Moments after gaining lucidity in his dream, the world around Caen broke away all at once, revealing a deep purple void.

Caen fell through that void with the force of a hypnic jerk, and the next moment, found himself standing on a perfectly grown, square patch of purple winter berries. It was snowing lightly all around him. Before him loomed the giant double doors of Vai’s mansion. Caen was not yet proficient enough to project into the mansion without Uncle Vai’s direct intervention.

As he took a step forward, the doors swung open to let him in. He made his way to the connective terminal.

“Uncle Vai!” he called. There was no response.

Sometimes Vai was busy with a project or having a meeting, but he always maintained enough awareness to notice when his aid was urgently needed by a relative.

“I'm going to meet my parents in Grat-line,” Caen said out loud, knowing his uncle would hear him. “I have some good news for you, by the way, but I'll see you later!”

There was still no response.

The Terminal was an ordinary-looking doorway at the end of a hall. It was hewn into the surrounding walls and resembled a typical doorway, except that it didn't actually have a door. Caen approached it, holding some complex visualizations in his mind as well as his parents’ Grat-line coordinates, which were much, much less complicated than Astral loci.

Anyone with little capacity for Dream-guarding could ply a portion of the Astral Realm through the aid of this ingenious framework that Uncle Vai had commissioned. Almost everyone else simply got implants, which facilitated entry into Grat-line. Caen, though, did not qualify for getting an implant due to his abjection.

Uncle Vai had set up a connective terminal in his domain solely for the purpose of teaching Caen how to access Grat-line without an implant. Most Astral practicians didn't need Grat implants, anyway.

Spell components in the Astral Realm entailed visualizations and immense exertions of one's will, for the most part. The spirit of a caster felt distant here, and it was just easier to have the mind do all the heavy lifting.

The spell fell apart in Caen’s mind. It was like a taut bow string being clipped, and though it did not hurt, it was jarring. He attempted the working several more times before it took.

The space within the archway twisted and contorted and wrapped around Caen like a plump second skin. The next moment, he was transported violently into a blank purple void. He was already holding a new Dream-guarding spell in his mind, while still clinging firmly to his parents' coordinates. His heart, or at least a representation of it, drummed erratically in his chest. The weight of Uncle Vai's terminal formed a thick, twisting barrier around Caen, offering protection from the surrounding void. But it was terrifying being out here. Deeply disturbing noises and incoherent, peripheral impressions scrabbled at his mind, making his casting all the more difficult. There were things that lived in this place. Specters. Astral monstrosities roaming the void. Uncle Vai had assured Caen that he would be safe as long as he remained within the terminal's shielding.

Caen's spell fell apart the first time, but his second attempt forcefully transported him to a flat plane of white nothingness. He breathed a sigh of relief. Here, he felt the soft impression of collective minds. The weight of the terminal around him was much lighter—almost delicate—as he cast the final spell.

Several failed attempts later, he was shoved through Astral space and onto the floor of his parents’ living room. His face hit the fluffy carpet there with a muffled thud, but he hardly felt any pain.

“Caen!” his mother, Sh'leinu, declared.

He sat up as she drew him into a tight hug. “Hey, Mom,” he said.

She pulled back, smiling. She was dressed in a blue cotton shift, her lush, white hair tied back into a ponytail. Her skin was more tan than his, a speculon on her forehead. “I've missed you so much, my dear.”

“It's just been three days,” Caen said, rolling his eyes but smiling as she helped him off the floor. She was shorter than him, but not by much. He looked around their quaint and compact cottage. There was an open kitchen to the left, and an oven sitting on a faux-wooden counter that only started filling the air with the scent of baking bread when he looked at it. A pair of sofas faced each other to the right, and beyond them were two adjacent doors, one leading outside. Fire cracked merrily in the fireplace without the aid of logs or any discernible fuel source.

“Did you say, ‘Caen’?” his father, Ergen, asked, walking through one of the doors in a blue shift identical to Sh’leinu's, though the shift looked smaller on Ergen’s taller frame; he was a lean man, nearly a head taller than Caen. His black hair matched his dark pupils. “Oh hey! You're here!” He rushed over to hug Caen.

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“Dad, what did you do to your hair? It's sopping wet.” Caen tried to wriggle out of his father's tight hug.

“We just got showers in here!” He released Caen. “And the pressure is something else. You should try it sometime.” He held Caen by the shoulders, looking him up and down, then glanced at his wife. “Does he look like he grew taller to you?”

“Three days is a long time,” she said, nodding sagely, as she walked over to the oven.

“Okay, you two,” Caen said, chuckling. “How have you been? How are the reclamation efforts in Odaton going?”

Ergen's casual expression grew a bit tighter, and he tapped the spot on his arm where his contract stamp was located. His shirt was covering it right now, but last time Caen was here, it'd been on full display.

Sh'leinu had put on a pair of mitts. “We can say even less than we could last time, dear.” She opened the oven and retrieved a tray of five loaves from it. “First phases are unpleasantly hectic, and it’s been rough for the survivors. But things are beginning to seem like they might be winding down here. For now, at least.”

Caen squinted. She was a bit better at navigating geasa than his father was, but her phrasing was suspicious. Even now, he could see some of the signs he'd missed. Faint circles under their eyes from lack of sleep, the slowness in his mother's movements, the stiffness in his dad's. People often presented in the Astral Realm in whatever way they saw themselves or ‘felt’ themselves. They were both in their sixties and usually never looked their age, but now they did. His parents were exhausted. They knew it to be true, and that truth was reflected here.

Ergen pulled a stack of dishes from a cabinet. “We've been cleared to come home in a few days, though.” He sounded cheerful as he said it, but Caen had caught on to the both of them.

“Tell us, dear,” Sh'leinu said, cutting into a loaf. “What have you been up to? Zeris mentioned you were working on something interesting.” She wiggled her eyebrows in the way she'd often done to him in his childhood whenever inquiring about his secret projects.

Caen wanted to tell his parents about Soul-sense and his two other bloodlines, but doing so right now would worry them more than he cared for. Rumor had it that the Planar break in Odaton had political undertones, and while his parents had been unable to confirm or deny these claims, they were clearly being worked to the bone down there. He smiled tightly and leaned against the wall. “I'll tell you in person when you get back.”

“You haven't gotten yourself into some sort of trouble, have you?” Ergen asked, looking at him in faux suspicion.

Caen let out a scandalized gasp. “What do you mean by that? I'm your most responsible child.”

“Technically, you're also our least responsible child,” Sh'leinu said as she placed a slice of doughy, fresh-baked bread on a plate that Ergen extended.

Caen sighed melodramatically as his parents laughed.

They sat on the carpet by the sofas, eating fake bread, which tasted quite nice, and chatting for hours.

* * *

“Uncle Vai!” Caen called out as soon as he materialized in the connective terminal. He was already feeling the strain of will fatigue and thus couldn't even so much as cast the spell to locate Vai. “I'm back! And I brought you bread. Well, something like that.”

“Come to the library, runt,” Uncle Vai muttered in a whisper that echoed all around Caen.

“I really like that spell,” Caen said when he got into the library. “Feels like a sound bank.”

“My arcane sagacity is beyond compare yada yada,” Vai said, waving a hand. He was hovering nearly a hundred feet off the ground. A spinning, legless table surrounded his rocking throne, and on it were piles of books and tomes. Vai probably knew a spell that could help him sift through all that material at a fraction of the speed, but his limited senses meant that he always squeezed out every possible drop of visual stimulation he could get. “Come up here quickly. I've gone through a few hundred books and found very little relevant information since this isn't really the sort of library for academic research. But I was able to distill some things that might clue us in on understanding this mysterious ability of yours a tiny bit better.”

Caen had stepped onto a floating platform and was already on his way to Vai's table. Pausing his ascent, he laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head. “Actually… about that, Uncle Vai. Um…”

“What are you dithering about? Get over here and—” Vai froze, then looked down at Caen, frowning. “Wait a bloody second. Why aren't you excited about everything I just said?” His bloodshot eyes widened. “Don't tell me. Oh, no, no, no. You backstabbing bastard! You figured something out, didn't you?”

“It wasn't intentional, I swear.”

A mirthless laugh escaped Uncle Vai’s lips. “Oh, you’d better hope to your ancestors it wasn't. Three fucking realms.” After another moment of glaring at Caen, he huffed, and the table, along with all the books on it, vanished. “Alright, then, let's see what it can do.”

Caen paused again, smiling sheepishly. “Uh… actually, I was already on the verge of will fatigue before I got here, and the trip to and from Grat-line didn't help. So…”

Uncle Vai's laugh sounded very dangerous. “Oh, this boy. This boy, this boy, this boy.” Vai opened a hole leading into his living room. Through the hole, Caen could see the humongous sea serpent taxidermy mount. The creature's eyes opened slowly.

“Hey now, Uncle Vai,” Caen said, moving backwards on his floating platform. “I can explain.”

In an instant, the sea serpent was swimming through the air, towards the hole.

“Uncle Vai, please!” Caen sped up the floating platform. “Uncle Vai! I brought you bread!”

A second later, the sea serpent was chasing Caen around the mansion while his villainous uncle laughed maniacally.

“Uncle Vai!”