An old scithian with amber wings steps through the ascension well up to the third floor. He has hair that is cropped short, and a well maintained beard. His yellow eyes are hard and piercing, his mouth set into a frown, with wrinkles that have etched themselves into his face over decades of misery.

  Then, very slowly, he tilts his head upwards, looking at the eyes in the sky.

  [Respitia the Pure tolerates your ascension.]

  With the speed of a tired snail, a smile spread across the man’s lips. “Yeah,” he chuckled to himself. “Tolerates. That certainly works.”

  Finally, his exile was over. He breathed in the air, smelling how different it was from the second floor. Ten fucking years in that hellhole. Ten years travelling, getting hit by bits of the storm, and now, sent like a hunting dog after some rookie.

  But.

  It would let him work off his debt. He’d failed st floor - really, Ion was something else - but he got another chance. He’d even been promised a team. A team! Hah.

  He would thank the rookie if he had the chance. Sadly, that’d need to wait until he was putting the young one in an early grave. But that was fine.

  Amber wings softly chimed in the wind as he enjoyed the sunlight on his face. It was so much brighter here than on the second floor. He had months to look forward to where he wouldn’t starve. There was even a chance he would be permanently forgiven for any crime if he managed this.

  Ahhh, his crime. The smile on his face widened, thinking of what had gotten him banished. It was funny, wasn’t it? Ten years of misery, ten years of doom and occasional starvation, ten years of freezing his wings off in that shithole floor.

  And he’d do the same thing again.

  Someone bumped into him, coming out of the ascendancy well.

  “Hey, ow, watch where you’re standing, old man,” the young climber chided.

  “Right, right,” he said, stepping forward onto the third floor. The leaves crackled wonderfully under his feet. He was in such a good mood, he wouldn’t even kill the idiot who’d smacked into him.

  “Asshat,” the young climber said.

  Sighing, the old man turned around. “Shhh. I’m having a nice day,” he said. “Don’t ruin it for me.” Then, slowly, he reached out, took the young one’s hand, and pulled it off his body at the wrist. There was no sound. No scream. Not even a wound. Just a clean pop as it came off.

  Then the limb vanished, crumpling in on itself, as if sucked into a tiny bck hole.

  Letting the young climber stare in shock at the lost limb, the old man with amber wings simply stepped forward. He closed his eyes, enjoying the gentle sound of the leaves crunching beneath his bare feet. He wore a long, silken robe, now, having changed back into a somewhat priestly garb.

  After all, he was a priest of Respitia. He sneered at the notion. Technically true, but also, so very false. Sighing softly, he walked more.

  Today, just for a day, he wouldn’t indulge the bad memories. Today, just for a day, he’d hunt again. After all, that was who he was. Ezekiel Thorn, avatar of Respitia, descender, and the [Bright Priest of the Hunt].

  He licked his lips. Freedom tasted delectable. The screaming behind him hardly registered to his ears.

  - - -

  PoV: Snow Okiyama - Ion

  There is so much to do.

  I love magic. That is the most accurate statement I can make to summarize my feelings about magic. I love it. The way mana flows, and lets me control it is so… convenient. The way I can use it to become just about self-sufficient.

  The ability to mess with my senses has been incredible. The thought of making clothing that’s comfortable and never breaks is amazing. I love magic. Taking it apart, learning it feels so incredibly fun.

  For the first time in ages I feel the way I did when I first heard music. The way the notes flowed together, the different instruments harmonizing and going into dissonance, the way they followed the beat. It was so sophisticated, and I wanted to learn it, too, so I took it apart.

  And now, magic is that same way. There are underlying rules, and those rules are meant to be broken sometimes. Arcane runes, chants, hymns… I want to know all of them. There is something so very special about it.

  Which means that deciding what to focus on is the hardest.

  I want to improve my enchanting, for the sake of convenience. It has already improved my daily life. No more trips to a sink when I have a refilling water fsk. No more being hot or cold when I can make items to regute temperature. It’s wonderful - but it’s also, tragically, unnecessary.

  My power lies in blocking others’ access to their skill. Breaking their builds, finding the keystones of the patterns their magic took, and then dismantling them. Slowing people down and picking them apart, bit by bit, that was my greatest strength. But it was also rigid, and could be countered.

  Of course, I could work on countering those counters. Or on making myself more robust. Regrowing my arm would make enchanting easier, so maybe I should focus on healing, instead. But that’s time consuming and mana-intensive. I have so much my vessel is almost overflowing, but I still want to spend it effectively.

  What I need is the thing I’ve been working on for so long. The ability to start building a lexicon. I know a handful of runes, a handful of patterns, and the booklet I’ve bought from the tower is full of sketches by now. Images of other abilities I’ve broken and tried to put down.

  I’ve gotten a little rusty at art, but they are still nice. And yet, they aren’t enough. I can’t create perfectly accurate images of parts of three-dimensional patterns after only seeing them once. I just can’t. I need something better.

  So, I've been working on a skill. For over a month now, and it’s still not done. I’ve analysed Inu’s [Reservoir], Bay’s [Part Storage], Thatch’s [Channel], Opal’s [Echo]... They all had bits and pieces I wanted to use, but combining them was hard. A trial and error type thing, where each mistake meant pretty significant backsh.

  Since we got to the third floor, we’ve been restocking. Bought more items, gotten a picture of how things worked around here, and geared up for a reasonable expedition - or a fight. After all, we are expecting to get in trouble with the guild. There’s simply no way around it.

  But that’s what the others have been doing. For that entire time, I’ve been sitting in my room like the leech I am, emptying my vessel in experimentation and hurting my brain. The skill feels so tantalizingly close and yet so far away. I sigh, pushing myself up from the floor, pulling off my headphones, and running my arm through my hair.

  It’s sticky with dried bits of blood. I can feel the sticky red on my face. I’ve been bleeding again from pushing myself too hard. Sighing softly, I head down the stairs of the inn, to where Harry stood behind the bar.

  Watching him polish a gss in a single motion of his hand was fascinating. He turned to look at me as he heard the footsteps, and gave a crooked smile. “Damn, Snow. You look like hell.”

  “Could you prepare the bath for me?” I ask. We’ve paid enough chits for it. There’s a couple of the wonderfully smooth coins in my pockets, and I run a finger across them, enjoying the sensation of rounded metal on my skin. Those were earned mostly by selling the products we made from our jobs.

  Harry nods. “Sure thing,” he says, and the [Archon of the Bathtub] heads into a backroom through a door with a bathtub on it. I follow quietly, ignoring the bits of noise in the inn as Mike, his husband, moves to serve food to customers.

  The inn is bigger inside than it should be. There’s runes on the walls, so it’s not surprising, but it is notable. They’re so tiny it took me days to even spot them. Now, though, I notice them everywhere.

  In front of me, Harry moves his hand over a smooth, stone spring filled with water. It’s artificial, set into the wooden floor of the inn, but equally covered with the runes. The hot-spring style tub is made from one single, solid piece of stone. Some fancy rock, I’m sure, though I can’t tell what kind. Opal would know more.

  With a single, smooth motion, Harry waves his hand. I feel his mana spill forth, twist and bend and wind into a dozen effects, and then infuse into the pool. Instantly, it clears up. There’s a pleasant smell, a little like citrus fruit, and the water almost sparkles. “No foam,” he adds. “As usual.”

  I nod, then walk into the bath, with my clothes on. I don’t really care if they get soaked, since they’re bloodstained and need to be washed, anyway. As per the usual, Harry gives me a bit of a confused look, then shakes his head. “I’ll be back to dry you off?”

  Again, I nod at him, and he walks out of the room. I sink into the water. The fabric clings to my skin, and I [Suppress] my sense of touch. Suddenly, all the annoyance I felt at it is endlessly softened.

  There’s something wonderful about disconnecting from the world that way. I close my eyes, too. The room is quiet. For just a little bit, I feel like there’s nothing outside of me and my own thoughts.

  So, I think. As always, my thoughts move forward at their consistent, monotone pace. We’ve been resting for a few days now, and it was about time we got moving again, I think. Everyone has been a little less on edge, being allowed to rex, and buy some “luxuries”. Thatch got himself a set of paintbrushes, for example, and Opal has started collecting gemstones in a box again.

  My teammates have their silly antics, and I have mine, after all.

  But there is something I think about. The divide between my identities in the system. To my friends, I am Snow. To most of the world, they know Ion. The stormbreaker, the one hated by Respitia, the monster rookie. Except, everyone in the world knows that Ion is missing a patch of skin, having a bit of skull exposed.

  And, well, of course I have that, too. Except, of course, I can hide that.

  Smiling faintly, I think of my next trick to pull. This one could be a lot of fun. Quietly, in the almost-silent bathhouse, accompanied only by the sound of flowing water, I turn to my shadow. “Hey, Kuro?” I ask, and the inky critter perks up. “Can you manifest into a piece of clothing?”

  As if to answer the question, the shadows underneath me swirl for a moment. Inky darkness creeps up my leg, over my hips, up the side of my chest, and settles on my shoulder. From there, Kuro unfurls.

  Before, they’ve turned into a centipede or other animals, but this is the first time they turn into something akin to clothing. Stygian darkness slithers up the side of my neck, then peels itself off, weaving into thin air. I can tell that the little critter is cycling through ideas for my outfit, and I smile quietly as they work through a few shapes.

  In the end, kuro weaves into a chitinous shawl across my neck that unfurls into a short cape behind my back. And, of course, it rises high enough on the side of my face to hide the bit of my skull that pokes out from my skin. I tap my fingers against the shadowy material and hear it click like chitin against my nails. Smiling softly, I nod.

  Maybe, eventually, I can get Kuro to just cover my entire face? Then no one would tell me to smile more. How wonderful would that be.

  For now, though, I was just happy to maintain my anonymity as Snow. Even if it was kind of funny that I would be wearing a mask when using my personal name, instead of when I used the anonymous one. Ah, well. Such is life.

  Now that none of the actions can be traced back to me, maybe it’s time to cause more trouble. Probably.

  Surely.