Three voices talking at once.
I took a slow breath and did what I had taught myself to do in my home world—what I had written to myself in private, what I repeated like a charm against despair:
Don't stay in the negative longer than a moment.
Understand the situation.
Choose the solution.
Move.
I stepped forward.
Not into the chamber—into the seam of perception beside it.
Reality folded a little, like fabric pinched between fingers.
For a heartbeat, I saw the chamber in two states: one where the anchor was fully installed, glowing brighter, spreading its influence like roots; and one where the anchor cracked, its energy spilling in chaotic arcs that would burn everything nearby.
That was the choice.
Clean victory was rare.
The world doesn't often offer it.
So I did something I hadn't done in a long time.
I stopped being passive.
I reached into the part of myself that had been called magic, and I used it the way it truly works—not as a spell, but as an understanding of the weave. I didn't "cast." I adjusted.
I touched the anchor's rhythm and shifted it one fraction out of alignment—barely enough that the engineer's hands faltered.
He looked up sharply.
One of the soldiers turned, and in the dark, the helmet's horn attachments caught a faint light and threw it back like a warning.
Then I spoke.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
I spoke in the space behind their hearing, where meaning lands before sound.
The engineer stiffened as if struck. The soldiers raised weapons that weren't guns or swords, but something between—a device that hummed with a charge that made my teeth ache.
"You're not supposed to be able to see this," the engineer said, voice tight with disbelief.
There it was again—that old truth. The moment you speak truth in a world built on lies, people treat it as impossible.
I could have fought them head-on.
But I've learned that force alone is often the empire's favorite language.
So I used the one thing they hated more than resistance:
uncertainty.
I showed them the future.
Not the present—never the present. The present is where people cling, where they justify themselves, where they pretend they're innocent because they "had no choice."
But the future?
The future is a mirror that doesn't care about excuses.
In a flash, I let them see a version of themselves standing in a city of ash, their horns cracked, their anchor pillars toppled, their empire's banners burning like dry leaves.
For a moment, the engineer's certainty fractured.
And that fracture was enough.
One of the guardians—fast, silent—moved like a shadow and struck the engineer's wrist, sending a tool skittering across the floor. Another guardian slammed a palm against the anchor's side, chanting in a language that sounded like stone grinding against stone.
The anchor pulsed violently.
The chamber shook.
Cracks laced the metal like lightning freezing in place.
The soldiers tried to stabilize it, their weapons humming higher, but the rhythm was broken now—and systems hate broken rhythm.
Then, like a heart giving up, the anchor went still.
Not destroyed—disabled.
There's a difference.
Destroying it would have released a wave of raw possibility, birthing unpredictable outcomes—maybe a new world entirely, maybe a new weapon, maybe a new horror. The Galvan Empire thrived on chaos turned into control. I wasn't going to give them fresh chaos.
Instead, we took what mattered.
At the base of the anchor—embedded like a seed—was a shard of ignite.
Small. Unassuming.
Heavy with the kind of potential that could spark a world or end one.
I held it and felt my own mind tilt toward it, like a compass needle searching for north.
For one terrifying second, I understood the empire's addiction.
With enough ignite, you don't have to convince people.
You don't have to argue.
You don't have to ask.
You can simply reshape reality until opposition becomes impossible.
My grip tightened.
The old part of me—the tired part—whispered that I could end everything right now. That I could make a world where I was never discriminated against, never doubted, never forced into loneliness. That I could make a world where truth was honored, where lies couldn't survive sunlight.
A thousand suns of desire.
And the burn of one touch.
I let the thought pass.
Because every world built to satisfy a wound is still built around the wound.
And wounds have a way of growing into monuments.
We retreated before Galvan reinforcements arrived. Above ground, the night air felt warmer, as if the world itself exhaled in relief.
But relief is temporary.
The empire's rise had begun. We had delayed one anchor, stolen one shard, won one small victory in a war that spanned not only land but time, not only armies but ideas.
Back at the temple-lab, the storm-eyed woman watched me place the ignite shard on a table marked with protective symbols.
"You're shaking," she observed.
I hadn't noticed until she said it.
"I'm tired," I admitted. "Of all of it. Of the fighting. Of the lying. Of being told my worth is only what people can see."
She leaned closer. "Then don't fight for their sight," she said. "Fight for what you know."
I almost laughed again. Almost said something cynical. Almost retreated into the shell I'd worn for years.
But the truth is this:
Even if I tell myself I don't care, I keep showing up.
I keep stepping into the seam between worlds.
I keep putting my hand on the thread of fate and pulling, even when it cuts my skin.
Because I have seen what happens when no one does.
And because I have also seen—rare as it is—what happens when a few people stand their ground and refuse to let reality be rewritten by greed.
There are three wars inside mankind: the one within the self, the one within the group, and the one against the world.
Tonight, I fought all three at once.
And somewhere beyond Zianttra's horizon, the Galvan Empire adjusted its plans—because the window they thought they'd closed in my mind had opened again.
Wider.
Sharper.
Hungrier for truth.
I looked down at the ignite shard and felt the weight of the next step.
I had wanted to rest.
But the rise had begun.
So had I.