After the conversation with what he believed to be his subconscious, Arden floated through the dark void while sitting with his legs crossed. According to the manifestation of his inner turmoil, Arden already had everything he needed. He just needed to shape them together correctly.

  “How?” he questioned aloud, but got no response.

  It had been a while since his inner voice spoke, and Arden assumed it wouldn’t speak again. It gave Arden the push he needed, but it wouldn't give him the answers. He would need to figure this out on his own.

  His mind was repaired somewhat. He was no longer in a downward spiral of failure and lamentation

  His body wasn’t, but that was the point of this.

  Arden got to work sorting through his nearly broken mind. If he needed to put the pieces together, the first step would be to take all of the puzzle pieces out of the box to see what he was working with.

  “Let’s see here. I came to this world halfway through a beating by Nux.”

  Arden felt a knot of anger in his core burning when Nux entered his mind. His mental state was a lot more stable after his visit to jagged rock junction, but he still felt the want, the need to kill the prince.

  ‘I still want to kill him. Maybe I still can, if I can repair my body.’

  Arden shoved the thought out of his head. For now. He could come back to it when he regained bodily function. He looked forward to it.

  “Then the priest Aldren healed me and discussed the fate of the world, and how the Blight was coming.” He paused for a moment. “The StarFall. The end of the world,” he said dramatically.

  ‘I don't care about my appraisal for the trial. I just need to survive. Escape the world before it ends.’

  “Then there’s the Godstone. Something left behind by the god of the Helios Church as a means to elevate someone’s strength to a ‘saint,’ however strong that is. The person selected to save the world by becoming a saint is Nux.”

  The words turned bitter in his mouth as he spoke them. When he first heard that Nux was destined for greatness, he felt nothing. Now though, Arden rejected such a notion. Too much had transpired.

  ‘But I swallowed the Godstone instead.’

  “He was supposed to bring it to the Starlight Grove to carry out his ascension. But why? Was it just because it's the origin of the Godstone?”

  Arden thought about it and shook his head.

  “No, there is something special about that place. Something that makes it important to use the Godstone there. But why is it important to use it there?”

  Arden’s eyes widened with realization as he said it.

  “Because otherwise it has no function. That’s why swallowing it had no effect, and that’s why they were making the trek to the grove. It wasn't just a ceremonial thing. But why?”

  Arden had no answer to his follow up, but he didn’t think it was important. All he needed to know was that the Starlight Grove was important.

  “Whatever the case, after the discussion with Aldren, we set out. Skipping the abuse, I was force fed several potions to make it seem like I was fine, but also to give me potion fatigue.”

  ‘I had a fever dream as a result that felt similar to this, but way less substantial. I had no control, just like a dream. I should just write it off as exactly that, a fever dream.’

  “The next day, we arrived in Silverbrook. Bellum found a stand-in who looked just like me. He also had a sister, like me. It’s possible that it was just a coincidence, but if I take her into account, it all becomes hazy.”

  Arden’s heart was in his throat as he thought about her and the events of that night in Silverbrook.

  “That was also where I first saw this world’s version of aura. Aura is a thing for Starborn and Celestials in my world, but nowhere near as special.”

  Arden tapped a finger on his chin repeatedly as he thought about what else was special about the people in this world.

  “There’s magic. That’s a big one. And also the awakened. Are the two related?”

  Arden thought back to Bellum. He was a swordsman to the core. Even when he was about to be killed, he never once used a spell. But the Status still labeled him as a red-tier awakened human.

  “Maybe the correlation isn’t between magic and awakened, but auras and awakened.”

  Arden thought about it for a little more and settled on that theory.

  “Yeah. It doesn't make sense to be called a protostar or other rank of Starborn if there are no Starborn to begin with. The auras are probably this world’s unique system to survive against the Celestials. If the people here learn to use their auras to grow stronger, then it makes sense to become awakened instead. The fact that everyone was either mundane or red-tier means that the tier must be just a measurement of strength, not the quality of Stellar Essence, because they have no Stellar Essence.”

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  Of course, that thought gave Arden another one.

  ‘What would happen if a Starborn learned the awakened aura techniques?

  A smile creased his face. He didn’t know, but he was eager to find out. Later, though. With another mystery tentatively solved, Arden moved on in his memory. To the banquet in Silverbrook.

  When Vera died.

  “Vera…She said that she was an outworlder as well. That she waited a thousand years to see me again. Again.”

  A somber expression rested on his face.

  “I don't think it was the same Other-Vera that enabled my Vera’s paradox. She fragmented herself, according to my Vera. She must be from another another timeline.”

  Arden sighed.

  “Why is time travel stuff so convoluted? I have no idea what that can mean whatsoever. From her being from another world, to her waiting for so long, to her seeing me again. Maybe she was waiting for the trial to begin?”

  ‘Would that make sense? And where would my stand-in fit into this? He didn’t seem to recognize me.’

  “There’s also the Satellite I got from her.”

  ‘Does that mean I killed her?’

  “No. That doesn't make any sense. Nux did. She just bled out on top of me.” He bit his quivering lip. He knew that memory would always stick with him, more than any number of dead assassins.

  Arden skipped over the week in isolation chained up in the magicarriage. Too much suffering and nothing eventful that could aid him in his quest to recover. So he moved on. Now, Arden was thinking about the events that took up the shortest amount of time, but felt the longest. His escape into the mountains after the attack of the Setting Sun.

  “I killed a lot of people,” Arden muttered. “I don’t regret it though. It was kill or be killed. First, there was Bellum and Loris. Then those two from the cave. After that was the Spawn of the Stonelord, followed by the other two assassins.”

  Arden sighed.

  “Then the cliff. I was cornered by the assassins and the Stonelord was approaching. In a fit of rage, I swallowed the Godstone, effectively dooming the world. After Nocturne and Nux defeated me, the Stonelord showed up, killed Nocturne, and threw me and Nux off the cliff.”

  Arden groaned and clutched his head. He was right there.

  “Damn it! I’ve already established that the Godstone could only be used properly at the Starlight Grove, but why am I so fixated on the act of swallowing? The Godstone barely did anything! What am I forgetting about? I’ve already gone over everything that matters in the trial, so why can’t I just figure it out!?”

  He took a calming breath and went back over the entire trial again to find what he was missing. Still nothing. He did it a third time and nothing changed.

  “I feel like I’m right there! I just need one or two more things for everything to come into focus, but they’re not here!”

  ‘Wait a minute. Not here. What about before the trial?’

  Arden felt his pulse increase. His instinct told him he was on the right track. He listed each of the events he had gone through over the past month.

  “Meeting Vera, paradox in progress, meeting the doppelganger, training with Vera. The doppelganger showing up again and explaining the importance of a legacy ability. The Mausoleum of the Maverick. Being detained, Vera teaching about essence circulation, fighting Fro- wait!”

  He found something. He remembered.

  Back when Arden was locked up with Vera, she taught him how to circulate stellar essence. He had none because he was mundane, but Vera told him to imagine stellar essence flowing through his body. To be ready for when he became a Starborn. She told him what stellar essence felt like.

  A warm, comforting energy, that was his to control.

  “Just like the Godstone’s power! I only felt it for a moment, but it was definitely Stellar Essence!”

  He knew that mundanes couldn't wield stellar essence. The stellar core that all Starborn had acted as both an essence generator and a buffer to prevent the power from going out of control in their bodies, because the essence would absolutely kill a mundane with its pure energy.

  It was the same in this world. No one in this world could process Stellar Essence due to there being no Starborn. No Stellar Cores to circulate the energy. They had to outsource the protection granted by the stellar core.

  “Is that why the ceremony had to be done at the Starlight Grove? It’s not that it has no function outside of the grove, it's that it was created for the sole purpose of being used at the Grove! Because only there would the body be able to stay alive after bathing in the Pool of Starlight! Like Aldren said, it can keep the body alive!”

  The puzzle pieces started to come together.

  “But the Stellar Essence in the Godstone doesn’t negatively affect me. Because I’m a husk! My body was already dead! My soul will live on, and like Vera said, Starborn abilities are soul-deep. Even though my body is dead, I can use the Stellar Essence in my soul to heal my body, without bathing in the Pool of Starlight!”

  Arden stood up with glee. Arden finally saw the whole picture.

  His inner voice was correct when it told him that he already had all the pieces. Everything that had happened thus far had been part of the equation.

  The nature of a husk. Stellar Essence being anathema to mundanes. The Godstone. Starlight Grove. All of it was connected. Once he took a step back, it all became clear.

  The important elements of the world represented a stellar core.

  The Godstone, representing the generation of stellar essence that came from a stellar core.

  The Pool of Starlight, representing the shield that would keep the stellar essence from rampaging inside of a human body.

  Only when combined did someone become a saint.

  “A Starborn…”

  Arden looked up at the endless void above him, as well as below him. Absolutely nothing was visible.

  But what about the invisible?

  Somewhere in the darkness of the void, a Godstone's amount of Stellar Essence was flowing through his body.

  Arden already had the feeling of Vera's fingers on him memorized. He would follow what Vera taught him to the letter, and use the Stellar Essence to heal himself.

  Arden sneered at the nothingness that surrounded him. He almost gave up before, and it was one of the most dangerous moments in his life. He had lost his mind for a while there, engaging in discussions with his inner voice.

  Now he was back. And soon, his body would be as well.

  All he had to do was find the Stellar Essence that was somewhere in the infinite void of his soul, and bend a God's gift to his own will.

  It couldn't be that hard.