The garden appeared between one step and the next.
One moment they rode through corrupted landscape — twisted trees, poisoned earth, a sky that hadn't known clean sunlight in three thousand years. The next, they were surrounded by life.
Green. Everywhere, overwhelming, impossibly verdant. Trees that stood straight and proud, their leaves rustling in a breeze that carried no corruption. Flowers that bloomed in colors Spencer had forgotten existed. Grass that bent beneath the horses' hooves without a trace of wrongness.
Thread Sight confirmed what his eyes were telling him. The threads here were clean — green-gold-white, vibrant and healthy, pulsing with the pure Pattern energy that had been absent since they'd entered the Blight. Spencer's Codex Stamina began regenerating at full rate for the first time in two days.
"The Eye of the World," Moiraine said, her voice hushed with reverence. "We've found it."
"No." A voice came from everywhere and nowhere, deep as roots, gentle as spring rain. "You were brought here. The Pattern guided your steps, as it guides all who need find this place."
The Green Man emerged from the trees.
---
Someshta was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with human aesthetics.
He stood ten feet tall, his body woven from vines and branches, his face a mask of leaves that somehow conveyed expression. His thread was unlike anything Spencer had archived — not human, not animal, not plant, but all three braided together into something that predated the current Age.
[Skill Archive: Recording. Category: Supernatural Entity. Entry: Nym Thread Signature. Comprehension: 0.]
"Welcome, travelers," the Green Man said. "I am Someshta, last of the Nym, guardian of this place. You carry great need with you — I can feel it pressing against the Pattern."
Moiraine stepped forward, her silver-blue thread bright with purpose. "We seek the Eye, Someshta. The Shadow threatens it."
"The Shadow always threatens." Someshta's voice held ancient sorrow. "But you are right — the darkness presses closer now than it has in centuries. The Eye's light draws enemies as surely as it draws friends."
The Green Man's gaze swept across the group, pausing on each member. When his eyes — deep pools of vegetable green — reached Spencer, he stopped.
"You carry something old," Someshta said slowly. "Older than me. Older than the Age of Legends." His leafy head tilted with curiosity. "How curious. The Pattern has woven something new from something ancient."
Spencer's throat went dry. "I don't understand."
"No. You wouldn't." Someshta's smile held no malice, only wonder. "The Pattern keeps its secrets, even from those it uses to weave them. Come. I will show you the Eye."
---
The pool was hidden beneath a stone shelf at the garden's heart.
Spencer saw it through Thread Sight before his physical eyes registered its presence — a radiance so pure, so complete, that it burned away the Blight's residual corruption from his awareness. The threads surrounding the pool were crystalline, structured with geometric precision, protecting something that hadn't been touched by the Shadow's taint in three thousand years.
Then he saw the pool itself.
Liquid light. There was no other way to describe it. Pure saidin, the male half of the True Source, collected and preserved since the Age of Legends. Through Thread Sight, it was the most beautiful thing Spencer had ever witnessed — clean Pattern energy radiating outward like a small sun, untouched by the madness that corrupted every other source of the Power.
This is what I came for. This is what I need to survive.
His Inventory had one slot reserved. His plan was clear: during the battle that was coming — Aginor and Balthamel, the Forsaken who would find this place — he would position himself at the pool's edge. A Tier 1 Nudge, carefully aimed at the saidin's flow, would create a thread-pocket that his Inventory could capture.
A portion of pure saidin. Enough to fuel Codex operations for months, maybe years.
If I survive the attempt.
"You feel its pull," Moiraine said quietly. She'd come to stand beside him, her ageless face unreadable. "All men do, whether they can channel or not. The Power calls to something deep in the male spirit."
"It's beautiful."
"It is." Her thread pulsed with something that might have been sympathy. "And it is deadly. The Eye holds enough Power to break the world, if wielded wrongly. That is why it was hidden here, guarded by the last Nym, waiting for those who would need it most."
"Who will use it?"
Moiraine's eyes flickered to Rand, who stood at the garden's edge, staring at the flowers with the haunted expression of someone who recognized beauty but couldn't trust it.
"The one who must," she said. "The one the Pattern has chosen."
---
The group camped near the Eye that evening.
The garden provided everything they needed — fruit from trees that bent their branches in offering, water from a spring that tasted cleaner than anything Spencer had drunk since arriving in this world. The corrupted landscape outside seemed impossibly distant, a nightmare that couldn't touch this pocket of preserved perfection.
Spencer used the time to finalize his plan.
Tomorrow. The battle will come tomorrow, or the day after. Aginor and Balthamel will break through the garden's northern wall. The Green Man will fight them. Rand will channel the Eye's power for the first time.
And during that chaos, while everyone is focused on the Forsaken, I'll make my move.
The math was brutal. A Nudge on something as powerful as pure saidin would cost at least 15 Stamina, probably more. The EXP drain could exceed 100 points. And there was always the risk of Pattern Correction — the universe pushing back against his attempt to take something that wasn't meant for him.
But if it works...
If it works, I'll have a resource that no one else has. A power source that can fuel the Codex without limit. A tool to help Rand, to protect my friends, to survive whatever comes next.
The risk was worth the reward. It had to be.
---
Loial found Spencer sitting at the pool's edge, watching the liquid light shimmer in the darkness.
"You seem contemplative," the Ogier said, settling his bulk onto a nearby stone.
"Just thinking about tomorrow."
"Ah." Loial's ears twitched with understanding. "The Aes Sedai believes enemies will find us soon. Is that what troubles you?"
That, and the plan that could kill me or save everything.
"Partly."
Loial began to hum — a low, rumbling melody that seemed to resonate with the garden itself. The grass grew taller beneath his feet, the flowers turned their faces toward him, and for a moment Spencer understood what it meant to speak to the Pattern without needing a system to translate.
"I have lived longer than most humans," Loial said when the song faded. "Not long by Ogier standards, but long enough to learn something important: the Pattern provides what is needed, when it is needed. Not always what we want. Not always in the form we expect. But what is needed."
"That's a comforting thought."
"Is it?" Loial's deep eyes held something ancient and knowing. "I find it terrifying, personally. To know that you are part of a weaving larger than yourself, that your choices serve purposes you cannot fully understand — that is not comfort. That is faith. And faith is difficult."
Spencer looked at the pool — at the pure saidin waiting to be claimed, to be used, to change everything.
"Faith it is, then."
---
The night passed in uneasy peace.
Spencer tried to sleep, but his mind wouldn't quiet. He kept running calculations: Stamina reserves, EXP projections, the precise moment during the battle when he'd have the best chance of success. The Codex hummed in his awareness, ready for the operation that would push its capabilities to the limit.
Sometime after midnight, he found himself back at the pool.
The liquid light was hypnotic. Through Thread Sight, the patterns within the saidin shifted and flowed, mathematical perfection expressed as pure energy. Spencer watched the threads dance and thought about everything that had led him here — the car crash, the transmigration, Winternight, Shadar Logoth, the road that had brought a dead systems engineer from Earth to the edge of a pool that held the power of creation itself.
I was nobody. A cog in a machine, doing work that didn't matter for a company that didn't care.
Now I'm sitting in a garden at the end of the world, planning to steal power from the Pattern itself.
How did I get here? How did any of this happen?
The answer, of course, was the Pattern. The same weaving that had guided them to this garden, that had placed Spencer in Aldan Maeren's body, that had given him the Codex and the abilities that came with it.
The Pattern provides what is needed.
I just hope it needs what I'm about to do.
---
Dawn came with the sound of something breaking.
Spencer was on his feet before he fully registered the noise — a thunderous crack, like stone splitting, followed by the roar of voices that held no humanity. Thread Sight exploded with warning signatures: two sources of Power, massive and corrupted, pushing through the garden's northern wall.
"FORSAKEN!" Lan's voice cut through the chaos. "Everyone to the Eye!"
The battle had begun.
Spencer ran toward the pool, his plan crystallizing into action. Through Thread Sight, he could see them now — two figures emerging from the breach in the garden's defenses. Their threads were ancient and wrong: saidin-signatures twisted by three thousand years of imprisonment, Power levels that dwarfed anything Spencer had witnessed.
Aginor. Balthamel. The first of the Forsaken to escape.
The first enemies Rand will face.
The garden erupted into chaos. The Green Man moved to intercept Balthamel, his vine-woven body growing thorns and weapons. Moiraine raised her staff, fire blooming in preparation. Lan drew his sword, positioning himself between the Forsaken and the group.
And Spencer reached the pool's edge, Thread Sight locked onto the liquid light, his Inventory ready to capture whatever he could claim.
Now or never.
Everything I've planned comes down to this moment.
The saidin blazed before him, pure and terrible and beautiful. Spencer reached for the Codex's Nudge ability, feeling the Stamina drain begin, feeling the Pattern's threads bend around his intention—
And Rand al'Thor stepped past him, golden thread blazing like the sun, and touched the Eye of the World.
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