The magma below was a distant haze, painting the city in hues of orange, yellow, and red. A few shouted from within the now dark streets. The woman with her baby cooed it back into calm when it cried.

"Kell?" Cyri spoke again, his voice coming from the dark next to them. Kell could barely make out the worried look on his face. Power outages were quickly becoming a norm within the ravines, but whenever they did happen, the darkness brought with it echoes of fear first heard on the surface when the sun first died.

They studied his face in the dark. His wrinkles turned into thin red lines by the light of the furnace fire. Kell stepped back. "I-I need to get off the trolley," they stuttered. "I need fresh air."

Without waiting for Cyri's response, they bolted off the trolley and ran.

Kell dodged past stunned spectators, taking advantage of the mania in the dark. They tumbled past walls and stands, careened over the unruly cobblestone streets. The cold wind bit and scratched at their cheeks as they ran, wild and frigid, and as they squinted against it they could see the woman's green scarf bobbing in between citizens straight ahead. She heard the commotion behind her and turned to look over her shoulder. Her scarf rippled in the wind -- wild dark eyes, sun-tanned skin, silvery hair. Her face was young. She was frightened.

How did she have that wrench? It was -- it had disappeared -- into that thing that briefly consumed the landing gear. It was gone. Their mind raced with question after question. Who was she? Why was she scared? Why did she target them?

A quiet little voice added: why chase after her? They could have stayed on the trolley with Cyri to wait for the power to return, just as they were supposed to do. It would have been safer than blindly running after someone who had tracked them down for a reason they couldn't surmise -- and that was what they assumed it to be, with the gadget in her hand and the look in her eye.

They had to know. They had to understand.

Maybe they simply wanted a reason to run. The thought was lost to them, taken away by the wind that whipped around their face.

The woman turned a corner and Kell followed, their feet pounding against the cobblestone. Bruises collected on their shoulders and arms as they slammed against people in the crowd. They shielded their face from harm and spat out apologies behind them. They grew closer. Their legs burned with energy. They skidded into the street until they followed her into the alleyway, and as soon as the woman took notice, she swept a leg out. It collided with an empty stall and sent it slamming down. The string of lights connected to it were torn from the wall, whipping at Kell with a sudden velocity that stopped them dead in their tracks.

They leapt over the mess and pushed themself forward. Their heart pounded. They were gaining on the woman. If they reached out, they could grab the neck of her coat and pull her backwards. Their hand stretched as they ran, but each swipe only met air.

They looked ahead. This alleyway was a dead end. Kell knew this, and prayed that the woman they were chasing did not.

"Who are you?" they shouted as they ran. That was abrasive. They hesitantly clamored, "I-I'm just curious!"

The woman shouted over her shoulder. "Get away from me!"

At the end of the alley was a blocked off door, one that hadn't been open in ages. The woman slammed against it. She frantically tugged at the handle and mumbled pleas under her breath. She looked up at the sign plastered onto the door -- RESTRICTED ACCESS: CORE ENTRY -- in big, blocky red lettering.

Kell had cornered her. They took a heavy, ragged breath as they stared her down. The woman turned, pressed her back to the wall, and waited with wide eyes. As Kell studied her, their gaze centered on the wrench, the insanity of this entire moment dawned on them: chasing after a stranger because she pointed and stared and happened to have something they lost. She could have been admiring the skyline behind the trolley or looking at the stars. Anything -- it could have been anything. But why did she look so scared?

Kell's curiosity whispered otherwise. They were already on edge. That was enough to spur them into this wild chase.

"Do something," Kell said, their voice little more than a trembling whisper. "You wanted my attention so bad. Do something. Say something."

The woman glanced down at the gadget in her hand. The screen flickered; from their perspective of the see-through screen, a small map sat in the center, pinging a confirmation only she understood. It made her acknowledge Kell with a frightening recognition.

"It's you, isn't it? Causing all this?"

Kell wrinkled their nose in surprise. Her voice was soft, yet hoarse, as if she hadn't spoken in years. It had a sort of age that seemed a lie in comparison to her youth, but she spoke in a false tone and timbre, forced down in an attempt to hide her identity. No matter her attempt, it was laughably bad.

Regardless, her question could bring no answer. It was too vague, and it only tugged Kell's curiosity further. They pressed. "What do you mean, 'all this?' All what?"

The woman glanced up at the sky, as if some obvious answer was being missed, then turned her gaze back on Kell. Something in her stare was familiar, haunting in a way that made Kell itch to learn about. She pointed at her gadget and granted Kell a better look, if only by waving it about in the air in front of them. It was by all means simplistic, but the technology was far greater. How could she create a screen out of nothing?

It beeped as she waved it about, yelling louder before dropping to a mumble, only growing in volume when it pointed to Kell. She murmured to herself, pacing in the little space the alleyway provided. Her boots clicked against the stones and dirt. "That explains it -- all these rifts, all these abnormalities -- there's a catalyst! Of course there is!"

As they listened to her ramble, their curiosity clamored to spill out of them. They pressed their mouth shut, but as soon as she took even the slightest pause, they spoke. "How do you have that wrench?"

The woman whipped her head around, glaring at Kell. Honestly, she had good reason to be so standoffish; Kell did just chase after her. A sliver of her silver hair slipped from underneath her scarf. She scrutinized the pilot with narrow eyes. "The wrench. The- that's all you care about? That's it? Just a wrench?"

The woman stepped forward, readjusting her scarf to cover her face once more. Kell's mere existence seemed to bother her. She pulled the wrench from her pocket and held it up in the air, pointing at them with it, and they could see just underneath her hand that Cyri's name sat waiting, confirming their haunting suspicion. "Tell me everything odd you've noticed lately. These power outages, right? And lots of other things?"

"Give me back my wrench," they said. Kell swiped at the wrench, but just before it was in their grasp, the woman pulled it away from them.

"Tell me," she said once more. Vigor fueled her. She stepped closer again. The tides were slowly shifting, and she was no longer the one being chased. Instead, it was Kell catching fire under the lens. They inched backward.

"The outages happen all the time," they said, but their voice was not steady, and the woman caught that with a quirk of her brows. "What are you trying to get at?"

"Sure, sure," she said. "But there's so much that isn't making sense. Why are these outages even happening? Shouldn't the mere existence of the core make them impossible -- or, at the very least, immensely improbable?"

The core -- that was what powered Kepla after the sun died. A massive geothermal generator in the center of the planet, drinking magma like wind and warming the world. The other two goddess planets had their own cores as well, but... there was no problem with theirs. It was only Kepla. Kell opened their mouth, then shut it. The woman didn't grant them a moment to pause as she rambled on.

"And there's all these... changes, too. That's what you could call them. Changes. Have you noticed those?"

"Like what?"

The woman tilted her head. Quietly, she walked a circle around Kell, occasionally poking at them. Their brooch, their vest, the fluff of their cloak. They swiped at her hand.

"You need a new cloak," she muttered.

"I've heard," they sneered, flinching away from her touch. "Answer me. Like what?"

She raised a hand and circled it idly as she thought, musing. "Things changing in slight ways. Memories telling you something different than what your eyes are seeing. Morphing into new figures entirely -- so many new variables. It could make a person go crazy -- but everyone on the goddess planets just turns a blind eye!"

Turning away, she marked something down on her screen. Then, she turned back. "Take where we are for example. Didn't you make two turns to get to this dead end? Why can we see the street, then?"

Kell turned on their heel as fast as they could. She was right. Behind them was a crowd of people, and past that, the trolley. But they had taken two turns, hadn't they? They made a mess of the stalls and storage left in the alley -- but that was gone, too.

"Crazy," they whispered, echoing the woman's remark in their own dubious tone. "Right."

The landing gear changing; the wrench disappearing -- the wrench appearing here, now, with a woman who whispered about the world so skeptically. The door slamming shut when Cyri couldn't even shut it. The voice on the Wintertide radio that certainly wasn't him trying to warn them. And more beyond that, still lingering in their distant memories. Things that they chose to ignore because it was simpler than questioning. There was always something strange waiting to be noticed, but wasn't that just the nature of life itself?

The woman analyzed Kell's face. She seemed satisfied with herself; it glimmered in her eye. Perhaps she was pleased that they were doubting themself now, or that she had gotten them to falter.

"You're an odd character, too," she said, as if halfway in realization. "It's like the world moves just for you when it waits for no one else. Why is that? Something had to have happened to you."

Kell swallowed. Their heart skipped a beat too fast. "I-I don't... know what you mean."

She wasn't supposed to know that. Even they barely understood it.

They refused to think of it. Kell pressed their mouth shut and felt the ground beneath them grumble. Deep below, the workers of Kepla were trying to fix the core. They could sense it slowly reawakening. The woman knew this. There wasn't much time before the lights above them would reignite and they would be found.

"No, you do know," she said. She pointed the wrench at them again. It sat inches away from the tip of their nose. "And you need to stop. You don't know what you're doing."

She paced closer. Kell backed away. They brandished their tightened fists as a warning, but the woman only gave them a simple glance.

"You're endangering all of us, don't you know that? I'm trying to fix everything -- all these anomalies -- and I can't do that when someone's so keen on littering their garbage wherever they please! You're messing everything up!"

"Kell!"

From around the corner, Cyri shouted their name. The woman's eyes went wide, and she backed away, fearful of being found by someone other than Kell. They knew their window was slipping away from them, growing ever smaller. If they wanted answers, they needed them now.

"Wait," they said urgently. "Wait, I don't understand. Who are you? What am I even doing wrong? How do you know about..."

They couldn't bring themself to speak of it aloud, or even think about it. Locked up in their mind, it was something that should only be known by them and them alone, hidden from the rest of the waking world and any prying eyes that inhabited it.

But they had to know. They had to understand. They had to find an answer to what they've seen time and time again in the recesses of their half-asleep dreams and vague, incomprehensible memories. It was intangible within their mind. They had to put a name to it.

The woman scowled, but Kell's confusion lit a match, setting her frustration ablaze. She grabbed their arms. "Does it matter? Just -- just cut it out! Stop whatever you're doing to the rifts and live out the rest of your stupid little life on this sorry excuse of a planet!"

"Excuse me?"

Rifts? Stupid little life?!

They tried to wrangle the woman off of them, but she only held on tighter. Scared, Kell grabbed her arm and wrenched the screen of her gadget towards their view. Ghalira, it read. She tore herself away from them. She began to speak -- a simple "stop this" -- only to freeze when her gadget pinged. Her eyes widened.

Static babbled from the small machine and the sudden flurry of grating noise made Kell back away and slap their hands over their ears, overwhelmed by the shock of it. The woman turned and fiddled with her machine, holding it out before her. From it erupted a mass of white light, bright and blinding. It painted the alley walls in an eerie curtain of flickering color, unearthly in ways Kell could barely understand. In the center of it all was the door, still donning its restricted access banner. The woman turned to Kell once more, glaring at them. In one hand was her gadget. In the other was their wrench.

Now!

Kell charged at her. They clawed for the wrench in her hand, only to be forced back by her arm. Clambering and swiping for it, the two were caught in a wild wrestle, one desperate to steal and the other desperate to keep. Their hands wrapped around metal, and just as they were tugging at it, she pushed them away and disappeared into the white void.

When the light dissipated, Kell blinked, adjusting their eyes to the blooming dark with a wince. The woman was gone, and with her, any hope of answers. They glanced down to the wrench in their hands --

And sitting there instead was the woman's screen, still glowing bright. It glimmered with text and images spoke of anomalies, of peculiar sightings and things going wrong.

They glanced up, and saw the door standing where the woman once did, glitching and fizzling with the remains of the electricity that had consumed it. RESTRICTED ACCESS, the sign read, CORE ENTRANCE. The words were written in an ugly black font.

It was red before, they remembered. Red letters on the tin sign. An anomaly.

That was what these all were -- the voice on the radio, the landing gear, the wrench. The woman herself. Anomalies.

Kell heard Cyri approach behind, resting a hand on their shoulder as he caught his breath. They held the two rectangular bars and clamped them together, and the screen fizzled away. It went tucked into their vest, hidden beneath their cloak.

Cyri's voice was anxious. "Kell, what's going on? Why'd you run off? Are you okay?"

Kell could not move. They could not speak. They only stared at the once red, now black lettering of the sign and struggled to understand the woman's cryptic warnings. They only returned to the present when Cyri shook their shoulder. As they turned to him, Zomir grumbled and yawned, springing back to life and cascading its blinking light within the channels of the city. An audible sigh of relief was passed between the crowds of people in the streets. The city returned to its normality, content to live in their light. Not a soul had even noticed the woman in the alley. Not even Cyri.

"Let's go home," Kell mumbled. They shook off his hand and stalked back into the crowd.