“You might’ve seen the pattern before,” Vidhan says. “Some call it the seed of life. But really, it’s a depiction of the seven worlds—bound together. The multiverse.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

Vidhan shrugs. “It can be.” He rights his glasses and looks at me, eyes magnified. “Seven realms,” he says. “A current flows between them, an energy. All living things, across all the worlds, draw power from this energy. Anything in the wrong place and time damages the flow. See, it’s delicate, the multiverse. Needs protection. Pathfinders are like guardians. We see to it things stay where they belong. Else everything collapses. We move between worlds to keep the multiverse alive. But…”

He hesitates, and I urge him on. “But?”

“But some Pathfinders…take a different view. Less concerned with protection, more interested in short-term self-gain. And power.”

I nod, remembering Malik’s words. “The Order.”

“Keep it down,” Vidhan hisses.

I snap my head around and look at him, shocked at the sudden change in tone.

“They’re here?” I whisper.

“They’re everywhere,” he answers. Then he points at the sixth ring. “But mostly, you’ll find them in Venetia.”

The Order. The ones who took Bea.

I feel a spike of adrenaline. A reminder. This is the reason I’m here. I’m filled with a wild urge to get to her fast. To fly across the worlds to her.

“Vidhan, can we Fall between any worlds, whenever we want?”

He raises his eyebrows and looks at me as if I’m mad. “Nah, mate. We move between worlds in order—forward, or back. It’s an immutable multi-universal law.”

Vidhan moves his finger to the top left circle. “Sol,” he says. “This is where you’re from.” He sweeps his finger clockwise into the next circle. “Lūna’s next, the universe we’re in now. Then here’s Ares. A war zone. Dangerous.” He slides his finger around and down into the adjacent circle. “Tir, the most extreme of all worlds. Hot as hell in the day, freezing at night. Here’s Jöve, the fifth, governed by massive tides. Half of the time everything there is a swamp—then boom, the whole world is underwater. And after that Venetia, the sixth, ugly to the bone. Normals there are superstitious brutes, the lot of ’em. Less time you spend there, the better. They know about Pathfinders and they don’t like us.”

“Normals are anyone who’s not a Pathfinder?”

“Exactly.”

“Do they all know about Pathfinders?”

“Depends on the universe. Take Sol. It’s the least enlightened—and maybe that’s a good thing—Normals there don’t have a clue about any of this and those few that Fall by mistake are returned and have their memories wiped.”

“Wiped?”

He taps his forehead. “Telepathy. We can use it to obliterate their memories of Falling. All gone in seconds.”

“Of course.”