By now, Lucid had made his way through two more carriages. The first was what he guessed was an economy class, with more crowded, less plush seating. The second was a bit nicer, a kind of business class. He realized, with a dull sense of guilt, that Karmen's stamp of passage had placed him in the first-class section at the front. He hadn't even noticed the difference when he boarded.
He didn't know exactly where he was going, but he knew the direction. Ayame had walked toward the back of the train, away from the engine. So that was where he went. The pulsing red alarm lights in the ceiling made the whole journey feel eerie and urgent. Each flash illuminated the worried faces of the passengers. There were no attendants in sight. Just weary-looking people of all kinds—humans, demi-humans with animal features, others he couldn't even name. Some looked at him with weary suspicion as he passed. A few looked up with a flash of hope, maybe thinking he was a crew member coming to explain the turbulence, but their hope died when they saw his fog-shrouded, featureless face. They quickly looked away.
'Great,' he thought with an internal sigh. 'That just makes it harder to make friends.'
He finally reached the last passenger carriage. Beyond it was a heavy, sealed hatch, marked with symbols that clearly meant "Staff Only" and "No Passenger Access." This wasn't a bathroom or a dining car. This was the backend, probably near the control room or the utility sections.
He didn't care. Ayame was important. Right now, he didn't care about rules or repercussions. He needed to know she was safe. It had been over an hour. He couldn't wait any longer.
He reached for the hatch's release. It hissed open.
The scene inside was wrong.
It was a small control room, or maybe a crew lounge. One of the train's conductors was slumped over a control panel, unconscious. The other conductor's chair was empty.
Flight attendants, three of them, were scattered on the floor like discarded dolls. They were breathing, but out cold.
That wasn't the part that scared him the most.
It was the woman by the large, reinforced window that looked out into the swirling purple void. It was the lady from earlier, the service attendant who had sneered at him about primitive estates. She wasn't unconscious. She was very, very dead. Her body was crumpled against the thick glass, which was smeared with a dark, wet streak of blood. It looked like her head had been bashed against the wall, repeatedly, with incredible, brutal force. It was a horrifying sight. And strangely he didn't feel a thing.
This wasn't the work of a careful culprit. This was the act of a monster. Someone who acted on raw, violent impulse.
Yet... the others were only unconscious. If something that violent was here, it could have easily killed everyone in this room. It could probably kill everyone on the train. Except, maybe, for him. Or for Ayame.
But Ayame wasn't here.
'No...' Lucid thought, a cold dread settling in his stomach. 'This can't be right.'
The realization was dawning on him, ugly and unavoidable. Ayame's disappearance. The sudden turbulence that started right after. It was too much of a coincidence, but he didn't want to believe it. Why would she do this? What was there to gain?
His eyes, scanning the grim scene, were caught by something else. Not the corpse, not the unconscious crew, but a faint, shimmering line in the air near the center of the room. It hung vertically, a tear in reality itself, about the height of a man but only as wide as a finger. It pulsed with a soft, white light.
He knew what it was. He knew exactly what it was.
A rift.
But something was particular about this one. It was small. Minuscule. It wasn't a Sentrum rift, or an Omega, or even a Beta. This was a seed rift, what some called a "rift seed." They were used in cultivation, nurtured in hopes they'd grow into something that could be cleared for resources. But they had a distinct, unstable vibration. This one felt different. Or... it could be a used rift. A transit rift. The white shimmer meant someone had recently traveled *through* it. Someone had opened a doorway here and stepped out of this world, or into it.
How?
His eyes fell on one of the unconscious attendants. The man's uniform jacket had a torn pocket. From it protruded a few small, rough-hewn crystals that glowed with a faint, internal light. They radiated a weak but familiar sense of Fate Essence. Rift-stabilizing crystals, or maybe keys. He remembered them from his time living as Karmen inside the Omega Rift. He had known everything then. But that borrowed knowledge was fading now, becoming half-remembered, like a dream after you wake up. The iterations he'd lived through were blurring together.
"Lucid... that is a rift," Alice's voice stated, calm but firm.
"Yup," he confirmed aloud, his voice flat in the quiet, red-lit room.
"Shall we clear it?'' she asked.
"No."
"No?" There was a note of surprise in her tone.
He put his hands in his pockets and started to turn back toward the hatch, as if to leave. "Why should I?"
"Excuse me, Lucid," her voice took on a sharper, more urgent quality. "You will die. The train will be consumed. It will destabilize and suck everything in this carriage into the void... It is not stable."
"Oh," he said, stopping. He turned back, a dumbfounded, sheepish grin on his face beneath the mist, as if he'd just realized something obvious. "I guess that's a valid reason."
But not only because of that, as he stood out the exit, he saw the terrified faces of the people, some hugging their children. Others showing clear signs of trauma. He didn't want to play the hero... meddling with the affairs of other had never gone well...but he couldn't exactly let things be. He had to do something.
He walked back to the center of the room, his manner now serious. He held out his hand toward the shimmering white line, palm open. He focused, not on attacking it, but on absorbing it. He drew the unstable Fate Essence from the fragile rift, pulling the bright, chaotic motes of light toward his palm. They flowed up his forearm in a stream of cool, tingling energy, disappearing into the core of his being where the Chain of Heart resided. It felt... nice. A clean, pure infusion of power.
***
Fate Essence Absorbed +989
***
'I could have just stepped through it,' he mused silently. 'But there's no telling what's on the other side. Or if I could get back.'
For now, the immediate threat was gone. The white line flickered and vanished with a soundless pop, leaving the air feeling still and empty.
Lucid stood alone in the small cabin, surrounded by unconscious crew and one dead attendant. The train, now without anyone actively guiding it, continued to glide smoothly along its pre-set rails through the purple void. The red alarm lights still pulsed, casting their frantic glow. The ninety or so passengers in the cars ahead remained in their seats, traveling through a terrifying, beautiful emptiness where danger had just proven it could lurk in any shadow, at any minute.
He looked at the main control panel. Lights blinked. A holographic display showed their trajectory along the glowing rail. It seemed the train was on autopilot, at least for basic navigation.
He looked back at the empty conductor's chair, then at the unconscious form of the other conductor slumped over his station.
A grim, utterly inappropriate thought surfaced. He walked over to the main chair, he gently brushed aside the unconscious man, and sat down. The leather was still warm.
He placed his hands on the smooth, cool surface of the control panel, though he had no idea what any of the glowing letters or buttons meant.
"I am the captain now," he muttered under his breath, the words a quiet, absurd statement in the blood-stained control room of a ghost train hurtling through an endless, starry void. His companion was missing, a murderer might be on board, and he was in charge. It was just another day in the Scattered Realms.
Lucid stared at the array of glowing holographic runes and unfamiliar switches on the control panel. He had no idea what any of them did. His hands hovered over them, not touching, just... considering.
'"Are you touching controls that you do not understand, Lucid?" Alice's voice chimed in his mind, a gentle chime of concern laced with her usual, divine amusement.
Lucid looked up, as if addressing the ceiling. "Nah," he muttered aloud. "I'm just trying to figure out how to turn these red lights off. They're annoying."
The pulsating crimson alarm bathed the small control room in a frantic, bloody rhythm. It was the only light, aside from the soft glow of the control panels and the vast, star-dusted purple void outside the window.
"Annoying?" Alice's laugh was a soft, melodic sound in his head, but it held an edge of something else. Worry? Disbelief? "That should be the least of your worries at the moment, my chosen."
Lucid didn't care. He leaned forward, squinting at a rune that looked like a stylized sun. If he couldn't even figure out how to turn off the lights on a train, how was he supposed to steal some advanced, magitek engine from a noble house in Vex? This was an opportunity. Practical experience. However, as much as he tried to distract himself or pretend nonchalance, he couldn't shake the feeling deep in his gut. Lucid thought told him he had outgrown it, that it wouldn't trouble him, but it did. The more he ignored the feeling now, the louder it called his name.
But his gaze, however, kept drifting from the controls to the floor. To the dark, sticky pool slowly spreading from beneath attendant's body. The once-condescending attendant was now just a shape, a broken thing pressed against the glass.