The Beginning After The End

Chapter 477

Chapter 475: Transcendence

ARTHUR LEYWIN

“I think he’s sick,” my mother said, rocking me back and forth in her arms. “He’s not eating, Reynolds, and he hasn’t made a peep all day.”

My father moved to stand at Mom’s side. He stared down at me nervously. “I can send for the doctor?” He made the statement a question, his voice rising along with his brows as he regarded my mother, uncertain.

Mom’s brows, on the other hand, descended thunderously. “Can you, Rey? That would be lovely!”

My father flinched back, rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, and mumbled, “Um, of course, I’ll…” Whatever else he might have said trailed off as he hurried away.

Mom rolled her eyes at his back, then refocused her attention on me. “That father of yours…” She tried to smile, but the expression didn’t quite reach her eyes. She poked my stomach gently, wiggling her finger back and forth to tickle me. “With any luck, you’ll get his good looks but my brains, little Arthur.”

I was aware of this exchange, but I did not think about it. My conscious mind sat nestled within my infant body, in control and living with it moment to moment instead of allowing the keystone to pull time away from me the way you might pull a carpet out from under someone’s feet. I clung to it, desperately intent on remaining myself, being myself.

I will not lose myself again only to wake up with the memories of another man’s life, I had told myself repeatedly while pointedly not thinking about the heartbreaking events of my previous attempt at the keystone. And I meant to keep this promise to myself. Only…I still didn’t understand how.

But I was starting to understand a piece of the keystone, at least. After my last two lives, I felt confident that I saw the trap in it—the reason one could not leave until they had “completed” the keystone—and why that was so unlikely. The lives lived were punishing in a way I hadn’t expected. Already, my memories of these lives were full of bitterness, regret, and loss. Despite not really being “myself” during these events, the memories of my decisions, of my feelings—my deaths—were vivid.

I was still unsure if Sylvie and Regis, and their respective abilities, were central to my continued progress, but now I was sure there was more to it than just that. Despite the djinn’s ability of foresight, it seemed like a bridge too far to think that they had accounted for, expected, or even required the presence of three connected minds to enter and alter the keystone in whatever way would fulfill its purpose. What they had accounted for, on the other hand, was the requirement that a mage already know three very specific aether arts to have reached this point.

The abilities taught by the previous keystones had acted as keys to enter this puzzle, but as I sat within the days and weeks of mulling rumination, I grew more and more convinced that they had to be more than just keys.

After first arriving and experiencing the miracle of my own birth for the second time, I shouldn’t have been able to see the aether gathering for my awakening, but I had. The importance of that had been lost on me in the following repeated attempts at this life, but in retrospect, this strange fact felt like some kind of clue or hint toward the keystone’s solution.

But pursuing any clue was itself a problem I wasn’t sure how to solve. After all, how could I attempt to make a change to learn more about it if the act of making that change meant I lost all sense of what I was doing, at least until I was born yet again with an entirely new life’s memories stuffed into my exhausted brain.

There has to be a way to navigate this place more purposefully, I told myself, thinking of the Relictombs and the Compass.

A cry erupted from my tiny form, and I pulled back, letting time pass as my mother cleaned and fed me, a distinctly uncomfortable experience to focus on. Before I knew it, I was a toddler yet again, already near my awakening.

I lurched back into the present with a jolt of fear. I’m not ready to go farther. Not yet.

Perhaps due to my temporal proximity to the day of my awakening, I was again reminded of the strange sight of aetheric particles swarming as if to spectate that event.

I should not be able to see aether, but there are times that I can. What could that mean?

Tentatively, I reached for Realmheart. My infantile body contained no godrunes, of course, but my real physical body did. If there were times I could see aether, it could only be because some sense of it was bleeding between the mental keystone realm and the physical world.

But if there was some physical connection, I could not find it. Like my search for Sylvie, attempting to activate Realmheart revealed nothing.

Sylvie…

‘I am here.’ The ghostly apparition of my bond manifested in front of me. She was sitting with her legs crossed and watching me carefully. ‘It’s fascinating. I can see it all in your mind, everything we’ve already discussed across these multiple lives you’ve lived.’

Good, that at least saves me the trouble of explaining it over and over again, I answered, realizing I hadn’t been shielding my thoughts at all, because there had been no need.

‘To continue our previous conversation, I think I may have an idea.’

I waited, silently encouraging her to continue.

‘If we need a catalyst to wake the real Sylvie’s mind and allow me to bind to her, perhaps we can channel the energy of your awakening.’

How?

‘I have no clue.’

I sat with the idea for a while, trying to use what I knew about magic to piece together a possible solution. Unlike with Sylvie’s resurrection egg, however, I was not handed some strange mystical answer. Whatever I did would be up to me, and if it didn’t work, I might drastically alter the timeline and end up forgetting all over again.

I began reaching for Realmheart again, more as a meditative practice than any expectation that I would actually make the connection. It was like trying to curl the fingers of a hand that was no longer attached to my body. Sylvie and I remained there for what felt like hours to my disconnected brain and body, but I was certain that my mother would have come to check on me if that were the case.

Pudgy fingers raised to dig into my bare sternum.

I scrunched up my face and scratched more vigorously. There was an itch deep inside my chest that I couldn’t seem to reach.

My vision flickered, and for a moment Sylvie lit up like an old Earth Christmas tree, her body made of light, both mana and aether.

The sudden change made me flinch, and it blinked away.

‘What was that?’ Sylvie asked, looking at me with a mixture of concern and excitement. ‘Do it again.’

I looked at her and tried to unfocus my eyes, to cross them, to stare so hard that the lights would appear again. When they didn’t, I closed my eyes entirely, clenching my little fists and straining to reach that mindset that had just flickered past me like a moth in the dark.

There was a sudden rumble, and the room filled with an embarrassing smell. I grimaced, and my mother reappeared to clean and change me. I endured the experience, afraid to slip free of the bonds of that moment. When she was done, instead of leaving me to my business, she carried me out of the room on her hip, bouncing me and singing softly.

I was so close, I grumbled to Sylvie, who walked patiently along at Mother’s side. My fingers dug into my sternum again.

“Do you have an itchy, Art?” Mom asked suddenly, holding me up for inspection. Her fingers brushed the spot with a soft humming noise. “I don’t see anything, but…” Her fingers sparkled with magic, and I felt the soothing mana move through me. Although it wiped away the ache in my legs and backside from sitting so still for so long, it only highlighted the strange itch I felt in my—

My core! I squirmed, and my speech came out as a burbling coo.

“Art, what—oh!”

I had shaken free of Mother and pattered away in my toddler style, doing my best version of a run back to the bedroom.

“Okay then, I can take a hint,” my mother said with mild sarcastic amusement as I crawled off.

Plopping back down, I turned my focus inward as best I could. Closing my eyes, I again reached for Realmheart.

The itching sensation grew more pronounced.

I felt a lopsided grin tremble across my face. My core, Sylv. I can feel my actual core. That damned itch…I can feel it.

Following the uncomfortable sensation like a beacon, my keystone-bound consciousness reached for my physical body.

Although my eyes were closed, the air within the bedroom grew warm with the sudden glow of atmospheric mana and aether.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and gaped at the motes of red, yellow, blue, green, and purple that swam all around me. I took a deep breath, and a little shudder ran down my spine. With Realmheart active, I simply sat and stared. It was beautiful, and it changed everything.

I quickly began to feel tired, so I released my connection to the godrune. The floating mana particles faded away, leaving only the purple motes of aether. After another few seconds, they too vanished. Despite this fatigue, I wasn’t discouraged. In fact, I was exhilarated.

I have an idea.

Despite spending most of my conscious time living in the present moment, the next couple of months seemed to fly by in a blur. With the ghostly version of Sylvie at my side, I practiced connecting to and activating Realmheart, Aroa’s Requiem, and King’s Gambit. While Realmheart seemed to work more or less as expected, I couldn’t utilize Aroa’s Requiem to repair a broken item as I had in ‘real’ life, and King’s Gambit served more to muddle my thoughts than to clarify them, and I had yet to duplicate the effect of splitting my mind and considering many possibilities at once. I suspected that it was due to my inability to actually manipulate aether inside the keystone.

Still, Sylvie and I had a plan that we were confident in.

The day of my awakening arrived at last. I began my meditation as usual, slowly condensing all the mana within my body to my sternum. Sylvie floated within me, hovering at the center of that spot like Regis so often did. She was silent, but her thoughts were hyper-focused on the real Sylvie’s slumbering mind. Despite being asleep, her connection to me remained.

Which meant that there were two halves of Sylvie’s whole present inside of me.

It’s beginning, I projected to Sylvie. Hold on, it might get a bit bumpy in there.

Using the itch in my core as a tether back to my body as I’d done before, I activated Aroa’s Requiem and focused on the ghost Sylvie. At the same time, I opened my mind to the real Sylvie, reaching through our link to give her a strong mental shake. Or trying to, at least. I couldn’t be certain if I was successful.

A powerful pushing force erupted out of me as my core formed and I awakened. Closing my eyes, I channeled Aroa’s Requiem into Sylvie, willing her to be whole and complete again. I projected my desire and request to the aether I knew was gathering around our home to watch the explosion unfold, drawn by some unknown twist of Fate. I couldn’t manipulate it the way I did my own purified aether, but if I was right…

In a kind of echo of my condensing mana, the atmospheric aether also gravitated toward me, through me. Within the pushing force, within my body, within the core that was rapidly forming out of the explosion that leveled our house, the violet motes shimmered and danced around the ghostly manifestation of Sylvie. The force of my awakening rippled outward not only in the keystone space, but it also vibrated through my physical body and the connections I had with my companions.

Somewhere outside of my self, I felt Sylvie’s eyes snap open.

Her ghostly form spilled out of me, transparent golden eyes wide as she spun around. Momentarily untethered from reality and uncertain what was happening, her thoughts snapped and sparked across the surface of my mind like the scales of the lightning drake. There was a liquid texture to her transparent body as she seemed to shift and reform, aging and then deaging rapidly as she vacillated between the younger, pre-rebirth version of herself and the slightly older Sylvie I was familiar with over these last many months.

Sylvie, you’re all right. Don’t worry, you’re just waking up.

My bond gazed down at her incorporeal body, let out a scream only I could hear, then swelled outward, bursting into the form of a dragon. Her broad, black-scaled chest rose and fell heavily, and her long neck twisted back and forth, scanning the environment. Had her very real fear not been pumping directly into me, the sight of this huge, transparent dragon flailing around while my mother and father tended to me none the wiser would have almost been humorous.

It wasn’t until Mom and Dad began taking me out of the rubble of our home that Sylvie seemed to focus, her head snapping down and her eyes fixating on them as if they were a lighthouse seen through a long-fought storm.

Grabbing onto that attention, I tried to reach her again. Sylvie, it’s going to be okay. It’s me, Arthur. I’ve managed to wake you up and…bind you to the ghost of your past self. I struggled to put the strange thought into real words I knew she would understand. We’re in the fourth keystone. And I need you.

Despite being able to see through them, I held her golden eyes. The huffing and puffing of her massive body slowed. One tentative footstep after another, she followed where Mother and Father carried me, their conversation meaningless background noise at this point. Her huge clawed limbs left no prints in the wreckage of the home as she passed.

‘Arthur?’

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It worked.

Sylvie opened her mouth to speak, but I held her mind and focused on the memories of everything that had transpired in the keystone so far. It took time for Sylvie to work her way through the shared visions, but I didn’t rush her. Instead, we sat with my mother in the shade of a small tree as Father inspected the ruins and spoke to a neighbor, who had come running at the noise.

Finally, Sylvie’s focus returned to the present. She had shrank back into her humanoid form and now regarded me with disbelief. ‘I saw some of what was happening, like I was dreaming. This is all…’ She trailed off with a shake of her head. Sylvie watched my mother slowly brushing her fingers through my hair for a minute or two, then continued. ‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I’m so sorry. The things you’ve had to endure here…it’s sick.’

I think you get out of it what you bring into it, I answered, watching Father pick through the rubble without truly seeing. The lives I lived here were the direct result of my own choices. Deviating from the experiences of my real life nearly always ends up resulting in…

I stopped, frowning, as a new thought came to me. Almost tentatively, I again followed the distant itch back to my physical body and activated Realmheart. While there was no physical manifestation of the godrune activating on my toddler body, aether and mana swam into my vision.

A fiery claw squeezed my heart, which began to beat rapidly.

Among the familiar colors that I expected to see, something else lit up under the influence of Realmheart.

‘What is that?’ Sylvie asked, sharing in my vision through our mental connection.

There was a nimbus of golden light radiating from the house. Thin golden threads seemed to connect the demolished house, me, my parents, and places that weren’t places, but rather times, both forward into the future and back into the past.

Fate, I thought breathlessly. This has to be Fate.

The gears of my mind spun as I tried to determine what had changed, what catalyst had allowed me to suddenly see this manifestation. Was it Realmheart, or Sylvie’s awakening in conjunction with my own, or some more subtle insight I’d gained that expanded on the properties of my abilities?

Curious, I released Realmheart. Again, the visible mana particles vanished instantly, while the aether lingered and faded more slowly. The golden threads remained longer—so long in fact that I began to think it may not be related to Realmheart at all—before the threads finally began to dim and go out, leaving ghostly little afterimages in my eyes. Eventually, even the afterimages melted away.

‘If this is Fate, then perhaps you can see it now because it has decided you can?’ Sylvie asked haltingly.

You think that Fate might be…conscious? Aware?

Sylvie blinked, nonplussed. ‘I hadn’t really meant it that way, but…it’s possible, isn’t it? Aether has a kind of consciousness, after all. Would Fate not also, if it is an aspect of aether? So far, it seems as if the lesson you’ve learned about your life—your ‘fate’—is that you already lived through the best case scenario. After all, you said yourself that every time you’ve changed something, it has resulted in a worse series of events.’

And you think that the keystone, or Fate, or the djinn—whatever is driving this sequence of events—is trying to show me that things have unfolded for a reason?’

Sylvie shrugged her incorporeal shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t dare to hope it’s that simple, and it does seem to fly in the face of your living through life exactly as you already had, since that resulted only in a sort of time loop…but as for why you can suddenly see these golden threads connecting moment to moment of your life, if this understanding is putting you on the right track, then you’ve gained some insight that Fate wants you to have.’

I nodded along slowly. What she said made sense, but it was also very disconnected from how I thought about mana, aether, insight, and even the previous suppositions I’d made about the aspect of Fate itself, and I found it difficult to fix this new paradigm in my mind.

‘Why don’t we continue forward,’ Sylvie suggested. ‘We can check other points in your life for these trails or threads as well. Maybe we can confirm more about it or unlock some new insight.’

We don’t know if you can travel along the timeline with me, I pointed out. If I retract my mind and allow events to proceed forward, you may be drawn away on the path you originally took during this time.

‘Then I will see you at my birth,’ Sylvie answered with a wry smile.

I squirmed in Mother’s arms, and she let me scramble free. With one last concerned look, she stood and returned to my father.

I sat on my knees beside Sylvie. ‘Enter my body. Just guesswork, but maybe it will shield you or keep us together.’

She did, and I pulled back from the world, letting time rush by.

Are you still with me? I asked.

‘I am,’ Sylvie confirmed, and I felt relief wash through me.

Progress. We were making progress.

I plunged back into the rapidly passing time as we once again approached the mountain pass where the attack happened and I was separated from my family. I found myself sitting in the cart with my mother, who was watching the scenery pass while chatting with Angela Rose and paying me no mind.

With the itch in my real core as a guide, I reached for my physical body and focused on the Realmheart godrune.

As expected, the world lit up with particles of aether and mana. And running through them, a thin thread of golden light, leading onward to the site of the ambush and the cliff. Thinner, fainter threads ran back from the glowing aura around the mountainside to each of us, as well as the hidden bandits. Pieces were clicking into place.

“Stop,” I said, my small voice commanding.

Durden pulled the reins, bringing our cart to a halt. The adults all looked at me with surprise.

‘What are you doing?’ Sylvie asked, then, ‘Oh!’ as my thoughts passed to her.

“There is an ambush ahead.” I continued, explaining to the Twin Horns and my parents what was going to happen. As they hurried into position to counter the bandits, I released Realmheart and activated Aroa’s Requiem.

This time, although the mana and aether particles faded out of view, the golden lines remained.

I reached out and took the golden thread leading away from the battle in my fingers and gave it a small tug. The world around me rushed by, only it was moving in reverse. That small tug took me back a few minutes. When I released it, the cart was again moving forward, my mother still seated beside me chatting with Angela Rose, paying me no mind. The point where I’d stopped the cart passed, and we rolled forward toward the fight that separated me from my family.

Activating Aroa’s Requiem again, I pulled the thread forward.

The fight rushed by me as if time were sped up, but it was different than when I disassociated from my body and stepped away, letting life play out as it had happened without conscious effort or interference. This speeding up of events felt more intentional, with my mind and location both staying relevant to my place in time. Events still played out the same way, but there seemed to be no risk of me being caught up in the rushing tide of time and the vortex effect I had encountered before.

Even as I plummeted off the cliffside yet again, I grinned.

Everything was starting to make sense.

I hurried forward to Sylvia’s cave. It was another point in time marked with the golden aura of Fate, which was no surprise.

‘I can feel the egg pulling me in,’ Sylvie said as we descended into the cave where I would meet my Grandma Sylvia—and Sylvie her mother—for the first time.

It’s fine, go to it. I’ll see you on the other side.

Despite my curiosity about using Realmheart and Aroa’s Requiem to explore the different potential outcomes of my time with Sylvia, there was something else more immediate that I wanted to accomplish. Sylvie was reborn as herself, and as I had hoped, the real Sylvie’s mind remained awake and conscious inside of her newborn body.

We sped forward, examining each major turning point in my life, unsurprised to find they were all marked by Fate. It was as Windsom transported us to Epheotus for the first time that I was brought up by an unexpected and rather uncomfortable thought.

All of these moments marked by Fate…were they destined to happen that way? Did Fate make these moments happen?

Hearing my thoughts and understanding the underlying context, Sylvie’s tone was consoling when she answered. ‘You made these choices, Arthur. You know that. No one was pulling the strings making these things happen.’

Still, I could feel her lack of surety, only partially veiled from our connection. There were so many places where it could go wrong. Even when I have made better choices in the keystone, the result has always been my premature death. What if…Fate is prioritizing my survival over the good of the world?

‘Or,’ Sylvie began, her tone that of someone explaining something very simple to someone very dense, ‘your survival is what is best for this world. But I think I have to point out that this keystone and the events it creates aren’t real. How could it know what would have happened in every given scenario?’

Fate, I reminded her.

“Arthur, Lady Sylvie. I must insist we continue on,” Windsom said, turning to look at us against the backdrop of the many-colored bridge and Kezess’s castle, the twin peaks of Mount Geolus swallowed by an endless expanse of fog.

Activating Aroa’s Requiem, I sped forward through the bulk of my training until I reached a specific point.

“The fact is that you’re a walking collection of statistical improbabilities,” Wren said, looking at me with clear exasperation. “You have an innate ability to comprehend the workings of the four main elements, as well as some of their deviating elemental forms, coinciding so neatly with the fact that comprehension of all four elements is necessary to unlock the mysteries of aether, which the very princess of dragons just so happens to have kindly bestowed upon you. Everything about you is an outlier, boy. Even asuras don’t have that much innate talent and luck.”

“If that’s your way of cheering me up, thank you,” I chuckled, getting to my feet. “Now, what’s next on our to-do list?”

“Before that, give me your dominant hand.” Wren rose from his conjured earthen throne and approached me.

Spreading out my right hand, palm facing up, I stared at the asura, waiting in anticipation. The next step was one I was less certain of than the previous revelations regarding Aroa’s Requiem and Realmheart, or even of combining Sylvie with her keystone-ghost self.

Wren pulled a fist-sized black case from his coat pocket, then opened it and removed a small pyramidal opaque gem. “This is a mineral called acclorite. By itself, it’s a rather rare but useless piece of rock. However, with the right refining and synthesizing process—which I will keep unto my grave, so don’t bother asking—it is capable of something remarkable.”

“Like forming a weapon. Or even, in the right circumstances, a living being,” I replied.

Wren’s brows rose up into his unkempt hairline, and he regarded me with undisguised astonishment. “So someone has been spilling secrets before their due time, I see,” he said after a moment, recovering and glancing around sourly as if he would find the guilty party hiding behind a rock. “How unprofessional.”

“I’m going to tell you something, and you don’t have any choice other than to believe me,” I started, having already confirmed that this was one of those moments marked by Fate. I took confidence from the knowledge that I could simply reverse course and attempt this again if I failed.

Wren made a face, but I pushed on. “Although it takes much more than a year, this acclorite does in fact grow into a weapon: a conscious being combining aspects of Sylvie, Sylvie, myself, and a Vritra retainer named Uto.”

Wren’s mouth curved into a wry smile as if he thought I were teasing him.

“Listen, Wren. This being is born in a place called the Relictombs—the system of dungeons or ‘chapters’ created by the djinn, and so he is able to feed on and utilize aether. Some part of that being’s consciousness—his name is Regis—is currently sleeping within me—kind of, except my body is…outside of this space and time—and I need to wake him up. I think this acclorite is the key to doing that.”

Wren’s smirk had slowly slipped off his face. He was frowning at me as if I were delirious or worse. “How could you know any of this, boy? The elven seer? Even if she’d shared some kind of vision with you, how would the—”

“It’s more complicated than that,” I interrupted, drawing a scowl from my tutor. “Suffice it to say that I know with utmost certainty that the consciousness that will grow out of this acclorite is here, now, with us. Sleeping. I want you to help me bind the mind back to the stone and awaken Regis early.”

Something clicked into place in Wren’s expression. It wasn’t belief, really, but more like…intrigue, and a very real willingness to explore this possibility further. “What are you suggesting?”

“First, set the acclorite under my skin,” I said, holding my hand out again.

Wren let out a long breath, then took hold of my hand and began pressing the opaque gem into my palm. I hardly registered the pain, and soon enough the acclorite disappeared underneath my skin.

I flexed my hand a couple of times, staring at my palm. Nothing happened.

“Now what?” Wren asked.

“This is your area of expertise. How could this rock turn into a conscious, living creature?”

“It’s rare,” Wren answered. He, too, was staring at my hand. “With suitable focus, determination, and input of energy, a weapon grown from acclorite will contain some measure of self-determination. This is born of the wielder, and fully binds a weapon to its user. But for the acclorite to grow into a fully self-aware, conscious being, this transfer of energy must be matched by an incredible will and, usually, a significant amount of desperation. Your state of being when the weapon manifested plays an essential role, as do the source and variety of inputs prior to manifestation.”

I smiled in amusement, recognizing Wren’s words here as an echo of what he’d said when he discovered Regis was a conscious manifestation in my real life. “And something of the acclorite remains, though. You said…well, nevermind, but if Regis were here in body, you would be able to sense the acclorite’s energy, right?”

Wren rested his hands on his hips and tapped his fingers rapidly. “I would. A being born of acclorite is mutable in nature, but the signature of its origin should be perceptible even if it were present only in a disembodied form. Unless that form was shrouded inside the body of another living being, where its own signature would be disguised by the mana and natural rhythm of the host—the heartbeat, breathing, circulation from core to channels, et cetera. This may be made yet more complicated if the being is—how did you put it?—outside space and time, whatever that means.”

“But if you knew it was there, and the host in question allowed you, could you find that sleeping mind?”

Wren regarded me as if I had completely lost my own mind. “I won’t pretend to even fully understand what that means, but…” His eyes narrowed, and he mussed his already tangled hair. With a scoff, he waved a hand and conjured a flat bed of rock, indicating I should lie down. I did so, and he stood over me. “Close your eyes and stop the noisy gears of your senseless brain from spinning so I can focus.”

I bit back a sarcastic retort and tried to do as he ordered, letting my mind still and go blank. My breathing slowed, as did my pulse. Calling back on multiple lifetimes of practice, I fell into a meditative blankness.

Wren’s hands passed over me. I could sense them, but I didn’t focus on them. He hummed thoughtfully, then let out an irritated huff, his warm breath washing across my face. Then, after what felt like a very long time, “Aha…”

Physical fingers pressed down over my sternum, and fingers of magic probed deeper, wriggling through flesh and meat and even deeper than my core into something ethereal and intrinsic to my being—the nexus of where my waking consciousness in the keystone met my physical body outside of it. I focused on the weak sense I had of Regis’s sleeping mind, which I felt even in that first moment after appearing inside the keystone, and hoped that the spotlight of my thoughts would point Wren in the right direction.

“Stop that, boy. Just lay there and act like the braindead loon you are. I take back every positive thing I’ve ever said about you. There’s no way you are anything but a complete and utter kook—” He cut off with a sharp inhalation, and I felt the incorporeal fingers close around something. “By the ancients, you are right. An acclorite-born being…I can feel it tethered to you—no, woven into and through you, as tied to you as your own nervous system…”

A warm, familiar energy floated up from my sternum through my chest and into my arm, then down the arm to my hand, guided by Wren’s magic. He snorted with delight. “I’ve never rehomed a consciousness that already exists into an acclorite crystal before. It shouldn’t work, but if you’re right and this…Regis…was really born from this acclorite…” The acclorite burned hot as molten iron in my palm, and I gasped at the pain. Wren grabbed my wrist, pinning my arm to the stone.

Purple light glowed through my skin, which felt like it would burn away at any moment.

‘Arthur, what’s wrong? What’s happening?’ Sylvie’s voice sounded in my mind from where she still trained with her grandfather in Castle Indrath.

My eyes rolled back into my head as my body bucked. A powerful hand pressed against my chest, holding me flat and preventing me from hurting myself. Not that I could have felt it past the agony of the acclorite.

A black will-o-wisp the size of my clenched fist floated free of my flesh, and the pain vanished. I sank back, no longer bucking against Wren’s arms, sweat pouring from my face and my breath coming in desperate gasps. I just barely made out the ball of dark light, within which two bright sparks glinted like eyes and a black slash below them looked like a wry smile.

I had no breath to speak, no focus to generate words. Even my mind seemed clouded, and I couldn’t sense the thoughts of either Regis or Sylvie.

The will-o-wisp darted closer to me and dipped low.

“Behold, master. I, Regis, the mighty weapon gifted to you by the asuras so long ago, have finally manifested in all my glory!” The two bright sparks glinted as if they were blinking, and the wisp turned slowly around in a circle. “Wait, what the hell is going on?”