"Every reincarnator we’ve removed from this world believed their system or their god or their particular abilities made them the exception."

"And it’s always every single one of them." He paused. "But even the worst of them had something they would not cross."

"Something that made them human, and something I could find just to use it!"

Rex considered the matter honestly.

"Oh, you think?"

Then he teleported instantly.

The teleportation was two meters, and he was behind Virella before she had processed the change in his position. His right hand closed around Virella’s throat from behind, applying pressure that was not enough to compress her airway where his fingers registered her pulse with clinical steadiness.

"You still going to see me as one of those pathetic excuses for a reincarnator, huh?" Rex asked. "Send me Legion, and oh... I’ll enjoy every second of it more to kill them with different kinds of torture."

Virella went completely still. "A-Agghh...!"

"K-Kregg...!"

Kregg’s expression cracked. "Y-You have teleportation magic too...?!"

Kregg’s composure, which had held steady through the mayhem—Apollo’s kidnapping, the chamber’s implosion, and the spectacle of seven of his people being beaten in the canyon—began to show fissures along its perimeter that had not been there before.

"Y-You... I knew it... The Balance Keeper once said that there are some reincarnators who are literally monsters from their past life."

"Let me tell you something..."

"I’m not a hero," Rex said. "And I’m not a villain either."

"Villain implies I’m standing in opposition to something heroic, but I’m not in opposition to anything." He kept his hand where it was, Virella’s pulse steady under his fingers. "I don’t have a side."

"I have what I’m building... And everyone else is either useful to that or they’re not."

He looked at Kregg across the five meters between them. "Now... let’s stop wasting them and spill all the good news, shall we?"

"We don’t want any blood spilled, right?"

"You said that like you’re in a good position while I have this girl pinned down!" Kregg gritted his teeth.

"Nahhhh... I’m faster than you, so I’d like to see you try that before you and this girl get killed," Rex smirked. "Go on! Give it a shot!"

Mireya shook her head. "N-No...! D-Don’t provoke him like that!"

Kregg’s hands started shaking because he knew Rex’s words were not just empty threats; they were the truth. The fact that he had killed all seven Legion members was undeniable.

"Yeah, though so," Rex laughed. "Pussy."

"So tell me about the Legion," he said. "I want every piece of useful information." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"I’ll let you and this girl live if you cooperate."

The canyon was quiet except for the wind moving through the upper opening and the sound of Mireya’s uneven breathing somewhere behind him.

Rex stood with his hand around Virella’s throat and looked across the space between them at Kregg. Kregg looked back with the expression of someone who had spent several years building a version of themselves that didn’t crack easily and was watching that version develop a problem it hadn’t been designed for.

Virella wasn’t resisting. She assessed Rex’s grip, evaluated her options, and made the pragmatic choice that fighting back would be futile.

He felt her pulse under his fingers, steady and controlled, and that told him more about her training than any combat performance she’d given in the chamber. She was scared, but she was handling it with the discipline of one who had been scared before in situations that required discipline.

Kregg observed Virella’s expression. Whatever her look conveyed, it wasn’t a conversation; instead, it was a form of communication—a compact exchange between two individuals who had collaborated long enough for a full discussion to be distilled into a single moment of eye contact.

Then he glanced at Rex.

"You have killed seven of my men," he said, delivering the statement without any accusation. His tone was that of someone simply stating a fact to clarify the nature of their discussion.

"Yeah," Rex said. "Why do you have to repeat it again?"

"Distracting me won’t change anything. In fact, I would love to face more of your men."

"You... you want me to believe you’ll let us walk away if I tell you what you want to know?" Kregg asked with an unsure look.

"Nah... it’s more like, I want you to make an accurate calculation," Rex said. "Believing me is optional, but the calculation isn’t."

Kregg was quiet. Somewhere above them, through the canyon’s upper opening, a bird crossed the narrow strip of sky and was gone.

"The Key," Rex said to Kregg. "Take it out slowly and put it on the ground in front of you."

"I’m going to need that more."

Kregg didn’t move immediately. His eyes went from Rex’s face to Virella’s and then back, cycling through the calculation of what options he actually had versus what options he wished he had and arriving at an answer he clearly didn’t like.

"If I give you the key," Kregg said, "you’ll have no reason to keep her alive."

"If you don’t give me the Key," Rex said, "I have a reason to not keep her alive right now."

He let a half-second pass. "Those are two different problems, and... one of them is solvable."

Kregg looked at Virella again. Something moved through his expression that Rex catalogued as involuntary, the kind of thing that surfaces when a person is confronted with a cost they had calculated intellectually but not emotionally.

Virella said, very quietly, "Kregg... Don’t do it..."

"She’s not wrong to say that," Rex said. "But you’re going to do it anyway, because the alternative is watching me demonstrate that I’m serious, and that’s going to happen in approximately ten seconds if you don’t move."

"One—"

"Okay, okay... I’ll give it to you...!"

Kregg moved slowly.

He reached into the inside of his outfit with two fingers, moving slowly, as if to show he was not reaching for a weapon. The Key got pulled out, and it was the same dimensional artifact Rex had seen on the pedestal in the chamber, its compressed material catching the canyon light in a way that suggested it existed between states.

Kregg held it for a moment before carefully setting it on the ground in front of him, demonstrating the delicate control of someone placing something fragile.

"Take it..."

Then he straightened and looked at Rex.

Rex extended his telekinesis, and the Key lifted from the canyon floor and traveled the distance between them, settling into his left hand with a weight that his earthen authority passive awareness registered as significant. He kept his right hand on Virella.

"Good," Rex said.

Kregg then raised his right hand, directing the current that had already formed sideways, and the bolt of compressed lightning struck Mireya across the shoulders.

She went down with the involuntary, full-body response of someone whose neuromuscular system has been subjected to a significant electrical charge, meaning she collapsed completely and without any preparation. The sound she made was a combination of the impact and the current, and it was anything but quiet.

"AARRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Mireya screamed.

Rex looked at Mireya on the ground and then looked at Kregg.

"Let her go, and I’ll stop the electrical charge in her body," Kregg said.

He spoke through clenched teeth, the first sign of genuine anger he had allowed to show. "Help her or I’ll do it again."

"Mireya," Rex said, without looking away from Kregg. "Are you dead?"

"No," Mireya said, from the ground, in the voice of someone who is very much not dead but is deeply unhappy about their current physical state.

"Then you’re fine," Rex said.

"I-I’m... not fine," Mireya said.

"You’re breathing and responding," Rex said. "That’s fine."

"That is a very low standard for fine," Mireya said.

Rex looked at Kregg. "You should know that doing things like that doesn’t change my position."

"It just tells me how you think under pressure." He tightened his right hand by a fraction, and Virella’s breath caught in the specific way of someone whose airway has been marginally compressed. "You have choices left."

"That was one of them, and use the next one better." Rex hardened the grip onto her neck.

"KREGG, STOP!" Virella said, sharp and clear.

Kregg’s jaw tightened, his expression revealing that he had just taken an action aimed at gaining leverage but was now realizing it had failed to do so.

Mireya, still on the ground, said, "Rex, please," a phrase that carried significant weight coming from someone who had just witnessed five people fall into a canyon and who had very few illusions left about her situation.

Rex glanced at her, then turned his gaze to Kregg, and finally focused on the empty space between them where the Key had been.

"I want information," Rex said. "You’re going to give it to me, and I’m going to decide what happens next based on how useful it is."

"That’s the complete structure of this negotiation." He paused to take a breathe. "This girl is alive as long as you’re cooperating."

"The moment you stop cooperating, the only reason she was useful to me disappears."

"Are we clear enough?"

Kregg was quiet for three seconds.

Virella said, "He means it, Kregg." Her voice was level, not pleading.

She was telling him something she had concluded from her own assessment of the situation, not asking him for anything. "He means exactly what he says and not more than that."

"I know," Kregg said.

Then he said, "She gets more."

"Alright, chop, chop," Rex said. "Tell me..."

"...about the Balance Keeper."