In my inner world, I walked underneath a starry sky and felt the cool wind in my hair.

As nice as the real space makeover was, it was much nicer being a person again.

This was the only place where I was almost human. Therefore, I could approximate normal human things while resting in the depths of my own existence.

“Hey, jackass. Do you know what a Stigmata is? Why did you copy that project? Just what the hell were you thinking, man?”

I walked over and punched Samson, trying to interrogate the answers out of him. He didn’t respond.

One day, he’d wake up again and tell me why he did something so stupid.

Though I had no way of knowing what really happened during Operation Starfall, a secret mission to stop a doomsday weapon from activating, this was the jackass who was involved in a disaster that ended one section of the world. And he had the audacity to copy down the project files that caused the whole mess that was the Frontier. When I realized the magnitude of the information he kept on his distress beacon, I wiped it clean — but not before memorizing most of the contents. Lucky me for having such a good machine-like memory. I could peel back the trauma and lick my wounds anew if I ever wanted to.

I had been through a whole lot just to reach proper society once more. On the way, I met a girl named Lyra.

She was gone now, but I wouldn’t forget her. I couldn’t forget her. It would be a disservice to her memory if I forgot.

A remainder of her dwelt within me, a statue bearing her likeness and the emerald blade she briefly wielded in life. I didn’t know exactly what went through her head when she met her end, but I vowed to live and understand. It may have only been a short while we were together, but I admired her strength. It wasn’t an easy job to set things right and kill a version of herself that had fallen.

Jaxl, a gas-masked mercenary who decided to make me his tag along, he dragged me here, to a little arms workshop called Kon Atelier, which was apparently a pretty big deal in Hadron. There were waitlists of over a year to get a weapon from this place.

Slowly but surely, perhaps I could wean myself off the survival mindset. I already had a friend I could keep in touch with in the form of Nina, a metallurgist and associate of Kon Atelier. With my registration into the Nexus system, I was technically a citizen of the Frontier now — I had to worry about paying taxes and getting a proper job.

Bleh.

Employment and being productive could wait. Nina helped un-muck my system and distill me down to a gemstone-like rock, and I had a debilitating condition known as being an actual rock.

It seemed a little absurd, now that I was in proper company. I suppose I had to learn how to talk to people again and figure out more about this world. That too, however, could wait for tomorrow.

My struggle to survive was finally over. Taking it easy was the new status quo; I could build relationships in ordinary peace and carefully plan for the future.

As for the wind-based powers I bore, an expert finally helped me identify mine. STIGMATA of WIND: CYCLE TURBINE, it was called. Another absolutely ludicrous name, but at least I didn’t have to bear with the shame of naming it myself.

Thanks for taking the embarrassment for me, Nina.

I used my Stigmata for so long that I understood the limits and capabilities of my technique. There were no cool swords made from wind for me in the future. Creating solid shapes was impossible, but I theorized that I could create strong gusts and vortexes that could do some real harm. If it was possible in this mental world, chances are it was possible in real space too.

My strength lay in boosting the abilities of others. Surrounding them with a shroud of my wind allowed them both protection and speed — and I figured out how to brute force emergency healing with the near limitless stores of useless energy I dubbed Ether, which was somehow unrelated to Qi, another more common-sense energy of this world. Qi being raw lifeforce, I suppose. I didn’t really get it — I had no way of sensing or seeing it, so I guess I was out of the loop.

There was no rush to prove these moves. I was safe now, so I could slack off and just enjoy my time here.

That, and if I turned into one of those people who named all their attacks, I think I’d die of cardiac arrest.

About their relation to the Manifest phenomenon and the cobalt blade and that damned woman to whom I had some sort of connection, I didn’t know much yet. I had a feeling they were related, but I had to confirm with Jaxl later — he seemed to know about them.

Tomorrow was going to be a great day. I wondered if Nina would come by again, or if Tapio would allow me to assist in his work. Learning how to replicate all those weapon patterns could boost my combat and craftsman efficiency by several magnitudes; there might even be a way to replicate Relics and gates without immense amounts of psychological damage.

Drunk off the possibilities for the future, I dozed off and waited for the dawn.

The alarm was loud enough to shove me back into my rock body.

Groggily, I pushed myself out of my bed and quickly found the source: a palm-sized beacon in the workshop flashing a steady red light and emitting an ear-ripping bleat.

I pulled it out of Tapio’s drawer and saw that it said “#035” in bold letters. Tapio himself arrived moments later, pulling on the sleeves of a thick leather jacket.

“What’s the code?”

He leaned over me and swore at the number and resulting message.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “That suicidal wreck has gotten herself into trouble.”

Tapio moved towards his wall of half-finished equipment orders. I followed along and asked, “What do you mean?”

“That girl’s been injured on the job.” He pulled out a black walking cane with four buttons on the handle and waved it at me, gesturing for me to stay put. “Just stay put and watch over that lizard until he wakes up. I’ll be back by the morning, I’m sure.”

“Where are you going? Where is she?”

He scraped together a smattering of supplies from his drawers; half of those things had to be hand-grenades. “I’ll explain later.”

That was no good. If my employer got himself zeroed in the field, who would pay me?

Call it a team-building exercise. I was going to be staying here for quite some time, so I might as well lend a hand here and there to gain some favor.

“I can heal fatal wounds. I am your insurance.”

Tapio paused for a moment, running the risks and rewards in his head. Then he waved his hand in resignation and pocketed me, saying, “Sure. Whatever. It wouldn’t hurt.”

3 AM in Hadron was a dying sunset trapped in glass. Tapio sprinted through the empty limestone streets, hopping safety rails to accelerate his descent. A hop through an empty cathedral dedicated to overseas contractors and a chocolate box variety of novel religions got us to a ground-level junction station; he took a sharp left into a junction station and flashed his ID at a crystal raven in a cage.

The bird’s right eye flashed red, reading the card. Then it pecked at a control panel and opened up a holographic, annotated map of Granport.

While Tapio was keying in a specific location, I poked my head out of his pocket and looked at the bird. The thing was stuck in a brass birdcage, staring intently at floating glyphs that seemed to correspond with the ominously pulsing Raven Gate we were waiting in front of.

Seeing as we didn’t have enough time for a proper conversation, I got a funny idea.

“—Say nevermore.”

“Eh? Who said that? Who the fuck said that?”

The raven’s reaction was visceral. Its eyes turned red as it flapped and turned on the old man, squawking up a storm. “You think you’re really funny, arentcha? You wanna scrap, cat man? Old man? I’ll beat your ass until you squeal!”

“That was my apprentice,” Tapio said calmly, still working away at the map. “They’re on call with me. I’ll send you her contact information when she gets off work.”

I was just curious — please don’t hurt me.

The raven hopped up to a perch in its cage and tilted its head. “Apprentice? You mean the psycho-bitch? Or is there a new one? Say, say, haven’t seen you leave your workshop for a while. You still dealing with those Ring goons? Going out now? Really?”

Tapio shot the chatty raven a glare. “You talk too much.”

“So cold.” The bird shrugged and returned to its station, pecking at blinking lights. “If playing hero makes you feel better about yourself, pick whatever fights you want. No shortage of easy villains out here these days.”

I didn’t have any time to puzzle out what the bird meant by that. As he was squawking some vaguely condescending words at us, Tapio locked in a location and marched through the Raven Gate.

An overview of a frozen city. The portal flickered and shut behind us, leaving us stranded on a partially collapsed rooftop.

It just so happened that this rooftop was located in the middle of a battlefield.

Fire and ice clashed in the streets. Swords and spears wielded by eager mercenaries pierced and punctured snow-bound humanoid figures encased in ice, a battle that burned on all fronts around us and lit up the night.

They were everywhere. Every street, every alley from here to the bridges of the city swarmed with activity; it was bloody, discordant noise. Ugly sounds. Annoying sounds. I clasped my hands over my ears and willed the noise away.

This was the same city we were in before, Granport, but a different sector entirely. This was downtown proper, an urban sprawl reclaimed by an eternal winter. I could see what that white blot was now before: off to the north, near the core of the city, was a massive castle of ice of some sort.

Tapio ducked into a stairwell and raised two fingers to his temple, activating some sort of microphone on his collar.

“Owl? Come in, Owl. Command to Owl. Owl?”

Static from the other end of the line. He clicked his tongue and took the steps three at a time down, cursing underneath his breath.

“Scramblers in the area,” Tapio said. “They know we’re here. Vivian, can you trace her? We can’t waste any more time.”

They? Were these ‘Rings’ he was rambling on about?

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Apparently, this was all old business to Tapio. Guess a ruined city wasn’t that weird, considering he was an old man with cat ears.

Making a mental note to fully interrogate both Jaxl and Tapio about what the hell was happening, I focused on the song of the world.

Eradicate the sound of self, the deceptive view bound to one's own ego.

Destroy the image given by the eyes. Push past the minimal jamming by those scramblers.

Listen only to the change the wind brings, to the shifting Ether walking hand-in-hand with time. Perceive everything as it is.

This was the same technique I used for hundreds of years to navigate that underground hell. The only difference now was that I could fully comprehend what I did.

There were many things in this world that could deceive this form of sight. A single wounded girl wasn’t one of them.

“—Three floors below us. Barricaded room. They’re self-administering first aid.”

“Anything between us?”

“Nothing you should worry about.”

I guided him to the hideout, a flimsy conference room boxed in with chilled drywall. Tapio raised his black cane and kept one eye on the open windows as he approached the door, on the open conflict raging in the snow outside.

He produced a silvery nylon glove and placed it against the wall adjacent to the door. Equally silvery light bled from the fingertips, forming the outline of a rectangle the approximate size of a door. He stepped through, phasing through solid matter like it was nothing.

It didn’t take much looking to find the girl named Owl. She was propped up in a pool of chilled blood, struggling breath wisping to trails of white as injected herself with a bright orange serum. Beside her, held up by a green plastic tray, were a collection of syringes and gels covered in bloodied fingerprints.

Tapio saw the needle she was using and froze. It looked as though he wanted to say something, but allowed her to finish administering the mystery drug and said, “Do what you can. I’ll secure the room.”

This girl had terrible luck. To run into me and Jaxl the day before, then into somebody — or something — capable of tearing through her entire system.

Mass internal hemorrhaging to every area except for the skull and upper chest. Her veins and limbs were functioning off drugs and willpower alone; I couldn’t even comprehend what kind of weapon could do something like this.

My healing, of course, wasn’t free. It was painful. It was a manual override of pink muscle, yellowish fat, and white bone with a force I didn’t entirely understand. But saving one’s life took priority over comfort and momentary feelings.

So I got to work, hoping she wouldn’t scream too much.

But the most reaction she had to me rearranging her guts was the faintest twitch of her eyelid.

Tapio placed some sort of device in the middle of the room and calibrated it. When it was done, he leaned on his cane and stared at the wall.

Twitches turned to blinks. Blinks turned to haggard grunts of exertion, then to bloodied coughs. When she regained enough strength to move, Owl plucked the syringe from her arm and flicked it in no particular direction.

“I thought I told you to get those fucking things out of me,” she eventually muttered.

“I thought I told you to keep your head low,” Tapio returned, dispassionately. “I’m aborting this mission. I don’t care what you found — we’re the last ones left.”

“...Go fuck yourself.”

It may have been snowing outside, but the temperature between them was so cold that even I felt a chill.

They didn’t speak to each other any further while I fixed up Owl’s wounds.

I watched them. But I didn’t understand.

I didn’t understand a single thing happening before me.

The two people here, supposed secret comrades in arms, couldn’t bring themselves to even look at one another.

“What’s going on?” I asked through my vocoder.

Relic Hunter society seemed simple from the outside looking in. It was a guild, a cabal of killers and exterminators chasing after artifacts that could be sold back to any number of bidders. Then there were these two, bleeding for something outside that pre-established system.

Find Relics. Sell Relics. Buy equipment and powers to advance up the rankings. Find a place in that ecosystem and live a happy life. The Frontier was a carefully cultivated society with little tolerance for infighting, as I learned from chatting with Nina.

“It would be convenient if our enemies had the courtesy to announce themselves.” Tapio rubbed his temple as he spoke, staring intently at the floor. “No, the Four Rings are a bunch of bastards who know how to work the shadows and limelight. They’re working against the common man, planning on expanding out this Frontier until it covers the damn globe.”

“What’re you rambling about?” Owl muttered, staring up at the ceiling.

“The Relic’s working with us,” he said. “Bear with her.”

Her hands balled into fists. “Somebody might be still watching, you stupid old shitbird.”

The old man was doing me a courtesy by explaining all this, but I had to agree. Talking in a situation like this didn’t seem like a good idea.

On a fundamental level, I already got the gist of what they were fighting. They were operating with secrecy in mind; the group they were up against must’ve been a real bunch of sneaky rats.

“They destroyed all my drones, but I intercepted an envoy,” Owl said, breaking the silence. “Those fuckers are playing both sides. Setting up search missions under the pretense of raids. Controlling the Husks. They’re mobilizing en masse to find ‘Whitelight.’” She pushed herself to her feet, having recovered enough to walk again. “But it’s not worth much if there’s nobody left to act on intel. Talk to me, are we fucked again?”

She was still injured, so I slipped into her pocket and focused on finishing my work. Black mist wept from the insides of her cloak as I patched her up, concealing her face and voice once more.

“Again?” Tapio guffawed at the remark. “Unlike you, I prepare for everything. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

With a coy grin, he took the cane and smashed it into the wall like a baseball bat. Another black door emerged from the cracks; he slammed the cane into the center of the light and twisted it, as though locking a door.

“Hurry up,” he said, gesturing for us to go through first. “Can’t talk shop if we’re all dead.”

Tapio’s black door led seamlessly to street level, to a quieter alley beside all the action.

“Let me do the talking,” he told Owl and I, donning black glasses. “I registered one of my shell companies as a participant in this suppression.”

“Talk fast,” Owl said. “I didn’t even see the bastard that got me. We won’t stand a chance in a direct showdown.”

We rushed through the torn-up streets towards the staging ground, a fenced-off hotel lobby reinforced with sandbags. Twenty minutes of walking got us far enough from the active conflict zone to be relatively safe, even without guards standing post.

This was a suppression of the Hoarfrost Riders, a contract offered by the Oracle Bureau. The rules were simple: kill as many offending targets as you can, and get paid accordingly. Bonus for any Relics recovered.

It was the perfect cover for any covert operation. Any evidence would be destroyed in the resulting chaos.

Today’s contract was bought up by the Steady Pulse Office, a subcontractor that managed many smaller independent Relic Hunter groups into one blood-thirsty mass to unleash on whatever needs a little blood-letting. We arrived when the teams were out there making their pay; holding down the fort were six coordination operators that made sure no grime got into the gears.

While me and Owl waited against the nearby wall, Tapio approached the nearest coordination operator and said, “Excuse me. If you have a moment.”

The operator was a bespectacled kid in a puffy white coat, no older than twenty years of age. When he looked up at Tapio’s face, he visibly panicked. “Wait, this is a secured area. You’re not supposed to—”

“I’m with the Red Cloud Group. Owner, actually,” Tapio said, presenting one of his many laminated business cards. “I have urgent business in Hadron — where’s your Gate?”

The operator visibly gulped. “It’s, uh, closed at the moment. It’s scheduled to open up in two days.”

Tapio looked over the brim of his opaque sunglasses and said, “Two days? I wasn’t informed of this.”

The kid in the white jacket smiled nervously and looked at the other operators in the area. None of them returned his gaze. “The threat has been upgraded to Mythos-2, so, uh… you know the rules.”

“When was this?”

“A-A few hours ago, sir.”

“Get me the head.” A crisp red plastic bill, folded twice, came from Tapio’s sleeve and slid onto the counter. “Tell Yves that money is of no issue. If you would.”

I see. This was the legendary ‘I want to speak to your manager’ tactic combined with bribery, a two-front attack against the recipient's corporate sensibilities.

Impressive.

There was visible hesitation from the young operator. He looked at the bill as though it were a snake.

“Money is of no issue here, either,” Tapio said, offering his best smile. But his expression chilled. “But my patience is a limited resource. Will that be good enough?”

“N-No need, this is plenty enough!” Laughing hesitantly, the operator punched keys. Looked around, made sure nobody was looking when he pocketed the red bill. Moments later, he handed the headset over to Tapio and said, “Sir Yves is on the line. Please go ahead.”

Twenty minutes. The Raven Gate allocated to the Steady Pulse Office would open after twenty minutes, and everybody would be able to go home two days early with a full wallet. A very happy ending for everybody involved.

Tapio looked very pleased with himself as he rejoined Owl and I on a sandbag bench. His grin spoke plenty loud enough:

This is what happens when you have actual contingencies in plan.

We couldn’t speak here. Not if we wanted to keep the cover we had.

Owl didn’t look too happy about the rescue. Her ability was already teleportation or something to that effect, so she could’ve probably shambled back here on her own and waited for medical treatment. But as far as I could see, there were no medics or even spare medicine to go around this ramshackle outpost.

Was she planning on dying out here on her own if things went really bad?

I was pleased that everything went as smoothly as it did. This particular crusty old man was the exact opposite of Jaxl: he knew how to use words and resources to break out of a tough situation. Though they may have walked the same path once, they ended in completely different places.

So we waited for time to run out and the gate to whisk us back home.

Scurrying gloved fingers dancing across keyboards. The falling snow outside. The bloodstained tatters of Owl’s cloak that everybody was doing their best to ignore, especially herself.

It was quiet. I had some time to think and reflect, for once.

This world wasn’t one that I knew of. The broken sky was one thing, but the people here were colder than I anticipated. I couldn’t pin down the exact reason for my uneasiness, but I swore I saw a certain... hunger in everybody’s eyes. They were constantly on the lookout for knives in the dark, yet had a knife firm in hand and were ready to plunge it into any weakness they could find.

Was it the influence of the shattered sky? The culture of the Frontier?

Or was this simply the new state of humanity?

I wasn’t ready to come up with an answer. I hadn’t seen enough — I couldn’t even begin to ponder the question in a reasonable manner.

“Owl, do you still have the backup drone on you? I have an experimental processor I’d like to try out.”

Tapio spoke before I could ponder any more uncomfortable sentiments. He held his hand out in Owl’s direction, expectantly.

Owl ignored his hand and retrieved a small grey box from her back, about the size of a small dog. She placed it on the ground, hit a start up button, and said, “Go crazy. Core’s fried.”

“I’ll need the new core as well,” he said, still holding out his hand. “I believe you still have it on you.”

“Sure.” Owl fished me out of her pocket and dumped me in his palm.

Tapio produced something like a circular vial of viscous clear fluid and dumped me in. He screwed a metal cap on, then slotted me into the side of the metal box.

In that fluid, hundreds of wispy tendrils latched onto me and attached themselves to my core. My very concept of self expanded as they drained Ether from me — I felt my presence expanding through the box, pulled along by wires and premade pathways until I completely saturated this machine.

Crafty old bastard. Tapio fulfilled his promise and gave me a body in the worst way possible. I wasn’t going to start complaining about it, even if the body itself was subpar.

Slowly, I stood up on four stubby metal legs and looked around. Using my old disembodied senses, I took a good look at myself.

A box-shaped drone with a big camera eye on the front. I could still utilize my Stigmata inside, which easily made up for any movement impediments a creature with such stubby legs would have.

“—Huh.”

More importantly, a voice leaked out of a speaker. It was unmistakably my voice, the voice I spoke to myself and mumbled in when I felt like it was time to talk.

“Testing. Testing? Hello.”

It was working. Experimentally, I tried talking some more, spitting out random things that came to mind:

“I am. Yam. Blam. Yesterday is today. No hope. Slit my neck and put my head on a pike. Lasagna. Massacre. Genocide. Genocide is fun. Don’t hurt me. Kill me. Kill me. Kill me. A-E-I-O-U-AAAAAAAA—”

Tapio was a genius. By merely thinking hard enough, I could speak again. If it were me, I would do a little more build up and then reveal something as big as this.

I began laughing uncontrollably, unable to fully control the new body. I couldn’t hold it in — I was just too happy to know how to react properly.

Tapio clasped his hands together and pointed at me. “Look. It works. It’s working! I haven’t lost my touch at all, even now.”

Incredible. I could spin around in circles without getting dizzy; if I had to get into a fight, this was leagues better than the big slab that I was before.

Not everybody shared in our creator’s joy, however.

The operators looked away from our little show. Owl looked down, frowned, and said, “The damned thing’s more broken than before.”

Twenty minutes came and passed in relative quiet. Our party of three was ready and waiting for the Raven Gate to open up, keeping one eye on the street outside to see if anybody would arrive.

Nobody came. Nobody wanted to speak up about it, either.

Twenty-one minutes arrived.

Then twenty-two.

“I’ve lost contact with Alpha,” said one operator out loud. He looked around.

“Can’t reach Delta and Golf, either.” Another operator leaned back and shouted, “Can anybody reach any of the teams?”

Complete silence from all six operators. With the enthusiasm of a man walking to a guillotine, the kid in the white coat hobbled near us and said, “I’m afraid we’ll need final verification from Sir Yves first — the Raven Prince requires a voice print.”

“That’s fine,” Tapio said in a voice which clearly indicated that it wasn’t.

He gave Owl a curt nod and stepped back, hands set firmly on his cane. Taking the signal, I threw up a shroud of Ether around the entire lobby and stood close to my group.

The kid took it as a go-ahead to keep doing what he was doing, which is precisely what he did. “Thank you for your patience,” he said, giving us a small bow in apology.

He never made it back to his desk.

In the moment he took his first step, a rose of Ether emerged from the necks of every person present. It pinched their jugulars and arteries and began to sprout.

I only had so much time to react. I reached up and snipped Owl and Tapio’s stems, but—

Before he could take his next step, he and every person still afflicted with that cursed rose crumpled to the ground. Blood explosively gushed out of their mouths and nostrils, leaving them lifeless on the floor and slumped over in their chairs.

One at a time, the computer screens flickered to a pure white. Owl raised her rifle, Tapio raised his cane, and I wielded my Stigmata, waiting for any visible targets to approach.

The computer speakers and headphones crackled at the same time. Then came the clink of a spoon in a ceramic cup, and a very bored sounding woman’s voice:

“Hey. Wanna chat? I’ve got coffee I’m willing to share if you surrender now.”