Chapter--What Aoikishi Felt
Kaosu looked down at his hands.
The crimson threads around his fingers had gone still.
Not weakened.
Not extinguished.
Still.
Kaosu frowned.
"That's new."
Raiyo looked over.
"What?"
Kaosu did not answer.
His Chaotic Energy shifted.
Every red strand turned toward the same impossible direction.
Not north.
Not up.
Not toward any coordinate the field understood.
Toward something.
Nyxus leaned closer.
"Your arm is pointing."
Kaosu ignored him.
Yamiya stepped forward.
Her eyes narrowed.
The red threads weren't being pulled.
No energy had seized them.
They were behaving more like—
recognition.
Kaosu's face changed.
He had felt something earlier.
Far away.
During the confusion.
During the injuries.
During the moment everyone had been trying not to die.
At first, he had refused to name it.
His father's physical presence had vanished.
Then something deeper had followed.
A second absence.
No recovery.
No amused return.
No enormous presence waiting behind the silence.
Kaosu's mouth tightened.
"My father is dead."
Nobody joked.
Raiyo looked at him.
Yamiya's expression softened.
Nyxus remained completely still.
Aoikishi did not ask how Kaosu knew.
That was the first thing Yamiya noticed.
Kaosu noticed it next.
His eyes lifted.
"You knew."
Aoikishi said nothing.
Kaosu stepped toward him.
"You knew before I said it."
"Yes."
Kaosu stared.
Something complicated passed over his face.
Anger.
Grief.
Relief.
Hatred for the relief.
He looked away.
"How?"
Aoikishi's attention had already moved elsewhere.
His face had changed.
Not much.
With anyone else, it might have been nothing.
But Yamiya had spent months watching Aoikishi pretend surprise was beneath him.
She knew every small failure in the performance.
His shoulders had stopped moving.
His breathing had shortened once.
His left hand had closed.
Not into a fist.
Around empty air.
As though it remembered holding something that was not there.
Yamiya whispered:
"Aoikishi?"
He didn't answer.
The training ground darkened.
No cloud crossed the sun.
Nothing blocked the light.
The world merely seemed less certain that brightness was the relevant thing to notice.
Nyxus saw text.
His eyes widened.
FOREIGN AUTHORITY DETECTED
The next line attempted to populate.
SOURCE:
Nothing appeared.
The field flickered.
SOURCE:
Again.
Blank.
Nyxus frowned.
"That's weird."
Aoikishi turned sharply.
"What do you see?"
Nyxus blinked.
That frightened him more than the message.
Aoikishi never asked like that.
Nyxus looked again.
"It's trying to tell me where something came from."
"And?"
"It doesn't know."
Aoikishi's face lost what little color it had.
Raiyo noticed.
"So?"
Aoikishi did not respond.
The message changed.
CLASSIFICATION REQUEST...
A pause.
FAILED
Another attempt.
CLASSIFICATION REQUEST...
FAILED
Then—
REFERENCE MODEL FOUND
Aoikishi moved.
His hand closed around Nyxus's wrist.
The code vanished.
Nyxus stared at him.
"You can do that?"
Aoikishi released him.
"No."
Nyxus looked offended.
"You just did."
"I interrupted you."
"That's doing it."
"Different."
Kaosu's Chaotic Energy bent farther.
For one horrible moment, it almost looked like a field of grass under wind.
Every red thread leaned.
Kaosu stared at it.
"What is happening to my Chaos?"
Aoikishi looked at him.
No answer.
Kaosu's jaw tightened.
"Don't."
Aoikishi remained silent.
"Not now."
The red threads trembled.
Kaosu stepped closer.
"My father is dead."
Another step.
"Something is making my own energy act scared."
Aoikishi's eyes flicked toward the threads.
Kaosu saw it.
"You recognize this."
Aoikishi finally spoke.
"Yes."
One word.
That was enough.
Yamiya had seen Aoikishi surprised.
She had seen him angry.
She had watched him stand before Karma with the calm of someone correcting a student's homework.
This was different.
Aoikishi was not afraid of what he was sensing.
That would have been easier.
He was afraid of recognizing it.
Raiyo spoke carefully.
"What is it?"
Aoikishi looked toward the horizon.
There was nothing there.
His eyes focused anyway.
For a moment, the others could not tell whether he was looking across distance—
or across time.
"No," Aoikishi whispered.
Nyxus frowned.
"No what?"
Aoikishi did not seem to hear him.
His hand shook once.
Only once.
Then stopped.
Kaosu saw it.
His expression changed completely.
"You're scared."
Aoikishi looked at him.
"No."
Kaosu stared.
Aoikishi corrected himself.
"I'm concerned."
Raiyo almost laughed.
"That is somehow worse."
Yamiya stepped beside Kaosu.
"What happened when Karma died?"
Aoikishi's eyes closed.
The answer came quietly.
"Someone used his death as a key."
No one moved.
Nyxus looked toward the empty horizon.
"A key to what?"
Aoikishi opened his eyes.
"A door."
Kaosu's voice hardened.
"What door?"
Aoikishi was silent.
Kaosu snapped:
"Stop doing that."
Aoikishi looked at him.
"The kind that was closed for a reason."
Raiyo folded his arms.
"That explains almost nothing."
"It explains enough."
"No," Yamiya said.
Aoikishi looked toward her.
Yamiya continued.
"You knew."
A beat.
"You know the energy."
Another.
"You knew the door."
Aoikishi's expression became unreadable.
"And you're choosing every sentence carefully."
Aoikishi almost smiled.
"You've gotten observant."
"I was already observant."
"True."
"Aoikishi."
The smile vanished.
Yamiya stepped closer.
"What came back?"
The pressure arrived.
Every piece of Chaotic Energy in the training ground flattened.
Kaosu gasped.
His knees bent.
Not from weight.
Recognition became physical.
Raiyo reached for a sword that wasn't there.
Nyxus's code flooded his vision.
INTERACTION REQUEST DETECTED
TARGET: LOCAL CONTINUUM
SOURCE: UNRESOLVED
TYPE: —
The final field wrote something.
Deleted it.
Tried again.
TYPE: CHAOTIC
Deleted.
Again.
TYPE: PRIMARY
Deleted.
Again.
TYPE: PERSON
The system stopped.
Nyxus stared.
"Uh."
Yamiya turned.
"What?"
Nyxus pointed at text nobody else could see.
"It changed its mind."
"About what?"
"What she is."
Aoikishi's eyes snapped toward him.
She.
Nyxus froze.
"I don't know why I said she."
Aoikishi did.
The training field developed a crack.
Not beneath them.
Across its possible outcomes.
For a fraction of a second, the broken pillar behind Raiyo was standing.
Collapsed.
Never built.
Burning.
Covered in flowers.
Every version remained visible.
Then reality forced itself back into one answer.
Raiyo slowly turned toward Aoikishi.
"That was Chaos."
Aoikishi replied:
"No."
Kaosu's head snapped toward him.
"What?"
Aoikishi stared at the pillar.
"That is what Chaos became."
Silence.
He realized what he had said.
Too late.
Yamiya's eyes sharpened.
Kaosu looked at him.
"What does that mean?"
Aoikishi did not answer.
Nyxus slowly raised one hand.
"I have another question."
Nobody looked at him.
Nyxus continued anyway.
"Is this related to the Observer?"
Aoikishi went still.
That was not the question he had expected.
"Not directly."
Nyxus nodded.
"Cool."
A beat.
"That wasn't my actual question."
Aoikishi sighed.
"What is it?"
Nyxus looked toward Kaosu's trembling red energy.
"Are we about to die?"
Kaosu turned.
"Seriously?"
"What? Everyone was thinking it."
Raiyo said, "I wasn't."
"You are now."
Raiyo paused.
"Unfortunately."
Aoikishi looked at them.
His students.
Battered.
Exhausted.
One without swords.
One with a broken arm.
One still partially unstable.
One apparently capable of arguing with administrative reality while eating pastry.
They had survived Karma.
They had survived Final Authority.
They had survived three months without him.
And far away—
something older than the institutions that named their powers had opened its eyes.
Aoikishi's expression hardened.
"No."
Kaosu frowned.
"No what?"
Aoikishi looked at him.
"We are not dying."
Nyxus nodded approvingly.
"Good."
Aoikishi continued:
"Pack everything."
Nyxus's approval vanished.
"Oh."
Raiyo looked around.
"Everything?"
"Anything useful."
Kaosu tilted his head.
"Where are we going?"
Aoikishi did not answer immediately.
For several seconds, he seemed to calculate something.
Then he stopped calculating.
That was worse.
Yamiya noticed.
"You don't have a plan."
Aoikishi looked at her.
"I have several."
"How many end well?"
Silence.
Raiyo muttered:
"Excellent."
Kaosu looked toward the direction his Chaos had chosen.
"What came back?"
Aoikishi stared into the distance.
His voice, when it came, was very quiet.
"Discordia."
Kaosu frowned.
The name meant nothing to him.
It meant something to Aoikishi.
Far too much.
Kaosu stepped closer.
"Who is she?"
Aoikishi's eyes did not leave the horizon.
"A mistake that predates most of the things currently old enough to regret making mistakes."
Nyxus blinked.
"That was a terrible explanation."
"I know."
"Can I get a simpler one?"
Yamiya glanced at him.
"Surprisingly, I agree."
Aoikishi finally looked back at them.
For the first time since ACT had known him, there was no amusement in his face.
No hidden lesson.
No smug answer being saved for later.
Only urgency.
"Karma did not create the problem."
Kaosu's jaw tightened at his father's name.
Aoikishi continued.
"He opened it."
Raiyo asked, "Can you close it?"
Aoikishi said nothing.
That silence lasted too long.
Nyxus slowly placed his remaining honeybun back into his pocket.
Nobody made fun of him.
Aoikishi looked at the four of them.
Then at the place Torin had disappeared.
Then toward something infinitely farther away.
Veydras Miekō was searching for him.
Noctis Arquen was searching for him.
The remnants of a war were searching for him.
And Discordia—
Discordia was beginning to remember.
Aoikishi adjusted his coat.
Kaosu watched him.
"What are you going to do?"
Aoikishi's eyes narrowed.
"I just spent three months asking the Observer a question."
Nyxus tilted his head.
"Did you get an answer?"
Aoikishi looked at him.
"No."
Kaosu groaned.
"Then what was the point?"
Aoikishi turned toward the opening portal.
"I'm beginning to think this was the answer."
The portal widened.
Nobody spoke.
Aoikishi stepped toward it.
Then stopped.
Something occurred to him.
He glanced back at Nyxus.
"Bring the honeybuns."
Nyxus's eyes widened.
Kaosu stared.
Raiyo slowly looked at Yamiya.
Yamiya looked equally disturbed.
Nyxus clutched his pocket.
"All of them?"
Aoikishi's expression remained completely serious.
"All of them."
Nyxus went pale.
"Oh, we're fucked."
No one corrected him.
And somewhere impossibly far away—
Discordia took another step.
This time,
Chaos stepped after her.