Chapter 48

  They passed many halls beyond the throne room, after another corridor Raime saw a vast chamber that resembled a gymnasium. The air thrummed faintly, alive with psychic residue, and the walls pulsed with soft streams of cerulean light that traced ancient Ithurian runes.

  Raime slowed as his gaze swept across the expanse. Dozens of intricate mechanisms filled the hall—levitating spheres that responded to unseen commands, floating columns of liquid light that twisted when approached, suspended lattices full of shifting geometric patterns. Some devices looked designed to measure mental output, others to hone it, and still others pulsed like living organisms, resonating faintly with their presence in the room.

  “Training grounds,” Neimar said as they crossed the floor, his steps silent but purposeful. “The finest of Ithural’s design. Every piece here was crafted to temper the mind and refine the flow of psionic force. Once, initiates from across the world would come to be tested here, each seeking to transcend their limits and become a royal guard.”

  Raime nodded silently, awe mixing with unease. The entire place felt like a monument to a civilization that had taken thought and turned it into art and weapon both.

  They passed through another door, this one circular and engraved with fractal markings that unfurled like an iris at Neimar’s approach. The chamber beyond was smaller, quieter. A single reclining chair stood at its center, a strange fusion between a barber’s seat and a spacefaring pod. Its metal frame spotless under the pale blue light, and psionic engravings spiralled along its surface, dormant.

  At Neimar’s gesture, Raime approached. The moment his hand brushed the armrest, sensation flooded through him—an echo of countless emotions overlapping in a storm of memory. Joy and despair, pride and failure, hope and bitterness; all those who had sat here before had left a piece of themselves behind.

  Raime drew a sharp breath, heart pounding. He could feel them—those who had been tested, judged. And he already knew what this chair was for.

  He turned to Neimar. “How does it work?”

  Neimar’s eye softened, the faint glow within it reflecting the runes etched into the chamber walls.

  “This,” he said, resting a hand upon the back of the reclining pod, “is a specialized construct designed to read the flow of essence within a being—to trace how mind, body, and soul resonate with the energies that dwell beyond perception.”

  He circled the chair slowly, his floating deliberate, reverent almost. “In our time, it was known as the Eidometric Conduit. It measures alignment. Every lifeform vibrates along certain frequencies—psionic, elemental, or something rarer still. The Conduit interprets these harmonics and reveals where your potential lies.”

  His gaze returned to Raime. “For the Ithurians, it was the first step toward Awakening. To build a core without knowing one’s natural resonance would be folly—akin to casting a seed into barren soil and expecting a forest to bloom.”

  The sovereign’s voice grew quieter, though its weight deepened. “It will see through you, Raime—through every layer, even those you yourself have never imagined having. It will not lie.”

  He gestured toward the seat, its engravings now stirring with faint light. “Lie back when ready. The Conduit will do the rest.”

  Raime hesitated for a moment before lying down, his gaze lingering on the intricate engravings pulsing faintly on the surface of the Eidometric Conduit. The smooth metal was cool beneath his fingers, almost alive, humming with latent energy.

  Yesterday I was still crossing the Sea of Grass… he thought, the realization hitting him with quiet force. And now I’m here. In front of the strongest being in the Rift. A Sovereign.

  It felt surreal. Yesterday, survival had been his only concern. Now he was about to let a godlike entity probe his very soul. How the hell did it come to this?

  Neimar—an ancient ruler, the last echo of a fallen civilization—had not only spoken to him as an equal, but had taken him as a disciple. He was helping him finish this damned tutorial, to awaken. It was absurd, he had agreed to help the ithurian people yes. And yet… it felt right, like it was meant to be.

  Raime had checked his emotions and his mind many times since his arrival at the palace, for any kind of intrusion or manipulation, but his thoughts were his own, or at least it seemed like it. His mind was busy with a myriad of thoughts, he would have to bring up the subject of the threshold limits soon, maybe even ask about the new quest that the System had given him. But that could wait. For now, there was this—another step toward understanding who he was, and what he had become.

  He leaned back into the reclined seat. The frame adjusted to his form with an almost sentient precision, and Neimar’s calm voice resonated nearby.

  “Relax. Do not resist the flow. Let the Conduit reach you as you are.”

  Raime closed his eyes and took a breath. “I’m ready,” he said. Then it began.

  It felt like waves rippling through his body—slow at first, then deep and rhythmic, like the tide drawing in and out. The vibrations settled into his bones, into his marrow, echoing with a sound he couldn’t hear but could somehow feel. A low hum that resonated through every fiber of his being.

  Then came other sensations—fleeting, overlapping, impossible to define. The soft pressure of unseen hands, the pull of something vast and unseen, a tingle that brushed across his thoughts like wind through tall grass. He felt as though he were floating, a leaf carried by a river whose current he could neither see nor fight.

  The sensation wasn’t unpleasant. Just… strange. Disorienting. Like a skilled masseur touching muscles he hadn’t known existed, the Conduit pressed and released parts of him that defied naming. Mind, body, soul—each one unraveling and reweaving under invisible fingers.

  It’s… scanning me, he realized distantly. No—understanding me.

  The name was apt. The Conduit truly conducted—moving through every layer of him, tracing unseen circuits of essence, mapping what made him who he was.

  Wonder filled him, soft and weightless. How much do we really know about ourselves? How much lies beneath awareness, unseen and untouched?

  Time lost meaning. It might have been minutes, or hours. Then, Neimar’s calm voice cut through the haze, drawing him gently back.

  “Open your eyes, Raime.”

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  He did.

  The wall across the room was no longer just engraved stone. The runes had melted and reformed into shifting sigils, their glow coalescing into shapes that resembled script—no, data. A smooth surface, luminous and alive, pulsed softly like a living monitor.

  Lines of energy wove themselves into patterns—his affinities, laid bare for both of them to see.

  [Affinity Assessment — Subject: GHJ-450282685]

  Light: 82%

  Mind: 67%

  Space: 54%

  Wrath: 30%

  Solid Matter: 29%

  Plasma: 27%

  Love: 25%

  Fluid Matter: 22%

  Entropy: 21%

  Gaseous Matter: 20%

  Probability: 19%

  Biological: 18%

  Resonance: 15%

  Pride: 14%

  Hope: 12%

  Memory: 10%

  Void: 8%

  Other Affinities: Negligible

  Neimar’s gaze lingered on the display long after the luminous lines faded into quiet equilibrium. The chamber was hushed, filled only by the steady thrum of the conduit as residual energy pulsed through its crystalline veins. When the Sovereign finally spoke, his tone carried a mixture of intrigue and solemn thought.

  “A difficult conundrum,” he murmured. “Your affinities are exceptional—perhaps dangerously so. But weaving them into a functional system will not be easy.”

  He turned from the screen, eyes narrowing with the kind of scrutiny born from centuries of contemplation. “Light, Mind, and Space—three forces that do not often coexist within the same soul. The first dances at the edge of reality, both wave and matter, elusive yet fundamental. The second delves inward, shaping thought and perception. The third defies both, defining the bounds of existence itself. To unite them will be a great undertaking.”

  Neimar moved closer, his expression thoughtful. “Yet… your soul is not ordinary. Its structure is raw, unformed, but it bears the marks of something remarkable. You stand at the threshold where most beings arrive only after many cycles of growth. With proper guidance, you could begin shaping your soul into your path from its beginning. Like I said before, that is… rare beyond words. It is what has stopped me from advancing beyond the fifth tier.”

  “Fifth tier?” Raime’s brain short circuited for a moment. I knew he was powerful but if the progression is logarithmic like I saw until now, what can he really do?

  Neimar paused, giving Raime the moment needed for processing the information, the lights of the chamber reflecting in his eyes. “Understand this, disciple: the soul influences the body and mind as roots feed a tree. Forming the core will bind these three aspects—body, mind, and soul—into a singular current. Once you begin, you cannot turn back. You must follow the path to its end.”

  For a long moment, Neimar was silent, his thoughts drifting like storm clouds across an unseen horizon. He seemed to weigh Raime’s every motion, every flicker of thought and instinct, the echoes of his battles and the shape of his will. “My people have preserved—and obtained from our invaders—countless cultivation manuals,” he finally said, “from new discoveries to techniques older than empires. Yet I suspect none would suit you entirely. Your nature defies the moulds of tradition. You will need to find your own expression—perhaps trade for knowledge, seek those who once walked similar paths. Or, if you prefer simplicity, choose a single affinity as the foundation for all that you are.”

  He turned toward the glowing wall again, where faint motes of Raime’s affinities still shimmered. “The lower tiers are simple—grow your core, strengthen your form. But as you rise, harmony becomes essential. A being’s three aspects must resonate with their chosen path. Without that balance, even the mightiest will fracture under their own power.”

  Neimar looked back at him then, voice low, deliberate.

  “So, will you build upon one affinity, shaping your body, mind, and soul around one single nature? Or will you seek to balance them all, to forge your own system from the chaos? There is an infinite amount of paths, but only you can walk your own.”

  “I feel I am running into this blind… despite your teachings, Master, I can’t begin to understand what all of this will mean for me.” Raime could not avoid noticing that Neimar stood just a little more straighter after he called him Master, still he continued. “While I would like to find the better way to proceed forward since the beginning, I’m afraid I will not be able to, like you said, create a balance for now, and if what is needed I’ll find it in the possible future, can I create a blank system and attune the cores later on? Is it possible?”

  Neimar’s silver eye gleamed faintly, a ripple of quiet satisfaction crossing the stillness around him. “A wise question,” he said, his voice touched by something that might have been pride. “And an even wiser hesitation. You are beginning to think as one who will one day command his own strength, not simply wield what is given to him.”

  He moved closer, the folds of his robe trailing soundlessly across the polished floor. “Forging your own path will serve you better in the long run. True, you will not draw upon your full potential immediately. Restraining your greatest affinity—light—will limit your raw might for now. But it will also give you time. Time to understand what you are, and what you can become. What you want to become.”

  The Sovereign regarded him steadily. “You are already walking the path of the mind. Your grasp of psionic principles is instinctive, almost natural. Imagine what you might achieve when that same intuition touches the nature of light itself—the duality of wave and particle. Consider that affinities are not linear in their scaling. While the difference between your space and mind affinities is quite relevant, the one for light is exponentially higher, orders of magnitude more powerful than your mind.

  He turned slightly, the air around him humming with restrained energy. “Still, it is possible, Raime. You can form three cores—each distinct, yet bound in design. A psionic core for the mind, which you have already begun shaping. A mana core, left unaligned for now—a vessel waiting for its future attunement. And a soul core, equally unformed, to serve as the foundation of your being.”

  His gaze softened as he added, “This triad will not come easily. It will test your endurance and your focus. But it will grant you something rare: freedom. You will not be bound by a single affinity, but will instead have the chance to see which path resonates with your essence. With time and study, you will discover what should fill those vessels—and what must remain empty.”

  Neimar paused, thinking. Then continued, his tone taking back its instructive rhythm. “Still, I would advise creating an interlinked framework, even now. Three cores woven together, no matter how faintly, will strengthen your flow of power. A fragmented foundation is weak; a unified one will endure, and empower one another. You need not decide what you are yet, only ensure that what you build will not collapse when your choices begin to bear weight.”

  Raime stood silent, the Sovereign’s words echoing through the chamber like ripples across still water. He had learned much since coming to this world, yet every new truth seemed to open a hundred more questions. This—cores, affinities, the binding of soul to body and mind—was more than he could grasp with what little he understood of the System’s deeper workings. He had thought, at the beginning, that it worked similar to a video game, kill things and gain levels, he still didn’t know how the attribute points gained from the beasts he felled fit into the picture, another question in the pile to ask the Sovereign. Still, it was a start. Knowing his affinities at least narrowed the field of possibilities.

  Light, Mind, and Space. Forces both distant and familiar.

  After the assessment, he could barely feel the faint hum of them within, each one different in texture—the calm pulse of thought, the elusive shimmer that came from light, and the vast, cold pull of distance itself. To build upon them recklessly would be foolish. He needed knowledge before direction.

  His gaze drifted back to the smooth floor, where his reflection wavered faintly under the sigils light. A soul malleable enough to shape, Neimar had said. Apparently, that was rare—unusual, even the System had cared to point it out. If that was true, then beginning with the soul made sense. To forge it while it still bent and breathed, before it crystallized into something unchangeable.

  Yes, that would be his starting point.

  But first, he needed to understand the structure he meant to build upon.

  “Before I decide anything,” he finally said, his tone careful, measured, “I need to understand how this all fits together. The progression through the tiers, the nature of awakening… If I am to make a choice that will define what I become, I would rather not walk the Path ignorant.”

  For a heartbeat, silence hung between them—then Neimar’s composure softened, the faintest curve touching his lips. The Sovereign’s silver eye gleamed like starlight over still water, pride flickering behind his calm expression.

  “Very good,” he said, voice carrying that rare note of approval that felt almost paternal. He turned, heading outside the chamber, the lights following him, responding to his movement like ripples of thought. “Then as I said before, let us begin with a small lesson. There is no time to waste.”