Stefan tried not to let despair overcome him. After crossing the castle gate, the guards took him across the courtyard, past the garden and greenhouses, and into the mansion at the far end. He couldn’t even take a good look at the interior, because they quickly went down a flight of stairs and pushed him inside a narrow room in the cellar. It was empty, smelled of mold, and had a small dirty window with iron bars as only light source.

With no further explanation, the guards closed the door and locked it. He heard their footsteps fade in the distance, and everything became quiet.

The boy stood in silence for a moment, still shocked that something like this was happening, and then began looking for a way to escape. He examined the heavy old wooden door, tightly closed and locked, and could see no way for him to open it. Next, he focused on the window, which was situated high enough to be out of his reach. Past the dirty glass he could see the iron bars and the shadows of leaves, which made him suspect the window was at ground level, perhaps behind some bushes. Even if he could open the window and cry for help, would anyone other than the guards hear him?

Still, he had to try. Since the window was too high up, Stefan jumped several times, trying to push the latch open when his fingers briefly reached it. When he finally succeeded, the window stayed in place. Frustrated, he jumped again, and this time managed to hold on to the narrow sill, with the intention of using his weight to swing the window open. But the dry old wood from the frame cracked around the hinges and Stefan, still holding onto the window, fell to the hard concrete floor.

The glass shattered, but he covered his face just in time to protect himself from the shards. Angry at his own incompetence, Stefan carefully brushed away the glass; at least he’d only gotten some scratches on his arms. But then, as he tried to get up, a sudden stab of pain shot through his head. His vision blurred, and dark spots flickered before his eyes. He tried to hold on to a wall but fell to his knees before he could react, and the throbbing became so severe he ended up collapsing on the floor.

Then, just as quickly as it had come, the terrible headache disappeared. Stefan was left panting, too afraid to get up again in case another movement caused the pain to come back. In the end, he lay down on the cold stone floor, surrounded by fragments of wood and broken glass, and decided to rest for a moment before trying to find an escape. Whether he liked it or not, he had time.

******

Rosario liked to think of herself as someone who wasn’t easily disturbed, or who could at least snap out of it fast enough. But after being thrown down a trapdoor into a cellar where a monster plant awaited, where two good people now lay dead, and then suddenly finding herself standing in some sort of lucid dream next to the person who caused all that misfortune, was too much and she felt dazed. Her gaze darted back and forth from the water-covered stone floor to the endlessly white sky that stretched in all directions. Her breathing became irregular. This couldn’t be real, yet somehow it felt beyond reality itself.

Some steps away from her, Bill Cornwell observed her behavior, and some concern appeared on his otherwise neutral expression.

“I understand this is a lot to take in at once, so let me share some of my sight with you,” the mayor said as he extended a hand towards her. “I find an intermediate state of awakening to be easier on the mind.”

She felt a sharp pain in her head at the same time the water-covered stone floor and white sky were replaced by a dreamlike, almost ghostly version of a city. It took Rosario a moment to realize she was still in the cellar below the keep, but now all the physical barriers around her were transparent. She recognized the semi-translucent shapes of the walls of the keep, with their outlines traced as iridescent thin lines. She noticed the plants from the garden in the courtyard, the greenhouses and the vegetation inside, the castle wall behind them, and then the shapes of the many houses of the town of Spiez. However, the outlines she saw were not static. In addition to the shimmering colors, there was a constant movement; the lines gave the impression of being made of marching ants, while some larger shapes even moved around freely.

Not used to seeing so many elements overlapping at once, Rosario felt overwhelmed and dizzy, and looked down at her feet.

Cornwell approached her. “You are now looking at the world through the presence of living beings,” he explained, using a softer tone for the first time.

She didn’t understand his words at first, and carefully looked up again at the outline of the castle wall; only in that moment did she realize that what gave the wall its shape was the moss, algae and small plants growing on it. The moving shapes in the distance then had to be the town’s people and animals.

Rosario told herself this had to be some sort of delirious state she was in, maybe because of the fall she had experienced a moment ago. Still, she ended up turning around towards the monster plant and the two bodies below it. Unlike everything else, the creature seemed as solid as she and the mayor. Noah and Emilia were visible too, although they weren’t as clearly defined and looked transparent. Did that mean they were alive but dying?

The mayor noticed her distress. “Don’t worry, they’re both fine. Just taking a nap.”

“But they need help! Don’t let them die!”

He gave her a puzzled look, but quickly understood her confusion. “Oh no, just because you see them like that doesn’t mean their life is fading. That is their true aspect, as beings who can’t fully step into the Convergence,” he paused and looked at them. “Such a shame for two talented individuals to be so limited.”

She looked at the smiths again, noticing they were also covered in those small critters she had found over her skin when waking up. The little creatures seemed as physical as she, the mayor, and the monster plant.

“Once the parasitic offshoot is nested in place, they will wake up, and I will make sure they remember nothing of this unpleasant experience, so don’t worry about it,” the mayor continued, and looked at her this time with a sympathetic expression. She felt unsettled by this display of empathy. “Ms. González, I know very well how difficult the first steps in the Convergence are, especially after what you just witnessed, and while there is nothing I can do to change this bleak reality, please allow me to be of guidance so you don’t lose yourself in the process.” He gave her a friendly smile and pointed across the courtyard: the garden, the greenhouses, and the mansion at the opposite end all looked ghostly, except for one figure.

“Stefan!” Rosario tried to run, but Cornwell placed a hand on her shoulder.

“No need to. Just focus.”

Rosario felt her balance shift, as if she had miscalculated her footing when stepping off an escalator. In disbelief, she saw they were now standing in the hallway that led to the basement room where Stefan was imprisoned. But before she could think about the impossibility of what just happened, Stefan fell heavily after trying to hold onto a window that broke under his weight. The shattered glass cut his arms, and Rosario ran past the transparent door and to his side.

“Are you okay?” she said, but the boy didn’t seem to hear her and was now trying to get up. “Can you see me? Stefan, it’s me!” Tripping over her words, she reached out for him but her hand went right through, as if he were nothing but air. Stefan raised his hands to his temples and collapsed to the floor, as if suffering intense pain.

In this Convergence, whatever it was, she could hear no sound other than her own voice and the mayor’s, but there was no need to hear anything to know how much Stefan was hurting. Just looking at his expression as he curled over himself was enough, and she backed up in horror, not wanting to risk causing any more harm.

Stefan now lay on the floor, and seemed to have calmed down. The mayor, who observed the scene from a few steps behind, went to stand closer.

“He will be fine. The pain will subside, and the contact was so brief there won’t be any permanent damage,” he explained. “But please don’t attempt to reach at him again. I don’t know why this happens, but we, beings of the Convergence, cannot touch each other. Doing so will only do harm, and it can be permanent or even lethal.” The crystal hunter found herself too overwhelmed to make sense of his words. How was such thing even possible? “You probably understand it now,” the mayor continued. “I’ve been trying to contact you since you arrived in the region two days ago. I saw you and your children in the Convergence, so I approached you to talk.” He shook his head, “It took me a moment to realize that you seemed to be walking in there blindly, as if neither you nor them were even aware of it,” he sighed, disappointed. “And I couldn’t do anything about it. Even the slightest attempt I made to reach you caused you discomfort.”

Rosario unintentionally put a hand on her head; if she understood this correctly, that had been the cause of her headaches for the past two days. Cornwell caught on her realization and continued.

“I had to accept that, somehow, you have this incredible affinity with the Convergence, but your mind operates within the limitation of the human psyche. I hope you now understand that, if I had met with you today and spoke about a world in which we can see the truth, you would have disregarded it as insanity. Forcing you to see the Convergence with your own senses was the only alternative I found. I apologize for my crude methods.”

Rosario did her best to remain calm as two things were becoming clear: first, whatever this Convergence was, being able to access it was rare and perhaps even risky for someone’s sanity; and second, for some reason the mayor assumed that just because she had this capacity, she was on his side, to the point she would be willing to forget what he had done to her and the kids.

Maybe she could use this kinship to her advantage, but she’d have to tread carefully.

*****