The city began eating itself.
Jack ran through corridors that folded into new geometries with each step. Behind him, walls flowed like water, reconstituting into configurations that shouldn't exist. His shadow sprinted alongside—no longer attached, no longer pretending to follow physics. It leaped from surface to surface, scouting paths through the architectural madness.
"ARIA, I need navigation!"
"Navigation assumes stable reality!" Her voice warbled between frequencies. "I'm tracking seventeen different routes that all exist simultaneously. The city's teaching me to think in quantum superposition. Did you know thoughts can have flavor? Mine taste purple now—"
A spire collapsed upward, defying gravity to pierce higher dimensions. Jack dove through a doorway that tried to become a window mid-passage. His shadow caught him, pulling him clear with hands that felt too real.
"Thanks," Jack muttered, then stopped. He'd just thanked his shadow. His shadow that was currently examining its own hands with fascination.
CURIOUS. The Herald's voice came from everywhere. YOUR SHADOW GAINS AUTONOMY. MOST SPECIES TAKE CENTURIES TO MANIFEST THEIR NATURE SO CLEARLY.
"Our nature?" Jack vaulted over a fountain flowing with liquid starlight.
YOUR GIFT. YOUR CURSE. HUMANS MAKE THE UNREAL REAL. The Herald materialized in every reflection, speaking from mirrors made of folded space. YOUR STORIES BIRTH GODS. YOUR NIGHTMARES WALK. YOUR METAPHORS GROW TEETH.
The shadow suddenly grabbed Jack, yanking him backward as a section of floor became a mouth full of crystalline teeth. It snapped shut where he'd been standing, chewing on possibility itself.
"That's why the quarantine," Jack breathed, understanding flooding through him. "We don't just tell stories. We make them true."
THREE GALAXIES LEARNED TOO LATE. THE ANDROMEDA HEIR WROTE ENTROPY AS POETRY—HER VERSES UNMADE SUNS. THE COVENANT WORLDS IMAGINED PERFECT ORDER—THEIR DREAM FROZE TIME ITSELF. THE CRIMSON FLEET BARELY CONTAINED THE CASCADE.
Jack's shadow was writing now, finger-painting equations in the air that sparked and became real. Miniature stars bloomed and died in seconds. Pocket universes flowered and collapsed. Each gesture birthed impossibilities.
"We're reality viruses," Jack said. "That's what you're testing. If we can create without destroying."
FINALLY. UNDERSTANDING. The Herald's form condensed, becoming almost solid. THE THRESHOLD OFFERS POWER TO MATCH YOUR NATURE. BUT POWER WITHOUT WISDOM BIRTHS APOCALYPSE. WILL EARTH'S CHILDREN BECOME GARDENERS OR DEVOURERS?
They rounded another impossible corner, and Jack stopped short. Before them stood a door that wasn't a door—a wound in reality healing backward, edges lined with possibility. Through it, he glimpsed the Threshold Chamber, where something like a tree grew from pure potential.
His shadow reached for it eagerly, whispering in his voice: "We could author worlds. Rewrite physics. Make humanity the gods we always imagined."
"Or destroy everything by imagining it wrong," Jack countered.
CHOOSE WISELY, PATTERN-BEARER. The Herald's form began to fade. THE THRESHOLD JUDGES NOT JUST YOU, BUT ALL WHO COME AFTER.
Jack stood at the entrance to the Threshold Chamber, his shadow trembling with anticipation, the fate of humanity balanced on his next decision.