They were sitting atop the canopy of colossal trees, the branches so wide they felt like platforms.The wind up there was constant, carrying the metallic scent of the rift that hummed in the distance, warping the sky like cracked glass.
Asheras stared at that crooked horizon, like someone looking for an excuse not to face what came next.
"A lot has happened," she said, her voice hoarse, almost rasping. "Things that changed... everything."
Ezra remained silent for a while, his mind lost in her words. Then finally, he turned to her, his eyes steady.
"How about starting with the Subfundus? And with you."
Asheras gave a dry laugh. The kind that doesn't come from the mouth, but from memory."Oh, that's easy. I was just another victim of the system."
"The idiot brother I never had the guts to kill with my own hands... ended up neck-deep in drugs."
Ezra frowned. Her words were strong, but he chose not to interfere. "Drugs? But... weren't those banned in the Subdepths? At least the ones strong enough to get someone like your brother addicted?"
"They were." She glanced sideways, her eyes burning like embers. "Back when Dereck Pigface ruled, yes. But he was overthrown. Now Theos Graam runs the show."
"Theos Graam?" Ezra repeated, testing the name on his tongue. "Never heard of him."
"Most haven't. And those who have... prefer to forget. He scrapped all of Dereck's laws, like every new tyrant does when they seize power. The first change? Legalizing and institutionalizing drug trafficking. The heavy stuff. From the usual to the ones that make people think they're gods."
She paused. "He turned the drug Impetus into a currency."
Ezra shifted on the branch, a chill running down his spine. "Impetus?"
The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. "The one that charges your body like it's pure vis, but sends the bill later, multiplied."
Impetus was a drug with two effects depending on the user. For someone with a Codex, it opened the body's pores and vis channels, boosting circulation and amplifying the vis potency. For regular people, it acted as the best painkiller, and, above all, a hallucinogen.But its consequences were far from miraculous. Everyone who used it either had their insides destroyed, or didn't live long enough to reach that point.
She swallowed hard. "My brother became addicted. Behavioral changes, tremors, hyperactivity, bulging veins, and finally overdose. Quick death. Anonymous burial. And, like every proper addict... he died deep in debt."
Ezra finished the sentence before she could. "And someone had to pay it off."
"Exactly... That someone was me."
"Asheras..." His voice was barely a whisper, but she didn't give space for condolences.
"No need. Most of the debt in the Subfundus over the last five years comes from the same root. Drugs. Always drugs."
She took a deep breath, her golden eyes fixed on the abyss of the rift. "In my case... I never touched them. Never used them. Never sold them. And still... they consumed me."
Ezra stayed silent, squeezing his hands to stop the tremble. He didn't know what to say, and maybe there was nothing he should say.
"Graam's gang raided my workshop. Took everything. Tools, artifacts, books... even my father's unfinished designs." She pressed her lips for a moment, her voice breaking.
"They said it was to cover my brother's debt. But it was just an excuse. They inflated the interest. Fabricated a debt that never existed. You know, the usual tricks loan sharks pull."
She lowered her eyes, staring at her hands as if they still bore the marks of everything she'd lost.
"I barely escaped," her voice kept dropping. "I was lucky... or maybe unlucky. I fell into a dimensional rift before they could sell me to some brothel, or worse, as a plaything for some deranged scientist."
Ezra took a few seconds to process those words. His eyes were fixed on her, but his mind was already trying to fit the pieces together, or at least attempting to.
"Here...?" he asked, voice more subdued now.
She nodded, the motion subtle but heavy with weight. Her eyes still on the ground, as if reliving every step that brought her there.
"Yes. The rift dropped me straight into this forest. In the Northern continent... the Eastern one, not the other."
She touched her own wrist, indicating the metallic bracelet with a display she wore. "Took me a while, but I managed to connect my watch to the Ishtar network."
"Ishtar...?" He remained calm outwardly, but his mind lagged behind the words,
"Wait…" his heart finally catching up, pounding.
"That's... in Astrekar!" he choked on his own breath.
This time, he couldn't hide his surprise. It wasn't the kind of shock that came from impossible revelations. It was worse. The kind of revelation that, despite sounding insane, made far too much sense.
The tragedies she'd described, gangs, debts, drugs, violence, were cruel, yes, but familiar. They were rooted in the Subfundus, and every society had its darker corners. Asheras's situation was just one among thousands, and a relatively mild one, if you thought about it.
But the idea that they were this far away, in an entirely different continent...
"That doesn't make sense," he murmured, digging into the inside pocket of his coat and finding nothing. "Tsk."
Asheras raised an eyebrow but remained silent, letting Ezra process it all.
With a mildly frustrated sigh, he steadied himself. "I thought we were in a separate dimension at most, in some random forest... maybe somewhere near the Convention… or, even the continent borders but..."
His gaze drifted around. For the first time since waking up there, he truly saw his surroundings.
The trees weren't normal. Their trunks twisted like tendons under the skin of a living creature. Branches intertwined in nearly organic shapes, and the wood's knots resembled empty eye sockets, hollow, but alert. Leaves trembled despite the still air, and some vines pulsed slowly, as if vis flowed through their bark.
Ezra narrowed his eyes. "So... you mean we're in—"
"The Forest of Souls," Asheras finished for him, before he could say it. Her voice was almost a whisper, reverent. "The stories didn't lie."
Ezra didn't answer right away. The name carried weight, not as a legend, but as a whispered threat in scattered reports. The Forest of Souls was near the Federation of Ishtar, a restricted zone, even by technocratic standards.
Only then did the full magnitude of their situation hit him.
After the Great Rescission, the collapse of the Old Laws, and the world's realignment, the seven ancient continents had been reshaped into twelve. Or eleven, if you didn't count the Thalassaryon Archipelago, the old Oceania, now submerged.
The High Convention of Yllira, the political and magical heart of the world, was located in Caelvareth, what had once been called Europe, the new geographic and diplomatic center of the world.
Astrekar, in contrast, sat at the far northern edge of the reconfigured world. The old North America had been split in two: Ruvennor to the west, harsh, untamed, wild, monstruous. And Astrekar to the east, land of the technocrats and constant surveillance.
Between Caelvareth and Ishtar lay a distance equivalent to crossing half the old world on foot.
Ezra ran a hand over his face, trying to bring order to the storm of thoughts.
"It's too far…" he muttered, still doubting his own words. He kept drifting in thought. "But... it makes sense. Far too much sense."
His eyes once more scanned the area, the pulsing trees, the tendon-like branches, the thick air that seemed to watch.
"This forest... the ents, the constant pressure in the air…" He was putting the pieces together like someone stumbling into a massive discovery. "So that's it," he whispered, "we really are in the north. Across the ocean…"
He stood slowly, gaze fixed on the sky above, where the clouds spiraled irregularly, as if something high above, unseen, were spinning them.
"But how is that even possible? Dimensional rifts, though... unstable, aren't supposed to cross continents. At most, I should've ended up on a nearby coast."
Asheras crossed her arms, raising a single eyebrow slightly. "You're more out of touch than I thought."
A half-smile danced on her lips, but her eyes remained sharp, unreadable. 'And maybe dumber too…' She kept that last thought to herself. 'Maybe it's some side effect?'
Ezra didn't take offense. On the contrary, the comment brought a kind of cynical relief. He sighed, unclasped the wrist strap, and tossed the watch toward her.
"Thanks to that piece of junk."
Asheras caught it midair, barely. "Oops." She flipped it in her hands with ease, already activating commands with fluid gestures. "And to think they still make these…"
"You think I had access to anything better after four years in a coma? Post-execution?" Ezra shot back, voice dry.
Her eyebrows lifted again, this time in genuine surprise. "Wait! This model... It's not that old. Came out like two, three years ago. And this specific version? It's a limited edition for veteran soldiers and ex-militia from Yllíria. Way more advanced than it looks… someone upgraded it?"
Asheras kept fiddling, more like evaluating the device, until she came to a conclusion. "How'd you get one of these?"
Ezra didn't answer immediately. He simply turned his gaze toward the pulsating trees around them."A stubborn guy who refused to die gave it to me." The corner of his lips lifted slowly, without him realizing it.
"...!" Asheras was taken aback for a second but quickly refocused on the device. "Okay, the issue's more than just a broken network chip, but... nothing that can't be fixed. Too bad we're in the middle of nowhere."
She paused, her face briefly lit by the trembling glow of the watch interface. "Luckily, Ishtar's about a thirty-day walk from here. And if there's any place in the world to fix anything technical... that's the pl—"
Ezra cut in, voice low and laced with skepticism: "We're talking about Ishtar, remember."His eyes had lost their calm glow. "Is there even a way to cross the most heavily monitored territory in the world, with a man officially dead, hunted by some random gang... and a girl with debt on her back?"
Asheras lifted her eyes slowly, not even blinking. "You're alive, aren't you? And debt... doesn't carry over. Yllíria's black market and Ishtar's are completely different worlds."
Ezra scoffed, humorless. "That's assuming a black market exists in Ishtar. It's a technocracy. Full federation control. Identity scans, tracking, cameras on light poles... Being there's like being naked. Inside out."
Asheras shrugged, a crooked smile on her lips. "Oh, it exists. Always does. No nation survives without a shadow. Traffickers, loan sharks, debt collectors... people who kill just to meet quota. The trick is knowing where to step."
She twirled Ezra's watch between her fingers. "Besides, they probably already know you're alive."
And she was right. The moment Ezra requested new documents, his status in the Convention, previously marked as dead, had been automatically updated. Everyone with access to the network knew.Even if many assumed it was a glitch, a rumor, or a prank by someone pretending to be him.
"Most people will ignore it. And it's not like you're being hunted, or pursued to the ends of earth... right?"
She seemed almost relaxed, until she stopped. Her expression shifted. Her eyes lingered on him with a strange focus.
"Wait." She turned. "You said you were captured, right? So how the hell did you esc—"
GHRRRRÁAAAAARGHHH!
The ground trembled. A guttural, deep, dragging sound, like the world itself screaming from the back of its throat.
A sharp, heavy crack. Then another. And another. The sound of massive wood splintering—like giant trees collapsing, one by one.
Ezra froze. His gaze locked ahead.
It wasn't human.It wasn't natural.
The branches of the trees around them stiffened. Some snapped, like spines under pressure.The moss beneath their feet recoiled, withdrawing, as if the earth itself felt fear.
And inside him, something awakened. Not fear, memory, and one he didn't want to remember. A sharp, electric shiver climbed his spine like a serpent made of remembrance.
Ezra began to circulate his Vis.
The frequencies of the world opened themselves to him: the distorted sound of the wind, the static hiss of buried force fields, the trembling of the earth like invisible drums.
And then, he heard it.Not just the ents, but their screams. Dying. Being destroyed.
"Ents..." he murmured, voice barely audible. "And more. Someone's destroying them."
The very next moment, a muffled explosion rumbled beneath the ground, deafened but deep.BOOOMM!Followed by another seismic wave that shook the underbrush, the trees, and Ezra's bones.
Then came a strange sound. Familiar.
Breathing. Fast. Uneven. Trembling.And a laugh. Low, hoarse—almost childlike but twisted, filthy, lewd.
Ezra froze. His blood turned to ice.
He knew that breathing.He'd been followed.
"Shit... time to go."He shot to his feet, spinning toward Asheras, but she was no longer there.
She was already meters ahead, weaving between the trees with ghostlike precision, propelled by a metallic grappling hook that gleamed in her hand like an extension of her will.
"Seriously...?" Ezra muttered, caught between a smile of disbelief and the despair of being left behind, or having to run.
And so, he ran.