The sterile, fluorescent hell of the administrative wing seemed to stretch into eternity. Our footsteps echoed on linoleum that felt like it would never end.
"There,"
Lamia whispered, her voice trembling as she pointed a shaky finger toward a set of double doors that seemed to absorb the light around them. They were made of a material that wasn't quite metal, etched with shifting, geometric patterns that hurt to look at for too long.
"The Central Records Room. The Terminal is inside..."
She sighed.
"We delete the error and we leave."
Niran pushed the doors open.
We didn't step into a room. We stepped into the universe's filing cabinet.
It was infinite. Shelves made of shimmering, impossible light stretched up, down, and sideways into a forever that made my brain ache. On those shelves, instead of books, were pulsing, soft-lit orbs—each one a soul, each one a story. The air hummed with the weight of every life that had ever been lived, a low, psychic thrum that vibrated in my teeth.
And in the center of it all, standing before a terminal of pure, dark obsidian, was its guardian.
The Tindalos.
It was a being of sharp, impossible angles. It didn't have a body, just a convergence of lines and shadows that suggested a humanoid form. It didn't move; it recalculated its position. One moment it was facing the terminal, the next it was facing us, its head—a shifting polygon—snapped toward us without a single muscle moving.
It had no eyes, but I felt its gaze. It wasn't looking at us. It was analyzing data.
`ANOMALY DETECTED.`
`CORE SYSTEM THREAT IDENTIFIED.`
The voice wasn't a sound. It was raw information dumped directly into our minds.
Kephriel took a step back, his chains rattling not in anger, but in alarm.
"This was a mista—"
The Tindalos raised a sharp, geometric hand. It didn't attack. It administered.
`CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL ENGAGED.`
Chains of blinding white light erupted from the floor, wrapping around Kephriel. They weren't ethereal like his. They were solid, real, and they glowed with the same sterile energy as the lights overhead. He was dragged to his knees, his form flickering.
"You cannot—! The contract—!"
he snarled, but the chains tightened, silencing him, sealing his power away. He was imprisoned not in a cell, but in a formula.
`COMPROMISED DATA IDENTIFIED.`
The Tindalos's head-angle shifted toward Lamia.
"No, wait! I can explain! I just need to access the—" she pleaded, holding up her hands.
A portal, like a tear in reality, opened behind her. She was yanked off her feet by an invisible force and flung through it without a sound. The portal snapped shut. Expelled.
`NON-ESSENTIAL ANOMALIES.`
The Tindalos now looked at the rest of us. Dao, Niran, Preecha, Julia.
"Raf!" Dao screamed, reaching for me.
Another portal ripped open. I saw the familiar sight of Dao's living room beyond it. One by one, they were thrown backward through it—Niran's shout of protest, Preecha's sharp intake of breath, Julia's terrified gasp—all cut off as the portal vanished.
I was alone. Alone with the imprisoned God of Death and the cosmic librarian.
The Tindalos's faceless attention settled on me. I felt its analysis like a physical scan.
`SOUL FRAGMENTATION DETECTED. ERROR. CANNOT COMPUTE CLEAN EXPULSION.`
It saw it. The hole inside me. The piece Gluttony had taken. Kephriel's rescue had been late because a price had to be paid. My soul was no longer whole. I was damaged goods.
The Tindalos didn't waste processing power on an insolvable problem. It simply raised its hand again.
It didn't send me home. It didn't imprison me.
It deleted me.
The infinite library vanished. For a heart-stopping second, there was nothing. No sound, no light, no up or down. Just the screaming, silent void between everything. My body, my real body, was lost there, tumbling through an endless nothingness. I felt myself unraveling, dissolving into the static.
My consciousness, the last shred of me, the last piece of my soul, screamed into the void.
And then, a pull. A gentle, familiar sensation. The memory of a breeze. The echo of a hope that felt like Dao. My soul, desperate and anchorless, latched onto it with everything it had.
I didn't switch. I crashed.
***
I awoke.
My senses were… wrong. I felt everything. The slow dance of dust motes in the air, the pressure change from a door opening somewhere far away, the humidity of a distant rainstorm. I was lying on something impossibly soft. I opened my eyes and saw the world through a haze of swirling, shimmering currents.
I was in a room made of living, polished wood and grown crystal. Light filtered through walls that seemed to be woven from light and air itself.
A figure stepped into my field of view. She was beautiful, her form seemingly made of gentle, swirling breezes given shape, her eyes the soft grey of a morning fog. She was short, with long, blonde hair and pointy ears. Her voice was the sound of wind chimes.
"Master? You're awake." She let out a sigh of relief that smelled of rain-kissed leaves. "You gave us such a fright. You've been asleep for days after your fall."
She leaned closer, her expression kind but puzzled. "You were whispering something in your sleep. A strange name."
My mind was foggy, filled with the gentle, foreign thoughts of the wind. But my soul clawed its way to the surface. I tried to speak, to say "What's happening?"
But the only thing that left this body's mouth was a soft gust of wind and a single, confused whisper that was not my voice.
"What... ?"
Zephyra, the maid, tilted her head, a gentle smile on her ethereal face.
"You must still be disoriented from the fall,
Master. Rest."
Her expression softened with a deeper concern.
"Your wife will be so relieved to hear you've finally woken."
The word hit me like a physical blow.` Wife.`
I was trapped. I was alive, but I had no body. I was myself, but wearing the form of another body.
But to this world, I was a different man. A man with a life, a home, and a wife waiting for him.
The last remains of my soul went into a different world.
And I was home.
I suddenly stood up, rushing to the mirror.
I was myself, that was my face...
but i was older.