The public transport vehicle was a long, segmented tube of metal and scuffed plastic that smelled of recycled air and damp wool. Kaelen took a seat by a grimy window, the motion of the transport a low, steady hum beneath his feet. He was committing to the mission with every meter the vehicle covered, leaving the familiar decay of the Veridia District behind. The price of his passage had been a few minutes of time, fed into a slot at the station, a transaction that felt more like a blood donation than a purchase. He was moving toward the Seer territories, and the journey itself felt like a betrayal of his own mind.
For the first hour, the transport slid through the outer wards, a landscape of familiar failure. Buildings sagged, their edges blurred as if seen through water. The temporal decay was a visible sickness here. A billboard for a nutrient paste flickered, its image stuttering between a smiling family and a corrupted mess of static, the moments of its past bleeding into its present. This was the cost of a broken system. This was what the Temporal Audit Commission was supposedly trying to fix, using him as the scalpel. The sight of it, the constant reminder of the stakes, should have justified his mission. Instead, it only sharpened the edges of his self-loathing. He was going to frame a woman to save this. He was going to lie to fix a truth.
He saw a woman across the aisle, her own T-Minus a healthy, placid blue, whispering to her child and pointing out the window. She was probably from a stable inner ward, a tourist to the rot. Her simple peace felt like an accusation. Kaelen turned away from her, from the window, from everything. He needed to prepare.
He pulled a small, hard-copy data-file from his coat. Using his own slate for anything other than its core, offline functions was too risky; its communication logs could be a death warrant. He had memorized the core of the mission briefing, but the cultural indoctrination required review. He forced his eyes to scan the page, a primer on the Aevum Seers. The words were a foreign language of nonsense. Auric Resonance. Harmonic Flow. The text claimed that a Seer could feel the emotional state of a room as a physical pressure, that their collective mood could alter the very flow of time in their environment.
It was a manual for a belief system, not an operational protocol. It was faith codified into jargon. He read about their governance, how committees would meet in gardens where the flora reacted to their consensus, how policy was debated through structured ritual. It was inefficient, unpredictable, and utterly insane. It was a system built on feelings, and feelings were the most corrupt data source in existence.
He let the file fall into his lap. His contempt was a physical thing, a sour knot in his stomach.
— This is snake oil, — he muttered to the window, his own reflection a pale, grim shape against the passing decay.
— Pardon?
The voice came from the seat next to him. An old man, his face a web of wrinkles and his T-Minus a flickering amber, had leaned closer. He clutched a small, woven bag in his lap.
— Headed to the Athenaeum? — the man asked, his voice a dry rustle. — For the healing pools, I’d wager. Your resonance is… tight.
Kaelen’s entire body went rigid. Resonance. The old man was trying to cold-read him, using their mystical nonsense. He was being tested before he even arrived. He had to play the part.
— Just a long journey, — Kaelen said, keeping his voice level. He forced himself to meet the man’s watery eyes. — The outer districts take their toll.
The man nodded slowly, a gesture of deep, unearned empathy. — Aye, they do. But the Seers, they know how to smooth the flow. They can help you find your harmony. You just have to be open to it.
Kaelen gave a short, noncommittal nod. He wanted to tell the man that harmony was a function of balanced equations, not wishful thinking. He wanted to explain that his “tight resonance” was the logical anxiety of a man on a mission to betray everything he stood for. Instead, he said nothing. The silence was his only shield.
The old man seemed to take his silence as contemplative. He smiled a little. — You’ll see. It’s a different way of being. A better way.
The man then turned back to the window, leaving Kaelen alone with the echo of his sincere, idiotic belief. The brief conversation had cost him his focus, leaving him feeling exposed and raw. He was a fraud, and even this dying old man could sense something was wrong with him, even if he diagnosed it with the wrong tools.
He reached into his pocket and his fingers closed around the obsidian charm. He pulled it out. It was a smooth, cold stone, polished to a black mirror. The mission file from Felix Hayes had called it a focusing tool, something to help an adept channel their intuition. He held it in his palm, a solid piece of the lie he was now living.
He closed his eyes, trying to follow the instructions he had memorized. He was supposed to clear his mind, to feel the flow of time around him, and to channel his inner state into the stone. He tried to focus. He thought of the mission, of the red digits of his T-Minus, of Seraphina Vey’s face on the file. His mind was a storm of logic, risk assessment, and guilt. There was no calm, no flow. There was only the hard, cold reality of his choice.
He focused all his anxiety, all his fear, into the charm. He squeezed it until his knuckles were white. He imagined pushing his very essence into the stone, a desperate attempt to force a result. Nothing happened. The obsidian charm remained inert, a dead weight in his hand. It didn’t glow. It didn’t hum. It didn’t do anything. His intuition level was zero. He had no resonance to give. The price of his rigid, logical life was the utter inability to even fake the alternative.
He opened his eyes, a wave of cold sweat on his neck. He felt like a child trying to move a rock with his mind. A fool. A fraud. The mission required him to betray his own principles, and he couldn't even make the props work. The comfort of his own certainty, the one thing he’d always had, was gone. He was adrift in a sea of nonsense, and he didn’t know how to swim.
A soft chime echoed through the transport. An automated voice, smooth and pleasant, filled the cabin.
— We are now approaching the border of the Aevum Seer territories. Estimated distance to the Sunken Athenaeum checkpoint is five kilometers. Please have your credentials ready for the Aura Audit.
Kaelen’s head snapped up. Five kilometers. The theoretical part was over. The journey was ending. He looked out the window. The landscape had changed. The temporal decay was gone, replaced by a strange, vibrant green. The architecture was still old, but it was whole, covered in thick, flowering vines. The air itself seemed clearer, the light softer. It was the result of that Harmonic Flow, he supposed. A collective delusion so strong it reshaped reality.
He slipped the cold, useless obsidian charm back into his pocket. It felt heavier than before. He was a man of logic and procedure, about to be judged by a system that had neither. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, illogical drum.
The transport began to slow.
He had to pass their test, a test he was fundamentally incapable of understanding, let alone passing honestly.
He had to become the lie.
