A few hours later found Sev sitting in the midst of a pile of old books and papers, slowly poring through them. Not for the first time, he wished he had Vex with him — the lizardkin would be done with all these in an instant. He'd reached out through the system already, but apparently there was something going on in Teque that Vex and Derivan had to handle, first; for now, he was on his own.

There was something about flipping through these old papers that made him... ache. The familiarity was part of it. He had memories of writing these notes. He recognized the handwriting, the shaky scrawl that he wrote in when he was excited or nervous or just hadn't touched a pen in a while.

These were notes that had been preserved across the Reset. The whole place he was in right now was fortified, in a manner of speaking. Aisha had partially explained it, but he remembered building this place; a small pocket just outside of reality, not unlike a dungeon but with a wholly different purpose.

Something needed to be maintained between Resets, or the whole thing was just for naught. This was where he kept projects he thought might give them a chance. This was where he chased down every new lead, everything they found that might allow them to preserve their universe. To preserve Obreve.

He remembered, too, every time one of those leads ran into a dead end. Either because the method he thought might work didn't, or because the tools he wanted to use vanished, consumed by the Void. Even the people that might be able to help him were gone. The various species that had once populated the other continents, their advancements and their magic...

All of it was gone now. All the friends he'd made, the different people he'd met — all their stories, their hopes and dreams.

With his memory returning, he was the only one that remembered them all.

"Shit," Sev muttered to himself. His eyes were wet. He sniffed, leaning away from the old parchment so his tears didn't soak into the paper and damage it, and took a moment to gather himself.

So many memories.

He wished, more than ever, that his friends were with him now.

With a sigh, Sev got to work.

Hours passed.

Papers lay scattered all around Sev. His hair was a mess from how many times he'd run his fingers through it, trying to think; he was going through all the documentation he could find on his plans, and one thing stood out to him as their only chance.

Grand Anchors. They were paradoxically both his first and last attempt at finding a way to circumvent the encroaching Void. He'd started working on them early on, but the biggest problem with the Grand Anchors was that they didn't just make a passive record of reality, like the Prime Anchors and their network of smaller anchors did. The Grand Anchors were built not to maintain, but produce. He'd built three of them; a Grand Anchor of Magic, of Reality, and of Divinity.

None of them were functional when he'd first built them, but they weren't meant to be. Producing a fundamental aspect of the universe wasn't a problem he could solve by himself. Each Anchor was built to run its own simulations and calculations, to analyze every universal Reset: to record each contraction and subsequent expansion of their universe and observe how each aspect came into being.

There was an order to it. Divinity came first, the divine planes reconstructed and then repopulated. Magic came next, flooding into the world and infusing everything with mana. Then the raw substance of Reality, upon which everything else was built.

With each Reset, the Grand Anchors became a little more complete, a little more capable — but even still, it wasn't enough. It became increasingly clear that they would not be finished before their universe was lost entirely. He'd started looking for other ways out, then, other solutions that might save the world they lived in.

Nothing else had worked. Everything lead to a dead end. Not even the gods themselves had a solution for the end of the universe.

So... backup plan it was. The Grand Anchors still existed, and they did, in a manner of speaking, work. They just couldn't operate themselves automatically the way he'd originally intended. Instead, they needed a guiding mind, someone that was capable of understanding the nature of the Grand Anchor. Someone that could guide its function and embody its Concept.

Vex, in that vein, was perfect for the Grand Anchor of Magic. That left two more — the Anderstahl one would, at least, be easy enough to get to, and the last one...

Sev's heart dropped, and he let his head hit the desk with a thud.

The last one was gone.

Each of the three Prime Kingdoms carried one of the three Grand Anchors that he'd made. The problem was that the third and final kingdom—the kingdom of Divinity—no longer existed. Not as far as he knew, anyway.

That was going to be a problem. It was possible—likely, even—that the Grand Anchor still existed within its Vault somewhere underneath where the kingdom had once been. The problem with that, of course, was that it would just be in the middle of the Void.

There was no guarantee they'd survive the journey to get to it, in other words. And without the last Anchor...

Sev let his head hit the desk with a thud. His notes were insufferably long, and thinking about it too hard made his head hurt. Even if they were able to get the final Grand Anchor and found a host for each of them, he wasn't certain his plan would work — there was no guarantee that each anchor would be able to produce enough of their Concept to sustain the universe.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Explains why and how a reality anchor got attached to Misa, though," he muttered to himself. In retrospect, he probably should have questioned how it was that the anchor had settled so easily into her; the answer now was obvious. He'd modified the system at some point in the past to allow people to bond with anchors in preparation for this last resort.

There was a knock on the workshop door. Gerald pushed it open a second later, and a wave of heat accompanied him; Sev winced and constructed a quick barrier out of golden energy so that heat didn't ignite the dry, ancient paper he was surrounded by.

"We've got the guy you asked for," he said. "The sun elemental."

"Sun elemental?" Sev stared. "I just asked for a flame elemental. Or, uh, a strong source of fire-aspect magic."

"Yeah, well, not many flame elementals left, and I happen to have a sun elemental as a friend," Gerald said with a shrug. "You need him now?"

"The sooner the better," Sev said, feeling at the stone in his pocket. In truth, he wasn't sure that this would help them at all—but it was as good a bet as any.

Phoenixes embodied rebirth. There had to be something there they could use. Something there that could help.

Sev couldn't help but feel, just a little bit, like he was headed toward yet another dead end.

"A semerit," Raltis said. The otter stared at the center of the table, where Vex had placed the [Semerit of the First Library]. "You're telling me the legends are real?"

"Shouldn't you know more about this than I do?" Vex asked, bemused.

Raltis huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. "I suppose. But things here aren't exactly well-connected anymore." He inclined his head toward the Roads. "You might've noticed those of us in Teque don't really know as much as our surface-dwelling counterparts."

"I did wonder," Derivan said.

"It's because we're all so isolated," Raltis said. "A lot of us are communities that were remade some time after the so-called end of the universe. And we lost a lot of history in the initial stages, when we were all evacuating underground. A lot of memories, too. Not just history, not just people. What little we were able to preserve is precious."

"And the stars?" Vex asked.

Raltis's smile was sad. "Not much reason for us to remember anything about the stars when we're all underground," he said, gesturing up to the mana river floating above them. "I think more of us were concerned with survival than with preserving what we could remember of the surface. Or maybe it's just that we couldn't really remember much of the surface at all. Hard to say. And we had a replacement that was just as beautiful."

The mana river above them almost seemed to respond to those words. Its hues shifted from light blues and royal purples to the lightest shade of pink and yellow, and a few sparkling drops of magic fell from above, raining down onto the rooftops below. Vex couldn't help but gaze up at it too. It was a phenomenal sight even now — perhaps especially so, with Teque and Fendal joined together.

Something about that union seemed to make the mana that sustained this place almost... joyful. He could see it in the way the mana flowed with more energy than ever before, the way it was responding to the words of its residents.

"It is strange how the mana here acts almost like a living weather system," Derivan remarked after a moment, following Vex's gaze. "But we are getting distracted, I think. Surely there is something you could tell us about these semerit that could help us?"

"It's all myths and legends," Raltis said. "I wish I had something more concrete. I haven't even looked at those books and legends for a while; far as I can tell, half of it is just made up, and the other half is... probably exaggerated. Stories about the stars dancing prophecies into the sky, about new worlds being written about in books. We can try to sort it all, certainly, but... it's going to take time."

"Not like we've got anything else to do," Novice finally said, speaking up for the first time in a while. He'd been staring contemplatively at the semerit for a while. "I think I remember reading a bit about them the other day. In one of the older books."

Raltis narrowed his eyes at Novice. "Did you go into the forbidden section of the library again?"

"...Maybe."

"...What did you learn?"

"Something about how they signify change?" Novice shrugged.

"That's what the Librarian told me," Vex said. "I—Wait. You have a forbidden section of your library?"

"Not all books are safe," Raltis grumbled. "Although Helg... was the one that organized that section of the library. So it's possible..."

The otter fell silent, clearly lost in thought. Vex caught the spark of guilt in his expression, though he didn't call it out. There was nothing more to say about it.

"I think what I read was that they're seeds of potential," Novice said. "Normally, you'd use them to make new spells. New glyphs. Or, well, not 'you' — but the Librarians. Or whoever's in charge of that kind of thing."

"Not sure creating new glyphs helps us right now." Vex frowned slightly. "It does match what the Librarian told me, though. It's just that Change and Stability should be able to help us craft most of the spells we need, along with this translation-aspect you've told me about."

"But there is more to your semerit," Derivan pointed out.

"You mean what the system said in the item description?" Vex glanced at it again. "I don't know what 'contains one temporal paradox' means. Or how we're supposed to use it."

"You changed the course of events in a kingdom, did you not?" Derivan asked. "Perhaps that is the paradox. An event that both happened and did not."

"That... makes sense." Vex paused, thinking about Derivan's words. "You think we can use that somehow? Bring the Kingdom back?"

"You believe you can use the [Spelldisk], along with translation-aspect magic, to restore that which has been erased," Derivan said. "But most such things are buried deep within the Void. Here, you have an opportunity—your semerit already partially undoes one such erasure through a knot written into time. Why not start there?"

Vex stared. "Derivan, I could kiss you."

Derivan paused for a long moment. "I am waiting."

"...You know what?" Vex said. "You're not going to fluster me this time. I'm going to do it."

"Very well."

Vex stalked up to Derivan, crossing his arms; the armor stared down at his boyfriend, equal parts amusement and affection in his eyes.

They kissed. Derivan cheated a little, using the Slime stat he had to give himself just enough of a mouth and a tongue to make it comfortable.

It was a good kiss.

Across the table, one otter and one lizardkin glanced awkwardly at each other, then quietly slid out of the room.