"Next, I'm going to teach you how to access your Origin Realm."
Liam did not answer immediately.
Ruined Sight refused to let the assessment chamber become quiet. A pale fracture traced the support beneath the observation glass. Stress lines quivered inside the nearest suppression housing. The security band around Liam's wrist had a weakness where its inner clasp met the locking mechanism.
Seraphine sat across from him without opening her slate.
"What exactly are you planning to teach me?" Liam asked.
"How to enter deliberately, recognize what belongs to your Blessing, and come back out without depending on panic."
"That sounds like the short version."
"It is."
"What's the long version?"
"It starts with something you should have been told before anyone asked you another question about Divine Ruin."
That got his attention.
"The public reading above the Origin Well exposed information the government may legally verify. Your Blessing name. Current Divine Rank. The names of unlocked Major and Minor Functions."
Liam waited.
"Your Origin Realm may show you substantially more. Function descriptions. Activation methods. Conditions. Range. Strain. Weaknesses. Safety warnings. Developmental information. Things no external system can read."
Liam glanced toward the observation glass. "And then they ask me for all of it."
"They can ask." Seraphine held his gaze. "You do not have to answer."
Liam went still. "I can refuse?"
"Yes."
"The military? Researchers? The people behind that glass?"
"Yes."
His eyes narrowed. "You?"
"Yes."
That answer landed differently.
Facility Forty-Seven had taught Liam that authority rarely bothered distinguishing a request from an order. A polite voice could still dock food. A calm instruction could still end with a guard at your back.
"What happens when they don't like the answer?"
"They may pressure you. They may argue that Divine Ruin is unprecedented and therefore exceptional. None of that gives them ownership of information the law says is private."
"Why tell me?"
"Because if I teach you how to find information that belongs to you without telling you that it belongs to you, I'm not teaching you." Her expression hardened slightly. "I'm taking advantage of what you don't know."
Liam looked toward the glass, then back to her.
"You could've skipped this whole conversation."
"Yes."
"Let me go in, figure things out, then question me afterward."
"Yes."
"Would've made your job easier."
"Probably."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Because permission means very little when you don't know what you're allowed to keep."
Something shifted behind Liam's suspicion. Ten years did not vanish because one government specialist said the right thing, but Seraphine had placed a boundary in front of herself before he knew enough to demand one.
"Most people here would rather I didn't know that."
"Some would."
"Are you actually on my side?"
Seraphine did not rush to reassure him.
"My responsibility is to determine what happened to you, what Divine Ruin is doing, and how to keep people safe." She paused. "You are included in 'people,' Liam."
"If protecting your rights makes someone else's investigation inconvenient, they can be inconvenienced."
A faint breath escaped him. "That almost sounded rebellious."
"It was administrative."
"Terrifying."
The corner of her mouth moved.
Then she became serious again. "There is something else you need to know before you decide how much help you want from me."
"Of course there is."
"I'm a Realm Walker."
Liam waited.
"That means absolutely nothing to me."
"Realm Walkers are rare awakened individuals capable of entering another person's Origin Realm."
The silence changed.
"You just spent several minutes telling me the government isn't allowed to take what's in there."
"Yes."
"And now you're telling me you can walk into the place where it exists."
"Yes."
No softening. No technical escape.
"What can you see?"
"That depends on the realm. Permission creates a stable path I can follow, but it does not make the realm mine. I cannot command your Blessing or unlock your Functions. I may not perceive everything you perceive, and some information may remain inaccessible to me."
"My well?"
"I don't know what Divine Ruin would permit me to do near it, and I have no intention of testing that without your explicit agreement."
"That wasn't a no."
"No," Seraphine said. "It was the truth."
"Can you enter without permission?"
"Sometimes."
His jaw tightened.
"It is harder, more dangerous, and heavily restricted. And before you ask: I have never entered the realm of someone who was conscious, capable of answering me, and telling me no."
"And if I tell you no?"
"I stay here and guide you from outside."
No threat followed. No suggestion that someone else could overrule him.
"You think I shouldn't go alone."
"I think your Awakening broke enough expectations that pretending this is routine would be irresponsible."
"Normal keeps losing fights around me."
"I noticed."
Liam almost smiled.
"If I let you come," he said, "I want your word."
"Define what you want protected."
"Anything you learn because I let you inside stays between us. Divine Ruin. Ruined Sight. How it works. Limits. Weaknesses. Strain. Warnings. The twenty-nine locked Functions. My well. Anything Divine Ruin tells me privately."
He paused.
"And anything we find."
"Presences?"
"Especially those."
Seraphine nodded. "There is one exception I need you to hear before I agree. If we discover an immediate, concrete threat to someone's life outside your realm, I cannot conceal the information necessary to stop it."
"So there's the loophole."
"There is the limit of what I can honestly swear."
"Divine Ruin being powerful doesn't count."
"No."
"You being scared doesn't count."
"No."
"Security deciding something might become dangerous someday doesn't count."
"No."
"Immediate means immediate."
"Yes."
"And if it happens?"
"I reveal the minimum necessary to prevent the harm. Nothing unrelated."
Liam watched her, then nodded. "Say it."
Seraphine straightened.
"Anything I learn solely because you allow me into your Origin Realm remains between us unless you authorize me to disclose it. Your Blessing, your Functions, your limitations, your warnings, your personal well, and anything else we discover inside remain yours. If we encounter an immediate threat to another person's life, I reveal only what is necessary to prevent that harm. Nothing more."
"Anything alive?"
"Private, unless it presents the immediate threat we just defined."
"Your word?"
"My word."
The room seemed quieter afterward.
"You can come with me," Liam said. "This time."
"This time," she agreed.
Only then did Seraphine prepare the chamber. She moved the guards farther back, ordered their suppression rods lowered, left medical monitoring active, and dimmed the lights again.
"What happens if something goes wrong while you're in there too?"
"Your physical body remains our safest anchor. If I tell you to find your breathing, the chair, the band around your wrist, or the pain behind your eyes, you do it."
"That explanation gets worse every time."
"False reassurance would be worse."
"At least you're consistent."
"Close your eyes."
Liam did.
The room refused to disappear. Ruined Sight painted fractures behind his eyelids as easily as it did across open air.
He opened them again. "I can still see everything."
"Then stop trying to make it stop."
"That's your instruction?"
"Let Ruined Sight exist without following everything it shows you."
"You say impossible things very calmly."
"I find it helps."
He closed his eyes again.
"Start with your body."
The chair. His boots against the floor. The security band. The ache behind his eyes. His breathing.
"Now turn inward."
Darkness came first.
Not the chamber's darkness.
Memory.
Blackness swallowing him during Awakening. Purple somewhere beneath it. The impossible sensation of being observed.
His breathing changed.
"Stop," Seraphine said.
Liam opened his eyes. "What now?"
"You're remembering where you were."
"Isn't that useful?"
"Not for this. Memory tells you where you were. Your Blessing tells you where you are connected now."
"That sounds like something instructors say because it sounds profound."
"If it still sounds profound in thirty seconds, you're doing it wrong."
He gave her a look and closed his eyes again.
This time he let the memory go.
The fractures remained. The room remained. His body remained.
He stopped following them.
Beneath the noise, he found pressure.
Small.
Then immense.
"There," Liam whispered.
"Don't chase it."
"It's far."
"How far?"
The pressure deepened until distance stopped making sense.
"Not far," he corrected. "Deep."
The depth reacted.
That was the only way he could understand it. He had been searching inward, and then something inward seemed to notice the search.
His stomach tightened.
"Liam."
"I'm here."
"Do you want to stop?"
"No."
"Do I still have permission to follow?"
"Yes."
Something foreign touched the connection. Liam recoiled instinctively, and the pressure weakened.
"That was me," Seraphine said.
"I know."
"If you reject me, I can't follow."
He forced his shoulders to loosen. "Again."
Her presence returned, controlled and careful. It did not push ahead of him.
Liam found the depth once more.
Then he stopped resisting.
The chamber vanished.
He fell.
There was no wind, no direction, no visible destination. Darkness possessed dimension around him, deep enough to feel like an ocean without water. Dark-purple lines appeared at impossible distances and vanished before he could decide whether they were fractures, veins, or something larger than either.
"Liam?"
Seraphine's voice came from nowhere.
"I'm here."
"Can you see me?"
"No."
Then she was beside him.
She did not descend into view. She simply became present, as though the realm had finally permitted him to notice her.
Liam looked around. "Normal?"
Seraphine took half a second too long.
"No."
"Good. I was worried we might accidentally have an ordinary afternoon."
The fall ended.
Their feet settled onto a surface black enough to swallow reflection. Dark-purple illumination moved impossibly far beneath it.
There was no sky. No ceiling. No horizon.
Liam knew the place before he understood it.
"This is it."
"You're certain?"
"I remember how it feels."
Seraphine accepted that and began scanning the darkness.
"What are you looking for?"
"The boundary."
He waited.
"You can't find it."
"No."
"Bad?"
"Unusual."
"You use 'unusual' when you don't want to say bad."
"I say bad when I know something is bad."
That settled him more than reassurance would have.
They began walking.
After perhaps fifty paces, Ruined Sight changed.
Liam stopped.
Enormous fractures ran beneath the black surface. Some intersected. Others vanished downward beyond anything he could follow.
Seraphine stopped beside him. "What?"
"There are fractures under us."
She looked down. "I don't see them."
"I do."
"Is the ground unstable?"
Liam followed one line until Ruined Sight lost it in the depth.
"I don't know."
"Then we don't test it."
They continued.
The darkness eventually opened around something enormous.
A causeway stretched across a gap whose bottom neither of them could perceive. It was far wider than any path needed to be. From a distance it resembled black stone. Up close, Liam could not decide what it was made from.
Sections had collapsed. Others remained suspended despite fractures so severe Ruined Sight insisted they should already have failed. Dark-purple light moved through the broken seams.
"Was this here during your Awakening?" Seraphine asked.
"I didn't see enough to know."
"That's better than guessing."
They stepped onto the intact portion.
Halfway across, metal scraped somewhere in the dark.
Both stopped.
The sound vibrated through the causeway.
"You heard that," Liam said.
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"I don't know."
"You've said that more since we got here."
"You asked me to be honest."
"I'm starting to understand why people prefer confident liars."
"That would make my job easier too."
He almost laughed.
Then Seraphine looked into the darkness to their right. Repeatedly.
Liam noticed. "What?"
"I think something knows we're here."
His expression changed, but not with surprise.
"That's what I felt the first time."
"You said presence."
"I didn't know what else to call it."
"Hostile?"
Liam thought back.
"No."
"What did it feel like?"
He searched for the closest truth.
"Like it recognized me."
Seraphine said nothing after that.
They reached the far side of the causeway.
Something immense lay partially embedded in the black terrain ahead.
At first Liam mistook it for architecture.
Then Seraphine stopped.
A chain.
One link alone was larger than Liam's body.
The metal—or whatever resembled metal here—was darker than everything around it. Purple illumination did not reflect from its surface. One end disappeared beneath broken terrain. The other extended into darkness until even Ruined Sight lost it.
Neither moved closer.
"Does it feel like one of your Function representations?" Seraphine asked.
"How would I know?"
"Fair." She studied it. "It doesn't resemble any I've seen."
Ruined Sight was already examining it.
Liam became still.
The ground had fractures. The causeway had fractures. The chamber outside had been filled with them.
Everything failed somewhere.
The chain did not.
"What do you see?" Seraphine asked.
"Nothing."
"Ruined Sight can't perceive it?"
"No. I can see it."
"Then what do you mean?"
Liam followed the impossible line disappearing into darkness.
"There's nothing wrong with it."
Seraphine understood. "No weakness?"
"No cracks. No instability. Nothing."
For the first time since Ruined Sight awakened, Liam was looking at something without a failure point.
And it was a chain.
The metallic scrape returned.
Louder.
The sound traveled directly through the links.
One colossal segment shifted against the ground.
Barely.
Enough.
Liam and Seraphine stepped back together.
The chain drew taut toward the darkness.
Seraphine's voice dropped.
"We are not following that yet."
Liam kept staring into the black distance.
For once, he did not argue.
Somewhere beyond the reach of Ruined Sight, the chain pulled tight.