I attempted my first tentative reach toward the Court of Heaven three nights after the council session that had committed us to preparing for "the impossible" — a careful, deliberate ritual built from fragments of theory Selene had gathered, the Crystal of Eldoria's stored knowledge, and my own intuitive understanding of the "Hide It" skill that had, apparently, been specifically designed to keep beings like myself from casually drawing that same Court's attention.
I reasoned, sitting alone in Valoria's quiet council hall late into the night, that if "Hide It" existed specifically to conceal my presence from higher powers, then carefully, deliberately lowering that concealment might function as a kind of signal in itself — not a full petition, not yet, but a way of announcing that a "Someone From Another World" wished to be noticed.
I let the concealment drop, just slightly, focusing my intention the way I might have focused a wish for Unlimited Appraisal, and felt something shift at the very edge of my perception — not a response, exactly, but an acknowledgment, distant and impersonal, like a door somewhere far away creaking open a crack before settling shut again.
And then, unexpectedly, something else arrived instead.
It came as a dream, or something adjacent to a dream — I was aware, in the strange, floating way of half-sleep, of standing somewhere that wasn't Valoria's council hall at all, but a vast, dark space scattered with countless pinpricks of light, each one, I somehow understood without being told, representing a single mind, a single consciousness, scattered across countless worlds.
One of those lights pulsed, briefly, with a familiar quality — not Kai's signature, which I'd grown to recognize clearly over months of friendship, but something similar in its fundamental "wrongness," the specific texture of a soul that had originated somewhere other than wherever it currently resided.
Help, the light seemed to convey, not in words exactly, but in raw, desperate feeling. Please, if anyone else is out there. I don't understand what's happening to me.
I woke with a start, the council hall's pre-dawn dimness disorienting after the vividness of whatever I'd just experienced, and found Aria already awake, watching me with immediate concern.
"You were saying something in your sleep," she said. "Not words, exactly. More like... reaching for something."
"I think," I said slowly, still processing the lingering, urgent impression of that distant pulse of light, "I just made contact with another person from Earth. Someone new. Someone in trouble."
Aria's expression sharpened immediately. "Another otherworlder? Where?"
"I don't know yet," I admitted. "But I felt them, the same way I imagine something felt me the very first time I arrived in this world. Whatever attempt I made to reach the Court of Heaven, it seems to have opened a connection to something else entirely instead — or maybe the same connection, just showing me something I wasn't specifically looking for."
I closed my eyes again, trying to recapture the sensation, and found, to my genuine surprise, that the connection remained faintly present, like a thread I could follow if I focused carefully enough.
"I can find them," I said, opening my eyes with growing certainty. "I think I can actually track where that signal is coming from."
"Then we should go," Aria said, already rising. "If there's someone else out there going through what you went through, alone and frightened, I don't think we should wait to find out how urgent their situation actually is."