“Happy wake day, runt!” Uncle Vai said, zooming over on his rocking chair and hugging Caen.

“Welcome to tier 9,” Uncle Teiro said with a smile.

Caen laughed. Uncle Teiro had a post-latency tier of 9, and so did Caen now. It was simply a system used to measure how many years a person had lived equal to their awakening age. The common age of spirit-awakening was between 8 and 10, and so most people celebrated their ‘wake day’ every eight to ten years as they moved up through the post-latency tiers. Because of how early he’d awoken, Caen celebrated his wake day every two years. This was the reason for his abnormally high PLT.

“Uncle Vai?” Sh’leinu prompted.

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “It’s customary for wake day celebrants to view recordings of their spirit-awakening.”

Caen, with Uncle Vai’s help, had revisited his earliest memories to observe that event, but his younger self had been in such mind-numbing pain that there was nothing else to glean from the memory. His parents and grandmother had always been reluctant to revisit their own memories of that night themselves due to how traumatic it’d been for them.

“You’ve never properly experienced this, for good reason, so we decided to remedy that. We have fused memories of those who were there with you that night into a unified sequence. Ergen and Elemna directly observed your spirit, while Sh’leinu observed your mind.

“Elder Gev performed extensive scans of your spirit, and Elemna just recently got a hold of his stored memory. Using your own memories of that night as a base, we were able to paint a very clear picture of what was going on in your mind and spirit back then. Though I did take some creative liberties.”

Caen’s breath caught in his throat. Elder Gev was a peak Percipient who was currently in seclusion, attempting to advance into the next stage of magic. Having access to his memories—

Vai seemed to catch the flow of Caen’s thoughts. “The principles in Elder Gev’s memories were far too advanced for even me to parse. He obviously didn’t intend for us lowly Attuners to understand any of it. But alas, stubbornness is a virtue. Now, I had to significantly pare it down to the point that your mind wouldn’t be severely damaged by the higher concepts involved. It’s still the biggest contribution to this two-hour memory sequence, though.”

Without further preamble, Vai took them all into the memory; internal observation for Caen and external for everyone else.

Caen’s eyes had been closed on that night, but the fusion allowed him to observe his surroundings. He lay between Ergen and Sh’leinu, and for the first time in his life, he watched his spirit stir in real time. The excruciating pain from back then was far more manageable, and Sh’leinu’s memories of Caen’s mind brought clarity to the entire sequence. Ergen’s contribution allowed Caen to feel his own spirit as it changed. Elemna’s contribution brought further vivid detail. And then Elder Gev’s memories. It was exceedingly clearer than if Caen himself had been examining his spirit.

Caen halted the instance of revisitation, his mind whirling with the possibilities. This wouldn't aid him in the trials, yet it was extremely useful to his understanding of his bloodlines. There was far more room for divergence in this memory sequence, which meant that he could take actions that he had not taken at the time. Within reason, of course.

With Caen’s current familiarity with his spirit and the location of his bloodlines, he could simulate finding said bloodlines within the spirit of this younger version of him, allowing him to study them in extremely different conditions than he could now. Especially that mysterious fourth bloodline.

His family members were all smiling at him. His mother was crying.

“Thank you all so much,” he said, his vision growing blurry. “Thank you. I… thank you.”

***

Despite the physical distance between him and Chasma, Caen could vaguely feel through their bond that the fragment was almost done feeding. There hadn’t been as much variety in the monster parts as there’d been with the treasures he’d acquired in the second trial, so he didn’t expect significant growth. Still, he was looking forward to experimenting with it.

He walked briskly through the busy night street of an outer district in the first stratum. He had just finished running a tedious errand for Uncle Vai and was making his way to one of the general warp gates.

The streets were crowded with bustle and revelry. The pleasant aromas of all manner of fire-touched foods, different sources of music clashing and blending, and beautiful fireworks lit up the night sky with mesmerizing bursts of color.

He walked past dancers, many of whom wore masks reminiscent of Patronage trial participants. Quite a few of those masks were caricatures of the Herb mask.

Stalls sold souvenirs. He saw far too many Herb Mask and Stormsong figurines and a very concerning number of plaques with the words ‘Herbivore for life!’ etched into them. Caen squinted. What was that?

Stolen novel; please report.

“Caen!” someone called.

He turned to see a brawny young man waving at him: Ganul, his cousin from the commune. The young man moved away from a group of other muscular individuals whom Caen did not recognize. They were perusing the souvenirs at a nearby stall.

“Uncle Vai’s been working you hard, huh?” Ganul said, slapping Caen on the shoulder when he walked over. “I’ve only seen you twice in the past three weeks.”

“Well…” Caen began.

“Gotta hustle,” Ganul finished, smiling as they shook hands vigorously. Though, of course, Ganul was gentle. As far as he knew, Caen was an abject.

Caen laughed. “I watched you and Malo in the trials.”

“Sheh!” Ganul exclaimed sheepishly. “I got lighted in the first round. Darn Cullers.”

“This is your first time, though, and you made it to the fifth zone,” Caen encouraged. Ganul had skipped the first zone, which was an excellent tactic, considering how chaotic his own batch had been. He’d performed really well in Caen’s opinion.

“Yeah, okay, maybe I’m a little proud of that,” Ganul beamed. “Malo says I performed much better than he did in his first trial. I’m so looking forward to the next trials. Oh, and Malo’s big news now! Did you see his fight with the guy who wielded Lance of the Morning?”

“Dilino, Number 10. Mhm. I loved that fight. Malo really made him work for that win.” Malo had been eliminated in the fourth zone of the third trial. Caen had been sad to see that.

“I know!” Ganul said with excitement. “And Malo says he learned so much. Best fight of his life, he called it. So, which unaffiliated participant are you rooting for this year?”

Caen made a show of thinking it over, then shook his head. “None, honestly. Maybe Soza. It’s his first appearance in almost ten years.”

“What, seriously? Not even Herb Mask?”

Caen made a noncommittal sound. “Most people say he’s just a faction plant wearing a mask.”

“Ha! Don’t let my boys hear you,” Ganul laughed. “They’re all raging Herbivores.”

“Raging… what?”

“You haven’t heard? The son of adversity has a growing fan club. They’ve been making crazy merchandise all week. Wanna see? The guys and I were just going over a few.”

"Sure," Caen said. He had work to do, but he supposed he could stay a short while.

***

The dense fog of the Seam folded around Caen, twisting and contorting into strange shapes. Supernal sounds echoed all about. Pseudo-stimuli assaulted his mind in all the ways he was capable of sensing them.

Caen was exerting supreme effort to maintain his trance. Using his speculon as a magical focus, his mind was partway in a state of abstraction, holding on firmly to half-consciousness.

Sh’kteiro was beside him, assisting his endeavors slightly, with the occasional nudge or bolstering spell. “Don’t split your mind,” Sh’kteiro instructed. “Rely on your speculon.”

Caen united the portions of his mind. His current working was a delicate balance. He could neither fall out of the magically induced state nor give in entirely to the hypnotic haze. Without his mind split, it wasn’t just harder to pay attention to whatever Sh’kteiro said; he could feel his consciousness slipping rapidly into the fog.

He channeled his will, his intention, through his speculon, which was a bridge between him and the state of mind he was trying to maintain.

The working collapsed.

Caen slowly began casting the spell chains anew. His Divination affinity was in abjection, and he could not Mimic Uncle Teiro’s affinity, as the man was a Percipient. After several failed attempts, he finally stabilized the constructs. Without the counterweight of split minds, he struggled more to maintain the balance between part-hypnosis and part-awareness.

“You’re still thinking like a Dream-guardian,” Sh’kteiro said, and at his words, Caen could feel the balance subtly restored. His uncle’s actions, no doubt. “It’s a problem I used to have a long time ago.

“Diviners do not resist the haze like a Dream-guardian does. No. As a Diviner, the haze is not your enemy; it doesn’t seek to overwhelm you. It embraces you. Yet you must regard its acceptance with open temperance. Not resistance.”

“Uncle Teiro, that sounds like a contradiction.”

He chuckled. “Yes, but your goal is to become comfortable within this contradiction. This is the only way to touch the Weave.”

Divination magic was all about interacting with the Weave of reality. It was about understanding the interplay between everything. This was known as ‘Interactance’.

Attuners did not have the means of sensing Interactance directly; thus, the need for Interactance charts and calculations. Caen’s mind went over these charts, letting them guide his focus, which was already strained to its limit. His speculon tingled.

Caen felt threatened by the fog. He could find nothing welcoming about it. Thinking of it as such warred against habits instilled in him by his mother and Uncle Vai. All this, together with the fact that he lacked Divination passive augmentations, made his endeavors all the more difficult.

The working collapsed again.

Caen sighed, a small smile on his face. “I assumed that Divination and Dream-guarding would work so well together.”

“They synergize in some ways and diverge so starkly in others,” Sh’kteiro said.

“You implied that you used to practice Dream-guarding at some point, Uncle.”

“That was many decades ago. I prioritized Divination because it came more naturally to me. Leinu, on the other hand, prioritized Dream-guarding. Surfeitism has its disadvantages.”

Caen hemmed. Surfeitism was the devoted practice of more than one magical discipline. And if this was an indicator of the kinds of downsides associated with it, then Caen didn’t feel discouraged in the slightest. Surfeitism was one of the greatest advantages he had in this competition.

Trying to raise Contract and Divination out of abjection before the next trial was a long shot, but Caen needed every edge he could get. He already had some ideas for how he might best utilize Contract magic.

“Let me try again,” Caen said.