Chapter 53

  The light of the twin suns hung lower on the horizon. It spilled across the white stone courtyards of the palace and bled into the broad windows of the meditation chamber, where Raime sat motionless, eyes closed, his consciousness stretched thin from hours of effort. The day had felt endless, his mind pulled taut between discovery and exhaustion, and even now his thoughts flickered sluggishly through a fog of strain.

  Neimar’s voice broke the silence, rich and even. “That will do for today. You’ve reached the edge of what your mind can safely absorb.”

  Raime opened his eyes. The chamber’s air was humming with psionic residue from the exercises they’d done. He could still feel the faint tremor of his new ability coiled inside his mind, sharp and restless, a blade of thought waiting to be shaped.

  “I can keep going,” Raime said, though even he could hear the fatigue beneath his voice.

  “You could,” the Sovereign replied, “and you would learn nothing from it.” Neimar’s shape — more presence than form — drifted a few steps closer, his silver eye steady. “Your consciousness must recover between lessons, or your learning efficiency will plummet. Go hunt instead. Let the practical refine what the theory cannot.”

  Raime blinked, uncertain if he’d misheard. “Hunt?”

  “The gardens are full of life,” Neimar said. “Predators, remnants of what once prowled this world before its decline. You will learn more from testing your limits against them than from sitting here trying to fill an already full mind.”

  Raime rose slowly, the stiffness in his limbs a reminder of how long he’d been seated. “So this is… a break.”

  “A test,” Neimar corrected. “And an opportunity. You will need more attribute points for what comes next. The formation of a Soul Core demands a strong foundation, therefore the more points you can accrue, the better.”

  At that, Raime’s mind drifted instinctively toward the silent weight resting in his status window — a hoard of more than a thousand unspent attribute points, accumulated through all the battles he fought until now. The number alone was enough to make most awakened jealous. It represented raw potential — strength, speed, vitality — all within his reach, yet forbidden.

  Neimar’s expression — or what passed for one in his usually stoic visage — grew faintly amused, as if reading the direction of Raime’s thoughts. “I can feel your impatience from here. But the answer remains the same. You cannot spend them. Not yet.”

  Raime exhaled through his nose. “Because of the threshold.”

  The Sovereign simply nodded. “Evolution without guidance,” Neimar said. “It sounds promising until you realize the flesh doesn’t think. It adapts, yes, but in the blind way a wound scars. It will twist itself to survive the changes in your essence. Bones might grow into an unwanted form. Organs could devour energy they were never meant to touch. Even your brain could grow new tissue in places that should remain untouched. I have seen those who tried.” His tone lowered, like a whisper beneath a storm. “They do not remain themselves for long.”

  Raime didn’t argue further. There was a calm finality to the Sovereign’s words that made debate pointless. Still, the frustration lingered — the idea of having such immense potential sealed away, like a vault of gold he wasn’t allowed to touch.

  When Neimar gestured toward the open terrace, the faintest shimmer of psionic energy drifted out into the fading sunlight. “Go,” he said. “Hunt. Move. Feel what you’ve learned. You will understand why I insist on this.”

  Raime inclined his head in reluctant acknowledgment and left the chamber to go and prepare.

  The palace grounds were quiet, save for the hum of wind slipping through crystalline arches. By the time he reached the garden gates behind the palace, the sun had dipped lower, its twin reflections burning across the clouds like molten copper. He paused for a moment at the threshold, studying the world before him.

  The royal gardens were nothing like he expected. They had once been a symbol of the empire’s splendour — terraces of metal and blooming flora. Now they were wild, untamed, reclaimed by the strange ecology of Ithural.

  Tall grass brushed against his knees, each blade a glimmering filament of gold that swayed under an unseen current. Trees with metallic bark rose high above, their leaves whispering faint chimes as they collided in the wind. Flowers bloomed in clusters of colour he had never seen before — crimson that looked like glass, blue that pulsed faintly with its own inner light.

  For the first time in what felt like ages, he saw a world that wasn’t purple or black or silver. For a moment, he simply stood there, letting the colours wash over him. I’d forgotten what real colour looked like.

  It reminded him of home — the green grass, the open sky, the sound of wind in the mountains. A thousand small things he hadn’t realized he missed until this moment.

  But sentiment had no place here. He breathed out slowly and let the feeling dissolve, replacing it with focus.

  He had no armour, no weapon. Neimar had insisted.

  “You’ve leaned too heavily on steel and craft,” the Sovereign had told him earlier. “Velthar believes strength comes from harmony between mind and weapon. I believe a weapon is a crutch — useful, but transient. The only thing you can truly rely on is yourself. Flesh and will. Learn to master those, and you’ll never fear being disarmed.”

  Raime could almost hear the old ithurian’s voice still, echoing faintly in his memory. It wasn’t that he disagreed — not entirely. But walking into unknown danger unarmed felt wrong. The absence of Thunk in his hand left a hollow space, like a missing limb. He had carried that weapon since crossing the portal to the Rift, had learned to bond it to himself, had come to trust it as an extension of his arm. Now, all he had was his mind — and his body.

  Fine. Then I’ll make do with that.

  He drew a slow breath and reached inward. The familiar ripple of psionic energy stirred through him, rising from the depths of his being like water through a well. Then, carefully, he split his consciousness — one part primed for fighting, the other, smaller, dedicated to scanning and analysing.

  The division came easier this time. He could feel the process now, like peeling a thin layer of thought away from the rest and setting it adrift within his mind. Still, maintaining the separation took effort. Time seemed to distort — moments stretching and collapsing without rhythm. The world tilted slightly, perception doubling as each stream of thought interpreted reality in its own cadence.

  It wasn’t perfect. The smaller fragment of himself often stuttered, losing track of information or looping the same calculation twice. But it was functional — a second set of eyes, clumsy but improving.

  He’d practiced during their lesson, speaking while listening to Neimar’s explanations of soul sensing and control. The results had been… uneven. His words lagged, slurred sometimes, as if coming from a half-sleeping part of himself. Still, Neimar had called it progress.

  He advanced through the tall grass, the metallic blades brushing softly against his boots. His secondary perception began to fill with faint pulses of movement — small animals, no larger than cats, skittering under roots and low branches. Then, further ahead, larger presences appeared: concentrated clusters of psionic activity, steady, waiting.

  Neimar had warned him about the beasts here — creatures evolved from the rare and dangerous fauna of this world, adapted to the garden’s strange ecosystem. They were rare breeds, and definitely stronger than the riff-raff he was used to dealing with.

  Perfect, because of course I need the monsters in this place to be better at killing me, Raime thought grimly.

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  He slowed, hovering slightly above the grass to mute the sound of the rustling. The evening air shimmered faintly, alive with psychic resonance. His awareness expanded outward in a dome, catching the ripples of emotion and instinct radiating from the hidden predators.

  They were close — perhaps twenty meters ahead, perched among the trees. Child-sized, according to his other thoughts descriptions.

  Raime’s hand rose unconsciously, as if to reach for Thunk, but he stopped himself midway. The gesture felt hollow. No. This time, it’s just me.

  He could feel his heartbeat slowing. His psionic energy pooled behind his eyes, sharpening perception until he could sense the faint vibrations in the air — the slow, deliberate movements of something alive, watching him from the shadows.

  He smiled faintly. “Alright,” he murmured to himself. “Nothing new here, just beasts in the trees.”

  The garden shimmered as Raime advanced, its golden grass whispering like dry waves under his levitating steps. The air here was heavier — rich with life and faint hostility. Every motion of his mind brushed against unseen threads, echoes of presence woven through the trees.

  Then he felt them — two signatures burning bright in his psychic awareness, sharp and layered, each a knot of instinct and violence.

  They knew he was there.

  Raime slowed, eyes narrowing toward a line of twisted trunks half-concealed by foliage. The shapes perched above were still for a moment, silhouettes against the dying light. When he took another step, the silence cracked — a ripple of agitation coursing through their thoughts, raw and animalistic.

  He stopped just inside the clearing, sunlight spilling over his shoulders. Two creatures clung to opposite branches — reptilian, lean, their scaled hides shimmering with hues of dark bronze and grey-green. Each had a narrow, angular head crowned with a frill of spines. But what drew his eye most were the wings — not feathered, but lined with scales so long and thin they resembled blades.

  Their edges caught the light like mirrors.

  I’m sure those could cut through normal steel like butter, he thought, and tightened his stance.

  The creatures hissed softly, twin cords of sound that vibrated through the still air. The noise carried a faint psychic pulse, a predatory warning. He recognized that kind of resonance; they weren’t ordinary beasts. Probably tier two. Dangerous enough that carelessness meant death.

  And I’m only at the edge of the garden, what kind of horror is living in the deepest parts?

  He flexed his fingers, drawing on the steady rhythm of his breath. No armour, no weapon — only the pulse of his mind and the power running beneath his skin. His secondary stream of thought drifted outward like a sensor, tracing every contour of the clearing, measuring distance, wind, and angle.

  The creatures shifted, their talons scraping against the bark. Raime blinked once, instinctively pushing his body with a burst of psionic force — a half-step forward and to the right.

  It saved his life.

  A split-second later, the air where he had stood erupted with motion. Both beasts launched themselves forward with impossible acceleration, wings snapping open and swiping in an arc exactly where he was standing a moment ago. The air cracked with the shockwave of their motion.

  Fast—!

  His secondary consciousness screamed a warning before his main mind could react, mapping their trajectories in flickering detail. They moved too quickly to adjust mid-flight, their attack a deadly straight-line thrust.

  Raime seized the moment.

  He turned toward the closer one — the leftmost — and unleashed his will. His psionic energy surged outward, invisible but heavy, gripping the creature mid-air. It froze abruptly, its wings locked in the middle of a downward stroke. The force was tremendous; he felt the strain in his mind, like holding back a raging current with bare hands.

  The beast thrashed, screaming a high, piercing sound.

  Raime didn’t let it go. He moved.

  In a breath, he blurred forward, his feet leaving faint ripples of disturbed grass as he accelerated with levitation-enhanced momentum. The creature hung helplessly before him — close enough that he could see the patterns of tiny silver veins beneath its scales, and the fear in its narrow eyes.

  He gathered his psionic energy inward — not as an external field this time, but into himself. The last time he had done this had nearly torn his arms apart. This time, he guided it more carefully, aligning it through the muscles of his body. The energy crawled across him, burning, heavy and electric.

  Let’s see if it still works.

  He struck.

  His fist connected with the creature’s neck — a sharp, controlled blow. The impact detonated like a little thunderclap.

  The kinetic force of his punch rippled through the creature’s body. Its neck twisted grotesquely, scales splitting under the pressure. A faint spray of dark ichor sprayed in the air as the beast slammed into the ground, the psychic grip around it collapsing at the same time.

  Raime landed lightly, exhaling a ragged breath. His knuckles tingled, bones aching from the feedback. The infusion had amplified his strength far beyond his physical limit, but the recoil wasn’t kind. He flexed his hand — sore, but intact. Better control this time.

  The second creature’s shriek tore through the air.

  He looked up just in time to see it diving — wings half-folded, talons extended, a streak of metallic fury. The speed was monstrous, its trajectory almost invisible to the naked eye, despite his enhanced perception.

  Raime’s secondary consciousness reacted before his body did, firing a cascade of probabilities through his mind. The creature’s momentum was too great for a simple dodge. He needed to redirect, not evade.

  He reached out mentally — and pulled.

  A telekinetic surge bent the air itself, shoving against the beast’s right wing mid-dive. The force unbalanced it instantly. Instead of striking cleanly, the creature twisted, crashing into the ground beside him in a whirl of claws and scales.

  Raime pivoted, his right leg already pulsing with infused psionic energy, ready to strike. The creature rolled, snapping its jaws toward his leg. He barely managed to levitate backward, aborting the attack while avoiding the bite by inches. Its teeth clamped down on empty air, the sound sharp as a whip.

  He flung out his hand, channelling a burst of focused kinetic pressure. The invisible blow slammed into the creature’s chest, forcing it down into the dirt. It screeched, wings flaring wildly. The bladed scales slashed through the grass like scythes, slicing golden stalks all around.

  Raime’s mind split again — one part maintaining the telekinetic pressure, the other forming an idea, sharp and dangerous.

  If I can push inward… maybe I can crush from within.

  He concentrated, narrowing his mental grip until it felt like pressing his fingers into solid matter. His psychic power sank past the creature’s hide, into its trembling muscles. For an instant, he felt the pulse of its life — fast, erratic, desperate. Then he closed his hand.

  The beast convulsed. Its internal structure folding under the pressure. Its scream cut short, dissolving into a low gurgle before the entire form slumped motionless to the ground.

  Raime stood there, his skin tingling from residual energy. Both creatures lay still — one with its neck broken, the other crumpled and steaming faintly, the psionic backlash radiating from within.

  The silence that followed felt grim.

  For a long moment, Raime didn’t move. His breathing returned to normal, his thoughts catching up to what had just happened. The two halves of his mind — the observing and the acting — gradually re-joined, folding back into a single awareness. The strain of separation left a dull ache behind his eyes.

  When he finally exhaled, the sound came out as a quiet, tired laugh. “That… worked better than expected.”

  He crouched near one of the corpses, studying it closely. The creatures’ scales were not merely metallic in appearance — they were infused with trace minerals, crystalline veins running under their skin. The structure reminded him faintly of the trees.

  “Tier two indeed,” he murmured.

  A pulse of faint light appeared before him — Neimar’s projection, the Sovereign’s silhouette shimmering into form amid the carnage. His expression carried no visible approval or disapproval — only calm analysis.

  “You are adapting quickly,” Neimar said. “But you still waste energy with every strike. Your control lags behind your strength.”

  Raime wiped his hand against his trousers, the faint shimmer of blood fading under the gesture. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It was not one,” Neimar replied, tone mild. “But progress is progress. You felt it, didn’t you? The flow between will and flesh — how one amplifies the other when they move without resistance.”

  Raime nodded slowly. “It’s… strange. When I pushed energy into my body, I could feel everything. The tension, the muscle fibers, even the blood flow. Like my awareness expanded into the body itself.”

  “That is the beginning of control,” Neimar said. “Psionic energy alone is external — thought imposed upon matter. But when you merge the energy with your body, you cease to command the body through brain signals and begin to Will your body to move. It confers more control and allows you to react at the speed of thought.”

  Raime gave a short breath of amusement. “You make it sound easy.”

  “It isn’t,” Neimar said simply. “Another point of observation is that your last trick to eliminate the beast from the inside won’t work on higher-tiers or smarter opponents. These beasts never developed conscious defences against external energy, but most of your adversaries will have them. Don’t become reliant on these methods, use them when available but otherwise prepare for a harder battle.”

  For a moment, neither spoke. The garden stretched around them — quiet again, save for the distant hum of wind through the leaves.

  Raime straightened, gazing at the horizon, where the trees bent under the rising wind. “You were right, teacher,” he said at last. “I learn faster when I move.”

  Neimar’s projection inclined his head faintly. “Then proceed the hunt. Each fight will teach you more than my words could. You are building instinct — and soon, you will need it.”

  With those parting words the Sovereign disappeared, leaving him alone once again.

  Cool exit, but I’m sure he is still lurking somewhere…

  Raime looked back at the bodies. He never was a fan of hunting for sport, but in his case he could feel the need of going on with his mission, he had a purpose in being here, and he would not settle for mediocrity.

  He could sense the path ahead, vague yet luminous. To build his core, he would need strength — but not the kind that came from numbers or arbitrary gains. He would need control. Balance. Understanding.

  He turned away from the corpses, letting the evening light fade behind him as he moved deeper into the wild garden, searching for whatever lessons the Sovereign’s world still had left to offer.