The universe would grow far older before she woke again.

“…Flee! Faster! As fast as you can…!”

There was turbulence in the great rushing river of mind.

And in that turbulence, here and there, souls emerged from the background wash. Each brief fleck suffered a moment of terror before falling back into the greater dreaming whole.

One of those flecks was Anlic.

In the sudden dark she clung to herself. She slithered to a stop.

Transient identities clustered around her. “What are you doing? Why are you staying here? You will be harmed.” They sought to absorb her, but fell back, baffled by her resistance.

The Community was fleeing, in panic. Why?

She looked back.

There was something there, in the greater darkness. She made out the faintest of patterns: charcoal grey on black, almost beyond her ability to resolve it, a mesh of neat regular triangles covering the sky. Visible through the interstices was a complex, textured curtain of grey-pink light.

It was a structure that spanned the universe.

She felt stunned, disoriented. It was so different from Mine One, her last clear memory. She must have crossed a great desert of time.

But — she found, when she looked into her soul — her questions remained unanswered.

She called out: “Geador?”

A ripple of shock and doubt spread through the Community.

“…You are Anlic.”

“Geador?”

“I have Geador’s memories.”

That would have to do, she thought, irritated; in the Conflux, memory and identity were fluid, distributed, ambiguous.

“We are in danger, Anlic. You must come.”

She refused to comply, stubborn. She indicated the great netting. “Is that Mine One?”

“No,” he said sadly. “Mine One was long ago, child.”