Seraphine had spent the last several minutes refusing to think about Genesis.
The word remained anyway.
She walked beside Liam across the broken landscape of Divine Ruin while ridges of black terrain rose and fell ahead of them beneath an empty darkness that still refused to reveal a horizon. Somewhere in that impossible distance waited Liam's personal well. He could feel it now, though his connection to it behaved less like a direction and more like a pull passing through the world itself.
Liam stopped for the third time since they had left the ridge.
Seraphine nearly continued before noticing that his attention had shifted toward a point several yards to their left. There was nothing there that she could identify beyond another stretch of black ground.
"You lost the well again?" she asked.
"No. I can still feel it."
"Then what are you looking at?"
Liam's altered eyes tracked something invisible to her. "One of the rifts."
Seraphine looked where he was looking, but the terrain remained unbroken to her perception.
Since entering Divine Ruin, she had learned quickly that Ruined Sight showed Liam an additional version of the realm layered over the one she could see. He had described fractures beneath the ground, weaknesses crossing distant formations, and breaks that continued farther than his perception could follow. Seraphine had never seen any of them herself.
"How large is this one?" she asked.
"Not very. Maybe two feet."
"And it is in the ground?"
Liam shook his head slightly. "That is the problem. I don't think it is."
Seraphine stopped beside him. "Explain."
Liam gave her the same irritated look he had begun reserving for questions he could not answer properly.
"I'm trying."
"That is why I asked."
He returned his attention to the empty space. "Most of the fractures look attached to something. A structure is damaged, or the ground has a weak point running through it. This one doesn't feel attached to anything."
Seraphine glanced at the unremarkable patch of terrain again. "Yet you can see it."
"Yes."
"What does it look like?"
Liam considered the question. "Like somebody cut a line through space and forgot to close it."
That description held Seraphine's attention.
They had been traveling toward Liam's well while she continued testing the realm's scale, and nothing she had discovered had made her Genesis suspicion easier to dismiss. Now Ruined Sight was apparently identifying breaks that did not correspond to visible damage at all.
She asked, "Does it feel dangerous?"
Liam looked at her. "Everything Ruined Sight shows me feels like something I should probably leave alone."
"That was not the question."
"No. It doesn't feel dangerous in a way I can explain."
Seraphine waited for more.
Liam looked back toward the invisible rift. "It feels usable."
The word stayed with her.
They resumed walking, but Seraphine began watching Liam more carefully than the landscape. Every few minutes his attention caught on something she could not perceive. Most of the time he merely glanced at it and moved on. Twice, however, he slowed as though comparing one invisible fracture to another.
Eventually Seraphine said, "I think you should interact with one."
Liam stopped walking.
He turned toward her so completely that Seraphine almost smiled.
"No."
"You answered before I explained."
"I understood enough."
"You have spent the last twenty minutes telling me that Ruined Sight distinguishes some of these rifts from ordinary weaknesses."
"And somehow your conclusion is that I should touch one?"
"My conclusion is that observation may not be the end of what your Function expects from you."
Liam stared at her. "My entire reason for not experimenting outside was that touching the wrong weakness could rupture a suppression system, collapse a wall, or kill someone."
"I remember."
"So we came inside my incomprehensibly large, possibly broken Origin Realm, and now you think the intelligent choice is to poke holes only I can see?"
"When you phrase it like that, it sounds less professional."
"I am trying very hard to phrase it accurately."
Seraphine folded her arms. "Then let me be equally accurate. I am not telling you that nothing can go wrong. I am telling you that we are inside your Origin Realm, surrounded by structures created or maintained by your own Blessing. If Divine Ruin expects you to learn what these rifts are, this is probably the safest environment in which to test one."
"Probably."
"Yes."
"That word is carrying a lot."
"It is carrying exactly as much as the evidence allows."
Liam looked toward the invisible fracture again.
Seraphine continued. "Outside, a mistake could affect people who have nothing to do with the experiment. Here, if the realm reacts, we are at least dealing with Divine Ruin on its own ground."
"That does not mean I am safe from it."
"No." Seraphine's answer came without hesitation. "Your Origin Realm belongs to you. I think that gives you an advantage. I do not think it makes you invulnerable."
Liam studied her.
Seraphine deliberately left the decision with him.
After several seconds, he asked, "If something goes wrong?"
"We stop immediately. If your consciousness destabilizes, I guide you toward your physical body. If the realm itself begins reacting beyond what we can evaluate, we leave."
"And if touching the rift does something too fast for either of us to react?"
"Then I will regret suggesting it."
Liam blinked.
Seraphine's expression remained perfectly serious.
A short laugh escaped him. "That might be the worst reassurance you've given me."
"It was not reassurance. It was informed consent."
"That phrase is becoming dangerous around you."
They continued until Liam found a rift he considered more isolated than the others. Seraphine could see nothing where he pointed, so she relied entirely on his description. According to Liam, the fracture hovered just above an otherwise stable section of terrain, did not connect to any larger weakness he could perceive, and was short enough that he could examine it without stepping over anything uncertain.
Seraphine remained several paces back.
"You are the only one who can see it," she reminded him. "If anything changes visually before you touch it, tell me."
Liam crouched in front of empty air from her perspective.
"It looks the same."
"And Ruined Sight still treats it as usable?"
"Yes."
"Then take your time."
Liam raised one hand and stopped before making contact with something Seraphine could not see.
He glanced back at her. "You are certain this is your idea?"
"I would prefer the record reflect that clearly."
"That way, if I disappear forever, everyone knows who to blame."
"If you disappear forever, administrative blame will be a secondary concern."
"That was almost comforting."
"Touch the rift, Liam."
He turned back toward it.
His fingers moved forward.
Seraphine saw the instant contact occurred even though she could not see what he touched.
Dark-purple distortion erupted around Liam's hand.
He jerked backward, but the distortion climbed across his fingers and wrist faster than physical movement should have allowed.
"Liam."
"I'm pulling away."
Then space around him fractured.
Seraphine had no better word for what she witnessed. Liam remained crouched before her, but for one impossible instant his outline appeared in several places simultaneously. One version stood six feet to her right. Another flickered behind her. A third appeared across the plain.
The original vanished.
Seraphine spun.
Liam reappeared nearly twenty feet away and hit the ground hard on one knee. His hand struck the black surface to keep him from falling completely.
She reached him within seconds.
"Are you hurt?"
Liam looked up, more offended than injured. "I think your rift moved me."
"My rift?"
"You suggested touching it."
"You are the only person who can see it."
"Then I think my rift moved me."
Before Seraphine could answer, the landscape reacted.
Dark-purple illumination surged beneath the black ground, racing outward from the location where Liam had made contact. Seraphine could not see the rifts themselves, but she could see their consequences now. Lines of violet light tore across the plain in branching paths, crossed beneath distant rises, and climbed through fractures in structures hundreds of feet away.
Seraphine's humor disappeared immediately.
"Prepare to leave."
Liam pushed himself upright. "I'm trying to figure out how."
"If I tell you to find your body, do it without arguing."
"That instruction would be easier if you had not trained me to argue with everything."
The illumination spread one ridge farther.
Then it stopped.
The purple lines faded until the landscape returned to its earlier darkness.
Nothing followed them.
No structure collapsed.
No chain moved in the distance.
Seraphine remained still for several seconds before looking at Liam. "How do you feel?"
"Like I was standing over there and then reality disagreed."
"I meant physically."
"No pain."
"Ruined Sight?"
"Still there."
"Anything else?"
Liam started to answer, then stopped.
Something had changed.
He closed his eyes and searched inward.
The sensation was subtle, but it was unmistakable. Before touching the rift, Divine Ruin had felt occupied by one active mechanism he understood only partially: Ruined Sight. Now another presence existed alongside it.
Not a voice.
Not knowledge.
A new piece of himself that had not been there minutes earlier.
Liam opened his eyes.
"Something opened."
Seraphine's attention sharpened. "Can you identify it?"
"No."
"Can you activate it?"
"I don't know what I would be activating."
Seraphine considered the displacement, the realm-wide reaction, and Liam's description.
Then she looked toward the empty space where the rift remained invisible to her.
Liam caught the look. "If you suggest touching another one, I'm leaving you here."
"I was about to say the opposite."
"That is reassuringly responsible."
"One unexplained displacement is evidence. Repeating it immediately would be recklessness."
Liam started walking again. "I am going to remember that you were the one who suggested the first reckless thing."
"It was a controlled experiment."
"I teleported twenty feet."
"You were displaced twenty feet. We do not know whether teleportation is the correct mechanism."
Liam looked over his shoulder. "You must be exhausting in arguments."
"I am excellent in arguments."
Their path resumed toward the personal well.
The change inside Liam did not disappear. If anything, he became increasingly aware of it as they traveled. He resisted the temptation to search for another rift and test whether he could reproduce what had happened.
Seraphine noticed.
"You keep looking at things I cannot see."
"There are more of them."
"Do any feel different now?"
Liam examined one briefly. "Maybe."
"That means?"
"That means I don't know, and apparently that is an acceptable answer when you say it."
Seraphine gave him a sideways look. "You are learning quickly."
The terrain deepened into a series of immense shattered terraces. Beyond them rose black formations resembling mountains, their upper reaches disappearing into the dimensionless darkness overhead. Purple light threaded through the landscape in long, buried currents.
Seraphine's earlier suspicion returned despite her attempts to suppress it.
A Seed-rank Origin Realm should have occupied roughly fifty feet by fifty feet.
They had now crossed distances many times larger than that, encountered geography extensive enough to hide entire structures, found a flawless chain extending beyond perception, and discovered rifts that Liam alone could perceive. Now one of those invisible fractures had interacted with him in a way that appeared to alter Divine Ruin itself.
Genesis remained an irresponsible conclusion.
It was also becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.
Seraphine realized something else that troubled her more.
If she voiced that theory outside this realm before possessing evidence, Liam would cease being merely anomalous. People who were already frightened by thirty Major Functions and an unreadable ceiling would hear the highest Divine Rank in existence associated with an eighteen-year-old they already had under containment.
Their oath had been about Liam's privacy.
Now Seraphine understood that privacy might also be protecting him from conclusions drawn too early.
Liam stopped again.
This time his expression changed before Seraphine could ask why.
"The well."
"Closer?"
"Yes."
"How close?"
He looked ahead across the descending terrain. "For once, I think we can actually reach it."
The dark-purple currents beneath the ground began converging as they continued. The terrain sloped gradually downward until two immense ridges opened around a vast depression.
Liam reached the edge first.
He stopped.
Seraphine came beside him.
At the bottom rested a circular body of black Essence unlike any personal well Seraphine had ever seen.
It was enormous.
Dark-purple currents moved beneath its surface without producing conventional ripples. At irregular intervals the blackness seemed to fold inward, creating the impression of impossible depth before smoothing again.
Liam did not need instruction.
"That's mine."
"Yes," Seraphine said.
They descended carefully.
Seraphine glanced toward him. "We are not entering it."
Liam looked at the black expanse below. "You genuinely think I might jump into that?"
"I have supervised newly awakened people before."
He considered the answer. "Fair."
They stopped at a safe distance.
Only then did Liam notice the structures surrounding the well.
Thirty massive black monoliths formed an enormous ring around it. Each appeared broken from something larger, its edges jagged and ancient, as though the structures had not been built there so much as driven into the landscape after surviving some greater destruction.
Twenty-eight were completely dark.
Two carried dark-purple illumination.
Liam stared at them.
Seraphine could see the monoliths, but their meaning belonged to him.
"What is it?" she asked.
"There should only be one illuminated."
Seraphine understood immediately.
"Ruined Sight?"
Liam nodded toward the first glowing monolith. "That one."
His gaze shifted to the second.
"And now there's another."
He approached it slowly.
The new presence he had felt since touching the rift strengthened with every step.
When Liam focused upon the illuminated structure, his private record answered.
MAJOR FUNCTION 02: FRACTURED STEP
STATUS: UNLOCKED
He read the words twice.
Seraphine remained behind him, deliberately giving him space.
"Did it tell you anything?"
Liam looked back at her.
She had phrased the question correctly again. She had not demanded the information simply because she was present.
He chose to answer.
"Fractured Step."
Seraphine looked toward the distant world they had crossed.
"The timing is difficult to ignore."
Liam almost smiled. "That happened when I touched the rift."
"It happened immediately after you touched the rift."
"There it is."
"What?"
"The specialist wording."
"It has kept me alive."
Liam turned back toward the ring.
He focused on one of the twenty-eight dark monoliths.
The answer was immediate.
?
He tried another.
Again, nothing but a question mark.
Locked.
No name.
No explanation.
He did not try to force either one.
He searched for any separate representation indicating a Minor Function and found none. Divine Ruin remained exactly as it had been in that respect.
MINOR FUNCTIONS: NONE
Liam stepped back and took in the full ring.
He had entered his Origin Realm with Ruined Sight as the only known Function Divine Ruin had given him. Now Fractured Step stood illuminated beside it, while twenty-eight other possibilities remained completely dark.
Beyond them stretched a world that should not have existed at Seed.
Somewhere behind the distant ridges, a flawless chain remained anchored to something they had not seen.
Seraphine stood beside him, looking over the impossible well and the thirty monoliths while the same forbidden rank returned quietly to her thoughts.
Liam broke the silence.
"We came all this way for answers."
Seraphine looked toward the second illuminated monolith.
"We found one."
"That sounded optimistic."
"No," she said, turning her attention toward the twenty-eight dark structures surrounding them. "It sounded accurate."
Around the black well, twenty-eight answers remained dark.