Baekho awoke while drowning.

He was underwater, only half done regaining consciousness, and his first breath was about to be his last. Purely out of instinct, he shifted.

The white tiger hadn’t even purposefully remembered that this allowed him to quench his body’s need for air. It had been a reflex. Now he was dripping wet within the dark waters of Twi, unable to tell up from down through his all-consuming headache.

With a few deep non-breaths he calmed his pulse until he was able to assess the situation. He was cut off from his friends and had no way of getting back to them. There was probably a cerebral concussion to worry about, maybe even a skull fracture. The boy touched his wet hair where the wall had met him. There was blood but not much. This could wait.

Accelerating upward, Baekho pieced it all together. He had fallen from the sky when he popped out of the ghoul-realm. By all means he should be dead. But the maze-sphere had shifted, which was the reason he had left Aron’s range without even moving. And the reason he had survived.

Baekho broke through the surface of Twi’s corresponding version of the Jade-Lion basin. The unmoving atmosphere of Twi did little to dry him, letting his clothes stick to his frame. A gray and silent city lay before him.

What else was he to do but make his way back to base and hope?

There was no telling if he shook from the cold or the shock or the fear for his friends’ safety.

As he hovered over the town he noticed a few severe marks of destruction. Whatever the possessed had done it had probably caused a few fires to go unattended. He had to help if he could.

Landing in an alley between two cottages where he was confident he would remain unseen, he popped. And almost shifted immediately as he saw the blob hovering above the district.

How had it made its way back into reality and why was it here? Junior would probably have been able to tell him. What did it want? What…

Baekho stepped out of the alley and narrowed his eyes. The blob was filamenting into tentacles that grabbed invisible objects out of the air and hurled them at invisible foes. It wasn’t just in reality. The ghouls had to travel in the real world to move at the corresponding points in their realm.

It was a gamble and there was no Junior to tell him the odds. He had to do it anyway. Because it was something to do.

Baekho shifted.

There wasn’t much point in aiming precisely. The huge thing was unmissable. The white tiger flew as fast as Twi would let him and was above the mega-ghoul’s position within seconds.

Baekho popped.

A wreathing white mass underneath him. He plummeted. Gamble number one: Would it immediately possess him upon contact?

The very seconds he entered the vaguely defined borders of the entity – or rather, fell through them – he shifted, taking the entity with him entirely. Gamble number two: Would this remove the entity from the corresponding point in its own realm?

Within the same second he had entered Twi, he left it again. Without the ghoul, hopefully making it vanish like its constituent creatures. That was gamble number three.

He popped out in free fall with no white streams in sight. If the entity could exist independently it would still wait for him in Twi and likely possess him right away now that he was an obvious threat. Gamble number four.

Once the ground was as close as he could it possibly allow to come, he shifted again and found himself in a wonderfully empty Twi with no amorphous ghoul-mass in sight. The boy broke his fall and gracefully touched down in another tight, dark alley. The historical district barely had any other street type anyway.

Then came gamble number five and he had no way of affecting the outcome: Would the spherical maze collapse as soon as the entity had been destroyed? If so, would Aron or Ren be quick enough to protect them? Would Minhyun know to pull the plug? Could they land in time or would they try to safe themselves only to fall to their deaths?

A link slammed into his mind hard enough to make him stagger. “Baekhooooooooo! Where are you? Please be alive. Please please please.”

“I’m here, Minhyun,” he sent with a grin. “But where are you?”

“Market square. Or what’s left of it. Junior warned us that the thing was going to vanish and it would all come down on us.”

Junior joined the conversation through the reestablished link network. “Since I only knew moments in advance, somebody must have made a split second decision. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”

“Sure do.” Baekho chuckled to himself, unsure if laughter could travel through the link. “You’re welcome by the way.”

***

The headquarters had survived surprisingly intact. They would have to move again regardless. For one thing their location was compromised. The ghoul incident wasn’t exactly traceable to them but hanging around and waiting until somebody got the idea of asking questions about that factory/refinery/military-base-thing standing secluded in the mountains was probably a fast way to get exposed.

But for the moment all of Nuest needed rest. The things to worry about would still be there in the morning. Unfortunately.

Baekho took a shower and dropped into his bed without even getting his head treated. A little disinfectant on the wound was going to have to suffice. Doctor Feng hadn’t protested. She was as shaken as the rest of the staff and probably wanted to get some shut-eye herself.

The boy didn’t wake up as his mind was forced into a link. He became lucid but was not pulled into the dream scape. Instead he stumbled right into the throne room of Lady Luck. Four more boys were by his side within the second.

“I greet and welcome you,” the shining woman said. “Drawing you here is not the course of action for which I wished. It is to my regret such length has become necessary and furthermore I am only now able to utilize it, as control has been gained over the breach in the barrier caused by your reckless actions.”

“Hey!” Junior said, pointing an accusing finger at her. “Listen here, you… uh, you.“

“The universe,” Lady Luck continued undeterred, “this universe – your universe – is but a minuscule component within the Ring. And this Ring is the superstructure containing only a finite number of branches of the multiverse, septillions at most. The Ring itself in turn is superseded and contained within the Hierarchy.”

“What?” Junior said softly, lowering his hand.

“Traveling from one Ring to another is so difficult, for all practical purposes it is impossible. Even for the likes of us. Unless there is aid from inside. If a species were to advance enough to open the gate from their side but not sufficiently powerful to become a threat to Hierarchy-travelers, then an invasion would be, by comparison, a trivial matter. Such is the philosophy of the Void. They are a powerful race of travelers, seeking lifeforms such as you and breaching the barrier to your Ring enough to insert objects of unimaginably great power.”

Aron gasped. “The eldritch devices.”

“It is the wish of my kind to prevent these occurrences, to create a fruitful and cooperative structure throughout the Hierarchy based on mutual trust and independent trade. The one you call Shadow has been the first to discover the abilities bestowed by the use of Void technology. I have done my best to warn him but-“

“Why don’t you stop him?” Ren yelled.

Lady Luck sighed and here light seemed to dim. “You overestimate my abilities. I can barely reach across the barrier. As much as I want to assist, I can solely act through my agents – you. Only in moments your mind is most open can I communicate at all, as was when I bestowed you.”

“Bestowed?” Baekho asked, putting the pieces together. “We got our abilities from you?”

“I cannot stay longer. Already the linkage is deteriorating. The Shadow is on the move, but yet you may have the advantage. What powers the Void technology has bequeathed to him, I cannot say for certain. What he might plot, even less. Long have I observed human activity and yet learned so little.”

“Wait,” Minhyun said, “You called me son last time. Why did you do that? Do you know where my sis-“

Baekho jolted awake in his bed, drenched in cold sweat.