We didn't start running again right away.

For a few seconds after I said it, after I said yes, the forest seemed to hold its breath.

The wind slipped through leaves the size of shields. Somewhere far off, something cracked. Ice, maybe. Or bone. Hard to tell anymore.

Nora stared at me like I'd just spoken in an ancient tongue.

"…What," she said slowly, "do you mean you know where we are?"

I shifted Kent's weight on my shoulders, adjusting my grip as his head lolled slightly to the side. He groaned faintly. Alive. Good enough for now.

I exhaled.

"Not where," I corrected. "What."

Her brow furrowed. "That's not an answer."

I glanced around us, the endless forest, the alien canopy, the oppressive stillness that felt less like nature and more like a watching thing.

Then I said it.

"We're probably on another planet."

Silence.

Absolute, complete silence.

Nora didn't laugh.

Didn't scoff.

Didn't tell me I was insane, which, considering recent events, was almost suspicious.

She just stared at me.

"…Another," she repeated carefully, "planet."

"Yeah."

"That is," she said, choosing each word like it might explode, "a very large claim."

"Mm-hm."

She studied my face. Searching for cracks. Hesitation. Delusion.

She found none.

"How certain are you?" she asked.

I didn't hesitate.

"One hundred percent."

That finally did something.

Her eyes widened, not dramatically, not theatrically, but in that subtle, dangerous way that meant she was recalibrating her entire understanding of reality.

She didn't argue.

Didn't demand proof.

She just asked, "How?"

Ah.

There it was.

The question I'd been dreading since the moment I woke up in the mud.

I rolled my shoulders slightly, buying myself a heartbeat. My mind raced, not for the truth, but for something believable enough to pass.

"Confidential material," I said.

She blinked. "What?"

"I've seen Belle reading some… restricted documents," I continued smoothly. "Ancient theories. Cosmological projections. Stuff normal people don't and can't know about."

That was a lie.

A terrible one.

Belle didn't read that kind of thing. She barely tolerated anything that wasn't directly relevant to her research, and even if she had stumbled across interplanetary theory, she would've sooner burned the pages than let me see them.

After all, she may be many things, my wonderful master, quirky airheaded roommate, and breathtakingly beautiful crush, but a liar and a snitch wasn't one of them.

But Nora didn't know that.

She crossed her arms slowly. "You expect me to believe you gained certainty about planetary displacement from secondhand glances at Belle's reading material?"

"When you say it like that, it sounds bad," I said.

"It is bad."

I shrugged. "Still true."

Another lie.

Stacking lies on top of lies felt dangerous. But telling the truth felt worse.

Because the truth wasn't just unbelievable.

It was impossible.

The real reason I knew had nothing to do with Belle.

It had everything to do with a life I wasn't supposed to remember.

A book I was never meant to read.

A story I now existed inside.

I didn't say any of that.

I couldn't.

Because if I did, she would probably try to stab me, thinking I went insane or something.

So instead, I stayed quiet, letting the forest speak for me.

Nora looked away, gaze lifting toward the canopy. She inhaled slowly, visibly forcing her thoughts into order.

"Assuming you're right," she said at last, "this raises several questions."

"Yeah," I muttered. "That tends to happen."

She ignored that. "First, how. Planetary displacement on this scale is not achievable with known magic. Even SSS-rank acsendants can't teleport outside of our planet."

I swallowed. That was true, long ago, a foolish Demon King had tried to teleport into the realm of the Goddess of Curses; they say even now he is being tortured, begging for death.

"Second," she continued, "why here?"

I swallowed harder.

"And third," she said quietly, "what kind of power would be required to do this forcibly."

That one landed.

My grip on Kent tightened unconsciously.

The entity.

The thing that wore Darge's corpse like a glove.

The violet rift. The way reality had screamed when it opened.

I'd been trying not to think about it.

Nora turned back to me. "Sebastian."

I met her gaze.

"How did it bring us here?"

The forest felt closer suddenly.

Denser.

Like it was leaning in to listen.

I hesitated.

And in that hesitation, my mind betrayed me, dragging up memories I'd been shoving down since the moment I woke up.

Pages.

Chapters.

Scenes burned into my brain from a life that no longer existed.

The novel.

Volume three.

Liam and his cohort.

An expedition gone wrong.

A planet that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.

An abandoned world.

Ruled once by a goddess.

I saw it all again, vivid and terrible.

The name.

The description.

The footnote that had chilled me even back then.

I exhaled slowly.

"There's a theory," I said carefully, "that certain entities don't travel through space."

Nora tilted her head slightly. "Go on."

"They fold it," I continued. "Or… bypass it entirely. Not by moving bodies, but by moving frames of reference."

Her eyes narrowed. "Explain."

I searched for words that weren't the truth but circled close enough to it.

"If reality is layered," I said, "then distance stops being a factor. You don't cross space, you step sideways."

Nora went still.

"That's not magic," she said softly.

"No," I agreed. "It's not."

Her fingers flexed unconsciously. "That's divine authority."

I didn't respond.

Because she was right.

This planet hadn't been reached by spellcraft or technology.

It had been claimed.

Once.

Long ago.

By the Goddess of Nature, Lysandra.

A world overflowing with life.

Untouched.

Sacred.

Until something had gone horribly wrong.

She had vanished, her angels fell, the other gods attacked, eager to claim a piece of this planet that once overflowed with life.

I remembered the description.

Unholy abominations stitched from beasts and divinity.

Forests that grew endlessly, unchecked by natural cycles.

Angel corpses half-buried in roots, wings fossilized into the earth.

A dead god's garden, left to fester.

I swallowed.

"If my guess is right," I said slowly, "then we didn't get here because of some cosmic coincidence."

Nora's voice was barely above a whisper. "Then how?"

"There is a high chance it was the Order," I said.

"The Order of Nowhere."

The silence that followed was heavy.

Nora looked out over the forest again, eyes distant, calculating.

"This world," she said slowly, "would be outside the jurisdiction of every empire."

"Yes."

"Outside the protection of divine laws."

"Yes."

"And outside," she finished, "any reasonable chance of rescue."

I didn't argue.

She closed her eyes briefly, exhaled, then opened them again, sharper than before.

"One more question," she said.

I tensed.

This was the one.

The question that had been clawing at the back of my skull since the moment I woke up in the mud.

The one I hadn't wanted to voice.

She looked directly at me.

"If that entity could bring us here," she said, "what does that imply about the power of the Order?"

My heart sank.

Because if the answer I thought I knew was correct...

Then we weren't just stranded.

I opened my mouth to answer.

And the forest, once again, seemed to hold its breath. And our adventure was about to get a whole lot harder.

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