All the text hovering before my eyes feels… wrong. It's system text. I know that it is. Yet there's something about it that doesn't mesh with everything else I've seen. It's that one word. 'Event'. There's a finality to it, yet also a horrible amount of uncertainty. High risk. Not guaranteed. But this is the worst outcome for the system.

Question is, how bad of an outcome is it for us?

I palm another coin. The same one; a reactivation of my skill from the last time it upgraded. All I have to do is flip another coin. Get confirmation that I won't mess everything up just by twisting fate the exact wrong way. I look over at Pearl. She looks back at me. There's a fire in her eyes stoked by vengeance and hope for the future in equal parts.

But that hope can't blossom as long as the system has a hold on this world. While it still controls everything, the newly made shellraisers can never show themselves. Because it can't know it succeeded. I… have to make this choice again. Fifteen seconds ago I was so confident in my resolve. Amazing how a simple word like 'cataclysm' can shake you.

The coin is heavy against my nail. I breathe deeply and flick it up through the grey, through the text in the air, and into the position of finality. It reaches the apex of its arc and freezes. My skill activates again, but this time… it already knows what I'm going to ask.

Reknit Fate activated.

Options: Confirm previous activation, deny previous activation.

Properties of Confirm: Best for Shelby, Best for Earth, Worst for System, Worst for _________.

Properties of Deny: End of Shelby. No further calculations made.

Choose.

E…end of Shelby. I… I've… no. No, no, no. Self-sacrifice isn't my thing, so whatever that censored line is, I'm sorry, but it gets the worst outcome. It's a little unnerving that it only lists me and the Earth as benefactors from this, but I can't stop to think beyond those three goddamn words. 'End of Shelby'. Even if it said 'best for literally everyone else and it kills the system', I wouldn't touch that with a thousand foot pole.

Wherever the 'reknit' part of my skill evolution comes in, I hope it makes things a little less… end of Shelby.

"Confirm," I say confidently. "To both."

With a loud hum, the coin at the top of its apex starts to spin. Growing heat rolls off of it as the coin shaped quickie becomes a spherical blur of molten white, filling the air with pops and crackles that glow as bright as a tiny star. Thin, shellraiser-coloured threads snake away from the mass, shooting off in all directions as the spinning sphere grows smaller and smaller until it disappears completely. Spent up. Used.

Gone.

In its place remains nothing but a feeling. A sensation of looming dread that brings with it an end to the greyscale paused world. One remaining coin lies at my feet. Thin parasitic threads latch out from it and dig into the stone below, cementing the coin deep into reality. From its final resting place it stares up at me… from heads.

"The construct room?" the liquid construct scoffs. "We don't have time to find that! Disregard what your coinflip says, savior–we must–s-savior? What is that?"

My awareness feels it before the construct can say anything. A mass of water filled with hatred and violence screaming down the hallway at breakneck speeds with Jumble sprinting her heart out to stay in front of it. Her teeth clench around something in her mouth, and her book drips with an obvious attempt by the horizonguard to make her weaker.

I tilt my head to the side. "We have to get away."

"Stating the obvious doesn't help," Pearl mutters. "Which relocations do you have?"

Wrong way.

The letters whisper over my eyes. I feel my own power leak out into the world around me, and a sensation like thin threads plays over my fingers. They weave together to form something tangible. Something like an ace up my sleeve. An actual, honest to goodness physical thing stuck inside of my sleeve. I curl my hand back and tap at the thing, which isn't… quite a playing card. It's card shaped. It has a suit. Four of them, in fact; a different one for each corner. And the back…

A simple hexagonal pattern. One of the coins the shellraiser gunk turned into down in the lab so many months ago. I slip my fingers over it, pull the card into my palm, and discreetly bring the brilliant silver thing into view.

I don't recognize it at all. The suits are an orange-yellow whirled shell, a green shark tooth, and two blurs that I can't even make out. One's pink, and the other's light blue. There's no numbers or letters to designate the card's value; just an image of a grasping hand reaching out for whosoever's looking at the card.

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The Reach.

All suits.

Unsuitable for regulation play anywhere.

Yes, cool, but how the hell does this help? How is it part of the skill I just used? The card doesn't offer up any explanations. Neither does the interface prompts, which fade away cryptically and uselessly. But this path, looking for the construct room, it'll somehow lead the way I want it to. So… I just won't fight it. Let's do whatever comes naturally and hope my skill's doing the rest.

"RUN!" I scream and turn on my heel. All the mask buddies share befuddled looks, then share a scream of their own as they finally see the murderous river crashing towards us. Jumble's magic coats each of us in an especially thick layer the closer it gets to us, maxing out the moment she comes into view at my side.

"Any luck?" she asks casually, even though half of her face is… uh… missing.

I stare at the wound for a second, then shake my head. "I found the last uplifting trial thanks to these guys."

"Yay us!" one of them cheers. Everyone else ignores them.

"So? Did it do anything important or useful? Please, Shelby–I need some good news right now," Jumble insists with a motion at her face. "I'm playing it off pretty well, but this feels like someone's constantly scrapping my skull away with sandpaper. Did you know water can do this to someone? I didn't. I do now."

A high-pitched screech. Something slams into my back with enough force to ripple through Jumble's protection. I extend my awareness to see what the hell it was, and I don't have to wait long to get an answer. Hyperpressurized water from the horizonguard's massive supply. Can't even see the asshole through the black murkiness of the stuff.

"How'd he get all that?" I ask with disbelief. "The halls are flooded for miles."

Jumble shakes her head and laughs. "The system made it rain. Convenient, don't you think? Especially because that rain has so much dissolved sediment in it that somehow doesn't mess with the horizonguard's control at all. And here I thought the quest still had a modicum of fairness to it."

"It is weird, right?" Fore chimes in. "I've done hundreds of quests in the dozen decades I've been alive, and all of them had rules set out from the beginning. Even if the system wanted to intervene, it couldn't. So what's up with this one? Can the system just break its own rules if it wants to?"

I snort and shake my head. "Jumble and I'd be dead if that was true."

"Then that makes it all the weirder! Aurgh!" Fore gurgles as a jet of water shears a hole through his chest. "Ow, ow, ow! I just finished healing that!"

He spins on his heel and shoves a hand at the mass of water. And collapses. His buddies grab him by the shoulders without missing a step and carry him with us… but the wall of water slows down significantly. Instead of just barely maintaining a lead we're rocketing ahead.

"Should I ask?"

Nose-mask shrugs. "Brain stuff takes a lot out of him. Poor guy probably just had another stroke to keep the horizonguard from drowning us."

That's… something I don't want to ask about. Hadn't even considered that class could just wave a hand at someone and seriously mess with their brain. It'd put it on the same level as psychic for dangerously manipulative; maybe even worse. I look down at Fore, eyes dripping blood and a clear fluid that isn't tears, and slightly rethink my judgement.

"Thanks for getting the system out of me," I say as if paying my respects to the dead. "I'll make sure we get out of this just fine."

The card in my sleeve burns hot. Fingers of molten magic grip around my arm, pulling insistently for me to move. Pure instinct shifts my path to go down one floor. Everyone follows without a moment's hesitation… but Pearl knows. She looks at me with about as much discomfort as I feel. Instead of railroading me with stifled words and strange feelings, my skill's taking a much more direct route this time.

One I'm not sure I could resist if I wanted to. Not yet.

My feet hit the new layer of stone hard. Everything in my body screams out for rest. My awareness shudders and warbles like a picture at the bottom of a choppy lake. Both timers are running dangerously low. I bite back the sensations and force myself to focus–we just need to find the construct room. That's it. Everything'll work out from there.

Huh. The floor's a lot closer than I remember it was. Shouldn't my face be further from it? And my hands in the way to stop my nose from smashing into it?

The sound of my nose shattering against the stone lasts for a split second. The pain of my forehead and chin cracking lances down my body like lightning. Pearl grunts too, a trickle of black running down her face like blood. But why? She hasn't bled for everything else that happened. Shouldn't I be panicking right now?

I turn lazily to look up at the ceiling. Blood drains into my eyes. A symbol burns up above. Six sides. A rainbow of colours. Definitely not supposed to be there. I lift a hand to reach for it… and feel what made me fall. Not an attack. Not our unity running out. Just a damn crack in the floor with a piece of crackling wire in it.

Magic courses through the wire. Simple stuff, really; a mild paralysis that wouldn't last more than a second. Just enough to slam me flat on my face. The symbol, though, that's worrying. I want to get up and run, but everything's screaming at me to stay in place. Including the card clutched up against my arm.

With a flash, the symbol disappears. In its place is a door. Behind that door is the heretic, arm already outstretched to pull me up into it. I grab the hand and let myself get yanked up into the room. Jumble jumps up a second later, but before the mask buddies can join, it slams shut behind her. Leaving only four people in the room; me, Jumble, the heretic… and the Quest.

Inside what looks like a mass production facility for glass cauldrons and artificially coloured drinks.

"Shelby." The quest steps over to me, face grim. "We have two minutes. Do what you have to do fast or kill me."

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