I watched, annoyed, as the blue screen invaded in the middle of a vision.

  [ Path Interaction

  Your Paths of Burning Starlight and Archon Apostle have discovered an interaction.

  Transport—subject found to already be in vision. Energy transferred from vision to presence.

  Interaction: Spiritual Substance ]

  The first thing I did—once I had read the full thing it was trying to tell me—was curse it. I did so for a few different reasons.

  One was that I had been trying to avoid Path Interactions, so it co-opting my Sacrifice vision felt like cheating. Like it had set some ground rules about what I could expect for when Path Interactions might occur for me, then flouted them to smack me with an instance.

  The other reason was that I couldn’t glean much from what it was trying to tell me. Why was there an energy transfer? What in the world did it mean by spirit—

  I swallowed. Spiritual Substance. I was rapidly figuring out what the Weave indicated by that. My presence was gaining a certain sense of weight, a certain tangibility that I shouldn’t have, not in what was supposed to be just a vision. It was alarming.

  Wishing I could take a deep breath or do something else to steady myself, I tried focusing on what was actually going on. I wasn’t done with the visions yet. Soul Sight was intent on showing me the whole story of how a tiny malformed worm no bigger than my thumb drank and supped on the dark, muddy slag of a cavernous hallway.

  The more it ate, the more it grew. Little by little, over a timescale I couldn’t fathom just then—it could have been days, it could have been decades—the worm became a monster.

  It wasn’t the only one there. Over time, it began interacting with other creatures in the hallway, most of whom were merely passing through.

  Most of whom were also a lot stronger than the worm.

  A lot.

  Despite a more seemingly solid presence, I still lacked a real body and its associated senses, but I could still sense the sheer power of some that passed by. Their auras were stifling, filling the entire cavern like I was in a sea of endless lightning. For some of them, I couldn’t even breathe, much less consider moving.

  Thankfully, my host didn’t have such mundane needs as air. In fact, I felt like I watched ages go by as the worm just ate, fought, slept, and grew.

  Most of the creatures passing by were too real in their power, yet still indistinct somehow. It was almost like my host lacked the requisite senses to actually perceive some of them. It was kind of crazy to think about. Beings who existed in this plane of existence but could only be perceived fully with extra senses I didn’t have the first clue about.

  Or did I?

  While most beings remained mostly indistinct from me, there were a few that I felt like I could make out perfectly.

  One I wasn’t going to forget was the ten-foot-tall woman whose lower half was missing entirely, replaced by thick tendrils of blue energy. The same tendrils lashed all over her body, as well as coming down from her shoulders like a cape and replacing her hair too. I never saw her eyes open, and a deep, instinctive part of me was thankful for it.

  I felt like she was a Se-Targa. The silvery skin, the remnants of the glowing wings at her back, all hinted at that. But she was certainly nothing like any Se-Targa I had ever seen. Not even Se-Vigilance was this… extraordinary.

  It was her aura that struck me the most, though. I had never felt anything like it before and gladly thanked all Banished Gods and then some that this was a vision.

  Space itself turned into solid glass at her appearance, then compressed. The only way I could think of the experience was that this being was so far beyond anything I had encountered yet, it felt like I was being forcefully restricted into two dimensions because the only three-dimensional object in her space that could exist as such was her and her alone.

  Something told me that if I had possessed the senses to see beyond my normal vision,?I would not have liked what I saw.

  The being was trailed by a surprisingly normal?person, though. A human, of all things.

  Still, a strange one. The blond guy, who couldn’t have been much older than Aurier, was covered in blue tattoos that reminded me of the tendrils on the insane Se-Targa. Unlike her, the youth was looking a lot more apprehensively at everything, including me. Or rather, the oversized worm.

  The Se-Targa stopped all of a sudden. “We are being watched.”

  Her words trilled like there were a dozen different voices saying the same thing. At first, they came distorted, almost staticky. Like the Universal Language Approximator was having trouble deciphering her voice, because it was obviously a language I had never heard before. But it soon became normal, thankfully.

  “A creature,” the Se-Targa continued. My anxiety spiked as she turned to face my direction. “That knows us.”

  Wait. Shit. Spiritual Substance. I wasn’t just seeing things here. I was present here in truth.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  And now, that presence had been sensed by…

  The sensation of alarm grew stronger as her eyes started opening. Just a tiny crack of her lifting eyelids poured out melting light into the area, and my bug host started shrieking. I could almost feel its agony. And those strange eyelids were still open—

  “Mistress!” the youth said with the same kind of urgency I felt. “Not here!”

  The Se-Targa’s eyes—the Ascendant’s eyes—finally closed. Because yes, who else could it be? What else could I be standing witness to, with an aura that overwhelmingly potent, within a Nether Vein, except for an Ascendant? “There’s a mortal in here, Shik’shikan. A human with a burgeoning Path and—” Her face scrunched up just a bit. “—and a very troubling Aspect.”

  “It matters not, mistress. We mustn’t waste our time any further.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s a human with access to the Weave.”

  Shit.

  That revelation made the youth pause in his efforts to get his mistress moving. I could see very clearly how he was trying to banish his confusion by running through a thousand different scenarios, because I was starting to understand the context behind it. They had detected me, a person who possessed Aspects and Attributes and all the things the Weave granted.

  Before the Weave had even come into being.

  Because I was pretty sure by now that I was witnessing a scene that had occurred before the Ascendants had created the Weave via the Rupture. A moment in time, within a Nether Vein, where the gods hadn’t been banished just yet.

  This was insane. Even more so because I apparently wasn’t just watching a simple vision. Thanks to my stupid Path Interaction, a part of me was here in truth, in physical, tangible form.

  “Whoever it is,” the youth eventually said, clearly coming to a decision. “I’m sure they’re of no consequence. Not against you. This is far beneath you.”

  The Ascendant considered me for a moment longer. “True enough. His lifethread is weaker than even the embedded ones around us. Onwards, Shik’shikan.” She finally turned away from me. “A mere interloper across time, perhaps a presence sent by someone. He is nothing. Yet.”

  The Se-Targa moved on without another backwards glance. Conversely, the human shot me little glares while keeping up with his mistress. Soon enough, though, they were both blessedly gone.

  The alarm riddling my soul didn’t leave though. How? How in the entire, fucking world had Path Interaction thrown me here physically? All this time, I had been under the impression that these were merely visions, like an extra-long, extra-immersive movie I had no control over.

  Interloper across time… did that mean this was some sort of time travel? Would I go on and cause some kind of butterfly effect that would have lasting effects I myself would feel in my future? Ridiculous. Stupid. I didn’t even want to consider it. This was not the route I envisioned myself going.

  It was impossible to tell how long I remained as the worm within those dark caverns. Could have been months, could have been centuries. Time was wonky in these visions.

  Literally.

  Throughout the whole experience, the worm just continued growing larger, eating the Netherthreads that were slithering about. Occasionally, it would fight other creatures, most of which I recognized as members of the Blight Swarm.

  Eventually, yet another person appeared. No. Calling the cloaked figure a person was severely downplaying them.

  It was the same kind of aura again, that overwhelming atmosphere of reality itself reshaping because of this creature’s will.

  Unlike the Se-Targa, this one approached me. Or the bug I was, to be precise. I tried focusing on the physical aspects of the being, on how the rips in the cloak were simply letting out continuous bursts of sparking energy like steam from a pressurized pipe. The hand that stretched out glowed white gold but was pierced with curling dark horns.

  I heard words that were almost melodic, like a song, but in a language I didn’t understand. Somehow, even Universal language Approximator didn’t translate it. Not at first. But afterwards—

  “This is your life from now on,” said the soft voice. Now they were actual sentences, not a song anymore. “This is your freedom. Please, take it. Enjoy it. Within you is a small part of me now, a piece that will allow you to move on beyond this… this trap. Not even a Nether Vein can hold you. So please, live your true life.”

  And then the cloaked figure was gone, leaving me feeling impossibly wistful. That voice had been so radiant, so warm, so… kind. It jarred against my whole experience so far.

  My idea of Ascendants was that of a bunch of beings selfish enough to seek so much power, they were happy to break the world in their efforts to climb, leaving only a strange system behind to fix their mess. But this one… this Ascendant had been exceedingly nice. Impossibly pure, in a way.

  And somehow, this blessing that I—well, the worm—had been given had grown twisted. Had turned this bug, and every other that had received the same piece of an Ascendant, into demonic monsters.

  I wondered if my impression was being affected, kind of like how the draconic Scalekin Councillor had touched everyone’s minds.

  When I blinked again, I found myself staggering backwards as I arrived back in my real body. I shivered. It felt like the strange atmosphere, the weird energies I had been subjected to within the Nether Vein, had come with me from the vision. That was too creepy to think about.

  My feelings were interrupted yet again when a new blue screen materialized in front of me.

  [ Rank Up!

  Your Thauma Attribute has risen by one Rank.

  Your Path of Burning Starlight has risen by one Rank.

  Thauma: Iron IX

  Path of Burning Starlight is evolving... ]

  I could only stare at the notification for a while. That vision had been enough to push my Path towards evolving yet again. I was finally hitting Gold.

  It should have brought a heap of euphoria. I was evolving my Path once more. The last time I had done so, the Path I had received had gone on to evolve normal Aspects such as Light and Heat into more advanced, almost Unique ones like Illumination and Flare. What in the world was I going to receive when my Path evolved yet again?

  But the notification was accompanied by a strange feeling. That sensation of something growing within me after I had come down from the highs of my latest Sacrifice and the Ritual of War was now growing even stronger. Was now manifesting out of me.

  Tiny prickles of black energy seeped out of me like sweat. It warped off, bleeding out and dispersing into the atmosphere around me.

  Except, it wasn’t gone. I could feel it turning the air heavy, shading my world from natural light, muting sound and smell and all other sensations. I still couldn’t understand what exactly it was, and why it seemed to be coming from me in such a volume, but I did understand it was bad news.

  “Ross,” Sreketh said quietly. “Are you alright? You look like you ate an undercooked grasshopper.”

  The comparison jerked me out of my current mental state with a short laugh. I looked down at Sreketh with my smile still intact. She obviously wasn’t seeing the strange blackness leaching out of me. “Yeah, I’m fine. Were you waiting here all this time? Actually… I’m not even sure how long it’s been since I used Sacrifice.”

  “You’ve been standing there next to the bug, completely unconscious, for at least an hour now. Everyone else went off to do their own thing since nobody wanted to disturb you.”

  Well, that was a bit disappointing. I couldn’t linger on it, though. My feelings were still stuck on my Path Evolution, and my thoughts continued to spiral a little at everything I had seen in the vision. Ascendants… the people who were the sole reason the world was in the state it was today. Would anyone even believe me that I had seen them in the flesh, much less almost interacted with one directly?

  Sreketh was looking at me very curiously, so I smiled down at her.

  “Let’s go find the others,” I said. “Then I can talk about what I saw.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for, Ross?”

  “I found a lot more than that. But you’re right. I found the important bits. I think… no, I know how to stop the Blight Swarm for good now.”