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The walls had been soul-empowered by Papa and then later overridden even more strongly by Mel, so Ibai already knew that he couldn’t simply bust his way out. What Papa and Mel didn’t know, however, was that Ibai’s ability had manifested a long time ago. He’d kept it a secret for nearly two decades now, knowing that it would only upset his family and make them look for a way to counter its effects. And that would’ve sucked all the fun out of it.

He had the layout of Marshrock more or less memorized. He’d probably spent more time here than anyone else in the entire world.

So teleporting out of this room was not going to be difficult.

He stood in the middle of the chamber, thought about where he wanted to be, and then wrapped himself in the brown shadow. It swirled around him and then winked out of existence, taking his body with it.

And for an instant, he could see.

The infinite void.

Everything and nothing. Life and death. A trillion burning stars in the sky and all around him. Souls suspended in space. Eleg, too, spinning and breathing and alive.

And all of them, ethereal. Massless shadows of reality. The universe of zero weight, where space itself was of no consequence.

In a flash, it was all gone, and Ibai reappeared in the next room over, stepping from his muddy shadow onto Marshrock’s dark stone again.

Ibai frowned. No one was around. But wait, no, that was probably a good thing. He was supposed to be sneaky. He jumped through space again, this time reappearing on the next floor up. Still no one. He jumped again, and this time there was a group of strangers looking directly at him, including several reapers. Many of them carried guns.

“Hello!” said Ibai.

‘An aberration!’

“Kill it!”

He teleported away as the gunfire erupted, reappearing in a bedroom a few floors down. “Well, that was unfortunate.” He shrugged it off and looked around.

He saw a girl with four horns on her face. She was staring at him with wide gray eyes.

“Hello,” Ibai said cheerily. “You don’t look like you want to kill me. What is your name, young lady?”

She stood up from the edge of her bed, hesitant. “...Who are you?”

“Oh, my name is Ibai. And yours?”

“...Emiliana.”