Lucid climbed the short ladder to the hatch on the ceiling. A circular metal door, sealed shut. He knew it was suicide. A fifty-fifty chance whether opening it would blast him out into a vacuum or if the train's protective field extended just enough to hold the air in. He didn't know the rules here.
"Listen to me, Lucid," Alice's voice was a sharp, clear command in his mind, devoid of its usual playful lilt. "A human cannot survive out there! You do not know the conditions!"
She really did want what was best for him. He knew that. But sometimes, you had to trust your gut. And right now, his gut was screaming that sitting in a dead train waiting to be hit by space debris or a cosmic whale was a worse plan.
He ignored her. He heard the words, but he didn't let them take root. He was silent, focused. His hand closed around the heavy locking wheel on the hatch.
He closed his eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. An old habit from a life that felt a million miles away.
He opened his eyes, looking up at the metal.
"Think carefully," Alice urged, her voice softening to a plea. "This could be very dangerous."
"Danger?" he muttered under his breath, the sound lost in the hum of the control panels. "Why are you scared of danger now?"
With a grunt of effort, he twisted the wheel with one hand. It gave way with a heavy *clunk*. He braced himself, then shoved the hatch up and open.
Nothing happened.
No explosive decompression. No rush of wind. No terrifying silence. The air in the cabin didn't even stir.
He stood up slowly, pushing himself through the opening until he was standing waist-deep in the hatch, his upper body protruding into the open void.
Nothing. He felt nothing. No pull, no pressure. The temperature was normal. He smelled nothing but a faint, clean dusty scent. The view was breathtaking. A vast, star-dusted purple expanse in every direction. Above him, a distant, bright light source, not a sun, but something, cast a soft glow. He couldn't tell if they were above it or below it; there was no sense of up or down. He turned his head and saw the twin moons hanging in the void, one a pale silver, the other tinged with that persistent, unsettling red. It was all mesmerizing.
He pulled himself up fully, standing on the roof of the control cabin. The gravity was faint, more like a gentle suggestion. He didn't float away, but he felt incredibly light.
In the distance, he heard it. A sound that shouldn't exist in a vacuum. A deep, resonant series of whistles and low moans, like a whale song heard from the bottom of the deepest ocean. It was beautiful. Gentle. Almost... inviting.
"See, Alice?" he said, a note of triumph in his voice. "I told you it would be—"
A sensation hit him then, not from outside, but from deep within his own body. A shivering, violent shaking that started in his bones and rattled outwards. His teeth chattered.
"Hshhshshs," the sound escaped him. "I-it... is cold."
It was a deep, penetrating cold that had nothing to do with air temperature. It was the cold of absolute emptiness, of infinite distance, seeping into his very soul. His fingers began to numb.
A familiar, gentle green light blossomed around him, enveloping his body in a soft, warm aura. The shivering subsided. The biting cold receded to a dull chill.
"Lucid, please," Alice's voice came again, but it was different. Softer. Gentler. There was no scolding, no teasing. It was a sincere, worried plea. It felt... wrong on her. Unfit. "Do not act without reason."
He brushed the oddness aside. He had a job to do. He took a careful step forward on the roof of the train, the material firm under his boots despite the weak gravity. He looked down the length of the carriages, then at the glowing golden rail they rested upon. Further ahead, the rail simply ended in a jagged break. The narwhal's passing had shattered it.
He jumped. It wasn't a fall; it was a slow, graceful drift downward. He landed with a feather-light touch on the wide, solid pathway of light that was the rail itself. He looked back up at the break. The golden, materialized fate essence was frayed and scattered.
He looked around, listening. The whale song came again, that deep, vibrating call through the void. But this time, something was wrong. The note was different. It was layered with a raw, aching resonance. It sounded like it was in pain. The sound pulled at him, not with violence, but with a profound, sorrowful need. He was drawn to it.
He didn't realize he was moving until Alice's voice crashed into his mind, urgent and sharp, shattering the illusion.
"Lucid, snap out of it!"
He blinked. He was standing at the very edge of the broken rail, one foot half over the abyss, leaning toward the source of the song.
"Oh... my," he breathed, stumbling back a step. He took another deep, steadying breath, forcing his focus back to the physical problem.
He turned and walked toward the break in the rail. He crouched down, inspecting the shattered ends. Glowing motes of golden fate essence drifted from the broken edges like embers.
Could he fix it? He could absorb pure essence. He could manifest the Chains of Heart. But to manipulate raw fate essence into a solid, complex structure like a rail? He'd practiced making simple balls of light. This was architecture.
He had to try. He had to do *something*.
"Chain," he whispered.
Focusing on his will, a single, brilliant white chain manifested from his forearm. Then another. And another. He poured his intent into it, not shaping them for a weapon or a grapple, but simply summoning more length, more substance. A torrent of shimmering links erupted from him, cascading down into the void below the rail. He could feel Alice's presence strain; this was using her essence, her connection to him, and it was taking a toll. But he pushed on.
He looked back at the broken gap. Then, deliberately, he stepped off the rail.
Alice gasped in his mind.
He fell, but it was a slow, drifting descent. As he fell, he grabbed two of the endless chains he had summoned. They were solid in his grip, cold and smooth. He stopped his fall, now hanging in the middle of the void between the two broken ends of the rail, suspended by the white chains in each hand. He dangled there, a man hanging between two strands of light over an infinite drop.
Alice was utterly confused. It looked like madness.
The whale's reverberating call sounded again, closer now, filled with that same desperate pain.
"Lucid, get out of there!" Alice yelled, trying to break the song's hold.
'This narwhal... it's not normal,' he thought, fighting the compelling sorrow in the sound. 'It's affecting me.'
'Breathe in. Breathe out.' He steadied himself. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he began to swing. He yanked on the chains, using his body weight to create momentum. In the low gravity, it was a strange, wide, slow arc. He swung back and forth, each swing carrying him a little higher, a little further.
Alice fell silent, watching. It was like observing a fascinating, terrifying dance.
The final, powerful swing brought him level with the rail again. He let go of one chain and grabbed the rail itself with both hands, hauling himself onto it. He was dizzy, disoriented by the lack of proper gravity and the swinging. He quickly looped the lengths of chain around the solid rail, securing them.
He looked across the gap. On the other side of the broken section, further to the right, another intact rail ran parallel to theirs for a stretch. His plan, insane as it was, formed completely.
He took a few careful steps back on the rail.
"Don't lose your footing, Lucid," Alice whispered, fear coloring her voice. "You can always go back to the carriage and—"
Before she could finish, he ran. He sprinted toward the broken end of the rail and, with all his strength, jumped.
The weak gravity launched him in a high, soaring arc across the gap. He was flying, for a moment truly flying, over the endless purple nothing. The whale song swelled, a symphony of anguish right in his ears.
"Get out of my head!" he screamed into the void, his voice swallowed by the silence.
As he began his descent toward the other, parallel rail, he expanded the Chains of Heart still connected to the first rail. More chains shot from him, lancing out to wrap around the new rail ahead. He caught them, his hands burning as they took his weight, arresting his fall.
He now hung suspended between the two separate rails, a living bridge of white chains and sheer will, his body the connection point.
Now came the hardest part.
He pulled.
He was trying to move a rail made of solidified cosmic energy. A rail that supported a train weighing thousands of tons. With a roar of effort that tore from his throat, he hauled on the chains. The muscles in his arms, back, and shoulders screamed in protest. He felt the skin of his palms tear, warm blood slicking his grip on the chains. Sweat beaded on his brow and instantly chilled in the void's cold.
But it was working. Inch by agonizing inch, the parallel rail began to bend, to shift toward the broken end of the first one.
He swung himself up, using the chains as leverage, putting his entire body into the next pull. He gathered every ounce of focus, every shred of Fate Essence he could channel, momentarily pushing Alice's worried voice and the whale's song into a dull background hum.
"GRAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!"
With a final, Herculean heave, he swung and pulled with all his might.
The two rails snapped together. The broken ends fused, the golden light flaring brightly before settling into a seamless, continuous path. The repair was complete.
He had done it. He had reversed engineered the celestial tracks.
As the last of his strength vanished, his muscles gave out. His grip on the chains failed. He fell, tumbling slowly away from the newly repaired rail, utterly spent, his hands bloody, his essence drained.
He looked toward the train, a distant silver sliver on the golden line.
Then he looked to his side.
The narwhal was there. In his entire field of vision. A colossal, living nebula of blues and purples, its crystalline horn gleaming, and it was moving. Not toward the train. Directly toward *him*.
"Shit!" he tried to move, to twist in the air, to summon one last chain, anything. But he was empty. A spent battery. He was adrift, a helpless mote before the cosmic creature.
The whale's cries grew louder, more beautiful, more profoundly sad.
"Why..." he breathed, his thoughts fuzzy. "Why is it in so much pain?"
It didn't feel hostile. It felt... needy. It needed to be embraced. It needed to be accepted.
He found himself turning toward the source of the echoing song. He stopped fighting. He faced the oncoming behemoth. He reached his hands out, not in defense, but in a gesture of open, foolish welcome. Extending them as if to embrace it.
"It's... it's okay," he muttered, his voice a faint thread. "I'm here. Come to me."
The narwhal, a breathtaking storm of wrong and right colors, closed the distance in a silent, blinding rush.
The next moment, there was no impact. Instead, he felt a deep, guttural *thrum* resonate through his entire being, starting at his core. It wasn't painful. It was... overwhelming. A flood of sensation, of ancient loneliness, of cosmic sorrow.
The narwhal had not struck him. Its shimmering, crystalline horn had passed through him, or he through it. He was enveloped, carried within a current of light and sound, a passenger in its agony. He looked into one of its vast, star-filled eyes. The colors were mesmerizing. He felt his consciousness slump, surrendering to the ushering pull of a deep, profound sleep, carried away into the endless void not by violence, but by an echo of unbearable grief.