There’s nothing worse than having your brain linked to two bodies. No, that’s not quite right. There’s nothing worse than having your brain linked to a perfect body when you’re in your normal hideous form. That’s what I decided when a strange and foreign force wormed its way into my body, duplicated it, and changed the copy into something truly beautiful.

  It’d be easier for an uncontacted Amazonian to explain what New York City is than it is to explain exactly what happened, but that was my best way of putting it. And whatever the case, having me compared so intimately made me feel self-conscious and terrible about myself.

  My cheeks were too shallow, my nose was too big, my shoulders too wide—even my ears felt horribly disfigured.

  I wasn’t one for caring about looks until that experience proved how grotesque I was. When I used the other body in my mind, I felt beautiful, strong, and genetically superior. I could suddenly understand what it must’ve felt like to be Olivia Laren in High School, to live life knowing that you’re different than others—better than others—in terms of appearance and muscle.

  It made me feel vain to think this way, but how couldn’t I? How could I how terrible I was—and how good I could become—and think the two were equal?

  I couldn’t. No one could. And sitting there for the first hour, submerged in that cold Nyralith water, it was all I could think about as the duplicate body continued to change and improve.

  Tinus returned once my double finished changing.

  “I thought this would be… painful,” I said.

  “It is, but not until it finishes its blueprint,” he said. “The pain will come and go, but the first night is the worst. That’s why we’re giving you this.”

  Another elder held up an elixir.

  “Is that a pain killer?” I asked.

  “It is,” he said. “Open your mouth.”

  I did, and they poured the liquid down my throat. My tongue and mouth were numb before I swallowed, and I had a deep desire to throw it up—but I couldn’t. My throat and stomach turned to ice, and I couldn’t even sit right.

  Two elders held up my head to prevent me from falling into the lake.

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t.

  “Work on your mana core,” he said. “This will be the one time that you’ll be able to do it so freely.”

  I tried to snap and tell him that should cycle when his entire body was abruptly paralyzed, but after about fifteen minutes, once I got used to Drokai holding me still, I started to cycle my mana core like Brindle’s memories, and soon I was lost in the sensation.

  Lake Nyralith had the purest mana I had yet experienced. It felt like threading a sunrise core, the barrier between the second and third evolution, in unlimited quantities. Or maybe it was even purer and gentler. I threaded it nonstop for an hour before I heard intense snapping, and when I looked into the water, I saw my limbs were breaking like a busted puzzle.

  I tried to ask what was happening—but I couldn’t.

  “Your bones are breaking so they can heal in your ideal form,” an elder holding me said. “But you needn’t worry. Lake Nyralith breaks and heals constantly. The pain is sharp, but it's always fleeting.”

  I didn’t believe a word of that, but the elders were insistent, so I handled my anxiety by threading my core again.

  Soon, hours had passed, and I was in a trance. My Kyfer core was a blackhole, and Nyralith had more mana than I could ever hope for. I wondered how much mana a normal core would accept. Surely not this much. I had threaded third evolution cores and only gotten a fraction of this mana. It truly was incredible.

  I probably would’ve enjoyed that feeling forever, but that numbing elixir slowly wore off, and when it did, I panicked again.

  My whole body was sore, and my posture was .

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  My shoulders were curved, my legs felt as though they had been split at the shins and extended. All parts of my body felt different, some wider, some slimmed, some filled.

  It was very uncomfortable.

  I didn’t want to experience this for a month—but I had to. So I activated the training for Mental Shielding, and after the bombardment of sights, smells, and sensations, I entered that black spot of isolation that doubled for sleep.

  No one woke me during that trance, and I was certain that days passed.

  I wanted to keep it going forever, but I was too hungry and thirsty, so I opened my eyes and was bombarded with pain again. I groaned in the hot sunshine as the Drokai opened my mouth and gave me water.

  “How did people do this without aid?” I croaked.

  “They drank the lake water,” an elder said.

  “And what happens when you do that?”

  “It prioritizes your organs.”

  “Wouldn’t that just kill someone?”

  “It usually does.”

  “Oh…”

  I didn’t ask questions again. I just felt thankful that I had help.

  That night, after the Drokai fed me a strange nutrient elixir, Tinus gave me advice I didn’t want to hear.

  “I know it’s painful and you want to escape to Mental Shielding, but you should thread your core while you can. Once your organs start shifting, you won’t be able to do anything.”

  I groaned. “Can’t I just do it once my body is perfect?”

  “No,” Tinus said. “Nyralith creates the ideal blueprint of who you should be given who you are. If you do this twice, it takes the blueprint from your ideal form and creates another form—and that comes with grotesque complications. You can only enter Nyralith once—so if you want its power, you must harness it now.”

  I nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  Starting that night, I fought back the pain and started threading for three hours. And once my core couldn’t take it, I started threading my soul core.

  Day in, day out, I threaded six hours a day, and while the pain was consistent, I felt inspired by the power and gains that I was making every single day.

  A week passed like that, and I could suddenly feel it—the plateau that tells you evolving is necessary.

  I didn’t need help again.

  With Brindle’s memories, I understood , not just a skill. Evolution was the process of unraveling and strengthening the core, and it was largely the same. Now, I had a technique that would bring me to the Demigod stage, so I ate food and drank water and closed my eyes and began the process of evolution.

  My core was twice as large as last time, and with the Kyfer core, the amount of mana I had was extravagantly higher than the average neophyte’s. So when I unraveled it, it exploded and I had to scream and rein it in.

  It was a brutal evolution—far worse than I believe any other neophyte had ever experienced. And that wasn’t including being surrounded by boundless mana that insisted on flooding into the unraveled core.

  But I wrangled it in. I controlled it. I used my own core and techniques, and memories. I exploited what I learned from Brindle and Yakana. I used everything, and once I finished—

  An explosive ripple of water passed through the entire lake and crashed on the shore once I expelled the excess mana.

  I wanted to ask about it—but I was immediately thrust into a new crisis.

  I couldn’t understand how Yakana could destroy a mountain with a single arrow until I finished evolving. My new core was probably ten times stronger than my last, and it was absorbing so much mana that I thought that the entire lake would run dry. But that wasn’t the case. I was naive for thinking that my first evolution core determined the amount of mana in anything. It was so small, so insignificant, that everything felt like a lot. It wasn’t until I opened up a second evolution core that I realized how sheltered I was from the mana in this forest. Even at the second evolution, perhaps even at the third and fourth, I wouldn’t understand how much mana was in this forest. And that made me understand how attacks could become so extravagant.

  For the next two days, I struggled to contain the influx, but when I was worn out and my core was smoldering like coals, Tinus arrived and used a special technique to close my core.

  “What are you doing?” I groaned deliriously.

  “You need a break.”

  “But this lake… I’ll never be able to find this again…”

  “Enough. You cannot thread any amount of mana if your soul shatters. Now rest.”

  He touched my forehead, and I blacked out.

  I woke up in agony. The pain from the lake had intensified, and I could feel my intestines writhing and twisting and burning.

  Yet I felt like if I slowed down, I would lose everything. So I started threading again, pushing halfway up to the third evolution before my stomach and other organs liquefied and began the healing process. There was nothing worse—and Mental Shielding didn’t help.

  It was so bad that I did what I had been dreading—

  I activated the next stage of Mental Shielding.

  It was far worse than the second stage ever was. It stabbed my body with invisible swords and cut my skin with razor blades. It felt like someone pressed my eyes in with their thumbs and bashed my skull against a wall. The screeching noises rattled my eardrums, and it felt like a root canal on my ears with no anesthesia. It was so incredibly unbearable, but I had a superpower that kept me going—even more pain on the outside. So I continued that bombardment until my world became black and I entered that peaceful trance.

  It was so worth it.

  I spent about a day in that state before my lungs stopped working and I had to wheeze for breath as they broke down and healed over and over again.

  I cannot express what it was like, but it was terrible, and no amount of Mental Shielding could help. I thought it would be the worst of it—but my heart was worse still. I thought I would die for hours or even days; it was hard to tell. And then, after my chest and neck were complete and I thought it was all over, Tinus appeared to me, as if in a delirious dream, and said, “This is the last part.”

  I felt relief—and then he dunked my head underwater.

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