Thea’s heart thudded heavily in her chest, each beat syncing uncomfortably with the steady rumble of the transport beneath her. The vibrations, the dim lighting, the faint scent of metal, sweat, and oil—it was all a bit too familiar.

  Memories she would have rather buried forever clawed their way back to the surface.

  She swallowed hard.

  “How… how do we do this, exactly?”

  Her voice came out more uncertain than she would have liked, but she trusted the Runepriest to know what he was doing.

  The Runepriest, meanwhile, simply leaned forward, meeting her eyes before responding.

  “Don’t worry, Thea. Nothing is going to happen to you here.” His voice was steady, reassuring. “We’re just creating a digital reproduction of the Awakening. We’re not actually going to induce any Psychic state in you or anything like that—it’s all just smoke and mirrors.”

  He gestured slightly to the space around them.

  “At any point, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, simply tell the Sovereign to stop, and the entire simulation will shut down. No delays, no waiting. Everything will freeze, and you’ll have time to recover. Alright?”

  Thea exhaled slowly.

  Somehow, that reassurance helped.

  She hadn’t even considered the fact that she could stop this whenever she wanted. Just knowing she had an out made the whole thing a little easier to face.

  She took a steadying breath before giving the Runepriest a small but slightly more confident nod.

  His grin returned, pleased with the response.

  “As for how we’ll actually do this,” he continued, his energy shifting back into something more instructive, “it’s simple: You recount exactly what you remember, step by step, and the Sovereign will recreate the scenario as you describe it.”

  He gestured vaguely, as if motioning to the unseen mechanisms of the DDS itself. “This should allow me to get a close estimate of what actually happened during your Awakening—giving me something to work with when it comes to explaining what it all means.”

  Then, raising both hands in a placating gesture, he added, “Of course, keep in mind that what I say will still be mostly conjecture.”

  His smirk returned. “Highly educated, deeply experienced, and exceptionally well-reasoned conjecture, of course, but conjecture nonetheless.”

  His expression turned just a shade more serious, “It is not possible for us mere humans to fully grasp the cosmic implications of our universe and the Void colliding. No one truly understands what happens during an Awakening—not completely. If anyone ever claims they do, shoot them.”

  He leaned back slightly, chuckling at his own remark, folding his arms. “But, I do have a bit more of an understanding when it comes to Psychic phenomena. And I’ll do my best to explain the things that can be understood.”

  Thea felt torn.

  On one hand, she dreaded having to relive the experience—having to drag up memories of what was, without question, the worst moment of her life. The raw terror, the suffocating madness of it… she didn’t want to go through that again.

  But at the same time…

  The promise of answers was too enticing to ignore.

  ‘Somehow, I feel like I shouldn’t be this curious about this stuff…’ she thought, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Like, what is this actually going to do for me? It’s not like I can change anything about the Awakening now, so what’s the point of learning about it…?’

  She chewed on the thought, but the curiosity didn’t fade.

  Because that was who she was.

  Thea had always been hungry for answers, always searching for understanding—it was something buried deep within her, something she had carried since before she even had the words to explain it.

  ‘Maybe the answers themselves will put my mind at ease…’

  The idea settled in her chest, grounding her.

  ‘Not having this giant question mark of “what the fuck happened there” lurking in the deepest parts of my mind… yeah, I could see that helping, actually.’

  She took a deep breath and slowly rose from her seat, her boots pressing firmly against the rumbling metal floor of the transport.

  Her eyes drifted across the cabin, taking in every detail.

  The Marines were there—just as they had been last time.

  She could even see the familiar hunched-over form of Karania at the far end of the transporter, tending to a wounded Marine. She was focused, steady, moving with that strange mix of calm efficiency and intense energy that was uniquely her.

  Thea’s fingers curled into fists.

  ‘They’re not real,’ she reminded herself. ‘They’re just reproductions from the Sovereign… Even Kara.’

  She repeated it again. And again.

  She needed to cement that thought—because she knew exactly what was about to happen to every single person inside this transporter.

  Thea exhaled slowly, forcing her muscles to relax, her mind to accept what was coming.

  She could do this.

  “Smoke and mirrors,” she quietly echoed the Runepriest’s words.

  Then, after one last breath, she began to recount her Awakening as best she could.

  “The second I accepted the Attribute distribution, I felt a strange pang in my chest—a sort of pressure—and this overwhelming sense of dread…” Thea said.

  She turned and pointed toward the seat she had been in earlier. “I was sitting right there—”

  Before she could finish, an exact copy of herself appeared in the spot she had indicated, seated just as she had been back then, eyes wide and frantic.

  She flinched slightly.

  Even though she had expected it, seeing herself like that—frozen in a moment she remembered so vividly—sent an unsettling shiver down her spine.

  Shaking it off, she continued.

  “I was panicking, so I figured asking Kara about what I was feeling would be the best thing to do. I figured I was having a panic attack of some sort or another. So I jumped up and rushed over to her.”

  Her simulated self mirrored her words perfectly, springing up from the seat and rapidly striding across the transport toward Karania, who remained crouched over the wounded Marine.

  The simulated Thea reached out a hand toward Kara…

  “And then I felt… I guess the Gate open?” The real Thea hesitated, struggling to put the sensation into words. “It’s hard to describe, but it was like a hole had suddenly formed—right behind my heart. Like something had just… torn open.”

  Her fingers curled slightly as she tried to remember the exact sensation. “And then everything… shifted.”

  The Runepriest nodded, his eyes still fixed on the simulated version of her, watching as the scene played out before them.

  “Hmm. That does sound about right,” he mused. “Funnily enough, though, the feeling of the Gate opening is almost assuredly not the start of your Awakening. I’d wager that even the moment you stood up from your seat wasn’t happening in the real world anymore.”

  Thea blinked. “What?”

  The Runepriest turned to her now, gesturing back toward her original seat.

  “Think about it,” he said. “When you came to again—after the Awakening was over—where were you?”

  Thea frowned. “…Still in my seat.”

  “Exactly,” the Runepriest said, crossing his arms. “And nobody around you was asking why you had suddenly jumped up mid-transit and rushed toward the Squad Medic. At least according to the reports I have read. That means there are only two possibilities.”

  He raised a finger. “The first is that everyone around you experienced a form of general amnesia, where you actually did move, but then everyone else forgot about that part in specific. Not unheard of—but highly unlikely.”

  Then, he raised a second finger. “The second, and far more likely reason, is that you were already within your Awakening from the moment that strange feeling started to intensify and you decided to stand up.”

  Thea’s stomach twisted slightly.

  ‘I wasn’t even in reality anymore by the time I moved…?’

  That realization sent a ripple of unease through her.

  She had always assumed the Awakening had begun after she had already taken action. But if the Runepriest was right… then the instant the pressure in her chest began, she had already been somewhere else entirely. That meant she had never even stood a chance to react to it, because it had already happened by the time she realised something was up…

  “What… what is the Awakening?” Thea asked hesitantly, trying to make sense of it all. “Like, in terms of real and not real? Was it all some sort of… dream? Did any of it actually happen?”

  The Runepriest cupped his chin, thinking it over for a moment before replying. “In a way, it was real. But also… not.”

  He sighed.

  “I wish there was a simple way to explain it, but there isn’t. The best way I can put it is this: The Awakening ultra-charges your Psychic Powers. Whatever your initial Path, Power, and Inheritance combination is, will determine what your Awakening looks like.”

  His eyes locked onto hers. “For some, that means their Awakening manifests as a Perditio-tinged Fireball, one large enough to obliterate everything in a wide radius around them—if they fail to close their Gate in time. And that last part is important.”

  He raised a finger. “Anything that happens within the Awakening is only a possibility. It will not affect the real world as long as the Psyker closes their Gate and survives the Awakening.”

  He let that sink in before continuing. “But if they fail—if their Gate remains open—then everything that happened inside the Awakening becomes real. It will manifest in the material world, exactly as seen.”

  Thea’s breath caught.

  She thought back to the horrific, destructive outcomes she had seen during her Awakening—the impossible horrors, the sheer wrongness of it all.

  The paths she had apparently almost taken.

  Her mind was already forming a dozen questions, but before she could voice any of them, the Runepriest lifted a hand, signaling for her to wait.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Now,” he continued, “your case is a bit more special.”

  He leaned forward slightly. “You are a Short-Term Precognition Psyker with the [Glimpse] Power. [Glimpse] allows you to look a few moments into the future, as you’ve already realized. But on top of that, you are a Veritas. And that means that anything your Glimpse reveals is the True future, at all times. It will come to pass, unless directly prevented by someone with the ability to alter timelines. Such as Mutatio, Veritas, or Obscuritas Psykers—among a few other exceptions we’ll cover in later sessions.”

  He sighed, almost ruefully. “This is why I said that anything you saw was real. Because it was. It would have happened.”

  He folded his hands together, his expression unreadable. “Technically speaking, it already had—inside the Void. That is why you were able to see it at all. Veritas can only perceive what has already happened in the eyes of the Void.”

  Thea’s brows furrowed as she tried to follow the Runepriest’s logic.

  “So you weren’t just seeing possibilities,” he clarified. “You were seeing inevitable futures. Because that is what a Veritas Precog does. And because of the Awakening, your Gate was ripped wide open, allowing more Energy to surge through you than should have been possible. This amplified your Power to an extreme, showing you more than you would normally ever be able to [Glimpse].”

  Then, the Runepriest smiled.

  “But,” he said, his voice carrying a note of satisfaction, “you resisted the Void. Whether you knew it or not, you changed the True future multiple times.”

  He tapped a finger against the armrest of his chair. “That’s why you saw multiple visions, instead of just a single one. Each of them was a very real, guaranteed end to your Awakening—each of them a future that would have happened had you followed along with it. But you didn’t. You fought back. Again and again, you rejected the outcomes placed before you. And every time you did, you altered the course of the Void’s reality.”

  His smile widened. “Until, finally, you clawed your way back to your Gate and closed it—erasing those futures entirely and pushing forward with your own, True future.”

  He clasped his hands together in his lap before leaning forward slightly. “So, to reiterate: Everything you saw was real. It has happened. Within the Void, those futures did come to pass—but they never touched our reality, because you denied them entry. Your Gate was the only viable entry-way, and as the guardian thereof, you simply told them to bugger off. The Void, because it lacks the very concept of Time itself, allows for all of these things to be true at the same time.”

  He gestured loosely, as if trying to give shape to an idea too vast to hold.

  “You can both be dead and alive. Or even have died in multiple different versions of the True future, while still sitting here, very much alive and kicking in the material plane.”

  Thea’s head spun as she tried to wrap her mind around that.

  The Runepriest let out a small chuckle as he took in her expression.

  “I get that it’s all extremely esoteric in nature and makes absolutely no sense,” he admitted, amusement laced through his tone. “So here’s the version of the explanation I usually give to people: ‘What you saw was just a vision. Nothing that happened inside it affected our world, because you closed your Gate in time.’”

  He leaned back slightly. “That usually helps people come to terms with it.”

  With a smirk, he added, “But since you’re a Veritas, I figured you’d at least like to know the truth. That all those things did happen—inside the Void. They just never managed to cross over into the causality of our universe.”

  Thea simply stared at the Runepriest for a few seconds, her mind struggling to process the information she had just learned.

  ‘What the fuck does any of this even mean…? It all happened, but only in the Void? It can all happen, and I could be dead? I likely am dead, inside the Void? But like… another me? That isn’t just a copy, but actually me?’

  Her thoughts raced, looping back in on themselves as she tried to grasp the implications.

  Hesitantly, she asked, “Does… does that mean I’d die if I entered the Void? Since I’m already dead there?”

  The Runepriest shook his head immediately. “No, of course not. There is a version of you in the Void where you are dead, yes. But that moment doesn’t actually exist here, in our universe, until you truly die.”

  He leaned his head back slightly, as if sorting his thoughts. “The Void is only… grasping forward in time, so to speak. The ‘you being dead’ state is simultaneously true with the ‘you being alive’ state inside the Void. But in our universe, there is only the ‘you being alive’ state—until the day you actually, truly die.”

  He gestured faintly, as if drawing the connection in the air itself. “If you were to enter the Void now, you wouldn’t just be stepping into its reality fully—you would be bringing a part of our universe with you. Just like, as a Psyker, you constantly bring a piece of the Void into our universe as well. It’s a constant give-and-take, a cycle of pulling and pushing between the two planes.”

  He nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied with his explanation, before gesturing toward Thea with an easygoing motion.

  “But let’s not get too philosophical about all this—we unfortunately don’t quite have the time to waste.”

  He smirked slightly. “Funnily enough.”

  Then, waving a hand toward the simulation around them, he added, “Now, go ahead and continue your recounting, so we can both get out of this training hall before Zephyr starts yelling at us.”

  Feeling a bit of whiplash from the abrupt shift in topic, but having gotten somewhat used to it over the past few hours, Thea quickly shook it off and refocused, drawing her mind back to the exact details of her Awakening.

  “So… I was trying to reach Kara,” she picked up where she had left off. “But then I heard this super deep thump, and everything just… shifted. I was back…”

  She moved toward the center of the transporter, placing herself exactly where it had happened. “Here. All of a sudden.”

  The simulation responded immediately, the perfect replica of herself reappearing beside her, the simulated Thea mirroring the same confusion and disorientation she had felt in that moment.

  “Everyone else was frozen, but I wasn’t. So I tried to get back to Kara again, but everything felt so… wrong. Like I was moving through mud.”

  She exhaled, pressing her fingers against her temples as she tried to recall every detail. “Then there was another thump—I got shifted again, and I found myself standing right next to…”

  Her voice trailed off as she moved over towards the location she remembered.

  Then, her eyes widened.

  “What… that’s not…” she muttered, her heart rate spiking as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

  The Runepriest’s hand suddenly landed on her shoulder, firm and steady. “What’s wrong, Thea?”

  She swallowed. “There… There’s somebody missing.”

  Her hand lifted, pointing at an empty seat.

  A seat that, without a single doubt in her mind, she knew had been occupied.

  A seat where a Marine had sat. A Marine she had subsequently killed in her Awakening.

  The Runepriest’s expression darkened slightly as he turned his gaze toward the missing figure.

  “Sovereign,” he said, gesturing at the empty seat, “why is this spot empty? If this was a reinforcement transport to the frontlines, it shouldn’t be empty.”

  Immediately, the Sovereign’s calm, artificial voice filled the space. “The corresponding Marine for that seat had been held back by local command at the forward HQ for another task. No replacement could be found in time before departure. The transport left with the space unfilled.”

  “No.” Thea’s voice was sharp. Too sharp.

  That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. She knew it wasn’t right.

  She stepped forward abruptly, her entire body going rigid as she stared at the seat, her mind rejecting the Sovereign’s answer outright.

  “That can’t be!” she snapped, her own voice startling her. “I know someone was sitting there! I remember it!”

  She was breathing faster now.

  She moved instinctively, standing in the exact spot she had been in after that first shift during her Awakening.

  “I was right here, just like this,” she said, pressing her palm against the cold metal wall beside her, grounding herself in the present as her memories flooded back. “I was trying to figure out what the fuck was happening, and that Marine—he started talking.”

  She whipped around, staring at the empty space like sheer force of will alone would force it to fill.

  “He was talking shit. Asking what was wrong with me. Calling me a Cyan—with that disgust in his voice…”

  The air felt thicker.

  Thea’s eyes darted around, scanning the transport again, desperate to find something—some detail, some misalignment—anything that could explain this.

  Checking whether she had maybe gotten the wrong seat.

  But everything was exactly as she remembered.

  Except for the Marine. He was just gone. Like he had never existed.

  Her voice dropped slightly as she continued. “I remember there was another thump… right before I asked myself—’how does he even know I’m a Cyan?’ I had my helmet on. Full visor. He couldn’t really have known. I don’t exactly go around announcing myself.”

  Her throat tightened. “And then…”

  A tremor ran through her fingers. “I had this… thought.”

  Thea slowly turned, her breath catching slightly as she locked eyes with the Runepriest.

  “This strange feeling. Like… I could—” she hesitated, then forced the words out, her own voice feeling foreign to her. “I thought, ‘I could kill him before anyone could stop me.’”

  The realization slammed into her all at once. Her head snapped up, eyes wide.

  “I swear I would never do such a thing!” she said quickly. “I would never hurt another Marine, I swear!”

  The Runepriest didn't react immediately.

  Instead, he simply watched her for a few seconds, his expression unreadable—calm, measured, like he was giving her space to process her own words.

  Then, in a deliberate motion, he reached out and placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.

  His grip was firm but not forceful, grounding her in the moment.

  "Thea," he said, carrying none of the alarm or doubt she had feared. "I believe you."

  She exhaled sharply, still rattled.

  "I've spent enough time with you now to begin to understand roughly the kind of person you are," he continued. "And I have absolutely no doubt that you would never do something like that. You don’t need to convince me of it, because I already believe you."

  The tension in her chest loosened, just slightly.

  "And," he went on, "the thought wasn't entirely yours to begin with. At least, not in the way you're thinking."

  Thea blinked, staring at him. "What?"

  The Runepriest gave her a small nod, as if he had already expected that response. "The displeasure you felt—the frustration, the sting of his words—it was real. Your emotions in that moment were real. But what you thought, was not your thought. It was the Call of the Void."

  A chill ran down her spine at the mention of the Call.

  She had never quite understood what the other Psykers had meant with the Call, but it was starting to all fall into place now.

  "The Void doesn't speak to us, not in the way people think," he continued. "It doesn't whisper ideas into your mind or force you to act. It’s not an external voice at all. It simply calls—an echo, responding to whatever you are feeling, whatever impulse you give it at the moment. A moment of hurt, of resentment, of anger… and it latches onto it, feeding it back to you as a thought. Insidious and subtle, like it is your own, but twisted and amplified."

  "So that's what that was?" she asked quietly.

  The Runepriest nodded. "The Call. Nothing more, nothing less."

  She closed her eyes for a brief second, taking a slow, measured breath.

  That made sense—or at least, as much sense as anything related to the Void could. The thought hadn’t been some hidden, dark desire lurking inside of her, just waiting to break free. At least not in the way she had thought.

  When she opened her eyes again, she felt a little steadier.

  But the Runepriest wasn’t done yet. His gaze flickered back to the empty seat, his expression shifting into something more thoughtful.

  "That said," he mused, rubbing his chin, "there is something odd about this Marine being missing. The Awakening doesn’t invent things. It only shows what would happen if a Psyker failed to close their Gate. It doesn’t just make things up—especially not with Veritas in the mix. It is impossible for the vision to show you something that doesn’t exist. Any vision you received should have been something that was not just a real, True future, but also singular in nature, with no alterations to reality itself. Which means…"

  His brow furrowed slightly. "There should be no chance for an errant, non-existent vision to suddenly appear."

  His fingers tapped against his armoured robes once before he turned sharply toward the air, addressing the unseen intelligence overseeing the simulation. "Sovereign, double and triple-check the information regarding this Marine."

  The response was immediate.

  "I have already done so five times, Venerable Runepriest," the Sovereign replied, its voice just as calm and mechanical as before. "There are no errors in my records."

  Thea tensed as the Sovereign continued.

  "The Marine in question was never aboard this particular transporter during the Assessment. They got to the frontlines via a different transporter entirely, later that same day. The seat in question was empty from the moment the transport departed to the moment it arrived at the frontlines. Nobody had ever occupied that seat. Not even momentarily."

  A slow chill crept through Thea’s body.

  She stared at the empty space, knowing that what the Sovereign was saying could not be true. Because she remembered that Marine.

  She remembered his voice, his body language, the disgust in his words.

  She remembered killing him in cold blood.

  And yet—According to reality itself, he had never been there at all…

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