[10:04:32]

The Thirst is worse than I remember.

It isn’t the dry itch at the back of the throat anymore. It’s a hand squeezing. Every glass of water buys me thirty seconds before it returns heavier. The whole body knows it doesn’t belong here. Earth is pushing me back.

I hold it down by force of habit. Many years on the other side trained my brain to treat the Black Thirst as background noise. Uncomfortable. Not fatal.

At least yet.

The clock bleeds throughout the day as I spend time with my mother and Lili. I’m mentally preparing for Thirstfall and seeking to understand Chaos Theory and everything that happened during my first Dive.

[9:47:11]

I sit on the kitchen table bench. She’s in the kitchen finishing breakfast. Lili is in her arms, eyes huge, hands grabbing at the air—reaching for something invisible only she can see.

The first time I dove, I ran out the door. No goodbye. No hug. No look back. Ten minutes on the clock and panic doing all the driving. I promised myself I’d never do that again.

"Mom."

She looks at me over her shoulder. Reads my face.

"You’re going today."

It isn’t a question.

"I’m going."

She doesn’t answer right away. She lowers Lili into the bouncer with both hands, careful. Then she walks over. Sits beside me.

"If I don’t come back," I say, "there’s money invested in the Sands Ventures account. The login is your name and Lili’s birthday. Ingrid1512."

She closes her eyes. The lower lip trembles once.

"Don’t talk like that, Den."

"Mom. I need you to know. It’s just a precaution."

She nods. Doesn’t trust her voice.

I get up, walk to the bouncer, and crouch.

Lili looks at me with those eyes that don’t know anything about the world yet. Innocence I’d forgotten existed until I came back to this house.

I kiss her forehead. Her skin is so soft it feels like it might tear if I press too hard.

"Look after Mom, little one."

She smiles. Not because she understood. Because smiling is the only thing babies know how to do when someone leans close.

I eat with Mom and spend the last hours watching her smile. When the time comes, I prepare myself. Concentrate, take a bath, and meditate a little bit.

[2:12:45]

Mom walks me to the door.

The hug lasts longer than usual. She doesn’t let go until I gently move her arms.

"I’ll be back, Mom."

"I know."

She doesn’t know. But she says it anyway.

I give all the remaining money to my mother, and since money is tight, I decide to walk to the clinic I went to yesterday.

[1:25:03]

District 4 clinic. Same gate as yesterday. The auto-turrets pivot and lock when I cross the perimeter. The chip in my hand opens the gate.

This time it’s a real dive. The way it was always supposed to be. No emergency timer. No panicked technician. No race against ten minutes inside an improvised testing tank. A clean dive—through the system, by the protocol, with a registered slot.

The irony isn’t lost on me.

My last two Dives were the most corrupted any Diver has survived.

The first was Rae forcing me through a clandestine tank, and the second was a pure emergency that dropped me into Forest of Wails. If anyone told me a normal Dive was just lying down in a tank and falling asleep, I wouldn’t believe them.

Reception. The same woman as before.

"Scheduled dive. Dryden Sands."

She checks. Confirms. Points me to the tank wing.

The tank itself is the basic model. Entry-level. OXI capacity capped at 1,200. I don’t have the cash for anything better, and I don’t need it. I came back to Earth still carrying over 1,400 OXI in this body. With the tank’s 1,200 added on the way through, I land back in Thirstfall close to 2,500—the cap for a Rank D.

The tank room is small. White walls. The smell of disinfectant and gel. The tank in the center—a vertical cylinder of reinforced glass, the translucent gel inside pulsing slow, almost like it’s breathing.

[0:31:50]

I undress all the way.

Naked in the white room, goosebumps rising in the air-conditioning. The fit, marked body reflected in the glass of the tank doesn’t belong to a kid who’s eighteen. The Lost Ark scar on the shoulder. The healed cut on the forearm from the blood contract. Marks no eighteen-year-old should have.

A nurse enters. Professional. She doesn’t look at my body any longer than the protocol requires.

She plugs the sensors. Chest. Temples. Wrists. Each sensor a cold adhesive that fastens to the skin and pipes data into the clinic’s system. Heartbeat, blood pressure, oxygen, neural activity.

"Whenever you’re ready, you can step in."

I climb the side ladder of the tank. The entrance gel is warm. The exact temperature to make a body forget it has a body.

I sink in slowly.

The liquid rises along my legs, my waist, my chest. Dense. Almost welcoming. Being held by something with no shape.

[0:18:09]

I float. The gel supports me. Gravity takes a holiday. My muscles unlock one by one—shoulders, back, neck. The Thirst at the back of my throat eases for the first time in hours. The gel has OXI diluted into it. The body starts drinking before the mind authorizes it.

[0:05:33]

The nurse hands the respirator over the rim. I fit it into my mouth. The taste is rubber and plastic and compressed oxygen. Familiar in a way it shouldn’t be familiar this soon.

"Safe travels, Mr. Sands."

I close my eyes.

[0:01:07]

Consciousness starts to dissolve.

Not like sleep. Like disassembly.

Each thought separating from the next. My mother’s face. Lili’s smile. The sell orders programmed in the broker. The smell of coffee. The suit hanging in the closet. Everything drifting away slow, like boats leaving the same harbor at staggered intervals.

[0:00:01]

The transition is smoother this time. Less violent. Less confused.

But the feeling is the same. That tightness in the chest you carry when you’re walking out of one world into another and you don’t know if you’re coming back.

The light comes, white and total.

When it clears, I’m standing on the Oathmark of Azure Prime.

The ocean sky of Thirstfall opens above me. Inverted, deep, and too blue to be real. The towers of the Azure Academy punctuate the horizon like fingers pointing up at the abyss above us all.

I check the Party HUD.

Lola ♥ Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Alive.

Immediate relief. Even after four Earth days, she is still alive.

I open the comms.

"Veric. I’m back."

I know Veric is a dramatic. So I play to his stage.

"Ready for the show?"