The first weird thing that happened that morning was the bell.Not the town bell.The shrine bell.It rang once—clear, sharp, and too early.I was halfway through a piece of bread at The Copper Acorn when the sound cut through the clatter and low talk, like a note of glass.Merra paused mid‑wipe on a mug."That's not right," she muttered. "Aria doesn't ring the bell at this hour.""Emergency?" someone at another table said."Or a special prayer?"My stomach did that "you're not going to finish breakfast, are you" flip.[Mood shift detected.] MMA said. [Shrine anomaly probability: 84%.]"Of course," I thought, shoving the last bite in my mouth. "Can't let carbs win."I grabbed my coat.Merra eyed me."If you're going up there," she said, "try not to knock the whole hill over.""Only the top layer," I said, and slipped out before she could throw the mug.The path to the shrine was busier than usual. A handful of townsfolk had started toward the steps, then stopped, uncertain, hovering at a polite distance.The bell rang again.Once.Not the usual pattern.No steady sequence.Just a single, insistent note.Aria stood at the top of the steps, one hand on the bell rope, the other pressed to the side of her head. She wasn't ringing it so much as… reacting to it.Because the bell was vibrating on its own.I could see it from halfway up: the bronze trembling, sound spilling out in a thin ribbon that made the air shimmer."Aria!" I called.Her eyes snapped to me."You're late," she said."I came as fast as— wait, what?"She let go of the rope.The bell kept ringing, the clapper moving like an invisible hand pushed it."The shrine wanted you," she said. "It rang your name.""Spirits can… do that?" I asked."Apparently, yes," she said tightly. "Get up here."As I climbed the last steps, the hum under my feet intensified. The same deep vibration I'd felt before, but now it carried something else. A… flavor.Cold metal.Ozone.A distant echo of engines.My heart stuttered."Astra," I whispered.Aria heard."That's the word that brushed my mind," she said quietly. "Like a whisper through fog. You've been… somewhere else since we last talked."Her gaze flicked to my face, sharp."What did you do, Kai?""Opened a door," I said. "Between here and another world. Talked to someone who fixes different kinds of fractures."Her jaw tightened."You're bringing other worlds into this," she said. "While ours is still cracked.""Not bringing," I said quickly. "Connecting. Carefully. The door sits in between. But it seems…" I looked up at the bell, still ringing without moving. "…the shrine noticed."[The local spirit lattice is responding to your expanded link.] MMA said. [It's tasting off‑world resonance for the first time.]"So Eldoria just smelled space station," I thought.[In crude summary, yes.]Aria stepped closer to the offering table."The land is… dreaming," she murmured. "Seeing things it shouldn't. Show it."She turned to me."What?""You," she said. "You're the bridge. Place your hand on the altar again. But this time, don't just listen. Share.""Is that safe?" I asked."No," she said. "But I don't think it will stop humming until you do."The wood under my palms felt warm, almost feverish.I took a breath.Closed my eyes.Last time, I'd let Eldoria's presence flow into me.This time, I pushed out, just a little.Not power.Not Authority.Just… impressions.The memory of walking into the Lobby. The feel of that in‑between space. Rhea's voice, laughter echoing off smooth stone. Her description of Astra Axis—a ring of habitats around a gas giant, all metal and light and motion.Metal.Light.Motion.I focused on those."This is me," I thought, not in words, but in… shape. "This is where else I've touched. This is not here. But it's connected through me."The hum rose.The bell's tone shifted, warbling for a heartbeat before stabilizing into a lower, steadier note.Behind my closed eyes, images bloomed.Not mine.Not fully.The shrine's dream.Stone, roots, river—Eldoria's body. Cracks like silver veins across a blue sky.And then, beyond, something new:A ring.A colossal loop of metal hanging in the dark, studded with lights. Ships drifting like fireflies. A giant planet below, banded and swirling.For a dizzy second, I saw Astra through Eldoria's eyes.The land shuddered in awe and confusion."This is what you're talking to?" it seemed to say. "This spinning metal wheel where people live inside walls instead of under sky?""Yes," I thought back. "They patch things too. Different tools, same… job."The ring flickered, then shrank in my mind's eye, becoming a distant point tethered to Eldoria by a thin, glowing thread—the same color as my bloodline's light.The shrine accepted that thread.Cautiously.Suspiciously.But it didn't reject it.The hum subsided.The bell slowed.The final note hung in the air and faded like breath on glass.I groaned softly and took my hands off the altar.Aria was watching me like she was trying to read a book through my skull."Well?" she asked.I exhaled."I showed it Rhea's world," I said. "Or my impression of it. The land thinks it's weird. But… it's not screaming.""Progress," she said. "What did you see?""Your world dreaming in circles," I said. "And reaching a hand up instead of only down."She looked at the bell."It won't do that again for a while," she said. "It takes a lot to make the shrine call. The last time was when the priests left.""Why did they leave?" I asked.Her expression darkened."Because they were cowards," she said. "The high temple sent a message: 'The fractures are worse near the capital, we require all high‑ranking clergy.' They left overnight. Took the best warding artifacts. Promised to send someone back.""They never did," I guessed."No," she said. "They forgot that small places can break, too."The hurt in her voice was sharp and old.I rested my elbows on the offering table."For what it's worth," I said, "I'm not going anywhere without telling you first. Or the shrine. Or Lena, or Merra, or—""You're going to leave eventually," she said evenly. "You have to, don't you? If you're tied to other worlds."I didn't answer right away."Probably," I said at last. "But leaving doesn't mean abandoning. The more stable Eldoria is, the easier it is to keep the links open. Think of it like… reinforcing the base before climbing higher."Her eyes softened a fraction."You think in metaphors a lot," she said."It's that or math."She snorted."Keep the metaphors," she said.A faint chime pinged in my vision.——————————
WORLD F‑01 – SHRINE AFFINITY: 12% → 18%
EFFECT:
– Increased sensitivity to off‑world resonance.
– Spirits may occasionally send vague, unhelpful warnings.
——————————"Great," I muttered. "I've given them a taste of 'vague warnings' from my system, now they're returning the favor."[You deserve that.] MMA said."I know."Aria turned away, hands smoothing the edge of the offering cloth."The land now knows there are other places," she said. "That might make it jealous. Or hopeful. Or both.""That's a mood," I said.She glanced back at me."You should talk to your other world soon," she said. "If it's poking my shrine, I'd like to know why.""I doubt it's doing it on purpose," I said. "But yeah. I'll check in."As I headed back down the steps, MMA spoke up.[Your cross‑world connections are starting to… interfere with each other, in the technical sense.] it said. [Eldoria feels Astra. Astra's old tech feels you. The Lobby is your buffer, but bleed‑through is inevitable.]"How bad can that get?" I thought.[If unmanaged?] MMA replied. [Cultures, magics, and techs could start to echo across worlds. Think 'fantasy priests dreaming of starships' and 'space engineers sketching runes they've never seen.']"That sounds both cool and terrifying."[Welcome to 'multiverse consequences.']Back in my room, the wall‑door shimmered faintly, like it had been waiting impatiently."Knock‑knock," I said, pressing my hand to it.The Lobby unfolded around me again: twilight walls, glowing lines, central orb.This time, the orb was already brighter, threads to S‑07 pulsing faster."Rhea?" I called.Silence.Then, from the far side of the chamber, the air rippled blue.Rhea stumbled through, goggles askew, hair sticking up as if she'd been electrocuted."Okay," she said, panting slightly. "New rule: don't route emergency coolant through experimental relays, no matter how many officers yell about schedules."She straightened, saw me, and grinned."Oh good," she said. "You're alive. And in one piece. And clothed. Three for three.""High standards," I said. "Everything okay on your end?"She flopped down onto the floor without ceremony."Define 'okay,'" she said. "No one's dead yet. The ring hasn't fallen out of orbit. Command is pretending the relay glitch was a freak accident and not a 'hey, your universe is talking to you' situation.""So… business as usual," I said."Pretty much," she said. "Except my HUD now flashes a 'ghost connection' warning whenever I walk past the old relay. It's like it knows there's a door, but it's too polite to say so."She squinted at me."You look… thinner," she said."That's rude," I said."I mean spiritually," she said. "Like you passed something big through your insides and haven't refilled yet.""…That's a gross but accurate description," I admitted. "The shrine rang this morning. It wanted to see where I'd been."Her eyes widened."You showed it Astra?" she said."Just a glimpse," I said. "Through my impressions. It was like… making a planet dream of another sky."She lay back, staring up at the not‑ceiling."That's… kind of beautiful," she said quietly. "And horrifying, if you think about what happens if too many worlds start dreaming about each other at once.""Yeah," I said. "MMA gave me the 'unmanaged cross‑world echo' talk. I'll try not to start a multiverse meme war.""Too late," she said. "I already told my engineer friends about 'fantasy boy with billboard death' in vague, untraceable terms. I think it's spreading.""I regret everything.""You love it.""…A little."She sat up again, more serious now."Hey," she said. "Do you feel like someone's… above all this?"I tilted my head."Above what?" I asked."Above us," she said. "Above your demons, my admirals, your spirits, my AIs. Watching how we handle the cracks. Waiting."[She's not wrong.] MMA said. [Higher‑order observers exist. Your bloodline is one of their tools. Or… experiments.]"I've had that feeling since the temple," I admitted. "Like the universe has a management layer that doesn't answer tickets."Rhea snorted."That's exactly how Central Admin behaves," she said. "Silent, smug, and always logging."She tapped her chest."I don't like being watched without pushing back," she said. "If we're some kind of… stress test for reality, I want to skew the results.""Make the data weird," I said."Exactly," she said. "You patch cracks your way. I jury‑rig war machines my way. If whoever's watching wanted something neat and predictable, they picked the wrong bugs."[This alliance is going to give higher‑order entities migraines.] MMA said."Good," I thought.We spent the next while trading more tangible details.Rhea sketched the ring's basic layout on the floor with a fingertip, lines of light following: residential arcs, industrial segments, the central spindle. I explained Havenford's rough map, marking the shrine, the Guild, the mill, the old drains."Our problems feel big and small at the same time," she said, connecting a tiny circle labeled "Havenford" to her ring diagram with a line. "Little town, big sky. Big station, tiny people.""Maybe that's the trick," I said. "Fix the bit in front of you. Don't let the size of the rest freeze you."She flicked the line between our worlds."We'll need more of these," she said. "Lines. Links. People like us.""Harem members," I said without thinking.She blinked."…You call your cross‑world allies… what?" she asked slowly.I coughed."It's a long‑running joke," I said. "My system insists my trait package includes 'Harem Flag Conductor.'"She stared.Then burst out laughing."Oh no," she gasped. "Oh no. The multiverse gave its tech support a protagonist complex.""I did not ask for this job," I protested. "Or the tag.""You got a tag," she wheezed. "I want a tag."MMA, traitor that it was, pinged.——————————
NEW RELATIONSHIP FLAG:
Rhea Solvine – "Cross‑World Co‑Conspirator"
——————————I glared at the invisible notification."Don't you dare share that out loud," I thought.[Consider it noted in the internal log only.] MMA said. [For now.]Rhea's laughter faded to an amused smirk."Fine," she said. "Call us whatever you want. Just don't expect us to swoon on cue.""I wouldn't dream of it," I said. "My experience so far is that everyone I meet is more likely to throw something at me than swoon.""As it should be," she said.A faint vibration ran through the floor under us.Not from the Lobby.From… beyond.Rhea stiffened."That's the ring," she said, touching her goggles. "Power fluctuation on the inner segments. I need to get back.""Emergency?" I asked."Annoyance," she said. "But if I'm not there, someone will route backup power through a relic and then we'll have an emergency."She stood, brushing off her jumpsuit."Hey, Kai," she said. "Next time we meet, bring me a story. Something good. Not just cracks and demons.""I'll bring festival gossip," I said. "And maybe a recipe.""Perfect," she said. "I'll bring you something exploding. For educational purposes.""Of course."She stepped toward her exit shimmer, then glanced back."And Kai?""Yeah?""Don't let the people who depend on you forget that you're… just a person," she said. "Not a bloodline with legs."The words sank into my chest like carefully placed weights."I'll try," I said. "You, too. Remember you're more than your toolbox."She saluted with two fingers."Stay weird, Bloodline Boy.""Stay loud, Ring Gremlin."She vanished.The Lobby hummed softly, the thread to S‑07 glowing just a shade brighter.[Worldline Access – S‑07: 3.5% → 4.2%.] MMA reported. [Cross‑world coordination capacity increasing.]"Good," I thought. "We're going to need it."As I stepped back through the door into my room, the familiar sounds of Havenford drifted up: a cart rolling by, someone calling for flour, a distant dog barking at something only it could see.The sky outside was still cracked.But now, somewhere beyond those cracks, a ring spun stubbornly around a giant planet, held together by people like Rhea.And in a quiet room in a small town, a door glowed faintly in a wall only one overpowered idiot could see."Alright," I murmured, straightening my coat as I headed downstairs."Time to make sure this little corner of the multiverse keeps being worth visiting."