The fine spray of saltwater danced in the early morning air as their boat sped off towards the offshore terminal. Caen sat downwind, watching the retreating island. The biennial celebrations weren’t over yet. This would be the first time he hadn’t stayed till the end.

His grandparents, his parents, his aunties, Orissa, Hshnol, Vai, and Zeris all sat in the boat with him. There were two tagalongs as well—a roughly bearded man and a woman with spikes in her hair.

When Vensha had asked for their names, the man with the rough beard had said, “You can call me Gruff, and she’s Sharp.”

“Your bodyguards look really tough,” Orissa teased Zeris.

Zeris rolled her eyes.

“Again,” said the woman with spiked hair, Sharp, “we’re not bodyguards. Eshtr has tasked us with making sure young Zeris arrives at the Citadel promptly. We’re merely here to escort her to her location safely and prevent any delays.”

Zeris had shown up at the pier this morning, accompanied by Oludlana and those two. Caen didn’t recognize them, but their armor-concealing coats had the emblem of the Faithful Descent faction.

Gruff had kept glancing at the stone coffin on their boat. Hshnol, who was seated closest to the coffin, had his eyes closed. He was running some errands in the Astral right now.

“That doesn’t look very comfortable,” Gruff whispered to his companion, though Caen's ears picked up his words easily. “Can Elder Horavainaris even… breathe in there?”

“Probably scripted,” Sharp replied, looking equally uncertain.

It was, in fact, scripted. The coffin’s interior was designed for maximum comfort and was shaped around Vai’s sleeping form, even though he wouldn’t feel any of it.

Processing at the offshore site didn’t take too long, and soon, they were in the terminal. Caen weathered the heightened influx of information from Soul-sense.

Traversing the vast distance between Ser-gwu Island and Drenlin typically took nine hops, which was rather taxing on anyone who wasn’t a Spatial practician. When the rest of his family had come down here themselves, they’d needed to take fourteen hops instead of nine, and that had just been a month ago.

However, the spatial disturbance from the volcanic peak of Mount Imxeda had worsened and expanded outwards. Their current hop route now included thirty-three terminals. It would take them as many as six days just to get back home. They’d need to take breaks, too, because only Zeris could endure that amount of spatial abuse consecutively.

“What’s with Imxeda?” Orissa asked Zeris as they all walked onto the hop pad. “Do you think the archmage is doing something there?”

The volcano was believed to have deep ties to the archmage, Trellam, in some way. Several local myths described it as his base and home.

Zeris shrugged. “Maybe. But no one seems to know what’s going on. Disturbances like these are common around the Dalat festival. But that was, what, six months ago?”

The whirring of the warp platform began, and Caen Mimicked Zeris’s Spatial affinity. That familiar sensation of free-falling preceded them phasing onto another platform. Thanks to Zeris’s passive augmentations, the effects of the spatial transport were almost trivial, though he knew those effects would only worsen as the day wore on.

“Thirty-two more to go,” Gruff grumbled behind Caen as they were all ushered off the platform.

They spent the rest of the day like this. Purchasing tickets, waiting for their batch to be called, and then hopping to the next terminal. They drew a lot of stares because of the elaborately designed stone coffin Hshnol was carrying.

Throughout the day, Caen and Zeris worked on refining how well he could communicate through their connection. He’d learned as much Klakalk as he reasonably could, but perhaps he could pair that with this.

Due to the rampant rerouting and high traffic on the Plex, the wait time between hops was unpleasantly long. By nightfall, they’d only taken six hops. They spent the night in an inn. Caen hadn’t stored up any sleep. Casting sleep abeyance was always an option, but he preferred to use that as a last resort.

Early the next morning, they were at it again. Over the course of their trip, Caen turned his attention to one of the new aspects of Soul-sense.

Having already informed his family members and Hshnol, he proceeded to run a few experiments on them while they waited at terminals.

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He could now sense a leeway whenever he connected to anyone. Leaning into that leeway linked him more firmly with them to such an extent that it felt as though he were standing or sitting in their position. And through them, he could sense the surrounding souls much better.

More importantly, he could lean into that leeway even more and extend his ongoing connection to yet another person. Having connected to Zeris, for example, he could extend their connection through

her to Vensha, who sat nearby. And from Aunt Vensha, he could extend the connection to Aunt Grena.

He could see all their soul structures, of course, and all the various cords of connection between them and people or things. His mind was currently split. One portion of it struggled to handle the overload of information that came from feeling as though he were in three different locations. It was very disorienting.

Zeris told him in tap code that it still felt as though she were being made hyper aware of them somehow. Both Vensha and Grena shared the same experience.

It seemed so odd to Caen. He’d never heard of anything like this before. Was he forming some sort of temporary bond between them? This was very different from splitting his existence and connecting to several people at once.

It was as though he’d threaded their souls together, or had formed a bridge between their existences. It was significantly taxing on his willpower. So much so that he’d begun to feel that existential strain already.

While he continued examining this phenomenon, the strangest thing happened. His muscles suddenly contracted several times in the span of one second. The contractions were subdued but unmistakable. Caen’s attention was drawn to Vensha’s soul, as he immediately identified her as the origin of that working.

“What by all the ancestors was that?” Grena asked Caen quietly enough that Gruff and Sharp, sitting a polite distance away, wouldn’t hear her.

Aunt Vensha looked very confused. “I just—” She switched to a basic tap code. I cast a spell. But the effect feels as though it’s been dampened.

It wasn’t dampened, Caen mused, his mind spinning. I think… hmm… let me try something.

He cast a spell on himself to sharpen his mind. The spell took, but the effect was far weaker than it should have been. Grena flinched, however.

My mind just grew a bit more focused, Zeris sent.

Vensha and Grena confirmed that the same thing had happened to them.

When he targeted just Vensha, the results were similar, if worse: a far weaker spell effect shared among all four of them.

Breaking off the connection entirely, he cast the mental enhancement spell on himself once more. When he reformed the bridge, linking all their souls together, the spell effect suddenly weakened.

It didn’t matter when the spell was cast; the moment he linked their existences, the effects were distributed among them.

We’re sharing spell effects, and there appears to be some kind of… leakage along our connection, Caen sent to each of them.

He truncated the bridge, shortening the connection to just him and Zeris. He cast the same spell again. The leakage still occurred, but it was far less severe this time. Halved, by his estimate.

Caen was eager to find out what other ways he could apply this.

He disconnected from Zeris, connected to Chasma, and Mimicked resilience. He could immediately feel a weakening of his own resilience, as well as an inflow of external resilience. It seemed that he and Chasma were sharing their separate instances of resilience, and that evened things out. He could feel the fragment’s curiosity.

When he extended the connection to include Zeris and the others, there was no leakage whatsoever. None of them noted feeling that blanket of safety and protection, which was slightly disappointing.

He’d hoped that he would be able to share resilience with others, but that didn’t seem possible. And he wasn’t sure why this was the case. None of Chasma’s other abilities were distributed to anyone else, either, though they did leak to him. His Mimicked abilities leaked to the fragment in turn. His spell effects, however, did not.

I wonder what else can be shared through these bridges, he sent to them.

You should try force and physical damage next, Zeris suggested.

She’d clearly communicated that to the others, because Aunt Grena gave her an exasperated look.

Caen linked himself to Vensha and his grandfather, Niodt, who was a Blood-healer.

When Vensha tried to lightly prick her finger with a needle that Caen provided, she felt quite some resistance. Niodt and Caen could feel a slight pressure on their index fingers. The elderly man did not have spirit tendrils, so he whispered into Elemna’s ear, and she conveyed his words in tap code.

Vensha used enough force to stab her finger. A bead of blood appeared on all their fingers, along with a very dull pain.

Ramifications streamed through his mind.

This ability of yours keeps turning into something properly villainous, Zeris sent. You’re like an evil healer from the stories.

Caen didn’t disagree in the slightest.

More testing? she asked.

He could feel more of that existential strain, but wasn’t fatigued yet, so he nodded. Just for a while longer.

Days went by. The hops were exhausting, but they did get to rest every night. Caen would’ve preferred to experiment more with Soul-sense, but he gave more priority to improving how well he communicated through his connections, which was more relevant to his goals at the moment.

Late in the morning of the sixth day, they arrived at the warp terminal in Chrenai: the end of their hop route.

Drenlin was just one day of air travel away.