Three people had died for him.

  Cade sat in the moss, his massive body casting a shadow over the tiny figures who watched from a respectful distance, and he couldn't escape that thought. Three people. Kern, who he'd stepped on by accident. Pell and Tormina, who had engineered their own deaths because he'd been too stubborn to accept their offer.

  They would come back. He understood that now, intellectually at least. Death here was temporary, a reset rather than an ending. Pell and Tormina would respawn somewhere along the Outer Ring in a few days, intact, and eventually word would reach them about what had happened after their sacrifice.

  But that was the thing, wasn't it? They had sacrificed themselves to see what would happen when he advanced. And here he sat, full of their anima, refusing to take the next step.

  What was the point of their deaths if he just... didn't?

  He looked down at his hands. Larger now than they'd been when he first emerged from that pool. The familiar triangle of birthmarks on his left thumb was still there, stretched across the broader skin—three small dots he'd had since childhood. His body had scaled up in every way, but it was still recognizably his.

  Naked, though. That was still bothering him more than it probably should.

  The temperature was comfortable enough—the perpetual mist kept everything mild, neither hot nor cold—and the natives clearly had no concept of modesty. They'd all emerged from their pools just as bare as he had, and none of them seemed to think twice about it. But Cade had spent twenty-six years on Earth, where walking around without clothes meant something, and he couldn't quite shake the feeling of exposure.

  Not that anyone here was paying attention to that part of him. They were all too busy staring at his size, his strange proportions, the muscles that apparently marked him as unusual in ways beyond just his height.

  Would that change if he advanced? Would he become something else entirely?

  The power was there. He could feel it now, sitting in his chest like a coiled spring. The anima that Pell and Tormina and Kern had given him, waiting for him to do something with it.

  He could feel that it was enough. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Whatever threshold existed between tier-zero and tier-one, he had crossed it. All that remained was to... do something. Take some action that would transform potential into actuality.

  Cade closed his eyes.

  Pell and Tormina hadn't died so he could sit here feeling sorry for himself. They had died because they were curious, because they wanted to see something unprecedented happen. The least he could do was let it happen.

  And if he was being honest with himself—truly honest—he was curious too.

  He opened his eyes and looked toward the cluster of tiny figures still watching him. Hyude stood at the front of the group, arms crossed, expression unreadable.

  "How do I do it?" Cade asked. "Advance, I mean. I can feel that I have enough... anima, or whatever you call it. But I don't know how to actually make it happen."

  A ripple of surprised murmurs passed through the crowd. Hyude's expression shifted into one of satisfaction.

  "You just... do it," Hyude said. "Focus on the anima inside you and compress it. Make it small. As small as you can, concentrated into a single point."

  Cade waited for more. When nothing came, he frowned. "That's it? Just... compress it?"

  "That's it. It's the easiest advancement. Tier-zero to tier-one has no trial. You just condense and transform." Hyude tilted his head. "You really don't know how? Even fresh souls usually feel it instinctively."

  "I don't feel anything instinctively about this." Cade closed his eyes again, trying to focus on the power inside him. It was there—he could sense it, a warm pressure behind his sternum—but when he tried to do something with it, nothing happened. It was like trying to flex a muscle he didn't have.

  "You're thinking too hard," someone called out. Fennick, maybe. "Don't think. Just feel."

  "Feel what?"

  "The anima! It's right there inside you. Just... push it together."

  Cade tried. He imagined the warmth in his chest condensing, shrinking, pulling inward. The anima resisted, diffuse and slippery, refusing to gather into anything coherent. It was like trying to squeeze water in his fist.

  Cade tuned out the bickering and tried to focus. The problem was that he had no frame of reference for what he was supposed to do. These people had grown up with anima, with this cultivation system, with the knowledge of how to manipulate internal energies baked into their souls across countless lives. He had grown up learning to bench press and count macros.

  He kept trying to compress the anima in his chest, where it naturally resided. That seemed like the logical place—gather it where it already was, squeeze it down. But no matter how hard he focused, the warmth just... sat there. Too spread out, too central, too hard to grip with whatever mental faculty was supposed to do the gripping.

  Maybe the problem was the location.

  He thought about other times he'd had to learn something that seemed impossible. Learning to whistle as a kid—that had taken weeks of frustrated attempts before his lips suddenly figured out the right shape. Learning to raise one eyebrow, which he'd practiced in the mirror for hours until the muscles finally isolated themselves.

  Learning to wiggle his ears.

  That one had been the hardest. There was no obvious mechanism, no clear instruction set. Everyone who could do it just said "you move the muscles above your ears," which was useless when you couldn't feel those muscles at all. He'd spent months convinced it was impossible, that he simply lacked whatever biological quirk allowed other people to do it.

  And then one day, sitting in class, bored out of his mind, he'd felt something twitch. A tiny flutter of movement he'd never noticed before. He'd focused on it, chased it, tried to reproduce it—and slowly, painfully, he'd learned to isolate the sensation and turn it into deliberate motion.

  Maybe this was the same thing. Maybe he needed to find a different angle of approach.

  Cade stopped trying to compress the anima and instead just... felt for it. Scanning his body the way he would before a lift, checking in with each muscle group, noting tension and relaxation and readiness.

  His shoulders. His chest. His core. His hips.

  He paused.

  Several things were wrong. Not painful, not urgent, but... wrong.

  First, his throat. He swallowed experimentally, and the motion felt different—isolated somehow, like the pathway for food had nothing to do with breathing anymore. He tried to feel the air moving through his trachea, the familiar sensation of breath filling his chest, and found... nothing. His throat ended in a closed system now, connected only to his mouth and esophagus. Speaking, swallowing—those still worked. But the whole mechanism for moving air to his lungs simply wasn't there anymore. His chest hadn't risen or fallen since he'd emerged from that pool, he realized. Whatever his body needed, it was getting it through his skin, not through anything resembling normal respiration.

  Second, something at the base of his spine. A presence that hadn't been there before—no, not at the base. Inside. He focused on it, confused, and felt muscles he'd never possessed twitch in response. Something long and flexible, currently coiled tight against his spine itself, nestled in a channel that ran along his vertebrae. A tail. He had a tail, and it was inside him.

  The realization was so bizarre he almost laughed. When he concentrated on it, really focused, he could feel it respond—a thin, whip-like appendage beginning to uncoil and extend outward through an opening at his lower back. It emerged slowly, surprisingly long for how thin it was, and when he tried to move it deliberately, it lashed sideways with a force that nearly threw off his balance. Far stronger than something that slender had any right to be.

  He tried to curl it, to control it the way he might control a finger, and felt it twitch spastically in three different directions before flopping against his thigh. Dexterous in theory, maybe, but he had absolutely no idea how to use it. Like trying to write with his off hand while blindfolded. After a moment of fumbling, he willed it to retract, and it slithered back inside, coiling against his spine until there was no external evidence it existed at all.

  Third, his pelvic floor. The familiar anatomy he'd lived with for twenty-six years wasn't quite what he expected. Things were... different. Rearranged. He didn't have time to catalog all the changes, but the configuration was definitely not what he remembered.

  What the hell had this world done to him?

  He almost opened his eyes, almost broke the meditation to investigate physically. But the natives were watching, and he didn't want to give them a show of him examining his own anatomy. Whatever had changed could wait. He had more pressing concerns.

  He filed it all away—the throat, the tail, the other changes—another set of mysteries, another list of things this world had done to him without permission, and continued his scan.

  His thighs. His calves. His feet.

  Back up. His lower back. His lats.

  Then he tried to move the anima. Just shift it, see if he could get it to go somewhere else.

  It was like pushing through molasses. The anima resisted movement, clinging to its place in his chest, reluctant to flow anywhere at all. But slowly, agonizingly, he managed to coax a portion of it upward, toward his shoulder.

  He tried to compress it there. Still difficult, but... marginally better? The anima was more contained in his shoulder, less diffuse. He could almost get a grip on it before it slipped away.

  He pushed further.

  The anima flowed down into his upper arm, still moving like cold honey, still fighting him every inch of the way. But when he tried to compress it there, in his bicep, it was noticeably easier. The muscle was smaller, more defined, a space he knew intimately from years of training. He could almost hold the compression for a moment before it escaped.

  Further still.

  Into his forearm. The sensation was strange—anima spreading through the twin bones, threading between the dense muscles he'd built with countless curls and grip exercises. But the compression was easier here, much easier. He could hold it, shape it, feel it responding to his will.

  Not quite enough, though. Not quite the breakthrough he needed.

  He pushed the anima into his hand.

  It wanted to spread across his fingers, to diffuse into his palm, to escape up his wrist. The shape was awkward, the space confined. But his control here was exquisite—years of gripping barbells, of adjusting hand position mid-lift, of developing the fine motor control that separated good lifters from great ones. He knew every tendon, every small muscle, every subtle movement his hands could make.

  He focused on the center of his palm and squeezed.

  The anima condensed.

  And then something appeared in his mind.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  A symbol. Not quite seen, not quite imagined—something between a vision and a memory that had never happened. A spiral, curving inward from the edges, the outer rim forking into delicate branching lines like the roots of a tree or the tributaries of a river. The spiral thickened as it wound toward the center, each loop tighter than the last, until it terminated in a small, intricate knot.

  Cade didn't know what it meant. But somehow, looking at it, he understood what he was supposed to do.

  Gather from the edges. Draw inward. Compress to the center.

  He followed the spiral.

  The anima in his hand responded, flowing along pathways he couldn't see but could suddenly feel. From his fingers, from his palm, from the edges of his grip—it all pulled inward, spiraling toward the knot he was building in the center. The sensation was intense, almost painful, like every cell in his hand was being gently squeezed.

  Tighter. Smaller. Denser.

  He could feel himself beginning to glow. Not see—his eyes were closed—but feel, a radiance building beneath his skin as the anima concentrated. The murmurs from his tiny audience had gone silent.

  The knot in his palm pulled tighter.

  And then something gave way.

  It wasn't an explosion—more like a lock clicking open, a door swinging wide. The compressed anima unfolded inside him, not expanding back outward but integrating, merging with his body in ways it hadn't been before. He felt his muscles condense, his bones harden, his entire being settle into a new configuration.

  He was shrinking.

  Cade opened his eyes and watched the ground rise up to meet him. The massive mushroom stalks that had towered over him seemed to grow taller still as his perspective compressed. His body folded inward, condensing, returning toward something closer to what he remembered.

  When it stopped, he looked down at his hands.

  They were his hands again. Not the scaled-up versions he'd been carrying around, but his actual hands, the same size they'd been when he'd woken up in that pool. The familiar triangle of birthmarks on his left thumb, restored to their proper proportions.

  He was back to his original size. Five-foot-seven, give or take. The height he'd been his entire adult life.

  But the tiny figures below him were still tiny. Hyude still barely reached his ankle, still had to crane upward to meet his eyes. The nodules on the nearby mushrooms were still specks, the pools in the distance still puddles from his perspective.

  He had shrunk back to normal, but normal was still a giant in this area of the world.

  Everything else, though—everything else was different.

  He could feel the change in every fiber of his being. His muscles were denser, more compact, thrumming with a strength that had nothing to do with how many hours he'd spent in the gym. He felt heavier—actually heavier, as if his body had taken on mass even as it shed size—but the weight was effortless to carry. Like he'd been walking through water his whole life and only now stepped onto dry land.

  He stood up, and the motion was so easy it almost launched him off his feet. He'd pushed with the force he needed before the advancement, and now that force was wildly excessive. He stumbled, caught himself, and felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest despite everything.

  He was stronger. Genuinely, dramatically stronger. And somehow, impossibly, back to his normal size.

  His stomach growled.

  Two kinds of hunger hit him at once. The first was simple, physical—the kind of hunger that came from burning through energy, from a body demanding fuel. But beneath it was something else, a sharper craving that pulled at the edges of his awareness. A wanting that had nothing to do with food.

  The hunger for more anima. For more power. For more growth.

  It was strong—stronger than he'd expected—but even as he noticed it, he could feel it beginning to fade. Like the spike of thirst after a hard workout, intense in the moment but not a permanent state. Something to ride out, not something to fear.

  The food hunger, though, that was staying.

  "Could someone bring me some nodules?" he called down to the watching crowd. "I'm starving."

  Below him, the natives weren't moving. They were staring at him—at his hand specifically—with expressions he couldn't quite read. Hyude had leaned over to whisper something to Maeven, who whispered something back. Fennick was shaking his head slowly, as if in disbelief.

  "What?" Cade asked.

  "He shrank more than expected," Hyude said, apparently deciding not to address whatever had prompted the whispered conference. "He was growing significantly from tier-zero anima before he advanced, but now he is tier-one and..."

  "That's his original size," someone called from the back of the crowd. One of the natives who had been there from the beginning—Cade thought it might be one of the first to emerge from the pools near him. "I saw him spawn. That's exactly how big he was when he came out of the pool."

  A ripple of murmurs passed through the group.

  "That doesn't make sense," Maeven said. "He should have compressed to one tier-above his spawn size. Not back to it."

  "None of this makes sense!" Fennick threw up his hands. "A fresh soul spawning at that size, advancing at the tier-zero rate, compressing down to his original form? It's like the system is broken specifically for him."

  More whispered exchanges. Glances toward Cade's hand, then quickly away. Whatever they'd seen during his advancement, they weren't sharing it with him.

  "I’m glad I’m my normal height," Cade tried to end the exchange, too hungry to keep listening. "And I'm really hungry. Please?"

  Fennick made an exasperated sound but gestured to a few others, who scurried off toward a nearby mushroom cluster. They returned moments later with armfuls of nodules, depositing them in a pile at Cade's feet.

  He knelt down—carefully, still hyperaware of the small bodies around him—and picked up a nodule. At his restored size, it wasn’t even quite like picking up a single grain of rice. He popped it in his mouth.

  The effect was immediate, but... diminished. Where before a single nodule had completely satisfied him, this one barely registered. Like eating a single potato chip when what you needed was a full meal.

  "More," he said, and grabbed a handful.

  He ate them quickly, one after another, chasing the satisfaction that came slower now. Five nodules. Ten. Fifteen.

  "The tier-zero food still works for tier-one," Hyude instructed. "But you need more of it. Much more."

  Cade heard them but didn't respond, focused on filling the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. After perhaps thirty nodules, the hunger finally began to fade. Not gone, exactly, but manageable. He sat back on his heels and let out a breath.

  "Okay," he said. "Okay. That's... that's going to be annoying."

  He thought about the symbol that had appeared in his mind—the spiral with its forking branches and central knot. He hadn't seen it anywhere in the physical world, but it had felt significant. Important. Like a piece of a puzzle he didn't yet understand.

  Something to figure out later. Along with whatever had prompted those whispered conversations among the natives. They'd seen something during his advancement that surprised them, but they clearly weren't inclined to explain. And there was still the matter of whatever had changed in his anatomy—the throat that no longer connected to his lungs, the retractable tail coiled against his spine, the unfamiliar configuration he'd noticed during his body scan.

  The list of mysteries was getting long.

  He turned back to Hyude. "Before, you said I should follow the water. Toward the tier-one territory. Is that still the plan?"

  Hyude considered him. "You're tier-one now, and your physical size alone makes you formidable—you could crush any of us without cultivation, as we've seen." A dry note entered the voice. "But you're still new to actually using anima. And your size... once you get down to tier-three territory or so, you might actually fit through a portal. That would open up options."

  "A portal?" Cade asked.

  Hyude made a gesture, and a few of the natives scurried off into the fungal undergrowth. They returned a minute later, beckoning for the group to follow. Cade walked carefully behind them, hyperaware of every step, until they reached a small clearing where something stood that made his breath catch.

  It was a doorway. Freestanding, maybe ten inches tall, made of something that looked like stone but shimmered faintly in the mist-filtered light. And carved into its surface, unmistakable, was the symbol he'd seen in his mind during advancement—the spiral with forking outer branches, thickening as it curved inward, terminating in that intricate central knot.

  "What is that symbol?" Cade asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. He didn't mention that he'd seen it before. That felt like information worth keeping to himself.

  Hyude glanced at the portal, then shrugged. "It's on every portal. Basically means advancement. The portals are how most people progress—you go in, you face what's inside, you come out stronger. Or you die and respawn somewhere along the Outer Ring." Another shrug. "This one's sized for tier-zero. You couldn't fit a leg through it."

  Cade stared at the tiny doorway. Fourteen inches tall. He could step over it without noticing. And yet for the four-inch natives around him, it was a passage to something else entirely.

  "The tier-one portals are larger," Maeven added. "Tier-two, larger still. By the time you reach territories where the portals match your size, you'll have options beyond just walking and eating nodules."

  “And I can be alone there, in the portals?” Cade asks, eager to be alone to process all of this.

  “Yes, along with the labyrinth creatures, of course, but once you clear a room, alone,” Maeven replies.

  "Sounds like I have a destination. And you?" Cade looked at the assembled crowd, still watching him with that mixture of curiosity and fascination. "What will you do?"

  "Tell everyone what we saw, obviously." Hyude's tone was dry. "A fresh soul spawning massive, advancing to tier-one, compressing down to his original size. That's a story worth spreading. By the time Pell and Tormina respawn, they'll probably hear about it before they even remember their own names."

  A cold feeling settled in Cade's stomach. "Everyone. You mean... are there people my size out there? Larger?"

  "Cities full of them," Hyude said. "The higher tiers have settlements, kingdoms, entire civilizations. Beings who make you look small. Word travels between the rings—slower than you might think, given the distances, but it travels."

  "And when they hear about me? About... all of this?" Cade gestured vaguely at himself, at the portal, at the spot where he'd advanced in a way that had made even these jaded souls whisper among themselves. "What will they do?"

  Hyude was quiet for a moment. "Hard to say. There are people of all types in the higher tiers. Some might be curious—want to see the anomaly for themselves. Others won't care at all. Too busy with their own advancement, their own politics." The tiny figure paused. "Some might view you as holy. An embodiment of the will of advancement itself, spawning at such a size, marked by the system in ways we don't understand."

  "And others?"

  "Others might see you as a challenge. A threat, even. Something to be tested, or eliminated before you become a problem." Hyude's dark eyes were unreadable. "The higher tiers are not like the Outer Ring, Cade. Life is not gentle there. Power matters. And you are... strange. Strangeness attracts attention, and attention is not always kind."

  Cade's jaw tightened. He looked back at the followers still lingering at the edges of the clearing—fewer now, many already dispersing to spread their stories, but some still watching him with that unsettling curiosity.

  "I need to move," he said, more to himself than to Hyude. "Keep ahead of the stories if I can."

  He turned to face the remaining natives directly. A handful of them, maybe eight or ten, still seemed inclined to follow.

  "Listen," he said, pitching his voice to carry. "I know I'm... interesting to you. A curiosity. But what you've seen today—if the wrong people hear about it, it could put me in danger. Real danger." He paused, searching for the right words. "I can't stop you from following. I'm not even sure I want to. But if you're going to trail after me, I need you to understand something. The details of what happened here—how I advanced, what you saw—I need that kept quiet. At least until I understand this world better. Until I know who I can trust."

  Silence. The tiny figures exchanged glances.

  "You're asking us to keep secrets," one of them said. Not Hyude—someone Cade didn't recognize. "From other Kindred?"

  Kindred, Cade picks up, a name for the people here. "I'm asking you to be careful about what you share and who you share it with. There's a difference." Cade crouched down, bringing himself closer to their level, though he still towered over them. "I don't know what I am. I don't know why I'm here or what any of this means. But think about it—my pool didn't behave normally. I spawned wrong. I advanced wrong. Everything about me breaks the rules you understand."

  He let that sink in for a moment before continuing.

  "What if I don't respawn like you do? What if whatever made me different means that death is actually permanent for me?" He saw the flicker of unease pass through the crowd—the concept clearly uncomfortable in a way his earlier pleas hadn't been. "I don't know if that's true. I hope it isn't. But I don't know. And if powerful people decide I'm a threat and come to kill me, and it turns out I don't come back..." He spread his hands. "Then you'll have helped end something that can't be undone. That's not the kind of story I think you want to tell."

  The silence stretched longer this time. Several of the Kindred looked away, suddenly unwilling to meet his eyes.

  "You're asking us to keep secrets," the same voice repeated, but quieter now. Less certain.

  "I'm asking you to consider that the rules might not apply to me the way they apply to you. And to be careful, just in case."

  More exchanged glances. Then Hyude stepped forward.

  "Most of us are leaving anyway," the tiny figure said. "Going back to our lives, spreading the basic story—strange giant, weird advancement, shrank back to spawn size. That much is already out there. But the details?" A glance toward Cade's hand, then away. "Some things are worth keeping close. At least for now."

  "Thank you," Cade said quietly.

  "Don't thank me yet. I can't control what others say once they're out of my sight. And the ones who keep following you..." Hyude gestured at the remaining stragglers. "They'll make their own choices. But I'll admit—the thought that you might not return..." The tiny figure shook its head. "That's an unsettling idea. We don't think about death that way. It changes things."

  "I know," Cade said. "Believe me, I know."

  Cade nodded and straightened up. It wasn't a guarantee. It wasn't even close to safety. But it was something.

  "Tell Pell and Tormina thank you," he said. "When word reaches them. Tell them I'm grateful, even if I didn't want it to happen the way it did."

  Hyude studied him for a long moment. "You're strange, Cade. Broken in ways I don't understand, and whole in ways I didn't expect. But I'll pass along your message." A pause. "Good luck in the lower rings. Try not to let anyone crush you."

  Cade huffed out an almost laugh. "I'll do my best."

  He turned toward the downhill slope, toward the direction the water flowed, toward whatever waited in the territories where gravity grew heavier and the people grew larger. He moved faster now, not quite running but not leisurely either. Putting distance between himself and the spreading stories.

  Most of the tier-zero Kindred stayed behind, already clustering into groups to disperse. But two figures broke from the crowd and lingered at the edge of the clearing—a pair Cade hadn't paid much attention to before. They weren't looking at him. They were looking at the portal.

  "Rhys," one of them named Zyrian murmured to the other. "The message said tier-eight. Yours?"

  "Tier-six. And a tip about essence types. Guess I kept my affinity" The one called Rhys glanced toward Cade's retreating form, then back at the tiny stone doorway. "He's the most interesting thing to happen in the Outer Ring maybe ever. I'm not losing track of him just because we're stuck at tier-zero."

  "So we go through. Fast advancement. Catch up."

  "Exactly."

  The two of them approached the portal, small hands reaching toward the shimmering surface. Whatever waited on the other side, whatever dangers the labyrinth held for fresh tier-zero souls, it was worth the risk.

  They had a giant to follow. And they intended to see where he went.

  Behind them, the mist continued its endless fall. Above, the clouds churned.

  And ahead, following the water, Cade walked toward a world where he might finally be something other than a monster among insects—moving fast, hoping the stories wouldn't catch up before he was ready to face whatever they brought.