There was one hour left, and Sev didn’t feel like he was any closer.

Derivan, Vex, and Misa had all left the building to try to help calm people’s nerves and to see if there was anything they could do to make this bit of reality last longer. Vex and Misa were trying to channel their Grand Anchors into something, even if they were missing the key piece of Divinity—and even though Sev knew those anchors didn’t quite work like that, he couldn’t bring himself to stop them.

After all, they’d pulled off the impossible before.

Just... what was he missing?

Before he could think on it further, there was a knock on the door, and Jerome strode into the room once again. He spoke before Sev could get a word in edgewise. “I’m going to leave. It might give you a bit more time.”

“Wait, what?” Sev asked, alarmed. He stood from the table, nearly knocking the Grand Anchor off of it—it was Jerome that reached out to steady it, actually. The paladin caught Sev’s arm a second later, his expression perfectly serious. Sev still tried to protest. “You can’t just—”

“I have to do it now,” Jerome said. “If I wait, it’s just going to be worse, right? It’ll give you even less time. I just... wanted to make sure. You know. That it would work. That’s why I asked.”

“Jerome,” Sev said. There was a rising panic in him, and try as he might, he couldn’t quite seem to stop it. “Jerome, don’t—we still have time. You can’t—”

“I think I gotta,” Jerome said, shrugging. “Look, you guys have brought people back from the Void before, right? It doesn’t have to be permanent.”

“Jerome, if you get erased, we aren’t even going to remember you.” Sev swallowed. “Misa’s been protecting us against that, but we’re in the final stages of collapse. The anchors are barely working to maintain what’s here, let alone keep our memories perfectly intact.”

“System,” Jerome said. “If I leave, how much extra time is Sev gonna get?”

“The system doesn’t just respond to people like that,” Sev began, although even as he said it, he realized it wasn’t true. Whatever was going on with Anderstahl’s Prime Anchor, it had been able to use the system to do exactly that.

As if to emphasize that point, the system window that popped up was visible to both of them.

Offloaded weight will allow anchor integrity to remain stable for an additional 3 hours.