The Void-Walker led the human deeper into the Evershade Exchange headquarters.
Only then did the conversation continue.
"You ca at the right ti," the Void-Walker said.
Its voice carried less relief than calculation.
"Pests have started appearing and interrupting our plans."
The curly-haired man did not answer imdiately.
He had already seated himself.
A hand mirror had appeared from sowhere inside his coat, and he was studying the human face he wore with lazy scrutiny, as though the report of continental instability were mildly less interesting than the line of his own jaw.
The Void-Walker waited.
Patience was one of the few virtues his kind had refined well.
At last, the human spoke without lowering the mirror.
"Relax," he said. "We’ve already done enough damage."
His tone was casual.
"The Exchange doesn’t need to win cleanly to survive. It just needs appetite to exist."
He tilted his face slightly, checking the reflection from another angle.
"As long as people still want shortcuts, the poison won’t disappear. You can cut the trade, burn the stock, kill the sellers. Doesn’t matter. Demand rebuilds the market for you."
Only then did he glance up.
"That’s the whole point. We’re not running a fortress. We’re running a condition."
The Void-Walker said nothing for a mont.
The logic was sound.
But it was incomplete.
It ant Convergence did not yet understand the current pressure in full.
Or perhaps he understood it and simply did not respect it enough to show concern.
So the Void-Walker answered carefully.
"East is failing us," it said. "The other continents have begun pressing back as well. And the West has entered unrest. The structure is not stable."
That finally made the human lower the mirror.
Not because he was alard.
But because the conversation had beco interesting.
"We were never supposed to build sothing stable," he said. "That’s your mistake."
He leaned back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other.
"The plan was always discord. Spread poison. Feed dependence. Split loyalties. Make every region suspicious of every cure, every ruler, every sect, every savior. If they fight each other long enough, it doesn’t matter whether the Exchange stands forever. The damage stays."
His grin widened slightly.
"You don’t need permanent victory. You need permanent rot."
The Void-Walker hesitated.
"But—"
Convergence cut it off with a lazy wave.
"Hey. Aren’t you curious about the secret I found?"
That changed the room.
The Void-Walker had already noticed it. Convergence had co too relaxed, too amused, and too unconcerned for soone returning to a network under visible pressure.
That ant he had brought sothing with him.
Sothing that, in his judgnt, outweighed the imdiate instability.
So the Void-Walker asked, "What secret could possibly interest soone like you this much?"
The human smiled.
This ti there was no humor in it.
"I know who the pests are," he said. "Or at least what they were."
The Void-Walker’s attention sharpened.
Convergence continued.
"They’re prepared by the Primordial Sli. Not randomly dropped into the world. They were sent here to fix things."
Silence followed.
Even in a sealed chamber, that claim had weight.
Then Convergence tapped his own chest.
"And this body?" he said. "It’s one of them."
The Void-Walker’s geotric face did not change much.
But the pressure in the room did.
Prepared by the Primordial Sli.
That was bad enough.
Possession of one such shell by Convergence himself—
Worse.
"If they were prepared by the Primordial Sli," the Void-Walker said slowly, "then we should be more cautious. Not less."
"Normally?" Convergence said. "Yeah. Sa."
He spun the hand mirror once, caught it, then let it vanish.
"Before this shell, I would’ve treated that as a problem worth respecting. Then I took the body and found out sothing funny."
His expression sharpened.
"The Sli gave them authorities. Strange little fixed miracles. Built-in advantages. They call them cheats."
The Void-Walker fell silent again.
Convergence leaned forward.
"And I got one."
The words ca lightly.
The implications did not.
"This shell," he said, glancing down at his own hands, "should’ve been discarded the mont I noticed the human residue. Petty habits. Emotional drag. Reflexes that make no sense for a being like . I would’ve abandoned it imdiately."
He smiled faintly.
"But I didn’t."
The Void-Walker asked, "Why?"
Convergence’s grin returned.
"Because the cheat is perfect for ."
He spread his fingers lazily, as if presenting a trivial trick.
"Hundred Percent Encounter Rate."
The Void-Walker stared at him.
It did not understand the term.
Convergence noticed that at once and laughed.
"Right. Forgot who I’m talking to."
He stood and began pacing, modern irritation and ancient certainty mixing in a way that made the room feel less stable the longer he moved.
"It’s simple. I mark entities, events, outcos—whatever matters. Then reality starts aligning all paths toward the eting."
He snapped his fingers once.
"People who should cross paths will cross paths."
He took another step.
"Battles that should happen will happen."
Another.
"Targets I care about won’t stay missed forever."
He stopped and turned.
"It doesn’t matter if they hide, run, teleport, bury themselves under factions, distance, or luck. If they’re ant to et, they will."
The Void-Walker processed the explanation in silence.
That was not rely useful.
That was terrifying.
Convergence, as a Primordial Incarnation, was already restricted compared to what he had once been. Bound by the limits of embodint, filtered through shell and world-law, unable to simply enforce the totality of his concept the way a full Primordial might.
But this—
This cheat reduced those restrictions in exactly the wrong direction.
It let his nature hook into reality through a foreign privilege built to favor inevitability.
The Void-Walker finally said, "That authority matches your Law too closely."
Convergence grinned.
"Exactly."
Then his tone flattened.
"That’s why I’m not worried."
He resud pacing.
"If we strike too early, we just prune problems. They grow back worse later. More organized. More motivated. Cleaner lines. No thanks."
He waved one hand dismissively.
"But if we let the right pieces rise at the sa ti..."
His eyes glead.
"...then we stop pruning and start culling."
The Void-Walker understood the logic imdiately.
Not suppression.
Concentration.
Let the threats cluster before cutting them all at once.
"And the cheat agrees?" it asked.
Convergence nodded.
"It keeps pointing the sa way. Not yet. The encounter point hasn’t matured."
That answer settled part of the Void-Walker’s concern.
And created a different one.
"Then what do we do now?" it asked.
At that, Convergence stopped moving.
The easygoing posture vanished.
Not entirely.
But enough that what remained felt like a smiling knife rather than an amused drifter.
His hostility beca visible.
"We kill a worm before it grows teeth," he said.
The Void-Walker tilted its head.
"Explain."
Convergence looked pleased again.
"There’s an Abyssal Entity moving through our edges," he said.
The Void-Walker’s attention sharpened further.
Abyssal matters were not treated lightly.
"A few months ago," Convergence continued, "sothing moved into adjacent layers of reality. Proper planar travel. Smooth enough that the Abyssal Entity assud it was one of ours or at least one of the Black Mass things under my range of influence. So it just watched."
He paused.
"Then the traveler noticed it was being watched."
That mattered.
Beings moving through layered reality were one thing.
Beings perceptive enough to detect an observing Abyssal presence were another.
"And instead of pressing forward," Convergence said, "it retreated."
The Void-Walker said nothing.
That decision alone suggested caution, awareness, and purpose.
The human’s grin thinned.
"That one is dangerous."
"Because it sensed the observation?"
"Because it was there at all," Convergence said. "And because it might’ve been looking for the small worlds."
Now the Void-Walker truly understood why Convergence had co in person.
That possibility touched too many hidden things at once.
"We need to find that traveler," Convergence said. "Oh, wait... my cheat has already taken care of that for ."
The Void-Walker asked the next obvious question.
"How did you convince an Abyssal Entity to cooperate with you?"
Convergence laughed once.
"I didn’t."
He lifted one hand and made a loose circling motion with two fingers.
"It was already looking for soone. I just... helped the paths line up."
The Void-Walker almost smiled.
"Superb."
"Yeah," Convergence said. "It gets better."
He leaned forward slightly.
"I also found out the one the Abyssal Entity was searching for was with that sa traveler."
That gave the room a new kind of silence.
The Void-Walker asked, slower now, "Who was it looking for?"
Convergence’s grin faded into sothing narrower.
"I don’t know the state of the Abyss well enough to na the situation properly. Even Primordial entities don’t stroll in there for leisure. The ones who could’ve are dead."
Then he added:
"But I got one useful piece."
The Void-Walker waited.
Convergence’s voice dropped.
"The Abyssal Entity said the target was one of the Arch Lords who disappeared millennia ago."
The Void-Walker did not move.
Convergence smiled again.
"Arch Lord of Abyssal Nullity. He stole sothing from the Abyss."
The Void-Walker froze.
Convergence saw the reaction and seed pleased.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Exactly."
Then he leaned back again as if they were rely discussing weather.
"So now the ga’s actually interesting."
The Void-Walker spoke only after several long monts.
"What did it steal?"
Convergence spread his hands.
"No idea."
Then the grin returned.
"But whatever it was, the Abyss wants it back."
He tilted his head.
"And if it was really tied to the sa traveler who was moving through the planes..."
His eyes glinted.
"...then that traveler’s carrying way more than one problem."
A strange smile crept across his face.
"We will et... soon."
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