They left the multi-dimensional Forsaken settlement with more questions than answers.
Lyka was unusually quiet as they walked, her normal chatter replaced by thoughtful frowning. She kept glancing back at the crystallized structures, then at Arthur's trail markers, then at her own improvised equipment.
"Something's not right," she said finally.
"You mean besides the dimensional fractures and reality cascade?" August asked.
"No, I mean…" Lyka stopped walking entirely. "Sparkles, how long have you been following Arthur's trail?"
"About two weeks, maybe three? Time gets weird in the zones."
"And in all that time, how many other zone hunters have you met?"
August thought about it. "Just you. And Maya, but she was retired."
"Exactly." Lyka pulled out her sonic daggers and examined them. "Do you know how many zone hunters there should be working an area this size, with this many active threats?"
August had no idea, so he said as much.
"Hundreds," Lyka said. "Maybe thousands. Zone hunting isn't a solo profession, Sparkles. It's dangerous, complicated work that requires teams, coordination, backup protocols."
She gestured at the landscape around them - dimensional fractures, reality distortions, evidence of Zone King activity everywhere.
"This level of zone activity should have triggered a massive response. Emergency protocols, military intervention, evacuation of entire regions. Instead, we've got one guy with a harmonic weapon working alone."
"Arthur's just… really good at his job?"
"Nobody's that good," Lyka said flatly. "And even if Arthur was, Command wouldn't let him work alone in a crisis this big. They'd assign teams, support staff, backup hunters."
Lyka started pacing, her agitation growing.
"And another thing - that research facility you found? The abandoned one with all the evacuation protocols? When did they evacuate?"
"I don't know. Recently, I think. The coffee was still fresh-ish."
"But the map showed hundreds of zones marked as 'Lost,' right? That level of catastrophic failure doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of escalating problems."
August nodded.
"So why were they still drinking coffee and filing reports if the situation was hopeless? Why abandon the facility now instead of months ago when the zones started going critical?"
"Maybe they were trying to hold out as long as possible?"
"Or maybe," Lyka said, stopping her pacing to stare directly at August, "the situation isn't what we think it is."
They continued following Arthur's trail, but Lyka kept pointing out things that didn't make sense.
"Look at these blast patterns," she said, examining the remains of what appeared to be a destroyed Zone King. "Arthur's using harmonic resonance weapons, right? But these scorch marks… they're too clean. Too precise."
"That's bad?"
"It's impossible. Harmonic weapons are area-effect by nature. They don't create surgical precision - they create chaos. These blast patterns look like something completely different."
Lyka knelt down and ran her fingers through the crystallized remains.
"Plus, where are all the Forsaken bodies? Arthur's supposed to be clearing entire populations before killing the Zone Kings, but I'm not seeing evidence of mass elimination. Just… empty zones."
August's Foundation monitor flickered green as they encountered more dimensional contamination.
"Speaking of which," Lyka said, watching August adapt to reality distortion, "your Foundation immunity thing? That's really rare. Like, one-in-a-million rare."
"So?"
"So what are the odds that the one person following Arthur's trail just happens to have the exact Foundation type needed to survive dimensional chaos?"
August felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"You think it's not a coincidence?"
"I think," Lyka said carefully, "that there are a lot of convenient coincidences in this whole situation. Your immunity, Arthur working alone, the dimensional crisis having simple solutions that nobody's implementing, multi-dimensional Forsaken who won't talk…"
She kicked a rock into a dimensional fracture and watched it disappear.
"It's like someone set up this whole scenario specifically for you to follow."
They made camp that evening in another pocket of stable reality.
Lyka was still working through the logical problems, muttering to herself while she sharpened her weapons.
"The evacuation protocols don't match the timeline," she said. "The zone distribution doesn't match the threat assessment. The dimensional solutions don't match the chosen response."
"Maybe the people in charge are just incompetent?" August suggested.
"Maybe," Lyka said. "Or maybe we're not seeing the real picture."
She looked up from her weapons to study August.
"Tell me about when you first got here. How exactly did you end up in this world?"
August hesitated. The whole "I'm from another dimension where this is a story I wrote" explanation seemed increasingly ridiculous.
"I… don't really remember clearly. One moment I was somewhere else, the next I was here."
"Convenient memory loss," Lyka noted. "Right around the time Arthur started working alone in an area where dimensional experts are desperately needed."
August felt increasingly uncomfortable under Lyka's analytical scrutiny.
"What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting," Lyka said, "that maybe Arthur didn't start working alone by choice. Maybe everyone else was sent away, or scared away, or… removed somehow."
"That's paranoid."
"Sparkles, I've been hunting zones for three years. You know what the first rule of zone hunting is? When something doesn't make sense, it's because someone's lying."
Lyka set down her weapons and looked directly at August.
"Someone is lying to us. About the dimensional crisis, about the Solvain Protocol, about why Arthur's working alone. And until we figure out who and why, we're walking blind into whatever's really happening."
August stared into their campfire, trying to process Lyka's reasoning.
Everything she said made sense. The abandoned research facility, the lack of other zone hunters, the convenient coincidences - it all pointed to deception on a massive scale.
"So what do we do?"
"We keep following Arthur's trail," Lyka said. "But we stop believing everything we've been told. We start looking for evidence of what's really happening instead of just accepting the official story."
She pulled out her own map - much more detailed than August's - and spread it on the ground between them.
"Look at this. Arthur's route doesn't match optimal zone-clearing patterns. He's not moving systematically through threat areas. He's moving like he's… searching for something specific."
"Or running from something," August added.
"Or running from something," Lyka agreed.
They studied the map together, tracing Arthur's path through the zone network.
"Here," Lyka pointed to a cluster of marks. "He doubled back three times in this area. That's not clearing behavior - that's hunting behavior. Like he was tracking something."
"And here," August noticed another pattern. "He skipped this entire region marked as high-threat. Why avoid dangerous zones if your job is clearing them?"
"Because clearing zones isn't actually his job," Lyka said quietly. "Or at least, it's not his only job."
They sat in silence for a while, both contemplating the implications.
"Lyka," August said finally, "what if Arthur isn't the hero in this story?"
"What if there are no heroes in this story?" Lyka replied. "What if there are just people with different agendas, and we've been fed a narrative that makes one side look noble and the other look monstrous?"
August felt his understanding of the situation shifting again.
First, he'd thought he was the creator of this world. Then he'd accepted that he was just another character in a story too big for its author. Now Lyka was suggesting that the entire story might be a lie.
"So what's really happening?"
"I don't know yet," Lyka said, rolling up her map. "But I know how to find out. We catch up to Arthur, we confront him directly, and we demand real answers instead of propaganda."
"And if he won't give us real answers?"
Lyka's grin was sharp and not entirely friendly.
"Then we find someone who will. Even if we have to follow him all the way to whatever he's really searching for."
August fell asleep that night with his head spinning from logical inconsistencies and uncomfortable questions.
Tomorrow they would continue following Arthur's trail, but now they'd be looking for evidence of deception instead of just following directions. Looking for the real story behind the dimensional crisis and the Solvain Protocol.
Lyka was right about one thing - when something didn't make sense, it was because someone was lying.
The question was: what was Arthur really doing, and who was he protecting by making everyone else believe in a crisis that might not exist?
August dreamed of empty research facilities and convenient coincidences, while dimensional fractures that might be fake spread across a landscape that might be a stage set for some larger performance.
In the morning, they would start looking for the truth behind the lies.
Even if that truth turned out to be more complicated than either heroism or villainy.