He felt his newly reformed body settling more fully into coherent existence, sensation returning progressively as reconstruction apparently neared genuine completion.
"Where is everyone else," he asked, memory of the confrontation that had preceded his fall into the black hole surfacing with increasing clarity. "What happened after I fell?"
Alice remained silent for a moment, something calculating behind her shifting, translucent features, though her hesitation felt less like strategic withholding and more like genuine uncertainty she was attempting to disguise as composure.
"That information exists beyond what I can currently provide," she said finally, folding her hands in front of her with exaggerated poise. "This space exists in isolation from external reality, disconnected from whatever unfolded beyond the boundary of this collapsed gravitational structure."
"Then how do I return?" he demanded, urgency entering his voice despite his continued physical weakness.
"Recovery continues naturally," she explained, her voice climbing slightly in pitch, betraying nerves beneath the formal delivery. "Your consciousness requires additional time to stabilize completely before physical reintegration with external reality becomes genuinely possible."
He struggled against the frustration building within him, recognizing that pushing against circumstances he couldn't directly control would accomplish nothing productive.
"How much longer," he asked instead, forcing patience into his strained voice.
"Difficult to calculate precisely," Alice admitted, and for a moment the formal veneer slipped entirely, something younger and less certain flickering across her expression. "Though your Fracture Spine trait has accelerated the process considerably compared to what standard reconstruction typically requires. Perhaps considerably less time than you might otherwise expect, given the unusual circumstances of your survival."
She caught herself immediately, straightening her posture her spectral form swaying slightly, smoothing whatever crack had appeared moments before.
'She's trying so hard to sound like she has this under control,' he thought, a faint, tired amusement threading through his exhaustion. 'She doesn't, does she.'
Silence settled between them, the cosmic ambiance continuing its steady pulse throughout the surrounding darkness, providing the only consistent illumination within this strange, isolated space.
"Rest now," Alice said finally, her voice softening despite her evident effort to maintain formal distance. "Your body still requires additional time before full stabilization, I will think of the next moves from here on."
Her spectral form floated closer to him, one arm grabbing his shoulder while the other rested on his hip. She pressed her body against his and looked him in the eyes.
He didn't recoil.
Then, in a tone completely uncharacteristic of this new persona she had adopted, she blurted:
"We can stay like this in the meantime… I have much Fate Essence to use…"
She smiled, tilting her head slightly, inching closer over his fogged features.
His thoughts drifted in the cosmic expanse. 'There is no turning back… if I said those words inside her Soulscape, then I have to stick with it…'
He intertwined his fingers and pulled her closer.
She vanished as a red tinge crept across her face into his body.
Suddenly, it was quiet.
"You coward," he sighed out into the empty vacuum.
Alice was enraged. "No… I ran… out of—"
He floated, a small grin tugging at his lips.
***
Pilt stepped back onto his feet.
She was just within reach. Mira stood right there, close enough that he only needed to touch her, to replace whatever mechanism was pulling her toward corruption.
'After all,' he thought, the weight of the memory pressing against his chest, 'I doomed someone very important to me. Maybe this sacrifice would reunite me with her. Redeem me. Avenge her in some way.'
Suddenly the air rippled. A figure stepped out, white hair catching whatever light filtered through the chamber.
She looked at Pilt, her gaze steady despite everything unfolding around them.
Pilt's eyes flared suddenly, countless possibilities branching outward in different directions before his enhanced perception. He saw Mercyros decapitating him. Crushing him. Killing him in various gruesome ways across dozens of potential futures.
And in none of those futures did anyone walk away unscathed.
A young girl materialized directly in front of him, arms outstretched protectively.
"No. Don't leave the mortals out of this," she said, her voice carrying quiet authority.
He stopped moving entirely.
"You are finally here," Mercyros said, his voice shifting into something warmer, something that carried genuine longing. "Aurelia. Oh, how I have missed you."
A dark, appendage-like structure whistled through the air, aimed directly at Mercyros. It crushed against the marble floor instead, splattering purple gore across the surface, covering Pilt in the mess as he stumbled backward.
"I need to cleanse the vile, wicked humans, Aurelia," Mercyros continued, his tone carrying something between conviction and pleading. "Humans can operate independently. They possess their own agency. The age of divinity has long since passed."
"Do you remember when you served as my assistant?" he asked her directly.
Aurelia looked down at the ground briefly before summoning a lyre into her hands, the instrument materializing from golden light.
Mercyros's eyes lit up at the sight.
"I ask of you," she said, her voice carrying formal weight now, "to stop this, Mercyros. You have plagued my—"
"Your town?" he interrupted.
"I see that Mother Fate has granted you the mortal life you wished for, dearest," he continued, though something darker crept into his tone as he spoke.
Suddenly the mood shifted, darkening perceptibly.
"A shame that it was granted," he said.
She shook her head slowly. "It's past us now."
"Past?" Mercyros repeated, his voice carrying disbelief. "I remember it clearly, Aurelia."
Pilt looked upward suddenly, finding himself abruptly launched toward a nearby platform, his body cutting a swift path through the air, circling around Mercyros's position with unexpected speed.
He aimed to take a shortcut directly toward them.
Mercyros's eyes tracked him like someone swatting a fly from the air. Where Pilt had been moving, gravity suddenly descended with crushing force.
The platform beneath him crumbled instantly.
"Leave this human alone," Aurelia said, reaching out for Mercyros's hand in an attempt to stop his aggression.
He hesitated for a moment, looking down at her hand resting against his.
For the first time since Pilt had witnessed their exchange, an expression of genuine uncertainty crossed Mercyros's otherwise composed features.
"Heavens," Mercyros murmured.
"Mercyros," Aurelia said quietly. "I was always here, even when I died as the young elected mayor of that town."
"I lingered as a ghost. I observed your influence throughout the years. You looked for me. You came here. I shouted, loud and far and wide, but you never saw me. Perhaps I was already dead, but existing only as a spirit. So you created the domain."
She looked up at him, tears visible at the edges of her eyes.
"In hopes that you could reunite with me," she continued. "But it only stopped me from reincarnating properly. It trapped me in this liminal state instead of allowing me to move forward."
She took his hand fully now, looking up at him with something resembling genuine warmth despite everything that had transpired.
"So live for me," she said. "I will carry on as a ghost, supporting you."
"The domain," she added, reaching up to cup his cheek gently as he bent down toward her.
By this point, Pilt had managed to scramble his way onto the main platform, his body bruised from the earlier fall but functional enough to continue moving forward.
Mercyros looked away from Aurelia suddenly, grabbing Pilt by the throat with mechanical swiftness. He stepped closer to the edge, holding Pilt over the golden expanse below, threatening to throw him down into whatever awaited beneath the platform's structure.
"You have brought me considerable pain," Mercyros said, his voice cold now, all warmth from his exchange with Aurelia vanishing entirely. "Just why did you have to meddle in my affairs?"
"Instead of a few, now many have to take their place toward death's embrace," he continued, tightening his grip around Pilt's throat.
Pilt panicked, his hands scrambling against Mercyros's grip, trying to find leverage or escape.
He saw the woman, Mira, suspended in the air by a giant, coiled mass of golden yellow energy, her body limp within its grasp.
Mercyros continued speaking, his voice carrying accusations mixed with recounts of Pilt's past, memories of a young girl he had betrayed, memories of bringing destruction home rather than salvation.
Pilt screamed in rage as he clawed at Mercyros's grip, his neck held firmly above the platform's edge, the drop beneath him stretching into endless yellow clouds that seemed to churn with malevolent energy.
"Let go of me!" Pilt gasped, his voice strained against the pressure crushing his throat.
Mercyros's grip tightened further, his expression carrying something between grief and fury, emotions warring visibly across features that had grown increasingly unstable since Aurelia's appearance.
"You dare demand anything from me?" Mercyros asked, his voice carrying dangerous calm despite the violence of his actions. "After everything you have destroyed here? After forcing my hand toward outcomes I never intended?"