He and Zeris took a shared carriage back to the temple. It was a wonky hunk of wood with incredibly terrible suspension and no ceiling. Caen had taken some numb-root from one of the pouches at his belt, and it helped dull the pain in his arm and side.

A Valiant with tattoos on his forearm was regaling the other passengers with tales of his most recent expedition into the Planes.

Caen tuned the man out and sank his focus into his own spirit. The hooting passengers were annoying enough, but the wobbling vehicle kept pulling him out of his scan. Spirit-healing dulled the senses, which loosened his control on supplementary components like finger gestures and incantations. The carriage’s sudden jolts and jounces worsened this all the more, destabilizing his working.

“—I took the beast by the horns and tore it apart,” the Valiant was saying. “Forehead to tail, just like that!”

Caen was starting to consider running to his destination, but it was about a forty-minute walk back to the temple. Zeris had insisted on hiring a private carriage back to the temple, but it was late in the evening, and finding private transport was difficult at this hour.

They needed somewhere safe and free from distractions to scan their spirits. That ruled out the town square and any other random location. As tempted as he was to stop by an alleyway, that would be counterproductive.

He joggled his knees and suffered through the rest of the ride, Zeris sulking beside him.

His thoughts were all over the place. A Fire bloodline. What did that even mean? How could something related to fire have influenced his affinities to such a great degree? Something wasn't adding up. He knew so little.

When he could see the jut of the temple's marble ceiling, it was all he could do not to just drop a few pomms with the carriage conductor and run the rest of the way. Also, Zeris would have killed him.

They didn't go up to the meditation chamber. He led them to the contemplation hall instead, which had nooks in the walls. Zeris entered a nook, and Caen picked one opposite her, sitting down in a lotus position.

He began tracing the intricacies of his spirit, once more trying to locate the bloodline that had evaded him for so long.

The buzz from earlier had died down and given way to a dull, yet annoying pulsing that needled at him like an itch he couldn't reach. But he felt closer than he'd ever come.

Everyone had the capacity to examine their own spirit, but Spirit-healers possessed tools that others didn't. The more intimately a person desired to be acquainted with their spirit, the more necessary it became for them to take up Spirit-healing.

Caen sank into his spirit, navigating those well-trodden routes once more. He'd improved his scanning techniques over the years and had grown very familiar with his own spirit.

In moments, he located the bloodline he'd inherited from his father’s family. The Spirit-healing bloodline presented in his mind as a greenish blob moulded from the very stuff of his spirit.

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The pulsing didn't feel so dull any longer as he traced a path to the bloodline he'd received from his mother's family. A shimmering cluster of flowing mirrors.

The pulsing became a second heartbeat, thumping forcefully within him. Almost as if it wanted to be found. His breath hitched in his lungs, nearly throwing his breathing sequence off-kilter.

He made a few wrong turns, losing his way a couple of times, but now that he had an idea what the bloodline was, it was somehow much easier to correct his course. The mere knowledge of it almost guided him.

Caen had scanned his spirit arduously for years, searching for this elusive thing. His desperation was immeasurable.

Something called to him, and he answered, chasing its frantic pulses. Echoes in a labyrinth of hallways.

He lost himself to the scan, making corrections to his course, winding through the intricate folds and crevices of his spirit.

And then, he found it. A ghostly mass of mottled pink flame came into view.

Caen inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.

This was it!

It had taken him so long to make sense of everything, but now he—

Caen's heart was gripped by a sudden urgency. A suffocating need enveloped him tightly. His heart hammered in his chest, sweat gathering on his brow. His spirit roiled in agitation.

He hurriedly rummaged within himself but couldn't find the cause of his sudden distress.

He was forced out of his scan, panting on the floor and clutching his chest. He wasn't in pain, but that insistence was so desperate, so fervent, that it felt physical.

Caen closed his eyes and called the bloodline visualization technique, Klaver's Variate, to mind.

He had practiced with a triangle all these years in preparation for this moment.

The feel of the bloodlines, their weight on his being, connected across interiorness. He'd located them all. Points on a triangle.

Every single time before now, this visualization had crumbled in his mind. But that was because he hadn't found the third one yet.

He'd found it now. Everything was going to snap into place.

A phantasmal triangle of rainbow light formed in his mind, each point pulsing through different colors. He sustained the mental construct longer than he ever had. Tense seconds ticked by. This was it. It had to be.

The nagging need in his mind calmed like a dying storm. The visualization felt firmer. Truer.

And then it crumbled.

That urgency flared to life once again. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.

Caen steadied his frantic breathing, but could do nothing for the turbulence in his mind. He recalled the visualization again.

It crumbled even faster this time. He did it again. And again, and several times more. The results were worse each time.

Snapping his eyes open, Caen sprang to his feet. His entire clothes were soaked through with sweat, despite the cooling wards. He paced along the wall. “No, no, no,” he muttered between breaths.

This could only mean one thing. He ran a hand through his hair.

Zeris opened her eyes, a smile forming on her face, but it fell off when she saw him pacing.

Caen, his parents, Elder Gev; they'd been wrong all along. There weren't three.

“Caen, are you alright? Caen.”

“Four,” he said, breathing heavily.

There was a fourth bloodline.