The gentle sway of the ship echoed faintly through the wooden floor. Inside one of the more secluded rooms aboard the Storm Dew, Jack stood by a round window, the storm-tinted sea reflected in the dark-purple lenses of his glasses. The rims were circular and thin, glinting faintly under the oil lamp overhead. Like a shadow of a memory, their goggle-like form obscured his expression, giving him the look of a man constantly peering through dusk.
With one final glance at the horizon, Jack turned. He extended his hand into the empty air behind him and pricked his fingers. On the fourth try, the void shuddered softly. A figure emerged, Knowledge Emperor Roselle Gustav, dressed in a regal crimson coat, golden embroidery dancing across its folds. His chestnut curls and dignified bearing made him look as if he had stepped out of history. A heartbeat later, it became a marionette.
The marionette stared at Jack. Its eyes shimmered faintly with a small light.
Jack exhaled.
The oppressive weight behind his thoughts began to lift. That familiar heaviness from his transmigration, muddled memories, faded as the calming effect of the spell washed over him.
"Odin's Help," he murmured to himself.
It was an advanced mystical reenactment, a spell meant to soothe mental afflictions, dulling trauma and stabilizing contracts. Audrey Hall's therapies had done wonders for him, but some fractures ran deeper. For those, he turned to spells.
Centered once again, Jack turned towards the projection, as he stared upon it for a few seconds. He gave out a small hum before he removed one of his Worms of Spirit. A transparent maggot, its body etched with three-dimensional patterns, squirmed faintly in his palm. He handed it to his marionette.
Eyes closed, Jack recalled the symbols of the Error Pathway, whispering their shapes in the theater of his mind.
Symbols flared to life around the marionette.
They swirled, converged, and etched themselves onto the Worm. For a moment, a precarious balance formed… then unraveled. The symbols twisted into disarray. The worm writhed. Pain laced through Jack's temple.
He hissed and raised a hand to his brow.
The marionette's eyes flickered again towards him, using "Odin's Help" once more to calm his state back to normal.
"First attempt failed," Jack muttered, massaging his temple.
He had hoped to reshape his Worms, to coax them into becoming something adjacent. A Worm of Time. But the symbolic mixture proved unstable. Despite his understanding of each Pathway, their intersections remained a dangerous, unmastered practice.
Then came a vision.
A foul stench, followed by the beating noise of a throbbing heart, as the scene of the horizon sea met his eyes.
Through his Chaoswalker marionette, Charlie, he saw a similar scene, with different details.
After collecting himself, Jack controlled his projection marionette and invoked a phrase in ancient Hermes:
"Huginn and Muninn."
The room shifted, winds appeared as they creaked open the window before dying down back to normal. As it did, two ravens appeared.
One white, perched on the bed. One black, resting atop the mirror.
Jack turned, closing the window with a quiet click before greeting them with a smile.
"Welcome to my humble abode. I am Jack. And you are?"
The white raven tilted its head. "We have many names. For now, call us Hugan and Moonan."
Jack chuckled. "Fair enough. I have a task for you both. Analyze the symbols I provide, the manipulation and the interlocking patterns. Then return what you learn to me."
The black raven scoffed. "So you push the labor to us, and keep the gains?"
Jack chuckled, unabashed, and gave a small nod. "Correct. I am delegating the tedious part."
The black raven tilted its head, one eye glinting with something sharp and old.
"And what," it asked slowly, "do we gain from being your scribes?"
Jack's smile thinned, not colder, but deliberate. "The knowledge you uncover," he said plainly. "High-Sequence knowledge. Symbolic structures most beings never glimpse, let alone study. And you'll learn it firsthand, not in scraps."
The ravens fell silent. The white one shifted on the bedframe, feathers rustling faintly. They exchanged a look, something passed between them that wasn't sound.
Jack continued before they could speak, voice lowering just a fraction.
"However," he added, "I'm an exceptionally skeptical man. I don't invest in arrangements that leak. If we proceed, I need certainty, absolute, that what you learn stays between us."
The black raven let out a soft, humorless croak.
"Ravens of memory and thought are not common prey," it said. "Most don't even believe we exist anymore. Fewer still know how to summon us." Its gaze sharpened as it fixed on Jack. "And those who do know tend to hunt us. We are… valuable."
Jack met its stare without flinching. There was no greed in his eyes.
"And yet," the raven continued slowly, "you knew. Both our nature and the call. And you speak as one accustomed to secrets."
The silence stretched.
Finally, the black raven inclined its head. "Very well. High-Sequence knowledge is not something we would refuse lightly. We accept, under discretion."
Jack clapped his hands once, the sound crisp in the cabin air. "Excellent."
He reached into his coat and withdrew a crimson glove. The Glove of Profaned Truth artifact.
Jack didn't hesitate. With a firm grip, he shattered the artifact.
The artifact shattered soundlessly, collapsing into fragments of light as the characteristic within it broke apart, releasing a shimmering tide of symbols into the air. They didn't disperse randomly, they rose, one by one, like concepts made visible.
Theft, deceit, among others.
Jack's marionette moved at once. Roselle's projection extended a hand steadily, seizing control of the symbols before they could fade or destabilize. Under its guidance, the symbols slowed, stabilized, and began to rotate, each symbol distinct, yet clearly part of the same conceptual group.
At the same time, the transparent Worm of Spirit resting in the marionette's other hand began to react.
The three-dimensional patterns etched into its body stirred. Symbols surfaced from within it as well. They peeled themselves free, drifting into the air to meet the newly released symbols.
The room filled with motion.
Two constellations of symbols spiraled around one another, weaving through the cabin, intersecting, repelling, converging, testing compatibility, probing for overlap. For a brief moment, equilibrium seemed possible.
Then tension built.
The symbols trembled, clashed, rearranged themselves again and again—until Jack subtly adjusted the marionette's control.
At once, the chaotic dance collapsed inward.
One stream of symbols plunged back into the transparent maggot, etching themselves deeper into its structure. The other condensed, flattening and stretching, until it formed a colorless, fungal drape, thin and veil-like, hanging in the air like a curtain.
Jack released his grip and both items dropped gently onto the table.
The ravens hadn't moved.
They watched in complete silence, eyes tracking every shift, every symbolic collision, every forced convergence. Even Jack could feel their attention sharpen.
Only then did he speak.
"Your task," Jack said calmly, gesturing to both the transparent worm and the fungal drape, "is to analyze these. Learn their structures and their compatibility"
He paused, then added evenly, "I want to modify the worm, properly, toward the framework of a Worm of Time. The Knowledge Emperor projection is merely the anchor. The understanding must be precise."
The black raven reacted instantly.
It swooped down and perched atop one of the chairs by the table, craning its neck to inspect the items more closely. "Interesting," it croaked, voice low with genuine intrigue.
The white raven moved as well…
"Not you," Jack said at once.
She stopped.
Jack turned toward her. "I need eyes elsewhere. North and east. There are… movements I don't like the shape of yet."
The white raven stared at him, unblinking.
Jack didn't repeat himself. Instead, he inclined his head toward the marionette.
At his signal, Roselle's projection raised a hand again.
This time, symbols of concealment, silence and secrecy emerged. Soft, muted symbols that drank in light rather than reflected it. They descended over the white raven like a veil, wrapping around her form. Her feathers darkened, with its edges blurring, until she seemed half-removed from the room.
Jack crossed the room and opened the window.
Without another sound, the white raven launched herself forward.
She vanished into the sky at breakneck speed, leaving only the scent of salt and a faint distortion in the air behind her.
Jack remained where he was.
Backlit by the soft glow of the marionette and the distant, rolling reflection of moonlight on the sea, he watched until even the distortion faded, then turned back toward the table, the raven, and the work ahead.
The black raven perched atop the chair leaned forward, head cocked. Its eyes flicked between the fungal veil and the worm, then back to Jack.
"You summon a projection of Roselle Gustav," it remarked, voice dry and clipped. "A feat not easily replicated… And yet you opt for this? Manual analysis. Trial and failure. Why?"
Jack's lips curled faintly.
"Two reasons," he said, adjusting his dark-purple glasses on the bridge of his nose. "One, I'm intimately familiar with my own strengths, and my failures."
He let the words hang.
Then, he turned slightly, watching the maggot-like worm pulse faintly beneath the dim cabin light.
"For example," Jack continued, "if one of my marionettes becomes concealed, the connection is severed. I have ways to mitigate this, but not eliminate it."
He raised a gloved hand and traced a small arc in the air.
"So I devised a workaround, a failsafe. Parasite layering." He said. "If I embed a secondary worm, something aligned with the Marauder Pathway, alongside the Worm of Spirit, the second worm could parasitize the marionette, retaking control. Then it could either create an 'avatar' or remain as a parasite host, maintaining the situation."
The raven blinked slowly, but said nothing.
Jack tapped the table twice, calmly.
"If this first experiment works," he added, "I may take it a step further and consume the characteristic, becoming a dual-pathway beyonder."
The raven's head tilted sharply.
"Even knowing the cost?" it asked. "You'll increase your exposure to madness. You risk losing control."
Jack offered a lazy shrug, but his voice sharpened.
"Yes. But madness is treatable, at least to its lowest thresholds. I've done it before. Audrey Hall's methods worked wonders."
He paused.
"And the payoff is considerable. I wouldn't just gain the powers of a second pathway, my marionettes would, too. Through the bestowal of worms, they would carry both inheritances."
A beat passed.
"Imagine a Devil infused with not only a Seer's abilities, but also of a Marauder. Or a Chaoswalker with almost guaranteed theft."
The raven gave a slow, rustling flap of its wings. "And the second reason?" it prompted.
Jack leaned back in his chair, hands steepled beneath his chin.
"Exploration," he said simply. "Knowledge."
He looked directly at the raven.
"My knowledge of the Pathways is vast, but largely academic. I know their names, traits, anchors, authorities, sequences, and symbology. I've read, absorbed, dissected… But practical interactions? I'm missing that aspect."
He gestured toward the worm and the fungal veil.
"This is how I gain it."
"'Knowledge is power' isn't just a saying," he murmured. "It's a process. Progress isn't handed down. It's built. Civilization expands, and so must the understanding of the beyonder world. Its rules evolve with those willing to test them."
Jack's eyes glinted beneath his glasses.
"If I succeed, I'll uncover not only how the Mystery Pryer and the Savant interact, but how they can be pushed, refined, or even redefined. What else can their abilities do? What haven't we discovered yet, because no one bothered to combine them?"
As Jack's explanation tapered off, he reached outward toward the empty air beside him and pricked his fingers once again. With a subtle heaviness, he pulled, and a hazy shimmer coalesced into the form of a man draped in a black cloak.
It was the projection of Botis, the Secrets Sorcerer.
The historical projection hovered lightly above the ground, its expression impassive, eyes hidden under his cloak's shadow.
The black raven, Hugan, cocked his head at the sight, intrigued.
Jack met the gaze with a faint smirk.
"You reminded me of something," he murmured.
And with that, Jack and Roselle's projection flickered and vanished along with Botis, leaving behind only the still form of the Chaoswalker puppet, Charlie, who stood motionless at the cabin's edge.
Moments passed.
Then, Jack returned, Roselle's figure still in tow. He raised his hand and dispelled the projection of Botis without fanfare.
Hugan's beady eyes narrowed slightly, but before he could question it, Jack had already turned to his Traveler's Bag.
With deliberate motion, Jack reached inside and retrieved several beyonder characteristics, each glimmering faintly. The table, already cluttered with mystery, now gleamed with more characteristics.
Then, his scarlet suit writhed, shifting and flexing. From the lining of the living attire, a silver gauntlet slid free, metallic and solemn, thudding softly onto the table.
It was the Twilight Oath, the sealed artifact Jack kept in Erynos.
Jack straightened his sleeves and tapped the table once.
"I had these stashed in Feynapotter," he said mildly. "Thought I'd fetch them while you observed."
He smiled feeling very content, like a craftsman settling into a long-awaited project.
"Now, while you study those symbols, I'll play with artifact creation."
He gave a flick of his fingers, and the Roselle marionette silently stepped forward. With practiced grace, it reached out and took hold of the chosen characteristic from the table.
At once, symbols bloomed in the air.They flickered around, orbiting the marionette's outstretched hand.
Jack leaned back, the glow behind his dark-purple lenses sharpening.
"Let's see," he murmured, a grin tugging at his lips, "what kind of toys we can make."
…
Lars sat calmly in the dimly lit cabin, flipping a small knife between his fingers. The blade caught glints of lantern light, flashing with every smooth motion. Then coming from the cabin's main door, he heard three knocks, followed by one.
He stood up immediately.
Without a word, he crossed the room and opened the door. Halsey stepped in, her cloak trailing the faint scent of sea salt.
"Nothing strange," she said, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. "Outside the regular Mandated Punisher inspections, everything's quiet. For now."
Lars nodded once, slipping the knife into his coat as he moved past her.
"I'll do another round," he muttered, already half turned away. "Check for blind spots. Might grab some booze and maybe food."
Halsey's eyes flicked toward him. "Try not to mix the two this time."
He only chuckled and left, boots tapping against the wooden corridor floor.
Once alone, Halsey closed the door behind her and exhaled. She crossed the room briskly, kneeling beside her travel bag. Her fingers moved with practiced care as she checked the contents… the sealed Rose Bishop's Cross. All was in place.
Then she reached for a lacquered case tucked in the corner. The lid creaked softly as she opened it.
The Moon card lay within. Pale, almost pearlescent, the illustration shimmered faintly in the low light.
As she stared, the room dimmed. The edges of the cabin blurred into a deeper darkness, and a ripple stirred the air.
A shape emerged in the center of the roomin the form of a cat. Its form shimmered like smoke held together by thought. Huge, glowing eyes blinked at her, one slow, knowing blink, then another.
The creature's eyes dropped to the card in her hand.
"Halsey, dear," the figure purred in a low, dry voice. "Best to keep that sealed."
Halsey's lips curved into a smile.
"Salem," she greeted. "You always know when to sneak in."
The shadow-cat flicked its tail, and the air seemed to fold inward.
With a faint, wet burp, three objects dropped from the rippling smoke of its body, landing on the bed with soft thuds. Sealed artifacts, each wrapped in cloth.
Halsey blinked, mouth opening to thank him, only for Salem's tone to shift, cutting her off.
"Be cautious…," he said, eyes narrowing, voice laced with something unfamiliar. "...of Alain Rouge."
The name dropped like a stone into the room's silence.