Quantum tunneling felt like being disassembled, shipped express, and reassembled by someone working from Ikea instructions in ancient Sumerian. Ren existed in too many places at once, experiencing every possible version of himself—the ones who died, the ones who never existed, the ones who made different choices.
In that infinite moment between here and there, he saw:
His grandmother, young and desperate, injecting her daughter with hope and determination.
The first humans to breach dimensions, brilliant and damned, not knowing they'd doomed their species.
The Neither—not monsters but antibodies, reality's immune system responding to infection.
The Demon Lord, volunteering to become something else to save everyone, losing himself in the process.
Elanil, in a thousand timelines, sometimes enemy, sometimes friend, always finding him.
And something else. Something vast and patient and hungry, waiting behind all the barriers. The thing the Neither feared. The reason for everything.
Then reality snapped back like a rubber band, and he was vomiting on solid ground while Elanil rubbed his back.
"I hate quantum travel," he gasped. "Zero out of ten. Would not recommend. Would rather walk through hell in flip-flops."
"You're alive," she said. "Complain later."
They'd materialized on the canyon rim just as the sun began to set. Below, the facility was... wrong. It existed in multiple states simultaneously—solid, translucent, made of light, made of shadow. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, it wasn't.
Simply gone, as if it had never been.
The singing canyons had gone silent.
"Dr. Yamazaki," Ren said quietly. "She's gone."
"She's been gone for ten thousand years," Mayfell corrected gently. "What we met was an echo. A recording that thought it was real."
"She felt real to me."
"Feelings often do."
Tyrael and his guards stood apart, watching them with expressions that promised future problems. But for now, the immediate crisis took precedence.
"The data unit," Mayfell said. "Is it intact?"
Ren pulled out the device. It had survived the transition, still warm, still humming with hidden knowledge. The screen showed coordinates—not fixed but shifting, as if the destination existed in probable space rather than real space.
"North," he read. "Through the Shattered Lands. Past the Citadel of Doors. To where the first tree died and the last tree grows."
"Poetic directions," Varos observed. "Useless, but poetic."
"I know those landmarks," Keiran said quietly. "My grandmother's stories. It's the Forbidden Zone."
Everyone turned to stare at him.
"The place where the barriers are thinnest," he continued. "Where sometimes you can see other worlds bleeding through. Where the elders say the first sin was committed."
"More sins," Ren muttered. "Great. Because we didn't have enough already."
"We need to return to the Tree," Tyrael declared. "Report to the full council. Plan properly."
"We need to reach the bunker," Mayfell countered. "Every moment wasted brings the cascade closer."
"You would trust the words of a human machine? The ravings of corrupted consciousness?"
"I would trust the only beings who understand the technology we're facing."
They argued as the sky darkened, the purple crack spreading like infected veins. The countdown continued: 29:13
. Less than thirty hours to save existence, and they were debating politics.
"Stop," Ren said quietly.
They ignored him.
"Stop," he said louder.
Still arguing.
"STOP!" He shouted, and something in his voice made them all freeze. "We don't have time for this. The world is ending. Reality is breaking. And you're arguing about procedure?"
"The human presumes to command us?" Tyrael snarled.
"The human is tired of ego getting in the way of survival." Ren stood, still shaky from the quantum tunnel but driven by frustration. "I don't care about your politics. I don't care about your secrets. I don't care about bloodline purity or ancient sins or who did what ten thousand years ago. I care about stopping this before we all become footnotes in nobody's history."
Silence fell. Even Tyrael seemed taken aback by his vehemence.
"You want to debate? Fine. Debate while marching. You want to report to councils? Send a messenger. But we're going to that bunker, and we're going to try Protocol Eight, because it's literally the only option besides 'everybody dies.'"
"Well said," Mayfell murmured, a small smile on her young-old face.
"The human has a point," Varos admitted. "Time is not our ally."
"I..." Elanil stared at him with something that might have been admiration. "When did you learn to lead?"
"I didn't. I just got tired of following bad decisions." He looked at the group. "So what's it going to be? Forward to possible salvation, or backward to certain doom?"
One by one, they nodded. Even Tyrael's guards seemed swayed. The elder himself looked like he'd swallowed something bitter, but eventually gave a sharp nod.
"Forward then," he said. "But know this, human. When this is over, there will be a reckoning."
"When this is over, I'll probably be dead. But sure, pencil me in for judgment day."
They formed up for night travel. The Forbidden Zone lay three days north—if they pushed hard, if nothing went wrong, if reality held together that long.
Rating: 6/10 for group cohesion, 9/10 for dramatic speeches, 0/10 for comfort with cosmic deadlines.
As they set off under the broken sky, Elanil fell into step beside him.
"That was..." she started.
"Stupid? Reckless? Likely to get me stabbed?"
"Magnificent." She said it quietly, like admitting weakness. "You made them listen. Made them see past their fear."
"I just yelled at them. It's different from leadership."
"Is it?" She looked at him with those crimson eyes that seemed less cold than before. "My whole life, I've followed orders. Defended people because duty demanded it. But you... you make me want to fight for something because it's right."
"Elanil..."
"When this is over," she said firmly, "when we've saved the world or died trying, we need to talk. About duties and choices and feelings that complicate everything."
"I'd like that," he admitted. "Assuming we survive."
"We'll survive." Her hand found his in the darkness. "We have to. I haven't properly yelled at you for making me feel things yet."
Despite everything—the countdown, the cosmic horror, the impossible task ahead—Ren smiled.
"Rating: 10/10 for emotional development, 11/10 for timing, hope/10 for the future."
They walked through the night toward the Forbidden Zone, where the first tree died and the last tree grew, where Protocol Eight waited with answers or oblivion.
Above them, reality continued its slow dissolution, and somewhere in spaces between, ancient hungers stirred.
The countdown never stopped: 28:47
28:47
28:47
But for the first time since the sky cracked open, Ren felt something besides despair.
Maybe it was false confidence. Maybe it was delusion born of exhaustion.
Or maybe, just maybe, it was hope.