“You good?”

  “I’ve just had a motivational seminar from a hallucinating hermit who believes sprinting in terror is a valid training method. So, you know. Peak mental health.”

  Musa grins. “You synced with the first layer. That’s the foundation of the Point Burst Scripture.”

  Aster barely hears Musa’s last words. Something about “you’re about to find out,” but the voice is distant, as if shouted from across a great divide. His focus is elsewhere—buried deep inside himself, where the whisper of ink still pulses along the lining of his Astral Vessel. The scripture’s madness hasn’t just brushed him; it has stitched itself into him, strand by strand, thread by blackened thread.

  He sees it now, clearly. A lattice of script not unlike the Crucible spell he learned to use with his Veneration—same structure, same roots—but this one bleeds intent and instability. It isn’t just technique. It’s psychosis, ritualized and refined. A desperate genius’s last conversation with himself, inked across eternity.

  The Point Burst Scripture, a graffiti’d war cry from someone who spent years high out of his mind and chased by golems through endless woods. Every line of the scripture crackles with that paranoia, that brilliance, that all-consuming certainty that someone—something—is always right behind you.

  Aster’s hand hovers at his chest, just above the Veneration spell. He remembers cultivation class— the glyphs, the demonstration, the energy flowing into something raw and potent.

  He doesn’t hesitate.

  He latches the Faith spell onto the scripture’s twisted framework.

  The effect is immediate.

  Every nerve in his legs detonates. He doesn’t feel movement; he feels disintegration. His muscles tear themselves apart mid-launch, and his bones shatter from the stress of a technique his body isn’t ready for. There is no grace, no elegance—just pure, unfiltered acceleration and a very sudden stop.

  Aster’s entire body slams into the courtyard wall like a ballistic mannequin. The impact craters stone. Ribs splinter. Limbs crumple. His consciousness blinks out as if someone flips a light switch.

  And then he’s standing again. Perfectly upright. No pain. No blood. No pulverized limbs. Back in the same spot he stood moments before launching himself into the wall.

  There, still fresh and steaming on the far side of the courtyard, is the imprint of his dead body. And behind him, an entire class howling with laughter.

  “Classics,” says the sergeant, wiping a tear from his eye. “Ten outta ten on heart. Zero on brain. My kinda guy!”

  Aster staggers in place, looking around like he’s just been resurrected from a bar fight and doesn’t know which city he’s in.

  Musa reaches out and steadies him with one hand. “Yeah… so that’s what happens when you pour Faith into a scripture designed for a body that isn’t even done adjusting to walking straight.”

  Aster is too stunned to reply.

  “You weren’t supposed to activate it,” Musa adds, far too casually for someone explaining post-mortem mechanics. “You’re meant to practice first. Get your footing. Baby steps.”

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  Aster gives him a slow, incredulous look. “My legs exploded, Musa.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “My lungs liquefied. I was mulch.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And your response is baby steps?”

  Musa shrugs. “Well, you did just pour rocket fuel into a broken coffee grinder.”

  Aster glares at him.

  “You’re drenched in the experience of the previous owner,” Musa says, gesturing at Aster’s chest. “You’re walking around wearing a madman’s instincts like a second skin. That guy—Herphon, the one who wrote the Point Burst Scripture—he didn’t learn under normal conditions. He was alone, isolated, hallucinating for years, fighting machines that wanted to rip him in half. He built this technique in the middle of a psychotic break and called it progress.”

  Aster once again ignores most of what Musa is saying and dusts off his hands like the hard part is over. “Blenskop broke him. I can feel his instincts carved into my soul. What’s left to learn?”

  Musa grins, then points toward a nearby training dummy like a father allowing a kid to do something incredibly stupid, knowing life is the best teacher. “Alright, genius. If you’re so in sync with him, show us. Nail the form. One clean Point Burst. Prove me wrong.”

  Aster doesn’t need a second invitation. The scripture is alive in him now, screaming for motion. He picks a point behind the dummy, sets his will to it—like hurling a tethered harpoon—and launches.

  His feet leave the ground in a burst of speed, the tether detonating beneath him and flinging his body forward with lethal acceleration.

  Then comes the rest of him.

  Or rather, it doesn’t.

  His staff lags. His arms whip back like flags in a storm. His torso twists mid-flight as physics, anatomy, and spiritual instinct fight an all-out brawl inside him.

  He hits the dummy at mach emotional regret. A wet slap. A crack. A crunch. And then silence.

  Aster’s body collapses like a marionette with its strings cut.

  “Oh gods,” says the voice of Herphon in Aster’s mind, half-cheerful, half-weeping, “we’re going to die so many times together.”

  Aster doesn’t know if he wants to scream or laugh. But he’s pretty sure his spine owes him an apology.

  Then—snap.

  He’s back.

  Instantly rewound to the moment before impact, standing perfectly upright in the exact same spot—no blood, no fractures, no shattered dignity. Just the faint echo of his own death still ringing in his ears like a cruel aftertaste.

  Across the field, the sergeant claps once—loud, sharp, commanding attention like a war drum. The class goes quiet, turning toward the spectacle.

  He points at Aster like unveiling a prized monument. “That, right there, is what separates a cultivator from a coward! You see him? Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t whine. Didn’t flinch from pain, or death, or the fact that his legs clearly filed for divorce halfway through the air.”

  Musa, now on the grass, laughing so hard he has tears streaming down his face. He tries to speak, but all that comes out are wheezing gasps and the occasional choked, “he flew like a bloody stone!”

  The sergeant continues, walking a slow circle around Aster as if narrating to an invisible crowd of generals. “You want to know what guts look like? It’s this man! No thought, no caution, just a primal scream from the depths of the soul and a full-body commitment to learning by catastrophic failure!”

  Aster, for his part, still stands motionless, eyes glazed over, staring into the middle distance like a soldier fresh out of shellshock. His mind tries—and fails—to locate where in the sequence of space and time he currently exists.

  Did I black out?

  Was I briefly dead?

  Did I meet a god just now? And did she laugh?

  He feels like he’s been concussed by philosophy. The ache in his soul isn’t metaphorical—it has paperwork and a funeral date.

  Meanwhile, Musa is curled in a fetal position, thumping the earth with one hand, wheezing, “You—your arms—dragged behind you like curtains!” between fits of unhinged laughter.

  The sergeant thumps a fist against his chest, pride gleaming in his eyes. “Mr. Elchen, you may be dumb as a dropped brick, but you’ve got what matters: suicidal conviction! And that’s the first step to being great.”

  Aster doesn’t respond. He’s too busy reevaluating every life decision that led him to this moment. Somewhere deep within, Herphon’s voice whispers, lovingly mad:

  “Oh, don’t worry. That was just the first tether.”

  ?? [Don’t be too rough with him, he shames easily]

  “Yes Daddy.”

  Aster blinks slowly.

  He really, truly hates his life.