The memory reformed but Randidly almost didn’t care.

The sensation of his Soulspace fracturing was different than his Class being obliterated by the gaze of Elhume; that had been pain, but some sort of deep invalidation. The foundation of how he was and the power of his existence had been scrubbed away by immense friction. The pain had started sharp, but then had dulled to an underlying weakness.

This was different. His Soulspace formed the foundation of his ‘identity’. It housed his Skills, contained his Truths, and was the foundation of his three images. Not only was that now deeply wounded, but some primal instinct screamed out the alarm of wrongness. To be rent open like this had violated some important principle. He now seeped out of the opening and drifted through his Vessel.

He felt unmoored, but he also felt horrifyingly alone.

At the same time, the Truths he had contained bounced and reverberated through him, but slightly warped from their prolonged proximity to one another. They combined and mixed, forming strange chimeras of their original pronouncements.

Every detail can be affected.

Yggdrasil reaches and matters.

You cannot affect both ways.

Yet all of these follow-up developments were simply footnotes to the endless horror of the pain that swept through Randidly’s existence.

“Stop right there.” The young man’s voice seemed so far away. Randidly’s vision swam, blurred with agony and maybe the presence of too many sneaky Samsara connections against his psyche adding superfluous and damaging thoughts. Yet the only response he could manage was a groan.

Luckily, the Alchemist portion of Randidly wasn’t so easily dissuaded by pain. Because he quickly realized half of the problem was the rays of warped ‘Truth’ released through the fracture in his Soulspace and bouncing around on the inside of his Vessel. Or at the very least, it complicated a half dozen other problems in a way that even Randidly wasn’t able to endure. Conjuring a bit of will, the Alchemist wrapped one shard of the broken Aspect and pulled it into place to guard the crack.

Randidly swayed dizzily. He had enough vision to observe that familiar, clumsy attack swinging forward… and then the spearuser’s eyes widened in realization. The young guard even had time to open his mouth and scream before the radiated, half-formed truths shredded his existence and left a blood mist in its wake.

A walking Calamity, The bleak thought whispered to Randidly. The doom of the Nexus. Your inevitable Ghasthund. You always speak of creating something new… will skimming over the reality of what genesis requires.

Randidly Ghosthound kills even innocents who stand in his way.

“Fuck…!” Randidly whispered the word, barely able to stay upright. He reflexively absorbed the Nether released as the Samsara reset the memory. However, even that felt sloppy. He struck out wildly with his Grand Fate, but his temporal senses had lost their acuity. Everything vibrated at the edges. The static-y quality numbed him.

The Alchemist clicked his tongue in distaste and produced some of the valuable thread that Randidly had extracted from his arm. He wove a basic rope and used it to bind the shards in place. The fit was extremely messy, so Randidly grunted and squeezed his shabby Nether accumulations. He gestured and significance flowed out almost randomly.

Pain darkened his awareness and his psyche was burdened by the impossibility of the task laid at his feet, but that didn’t mean the desires or stubbornness of Randidly Ghosthound had dimmed. He truly didn’t know how to solve all the problems. But he didn’t doubt even for a second that he wanted to.

Those desires, those almost-prayers, stirred the unguided significance. A Nether Ritual rapidly formed, following his intuition. Even as the manifestation had been torn and partially destroyed by the breaking, young Yggdrasil sent roots and branches to help reinforce the edges. Together his efforts faded the hard edges of the rope, incorporated the shards of the broken mirror, and settled them into place. The Truth’s Randidly possessed screeched and roared to remain caged, but the shards had been part of Pangu’s Asymptote and still possessed that ability to provide a warped reflection. They bounced back into the broken Soulspace.

The bandaging held. Randidly’s Soulspace might be severed, but no longer would truths sear and stab through the whole of his existence. Randidly blinked slowly, still bleary, but Yggdrasil gamely resupplied him with animating energy. And as a reward for his recovery-

“Stop right there,” The young guard announced.

Randidly trembled slightly. He hated this memory, more than the others. Because he worried that the sneering lesson of the Samsara was actually true. That he had warped himself to save the Nexus, and he had gone so far he now harmed it, in a fundamental way.

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Perhaps even worse was how his own philosophy interacted with this Truth: he had left a Path behind that the people of the Alpha Cosmos could follow. They could make his very same mistakes, all in the pursuit of the greater good. They would carve away their own flesh until they were gaunt caricatures of who they had been.

Is this what you feel when you look at me, Neveah? Randidly’s mouth twisted. His tongue was thick and tasted like dried blood.

After narrowing his eyes, the guard launched his usual attack. Randidly let out a short sigh. Part of him wanted to simply relax. To take some more time. But the few seconds of controlled agony rumbling out from his sundered Soulspace let him sense a dozen or so sneaking connections from the Samsara, clouding his mind further. They didn’t necessarily inflame his emotions but achieved a similar effect by blurring the environment around him.

He couldn’t remain here. Of all the Samsara dreams… this one threatened him the most.

I don’t know where to go or even how to get there, Randidly admitted to himself. His Truths raged and thrashed, striking against the mirror shards that kept them slightly bound for now. Pressure began to build again in his Soulspace. And this time, the central portion of the Vessel had already been greatly weakened. It wouldn’t be long until either the bandage ripped or the Soulspace collapsed further.

“But I’ll never get there without moving,” Randidly felt the strangest sense of frustration and loss suffusing the scraps of emotion he had gathered. But he didn’t know any useful way to express that; they simply weighed him down. He simultaneously knew that Neveah would tell him that emotions don’t need to have a point.

Randidly rolled his shoulders and ignited his confusion into rage. His emerald eyes blazed, revealing a brittle brightness. He obliterated the guard. But when the Truth began to form in the surrounding environment, as the Samsara swirled and reformed, he raised an arm. He formed that spear of roots and violent, half-heard Truths bouncing around his Vessel.

Randidly Ghosthound kills even innocents who stand in his way.

“I may have chosen to resemble a monster, but that is not all I am!” He roared out his rejection. His whole being narrowed to that noise, channeling the most undeniable portion of the Stillborn Phoenix. Randidly thrust, aiming for a weak boundary of the Samsara.

Aether for shape, Nether for substance, his emotions bubbling and spitting as they flowed down to become the interstitial flesh of the weapon. Yet almost instantly, Randidly could see the density and the significance of his Nether held the rest of the weapon back; his significance began to curdle as the destabilization of his outer Nether Core began to percolate even through the Samsara to him.

His eyes narrowed to slits. He didn’t stop pouring everything he had into the attack, despite his instincts warning that he wouldn’t succeed. He spoke with exasperation and self-mockery, referring to himself in the third person. “Randidly Ghosthound doesn’t need to put up with this fucking shit…!”

And to his surprise, that phrase triggered a reinforcing ripple from his distant Nether Core. Instantly the Nether sparkled and turned translucent. The Samsara screamed in rejection as some of his power flowed through to him, yet it couldn’t prevent it from happening.

My core is reacting…? Another clue to my Penance? But what the hell is this? Randidly flushed with confusion, but mostly focused on following through with the attack. He only had one more nagging thought. I just hope… my Penance isn’t like my Class, including my own name…

I’m tired of all these narcissistic developments in my life…

The conjured spear stabbed between the shifting waves of the Samsara. Randidly adjusted his mental grip and grinned. He heaved on the shaft of the weapon, twisting the spear sideways. With a groan, the Samsara popped open.

Randidly shot past the charred corpse of the guard in the memory, flesh scoured from his top half so a skeleton watched him pass with sightless eyes. Randidly acknowledged a debt there. I’ll come back… and figure a way out of this Truth. And not just for your sake. But for my own.

So I can live with what I’m becoming…

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Temporal Thaumaturgy Mends Eternity has grown to Level 795!

As he squeezed through the opening into the broad realm of shifting patterns, Randidly took the opportunity to cleanse all the Samsara connections. He felt a great deal of dread, as he he cut them and reestablished his connection to his own time. His mind remained overworked and drained. Escaping from that little memory pocket had cost him all of his accumulated Nether. He might have a few clues how to transform Nether he could gather into his actual Nether, but he would need some refined Nether to even attempt the process.

He paused and spun around, sensing the approach of the Samsara again. With his Nether spent and his Soulspace beginning to tremble once more, he could only watch with gritted teeth as he was shrouded in a memory.

Randidly Ghosthound ended up on his back, staring into darkness. A little physical strain confirmed it was one of his original three memories of the Samsara when Yystrix forced Randidly to condense his first Class.

“Another reaction from the Nether Core: I must be on the right track for the Penance. But what the hell is a Penance, anyway?” Randidly muttered as he tried to find the commonality between the times his Nether reacted.

“Randidly Ghosthound,” Yystrix said in a low drawl. Randidly flushed; he honestly forgot she would be listening. But as she continued to speak, his expression became strange. “You have no business considering the mysteries of Nether Cores, at least not yet.”

He decided to take a gamble. When he didn’t see a way forward, he could only lash out wildly and hope for the best. “What if I told you I’m from the future?”

“...I would say you certainly have an active imagination,” Yystrix chuckled. Yet the pressure against him changed. “But there is no harm in enunciating the details. A Nether Penance… the old Nether Penances, were always about connection. Connection to the broader universe. The way you have lived… what is the connection that you’ve formed with the rest of existence? What is the ‘price’ of your lifestyle you would never have chosen, but yet now… You stare the costs in the teeth and you do not flinch? You would gladly suffer them?”