It begins, as many slow descents into psychological ruin do, with hunger and blind trust in a man he’s only ever met in a dream. Well, some descents. This one is a bit more... bespoke.

  “No food,” Matter says, with that same placid calm that makes you want to throw something at his perfect face. “No comforts of the flesh. The ritual needs your spirit to be cleansed. You’ll need to be clear.”

  Right. Clear. As if starving to death is a form of enlightenment.

  It’s supposed to last ten days—a full cycle, ending exactly on his twenty-first birthday. Matter calls it a “rite of passage.” Aster calls it “creative suicide.” Either way, it’s a schedule.

  So he does what he’s told, because he’s stupid, and because Matter, for all his maddening vagueness, has yet to actually lie to him. So he fasts.

  Day one isn’t bad. His body assumes it’s an accident. Maybe Aster’s too busy. Maybe he’s doing one of those trendy “soul detoxes.” It waits politely.

  Day two is war.

  His stomach starts fomenting a rebellion. His limbs twitch like haunted marionette strings. We’ve been starving for four years and now you’re doing it on purpose?! Even his brain, normally the voice of reason, is now staging surrealist dinner theatre.

  The fridge becomes a brothel of desire.

  The yoghurt whispers about meeting in secret, lids off.

  The cheese offers to supervise, somewhere between concerned friend and lascivious uncle.

  And the butter... the butter doesn’t even knock.

  It wants to be spread onto the rest. It wants eye contact. It’s soft, golden, and smells like forbidden weekends. It slides around in his mind like a lounge singer in a silk robe, crooning forbidden promises of guilt and desire.

  But the real torment comes when he closes his eyes to sleep—when he should find rest, sweet unconsciousness.

  Instead, every night, without fail, he wakes up.

  In the Astral Plane.

  With Matter there.

  Waiting.

  Looking perfectly rested, immaculately composed, and completely unbothered.

  The first time it happens, Aster stares at him in confusion and sleep-deprived horror.

  “Why am I here?” he asks. “I didn’t smoke the elixir again.”

  Matter smiles. “The elixir was only the jump-start needed to loosen your Bio-Field. Its effect has loosened it permanently. Until your eventual Severing, you’ll remain bound to your Material Vessel in the day and only come over when you sleep at night. So, when you sleep, you come here instead.”

  “That’s not how sleep works.”

  Matter shrugs. “It is now. Time to train your Will.”

  And that’s it.

  Every night since, Aster falls asleep in the real world—a husk, an aching, hunger-wracked corpse—and wakes in the Astral version of the house, lucid, sore, and shoved directly into yet another Will practice session.

  Every time he tries to ask about the ritual, the wyrm, the damn point of all this, Matter nods thoughtfully, almost answers, and then redirects him with unnerving politeness:

  “That’s a good question. You’ll learn more after you stabilize your Astral Vessel.”

  “Ask me again after you reach Acolyte rank.”

  “I promise, we’ll cover that. Right now? More Will practice.”

  At first, Aster thinks this is a joke. He’s never practiced Will in his life. If someone had told him he’d be tested on it, he might’ve at least downloaded a book about it.

  Instead, he gets a gem—a tiny, infuriating gem—and a labyrinth made up of narrow wire loops branching off like plumbing from the Mario universe.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  His task? Move the gem through the loop using nothing but pure focus. Eyes open. Mind calm. Will steady.

  Touch the wire? Buzzer. Drop the gem? Buzzer. Blink too hard? Buzzer. Think about how hungry he is? Buzzer. Try to ask Matter a question during the task? Louder buzzer.

  He fails. Constantly. Consistently. Magnificently.

  And each failure earns him exactly zero pity.

  “Try again,” Matter says.

  “Why does it buzz?” Aster asks on night four, rubbing his temples like he’s trying to erase the memory of existence. “This is the Astral Plane. There are rules here. Sacred geometry. Divine law. You’re telling me someone installed a buzzer?”

  Matter doesn’t look up from his notes. “It’s motivational.”

  Aster stares at him for a full minute.

  “Okay. Fine. What’s the point of this? What am I actually training?”

  Matter finally glances up. “Your Will.”

  “That’s not an answer, it’s a loop. You’re defining the word with itself. It’s like saying I need to work on my ‘soul-ness.’”

  “Exactly. Back to practice.”

  Aster grinds his teeth so hard the Astral version of his molars probably needs filing.

  On night six, he finally finishes it, only to be rewarded with the wire loop being swapped out for a solid enclosed tube.

  Aster stares at it, jaw slack. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Matter, deadpan: “Now you must feel the gem completely. Without relying on your sight.”

  Aster opens his mouth. Closes it. Considers violence.

  Instead, he sits. Closes his eyes.

  What follows can only be described as a breakdown masquerading as spiritual growth. Aster tries everything—holding the stone, not holding the stone, breathing on it, whispering to it, glaring at it, asking it nicely, screaming internally.

  Nothing works.

  But he doesn’t give up. Night after night. And eventually, something begins to shift.

  It isn’t a sudden epiphany. There are no choirs of angels, no glimmering lights. Just... sudden weight.

  Not physical. Not tactile. Just a kind of metaphysical weight. Like the idea of the stone’s mass has slotted into place in his mind.

  The gem feels less like an object and more like part of the room—or part of him. When he focuses, he can feel it. Not see it, not touch it, but feel its weight in the shape of his thoughts.

  He closes his eyes. Focuses.

  He feels it lift. Knows it’s suspended.

  And when it drops, it does so with a strange gentleness, like it’s been released, not dropped.

  He opens his eyes, trembling. “I did it.”

  Matter blinks at him, genuinely surprised. “That’s... the border of the second level of the Absent Labyrinth...”

  Aster squints. “The what?”

  Matter clears his throat and adds, with the casual smugness of someone who’s just watched a cat survive a washing machine cycle, “Saint-level Will training relic. I needed to see if you had the strength to barely lift the gem. Turns out you blew through the first level and are bordering the second.”

  Aster stares. “Saint-level? Divine-level? Are you grading me with a church tier list now?” He floats the stone again, absent-mindedly looping figure eights in the air like a smug hedge-witch auditioning for a coven.

  Matter shrugs. “That’s the scale we’re working with—Initiate, Acolyte, Saint, Divine. Standard cultivation metrics. Used to rank people based on how likely they are to obliterate their surroundings when mildly inconvenienced.”

  “And I’m an Initiate?” Aster ventures.

  Matter sucks air through his teeth in that universal gesture of not quite. “Not even that.”

  Aster blinks. “Saint. Level. I’ve been starving for close to two weeks, half-conscious, doing this in my sleep, all because you gave me a saint-tier trial as a warm-up?”

  Matter looks mildly sheepish. “The higher your Will, the better the surgery outcome. And, well... it kept you busy. Gave me a chance to get some work done without your endless questions.”

  Aster blinks.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Then, without breaking eye contact, he lifts the gem and launches it across the room with a precise mental flick.

  It smacks Matter squarely in the forehead.

  Doesn’t even faze him.

  He smiles. “Good control.”

  Aster stands, turns, and walks out of the Astral chamber, muttering something about “finding the nearest divine complaint box.”

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