"We're going to have to one way or the other," I said, the rest of my little entourage conversing with each other about the safety of what lay in front of us. While the buildings looked relatively pristine on the inside, it was clear that something entirely different was occurring within.

There was no formal door to speak of, just an open entrance. Inside, it was dark, to the point of washing out all the form of the interior. Celistar had given us some light to look with, but it didn't help clear up the confusion. There just didn't seem to be much of anything in there, just a formless void.

It wasn't cracks in reality like the Grey Void, it just wasn't. I'd tried to probe it out with my powers, but the individual tendrils met a hard wall right where the doorway was. Then they were consumed, just disappearing from my control. Meanwhile, we saw… nothing. Not even a glimmer of light.

Finally, I got annoyed with everyone tipping around things and just walked up to the entrance, attempting to make contact with it physically. I'd coated my arm with a thick layer of Nebula, but as soon as my hand grew close, the shadow ran away.

Wait, ran away?

"That bastard," howled Viktor, and he blew past me so fast I barely glimpsed his features. Clearly his nemesis, the shadow, was thoroughly on his shit list and wasn't about to make a quick escape again.

Tiny tendrils of flame blew back from the point of impact as Viktor launched a punch with enough force to tenderize anything it landed on.

A deafening bang rang out, echoing repeatedly across the empty space in front of the skyscraper. The staccato sounds built on top of each other until it sounded like he'd punched many times in quick succession, although I was mostly sure that wasn't the case.

Mostly. This being Viktor, any fist-related shenanigans were definitely fair game.

"Yay, I got it!" The big man said in a voice that I'd never heard before, like a kid in a candy store. He had a giant smile plastered on his face. Dude liked simple pleasures… I could get behind that.

I patted him on the back, still trying to rectify the discord in my head. "Good job," I said, with no trace of judgement.

Even though the way had cleared into the interior, we encountered another curveball. The inside led to more outside. There was just a straight tunnel right through the building, as near as I could tell. It made no sense.

Utterly unwilling to trust my eyes at this point, I probed the space as I'd become accustomed to doing. Sure enough, it seemed to just go directly through: no passing go, no collecting Nebula.

"Guess there is only one thing to do then."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

That tunnel wound up being a lot longer than it looked light. To be fair to me, the other side was also a lot brighter than it looked like, so it'd washed out the tunnel and made it seem shorter.

What was inside, though, was nothing short of stupendous. It made no sense. None. We'd been to the other parts of the city, and this was so out of place it made me blink my eyes to see if it would resolve back into a mess of angles and squares.

Ornate, delicate carvings that would not have looked out of place in Yuèyīng's chambers adorned verdant promenades alongside shimmering waters, inside of which swam orange fish beneath the shade of wide lilies.

Celistar looked a bit stricken at the sight, which was not the reaction I'd been expecting. I laid a hand on her shoulder, causing her to drift her attention to me, although the look of borderline panic was still all over her features.

This shouldn't be here, she said, her voice shaky even through the mental link. This garden was destroyed thousands of years ago. Or so I'd thought.

Is it possible it just looks familiar? I asked.

She shook her head, but didn't seem too sure about it. Maybe the intervening years haven't been kind to my memories. I was relatively young at the time.

I released her shoulder after having given it a squeeze. I did feel a little awkward being the one to comfort her, considering she was taller than me by a fair bit.

Better looking too. The world isn't fair, I tell you.

Our footsteps weren't nearly as loud here. The rich foliage draping over the flawless sculptures worked effectively to dampen the sounds. It was a bit of relief, but there was a lot of other noise here that could mask the approach of any number of things.

I let the Nebula waft off of me, feeling just the area of our immediate surroundings. I was definitely getting better at this little sensing trick, but walking, talking, and manipulating too much power would definitely make my poor brain melt down.

So, instead, I let it just passively dissipate once it escaped our immediate area, not exerting my will on it any further. It would have felt wasteful, but I'd never really felt the depths of my reserves, and there was no reason to suspect that this would be any large drain on them.

I'd keep an tabs on it either way, no use setting myself up to flag out out of sheer stupidity - even if I did tend to be pretty good at that sort of thing.

I snapped my attention back to reality. The difference between the two components of this city could not be more jarring, and I wondered why there was such a large gulf between them.

It seemed as if a toddler with a fetish for blocks constructed the former parts, and someone tore out this current bit from a particularly vivid lucid dream.

I kept an eye on Celistar as we walked, watching her shoulders tense as we made each twist and turn in the path, which seemed to have a singular destination.

It was as though something was making her smaller as she went, shrinking her down.

Before long, I realized it wasn't just her shoulders. The Moon Goddess was in fact getting smaller. Not just resizing her existing self, either. She appeared to be aging backwards, becoming closer to the child she saw in her own memories.

We rounded a corner, and before us lay a scene of destruction. The beautiful work of the artisans who had built this place destroyed, debris scattered across the garden in small pieces.

A pair of the most beautiful people I had ever seen lay upon vividly colored mats, fruits I didn't recognize disturbed from their resting place to adorn the table.

"Father, mother!" called out Celistar, rushing to them. She tripped several times on her own hem, unused to her own legs, even falling to the ground one. Reaching them, she collapsed to the floor. A whisper of her power pulled them into her arms.

She looked back at me with a child's face, messy with tears.

"Benefactor…" She called out.

"Help me."

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