Thunder rolled over the Waking Marsh as Icarus awoke to the scent of ozone and something worse—ash. He sat up fast, blood still crusted at the corners of his eyes from the night before, the effects of the Lensbearer potion lingering in the form of a low hum at the base of his skull. Everything he looked at still flickered with layered perception: past, present, potential.
But now, something new pierced through that field of truths—danger.
He heard it before he saw it: the rhythmic chants, too perfect to be human. The high-pitched harmonies of a choir without breath.
Lysandra was already standing at the cave's entrance, her hand on the curved blade she kept hidden beneath her robes.
"They've found us," she said without turning. "The Red Choir."
Icarus's heart dropped. Of all the Bishopric's weapons, the Red Choir was the most feared—ex-Beyonders, stripped of autonomy and bound to a hive-mind liturgy. They sang rather than spoke, their voices synchronized in unnatural harmony, each tone laced with divine distortion. They weren't assassins.
They were eradication.
"How long do we have?" he asked.
"They crossed the outer runes five minutes ago," Lysandra replied. "They silenced the marsh spirits. Even the reflections are fleeing."
Icarus stood slowly, retrieving the small pouch containing the remaining ritual ash and mirror dust. His body was still adapting to the Lensbearer Sequence—he could feel the fragment of the new Pathway writing itself deeper into his nerves, reprogramming his senses.
Not enough time. Not enough power.
But he had clarity.
"Then we don't fight," he said. "We reroute them."
Lysandra looked over her shoulder, brow furrowed. "How? We can't outrun a Choir."
"No," Icarus agreed. "But we can mislead it."
They moved quickly. The marsh twisted as it always did, paths shifting with the moods of the land, but Icarus was able to see through it now. The Songlines—the forgotten trails etched into the fabric of the region by rituals long extinct—shone like veins of silver in his perception.
He led Lysandra to a hollowed tree where old warding stones remained buried. They weren't active, but with the right Sequence-aligned intention...
He reached into his satchel and retrieved a mirror shard. Holding it to the bark, he whispered the new invocation:
"Through the Eye, distort the Lie."
The glyphs etched into the stone roots lit up.
Around them, the air shimmered, and their images separated, peeling away from their bodies like smoke. Reflections—decoys, forged from the Lensbearer's perception magic—ran in opposing directions. They mimicked heat, sound, even emotion.
To the Red Choir, they would be indistinguishable.
For a time.
But the Choir was not without its own miracles.
Above the tree line, a red tear opened in the sky like a screaming wound. Figures descended—dozens of them—each clad in scarlet robes, faces wrapped in strips of gold-sewn cloth, their mouths moving in unison.
They sang a single note.
Reality bent.
Trees withered. Water boiled. The fake reflections caught fire mid-step, burning with violet flame.
In the cave, Icarus flinched.
"They're harmonizing," he said. "Resonant reality collapse. They're not tracking us—they're unraveling every layer of deception."
Lysandra looked at him grimly. "Then we have to be more than deceptive."
She reached into her own pouch and pulled out a relic—a memory shard, silver and thin as glass. She crushed it between her fingers.
Icarus felt it immediately: her life, fractured and spread across the air. Thousands of memories—fragmented moments of her existence—exploded outward like a psychic minefield.
To the Choir, it would be chaos.
The singing faltered.
Two of the figures convulsed mid-air, overwhelmed by the influx of foreign experience. One dropped, twitching, its harmony broken. The others compensated, forming tighter rings, doubling their tone.
"They're splitting into Triads," Icarus said.
"Then it's time to do what you made this power for," Lysandra replied. "See a way out."
He closed his eyes, letting the Sequence activate. Threads of potential bloomed in his mind. Futures split open—six, twelve, twenty-three. Most ended in fire. Some in screams.
One ended in silence.
A hidden path beneath the marsh. An echo vein, a route once used by Fourth Epoch priests to bury unstable relics. It ran parallel to the old leyline ruins and connected to the deep archives beneath Calonia. It was suicidal. It was ancient. It was unguarded.
"Follow me," he said.
They ran. Behind them, the Choir resumed its song, louder now, angrier. The marsh itself twisted in protest. Trees melted. Reality stuttered.
But Icarus was no longer bound by normal perception. He led them straight through illusions, traps, warps of space that would have confounded even the Choir's seers.
At the heart of the marsh, beneath a cairn of weeping stone, he found the sigil—half-buried in slime and centuries of silence.
A single word, etched in prehuman script.
"Aneth-Ra."The Door Between.
He cut his palm, letting the blood fall into the groove.
The stone hissed. The ground gave way.
They tumbled into darkness, sliding down a spiral tunnel of smooth obsidian. Heat licked at their faces. At the bottom, they landed in a chamber shaped like an open throat, glowing veins of blue and gold etched into its surface.
Above, the Choir's song halted. They would not follow here.
Could not.
Lysandra sat against the wall, breathless.
"That… was reckless."
Icarus didn't respond. He was staring ahead.
In the center of the chamber was an altar. Upon it: a second crystal.
This one black.
Pulsing with heat.
He approached, already knowing what it was.
A Lensborn Core.A seed of the next Sequence.
Lysandra stood behind him, her voice low. "You're not building a new Pathway anymore."
Icarus nodded.
"I'm birthing one."