That made sense, I supposed. I looked around. Doors for a sky, for the ground, doors instead of buildings and mountain. "What is this place?"
"Again, it has had many names. The Dark World, perhaps, you might have heard. The place that is not."
I peered at his head. The veins were moving, pumping their own blackness as ours would pump scarlet blood. "The hands that are not." What was that? I frowned, looking closer.
"Yes. This, all you see, this is-"
"-debris." I was sure of it. Grains in his body, planes surging them along.
His smile broadened, his eyes shone like beetle wings. "Yes. Oh, Tanyana, I was so glad to welcome you."
Welcome? "That was you, in the beginning? When I fell from Grandeur?"
He nodded.
Was I supposed to understand any of this? "So this world is made of debris? Like you?"
"It is debris. Like me. We are one and the same. Your world is made of layers, and particles, of different pieces running in hectic chaos. I am only one. All this-" he swept his arms wide "-is me. It is also debris. I am the door, the guardian, the sign."
"Right." No sense at all. "What are the doors?"
His face settled into seriousness, into sadness in transparency and black. "Joins between our worlds."
"Lots of them."
"Yes, too many. It is all I can do to guard them and keep them closed."
"Closed." I frowned, brain still sluggish. I blamed the blows, the silver and the whole bizarre situation. "If they opened, that wouldn't be good, would it?"
He shook his head. "Should they open, the Dark World and the Light World, my world and your world, they will blend. The Dark World will destroy you. The Light World will destroy me. Everything is changing. Soon, I am not sure I will be able to hold the doors closed."
"Fear for everything," I murmured, and thought of Lad who had done his role as a Half so well, and warned us. Lad.
Lad!
I jerked upright. The Keeper didn't hold me down. "The debris! Is it… is Lad…?"
"Can you see? We are connected, all worlds. If you know how, you can see both."
Like pions, just with an added helping of scary and a little too weird. A frown, a moment of concentration, and shapes emerged from the doors. My collecting team cast thin and insubstantial in wood and shadow. Mizra and Uzdal had fallen, their shield cast down, suits weak. They lay on either side of the empty site, limp and unconscious.
"Not dead," Keeper told me. How did he know?
Sofia was wrapped around Lad who still rocked, hands to head, crying. She shielded him completely, exposing her back, and watched as Kichlan stood against the debris-thing. She knew, I could see it in her face, that if Kichlan fell – then she would die before she surrendered Lad. Sofia knew it, accepted it, and thought it rather likely.
"You said it is going for Lad. Why?"
"It knows the most powerful of you, those who threaten it." He shook his pale head. "Do not let it kill the Half. There are so few like him left in this world, and they are so precious. I need them. You need them. To help me keep these doors closed."
I could see all this, but no more of the real world. Kichlan stood – one arm hanging by his side, the other raised with a jagged blade of suit guarding his face – his image mottled with wood grain, in a world of darkness and doors.
The debris-thing was something else entirely. The Keeper's terrible twin. A pale body with dark grains running through it, but twisted. Scarred. Dark ridges ran from fingers to shoulder, torso to leg. Its head sagged to the side. Its legs shuffled. Its skin rippled, new ridges forming, old ones dying, scarring over and over again.
It looked to me, for all I did not want to see it, like it had fallen. And landed on glass.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Debris. Like me."
"Make it stop." I stood, no longer feeling the dizziness in my head or the cuts to my body. I felt whole, strong. I flexed a silver-coated hand. Very strong. "If you are it and it is you, make it stop."
"I can't." The Keeper stood beside me. He was tall, but thin as a willow branch and as delicate. "They are changing us. Changing me. I am losing control."
"They?"
The Keeper lifted a fine hand and pointed with pale fingers. "Can you see them? They hide in your world, scurry like rats behind walls. But they are always there, behind you. Following."
Where the remnants of a wall from Grandeur's old site would have hidden them in the real world, in the Keeper's home of doors and shadows the puppet men were starkly clear. Three of them stood in a line, watching Kichlan and the debris-thing.
"They see too much," Keeper whispered. "They touch both worlds. I fear them. Their touch burns, and each part of me they scar unlocks another door."
As one, their pale faces and mouldy eyes turned toward me.
Kichlan roared. I spun to see him slash at the debristhing and miss widely. It flickered around him, dancing like a cruel partner. A warped hand flashed out, struck his shoulder, and sent him spinning.
"Bro!" Lad leapt to his feet, throwing Sofia off like she was a doll. "No!"
"Not the Half!" Keeper shouted, but I was already moving. I ran over to the doors. They were hard, like concrete. Kichlan landed on his injured side. The debristhing scuttled forward. Lad extended his suit into clubs and lunged.
But I got there first. I held Lad back with a hand, catching his club in its downward swing, lifting him from his feet and pushing him at Sofia.
"Hold him!" I shouted at her.
She and Lad stared at me like I was the debris-thing, like I was a ghost or a creature worse than any imagination could make me. But I didn't care. It was Kichlan I had come to save. I would not let the scarred thing hurt him any more.
The Keeper appeared behind Kichlan as the debris-thing hesitated. It flickered itself around, head twisting like a doll. I realised it had no face; at least, it had none left. There had been a nose, eyes, a mouth. Only ridges, shifting and solidifying, remained. The scars on my own cheeks seemed to tighten in response.
Kichlan looked up, pale and strained. "Tanyana?" he whispered.
The debris-thing lashed at me. I caught it as I had the planes, locking my suit to its arm like weapons crossed.
"Tame it!" Keeper cried.
"Miss Vladha."
As one we stopped. Kichlan, Sofia, Lad, even the debris-thing, the Keeper and I, as the puppet men entered the abandoned construction site.
"What are they doing?" Keeper hissed.
"You?" Kichlan spat the word at them. "What is going on?"
But the puppet men held their attention firmly on me. "We suggest you do not listen to the advice of weaklings not long for either world. We suggest you listen to us, Miss Vladha, and do exactly as we say."
The Keeper placed himself between Lad and the puppet men. He wavered, like a wind was battering the branches of his limbs and the thin trunk of his body. But still, that stance, legs wide and shoulders broad, was defensive and strong. "You know I am here, don't you?" His dark eyes danced between the three identical faces. "You can see me. Hear me."
How was that possible? Even Lad, a Half, only heard the Keeper.
The puppet men turned simultaneous heads, lifted the corners of their mouths, and sneered together. "You should flee. Your time is limited. Run, if you want to make the most of it."
Kichlan rolled to unsteady feet. "Leave him alone!" He didn't know Keeper was there. All he could see was the sight he dreaded most, the puppet men threatening his brother.
But they paid Kichlan no heed. Sneers fell away as they looked back at me. "Destroy it, Miss Vladha. Quickly."
"No," Keeper whispered.
The debris-thing folded, and vanished from my hand.
"Behind the Half." The Keeper vanished with it.
I plunged my suit into the ground. It threw me up and over Lad and Sofia's heads. The debris-thing re-emerged and I crashed right into it.