The appraisal chamber remained unusually quiet after Kael explained that the black dodecahedron was still deep inside the Hollow Depth.
Senior Appraiser Velric had already spent the better part of the morning struggling to understand the pale bone fragment sitting in front of him, and the discovery that Kael had now found an entirely unknown geometric object inside a mountain-sized creature had clearly exceeded the limits of what he considered a reasonable workday.
Velric eventually leaned forward.
“You said the object is still there.” “Yes.” “Then how long will it take you to bring it to Greyhaven?” Kael thought about the question.
He knew exactly where Greyhaven was.
One of his occupied positions was already sitting inside the appraisal chamber.
He also knew exactly where the black object was because another occupied position held it in his hand.
The only thing he had never bothered calculating was how long ordinary travel between the two locations would take.
“Depends.” Velric’s expression tightened.
“On what?” “What’s in the way.” Rhea immediately looked at Kael.
“Master.” “Hmm?” “You’re going to come straight here, aren’t you?” “Yes.” Halren glanced between them.
“Is there another way I should be interpreting the word straight?” Rhea sighed.
“Probably not one that will make you feel better.” Velric looked toward Kael again.
“If you can exist in both places, why not simply bring the object here through…whatever it is you’re doing?” Kael understood the question.
He raised one hand and then pointed toward the Kael standing near the far wall of the room.
“Both are me.” Velric nodded carefully.
“But that doesn’t make everything touching me part of me.” He tapped the table.
“If I hold this table there, the table is still there.” Velric frowned.
“So your positions don’t transfer external objects.” “No.” Rhea leaned against the table and thought about it.
Then an idea appeared.
“What if you swallow it?” Every person in the room turned toward her.
Rhea straightened slightly.
“I’m serious.
If it’s inside Master’s body, wouldn’t it technically be inside him?
Then maybe it could be present wherever he is.” Velric looked horrified.
“You want him to swallow the only known example of an unidentified artifact recovered from an undocumented creature?” Rhea pointed at Kael.
“He was going to pay an entrance fee with a Deepheart Crystal.
I’m not saying his judgment is perfect.” Kael ignored that.
He actually considered her suggestion.
The dodecahedron was roughly the size of his hand, so swallowing it conventionally would be inconvenient even if his body allowed it.
“Probably wouldn’t work.” Rhea looked disappointed.
“Why?” “Being inside me doesn’t make something me.” That answer ended the discussion.
The boundary between Kael and everything else remained absolute.
His body could occupy many positions because it was fundamentally composed of Veyrion.
An external object remained an external object no matter how closely it interacted with him.
Velric seemed relieved.
“Then please bring it intact.” Kael nodded.
The position holding the dodecahedron turned toward Greyhaven.
There was no road.
That wasn’t particularly important.
He started walking.
The first obstacle appeared less than ten minutes later in the form of several hundred meters of solid rock.
Kael did not search for a natural passage.
Decay spread forward in a narrow corridor.
Stone deteriorated, fractured, and collapsed into manageable fragments before he reached it.
He continued straight.
Back in Greyhaven, the Kael sitting inside the appraisal chamber stood up.
“Done?” Halren blinked.
“With what?” “The meeting.” Velric looked toward the bone fragment.
“For now.” Kael nodded and headed for the door.
Rhea immediately understood.
“We’re training.” “Yes.” “My legs still hurt.” “You can move.” “That’s a very low standard.” “It’s enough.” Rhea followed him out while muttering something about cruel masters.
By the time they returned home, Kael had already arranged the next exercise.
The training yard contained seven wooden targets placed at different angles and distances.
Some stood upright.
Others were suspended on ropes, allowing them to swing when struck.
One was positioned behind another in a way that forced Rhea to change direction if she wanted to hit both efficiently.
Kael pointed toward them.
“Strike all seven.” Rhea drew her short blade.
“Any order?” “Your choice.” She moved.
The first strike landed cleanly.
She stopped, turned, accelerated toward the second, struck, reset her stance, changed direction again, and continued until all seven targets had been hit.
When she finished, Kael shook his head.
“Again.” Rhea frowned.
“What was wrong?” “You stopped six times.” “I had to change direction.” “No.” Rhea stared at him.
Kael stepped into the yard.
“Watch.” He didn’t use his Domain.
He didn’t occupy additional positions.
He simply moved.
One step carried him toward the first target.
His hand struck it lightly.
Instead of stopping after the contact, the turn of his shoulder carried into the next step.
That step became a pivot.
The pivot carried his body toward the second target.
The movement of his arm flowed into the next rotation.
Nothing reset.
Nothing paused.
One action simply became the next.
Within seconds, Kael had passed all seven targets.
His movements weren’t flashy.
That made them more unsettling.
Rhea had seen highly trained hunters demonstrate complex techniques before.
Most of them looked impressive because their movements were explosive, fast, or deliberately dramatic.
Kael looked like he was walking.
Every motion merely happened to place him exactly where he needed to be.
“Don’t finish the first movement before beginning the second,” he said.
Rhea lowered her weapon.
“That sounds impossible.” “You do it every day.” “When?” “Walking.” She frowned.
Kael took two steps.
“You don’t finish one step, stop, reset, then begin another.” Rhea understood immediately.
Her fighting style was built from separate actions.
Step.
Strike.
Reset.
Turn.
Strike.
Each technique had a beginning and an ending.
Kael wanted to remove those endings.
Rhea tried again.
The first two strikes connected more smoothly.
She hesitated before the third.
Kael tapped the back of her shoulder.
“Dead moment.” Rhea reset.
Again.
Far away, Kael continued moving through the Hollow Depth while holding the black dodecahedron.
He reached an underground lake.
The shortest path to Greyhaven passed directly through it.
Kael stood at the edge and examined the enormous body of water through Spatial Sense.
The lake filled a cavern far larger than Greyhaven’s central district and continued for several kilometers.
Going around would have been easy.
It would also have taken longer.
Kael stepped into the water.
The dodecahedron remained in one hand while he walked along the submerged stone floor.
His body had no particular need for air, so the depth made little difference.
Strange pale creatures moved through the black water around him.
Several approached out of curiosity, but none attacked.
Kael ignored them.
One larger predator made a different decision.
It was nearly twenty meters long, with a flattened body and a circular mouth filled with inward-facing teeth.
It detected the disturbance created by Kael’s movement and rushed toward him.
Back in Greyhaven, Rhea was attempting her twelfth sequence when Kael tilted his head slightly.
She stopped.
“What?” “Nothing.” “Something happened.” “Something tried to eat me.” Rhea stared at the Kael standing directly in front of her.
“Right now?” “Yes.” She slowly pointed at him.
“Shouldn’t you deal with that?” “I am.” The Kael beneath the underground lake stopped walking.
Additional occupied positions appeared along the lake floor and against several exposed rock shelves.
The predator lunged.
Kael did not activate Decay.
He had just spent the last hour teaching Rhea about continuous movement.
There was no reason he couldn’t demonstrate it somewhere more interesting.
The first Kael stepped aside from the creature’s mouth.
Another position occupied the path beside its head and struck the armored section behind the jaw.
The force redirected the predator slightly.
A third Kael used that change in movement to guide the creature toward the cavern wall.
No wasted motion.
No separate exchanges.
Each interaction fed into the next.
The predator twisted.
Kael moved with it.
One position struck.
Another redirected.
A third stepped onto the creature’s back and used its own movement against it.
Several seconds later, the enormous predator crashed headfirst into a stone wall.
Kael continued walking through the lake.
Back in Greyhaven, he looked toward Rhea.
“Again.” Rhea stared.
“You just fought something while teaching me.” “Yes.” “And you’re telling me to continue.” “Yes.” She tightened her grip on the blade.
“Fine.” Her next attempt was better.
The first strike flowed into the second.
The second became a turn toward the third.
She almost stopped before the fourth but forced herself to continue.
Kael observed every shift in her weight and every interruption in her internal force.
“Don’t separate the movements.” “I’m trying.” “Try less.” Rhea nearly stopped just to glare at him.
“That doesn’t make sense.” “You’re thinking about each action before doing it.” “Isn’t that normal?” “Not if you’ve practiced it enough.” The words triggered a brief memory.
Long before Greyhaven, before Rhea, before walking through cities felt ordinary again, Kael had discovered that existing in many places was easy compared with moving properly in many places.
His earliest experiments had been clumsy.
Two positions were manageable.
Five became awkward.
Twenty created problems.
Not mentally.
He never became twenty separate people.
The difficulty came from habits.
A movement designed around one location did not automatically become efficient when performed across dozens.
Kael remembered several of his occupied positions colliding with one another while fighting a massive six-legged monster.
Another position had stepped into the path of his own attack.
Several Domains had overlapped unnecessarily.
He had stood among the mess afterward and realized something simple.
Being capable of occupying many places didn’t mean he knew how to use them.
So he practiced.
One year became several.
Movements were broken apart and rebuilt.
Positions stopped behaving like many bodies controlled by one consciousness and began behaving like different locations of one individual.
Eventually coordination became effortless.
The memory faded.
Rhea was still moving.
She struck the fifth target.
Turned.
The sixth.
Her momentum carried naturally into the final step.
The seventh target shook.
Rhea stopped.
For the first time, she hadn’t reset once.
She looked toward Kael.
“Well?” “Better.” Rhea froze.
Kael frowned slightly.
“What?” “You said better.” “Yes.” “Not less bad.” “No.” “Not acceptable.” “No.” A grin spread across her face.
Kael stared at her.
Rhea looked absurdly pleased with one extremely ordinary word.
He decided not to ask.
While Rhea celebrated her promotion from acceptable to better, the Kael carrying the black dodecahedron emerged from the underground lake and continued toward Greyhaven.
He had been testing the object throughout the journey.
Stone produced nothing.
Water produced nothing.
Metal from an old weapon fragment produced nothing.
Monster tissue produced nothing.
Decay Domain still failed to affect it under ordinary application.
Only contact with Kael’s body created the strange change along its internal boundary.
That interested him.
Not because it promised power.
Kael had no particular need for more power.
He simply disliked not understanding things.
Several hours later, the terrain ahead changed.
Kael stopped.
His Spatial Sense extended forward.
At first, the underground formation resembled another dense region of unusual stone.
Then the geometry became obvious.
Straight walls.
Right angles.
Parallel corridors.
Huge chambers separated by perfectly regular barriers.
Natural formations did not look like that.
Something had been built beneath the Hollow Depth.
Kael examined the structure.
It was enormous.
Most of it remained buried inside rock that had accumulated around it over an unknown period.
Several sections had collapsed, but the central portions remained intact.
His direct path toward Greyhaven passed through it.
Normally, that would not have mattered.
Kael raised one hand.
Decay began gathering.
The black dodecahedron changed.
Kael stopped.
A thin line appeared across one of its twelve faces.
Faint.
Perfectly straight.
For the first time since he removed the object from the mountain-sized creature, it had reacted without the strange contact effect being the cause.
Back at Rhea’s house, Kael’s attention shifted.
Rhea noticed while wiping sweat from her forehead.
“Another monster?” “No.” “What now?” Kael examined the buried structure.
His Spatial Sense moved across the wall directly ahead.
There were no doors.
No writing.
No obvious mechanisms.
But there was a cavity embedded inside the material.
Kael focused on it.
Twelve flat surfaces.
Exactly the same proportions as the object in his hand.
Exactly the same size.
A perfect fit.
Kael looked at the dodecahedron.
Then at the wall.
“I found somewhere to put it.” Rhea stopped wiping her face.
“What?” “The black thing.” Her expression immediately became suspicious.
“Put it where?” “In a hole.” Rhea stared at him.
“A mysterious hole?” “Yes.” “In a mysterious underground structure?” “Yes.” “That exactly fits the mysterious object you found inside a mountain-sized monster?” Kael considered the summary.
“Yes.” Rhea lowered the towel.
“Master, please don’t put the mysterious object into the mysterious hole.” Kael looked at her.
“Why not?” “Because that’s how terrible things happen!” Kael paused.
That was actually a surprisingly reasonable argument.
Deep beneath the Hollow Depth, he examined the cavity again.
Nothing moved.
No energy appeared.
No hidden mechanism activated.
The thin geometric line across the dodecahedron became slightly clearer as Kael moved it toward the wall.
Rhea watched his face.
Her expression gradually changed.
“You’re going to do it anyway.” “Probably.” “Master.” “I want to know what happens.” “That’s exactly the problem.” Kael smiled faintly.
Rhea immediately knew she had lost the argument.
The position beneath the Hollow Depth raised the black dodecahedron.
The cavity waited inside the wall.
The object was now only centimeters away.
Back in Greyhaven, Rhea pointed toward Kael as though distance itself could somehow stop him.
“If the Hollow Depth explodes, I’m blaming you.” “Fair.” The dodecahedron moved closer.
The geometric line brightened slightly.
Kael’s interest increased.
For once, something stood directly in front of him that he didn’t understand, couldn’t immediately decay, and hadn’t already spent decades examining.
That alone made the decision easy.
He pushed the object toward the cavity.