The Aetherian was the same strange shape Rieren had seen it in last time. A diamond head attached to a stone column of a torso, with many wooden beams sticking out from near the top like a plethora of hands. She still didn’t know how exactly it was speaking, but understanding it was no trouble.

Most Aetherians prided themselves on their cosmic bodies, on forms that resembled the heavens and what lay beyond. She had never seen one that looked so… odd.

“Good to see you again,” the Aetherian said with wild amicability. “You have arrived just in time. Won’t be long now till we’re finally through.”

“Through to what?” Rieren asked, glad she could speak.

Her voice sounded loud. Real. Perhaps she was here more physically this time.

“To the new world, of course!” the Aetherian replied. “Have you been living under a crushed planetoid?”

Rieren decided not to comment on its strange choice of words. It wasn’t human, after all. Though, it did speak in the same common language that all residents of the Elderlands used, much as the other monsters had done. Now she was curious who in the whole wide worlds taught it to them?

Shaking her head to rid her mind of the pointless questions, Rieren focused on the route her little planetoid was taking. The Aetherian was right. They were nearing the centre at an incredible pace.

The two enormous masses in the middle of the planetary system loomed ever larger. This close up, Rieren almost began experiencing vertigo at the sheer scale.

Her confusion about their makeup kept that feeling at bay. They were both enormous. All right. But then, why did one look like a star similar to the sun when she could stare into it without harming her eyes? Similarly, why did the other resemble classical depictions of what the Mortal Realm looked like from the cosmos—a planet covered with clouds and water?

Even stranger was the exact route all the little planetoids were taking as they circulated ever closer to the centre of the system. Now that Rieren was situated closer to the madness, she could clearly make out their path. The planetoids were entering the star, not the gap between the star and the large planet directly.

And then from the star, they were ejected straight onto the surface of the planet. The method seemed to be utilizing the smallest gap between the cosmic bodies, where the planet and the star were closest.

“Are we to enter that?” Rieren asked, pointing to the star.

The Aetherian seemed confused by her question. “Something is telling me you are ignorant of how exactly we are to make our way to our new lives.” A strange sense of annoyance wafted off the Aetherian. “Is this the best you can do? This lackadaisical approach? Argh, you must be one of the lethargic ones who can’t muster even a fig of care.”

Rieren blinked. Her heart had started pumping a little too loudly in anticipation of the monster claiming that she wasn’t an Aetherian in truth. That she was a traitor who would now need to be hunted down by the rest of its kind.

Apparently, that was not the case. It just thought she was lazy and pathetic.

“Well, you have a little time to shore up,” the Aetherian said. Its tone was more admonishing than disappointed, like a parent dealing with an unruly child. “We have no time to waste. Chop, chop!”

Her ignorance was giving her away a bit too much. She ought to resurrect the acting she was capable of performing. Just because she had actively decided to discard her paranoia didn’t mean that hiding, pretending, or lying, when necessary, would never be useful.

“One moment, please,” Rieren said. “I can only prepare properly when I understand what is fully going on. I was away for a long while and I… do not even know who I fully am. Would you be so kind as to explain some things? It all feels so fantastical, yet so familiar in a way too.”

The Aetherian said nothing for a moment. With no expression from which Rieren could judge its disposition, it was almost like speaking with Kervantes again. Curse that mechanical bastard, of course.

“I was unaware you were going through such difficulties,” the Aetherian said. Rieren was a little taken aback at how kind it sounded. Though, she shouldn’t have been. It had been friendly from the beginning, unlike most monsters she had met. “How can I properly help you before we reach our destination?”

Rieren smiled at the monster in gratitude. “Simply answering my questions will be enough, if you please.”

“Very well, then. Ask away.”

“I repeat my earlier question—are we truly going to enter that enormous star, and then enter the planet from it?”

“Correct. That is the true Aether, the one that conjoins all Aetherians into one mass and allows them to exit in an evolved form better capable of traversing worlds and enjoying their lives. Currently, that planet will be the destination for the batch we are a part of. Aren’t you looking forward to it? It’s quite the pretty world, if I do say so myself.”

“That it is,” Rieren said. She decided against mentioning that the world wouldn’t be as pretty if a storm of meteorites crash landed on it. “You mention a batch. I assume there are more. Are they all headed to the same planet?”

“Of course not. There are too many of us to crowd one world. Why in the world would we overpopulate one planet when there are so many more that await our glorious touch in the cosmos?”

“That is a good point.”

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Rieren had never fully discovered the mysteries behind the Abyssals or the Aetherians in her last life. She knew the Aetherians had a strong, direct connection with the Celestial Realm. In fact, her first suspicion was that the giant star was a representation of the plane of the gods.

But the common thing about all these cases was that someone—or perhaps, multiple someones—was guiding this. There had to be a single entity in charge of establishing this practice, whether an individual Aetherian who had set it up, or a group who had decided that the monsters needed to invade other lands through their star and their meteors.

“How?” Rieren asked. “How did you come to… this?”

Once again, she vaguely pointed in the direction of the system’s centre.

“Pray, can you repeat the question?” the Aetherian said. “I don’t think I understood you.”

“How did you come to decide that throwing yourselves into other worlds would be the best for you and your kind? Who… discovered such a process? Surely you have records of come kind, yes? Something that indicates how such a practice came to be, even if it is something you have been doing for time immemorial.”

“My, I had no idea you had such a historical mind.”

Rieren didn’t. The only mind she had was one of discovering how this had come about, which might just lead her to discover how she could stop it. If she asked directly, it might raise the monster’s hackles just as her earlier ignorance had done.

“I am only curious,” she said. “And all this information is slowly helping me remember. I can almost imagine how I ended up here… and how I died.”

The sombre sincerity was enough to convince the Aetherian to keep going. “Old legends state that the greatest among us were the ones to instate the mandate.”

“Mandate?”

“The cosmos itself cannot be our permanent home. As such, we must ensure that we position ourselves in other worlds where we might build our true lives.”

Rieren nodded. “Ah, of course. The cosmos is only our birthplace. To find where we must settle down, we must journey beyond it.” She paused. “I wish to one day end up at the Celestial Realm. I believe that is where I was heading, originally.”

“Ah I see. Your ambitions aimed high! I commend you. I have heard that is one of the most difficult worlds to end up in.”

“Yes. Now about the mandate?”

“Right, right. The mandate was passed down by the Cosmic Aetherian, who established the central Aether—the star you see there—and let its many shards travail through the cosmos to land on different worlds, where each one creates an anchor that moors the world to the Aether, allowing for safe, clean passage onto its surface.”

Rieren’s eyes widened. So that wasn’t the Celestial realm. “An anchor.”

“Yes. Without it, the world would move on in the cosmos that we inhabit.”

“And,” she said as a sudden realization of what exactly the Aetherian meant hit her. “It keeps a specific location of the world facing the star—sorry, the Aether.” Rieren quickly recovered, trying not to sound like she’d just had an epiphany. “And it assists with the free movement between the Aether and the target world too, of course.”

“Correct!”

Rieren didn’t speak for a while. Her mind was still focusing on the connection between the Aetherian’s mention of shards and how she could finally act on it. Apparently, the Aetherian had decided that it signalled Rieren was done with her question.

“I am glad I was able to answer all your queries, young one!” it said. “Now, let us finally begin preparing for our ascension to a new way of life.”

Rieren certainly had more question, but then the entire cosmos started moving a bit too much. While they had conversed, the planets had circulated ever closer to the centre of the system. Rieren was a little afraid that this might be in real time, that the Aetherians’ collision with the Mortal Realm was imminent. That she had taken far too long.

But it turned out it was just her sprit getting distorted. Rieren herself was being pulled into the exact gap between the gigantic planet and the star. Batcat meowed softly atop her head. Strange that the friendly Aetherian hadn’t seen the kitten.

As the motion started getting faster and faster, her vision darkened until she lost all her senses. When Rieren could see again, she was back in the Mortal Realm.

Nothing was different. Rieren didn’t feel like she had made a breakthrough, that she had climbed another stage in power. She grimaced. For all that she had learned, an actual enlightenment still wasn’t within her reach. That was what she needed to get herself to Peak-Enlightened.

What had she found out in the previous timeline? That the Aether was synonymous with the cosmos beyond the heavens in more ways than one, though they weren’t necessarily the same thing. She already knew that. If her last experience had been anything to go by, she would need a deeper understanding beyond that comparatively superficial piece of knowledge.

There was something at the edge of her comprehension. It was almost frustrating how it was only just beyond her reach.

But Rieren was having a great difficulty focusing on any enlightenments. She had just discovered a key piece of information, something that could change the fate of the Shatterlands. Something she could use to change this entire region’s destiny.

“Where are you going?” Kalvia asked as Rieren got to her feet.

On her head, Batcat stirred. Apparently, the kitten had fallen asleep during the little trip to the Aether. How it could sleep when they were in another realm that was so mystical was beyond her.

“To find a sword,” Rieren said.

“What?”

“A sword.”

“No, I heard that. By what, I meant what sword, and why in the Abyss going to hunt for a sword when you need to cultivate to Peak-Enlightened?”

Rieren sighed. She knew full well she was falling behind where she needed to be. There was no point in finding the legendary sword if she couldn’t use it to its full capacity, and that would only happen once she had broken through to Peak-Enlightened.

“It’s the sword that is drawing the Aetherians,” she said. “As such, we need to secure it.”

“A sword drawing in those monsters? How?”

Rieren explained what she had learned in her latest vision about the Aether. Kalvia looked skeptical, but her face mollified into a more accepting expression once Rieren’s short tale was done.

“Are you sure it’ll work?” Kalvia asked. This time, there was the edge of hope, like she wanted to believe it would work.

Rieren looked downslope. Dawn was coming up. “I am certain it is what the Aetherians are using. They create pathways into this world through anchors thrown down from the Aether itself. One of these anchors was found and fashioned into a powerful blade of legend, one that resides in this very city.”

“If you can control it, then you can control where exactly the Aetherians show up.”

“Exactly.”

“I see. Well, you best get going then.”

Rieren had been about to, but then she paused. “You will not be offering your assistance?”

For some reason, she wasn’t even certain why she was expecting it. Sure, she and Kalvia had grown closer over their recent shared experiences in the Shatterlands. But in the end, she was the Empress-to-be and Rieren was an independent, unbound cultivator.

“May fortune favour your steps, Rieren,” Kalvia said.

“Thank you.”

Rieren headed off.

It didn’t take her long to reach the temple. It was still full of refugees from all over the Shatterlands. If anything, it looked more crowded than before. She hadn’t decided to invade the dungeon beneath it yet as she hadn’t thought she would need the relic there anytime soon. Well, that had proven false.

Rieren did her best to sneak to the temple’s rear, then pulled open another secret doorway after removing some flagstones. It was a good thing her memory was sharp.

“Ready, cat?” she asked.

Batcat meowed in affirmative. It had woken up, likely alert now that they were approaching danger.

“Then let us acquire a legendary sword.”