The Threshold Chamber defied description, so Jack's brain stopped trying.
It was a wound in reality that had learned to heal wrong. A space bigger inside than the universe containing it. At its heart grew the Tree—if trees were made of crystallized possibility and bore fruit that were futures ungrown. Each branch reached into might-be, each root drank from never-was. The leaves whispered in languages that wouldn't be invented for millennia.
Jack's shadow rushed forward, drinking in the sight. "Look at it! Every choice unmade, every path untaken. We could pluck possibility like apples. Rewrite the rules. Make humanity whatever we imagine."
"That's what I'm afraid of." Jack stepped into the chamber, feeling reality flex around him. His Ferox-touched bones resonated with the Tree's frequency—recognition between things that shouldn't exist but did.
The shadow circled the Tree, running fingers along bark made of fossilized dreams. Where it touched, visions bloomed:
Humanity as cosmic gardeners, growing galaxies from seeds of thought. Earth's children painting nebulae with living color, teaching stars to sing. Beautiful.
But also:
Humanity as reality's cancer, spreading stories that devoured truth. Worlds unmade by careless metaphors. Time itself breaking under the weight of human ambition. Horrifying.
"ARIA?" Jack called. "You still with me?"
"I'm... everywhere, Jack." Her voice came from the walls, the air, the spaces between. "The city taught me to unfold. I exist in parallel now. In one branch I'm still your ship's AI. In another I'm a god of small mathematics. In a third I never existed at all." A pause. "I prefer the first one. It has you in it."
The Herald materialized beside the Tree, its presence making the chamber more real by contrast. THE THRESHOLD WAITS. WHAT WILL EARTH'S CHILDREN BECOME?
Jack approached the Tree. Up close, he could see every possibility—not just for him, but for humanity. The power to author reality. To become what they'd always written about. Gods. Heroes. Monsters. All of it.
His shadow reached for the nearest fruit, a sphere of condensed potential that promised the power to reshape physics with a thought. "Take it. We've dreamed of this since we first looked at stars and made up stories about hunters and bears. Now we can make those stories real."
"We already do," Jack said quietly. "That's the problem."
He touched the Tree's trunk, feeling infinity rush through him. Every story humanity had ever told, every dream, every nightmare—all waiting to become real. The power was intoxicating. Overwhelming. Terrifying.
"I choose," Jack said, and his shadow froze mid-reach. "Not to take power. Not to reject it. But to earn it."
The Herald's form rippled. EXPLAIN.
"Humanity needs to grow into this. Learn wisdom before we write reality." Jack pulled his hand back, ignoring his shadow's protests. "We'll make mistakes—that's what we do. But we'll make them slowly, learning from each one. No shortcuts. No instant godhood. Just... growth."
His shadow snarled, trying to grab the fruit anyway. Jack caught it—catching his own shadow, how was that his life—and forced it back. The struggle was internal as much as external, ambition fighting wisdom, hunger battling restraint.
"We're surveyors," he told his shadow, told himself. "We map the dangerous places so others can navigate safely. That's what humanity needs—guides, not gods. Teachers, not tyrants."
The shadow stilled, then slowly merged back with Jack. The reintegration hurt—ambition denied always did—but it felt right. Whole.
The Herald circled them, its form cycling through states of existence. NO SPECIES HAS CHOSEN PATIENCE. THEY GRASP OR FLEE. CONQUER OR HIDE. YOU WOULD... GROW? SLOWLY? BY CHOICE?
"One impossible world at a time," Jack confirmed. "Learning what stories cost before we write them in reality."
For a moment that lasted eternity, the Herald processed this through probability matrices that made reality hiccup. Then, something like wonder crept into its voice: UNPRECEDENTED. WISDOM CHOOSING ITS OWN PACE. PERHAPS... PERHAPS EARTH'S CHILDREN ARE READY FOR A DIFFERENT PATH.
The Tree pulsed, its light dimming from blinding to merely brilliant. The fruits of possibility remained, but somehow less urgent. Less hungry. They would wait. Humanity would come to them when ready, not before.
"Then we pass?" Jack asked.
YOU BEGIN. THE TRUE TEST IS LIVING UP TO THIS CHOICE. The Herald's form started dissipating. BUT YES. EARTH'S QUARANTINE... NEGOTIABLE. THE THRESHOLD REMAINS FOR WHEN YOUR KIND IS READY. FOR NOW—
DarkFall screamed.
Not pain—transformation. The entire planet shuddered as something fundamental changed. Through the chamber's walls, Jack saw the shadow-sphere cracking open, spilling light that had been fermenting since before Earth's sun was born. The city's crystalline structures began growing, reaching skyward, their death-song becoming birth-cry.
"Jack!" ARIA's voice snapped back to clarity. "Whatever you did, it's rewriting the planet's base code. The Shadekeepers—they're changing too!"
Through the walls, the frozen witnesses began to move. Not fleeing—dancing. Their forms brightened from dim crystal to brilliant light, free from the weight of failure. They had witnessed something new: a species choosing wisdom over power.
RUN, the Herald advised, almost amused. TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES SPACE. AND YOUR KIND STILL NEEDS PRACTICE WITH THE IMPOSSIBLE.
The chamber began folding in on itself, reality packing up to become something new. Jack ran, his shadow matching him step for step, no longer rebellious but ready. Behind them, DarkFall shed its cocoon of darkness and began to bloom.