"You morons!" Lia yelled, yanking a bolt out of her shoulder. "I will tear your arms off and roger you to death with the wet end!"

"Stand down, Revenant!" a guard shouted from the parapet of Sablewyn, his reloaded crossbow aimed at the centre of Lia's chest with all the confidence of a man who was well fed, had his paperwork in order and had massively thick walls between him and the woman he'd just shot. Behind him, I could see a bunch more guards running to line up, all bristling with weaponry

"We already told you!" Lia snarled back. "I'm not a Revenant!"

"That's exactly what a Revenant would say!" one of the other guards yelled, his voice cracking under the pressure. This wasn't going all that well. Lia looked like she was about three seconds away from dismantling the entire palisade and using their crossbows as toothpicks.

"Whoa, whoa!" I said, stepping in front of Lia, trying to project an aura of calm while simultaneously wondering if the guy with the -3 in Charisma was in a position to attempt to deescalate this sort of situation, "Let's just take a breath, everyone. We don't need to turn this into some sort of Revenant hunt. I mean, look at her! Does she look dead to you?"

"She was killed by Balethor the Magnificent!" shouted the lead guard, who clearly fancied himself the hero of this little showdown. "We all got the notification days ago! Everyone in Sablewyn knows it!"

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow, throwing a glance at Lia. "You didn't mention you'd been Magnificently killed."

Lia's teeth ground audibly. "I was unconscious! How was I supposed to know the local gossip?" she glared up at the guards again. "I'm not a Revenant, and I'm definitely not here as a pincushion for your crossbow bolts."

The guards looked less convinced. Maybe this was a Revenant who just had really good arguments?

"Listen," I called up, "if she were a Revenant, would she be standing here, talking to you instead of, I don't know, trying to gnaw your faces off?"

"Maybe. But perhaps Revenants are smarter than we thought!"

Lia's hand twitched toward her sword, and I could see the barely controlled fury in her eyes. "If I were dead, trust me, you'd already be in pieces."

"Right! Exactly! See?" I threw my hands up like that was the end of the matter. "No gnawing, no tearing, just a very angry and very alive person who would very much like to come in for a sitdown and a chinwag."

The guards hesitated, but I sensed the tension wasn't easing. Lia was glaring up at them, her hand still on her sword hilt. "All the aggression isn't helping with the 'I'm not a monster' thing here, you know?"

She turned her icy gaze on me, and for a second, I thought she might kill me instead. "Shut. Up."

"Fair enough."

Suddenly, one of the older guards shouted down, "We need confirmation from the Elders before we let you in! You stay put!" He disappeared from the parapet, leaving the rest of the guards still aiming their crossbows at us.

Lia let out a long, exasperated sigh. "I swear, if one more person calls me a Revenant, I will become one just to rip their heads off."

"Maybe I should handle the next bit of diplomacy," I offered, stepping slightly behind her for cover.

She glared at me but said nothing more.

***

The funny thing is, the earlier part of our journey had been largely pretty chill.

In fact, the walk to Sablewyn had been almost pleasant by my standards of existing in Bayteran. No wolves. No Dungeon delves. No insane alchemists threatening to disturb the fundamental laws of nature. After the surge of adrenaline from the fight with the Rebels had faded, and then the tension of the Lia/Scar stand-off, it had actually been a pretty nice walk.

Just me and Lia frolicking through some semi-haunted woods.

Well, no. Of course, it wasn't like that. Lia stalked ahead like someone on a mission to murder every branch that dared to brush against her, leaving me in her wake. But it was companionable-like. So much so, we even had the opportunity for some mild musings. "You know, I think Scar's going to run things better than I ever could."

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"Well, obviously," Lia replied. "You appear to have zero experience in Village administration and seemingly even less desire to learn. But Scar? He knows what's needed. Anchorfall will be all the better for having you absent for a time."

Oof. Unnecessary. "I mean, sure, he's good and everything, yeah. But do you think we're safe leaving everything to him? I mean, what if the Rebellion comes back?"

Lia slowed her pace, turning to look at me. "Your village is established upon an Accumulation Pool. As long as the repairs go through, it will be secure enough for now. Villages take time to grow, and yours is still in the early stages. Trust your Steward. He will do you right."

"You sound like you've done this before?"

"I've been involved in building more than a few forward camps for the Empire," she said. "Though they were a bit more organised than what you're attempting."

"Sure, sure," I said, trying to pretend a zillion pairs of spooky eyes weren't tracking our progress. And then I broached another topic that had been playing on my mind. "About your time in the Medical Hut... what was it like being in there? I mean, being out for a few days. What do you remember?"

Lia frowned at that, the question seemingly catching her off guard. "I... had dreams."

"Dreams?"

"Strange ones," she said almost too quietly for me to hear. "I was living a life in another world. One completely different to this one. I had never seen anything like it."

That piqued my interest. "What was it like?"

Lia shook her head, clearly baffled by her own memories. "It's hard to explain. There were all these... massive boxes on wheels, moving faster than any horse I have ever seen. And people were sitting inside them, like it was the most normal thing in the world. And everywhere I looked, people had these small glowing rectangles in their hands, almost like they had their own personal system interface, but... different. And everyone had them, even the children!"

I stared at her, the bottom falling out of my stomach. Lia didn't notice, though, and carried on with her tale.

"There were buildings. Huge towers made of glass. And everywhere, people were walking around holding cups of . . . I don't know, some kind of drink with cream and sugar in it. They were purchasing them from . . . I think it was a mermaid? But that makes no sense, does it?"

Oh dear.

Lia's words kicked something loose in my brain. Glass towers. Speeding cars. Coffee-to-go. Every one of my internal alarm bells was shrieking. She'd been to Earth in her coma, hadn't she?

Not metaphorically. Not like when someone goes, "Oh my god, same!" because you also enjoy sandwiches. This was my world. Right down to the detail of a sky so full of fumes it hurt to breathe. She wasn't guessing. Whilst she'd been recovering, she'd been there.

I didn't stop walking, but something in my chest shifted. Like a gear had slipped and now everything was just that tiny bit misaligned. The Well of Ascension. It had to be involved. I thought it was, somehow, a bridge between the worlds. But what if that was too generous? What if it wasn't a bridge? What if it was a leak?

A rip in the fabric of reality, bleeding the wrong dreams into the right minds?

Was Lia's mind just wandering through my memories like a tourist on a half-remembered city break? Or was something to do with the Veil happening? To the Threshold? After all, if she could drift into my world during a dream, about the Shadow beings? Could any of them move across? And, if they could, how long would it be until the border stopped being a border at all?

The Threshold was breaking, wasn't it?

"You okay?" Lia asked. "You've got that look."

"Yeah, I'm good," I lied, picking up the pace. "Just thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself."

"Cheers for that."

***

Nevertheless, by the time we reached Sablewyn, my unwelcome thoughts had mostly quieted, helped along by the fact that the gates were in sight. I know I should have been feeling a little more relaxed at the sight of civilisation, well, as much civilisation as the Empire offered, at any rate, but that changed the moment we got closer, and the first crossbow bolt whizzed past Lia's ear.

"By the Maker's name!" she roared, her sword already out of its scabbard.

I froze, torn between diving for cover and telling them to knock it off before Lia decided to go full 'Dark Wren' on them. Whoever was up in those guard towers clearly had terrible aim, but that didn't mean the next one wouldn't get lucky.

"Hold your fire!" I shouted, waving my arms in a completely non-threatening way that only succeeded in making me look like a man trying to swat invisible bees.

"Have you aggroed them?" Lia yelled

"Think it's you they're after," I said, doing my best not to lose my head, literally or figuratively. And then one of the second flurry of bolts caught her in the shoulder.

"I'm going to kill all of them," Lia growled, seemingly shaking off the traumatic injury as if it were a hangnail. "All of them. Slowly."

"Right, but let's just put that plan on hold for a sec," I said, stepping in front of her as the guards' whispers grew louder. "We need to think this through. You can't just—"

"I know what I can and can't do," she snapped. "But if they call me a Revenant one more time, I swear—"

"Maybe we'll tell them you're just a very annoyed, living person, who likes her space? And not being shot?" I suggested, earning a withering look. Then, just as things were on the verge of exploding, there was a deep creak, and I watched the gates begin to open.

Lia's hand stayed tight on her sword, but she didn't immediately charge forward. Good. Progress.

A figure stepped through. He was tall and wrapped in flowing robes that swirled dramatically, as if the wind was working overtime just for him. Classic Elder move. He came to a halt just beyond the gates, well short of Aggro Magnetism range, his face shadowed by a deep hood.

But it wasn't the mysterious posturing that set my nerves alight. It was what he said next, in a voice so calm, it might have been mistaken for disinterest.

"Lia. Your father... well, we believed you were dead..."

And with that, the gates creaked wider, revealing a path that led straight into more trouble than I'd anticipated.

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