Morning arrived with pale light filtering through his window. Cel’s door opened onto the corridor just as another door down the hall did the same.

Lior emerged, wheat-blond hair sticking up at odd angles, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. He looked up and his expression shifted immediately - first recognition, then shock so complete it stopped him mid-motion.

“Cel?” His voice cracked. “What—your throat—“

Cel’s hand moved automatically to his throat. His fingers found the thin line of dried blood he’d completely forgotten about. The cut wasn’t deep, but it had bled enough during the night to leave a visible mark.

‘Shit.’

“It’s nothing,” he said quickly.

“Nothing?” Lior crossed the distance between them in three quick strides, eyes wide with something close to panic. “You’re bleeding! Did you—were you trying to—“

The implication hit a moment before Lior’s voice broke completely on the unfinished question.

“No.” Cel raised both hands, palms out. “No, it’s not what it looks like. I wasn’t—“

“Then what happened?” Lior’s sky-blue eyes searched his face desperately.

The truth was impossible to tell. A lie was needed.

“I was testing something,” Cel said. The words came out awkward, stilted. “With my artifact. Wanted to see how sharp the edge was.”

Silence stretched for two full heartbeats.

Then Lior’s expression cycled through confusion, disbelief, and arrived at something that might have been horror.

“On your throat?!”

The question came out half-shout, loud enough that a door down the hall opened. Someone peered out, saw them, and quickly retreated back inside.

“I just—“ Cel scrambled for something to make this seem reasonable. “It seemed like the best way to—“

“The best way?” Lior stared at him like he’d announced plans to jump off the Academy’s tallest tower. “You put a blade to your own throat to test if it was sharp?”

When phrased like that, it sounded even worse than Cel had thought.

“It was controlled,” he tried. “I knew what I was doing.”

“Controlled.” Lior’s voice had gone flat. “Right. Very controlled. That’s why you’re bleeding.”

Cel opened his mouth. Closed it again. No explanation was going to salvage this.

“Look,” he said finally. “I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch. And I learned what I needed to know about the blade’s edge, so—“

“You’re insane.” Lior shook his head slowly. “Completely insane.”

He reached out and grabbed Cel’s shoulder - not aggressively, just a grip that suggested he needed something solid to hold onto while processing what he’d just heard.

“Promise me you won’t do that again.”

“I promise I won’t test my artifact’s sharpness on my own throat again.”

Lior studied him for a long moment, clearly trying to determine if that answer was sufficient. Then he sighed, releasing Cel’s shoulder.

“We should get to conditioning,” he muttered. “Before you find some other creative way to kill yourself.”

They walked to the training grounds together, Lior occasionally glancing at him with lingering concern. Cel kept his expression neutral, relieved the conversation had ended but acutely aware that his reputation for rational decision-making had taken quite some damage.

The day passed without incident. Dawn conditioning proceeded as it always did - bodies moving through drills, Instructor Calder’s voice cutting across the yard with corrections. Theoretical classes filled the morning with information Cel already knew. Combat training in the afternoon tested basic techniques against partners who couldn’t push him far enough to reveal anything.

Through it all, Hestia occupied her usual position. She took notes during lectures. Participated in drills with her typical precision. Never looked at him. Never acknowledged him.

It was almost worse than confrontation.

By the time afternoon classes concluded, tension had settled in Cel’s shoulders like a physical weight. He needed to move. To do something other than sit and wait for Esrin to either confirm or deny his story.

The Reckoning’s hideout waited.

Esrin had told him to arrive at sunset two days hence. Today was that day.

Cel left the Academy grounds through the main gate, nodding to the guard who’d come to recognize him over the past months. The city sprawled before him - broad streets branching in every direction, buildings pressed close enough that their upper floors nearly touched.

He moved through crowds with practiced ease, tracking landmarks from memory. The fountain with the cracked basin. The bakery that always smelled like burned bread. The corner where street performers gathered each evening.

His mind turned to what waited at the end of this walk.

Death’s Friendliest Face.

Wrath’s Only Daughter.

Two members of the Reckoning assigned to train him. Two people he’d met only once, during that initial gathering when they’d voted on whether to let him live or kill him immediately.

Death’s Friendliest Face had voted for him joining. He remembered that much. Still, the contradiction of his codename was unsettling - what kind of person earned a name that paired death with friendliness? Someone who killed with a smile? Someone who made dying seem pleasant?

He didn’t know. Couldn’t know until he met them properly.

Wrath’s Only Daughter was clearer in his memory. She’d voted for his death without hesitation. Her hostility had been palpable even though it was their first meeting. Training under someone who’d wanted him dead seemed like an efficient way to end up dead, just delayed.

But Esrin had made the assignment. An opportunity to grow stronger. Refusing wasn’t an option.

The bar came into view as he rounded a familiar corner.

It looked exactly as it had that first night - weathered wood, grimy windows, a door that hung slightly crooked on its hinges. The kind of place that was abandoned long ago.

Cel approached and reached for the handle.

Locked.

He pulled harder. The door didn’t budge, resistance firm under his grip.

Cel  stepped back, frowning. Had he missed a specific time requirement or something?

He grabbed the handle again.

Only this time... he really pulled.

The door flew open with enough force that he stumbled backward a step.

Not locked. Just stuck.

Heat crawled up his neck as he glanced around to see if anyone had witnessed that display. The street remained mercifully empty.

He stepped inside.

The interior matched his memory - cramped space, handful of tables, bar running along one wall. Just dim light filtering through boarded windows and the smell of old wood and older alcohol.

Cel moved deeper into the room, scanning for anything that might indicate where to go next. A hidden door. A symbol. Some sign that this place connected to the Reckoning’s void-dimension manor.

Nothing.

He stopped in the center of the room, precisely where he and Esrin had emerged from the rift that first time. The floor looked like floor. The air felt like air. Reality seemed entirely intact.

What was he supposed to do now?

He extended his hand slowly, fingers spreading as if he might touch something invisible. His palm met only empty space. No resistance. No tingle of energy. Just air moving past his skin.

“Open,” he said quietly.

Nothing happened.

“To the Reckoning.”

Still nothing. He felt ridiculous, standing alone in an empty bar speaking to nothing.

Maybe there was a phrase. Something specific that activated whatever mechanism Esrin had used. But she hadn’t told him any words. Just said to come here at sunset.

He tried again, cycling through possibilities. “Show me the way.” “Grant me passage.” “I seek the Reckoning.”

Each attempt landed in silence.

Frustration built in his chest.

Then a thought occurred.

He’d summoned Silent Moon thousands of times by now. The motion was instinctive - not words but intent. A reaching inside himself, a calling forth of something that existed in a space adjacent to reality until he needed it.

What if it worked the same way?

Cel closed his eyes. Breathed. Let his mind settle into that same space he accessed when summoning his blade.

But instead of reaching inward for Silent Moon, he reached outward. Toward the space where Esrin had opened her rift. Toward the connection that must exist between this location and the void dimension.

He focused on that intent - not demanding, just... requesting. Asking reality to part so he could pass through.

Something shifted.

His eyes snapped open.

A vertical slash hung in the air before him - violet light bleeding from its edges, energy crackling across its surface in patterns that hurt to look at directly. Small, perhaps the height of a door. But unmistakably a rift.

Cel took an involuntary step backward.

Reality had just broken open in front of him. Torn itself apart because he’d asked it to.

The rift pulsed, patient and waiting.

He studied it carefully, taking in details that his panic had obscured when watching from a distance two nights ago. The violet light wasn’t uniform - darker at the edges, brighter at the center, shifting through shades that had no names in normal spectrum. Energy crackled across its surface in branching patterns, like lightning frozen mid-strike.

It looked almost exactly like the rift that had opened outside the city walls.

Just smaller. Controlled.

But fundamentally the same.

Cel’s breath caught. This wasn’t anything the Empire taught. Rifts meant disaster, not possibility. They were random tears, dangerous openings to be sealed with human lives.

What did it mean that the Reckoning could simply create them on demand to use them for traveling?

Questions for later. If he survived whatever training waited on the other side.

Cel stepped forward slowly, approaching the violet tear. Up close, the energy made his skin prickle. Not painful, just aware. Like standing too close to a fire or too near the edge of a cliff.

He extended his hand.

His fingers passed through without resistance. No sensation at all - his hand simply disappeared into the violet light as if it had ceased existing from the wrist forward.

He pulled back. His hand returned, intact and unmarked.

‘Alright.’

One deep breath. Then another.

Then he stepped through.