The heavy electric gate hummed shut behind them, sealing off the world with a final, decisive thud. The sound resonated through Elijah's chest, a physical confirmation that he'd crossed a threshold, entered a space that existed outside the normal rules and boundaries of the world he'd left behind.
He stood for a moment in the compound's main yard, the golden Seal of the Keeper still warm in his palm from where he'd shown it to Shimmen. The metal held his body heat, pulsing with a warmth that felt oddly comforting, grounding, a physical anchor in a night that had become increasingly surreal.
The man beside him gave a slow, approving nod, his weathered face crinkling with satisfaction, those pale blue eyes reflecting the lamplight with an almost crystalline clarity.
"Welcome home, Keeper," Shimmen said, his voice a low rumble that carried that distinctive country drawl, the words "welcome" and "home" both stretched out, made softer, more intimate by his accent. "Shall we?"
He gestured forward with one gnarled hand, the movement economical and purposeful, and Elijah fell into step beside him, his fatigue momentarily pushed aside by curiosity about this place he'd apparently had some connection to in a past he couldn't fully remember.
The yard wasn't a single open space, but rather a series of interconnected areas, each distinct yet flowing naturally into the next. It was a masterful blend of two worlds, two aesthetic philosophies that shouldn't have worked together but somehow created something greater than either alone.
The layout followed the principles of classical Chinese garden design—winding gravel paths that discouraged straight-line rushing, forcing visitors to slow down, to notice details. Subtle rock arrangements created focal points, carefully placed to guide the eye and suggest natural landscapes compressed into miniature. Graceful arches of bamboo created natural screens, dividing spaces without walls, allowing glimpses of what lay beyond while maintaining distinct zones.
Yet nestled within this serene Eastern framework were the unmistakable structures and elements of a 1940s American landscape—the cottages with their clapboard siding, the hanging porch swing, the aesthetic of a specific moment in American history frozen and preserved.
Their first stop was a cleared circle of raked sand, bordered by smooth grey river stones that had been worn round by water over countless years. The sand itself was pristine, bearing only the careful patterns created by raking—parallel lines intersected by spirals, a meditation in itself.
Here, the air was filled with the sharp *clack-clack-clack* of hardwood meeting hardwood with precise, rhythmic regularity. A dozen figures dressed in simple cotton tunics—some white, some pale blue, all belted at the waist with dark sashes—moved with a grace that straddled the line between dance and combat.
Their bo staffs—six-foot lengths of polished hardwood—were extensions of their bodies, moving through defensive circles and offensive strikes with fluid precision. Block-strike-spin-block, the movements repeated with variations, building muscle memory, ingraining patterns that would become automatic in moments of crisis.
The practitioners ranged in age from teenagers to individuals well into their fifties, all moving through the forms with varying degrees of mastery but equal dedication. An older man with gray in his beard performed the movements with economical perfection, each strike placed exactly where it needed to be with minimal wasted motion. A younger woman beside him showed more raw power, her strikes faster but sometimes overextended, still learning the balance between force and control.
"The mind must flow like the river, but the body must strike like the avalanche," Shimmen murmured, his voice barely above a whisper, quoting what was clearly an old tenet of this place's philosophy. "Some of our best still begin here, with the fundamentals. Speed and power mean nothing without foundation."
Elijah watched them for a moment longer, something in the rhythmic movements creating a sense of calm that penetrated even through his fatigue and confusion. There was something profoundly reassuring about this dedication to fundamentals, this acknowledgment that true skill was built slowly, carefully, through endless repetition of basic forms.
A left turn past a screen of willow trees—their branches heavy with narrow leaves that rustled in the slight evening breeze—and the sound changed dramatically.
The rhythmic clacking of wood gave way to the controlled, percussive *pop-pop-pop* of pistol fire, each shot sharp and distinct, the reports echoing slightly off the earthen berms that surrounded the training area.
This was the ammunition training ground, a sunken area perhaps fifteen feet below the main yard level, accessed by stone steps worn smooth by decades of foot traffic. The floor was hard-packed earth, and the far wall was a massive berm of packed soil held in place by timber retaining walls—a backstop capable of catching thousands of rounds safely.
Silhouetted dummies stood at various distances—twenty-five feet, fifty feet, seventy-five feet—each painted with bright white circles over their center mass, additional circles marking headshot zones. The closest targets showed the wear of countless impacts, the white paint chipped and pockmarked, the underlying material visible in places.
Perhaps eight trainees occupied shooting positions, their postures rigid with concentration, each focused on the fundamentals of marksmanship that transcended any particular weapon or style. They wore simple ear protection—foam plugs or basic muffs—and safety glasses, the only concessions to modernity visible in their otherwise timeless practice.
Breath control: the slow inhale, the partial exhale, the hold at natural respiratory pause when the body was most still. Smooth trigger pull: pressure applied gradually, straight back, no jerking or flinching. Follow-through: maintaining sight picture and trigger pressure even after the shot, preventing the anticipatory movements that threw aim off.
One man's pistol clicked empty, the slide locked back. Without rushing, he executed a magazine change—remove, pocket, retrieve fresh magazine, insert, release slide—with practiced efficiency. The entire operation took perhaps three seconds, economy of motion making speed unnecessary.
"Precision over power," Shimmen noted, his voice carrying easily despite the gunfire. "A lesson some in the outside world have forgotten. They think bigger calibers, faster rates of fire, more ammunition make up for poor fundamentals. Here, we know better. One well-placed shot beats a dozen that miss."
Elijah nodded, something about the philosophy resonating with him even though he couldn't consciously access memories of his own training. His body remembered, though—he could feel it in the way his stance unconsciously shifted watching them, the way his breathing automatically synchronized with theirs.
But this place—Caltheron, Shimmen had called it—was more than just a forge for weapons, more than a training ground for fighters and killers.
Shimmen led him next through another bamboo arch, this one decorated with hanging chimes that sang softly in the breeze, and suddenly the energy changed completely.
They emerged at the heart of the garden's tranquility: a serene spring-fed pond that occupied perhaps a quarter-acre of space. The water was dark and clear, its surface occasionally disturbed by the gentle movement of something beneath, creating concentric ripples that expanded outward and faded.
Dotted across the surface were broad green pads of lotus plants, some bearing flowers—pale pink and white blossoms that opened to the moonlight, their petals perfect and unblemished. Beneath the surface, visible as flashes of brilliant color against the dark water, koi fish drifted like living jewels—orange and white, red and gold, some patterned in complex combinations that made each one unique.
The fish were large, clearly well-fed and cared for over many years. One particularly impressive specimen, perhaps two feet long and bearing a pattern of red and white that resembled a sunset, swam close to the surface, its mouth breaking the water occasionally as it searched for insects or food.
On flat reed mats—traditional tatami-style constructions—placed at the water's edge, a group of perhaps six individuals knelt in various forms of practice.
Three were in deep meditation, their postures perfectly upright, hands resting in their laps in classical mudra positions, eyes closed, faces serene. Their breathing was so slow, so controlled, that their chests barely moved, each breath a deliberate, mindful act.
Two others practiced yoga, their bodies held in poses that required both strength and flexibility. One woman stood tall in Virabhadrasana II—Warrior Two—her legs spread wide, front knee bent at ninety degrees, back leg straight and strong, arms extended parallel to the ground, her gaze steady and focused over her leading hand. Despite the difficulty of the pose, despite the trembling that must have been occurring in her muscles, her face showed perfect calm, no strain or struggle visible.
Another practitioner balanced in Vrikshasana—Tree Pose—standing on one leg with the other foot pressed against the inner thigh of the standing leg, arms extended overhead with palms pressed together. They were a picture of stillness against the gentle rustle of the bamboo behind them, as rooted and unmovable as the trees that gave the pose its name.
Nearby, at a small wrought-iron table that looked like it had been salvaged from a 1940s ice cream parlor, three others shared a pot of tea and quiet conversation. Their voices were low, almost musical, punctuated occasionally by soft laughter that carried genuine warmth and friendship. Ceramic cups sat before each of them, steam rising in delicate spirals, and a plate of what looked like simple cookies or biscuits occupied the center of the table.
They weren't training—not in any obvious way—but their presence here, their participation in this moment of peace and connection, was clearly considered as important as the weapons training occurring elsewhere in the compound.
"Caltheron is still thriving, Elijah," Shimmen said softly, his gaze sweeping over the peaceful scene with evident satisfaction and perhaps a touch of pride. "Just as you left it. The balance is maintained—blade and breath, violence and peace, action and contemplation. One without the other creates monsters or victims. Together, they create something greater."
Elijah felt a tightness in his chest that he hadn't consciously noticed until it began to loosen. He had wondered—without fully articulating the question even to himself—whether this place would still exist, whether whatever role he'd once played here had been important or merely incidental.
Shimmen's words suggested the former, suggested that his absence had been noted, that his return mattered.
They continued past the pond, following the winding path through a cluster of small cottages. There were perhaps a dozen of them scattered throughout this section of the compound, each maintaining enough distance from its neighbors to provide privacy while remaining close enough to form a community.
Their white clapboard walls and gabled roofs were pure 1940s American nostalgia, the kind of structures that would have housed factory workers or farm families in that era. Small front porches held rocking chairs or benches, and window boxes showed signs of recent tending—herbs and flowers planted with care.
But their placement, nestled amongst the bamboo and flowering camellias, surrounded by the stone lanterns and careful landscaping of the Chinese garden aesthetic, gave them a timeless quality. They looked simultaneously of a specific moment in history and somehow eternal, as if they'd always been here and always would be.
Some showed signs of current occupation—lights visible through curtained windows, the smell of cooking drifting from one, the sound of quiet music from another. Others stood dark and ready, awaiting the return of residents who were presumably away on assignment or training.
Finally, after perhaps ten minutes of walking through this carefully constructed world, the path opened up, revealing the main house in its full glory.
Shimmen stopped, clasping his hands behind his back in a formal, contemplative pose. His silhouette, backlit by the lights of the house, was stark and solid, the figure of a sentinel who'd stood this watch for decades and would continue standing it as long as breath remained in his body.
The house was a perfect preservation of a bygone era, maintained with such dedication that it seemed less like a restoration and more like a temporal anomaly, a building that had simply refused to age along with the rest of the world.
It stood two stories tall, its sage-green clapboard siding weathered to a soft, welcoming hue that suggested age without decay, time passing without deterioration. The color was distinctive—not quite green, not quite gray, but something in between that changed subtly depending on the light and viewing angle.
A wide wraparound porch extended across the entire front face and around both sides, its floor made of tongue-and-groove boards that had been worn smooth by countless footsteps but showed no signs of rot or damage. White-painted columns supported the porch roof, and between two of them hung a wooden swing suspended by chains, moving slightly in the evening breeze with a gentle creaking sound.
Two rocking chairs occupied another section of the porch, positioned to face outward toward the yard, the kind of seats where people could sit and watch the world go by, could observe the comings and goings of the compound while remaining in the comfort of shade and shelter.
Large multi-paned windows—each individual pane perhaps eight inches by ten inches, held together in a grid of wooden frames—glowed with warm, buttery light that spilled out onto the porch and yard. The light had the distinctive quality of oil lamps or low-wattage incandescent bulbs, warm and inviting rather than harsh and clinical.
Internal shutters were visible through the windows, folded back now to allow the light to shine freely, but ready to be closed for privacy or protection. Each window bore curtains as well—lace or cotton, simple but carefully maintained.
The roof was shingled in a dark gray that contrasted pleasingly with the sage-green siding, and a brick chimney rose from one end, currently showing no smoke but ready to serve its function when needed.
It was, in every visible detail, a perfect time capsule of 1940s American domestic architecture. But Elijah could see the subtle signs that this was far more than a museum piece—the reinforced door frames, the cameras hidden in decorative elements, the windows that were probably ballistic glass despite their antique appearance, the communication antennas disguised as weather vanes.
It was a fortress disguised as a home, a command center masquerading as a relic, the perfect synthesis of this place's entire philosophy: tradition concealing capability, nostalgia housing lethality, the appearance of harmlessness sheltering deadly competence.
"The heart of it all," Shimmen said, finally breaking the silence that had fallen between them. "It has waited for its Keeper, maintained exactly as you left it. Shall we go inside?"
He gestured toward the porch steps, inviting Elijah to ascend, to cross the threshold, to reclaim whatever role he'd once held in this strange, hidden world.
Elijah opened his mouth to respond, to say yes or to ask more questions or to express the confusion that still dominated his thoughts despite the momentary peace this place had provided—
And then his ears began to buzz.
It started as a barely perceptible hum, a frequency right at the edge of hearing, the kind of sound that made you question whether it was real or imagined. But it grew rapidly, increasing in volume and intensity, becoming impossible to ignore or dismiss.
*Zzzzzzzzzzz*
The sound was inside his head, resonating in his skull, vibrating through bone and brain tissue. It wasn't painful—not exactly—but it was profoundly disorienting, making it difficult to focus on anything else.
And with the buzzing came change.
The world around him began to wither. There was no other word for it—the colors drained away like water running out of a basin, the vibrant greens and warm lamplight fading to shades of gray. The textures flattened, depth becoming harder to perceive, everything taking on the quality of an overexposed photograph or a dream half-remembered.
The transformation was gradual but inexorable, reality dissolving frame by frame, each second showing less of what had been there and more of something else, something wrong.
The main house remained ahead of him—still in the same position, still recognizable—but changed. The warm, inviting glow from its windows had become cold and harsh, more like the flicker of static on a dead television channel than proper light. The sage-green siding had faded to a uniform gray, and the entire structure seemed less solid, as if it might be a projection rather than a physical building.
Shimmen was no longer next to him.
Elijah turned, looked to where the old man had been standing just seconds ago, and found empty space. No footprints in the gravel to suggest he'd walked away. No sound of departing footsteps. Just... absence, as if Shimmen had never been there at all.
The buzzing in his ears intensified, and Elijah raised his hands to his head instinctively, pressing his palms against his temples as if he could physically suppress the sound. It didn't help. The vibration was coming from inside, from the chip Janet had mentioned, from whatever technology had been embedded in his skull without his knowledge or consent.
Withering gray light radiated everywhere now, replacing the natural illumination of moon and lamplight. It came from no visible source—not the sky, not the house, not any object in the environment—but rather seemed to permeate the air itself, as if the atmosphere had become luminescent with this sickly, pallid glow.
The carefully maintained garden, the tranquil pond, the cottages, the training areas—all of it had faded to the same flat gray, details washing out, becoming indistinct and dreamlike.
And up ahead, perhaps fifty feet from where Elijah stood frozen in the middle of the path, between him and the main house, was a figure.
It hadn't been there a moment ago. Or perhaps it had, and his eyes had only just now been forced to perceive it. Either way, it was impossible to ignore, impossible to dismiss as hallucination or trick of the light.
The entity was humanoid in its basic structure—head, torso, two arms, two legs arranged in roughly human proportions. But that was where any resemblance to humanity ended.
Its body was composed entirely of smoke—reddish-black in color, the hue of old blood mixed with shadow, of rust and decay and things long dead. The smoke wasn't static; it moved constantly, swirling and shifting, parts of the figure becoming more solid and defined while other parts dissipated into wisps before reforming.
The form was semi-transparent, allowing Elijah to see faint suggestions of the scenery behind it, but substantial enough to create a clear silhouette, to have presence and weight in the space it occupied.
At the center of its chest, visible through the shifting smoke like a window into its core, was a symbol that made Elijah's stomach clench with recognition and revulsion.
A concentric inverted spiral, its lines glowing with a faint reddish light, serving as the pupil of a larger design. The spiral was enclosed within a triangle—equilateral, precise, each angle exactly sixty degrees . And at each vertex of the triangle was an eye.
Not human eyes. These were closed, the lids rendered in the same reddish-black substance as the figure's body, but clearly defined, clearly eyes despite being shut. And from beneath each closed lid, tears flowed—not water, not clear saline, but dark liquid that looked like ink or oil, black tears that dripped down, following the lines of the triangle, pooling at the bottom point before dissolving back into the smoky form of the figure.
Surrounding the entire symbol—the spiral, the triangle, the weeping eyes—was a handprint. Six-fingered, with the thumb and digits splayed outward as if the hand had been pressed against glass or laid flat on a surface. The print flickered, appearing solid for a moment then fading to barely visible, pulsing in and out of clarity like a phantom mark that couldn't quite maintain its existence.
The being's face held vaguely human features—suggesting eyes, a nose, a mouth without fully committing to any of them. The features were unsettlingly smooth, rendered in a style that was almost cartoonish or creationist, as if someone had tried to draw a human face from description but had never actually seen one, creating something that fell into the uncanny valley between recognition and wrongness.
Within the smoke where eyes should have been, two points of light glowed faintly—suggesting emotion, suggesting intelligence, yet simultaneously conveying absolute emptiness, a void where feelings should have existed but didn't.
And at the very center of its chest, behind the triangle symbol, was visible darkness—not merely the absence of light but active darkness, a void that seemed to pull light into itself, a hole in reality that consumed rather than reflected.
The figure stood in that withering gray illumination, and around it the air itself seemed to distort, rippling like heat shimmer, creating waves of visual distortion that made it difficult to focus on, made the eyes want to slide away and look at something—anything—else.
It was illusion-like, ethereal, existing in that space between real and not-real, between physical and mental, a thing that might have been external or might have been generated entirely within Elijah's manipulated perceptions.
The figure's smooth, almost cartoonish face arranged itself into an expression—mouth curving upward, eyes brightening slightly—that approximated a smile. When it spoke, the voice came from everywhere and nowhere, bypassing Elijah's ears entirely and speaking directly into his consciousness.
"Eli." The name was drawn out, made mocking, diminutive. "Really, for someone who thought himself a promising mind, seriously, this is the best you can do? Run and hide like some roach when troubles find their way to you?"
The tone was conversational, almost friendly, which made it infinitely more disturbing than if it had been overtly threatening.
Elijah found his voice, though it came out rougher than he'd intended, stress and fatigue and fear all evident in the syllables. "You. Who are you really?"
He took a step forward, his body moving on autopilot while his mind struggled to process what he was seeing, what was happening.
"I know now that there's a chip in my skull. A chip that's making me see things and hear things that aren't there." He gestured at the gray wasteland that had replaced Caltheron's beautiful garden. "Making me experience realities that don't exist. And if my guess is right—" his voice hardened, anger cutting through the fear, "—you're the person who put it there. Or at the very least, you're connected to whoever did."
The figure's smile widened impossibly, the expression no longer even attempting to approximate human emotion, becoming something predatory and alien. The reddish-black smoke swirled faster, excited by Elijah's recognition, pleased by his understanding.
But it didn't confirm or deny. Just stood there grinning that terrible grin, waiting.
Elijah continued, his thoughts organizing themselves despite the buzzing in his ears, despite the wrongness of everything around him. "When Janet was using those neural transmitters to try to neutralize me, to trap me in that... that constructed false-sense prison," he struggled for the right terminology, "I could still hear her voice. Even when I was bound to that chair, even when the torture-sound was overwhelming everything else, her words reached me."
He paused, remembering that moment, that realization. "And it aided me. Helped me understand that what I was experiencing wasn't the full reality, that my real body was still out there, still capable of acting. Suddenly I could feel things—air currents, sounds, smells—with impossible clarity. My perception was enhanced, expanded, as if some limiter had been removed."
His eyes narrowed, focusing on the figure despite how it hurt to look directly at it. "That's what let me escape Janet's control, what let my body fight even while my consciousness was trapped. But what was that? It was like I created my own perceived reality with just the belief that I wasn't truly under her control. Like conviction alone was enough to override the technology, to break through the programming. What was that?"
The figure's posture shifted, the smoke consolidating slightly, making it more defined, more present. When it spoke, the voice carried a note of satisfaction, like a teacher pleased that a student had finally grasped a difficult concept.
"That was the Synaptic Realm," it said, and somehow Elijah knew the capitalization was intentional, that this was a proper noun, a specific concept with weight and meaning. "In your case, you used Janet's voice as a guide—an external anchor in reality that your subconscious could latch onto while your conscious mind was imprisoned."
The figure raised one smoky appendage, gesturing as it explained. "That anchor allowed you to sense the micro-currents of your real body, not the illusioned body your conscious mind believed it was experiencing. You gained what we call an epiphany of perception—a sudden, acute awareness of the external world through purely physical sensation, bypassing conscious thought entirely."
It paused, the grin becoming somehow more pleased, more excited. "Boy, you are really full of surprises. You accomplished all this while wearing an Orrhion chip specifically designed to prevent such awareness. The fact that you broke through, even partially, speaks to potential I hadn't fully anticipated."
Elijah stared at it, processing this information, trying to fit it into some framework that made sense. Finally, he asked the most basic question: "Who are you?"
The figure straightened, taking on a more formal posture, though the smoke never stopped moving, never became truly solid. "You can address me as your Guide."
There was a beat of silence. Then Elijah snorted—an involuntary sound, half-laugh and half-scoff. "That's the lamest name I've ever heard. 'Your Guide'? What are you, some kind of spiritual GPS system?"
The figure's expression flickered, the smile faltering, something that might have been annoyance crossing its cartoonish features.
"I'm going to call you Wonko," Elijah continued, the name appearing in his mind from nowhere, sounding right in a way he couldn't explain. Maybe it was from a book he'd read once, maybe it was just random neurons firing, but it fit this absurd, impossible entity better than "Guide" ever could.
The figure's entire form rippled with what was clearly displeasure, the smoke churning more violently, the reddish-black hues deepening toward pure black. Its face arranged itself into an expression of definite irritation, the eyes brightening with something that approximated anger.
"Boy," it said, and now the voice held an edge, a threat barely contained, "for now, I will tolerate your disrespect. You are, after all, barely beginning to understand what you are, what you're capable of, what role you're meant to play. But do not continue to piss me off. There are limits to my patience, and you do not want to discover where those limits end."
Elijah met its gaze—or the approximation of a gaze—and shrugged with more confidence than he felt. "Fine, fine. Whatever you say, Wonko."
He deliberately used the name again, asserting his small rebellion, claiming what little control he could in a situation where he had almost none.
The figure—Wonko—held its irritated expression for a moment longer, then seemed to consciously smooth it away, returning to that unsettling approximation of calm neutrality.
"As I was saying," it continued, as if the naming dispute hadn't occurred, "what you accomplished was the fundamental foundation of Essence Body training. It's the entry point, the first step towards becoming an Orrhion essence practitioner."
It began pacing—or rather, its form moved laterally while maintaining the same distance from Elijah, smoke trailing behind it like a cape. "But in your case, you gained the epiphany, the momentary awareness, without actually reaching the Synaptic Realm proper. You touched its edge, glimpsed its possibility, but didn't fully enter. And you can't, not yet, because the Orrhion chip is still disabling you from fully opening your neural Orrhion pathways."
Elijah's face scrunched into confusion, his eyebrows drawing together, his mouth opening to ask for clarification on terms that made no sense—"Essence Body," "Orrhion essence practitioner," "neural Orrhion pathways," all of it sounding like jargon from some esoteric tradition he had no context for.
But before he could vocalize any questions, Wonko raised one smoky appendage—the suggestion of an arm ending in the approximation of a hand, though the fingers were too long and there were definitely more than five—and snapped.
The sound was sharp and clear despite being produced by smoke rather than solid matter, the snap resonating in the gray space around them with more force than should have been possible.
And reality responded.
The air in front of Wonko began to ripple, like heat shimmer off summer pavement, but more intense, more deliberate. The ripples expanded outward from a central point, creating concentric circles of distortion that pulsed in time with some invisible rhythm.
Then the distortion began to solidify, to take on shape and substance. It started as a warping, a bending of the light and the gray atmosphere, creating a lens-like effect where things behind it became stretched and compressed simultaneously.
Gradually, that warping resolved into something more structured. A screen—or perhaps window was the better term—appeared in the air, hovering about chest-height to Elijah, perhaps four feet wide and three feet tall. Its edges were indistinct, fuzzy, the boundary between the projection and the surrounding air unclear and constantly shifting.
Within that window, images began to form. They were blurry at first, like a television tuning itself, static and partial pictures resolving and dissolving. Colors bled into each other, shapes overlapped, and for several seconds it was impossible to distinguish what was being shown.
But then it sharpened. The colors separated, the edges defined themselves, and the projection stabilized into clear, detailed imagery.
Elijah saw... something. The full content wasn't immediately clear—the angle was wrong, the perspective unfamiliar—but he could tell it was significant, important, something Wonko wanted him to understand.
The images moved, animated, showing processes or sequences or explanations in visual form that bypassed the need for language, that communicated directly through demonstration.
And Elijah, despite his exhaustion, despite his confusion and fear and the surreal horror of his situation, found himself leaning forward, his attention completely captured.
His face arranged itself into an expression of pure awe—eyes wide, mouth slightly open, all the tension and suspicion temporarily forgotten in the face of whatever revelation was being offered.
The projection continued, and Elijah stared, drinking in information he didn't fully understand but knew, bone-deep, was critical to his survival, to understanding what he'd become, to navigating the impossible situation he found himself in.
And in the withering gray wasteland that had replaced beautiful Caltheron, surrounded by smoke and illusion and technology that shouldn't exist, Elijah took his first real step toward understanding the truth.