The weapons felt inadequate in Kaelen's hands.
He examined the entropic disruptor that Roland had provided—a sleek, gunmetal device with pulsing blue circuitry visible beneath its translucent casing. According to Roland, it could temporarily destabilize entropic patterns, creating a momentary vulnerability in otherwise impervious anomalies.
But against another harbinger? One already partially transformed into something akin to the Crimson Court's glass-like entities?
"It won't be enough," he said, setting the device aside. "Not by itself."
Vex, busy securing what appeared to be modified body armor across his chest, glanced up. "The weapons aren't meant to defeat the harbinger. They're insurance—a way to buy time if things go wrong."
"And they will go wrong," Roland added grimly, calibrating a device that resembled a compact satellite dish. "This harbinger has consumed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. The entropic density readings are off the charts."
Kaelen closed his eyes, focusing on the hunger within him. Since the encounter with the Crimson Court, it had changed—become more focused, more purposeful. He could direct it now, shape it with his will rather than merely surrendering to its demands.
"I won't need weapons," he said finally, opening his eyes. "Just a clear path to approach."
Vex and Roland exchanged concerned looks.
"What exactly are you planning?" Vex asked, his voice carefully neutral.
"Direct confrontation." Kaelen withdrew Klein's notebook from his pocket, now permanently altered by his encounter with the Court. The pages glowed faintly with entropic energy, symbols shifting and rearranging themselves as if alive. "The visions showed me something about how harbingers interact. It's not just about physical combat—it's about... resonance."
"Resonance?" Roland's scientific curiosity was immediately piqued. "You mean entropic frequency matching?"
"Something like that." Kaelen traced one of the symbols with his finger, watching as it brightened at his touch. "Each harbinger develops a unique pattern of consumption. When two patterns interact directly..."
"They either harmonize or clash," Vex finished, surprising both Kaelen and Roland. At their questioning looks, he shrugged. "Thorne had theories about harbinger interactions. He never confirmed them."
Kaelen studied Vex with renewed suspicion. The man clearly knew more than he had previously revealed—about harbingers, about the Court, perhaps even about Kaelen himself.
"What else did Thorne theorize?" he asked pointedly.
Vex held his gaze for a long moment before answering. "That harbingers aren't just competing to determine which elements of reality survive. They're competing to determine which consciousness becomes the... architect of what follows."
"The foundation of the next reality," Kaelen murmured, remembering Thorne's recording. "But there's more to it, isn't there?"
A tense silence filled the bunker. Roland looked between them, clearly sensing the undercurrents of the conversation.
"We should focus on the immediate threat," Vex said finally, turning back to his preparations. "The Old City district is being consumed as we speak. Every minute we delay means more lives lost."
Kaelen wanted to press further, but he knew Vex was right. Whatever secrets the man was keeping could wait. The destruction unfolding across the city could not.
"How do we approach?" he asked instead. "The entropic distortion around the other harbinger will be intense."
Roland activated the main display, showing a three-dimensional map of the city with entropic concentrations highlighted in varying shades of red. The Old City district blazed like a miniature sun, surrounded by concentric rings of decreasing intensity.
"We can't go directly through the high-density zones," he explained, tracing a path with his finger. "But there's an underground maintenance tunnel that runs beneath the financial district. It emerges here, at the edge of the Old City. The concrete shielding might provide some natural protection against the worst of the distortion."
"And once we're there?" Vex asked.
"Kaelen creates a buffer zone," Roland replied, glancing at him for confirmation. "Like he did on our way to the bunker, but stronger. A pocket of stability that allows us to approach the harbinger directly."
Kaelen nodded, though he wasn't entirely certain he could maintain such a field under the intense pressure of another harbinger's consumption field. The notebook vibrated in his hand, as if responding to his doubt.
"I'll need to consume on the way," he said, the admission coming easier than he expected. "To build up enough energy to create and maintain the buffer."
"Consume what?" Roland asked warily.
"Ambient entropy, if possible. But if necessary..." Kaelen let the implication hang in the air. They all knew what harbingers were capable of consuming.
"We'll find a way that doesn't involve more deaths," Vex said firmly. "The city has plenty of entropic hotspots that aren't people."
They finished their preparations in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Kaelen found himself wondering about the other harbinger—who they had been before the Tower's appearance, what had shaped their consumption patterns, what kind of reality they would create if they won this cosmic competition.
And more troublingly: what kind of reality would he create if he won?
The question haunted him as they left the bunker, moving through the darkened university campus toward the maintenance tunnel Roland had identified. The night sky above them was a canvas of impossibility—stars that shifted position when not directly observed, constellations that formed and
dissolved like thoughts, and always, the Tower looming over everything, its presence both physical and metaphysical.
"The entrance should be here," Roland said as they reached what appeared to be an ordinary maintenance shed near the edge of campus. He pressed his hand against the door in a specific pattern, and it slid aside to reveal not a shed but a stairwell descending into darkness.
"More of Thorne's secret passages?" Kaelen asked, eyeing the stairwell warily.
"The university is built on a network of old tunnels," Vex explained, activating a light that cast long shadows down the stairs. "Some dating back centuries. Thorne mapped them all, modified the ones he found useful."
They descended in single file, the air growing cooler and damper with each step. Kaelen felt the pressure of the earth above them, but also something else—a faint vibration that seemed to resonate with the hunger inside him. The notebook in his pocket pulsed in rhythm with this vibration, growing warmer against his chest.
"Do you feel that?" he asked, pausing on the stairs.
Vex stopped, head tilted slightly as if listening. "Yes. Entropic resonance. We're moving parallel to a major flow line."
"A what?" Roland asked from behind them.
"The entropy doesn't spread randomly," Vex explained. "It follows paths of least resistance—ley lines of a sort, but for reality dissolution rather than mystical energy. Thorne mapped dozens of them across the city."
"And one runs alongside this tunnel?" Kaelen asked, already knowing the answer. He could feel it now, a river of potential just beyond the concrete walls.
"Precisely why Thorne modified this particular passage," Vex confirmed. "It allows for observation without direct exposure."
They continued downward until the stairs ended at a long, straight tunnel with arched ceilings. Unlike the modern construction of the stairwell, this passage was clearly ancient—brick and stone worn smooth by time, with modern reinforcements added at strategic intervals.
"This way," Roland said, consulting a small device that displayed their position relative to the city above. "We need to follow this for about two kilometers, then take the eastern branch."
As they walked, Kaelen found himself drawn to the right-hand wall of the tunnel. The entropic flow line was there, just beyond the ancient bricks. He could sense its power, its potential—like a starving man smelling a feast in the next room.
"You can consume from it," Vex said quietly, noticing his attention. "Thorne built access points along the tunnel. Places where the barrier is intentionally thinned."
"Why would he do that?" Kaelen asked, though he suspected the answer.
"To study the effects of controlled consumption," Vex replied. "And to provide... resources for those who might need them."
"For Anomalies like me," Kaelen said. "For harbingers."
Vex didn't deny it. "The next access point is about fifty meters ahead. A section of wall marked with a blue spiral."
They found it easily enough—a portion of the tunnel wall where the ancient bricks had been replaced with what appeared to be normal concrete, save for a spiral pattern etched into its surface. The spiral glowed faintly blue in the darkness, pulsing in time with the entropic flow beyond.
"How does it work?" Kaelen asked, studying the pattern.
"Place your hand on the center of the spiral," Vex instructed. "The barrier will thin temporarily, allowing controlled access to the flow. But be careful—draw too much, and the barrier could collapse entirely."
Kaelen hesitated, remembering the overwhelming rush when he had touched the fountain in the city square. "What if I can't control it?"
"You can," Vex said with surprising confidence. "The Court's test changed you. You're more... integrated now."
The certainty in Vex's voice raised new questions, but Kaelen pushed them aside. They needed him at full strength for the confrontation ahead. Taking a deep breath, he placed his palm against the center of the spiral.
The effect was immediate but controlled—nothing like the chaotic flood from the fountain. The barrier between him and the entropic flow thinned to transparency, allowing him to perceive the current directly. It wasn't water or energy in any conventional sense, but pure potential—reality in its most fundamental state, before it solidified into matter and natural law.
Kaelen reached into this current with his hunger, drawing it into himself in a controlled stream rather than a flood. The sensation was exhilarating—power filling him like light filling a dark room, expanding his awareness and sharpening his senses.
He could feel the structure of the tunnel around them in perfect detail—every brick, every molecule of mortar, every microscopic crack and imperfection. Beyond that, he sensed the earth above them, the foundations of buildings, the complex web of utility lines and forgotten structures that formed the subterranean landscape of the city.
And further still, he felt the other harbinger—a blazing presence of consumption and transformation, drawing massive quantities of entropy into itself with reckless abandon.
"I can sense it," he said, his voice resonating strangely in the tunnel. "The other harbinger. It's... wrong somehow."
"Wrong how?" Roland asked, monitoring Kaelen's consumption with one of his devices.
"Unbalanced. Consuming without... purpose." Kaelen struggled to articulate what he perceived. "Like drinking from a fire hose without swallowing—most of what it takes in is wasted, spilling back into the environment as chaotic dissolution."
"Inefficient consumption," Vex murmured. "Interesting."
Kaelen withdrew his hand from the spiral, the barrier between dimensions thickening once more. The power he had absorbed settled within him, no longer a desperate hunger but a controlled reservoir of potential.
"We should continue," he said, feeling more centered than he had since awakening in this dissolving world. "I'll need to access at least two more flow points before we reach the Old City."
They proceeded through the tunnel, stopping at two more access points along the way. Each time, Kaelen drew entropy into himself with increasing precision, building his reserves while refining his control. By the third access point, he could direct the flow with such accuracy that he was able to repair a section of crumbling tunnel ceiling, reversing its entropy to a state of greater order.
"Remarkable," Roland commented, examining the restored brickwork. "You're not just consuming entropy—you're redirecting it. Reshaping it."
"The Court's test showed me how," Kaelen explained. "Entropy isn't just dissolution—it's transformation. Change in either direction."
"Toward greater complexity or greater simplicity," Vex added. "The arrow of time can point both ways, in the right circumstances."
They reached the eastern branch of the tunnel system, where the ancient brickwork gave way to more modern concrete construction. The air here carried a different quality—charged with ozone and something else, something organic and vaguely medicinal. The same smell Kaelen had noticed in Thorne's laboratory.
"We're getting close," Roland warned, checking his monitoring device. "Entropic density is increasing exponentially. We're at the outer edge of the harbinger's influence."
Kaelen could feel it—a pressure against his senses, like standing at the edge of a powerful current. The notebook in his pocket vibrated continuously now, the symbols on its pages shifting more rapidly.
"This is as far as we go by conventional means," Vex said, stopping at what appeared to be a dead end. "Beyond this point, the tunnel collapsed during the initial unmaking. We'll need to surface and cross the final distance above ground."
"Through the harbinger's consumption field," Roland added grimly. "This is where your buffer zone becomes essential, Kaelen."
Kaelen nodded, withdrawing the notebook. The symbols had arranged themselves into a specific pattern—a mandala of entropic mathematics that seemed to pulse with its own inner light.
"Stand close to me," he instructed, placing his palm against the central symbol. "This will be... intense."
As his skin made contact with the page, power surged through him—not the raw, chaotic energy of his early consumptions, but something refined and purposeful. The entropy he had absorbed from the flow lines responded to his will, reshaping itself around them into a sphere of altered reality.
The air within this sphere shimmered slightly, like heat rising from sun-baked asphalt. Colors seemed more vivid, sounds more distinct. Kaelen could feel the buffer zone as an extension of himself—a bubble of controlled entropy that pushed back against the chaotic dissolution beyond.
"It's working," Roland said, wonder evident in his voice as he studied the readings on his device. "You've created a stable field of reversed entropy flow. Incredible."
"How long can you maintain it?" Vex asked, practical as always.
"Long enough," Kaelen replied, though in truth, he wasn't certain. The effort of maintaining the field was considerable, even with his enhanced reserves. "We should move quickly."
Vex activated a mechanism beside the collapsed tunnel, revealing a narrow maintenance shaft that led upward. One by one, they climbed the rusted ladder, Kaelen maintaining the buffer zone around them as they ascended.
They emerged into a landscape of nightmarish transformation. What had once been the Old City district—a historic area of narrow streets and centuries-old architecture—was now a swirling maelstrom of dissolution. Buildings unwound like spools of thread, streets rippled like liquid, and the few remaining people moved in strange, jerky patterns, as if caught between moments of time.
At the center of it all stood the harbinger—a figure that might once have been human but now existed in a state of perpetual transformation. Its body shifted between solid and liquid states, glass-like portions reflecting the chaos around it while more human sections moved with disturbing fluidity. Where a face should have been, there was only a swirling vortex of entropic energy, occasionally forming features that dissolved before fully manifesting.
"My God," Roland whispered, staring at the entity. "It's completely surrendered to the consumption process."
"No," Kaelen corrected, studying the harbinger with his enhanced perception. "Not surrendered. Overwhelmed. It's consuming more than it can process—trying to absorb everything without selection or purpose."
"A failed harbinger," Vex suggested. "One that couldn't maintain the balance between human consciousness and entropic transformation."
The entity suddenly paused in its consumption, the vortex of its face turning in their direction. Even from this distance, Kaelen felt a shock of recognition pass between them—harbinger recognizing harbinger across the field of dissolution.
"It senses you," Roland warned, checking his instruments. "Your buffer zone stands out against the background entropy like a beacon."
"Good," Kaelen said, stepping forward. "I want to communicate with it before things escalate."
"Communicate?" Vex sounded skeptical. "Look at it, Kaelen. I'm not sure there's enough humanity left for meaningful dialogue."
"There's one way to find out." Kaelen expanded the buffer zone, pushing it outward to create a path through the chaotic dissolution toward the other harbinger. The effort was immense, like swimming against a powerful current, but the entropy he had absorbed from the flow lines gave him the strength to maintain the field.
They moved forward cautiously, following the path of stability that Kaelen created through the maelstrom. All around them, reality unwound—matter returning to energy, energy dissolving into potential, potential fading into nothingness. Without the protection of the buffer zone, they would have been unmade in seconds.
As they drew closer to the harbinger, Kaelen began to perceive more details. The entity was male, or had been once—traces of a business suit still clung to portions of its form, and a gold watch remained embedded in what might have been a wrist. More disturbingly, other objects protruded from its
constantly shifting body—personal items that must have belonged to those it had consumed. A child's toy. A wedding ring. A pair of glasses with one lens shattered.
"It's incorporating physical objects from its victims," Roland observed, recording data on his device. "Not just their entropic essence."
"Inefficient," Vex commented. "A proper harbinger consumes the pattern, not the physical form."
The harbinger had stopped its random consumption now, fully focused on their approach. The vortex of its face spun faster, occasionally resolving into a human countenance for split seconds before dissolving again. When it finally spoke, the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once—a chorus of consumed identities speaking in discordant unison.
"ANOTHER SELECTOR," it said, the words distorting the air around them. "COME TO CHALLENGE MY ASCENSION."
"I'm not here to challenge you," Kaelen replied, maintaining the buffer zone with increasing effort. "I want to understand what you're trying to achieve."
"ACHIEVE?" The harbinger's form rippled with what might have been laughter. "I ACHIEVE TRANSCENDENCE. I CONSUME ALL. I BECOME ALL."
"You're consuming indiscriminately," Kaelen countered. "Without purpose or pattern. That's not what harbingers are meant to do."
"MEANT?" Again, that ripple of disturbing laughter. "WHO DECIDES WHAT WE ARE MEANT FOR? THE COURT? THEY ARE MERELY CUSTODIANS. WE ARE THE FUTURE."
The harbinger moved closer, testing the edge of Kaelen's buffer zone. Where the two fields met, reality seemed to fold in on itself, creating patterns of impossible geometry.
"You know about the Court," Kaelen said, trying to find some connection, some remnant of rationality in the entity. "You understand what's happening. Who were you before the unmaking began?"
The vortex of the harbinger's face slowed momentarily, almost resolving into human features before dissolving again.
"BEFORE? THERE IS NO BEFORE. ONLY CONSUMPTION. ONLY BECOMING." Its voice changed, becoming briefly singular—a man's voice, cultured and precise. "I was... waiting for this. Preparing. When others ran, I embraced."
A chill ran down Kaelen's spine. Unlike him, this harbinger hadn't been caught by surprise when the Tower appeared. It—he—had been expecting it. Preparing for it.
"You knew the Tower was coming," Kaelen said. "How?"
"PATTERNS. CYCLES. SIGNS." The harbinger's form bulged and shifted, growing larger. "THE COURT LEAVES BREADCRUMBS BETWEEN REALITIES. THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO LOOK CAN FIND THEM."
"He was a Seeker," Vex said quietly. "There were rumors about groups that worshipped the concept of unmaking, that sought signs of the Tower's arrival across multiple realities."
"YOU KNOW MUCH, LITTLE ANOMALY," the harbinger said, its attention shifting to Vex. "MORE THAN YOU SHOULD. PERHAPS YOU ALSO PREPARED?"
Vex didn't respond, but Kaelen noticed his hand moving subtly toward one of the weapons concealed beneath his coat.
"What kind of reality are you trying to create?" Kaelen asked, drawing the harbinger's attention back to himself. "When the Court chooses its final selector, what world would you build?"
"BUILD?" The harbinger's form rippled again with that disturbing laughter. "I WOULD UNMAKE THE CONCEPT OF BUILDING. REALITY IS A PRISON OF FORM AND FUNCTION. I WOULD CREATE ENDLESS BECOMING—A UNIVERSE OF PERPETUAL TRANSFORMATION WHERE NOTHING REMAINS FIXED."
The vision was horrifying—a reality without stability, without permanence. A cosmos where consciousness itself would be in constant flux, unable to form lasting thoughts or memories.
"That's not creation," Kaelen argued. "That's eternal chaos. Life couldn't exist in such a state."
"LIFE IS OVERRATED," the harbinger replied, its voice briefly becoming singular again. "I've seen beyond life and death. There is only pattern and dissolution. Why cling to obsolete concepts?"
"Because those concepts give existence meaning," Kaelen countered. "Without stability, without continuity, there can be no growth, no learning, no connection."
"MEANING IS SUBJECTIVE. MY MEANING IS TRANSFORMATION." The harbinger's form surged forward suddenly, pressing against Kaelen's buffer zone with tremendous force. "ENOUGH TALK. YOU ARE AN OBSTACLE TO MY ASCENSION. THE COURT WILL NOT CHOOSE TWO HARBINGERS."
Kaelen felt his buffer zone beginning to buckle under the pressure. The entropy he had absorbed from the flow lines was substantial, but the other harbinger had consumed hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives—each one adding to its power.
"Roland, Vex—fall back," he ordered, pouring more of his reserves into maintaining the buffer. "I need to handle this directly."
"We're not leaving you," Roland protested, activating one of Thorne's weapons—a device that emitted pulses of counter-entropic energy.
"He's right," Vex added, drawing his own weapon. "If this harbinger prevails, the reality it creates will be uninhabitable. We stand together."
The harbinger surged forward again, its form expanding to engulf buildings around it, incorporating their dissolving matter into its growing mass. The vortex of its face spun faster, occasionally splitting into multiple vortices before recombining.
"I WILL CONSUME YOU ALL," it declared, its voice now a cacophony of thousands. "YOUR PATTERNS WILL JOIN MINE. YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS WILL DISSOLVE INTO THE GREATER BECOMING."
Kaelen knew they couldn't win a direct confrontation—not against an entity that had consumed so much. But perhaps they didn't need to win. Perhaps they only needed to understand.
He reached into his pocket, withdrawing Klein's notebook once more. The symbols on its pages had rearranged themselves again, forming a new pattern—one that resonated with the entropy flowing through and around them.
"What are you doing?" Roland asked, watching as Kaelen traced the central symbol with his finger.
"Testing a theory," Kaelen replied, feeling power building within the pattern. "The Court's test showed me that harbingers aren't just consumers—we're conduits. We don't just take; we can also give."
Before Roland or Vex could respond, Kaelen pressed his palm firmly against the page and channeled his will through the symbol. The effect was immediate and dramatic—a pulse of focused entropy that shot from the notebook toward the other harbinger, not as an attack but as a connection.
For a brief, eternal moment, Kaelen's consciousness expanded beyond his physical form, reaching across the gap to touch the mind of the other harbinger. What he found there was chaos—not a single consciousness but thousands, all consumed but not integrated, screaming in a cacophony of overlapping thoughts and memories.
At the center of this maelstrom was the original mind—the Seeker who had prepared for the Tower's arrival, who had willingly embraced the role of harbinger. But unlike Kaelen, this man had surrendered his humanity entirely, believing that transcendence required the dissolution of individual identity.
"You're drowning in what you've consumed," Kaelen projected into the chaos. "You've taken too much, too quickly, without integration."
"INTEGRATION IS LIMITATION," came the reply, though it was difficult to distinguish the original consciousness from the thousands it had absorbed. "I BECOME ALL BY DISSOLVING ALL BOUNDARIES."
"But you're losing yourself in the process," Kaelen argued. "A harbinger must maintain a core identity to shape what comes after. Without that anchor, you're just entropy with delusions of purpose."
He could feel the other harbinger's rage at these words—a surge of chaotic energy that threatened to overwhelm the connection between them. But beneath the rage was something else: fear. Fear that Kaelen might be right, that all this consumption might lead not to ascension but to dissolution.
"Join with me," Kaelen offered, surprising himself with the suggestion. "Let me help you integrate what you've consumed. Together, we could—"
"NEVER!" The harbinger's rejection severed the connection violently, throwing Kaelen back into his physical form with such force that he staggered. "YOU SEEK TO ABSORB ME. TO STEAL MY ASCENSION."
The entity's form expanded explosively, consuming everything around it in a frenzy of dissolution. Buildings, streets, the very air itself—all were drawn into the growing maelstrom of its body.
"We need to retreat," Vex shouted over the roar of reality unmaking itself. "It's entering a consumption frenzy. Nothing can stop it now."
But Kaelen stood his ground, maintaining the buffer zone even as it shrank under the increasing pressure. The brief connection had shown him something crucial—a fundamental flaw in the other harbinger's approach. It was consuming without integration, growing without structure, becoming without purpose.
"There's another way," he said, more to himself than to his companions. The notebook in his hand pulsed with potential, the symbols rearranging themselves once more into a pattern he somehow recognized—not from the Court's test but from somewhere deeper, some intuitive understanding of entropy's true nature.
"Kaelen, we have to go!" Roland urged, firing his weapon at the advancing wall of dissolution with little effect. "Whatever you're planning, it's not worth the risk!"
But Kaelen knew this was exactly what he had been preparing for since awakening in this dissolving world. The hunger within him, the consumption, the gradual understanding of his role—all had led to this moment of choice.
He traced the new symbol with deliberate precision, feeling power building with each stroke. This wasn't about attack or defense; it was about harmony and dissonance, about entropic resonance across patterns of consumption.
"I'm sorry," he said to the approaching harbinger, though he doubted it could hear him through its frenzy. "But your vision of reality cannot be allowed to prevail."
With the final stroke complete, Kaelen pressed both hands against the notebook and channeled everything he had absorbed—all the entropy from the flow lines, all the understanding from the Court's test, all the essence of those he had consumed—into a single, focused purpose.
The symbol blazed with light, not the crimson of the Court but a deep, midnight blue that seemed to absorb the chaos around it. From this light, a wave of counter-entropy expanded outward—not destruction but reconstruction, not dissolution but integration.
Where this wave met the other harbinger's chaotic consumption, the two forces clashed in spectacular fashion. Reality itself seemed to fold and unfold along the boundary between them, creating patterns of impossible beauty and complexity.
For a moment, it seemed the other harbinger might overwhelm Kaelen's counter-wave through sheer volume of consumed entropy. But what the entity had in raw power, it lacked in focus and integration. Its chaotic consumption began to falter against Kaelen's structured purpose.
"What's happening?" Roland shouted, shielding his eyes from the intensifying light where the two forces met.
"Pattern warfare," Vex replied, his voice carrying an odd note of satisfaction. "Kaelen is imposing his consumption pattern over the other harbinger's chaos."
The clash reached a crescendo, reality itself groaning under the strain of opposing entropic forces. Then, with a sound like a thousand glass panes shattering simultaneously, the other harbinger's pattern collapsed.
But instead of being destroyed, the entity began to transform. Its chaotic mass contracted, the thousands of consumed identities finding structure and integration under the influence of Kaelen's pattern. The vortex of its face slowed, gradually resolving into human features—a man in his fifties, with sharp eyes and a neatly trimmed beard now streaked with silver.
"What... what have you done to me?" the man asked, his voice singular for the first time, though echoes of the thousands he had consumed still resonated beneath his words.
"I helped you integrate what you consumed," Kaelen explained, maintaining the counter-entropic field with effort. "You were drowning in chaos, losing yourself in what you had taken."
The man looked down at his hands—still partially translucent, still showing traces of the glass-like substance of the Court's entities, but now stable, defined.
"I can... think clearly," he said, wonder in his voice. "For the first time since
the consumption began. The voices... they're still there, but organized, harmonized."
ntegrate. Not just take, but transform with purpose."
The man studied Kaelen with new understanding. "You're different from what the Court described. You're not just selecting; you're... healing."
Before Kaelen could respond, a ripple passed through reality around them—a distortion more fundamental than the entropic dissolution they had witnessed before. The air seemed to fold inward, creating a window similar to the one they had seen in the Crimson Court.
Through this window stepped a figure that made Kaelen's blood run cold: Dr. Voss, or rather, the entity that now wore her form. Behind her, the glass-like beings of the Court watched with their featureless faces.
"Fascinating," Voss said, her voice still that disturbing chorus of overlapping tones. "You continue to exceed expectations, harbinger."
Kaelen maintained his counter-entropic field, extending it to include Roland and Vex as well as the newly stabilized harbinger. "I'm not performing for your entertainment."
"No, you are performing for your survival. For all survival." Voss gestured to the stabilized harbinger. "You have done what we thought impossible—integrated a harbinger that had surrendered to chaos without consuming it yourself."
"Because consumption isn't the only answer," Kaelen replied. "Integration doesn't require destruction."
"A novel approach," Voss acknowledged. "One we have not observed in previous cycles."
The stabilized harbinger took a step forward, his form still fluctuating slightly but maintaining its basic human shape. "The Court lied to us," he said, addressing Voss directly. "You said harbingers must compete, must consume each other until only one remains."
"Not a lie. A test." Voss smiled that too-wide smile. "Every cycle brings variation. Every harbinger approaches their role differently. We observe, we adapt, we evolve our methods."
"You're experimenting with entire realities," Kaelen said, disgust evident in his voice. "Playing games with countless lives across multiple worlds."
"Not games. Cultivation." Voss turned her luminous gaze back to Kaelen. "And you, unexpected variable, continue to be our most interesting specimen."
Before anyone could respond, another ripple passed through reality—more violent than the first, causing the very ground beneath them to shudder. In the distance, the Tower pulsed with intensified light, its structure seeming to shift and expand.
"The cycle accelerates," Voss observed calmly. "Your actions have... consequences, harbinger. By stabilizing your rival rather than consuming him, you have altered the pattern of this unmaking."
"Is that bad?" Roland asked, scientific curiosity momentarily overriding his fear.
"Not bad. Different." Voss tilted her head at that unnatural angle. "The Court adapts. The cycle continues, but the path changes."
With those cryptic words, she stepped backward into the folded reality, the glass entities following silently. As the window closed behind them, her voice echoed one final time:
"Prepare yourselves. The true test begins now."
The ground shook again, more violently this time. In the distance, the Tower's pulsing light intensified to near-blinding levels.
"What's happening?" Roland asked, checking his instruments with growing alarm. "The entropic readings are spiking across the entire city!"
"The cycle is accelerating," the stabilized harbinger said, his voice grim. "By refusing to follow the Court's expected pattern, we've triggered a phase shift."
Vex was already moving, heading back toward the maintenance shaft they had used to reach the surface. "We need to get back to the bunker. Now."
"Why? What's coming?" Kaelen asked, though part of him already knew the answer.
"The other harbingers," Vex replied without slowing. "All of them. The Court is bringing them together for the final selection."
As if in confirmation, the sky above them split open—not with lightning or storm clouds, but with reality itself parting to reveal glimpses of other places, other versions of the city in various stages of unmaking. Through these rifts, Kaelen sensed them: other harbingers, each with their own pattern of consumption, each with their own vision of what reality should become.
The stabilized harbinger looked at Kaelen, understanding passing between them. "They're coming here. To this version of the city. The Court is gathering all candidates for the final test."
"How many?" Kaelen asked, dreading the answer.
"I sensed seven distinct patterns before my integration became... chaotic," the man replied. "There may be more."
Seven harbingers, each potentially as powerful as the one Kaelen had just faced. Each with their own vision of what reality should become after the unmaking. Each selected by the Court for their unique approach to consumption and transformation.
"We need to prepare," Kaelen said, the hunger within him responding to the approaching presences. "If the Court wants a final selection, they'll get one—but not on their terms."
The notebook in his hand pulsed with renewed energy, the symbols rearranging themselves once more into a pattern he had never seen before—complex, beautiful, and somehow both ancient and new simultaneously.
Whatever came next, Kaelen knew one thing with absolute certainty: the game had changed. The Court's carefully orchestrated cycle of unmaking and remaking had encountered a variable they hadn't anticipated. And in that unexpected variation lay the possibility of something truly revolutionary—not just a new iteration of reality, but a new approach to its fundamental nature.
The true test was indeed beginning. But for the first time since awakening in this dissolving world, Kaelen felt ready to face it—not as the Court's harbinger, but as his own.