends and families, but who had died peacefully in their beds, having been able to conceal themselves from the world at large.

That meant that I should be safe for now, and that I had a pretty good chance of being able to survive.

That was what I told myself, anyway.

At any rate. That conversation had started to get a bit too heavy for each of us. So, after a long, and somewhat uncomfortable pause, the two of us fell into silence for a while, and then began to talk about more mundane, unimportant things, as we made our way up ahead, and continued to progress through the dungeons.

Then, after we had at last made it to just about halfway through the fifteenth floor, we each decided to call it a day for now. So, at long last, we each made our way out of the dungeon, and then began to walk through the huge, open farmlands, back towards the town of Westfall.

Along the way, Praxa and I continued to talk a little bit more about the mysteries of the past… but mostly, we just walked silently together, enjoying the sights that were all around us.

Once we arrived at the wooden gate, we said our farewells for now, and promised to meet up again the following morning. Then, I went down to the daycare in order to pick up each of the children, before taking them back home, and cooking up an early dinner.

The rest of the day passed quite simply by, and in much the same way that the days had passed by before. But as I was falling asleep that night, I thought again of everything that Praxa and I had spoken about, and of how much more there still was to figure out, and to understand.

All of that felt very far away right then, and I doubted that I would be able to make any more headway on those mysteries too soon.

Still… I knew that, sooner or later, I would need to start to answer all of those questions, and to figure out what was going on.

As I started to fall into a deep state of rest, I saw once more the image of the vault that I had seen in my dreams.

At the same time, I heard a soft voice whispering into my ear, that must have been my own, though it seemed quite different, somehow.

It merely said: “someday, all of this shall end...”

And then, a few moments later, the voice broke off, as I drifted off into a deep, and restful sleep.