Leaving the fissure was like being born backwards—a violent, claustrophobic compression from a world of infinite possibility into one of rigid, suffocating law. The hauler shuddered, its frame groaning in protest as it was squeezed through a conceptual bottleneck only Corbin could perceive. For a moment, the view outside the viewport was a nauseating smear of non-space, a grey static that held neither light nor time. Then, with a final, gut-wrenching lurch, they slammed back into reality.
The transition was jarring. The low, musical hum of the fissure was replaced by the familiar, oppressive thrum of Aether City's industrial underbelly. They were in another service tunnel, this one older, its walls weeping a black, viscous fluid that smelled of rust and decay. The air was thick and still, the ambient Aether here thin and lethargic, drained by the Guard's ongoing quarantine.
But they were through. They had escaped the noose.
Corbin slumped in his seat, the brilliant, optimized silver light around him flickering and dying. The axiom of efficiency had expired, its energy spent on the precise, grueling navigation. He was pale and drawn, sweat beading on his forehead, but his eyes held a fierce triumph. "The path is closed behind us," he rasped. "The fold has collapsed. They will not find our exit point."
Rork let out a long, slow breath, his hands unclenching from the steering yoke. "Good. Now where's the Echo?"
"Close," Corbin said, his voice regaining a sliver of its normal timbre. "But the final leg is the most dangerous. It's not a path through space, but through perception. We must cross the 'Mirror Districts.'"
Elara, who had been monitoring their rear flank, turned sharply. "The Mirror Districts? Corbin, that's a suicide run. That's Guard propaganda central. Their surveillance isn't just technological there; it's psychic. They have Resonance Inquisitors there."
Kaelen, who had been quietly enduring the fresh waves of Paradox Burn that lapped at the shores of his consciousness, focused on the exchange. "Resonance Inquisitors?"
"Thought-Weavers," Elara clarified, her face grim. "They don't manipulate matter or space. They manipulate belief. They broadcast axiomatic fields of compliance and contentment. They make the populace happy to be controlled. Their Cores are tuned to detect dissent, to feel any Nexus that doesn't harmonize with their enforced peace. Walking through there is like wading through a psychic tar pit. One wrong thought, one spike of fear or defiance, and their Hounds will be on us before we can blink."
Kaelen considered this. A field of enforced belief. It was another axiom, a large-scale, persistent one imposed on a population. The sheer, chilling elegance of it was monstrous. It wasn't a cage of bars, but a cage of contentment.
"The Echo lies in a blind spot the Inquisitors maintain," Corbin explained. "A place their broadcasts cannot reach, lest they create cognitive dissonance in the surrounding population. To reach it, we must walk through the heart of their domain, projecting nothing but perfect harmony. Our Nexuses must be silent. Our thoughts must be placid."
"Impossible," Rork grunted. "You can't just turn off fear."
"Normally, no," Corbin agreed, his gaze sliding to Kaelen. "But we are not normal anymore." The unspoken request hung in the polluted air of the cabin.
They needed another edit. Not of physics, not of efficiency, but of mind. Of emotion itself.
Kaelen felt the Paradox Burn within him pulse in warning, a deep, sickening throb. The cost of editing Corbin's Nexus was still a fresh, corrosive wound in his soul. To edit something as volatile and complex as human emotion, on multiple people simultaneously… the price would be astronomical. It might be more than he could pay.
Elara was watching him, her expression unreadable. "Kaelen… we can find another way. We can try to go around."
"There is no other way," Corbin said softly. "The Mirror Districts are a moat. This is the only bridge."
Kaelen closed his eyes. He saw the bone fragment, the words of the last Axiom. A truth that can unravel the lie. The Mirror Districts were the lie, made manifest. A perfect, smiling prison. To walk through it, he would have to become a ghost in the machine of that lie. He would have to edit their very souls to make them invisible to the guards.
He opened his eyes. The others were watching him, their faces a mixture of hope and dread. They were waiting for him to perform another miracle, another terrifying rewrite of reality. He was their key, their shield, their ghost-maker.
"The price will be high," Kaelen said, his voice quiet but clear in the tense silence. "Higher than before. I will be editing the source of your fear, the root of your defiance. I will be making you, temporarily, willing prisoners. The Paradox Burn… it will change me." He looked at each of them in turn. "But I have calculated the cost. And I am willing to pay it."
He did not give them a choice. This was the path. He reached out with his will, his consciousness expanding to envelop the hauler and its occupants. He felt the roiling sea of their emotions—Elara's sharp-edged anxiety, Rork's simmering aggression, Corbin's intellectual tension, the raw terror of the other rescued Threads. He saw them not as feelings, but as energetic signatures, as active, dissonant codes in the Weave.
He did not try to suppress them. That would be a constant, draining battle. Instead, he imposed a new, overriding axiom upon their collective psychic field, a command that would resonate at the very core of their consciousness.
[EMOTIONAL_STATE = CONTENT] [PSYCHIC_RESONANCE = HARMONIC_WITH_LOCAL_FIELD]
It was the most complex edit he had ever attempted, a multi-layered command targeting the most unstable and personal aspect of his allies.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
The tension in the cabin melted away. Elara's shoulders relaxed, a faint, placid smile touching her lips. Rork's scowl smoothed into an expression of bland neutrality. The fear in the other Threads' eyes was replaced by a glassy calm. They all looked… peaceful. Satisfied. Compliant.
And Kaelen screamed.
It was a silent, internal scream that tore through every fiber of his being. The Paradox Burn this time was not pain. It was violation. He had not just edited a law or a Nexus; he had edited them. He had reached into the hearts of his companions and turned them into living lies. The backlash was a torrent of spiritual poison, a feeling of such profound wrongness that his vision went black at the edges. He felt his own emotions curdle, his sense of self fragmenting under the weight of the personas he was forcing upon others. He was becoming a prison warden in his own soul.
He clung to consciousness by a thread, his knuckles white where he gripped a cargo strap. The hauler began to move, rolling forward into the Mirror Districts. Through the viewport, he saw clean, well-lit streets and citizens with identical, serene expressions. He could feel the Inquisitors' broadcast field—a sweet, cloying mental static that promised everything was alright.
And their hauler, filled with perfectly content passengers, slid through it like a ghost. Unnoticed. Unremarked upon.
They were safe. They were hidden.
And Kaelen, in the back of the hauler, was paying for their safety with pieces of his own humanity, learning a terrible new truth with every yard they gained: some edits cost more than energy. Some edits cost the very right to call yourself human.