[Kira POV] Year 0, Day 53

  Reality folded.

  Kira's stomach lurched as space compressed around them, distance becoming irrelevant. The teleportation key flared hot in her hands—or cold? She couldn't tell. Temperature lost meaning when the world stopped making sense.

  Then: sand.

  Her boots hit solid ground. She stumbled forward, caught herself against—nothing. Just air. Her body hadn't caught up to the fact that travel was already complete.

  "Gods," she breathed.

  Desert stretched in every direction. But not empty desert. This place was wounded.

  Craters everywhere. Glass formations where sand had melted and cooled. Massive gouges in the earth like some giant had dragged claws across the landscape. Scorch marks. Shattered stone. The lingering smell of ozone and char.

  Evidence of battle. Recent battle. Days old at most.

  But Kira wasn't looking at the destruction yet.

  She was shaking.

  Not from fear. From something else entirely. Her merchant education screaming at her. Numbers and possibilities cascading through her mind faster than she could process them.

  "That was—" Her voice cracked. She tried again. "That was actual teleportation."

  The words came out strangled. Disbelieving.

  "Real teleportation. Not theoretical. Not legend. Not some trick with short-range spatial compression. Real."

  Her hands were trembling. She pressed them together, trying to still them. Failed.

  "Do you—" She turned to Ealdred, forgetting protocol entirely. Forgetting hierarchy. Forgetting everything except the commercial implications. "Do you have ANY idea what this means?" she asked frantically.

  Ealdred's expression shifted to something between annoyance and resignation. Like he'd seen this reaction before. Many times before.

  "The Merchant Guild," Kira continued, her voice rising. She couldn't help it. Decades of training, of indoctrination into the Guild's greatest obsessions, flooding back. "We've been researching this for millennia. Entire departments. Fortunes thrown at the problem. The theoretical models all say it should work but we can never—and you just—we just—" she stammered.

  She gestured helplessly at the desert around them. At the impossible distance they'd just crossed in seconds.

  "How far did we travel? That had to be hundreds of kilometers. Maybe thousands. And the mana requirements—I felt the surge when we activated it. That much power should have killed us. Ripped us apart. The spatial calculations alone—" she continued rapidly.

  "Are you quite finished?" Ealdred asked, his tone flat. Bored.

  "No!" Kira realized she was almost shouting. Forced herself to breathe. "The anchor points—how are they established? What determines a valid destination? Can new locations be added? The keys—are they single-use or reusable? What's the creation process? The exact mana cost per activation? The theoretical models suggest catastrophic failure rates above ninety percent for anything beyond—"

  "Fine," Ealdred cut her off with visible resignation. "I'll answer. Because explaining once is easier than listening to endless babbling. And you're not the first merchant to lose your mind over this."

  He gestured at the empty desert around them.

  "Teleportation. Two-part system. Anchors and keys. Your Merchant Guild is stuck because they're solving the wrong problem," Ealdred explained.

  Kira's merchant brain shifted instantly into information-gathering mode. Recording. Processing. This was knowledge worth kingdoms.

  "The keys," Ealdred continued, "can be created. Copied from old Empire examples. The Merchant Guild probably already knows how—I got mine through Syndicate connections. Someone in your organization definitely has the method. They're just not sharing it."

  "But they're expensive," he added. He pulled one of the crystalline devices from his storage. Let her see it. "More than a full set of Legend-class equipment. Each one. And they're useless to most people because of the activation requirements."

  Kira stared at the key. Her mind calculating. Legend-class equipment sets could buy cities. Could fund wars. And these keys cost more?

  "The keys need massive mana input," Ealdred said. "All provided by a single individual. One continuous pulse. No group casting. No external sources. No artifacts helping. Just one person channeling everything the key demands."

  He paused, letting that sink in.

  "Maybe a dozen people on this continent have enough mana capacity to use these even once. Archmage-level minimum. And those people? Heads of state. Supreme Guild leaders. Their time is too valuable to waste jumping around empty desert for convenience."

  Kira's thoughts raced. The mana requirement alone explained why the Guild research kept failing. They were probably testing with groups. With artifacts. With every enhancement method available.

  But the keys didn't work that way. They demanded raw individual power that simply didn't exist in test subjects.

  "What about the anchors?" she asked. "The destination points. Those can be created, right? That's where the real breakthrough would be. New anchors mean actual utility. Commercial applications. Strategic value."

  Ealdred's expression darkened slightly.

  "No," he said.

  Just that. One word. Final.

  "What do you mean, no?" Kira pressed.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Nobody knows how to create new anchors. Not the Merchant Guild. Not the Empire. Not anyone living. Possibly not even the Empire at their height. There's no structure around them. No visible markers. No method anyone's discovered to establish new destinations," Ealdred explained.

  He gestured vaguely at the desert. At nothing. At everywhere.

  "The anchors simply exist. Somehow written into the world's fundamental rules. Ancient. Permanent. Unchangeable. And every single one is in the Desert of Nothing. Paradise-era or earlier. Dead cities. Ruins. Places nobody's lived in for seven thousand years."

  Kira felt her excitement drain away. Replaced by cold understanding.

  "So it's a dead end," she said quietly. "Functionally useless. We can only go to places that don't matter anymore."

  "Correct," Ealdred confirmed. His tone carried finality. "The Merchant Guild knows this. Has known for centuries, probably. But they keep the research going anyway. Better to let merchants dream of breakthrough than admit certain knowledge is permanently lost."

  "Keeps hope alive. Keeps funding flowing," Kira said bitterly. "Typical Guild behavior."

  She looked around at the devastated landscape again. Really seeing it this time.

  The craters. The melted glass. The destruction.

  "What happened here?" she asked. "This looks like a battlefield. Like a war."

  "Little monsters playing," Ealdred said flatly. "Nothing important."

  Kira stared at him. At the apocalyptic scenery. At the casual dismissal.

  Playing?

  But she didn't get to pursue that question. Ealdred was already moving forward, addressing the group.

  "Now. The bonding. Kira, what you're about to witness is confidential. Classified. You'll understand why once you see it," Ealdred said.

  His eyes fixed on her with uncomfortable intensity.

  "Discretion is not optional. It's survival. For all of us. Understood?" he asked firmly.

  Kira's merchant training kicked in. She understood business secrets. Information that could kill if shared improperly.

  "Yes, Master Ealdred," she replied.

  "Good." He looked at Null. "Show her. Demonstrate what she's agreeing to. Then offer the seed. Let her choose."

  Null stepped forward. Away from the group. Creating space.

  The twin fox-maids whispered to each other excitedly. Their voices perfectly synchronized, speaking the exact same words at the exact same moment. Like one consciousness operating two bodies.

  "Big sister showing! Lady gets to see!" the twins said.

  Kira barely registered their words. Her attention fixed on the battlemaid walking into the open desert. On what was about to happen.

  Null stopped. Turned to face them.

  Then she let go.

  The transformation was instant.

  Her body stopped being constrained by the concept of "human shape." Stopped pretending. Became something that existed in directions that shouldn't be possible.

  Mass rippled. Shifted. Refused to stay properly in three dimensions. Like looking at something through water, but the water was reality itself and it couldn't quite hold her.

  Limbs that weren't quite limbs. Angles that made Kira's eyes hurt when she tried to focus on them. A presence that felt wrong on some fundamental level that bypassed conscious thought and triggered pure animal terror.

  Kira's reaction was immediate.

  She screamed.

  Stumbled backward. Her feet tangled. She went down hard, hitting the sand on her hands and knees.

  And she couldn't stop staring.

  Her mind trying to process what it was seeing. Failing. Trying again. Each attempt scraping pieces off her sanity like rust being filed away.

  "WHAT—"

  The word came out broken. Animal sound more than language.

  Her body betrayed her completely.

  Warmth spread down her legs. The smell of urine sudden and sharp. She'd pissed herself. Literally lost control from pure terror.

  And still she couldn't look away.

  Every instinct screaming to run. To flee. To get away from that thing that shouldn't exist.

  But her body wouldn't respond. Just shaking. Frozen. Staring at the horror that used to wear a maid's face.

  "That," Ealdred's voice cut through her panic, "is where your power comes from. Your long life. Everything you're hoping to gain," he said.

  His tone was clinical. Observational.

  "Your master controls this creature. Or thinks he does. The loyalty binds you to the monster first, and through it, to your master. That's the source," Ealdred explained.

  Kira was hyperventilating. Her lungs couldn't get enough air. Couldn't process enough oxygen. Her vision tunneling. Narrowing down to just the horror. Just the wrongness.

  She tried to scramble away. To put distance between herself and that thing.

  Her hands slipped in the sand. She fell again. Crawled. Got her feet under her and stumbled backward.

  "Why—why is it—I can't—"

  The twin fox-maids spoke again. That same perfect unison.

  "Why is lady scared? Big sister just showing cool form. Pretty shadow shape. Why screaming?" the twins asked in confusion.

  They genuinely didn't understand. Whatever they were, they saw that horror as normal. As pretty.

  Kira wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or both.

  Ealdred just watched with clinical interest. Making mental notes. Taking measurements of her breakdown like it was data to be recorded.

  No fear in his expression. No discomfort. Just observation.

  The twins were tilting their heads in perfect synchronization, fox ears twitching with confusion. They looked at the horror that used to be Null like it was just their sister showing off a new dress.

  These things aren't human, Kira's mind screamed at her. None of them are. You're surrounded by monsters pretending to be people.

  She forced herself to stop moving. To just sit in the sand, shaking, staring.

  Her merchant pragmatism fighting back through the terror. Trying to assert control.

  Think. Calculate. Analyze the situation.

  Death now versus binding to horror.

  Death is permanent.

  Horror might be survivable.

  Might even be profitable long-term.

  The math is clear.

  But her body wouldn't stop shaking. Wouldn't stop seeing that thing. Wouldn't stop knowing what she was about to chain herself to.

  "I—" Her voice came out as a whisper. "I can't. There has to be another option. Please. Anything else," Kira pleaded.

  Void's voice was gentle. Too gentle for what he was saying.

  "We could help you avoid seeing your slow decline. Make you monster food right here. Quick. Painless. That's the other option," he said calmly.

  Kira stared at him. At the choice being presented with such terrible mercy.

  Bind to the horror.

  Or die.

  Now.

  She laughed. The sound came out wrong. Hysterical. Broken.

  "That's not—that's not a real choice—" Kira stammered.

  "It's the only choice you have," Void said quietly. "I'm sorry. But this is what we're offering. What we are. If you can't accept it, then we end this here. Mercifully."

  Mercifully.

  He said it like he meant it. Like killing her now would be a kindness.

  And looking at that horror, Kira almost believed him.

  But.

  She'd come here to survive. To escape death. To live, no matter the cost.

  And dying now would be admitting defeat. Admitting her brother had won. That she'd failed completely.

  Fuck that.

  Kira pulled herself together through pure force of will. Merchant pragmatism overriding terror.

  She forced herself to look at the horror again. Really look. Not just stare in frozen panic but actually see it.

  It was still terrifying. Still wrong on every fundamental level.

  But it hadn't attacked. Hadn't moved. Just stood there. Waiting.

  The twins treated it like it was normal. Safe. Just their "big sister."

  And Void stood calmly nearby, showing no fear at all.

  Maybe... maybe she could learn to do that too.

  Eventually.

  After years of therapy. Or whatever passed for therapy when you worked for monsters.

  "I came here to survive," she said. Her voice was shaking but steady enough. "To escape death. If this... if that... can do it, then I accept," Kira said.

  "You're certain?" Void asked.

  "No. But I'm desperate enough that certainty doesn't matter anymore," she replied.

  The horror—Null—did something. Reached inward maybe? Kira couldn't track the movement. Couldn't process what she was seeing.

  Then: a sphere.

  Small. Dark. Absorbing light rather than reflecting it.

  Pulsing with wrongness. With corruption. With promises of power and chains intertwined impossibly.

  It drifted toward Kira. Hovering in the air. Offering. Waiting.

  Kira looked at it. At the horror beyond it. At her only path to survival.

  Her hand trembled violently as she reached out.

  "I accept," she whispered. "Whatever this costs. Whatever it makes me. I accept."

  She grabbed the seed. Held it in her shaking palm.

  It was cold. Impossibly cold. Like holding a piece of void given physical form.

  The twins clapped their hands together in perfect unison, bouncing excitedly. "Lady chose! Lady is brave! Going to be like Void-master now!" they cheered.

  Kira closed her eyes—so she wouldn't have to look at the horror anymore—and brought the seed to her lips.

  One last moment of being purely herself.

  Then she ate it.