The Pattern and the Price

The Cost of Living Between Worlds

Hakeem hasn’t fully existed in singular reality for three years.

He still functions. Teaches new navigators. Leads crossing expeditions. Performs his duties as Flowing Trace elder. But anyone who knows him well can see the difference.

The way his attention drifts to patterns only he perceives. The slight delay before he responds to questions, as if translating from one language to another. The moments when he’s clearly listening to something no one else can hear.

Sareth notices it most during morning ritual. She watches him trace the daily inspection pattern—checking boundary conditions, reading atmospheric signs, calculating window stability for the day ahead. His movements are practiced, automatic. But his eyes… his eyes track things that aren’t there.

Or things that are there, just not in this realm.

She knows what she’s seeing. Fifty years of crossing between worlds leaves marks deeper than the silver that threads through his hair. This is what mastery costs. What partnership requires. What awaits every navigator who continues the work long enough.

Hakeem will keep teaching until he can’t anymore. Until the day he steps into shimmer and doesn’t step back out. Until his awareness finally lets go of physical reality entirely and flows into the Mirage Realm permanently.

He knows this. His students know this. The whole tribe knows this.

And they honor him for it.

Because he chose to pay the price so others wouldn’t have to. Because he maintained vigilance that kept boundaries stable. Because he transformed himself into permanent bridge between worlds so that others could cross safely when needed.

“You’re staring again,” Hakeem says without looking at her.

“Sorry.” Sareth looks away. “I was just—”

“Wondering if you’ll end up like me.” He turns to face her fully. For a moment, his eyes focus entirely on this world. Entirely on her. “You will. If you keep crossing. If you dedicate yourself to navigation the way I did.”

The certainty in his voice makes her throat tight.

“Is it worth it?” The question escapes before she can stop it.

Hakeem considers. His gaze drifts again—not away from her, but through her, perceiving layers of reality she can only glimpse during active crossing.

“Ask me again in fifty years,” he says finally. “When you’re standing where I am. When you can see both worlds simultaneously whether you want to or not. When your students look at you the same way you’re looking at me now.”

He touches her shoulder. The contact grounds him. Brings his attention fully back to singular perspective.

He smiles.

“Until then,” he says, “just remember: transformation isn’t failure. It’s the price of expertise. And some knowledge reshapes those who seek it.”

Reading Time in Glass

The Glass Plains stretch for miles—fused sand crystallized by ancient magical conflicts, creating surfaces that reflect and refract light in patterns that shouldn’t be possible.

Helean has been standing before one particular glass formation for six hours.

To outsiders, it looks like she’s simply staring. Standing motionless. Doing nothing.

But Helean is working.

Reading the layered visions preserved in dark glass formed when the great binding ritual turned sand to crystalline record. Processing information that exists simultaneously across time and space. 

The glass shows her multiple timelines at once.

Historical events already occurred—she sees the ritual as it happened seven centuries ago. Seventeen circles carved across desert. Elders dying as they created the containment pattern. Blood soaking into crimson sand. The entity’s awareness fragmenting, scattering, binding.

Future possibilities not yet determined—she sees three different paths Guild incursions might take. Rifts forming at predicted locations. Boundaries failing if maintenance protocols aren’t maintained. Outcomes branching and branching, over and over again, based on choices not yet made.

Present patterns unfolding across the desert—she perceives dai’mnae movements through the Mirage Realm. Intersection point fluctuations responding to lunar cycles. The binding circles’ energy distribution creating ripples that affect boundary stability hundreds of miles away.

All of it. Simultaneously. Overlapping. Interpenetrating.

How does she hold it all without breaking?

That’s the question Sareth asked when she first learned about Glasswalkers. The Obsidian Eye Tribe’s specialists who can read visions in fused glass. Who perceive both realms simultaneously with such clarity that they require years of training just to maintain individual identity while processing doubled—tripled—infinitely multiplied awareness.

The training takes most candidates at least a decade. Some never achieve stable perception. Their minds trains and fragments under the weight of processing too much existence at once. The tribe cares for them, but they’re lost—awareness scattered across timelines they can perceive but not navigate.

The successful Glasswalkers pay different price.

Helean withdraws from the glass carefully. Slowly. Reducing the information flow gradually instead of severing the connection all at once. Six hours of vision requires careful disengagement. Rush it, and you risk bringing too much of what you saw back with you.

Her legs scream when she tries to move. Her throat is parched. Her head pounds with the particular pain that comes from holding contradictory perceptions for extended periods.

But she can’t rest yet.

What she saw today concerns her. Boundary instabilities forming in patterns that suggest deliberate stress rather than natural fluctuation. Guild activity clustering around specific intersection points—not random exploration, but systematic probing. Dai’mnae showing increased interest in physical realm access, drawn by the instabilities Guild interference creates.

The warnings must reach the other tribes before the patterns she foresaw become inevitable.

Helean’s assistant—a young woman training to become Glasswalker herself—approaches with water. “What did you see?”

“Trouble ahead.” Helean drinks gratefully. “Three months. Maybe four. The western anchor will experience critical stress unless we reinforce the binding circle immediately.”

“The Guild?”

“Indirectly. They’re studying intersection point at coordinates that correlate with anchor position. They don’t realize their observations create resonance patterns that propagate through the boundary membrane. By the time they understand what they’ve done…”

She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to. Her assistant has studied enough failed timeline branches to know what happens when binding circles fail.

“I’ll send runners,” the assistant says.

Helean nods. Returns her attention to the glass. To the visions still echoing in her perception. To the futures she can see but cannot choose.

This is what Glasswalkers do. Read time itself. Provide warnings that give tribes chance to prevent disasters before they become inevitable. Navigate probability branches with enough skill to guide civilization toward survivable outcomes.

And slowly, inevitably, lose the ability to exist fully in any single timeline.

Helean is thirty-four. She’s been Glasswalking for twelve years. She can already feel herself fragmenting—awareness spreading across the timelines she’s witnessed, becoming less singular with each vision.

She’ll keep working. Keep reading the glass. Keep providing warnings.

Until the day she can’t separate what she’s seeing from what she’s living. Until her awareness scatters across the timelines permanently. Until she becomes like the eldest Glasswalkers—still breathing, still alive, but existing in so many moments simultaneously that they can no longer focus on just one.

Worth it, she thinks, touching the glass again. Has to be worth it.

Because someone needs to see what’s coming. Maintain watch across time. The work of sacrificing singular existence so that everyone else can remain safely bounded in the present.

Living With Thin Boundaries

The settlement at Oasis Karell adjusts its rhythm around the moons.

Tonight, all three converge, aligning in the same sky quadrant. The strongest possible influence on boundary stability. Windows opening across the entire region whether anyone wants them to or not.

Children have been taught since infancy what to do during convergence. Don’t stare at shimmer. Don’t approach active intersection points. Stay within the boundary markers where elders have reinforced reality’s membrane. If you see something flicker in your peripheral vision—look away.

The settlement’s layout reflects centuries of learning to live where worlds overlap. Permanent structures positioned only in zones where boundaries remain reliably stable. Living spaces, food storage, essential infrastructure—all built in areas that never show shimmer regardless of lunar configuration.

But the settlement’s edges? The outer rings where boundaries naturally thin?

Those spaces serve different purposes.

Training grounds where apprentice navigators practice crossing under controlled conditions. Summoning circles for dai’mnae partnership rituals. Observation posts where watchers maintain constant vigil during major convergences. Emergency containment zones in case rifts form despite all precautions.

Tonight, the watchers are busy.

Three intersection points activated close to the settlement boundaries. Standard for convergence—expected, planned for, not dangerous if properly monitored. But they require attention. Windows this strong create opportunities for both intentional crossing and accidental manifestation.

Yara maintains watch at the southern point. She’s partnered with a Whisper Demon for eight years—long enough that she barely notices the constant awareness of her partner’s presence anymore. It feels natural. Normal. Like breathing.

During convergence, her partner’s abilities intensify. She can hear communication flowing through sand-based networks across impossible distances. Feel dai’mnae movement through the Mirage Realm as pressure changes in her consciousness. Sense when boundaries shift from stable to volatile before she can physically register any change.

Western point showing stress, her partner communicates. Not words. Pattern and meaning transmitted directly through their bond.

Yara signals the other watchers. The western point isn’t her responsibility, but the warning matters. Convergence creates resonances. Stress at one intersection affects others nearby. If western point destabilizes, southern and eastern points might follow.

The demon hunters stationed at western point respond immediately. She feels them activating reinforcement protocols—blood sigils drawn in expanding circles, binding patterns that shore up reality’s membrane, protective barriers designed to prevent rift formation even under maximum stress.

The boundary stabilizes. Crisis averted.

This is daily life at the edge of civilization. Not dramatic. Not heroic. Just constant vigilance. Perpetual maintenance. Endless small adjustments that prevent catastrophic failures most people never even perceive.

Yara’s shift ends at dawn. Twelve hours of monitoring. Twelve hours of processing multi-layered perception. Twelve hours existing partially in both realms simultaneously.

She’s exhausted in ways that have nothing to do with physical fatigue.

Her partner withdraws slightly—reducing the intensity of their connection, giving her consciousness room to settle back toward focusing on one world at a time. But the separation is never complete. She’ll still feel the Whisper Demon’s presence (she calls him Shush), still process boundary conditions, still exist somewhere between fully human and hybrid awareness.

forty-two years old. Started partnering at twenty-six. How many more years before I end up like old Hakeem?

She doesn’t know. Can’t know. Every navigator’s transformation follows different timeline. Some maintain focus on one reality for decades despite regular crossing. Others fragment within years.

But she keeps working anyway.

Boundaries require constant watching. Partnerships make desert civilization possible. The work demands people willing to stand between chaos and stability, processing the constant stress of living where worlds overlap.

The sun rises. Convergence fades as Keth’s orbit carries it away from alignment. The intersection points calm. Shimmer reduces to barely visible distortion.

Yara goes home. Sleeps. Dreams in doubled awareness—physical rest while her consciousness maintains connection to Mirage Realm patterns she can’t fully disengage from anymore.

Tomorrow, she’ll return to the watch.

When Windows Open Wide

The merchant caravan arrives at Oasis Karell three days after convergence.

They’re late. Should have reached the settlement before the alignment, when boundaries were stable and crossing safe. But their coastal guide miscalculated. Got lost in the Shifting Seas when dune migration destroyed his landmarks. Led them through active intersection points without proper protocols.

They’re lucky only two guards died.

The survivors huddle in the settlement’s healing quarter, traumatized by experiences they don’t have any framework to process. One woman keeps describing “shapes that looked at me.” A man insists he heard music in colors. Another guard can’t stop crying from an overwhelming sense of beauty he can’t properly articulate.

They accidentally crossed into the Mirage Realm without blood sigils, without anchors, without any understanding of what they were perceiving.

Most of them will recover. Eventually. The tribal healers know how to work with consciousness contamination—breathing techniques for grounding awareness back in physical reality, meditation to help fragmented perception reintegrate, time and patient care.

Sareth helps with the survivors. Not as healer—she’s not trained for that. But as someone who understands crossing from experience. Who can explain what they witnessed in terms that make sense. Who can offer perspective that turns “I’m going insane” into “I experienced something real that my mind wasn’t prepared to process.”

“The patterns you saw,” she tells the woman who keeps describing being watched. “Those were dai’mnae. Consciousnesses native to the Mirage Realm. They were curious about you. Not hostile. Just… interested. Like you might be interested in unusual bird you’d never seen before.”

“But they were inside my head,” the woman whispers. “I could feel them thinking at me.”

“Dai’mnae don’t communicate through language. They communicate through pattern and resonance. What you felt was them trying to understand what you are. It wasn’t meant as an invasion. Just observation.”

Though the difference probably doesn’t help much when you’re experiencing it unprepared.

The woman thinks about this. “Will it happen again?”

“Not unless you deliberately cross into the Mirage Realm. And you won’t do that accidentally—not with proper guides. The Flowing Trace knows which routes avoid active intersection points. Where boundaries stay stable. When windows open and close.”

“Your guide didn’t know any of that,” Sareth continues, keeping her voice gentle. “He was coastal. Trained for ocean navigation, not dimensional boundaries. He did his best with knowledge he had. It just… wasn’t the right knowledge for desert crossing.”

The merchant caravan master arrives that evening. Furious. Grief-stricken. Demanding compensation for the guards he lost. Threatening to report the “dangerous conditions” to Port Theora authorities. Insisting the tribes should have warned him about intersection point activity.

The Flowing Trace elder who meets with him is patient. Understanding. Unmoved.

“We did warn you,” the elder says quietly. “I saw your contract. It included explicit advisories about convergence timing. We know you were offered to delay your crossing by four days—until alignment passed and boundaries stabilized. You declined. Said you couldn’t afford the schedule delay.”

The merchant goes pale. “How can you… I didn’t understand—”

“No. You didn’t. Because you approached desert crossing the way you’d approach ocean voyage. Checking weather, calculating provisions, hiring guards against bandits. Standard merchant concerns.”

The elder’s expression isn’t unkind. Just… tired. “The desert requires different expertise. We’ve been telling coastal traders this for generations. Some listen. Some learn. Some insist they know better because they’ve crossed dangerous territories before.”

“Those guards—” the merchant starts.

“Those guards died because you made uninformed choice. We’re deeply sorry for your loss. We’ll provide whatever assistance we can for the survivors. But we won’t accept responsibility for consequences you were explicitly warned about.”

The merchant leaves without compensation. Diminished. Marked by grief that will probably make him more careful on future crossings.

If there are future crossings.

Many merchants never return to the desert after experiencing intersection point activity firsthand. The profit margins aren’t worth the risk to people who finally understand what they’re actually risking.

Sareth watches him go. Feels sympathy tempered by frustration. More deaths will follow before coastal authorities accept that desert crossing requires specialized knowledge. More preventable disasters before people understand what they’re risking.

“You can’t save people from their own ignorance,” Hakeem says beside her. When did he arrive? She didn’t hear him approach. “You can only maintain boundaries. Provide expertise to those willing to learn. And clean up after those who aren’t.”

His attention drifts. “The windows are opening again. Different configuration this time. Keth at perihelion. The twins in opposition. Should create favorable conditions for crossing tomorrow morning.”

“We have three navigators ready?”

“Five, including you.” He refocuses on her. “Time to practice what you’ve been learning. Tomorrow, you lead your first independent crossing.”

Tomorrow. Independent crossing. Me leading.

The anticipation wars with terror in her chest. This is what she’s trained for. Six years of preparation. But actually doing it—taking responsibility for other navigators’ safety, calculating window stability herself, making decisions that determine whether crossing succeeds or ends in tragedy…

“You’re ready,” Hakeem says, reading her expression. “You wouldn’t be if you weren’t terrified. Fear means you understand the stakes. Confidence would concern me more.”

He touches her forehead, now permanently marked in gold. The swirling tattoos a hard-earned symbol of her status. The contact grounds them both—pulls his scattered attention back to the here and now, and anchors her spiraling anxiety as well.

“It will be fine,” he says. “The Mirage Realm isn’t hostile. The beauty isn’t a trap. The dai’mnae aren’t enemies. Everything that makes crossing dangerous comes from human error. From approaching boundaries without respect. From assuming expertise you haven’t earned.”

he smiles. “You’ve earned it. Now prove it.”

Patterns Across the Desert

From the back of Kaelthas, an average sized greenish dragon, high enough that the air burns thin and cold, Alira can see what ground-bound observers never perceive.

The seventeen binding circles spread across the desert below her aren’t random. They form precise geometric pattern—each circle positioned at calculated intersection, lines connecting them creating relationships she recognizes from her weather-working training as force distribution patterns.

The kind you’d use to spread power evenly across large area while preventing any single point from becoming overloaded.

The design is deliberate. Engineered. But the sophistication required seems impossible for the era.

Pre-Separation practitioners created the binding ritual seven centuries ago. They had direct access to water magic—the source itself, before it fragmented into domain-specific adaptations. They understood principles that modern practitioners have lost, working within a  unified magical theory instead of the specialized systems that evolved after the great divide.

But this level of sophistication? Continental-scale infrastructure designed to anchor reality across all known domains?

Modern tribes maintain the system. Perform rituals meant to shore up the circles’ power. Repair and protect the circles themselves. Track how binding patterns affect intersection point stability.

But when you ask them to explain the underlying mathematics, they’ll tell you honestly: we don’t know. The pattern works. We preserve it. But we couldn’t recreate it.

The binding ritual contained the great entity sleeping beneath crimson sands. That was the immediate purpose. Prevent a consciousness that threatened to consume everything from reaching through into physical reality.

But the circles do more than containment.

They regulate magical energy distribution across the entire desert domain. Each circle serves as anchor point, stabilizing reality boundaries in the immediate vicinity, while deliberately creating controlled thin points between them. This creates predictable zones where tribes can develop crossing techniques safely while maintaining stable boundaries elsewhere.

The great pattern isn’t just local. Alira’s weather-working studies brought her to learn the connections to systems way beyond desert boundaries. Mountain storm-crystals regulate atmospheric energy, absorbing excess power during intense weather and releasing it gradually. Ancient underwater crystal beds channel ocean currents and magical flows across vast distances. Underground cave systems where water meets crystalline formations create bridges between surface domains and deeper infrastructure.

And anchoring it all—connecting everything—the seventeen binding circles.

Kaelthas circles lower, responding to her unspoken desire for closer examination. Dragons perceive magical patterns humans can’t see unaided. Through their bond, Alira processes doubled awareness: her human sight showing a physical circle built with carefully positioned. carved stones and Kaelthas’s draconic perception revealing energy flows that connect those stones to each other, and to the closest ones of the great seventeen.

The great circles don’t operate in isolation. They’re major nodes in Dimidium’s planetary network that spans all known domains and likely extends into territories beyond current exploration.

When storm-crystals in the Dragon’s Spine absorb excess atmospheric energy, that power flows through the network—through underwater channels, through cave systems, through the binding circles—preventing any single domain from experiencing catastrophic magical overload, and allowing those creatures and beings able to sense, manipulate and employ magic, to access their power.

The great circles anchor reality across the entire continent. Not just locally—the pattern’s influence extends through underlying magical currents that connect all domains. When the seventeen binding circles remain stable, reality boundaries stay coherent everywhere. When they experience stress, intersection point instability ripples outward into coastal and mountain territories.

Controlled intersection points throughout the desert prevent random rift formation across all domains. By directing boundary thinning to specific predictable locations, the binding pattern stops rifts from appearing randomly elsewhere.

“Your thoughts are loud,” Kaelthas observes through their bond. His ancient awareness carrying amusement. “You’re trying to understand a system that took the cooperation of many great mages to create. Of course modern practitioners can’t recreate it. No single domain has the expertise anymore.”

“But someone understood it once,” Alira argues. “Someone could again.”

“They did. And they built a system designed to outlast their knowledge. Self-maintaining, self-regulating, capable of functioning for millennia without requiring the expertise that created it.”

“So what happens if it breaks and nobody can repair it?”

Kaelthas’s presence in her mind carries weight she can’t quite interpret. Not quite worry. But something close. “That’s the question, isn’t it? The tribes maintain what they can. But maintenance isn’t the same as true understanding. They’re preserving system they can’t fully comprehend.”

Alira thinks about the Glasswalkers. The demon hunters. The navigators who sacrifice themselves to permanent transformation. The whole elaborate structure of tribal expertise built around maintaining infrastructure their ancestors designed but modern practitioners can’t recreate.

Her own Clan, and all the others, working to maintain the great crystal formations through the Spine.

“We’re caretakers,” she says slowly. “All of us.” 

“Yes.” Kaelthas banks into a thermal current, rising higher. “And we all hope that careful preservation proves sufficient. Because if the binding circles fail catastrophically—if any part of the network collapses—no one currently living knows what would happen. Not to the bound Entity under the desert. Not to the magic that still courses through this world, even after the Separation. Not to Dimidium itself.”

The dragon’s words settle into her awareness like stones dropping into deep water. The weight of that responsibility makes her dizzy. Or maybe that’s just the altitude.

Kaelthas turns north. Begins the long flight back to mountain territories. But Alira’s mind stays focused on the pattern below. On the circles connecting to systems beyond her sight. On the question of what lies beyond known territories and what the network might connect to that exploration hasn’t yet discovered.

The Stormwall to the west forms a perpetual barrier—yes. But it also serves as massive energy regulator, drawing excess power from all known domains and preventing accumulation that could destabilize the network.

What does that suggest about lands beyond the wall? About systems that might extend even further than current maps show?

Nor Clans nor Tribes speculate publicly about such things. Their responsibility is maintaining the seventeen circles and the intersection points they regulate.

But they know this much: the binding pattern their ancestors created seven centuries ago wasn’t designed to serve only the Crimson Desert.

It was designed to serve all of Dimidium.

And perhaps beyond.

The Price We Pay

Sareth’s independent crossing succeeds.

Five navigators. Favorable window configuration. Forty-seven minutes on the other side. All five returned safely with enhanced intersection point mapping data that will help future expeditions.

No catastrophes. No lost consciousness. No permanent transformations beyond what crossing always requires.

A rousing success.

Yet it feels incomplete somehow.

Sareth sits alone after the celebration. The tribe honored her achievement—her first independent crossing led without incident. Hakeem expressed pride. The elders acknowledged her advancement from apprentice to full navigator.

She should feel accomplished. Validated. Proud of expertise earned through years of dedicated training.

Instead, tonight she can’t feel past the weight of her choices.

I’ll end up like Hakeem. Like Imara. Like Yara and all the watchers who can’t fully disengage from doubled awareness anymore.

The transformation is inevitable. Not dramatic. Not immediate. But certain. Every crossing leaves marks. Every partnership deepens the bond between human and dai’mnae consciousness. Every year of work at thin boundaries makes singular perspective harder to maintain.

The cost seems almost unbearable when stated so plainly.

“You’re questioning your choice.” Hakeem settles beside her. His timing is either perfect intuition or enhanced perception that lets him sense when students need guidance. Possibly both.

“I’m questioning whether I understood what I was choosing,” Sareth admits. “When I started training I knew navigation was dangerous. I knew crossings could fail. But I didn’t quite understand… this.”

She gestures vaguely at Hakeem. At everything he represents. “The slow erosion. The gradual loss of self.”

“And now that you understand?”

The question hangs between them. 

Sareth thinks about Bhoor. The Guild researcher who approached intersection points as scientific curiosities and ended up traumatized, broken, unable to continue his life’s work.

She thinks about the merchant caravan. The guards who died because leadership made uninformed choices.

She thinks about her friend Helean, reading glass for hours upon hours. About Yara maintaining watch through every convergence. All the demon hunters reinforcing circles. All the navigators teaching next generation. All the transformed individuals who sacrificed singular existence so others could remain safely bounded.

“I’ll move forward.” she says finally. “Because the alternative isn’t ‘I remain unchanged.’ The alternative is ‘someone else transforms instead of me.’ Or worse—boundaries go unmanned, and catastrope happens anyway.”

“Grim perspective,” Hakeem observes.

“Realistic perspective.” Sareth meets his eyes—both the physical gaze and the layered awareness that looks through multiple realities simultaneously. “You taught me that. Approach boundaries with respect for actual stakes. Don’t romanticize danger or minimize costs.”

“Did I teach you well enough?”

“Ask me again in fifty years,” Sareth echoes his own words from that morning conversation that feels like it happened weeks ago. “When I’m standing where you are. When students look at me the way I look at you now.”

Hakeem laughs. 

“You’ll do fine,” he says. “You already understand what took me decades to learn: expertise requires sacrifice. Mastery demands transformation. Knowledge costs everything you are.”

He stands. Offers his hand a last time. “Now come. We have work tomorrow. Unfavorable window configuration. Perfect conditions for teaching intermediate navigators about unstable boundary calculations.”

Sareth takes it, it’s warm and dry as always. She lets him pull her to her feet.

The shimmer calls to her even now. Even at rest. Even miles from active intersection points. 

She knows it will always call.

Knows she’ll spend her life navigating that call. Learning to cross between worlds and remember to come back. 

Worth it, she decides. 

Boundaries require maintenance. The work between worlds needs understanding. Civilization demands people willing to pay the price.

The Mirage Realm’s beauty remains undeniable.

And living between worlds—maintaining the boundaries, preventing catastrophes, transforming so others don’t have to—carries its own beauty.

Different beauty. Harder beauty. Beauty that costs everything you are and everything you’ll become.

But beauty nonetheless.