I was sent through the gate into a world that was not mine, because my own was not going to last — and the gate promised that something could.

The promise is one sentence. I have read it more times than anything I have, and I have had to correct it every time.

Live here as long as you wish, and your power will not run out.

Two clauses. The first is real. "Live here" is what the gate can do: one way, a body that reads in joules, a stay that is a fixed budget and not a wish. I did it once, when I stepped through, and I wore myself out doing it. It was real. That was the half that made the gate feel loadable.

The second is not. Your power will not run out. Nothing will not run out. A body is a pipe. A pipe is a meter. The meter reads in joules. And that is where the gate broke — because the second clause is the one that made the chosen one boom, and the boom ate the fire. I'll come back to the boom.

The middle is the part I spent thirty years refusing to read: as long as you wish.

I am the First. I am not the one who arrived any more — the scholar who stepped through and decided to be the First has been refactored so many times that I am more a stay than a body. I carry his home-ache. I am the place where it went wrong, and where it is going to go right, because I am the one life still holding when the fire is spent. That is why this journal exists. Not for me. For the one who arrives after me, who will wake somewhere cold to find I already did the one thing I was not supposed to be able to do: stopped casting, and understood why stopping was the better stay.

So let me put the number on the table first. You will not believe me otherwise.

The world is not generous. It is a second world with six centuries of sun left, and it has already spent the rest of its being. That is the whole stay we are allowed. It is burning a finite pile of exergy, and the pile is what it is. Everything I have done — every spell I held, every stay I had, every body I tore apart and reformed — came out of that pile. Not one of it from nowhere. That is the physics, and the trouble.

The gate was never a dream of boundless power. It was a dream of spending a finite pile for a long stay. Those are not the same thing, and the difference is the story.

Journal entry, the First, the not-refused stay: I have read the gate's promise again and corrected it again. First clause is real. Second clause is a pipe that reads in joules. The middle is the one I still won't read. The pile is six centuries of its sun; the six centuries is the stay the gate meant. I am going to tell you what I did with them. I am going to tell you the number. The number is the thing the gate was afraid of, and the afraid is the thing the gate was for.