Holiday scratches at the open air with his glowing red hand. What looks like a small tear forms in reality, beyond which I can see...somewhere else. It immediately reminds me of Achemiss’ lizard construct rending a hole in the sky to block Ari’s attack.

Energy condenses in my palm like oily vines. Fingers coated in talons of inky darkness, I scratch at the air...and nothing happens. Maria’s gaze move between Holiday and myself, her eyes narrowing in concentration, flames coating her fingers.

“Eternity is unlike anywhere else. It’s a place with layers upon layers of reality, though Vizier’s Crown is a bit of a dead spot, makes it hard to pierce the veil.” Holiday strikes out again, grunting as he pulls apart the sky with both hands until we can just barely see a world that looks like the Vermuthi desert, red sands covered by dark storm clouds.

A moment later the tear in reality collapses, expelling Holiday’s fingers. He shakes them out once and crosses his arms across his chest. “It’ll take time for you to get the hang of it, and once you leave Vizier’s Crown, you’ll be able to travel through layers of reality. Questions?”

My mind begins to swim with possibilities, imagining all the potential uses...trying to understand how Achemiss was able to tear a rift into our old world from Eternity.

“Will I be able to pierce the veil?” Maria asks.

He gives her a sympathetic look. “Someone can always carve a path for you. In reality...each layer extends until it reaches an end, but none are small enough for you to explore in a year.”

“This plane has an end?” I wonder. “I thought Eternity was infinite.”

“A single plane is like a grain of sand. Imagine all the grains of sand on a beach laid out in a single line.” Holiday replies. “This is the scale we’re talking about here. If you find someone who really thinks they’ve found the edge of Eternity they might just be insane.”

“Are many people here insane?” Maria murmurs.

Holiday chuckles. “What do you think? What are the ascendants who return like?”

“They’re recluses, eccentrics,” I answer.

The ascendant snorts. “I will say that coming here certainly doesn’t make you more normal. What affinity do the two of you think I have, hmm?”

“Beginning,” Maria says immediately.

Holiday’s lips part, his eyes glinting. “If I’m a Beginning practitioner, how did I fly before?”

Maria and I are both silent as we mull over an answer.

When we arrived, Holiday launched off the ground using his own strength, then just...kept going forward. It didn’t look like he used any kind of item. I’ve been around so many powerful practitioners that I didn’t question it.

“I’ll admit that the question is a bit unfair. The kinds of people who are selected for descents, people like Ari and myself, need to survive punishing conditions. Some type of armor or weapon wouldn’t be enough to keep us alive. If you tried to descend now, for instance, you’d die.”

“You don’t have a dual affinity, do you?”

“No.”

The words from a few minutes ago flash through my mind: Eternity has lessened distinctions between affinities...

“It’s the energy of Eternity itself, the...ascendant energy. You’re able to use it to change yourself.” I don’t think what I’m saying is incorrect as the words leave my mouth, but it feels too simplistic.

“Correct. But learning how to control the energy here requires practice. Currently all it’s good for is a passive defense. Standing still won’t help you learn; let’s get going again but this time, I want you to actually pay attention to what I’m doing. Maybe even try to replicate it.” Holiday turns to Maria. “Fly along as you were before, but pay attention all the same. The future is ever uncertain.”

Maria gives him a thin smile, her eyes dark, unfathomable pools. “It’s always the details that defy us.”

“...Too true.” He stares off vacantly; a moment later, the wood floor and two chairs of the makeshift classroom disappear. I catch myself with my practice before I hit the ground, holding myself aloft, while Maria jets the ground with a small burst of flame and jumps upright in one fluid movement.

As Holiday starts walking forward, I can’t help but ask: “How do you know which way to go?”

He taps his head. “Beginning practitioner.”

Is that really it? “Do you have a map of this area memorized?”

“I might’ve snuck a glance at one when I realized I’d be dropping you two off here: It’s not a location I would normally frequent. And while this monotonous landscape probably looks the same to you, it is different: It’s almost impossible for me to lose my way.” Holiday chuckles. “I’d say impossible, but nothing is certain in Eternity.”

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Holiday begins to skip, launching himself off the ground and traveling several feet with each stride. His vitality is normal, and visually, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Maria glances my way as we both follow behind, me gliding just above the ground and her jogging. “Can you perceive him doing anything?”

I shake my head. “No. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be paying attention to. His athletic form?”

“He must know that we can’t see anything...” Maria murmurs to herself.

Holiday stops abruptly and turns around. “If my assumptions and known information are incorrect, I can still err. Dunai, you can’t see this?”

As he holds out his hand, it glows red.

“I can,” I reply. “It’s glowing.”

Holiday turns to Maria. “And you?”

“It glows red.”

The ascendant nods. “But can you see something besides the glow?”

I squint. “Can I come closer?”

“Sure.”

Holiday’s hand doesn’t look much different up close, unfortunately. “Can I touch your hand?”

Holiday jabs his hand forward so that it’s touching my own. “Look, no one can really die in the ascendant world, and my job is to get you at least acquainted with the way things work here. Do whatever you need to do. I’ll stop you if I don’t like what you’re doing.”

That’s all the license I need to start experimenting. I still suspect that ascension is related to souls for several reasons: Soolemar is unable to ascend, ascendants have powerful souls comparable to necromancy experts, and ascendants can only face true death outside of Eternity.

Even in a simulation like the Infinity Loop, where the body was inconsequential and refreshed each iteration...my soul remained constant and sustained wear over time. Similarly to then, I’m certain that my soul is inside my body now: I would have noticed otherwise, would have been unable to control any ethereal energy without it.

But at the same time...something here must be protecting souls in a way that the Infinity Loop didn’t.

As I stand there with Holiday’s hand in mine, I realize that I have very little experience working with living, ensouled people that I don’t intend to kill. Soolemar is probably the closest example I can think of, but...practicing offensive ethereal attacks against him feels qualitatively different than probing someone...normal.

I start slow, poking into his hand with a single thread of ethereal. If Holiday notices the intrusion he doesn’t say anything. The resistance is immediate: I’m barely able to move the thread past the man’s fingertip before it comes up against a tide of ethereal energy coursing through his body.

My mind travels to the moment I killed Ari. The battleground was a plane of dust and smoke sundered in half by a gap over fifty-feet wide. I’d only just revived Euryphel from death and his body was nearly falling apart, his arms and chest spiderwebbed by searing lashes, his arms in particular nearly cooked through. The wounds looked terrible, but I knew that I could heal them with time: A life practitioner team could restore them to function given a few days.

Even nearly cooked alive, collapsed on the ground...Eury spun Maria’s inferno attack into a fiery crucible, cooking both Eldemari and Ari alive. I see the moment in greater clarity as I close my eyes, the harsh light of the blaze, the scent of charring flesh, Ari’s grunt of rage. I see Ari moving her arm forward in slow motion, about to end Maria...

And then I strike.

When I was only a decemancer, I considered myself a puppeteer: I puppeted myself around in the air, puppeted constructs and, above all, could even puppet people–could kill them with a thought. When I first encountered necromancy in the Infinity Loop, I didn’t think of it as puppeting in the same way: It was a perversion, a twisted mysticism born of cryptic chants and harsh patterns carved in flesh.

I’ve since amended my way of thinking. I see myself draping Ari in a matrix of threads, then pulling them through flesh like water. I remember sawing at the soul’s connections to vasculature, its anchors snapping one by one. I remember my terror when Ari’s soul tried to uproot my own, followed by exhilaration as the decentralized shards of my soul provided stability at the critical moment.

There was a strange euphoria in severing her mortal coil in messy, sharp strikes, like I was cheating by bypassing a physical body near impervious to my–and everyone else’s–attacks.

“That...kind of tickles,” Holiday murmurs, interrupting my thoughts.

I open my eyes and give him a look. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“Have you learned anything?”

“You have a strong soul,” I reply. “Do you actively strengthen it, or does that happen naturally by virtue of being in Eternity?”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t do anything to my soul. I mentioned before that the distinctions between affinity lessen here, but perhaps not in the way you’re assuming: Only those with domain over Death can directly manipulate souls. If you’re looking for someone to give you more details, I’d suggest seeking out Achemiss since you’re already acquainted.”

“How would I get to Achemiss from Vizier’s Crown?” I had already been considering seeking him out, but not for information about necromancy. I want to know how he contacted Soolemar...and how he contacted me. How I might be able to contact others.

Holiday cocks his head. “He’s far from here. In case it wasn’t obvious, this location is meant to be as inconvenient as possible.”

“How long would it take?” It’s not like I have a shortage of time.

“Depends on how well you navigate Eternity, but at least three years from now, I’d reckon. If you get stuck in zones like Vizier’s Crown with scarce points through which to exit, the journey might take longer. In a place like this I might travel for days without finding a weak point in the veil I can exploit.”

I narrow my eyes. Three years...I can’t imagine how far a place must be for it to take years of traveling to reach, let alone years of travel by an ascendant. To be fair, this place is called Eternity: Any previous scales of distance I’m used to are irrelevant. “How long would it take for you to reach Achemiss?”

Holiday shrugs. “It could take three years. Could take longer if I’m unlucky tearing through reality, could take significantly shorter if luck is on my side. Part of the point of Eternity is to be continuously unpredictable, else us Beginning types would make nice maps for everything and grow bored in a couple hundred years. Now, are you going to keep experimenting, or have you already mastered slashing a hole in reality?”

I frown but keep my mouth shut. After another half minute of probing, I manage to wiggle an ethereal energy tendril into his chest cavity. There, I realize something I didn’t expect: I can’t actually touch Holiday’s soul. It’s almost as though I’m trying to touch the holographic projection of a physical object.

I frown. What kind of place is Eternity if neither body nor soul are real? I hadn’t thought about the implications of Eternity being a land of immortality before now. ‘Real’ is perhaps the wrong word to use–Ari was real. The power she no-doubt gained in Eternity was real.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot I still need to learn.