Caen woke up, blissful. The beautiful rays of sunshine caressed his face. It—

Rays of sunshine?

He jerked upright, squinting at the bright light pouring in from his window. He was sitting on the floor of his room, and the events of the previous day flooded his recollection.

That had really happened.

Caen moved aside the damp dishrag and rummaged through his clothes on the floor, wincing in pain from the injuries he'd gotten yesterday. He retrieved his pocket watch and checked the time. 11 in the morning. He hadn't overslept in… well, years. He was six hours behind his daily routine, and meditating on the roof was only pleasant when the sun wasn't shining so brightly.

He was starving and had fallen asleep last night, before he could eat his fruits. He wolfed those down now as he glared at the pile of dirty clothes and armor on the floor beside him. That was a chore he didn't look forward to doing.

Heart thudding in his chest, he sat cross-legged on the floor and closed his eyes.

Please, be real. Please, be real.

He unfurled his existence, activating Soul-sense and pushing through that distinct resistance he felt whenever he engaged the ability. His entire being unfurled. And paused. Waited.

It was the oddest feeling. He was waiting for something to… connect with. It was a signal with no perceiver. Or better yet, a perceiver with nothing to perceive. Yesterday, the same thing had happened when he'd tried to connect with himself in Redshadow.

Certain disciplines of magic, especially those that strongly concerned a person's interaction with themselves—such as Spirit-healing, for example—possessed intuitive aspects that helped a practician understand it instinctively. This didn't provide any insights on how ‘best’ to utilize spells or enact effects, but at the very least, a practician was unlikely to unwittingly do something that severely harmed themselves in the course of practicing their magic. Due to his abjection, Caen didn’t have these instincts in relation to magical disciplines. What he did have, though, was the Ereshta’al bloodline, which granted instincts of its own. He felt those same instincts now from this new ability he’d discovered.

Caen thought about himself, thought about connecting with his own existence. He immersed himself in that mindset from yesterday when he'd seen his soul structure; that fullness and completeness of self. Then he felt a need to… connect. A need to perceive the external.

Caen decided to go about this differently. He wanted to try inverting that need for perception inwards. Every time he'd activated Soul-sense, there'd been someone nearby to connect with. But he wanted to view his own existence in the same way he'd viewed Zeris's and the shadelings’.

He folded his existence in on itself, deactivating Soul-sense. But even as he did this, he felt that resistance again.

When he tried to unfurl his existence, he didn't push past the resistance this time. He imagined it as a barrier, and just as he touched lightly on it, he retracted his existence just like he might his spirit tendrils. Doing this effectively deactivated Soul-sense, but there was something there. He repeated this process, not bothering to keep count of how many times he did.

With each iteration, he started to note faint impressions. Burrowing down on them, he could make out Alignment. Cohesion. Establishment. Recognition of… of something. Like a dot trying to loop back on itself, but on closer inspection, the dot was already a circle. As if he were already connected to himself…

Caen unfurled his existence all the way to the barrier—which felt somewhat weaker now—but didn't push past it. More impressions began leaking through to his mind. He focused on these, and soon, sounds followed. Ghostly sensations crawled all over his body, his mind, his spirit. When his eyes snapped open, he could see a tapestry of winding threads of color spreading to cover his entire form; his soul structure building piece by piece.

He unfurled his existence all the way; there was no existential hiccup, no resistance whatsoever. A laugh of relief escaped his lips as he ran a hand through his hair. That need to perceive the external still persisted, but his soul structure remained.

He deactivated Soul-sense, then activated it again. His soul structure sprang up around him. Each time he repeated this, the result was the same.

With Soul-sense active, he closed his eyes and could still perceive his soul structure. He could see what parts could be seen, hear what parts could be heard, feel what parts could be felt. It was bizarrely disorienting and mesmerising. Sensing other people's souls had been dependent on sight for him, but it seemed that this didn't apply to his own soul structure.

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Opening his eyes, he grabbed a notebook from his bag and began jotting down his observations and discoveries.

Once he was done, he hopped to his feet and rushed out of his room. He rushed back in, took a temperature regulation pill, then went out again. “Zeris!” he called.

“Ancestors! Why are you shouting?” she replied from downstairs. “I thought you'd left already.”

“Slept in,” he said as he walked down the steps.

She was sitting at the dining table in clean clothes and even had a towel wrapped around her head. The table was a mess once more. Pieces of paper were strewn about, and several open tomes with complex diagrams on their pages. She closed the tome in front of her and pushed it away, smiling at him. “You owe me the full version of everything that happened yesterday. With commentary.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, sitting in the chair across from her. As he reached out with a tendril of his spirit to graze hers, he noticed how sluggishly his tendrils were moving. He'd been too distracted before now. “What the—”

“What now?” Zeris asked.

“I'm not sure. Let me check.” Caen looked inwards and, with a spell, began scanning his spirit. He couldn't actually see his spirit. It was more of a strong sense of where things were. He imagined slag as a heavy, viscous substance. It felt like… sludge. He usually located them in specks within his spirit, which was why Caen was shocked to discover large clumps of the thing.

This was the equivalent of a week's buildup. Slag built up over time in everyone's spirit. More so in those who regularly practiced magic or used it inefficiently. Caen cleaned out his spirit daily, scouring it completely. Most people didn't have their spirits cleaned out for months, while more diligent practicians went for weekly treatments. But slag bogged down the spirit's dexterity, hindering mobility. And with a spirit as magically unresponsive as Caen's, every extra burden scaled up exponentially.

How did this happen? he wondered, but even as he asked, a suspicion formed in his mind. Yesterday morning, he'd spent an hour cleaning out his spirit completely. But between then and now, there was only one likely culprit.

Caen definitely couldn't handle this much slag on his own. Most Spirit-healers he knew didn't even cleanse their spirits themselves. He ended the scan and winced.

“Slag build-up,” he said. “I'll need your help with that, too.”

Zeris groaned and scanned his spirit the next moment. “This is extensive! I thought I saw you cleanse your spirit two days ago.”

It was a strenuous process to engage one's spiritual awareness and hold a conversation. Some physical senses paired rather poorly with spirit probes or scans. Sight, for example. Hearing was only slightly better, but they'd had practice. He could still technically see, but he closed his eyes out of habit.

“Last time I cleansed my spirit was yesterday morning, actually,” Caen told her as he dove back into his own spirit and began cleansing his slag alongside her. “It’s that new ability I discovered yesterday. I think I might be using it inefficiently.”

“Your fourth bloodline?”

“It's not my fourth bloodline. Or at least I don't think it is. Instinctively, this feels more like a cumulative effect of all four of them. Not a bloodline, something else. A gestalt.” Magister Fermien had told them yesterday that the third bloodline was related to Fire magic, but Caen hadn't the slightest clue what it did. All the more so for the fourth bloodline.

He went on to tell her about the strange thing he'd seen when using Klaver's Variate in Redshadow yesterday. He told her about Soul-sense and everything he'd done with it up till this morning.

In the time it took to explain it all, they were nearly done, though, of course, Zeris had done the majority of the work.

“I’m concerned, though,” Caen said. “This ability… it’s interesting in a way that makes me worried about the implications.” Caen had awakened his spirit much earlier than usual, and his childhood had seen him being subjected to all sorts of medical examinations and experimentations.

His parents had been ‘mandated’ to live on Ser-ghwu Island for a time. Up until the elders had lost interest in him, he’d been something of an academic curiosity. His parents, grandparents, Teiro, Grena, and Vensha had contended with chroniclers on a daily basis. Caen remembered so little of those early days because of his recurring ailments, but he knew all too well that his parents had been all but robbed of their freedom. The Ereshta’al family kept ‘special’ descendants on a tight leash. Just days ago, he’d started considering throwing himself at their mercy in hopes of finding answers to his condition. Things were different now. An ability like this would rekindle their interest in him. It was a sobering thought.

“Do you think I’m being too paranoid?” Caen asked her.

“Not at all,” she said, chuckling. “There’s a reason some Spirit-healers have very… unfavorable opinions about the family.”

Caen made a mental note to bring this up with Uncle Vai tonight.

“Alright,” Zeris said. “That's about the last of it. You can handle the rest yourself.” Her probe retreated.

They had significantly dwindled the large clumps of slag. Only a few specks remained, and even those were far less than what Caen normally had to cleanse himself.

“Thank you,” he said, opening his eyes.

“Come on, what are elders for?” she said, trying to ruffle his hair.

Caen smacked her hand away, snorting. She was only six months older than him. “I actually came down to ask for your help with testing.”

Zeris drummed her fingers on the table. “Experiments! Let's get to it.”