Chapter 31: The Price of Knowledge

"We have to go!" Hitane yells, her voice cutting through the rising panic. "Juiro, get to the door! We need to move before the structure collapses!"

"Wait!" The Weaver commands. Her voice is suddenly strong, resonant and commanding, shedding the frailty of age that cloaked her just moments ago. She reaches into the deep folds of her robe and pulls out a small, intricate object. It looks like a compass, but instead of a needle, it possesses three rotating rings made of brass and a crystal I do not recognize. It glows with a soft, pulsing blue light.

"Take this," she says, thrusting it into my hands with a strength I did not think she possessed.

"What is it?" I ask, staring at the device as it hums against my palm.

"It is a Resonance Amplifier," she says, her milky eyes wide and urgent. "I built it from the bones of a dead timeline. It will help you sync. It will help you braid your powers into a single strand. But it needs a jump-start. It needs a massive surge of energy to activate."

The front door of the house explodes inward with a deafening crash. Splinters of wood and twisted metal shower the room like shrapnel.

Two men in gray suits step through the cloud of dust and debris. They are identical to the one in the village. Faceless white masks. Sleek silver pistols raised and leveled at us.

"Deletion authorized," the mechanical voices speak in perfect, terrifying unison.

"Go!" The Weaver screams. She stands up to her full, diminutive height and slams her gnarled wooden staff onto the floor.

The floorboards ripple like water. The air in the room twists and distorts. The hundreds of clocks on the walls start to spin wildly, their hands blurring into gray circles.

"She is manipulating the local time stream," Hitane gasps, grabbing my arm. "She is accelerating the entropy of the room. She is going to collapse the pocket dimension!"

"We cannot leave you!" Minaki cries, reaching out for the old woman, her face streaked with tears.

"You must!" The Weaver shouts, not looking back. She turns to face the Gray Men. She raises her hand, and the air around them turns into a swirling storm of gray dust. They are aging rapidly, their suits decaying into rags, their masks rusting and crumbling in seconds. But more figures are stepping through the breach behind them, an endless line of faceless soldiers.

"I have lived too long!" The Weaver yells, her voice cracking under the strain of the spell. "My thread is cut! Save yourselves! Become the Triad!"

One of the fresh Gray Men raises his pistol. He fires without hesitation. The beam of white energy hits The Weaver squarely in the chest.

She does not scream. She simply smiles, a look of profound peace settling over her ancient features. And then she shatters. She turns into a cloud of golden dust, scattering into the air and vanishing into the entropy she summoned.

"No!" Minaki screams, the sound raw and agonizing.

I grab Minaki by the waist. I grab Hitane by the arm. I look at the gray men, who are now advancing on us over the spot where The Weaver stood. I look at the collapsing room, the walls folding in on themselves as time eats the building.

I look at the device in my hand. It is warm. It is humming, feeding off the chaotic energy in the room.

"Hitane!" I yell over the roar of the collapsing dimension. "I need a coordinate! Where do we go?"

"Nagano!" she shouts back, her eyes scanning the dissolving reality. "The blind spot! It is the only place they cannot see us land! Aim for the mountains!"

I close my eyes. I do not know where Nagano is. I do not have a picture in my head.

But I have the device. I feel its energy flowing into my hand, traveling up my arm, and slamming into my chest. It connects to my anchor. It feels like a supercharger, a rush of pure power.

I reach out with my mind. I look past the gray men, past the burning house. I look for the fuzziness Hitane described on the map. I look for the hole in the fabric of the world.

I feel it. A blank space in the geography of reality. A void where time does not sit right.

I grab that void. I grab my family.

And I tear the world open.

This time, it is not a struggle. The device amplifies my pull a thousand times over. I do not just open a door; I smash down the wall of reality. A massive, swirling vortex opens in front of us, sucking in the air and the light.

"Jump!" I scream.

We dive into the vortex just as the house collapses into nothingness behind us. The Gray Men, the clocks, the fire, it is all swallowed by the void of the collapsed dimension.

We are falling again. But this time, it feels different. I can feel Minaki is fear vibrating in my bones. I can feel Hitane is calculation mapping our trajectory. I can feel them not just as hands in mine, but as currents in my own blood.

The device pulses. The threads are twisting together. We are not three people falling through the dark. We are one comet, burning across the sky of the space-between.

We are the Triad. And we are going to war.