Chapter 3: THREE METERS

Sio opened his eyes to his mother knocking on the bedroom door.

"Sio? Are you planning to eat tonight, or should I leave your dinner to develop a personality?"

For a moment, he expected to find pale stone, impossible buildings, and tentacles threaded through the walls. Instead, there was only his bedroom ceiling, the half-packed travel bag beneath his desk, and distant landscapes slowly cycling across the wall display. More importantly, there was no enormous creature trying to bite his face.

He couldn’t remember falling asleep before entering that place, and he couldn’t remember leaving it either.

Sio opened his System.

〔 CLAIMS 〕

I — UNKNOWN ENTITY

II — EMPTY

III — EMPTY

The Claim remained. So did the anomalous Scar. Whatever that impossible city had been, it hadn’t been just a dream.

His mother knocked again. "Sio."

"I’m alive."

"I didn’t ask. Food. Now."

The familiar impatience in her voice pulled a small smile from him. "Coming."

Dinner had cooled enough that his mother complained about it twice while reheating it on the sunstone built into the kitchen counter. The pale slab still held plenty of warmth gathered by the house during the day, and she moved around the kitchen with the practiced speed of someone trying to finish several things before any of them demanded more attention.

Sio ate while she worked, nearly telling her about his Claim when she passed behind him and wordlessly added another spoonful to his bowl.

"You’re quiet," she said.

"I’m eating."

"You’ve talked while sleeping."

Sio glanced at her. "Slander."

She gave him a look that made it clear the prosecution had witnesses, and Sio suddenly became very interested in dinner. He’d tell her eventually. Preferably after he figured out how to explain the part where his first Claim had tried to kill him.

Once he finished, Sio returned upstairs. He should have slept, but the memory of his front door appearing kilometres away followed him into the room.

The creature had done something similar when it attacked him. It hadn’t crossed the distance between them normally; it had disappeared into one opening and reached him through another. Whatever Sio had accidentally done outside seemed to be a smaller version of the same thing.

He placed a cup on his desk, sat about three metres away, and picked up a pencil. Trying to reach home had nearly dropped him to his knees, so whatever he’d done clearly cared about distance. Three metres seemed less ambitious.

His first attempts were useless. One produced nothing, another made the air beside his hand tremble, and a third created a black point beside the cup with no matching opening near him. Sio was getting annoyed when he stopped thinking about making an opening and remembered what had happened outside. He hadn’t wanted a portal then. He’d wanted to be home.

So he focused on two places instead: beside his hand and beside the cup.

Two tiny black points appeared.

Sio carefully pushed the pencil into the nearest one and watched its sharpened end emerge three metres away. He froze, pushed it a little farther, then pulled it back and inspected the pencil as though reality might have chewed on it.

"Okay. That’s actually cool."

Thirteen years of failed Claims had somehow led to this. Earlier tonight, he’d been arguing with a homeless rock. Now half his pencil had briefly existed on the other side of his bedroom.

Naturally, succeeding once convinced him to become less sensible.

Sio widened the opening enough for his fingertip and cautiously pushed it through. Cold air touched his skin as his finger emerged beside the cup. He wiggled it, watched the distant fingertip move, and laughed before attempting to make the opening large enough for his hand.

Pain tore through him.

The connection collapsed, and Sio yanked his finger back as the System appeared.

〈 BURDEN EXCEEDS CURRENT HOST CAPACITY 〉

He stayed there until the pain passed, then counted his fingers. Ten. Apparently, reality had returned all borrowed property.

A few more careful attempts gave him enough to work with. Shorter distances felt easier, larger openings felt much worse, and reaching somewhere outside his room proved strangely difficult even when he knew exactly where it was. Sio grabbed a notebook and wrote down the only conclusions he trusted enough to keep.

✎ DISTANCE + SIZE = BURDEN?

✎ WHAT MAKES A DESTINATION REACHABLE?

It wasn’t much, but he couldn’t stop looking at the pencil.

Sio had spent years memorizing routes to places he’d never visited, saving whatever money he could for another trip, and staring at maps simply because knowing somewhere existed made him want to see it. Now his first Claim apparently regarded distance as something negotiable.

For once, thirteen years of waiting didn’t feel entirely wasted.

Then his attention returned to the other thing he’d gained.

〈 ANOMALOUS SCAR DETECTED 〉

The excitement faded.

Claims were familiar, at least academically. Sio had spent most of his life learning about Veyr because he was one. Scars belonged to Riven, and he’d never expected that knowledge to become personally relevant.

He focused on the notification.

〔 SCAR 〕

ORIGIN: UNKNOWN

NATURE: UNRESOLVED

The openings belonged to his Claim; he could feel that much whenever he used them. When Sio concentrated on the Scar instead, something tightened deep inside him. It wasn’t painful, but it felt completely different. Using the Claim was like reaching outward toward somewhere else. This sensation remained close, responding from somewhere within himself.

Sio released it before curiosity convinced him to do something stupid for the second time that night. He added one final question to his notebook.

✎ WHAT DOES THE SCAR DO?

Three questions stared back at him. A few hours ago, his biggest problem had been finding part-time work and figuring out how to save enough money for another trip. Somehow, he missed having problems that boring.

Still, Sio found himself smiling as he closed the notebook. For thirteen years, he’d had three empty Claims and nothing to discover. Now he had more questions than answers.

For tonight, that was enough.

Several streets away, a man stood beneath the place where the sky had broken.

He had remained there long enough for the nearby solar leaves to begin folding for the night. Nothing about him would have seemed particularly strange from a distance. He wore ordinary clothes, breathed like anyone else, and occasionally blinked when the wind irritated his eyes.

Something moved beneath the skin of his neck.

The man lowered his gaze toward the path. Whatever had happened here had left almost nothing behind. A faint scrape marked the stone where Sio had fallen, and disturbed dust had already begun settling back into the narrow seams between the walkway.

The man crouched and pressed two fingers against it. For several seconds, the human face showed nothing. Then its nostrils flared.

The thing inside that body recognized what lingered there.

Something had crossed.

That alone should have been impossible, but something else was wrong. There was no dead soul waiting for a body to be taken. No abandoned shell. No newborn through which something from the Passage could have entered.

Yet something had crossed.

The man rose and remained motionless while the thing beneath his skin shifted again. Then his head slowly turned toward the path Sio had taken home.

He began walking.