Ash descended over Vale Ridge in a pale, unhurried fall, veiling the distant horizon behind a curtain of drifting grey.
"Another ashrain?" One of the miners paused with his pickaxe resting against the stone and stared upward, worry settling into the lines of his face. "Wasn't there one two days ago?"
"Yeah," another replied, wiping the sweat from his neck with the back of his wrist.
"The world is getting uglier by the day. Let's just hope this one isn't Rank Four."
Lyn stopped working long enough to study the ash. What had begun as a light drizzle was already spreading across the ridge, softening the outlines of men, tools, and exposed stone until everything beyond a short distance seemed half erased. He directed his intent into his Vessel Realm and focused upon a cat-shaped fragment of green glass. As he poured Essence into it, the shard began absorbing it, glowing like a green gem within his Sea. His vision sharpened immediately. The haze thinned in his perception, and the softened outlines of the ridge snapped back into sharp, almost painful focus.
"Twice in one month?" he murmured.
"Hey, you!" the substitute shouted from farther along the excavation. "Stop staring and get back to work. Light-refining ore doesn't dig itself!"
Lyn adjusted his grip on the pickaxe, but the air changed before he could bring it down. The pressure arrived gradually enough to be mistaken for heat at first. Then the falling flakes took on a faint red glow, and the complaints around the ridge broke apart beneath a wave of coughing.
"This is..." The substitute's voice died with the last of his confidence. He possessed enough knowledge to identify the ashrain's rank, yet the answer had already revealed itself across Vale Ridge.
A man to Lyn's left stiffened as though his breath had caught upon an invisible hook. His fingers tore at his throat while his chest strained for air that would not enter. Someone behind him attempted to call for help, but the effort produced only a dry scrape before his knees struck the stone.
The coughing spread through the excavation, each voice weakening at a different pace until the ridge filled with the uneven rhythm of men suffocating where they stood.
If the Fire Path overseer had come today, Vale Ridge would not have become a grave.
The overseer had ceased appearing weeks before, abandoning the miners to substitutes who could enforce the work but were powerless to protect them. Lyn remained where he was while the final cough faded into the ash. Silence gradually reclaimed the excavation, broken only by the whisper of crimson flakes settling over bodies and abandoned tools.
"Unaffected as always," Lyn sighed as he extended his right hand.
A translucent shimmer gathered before his palm, its surface thin and uneven like a standing fragment of glass. The Shard Gate opened without sound. Lyn guided it beneath the falling ash, allowing the glowing flakes to pass through its surface and enter his Vessel Realm. Beyond the Gate stretched an inner world with an endless Sky suspended above a Sea without visible shore.
The fragments descended into that vastness one after another, carrying the red glow of the ashrain with them. Lyn continued gathering until a subtle tremor passed through the Sea.
That is enough. Any more would risk my Sea going unstable.
He withdrew his hand, and the Shard Gate dissolved. More than forty fragments now rested within his Vessel Realm. Their value should cover two weeks of food and might even bring him closer to purchasing a cheap Rank One Heavenly Shard. At this, he could not help but think about one thing and one thing only.
The Fleet Step shard.
He thought bitterly about it. He had wanted it so he could work faster and perhaps earn more contribution tokens.
Fleet Step, the Rank One speed shard spoken of among the miners with reverence, required an entire month of labor. Even that estimate depended upon the sect leaving its price unchanged, something Lyn had learned never to expect for long.
A combat shard?
Lyn laughed to himself.
Only a few months earlier, he had heard screams through the wall of his home. A woman living one street away had discovered a Rank One Iron Palm Shard within her dead husband's Vessel Realm. Before his death, the man had taught her how to extract it, intending for the shard to pass to their children.
Her brother arrived soon afterward, claiming he had come to help her grieve.
The screams and commotion must have reached every nearby home, yet no one had intervened.
After all, who would risk offending a man who now possessed a combat Heavenly Shard?
Lyn stared solemnly at his empty palm. He possessed no method of invading a Vessel Realm and extracting the Shards within it. With nothing else demanding his attention, Lyn sat among the corpses and considered the ash-filled sky above them. The silence lingered only until practicality reasserted itself, prompting him to turn his attention to searching the bodies.
The miners had carried little worth stealing. Lyn recovered several Contribution Tokens from among their belongings. The sects issued small golden pieces of glass as currency throughout the territories under their control. For men like the ones lying dead across Vale Ridge, even a few pieces represented hours of labor, yet bought barely enough food to keep them working.
In his mind, there was nothing morally wrong with what he was doing. He laughed inwardly. Why would the dead need contribution tokens?
After reaching the final corpse and making certain he had overlooked nothing, he turned to the substitute's body and searched every pocket. When he found the attendance paper, he focused his intent, causing a Shard Gate to appear nearby. He tossed the paper through it.
Inside his Vessel Realm, the document was swept along by the ash streaming through the air like wind. With another thought, Lyn directed the ash toward it. The paper was consumed, burning away without leaving so much as a trace. With everything taken care of, Lyn set off toward Hazelrun, leaving the hollow shells behind without a second glance.
He would claim that he had overslept and failed to report for work. The sect would deduct Contribution Tokens from his wages, but that minor loss was preferable to explaining why an Ashrain had killed every miner on Vale Ridge while leaving him untouched.
As the excavation disappeared behind the ash falling over it, he directed part of his awareness into his Vessel Realm. Three Heavenly Shards rested within the depths of his Sea. Light Reflect remained intact, though the amount of Essence required to sustain its defense made ordinary use wasteful. Light Cat Eyes drew steadily from his reserves as it sharpened the road beyond the haze. Light Information remained silent, incapable of offering anything unless Lyn already understood enough to ask the correct question.
If I exchange the ash too soon, the elders will ask how I harvested it without Fire Truth Carvings. I will have to depend on them overlooking it or forgetting the matter.
He still lacked any explanation for his ability to collect materials without possessing the corresponding Truth Carvings. Weather phenomena presented a similar mystery, passing over him without causing harm as though the forces within them could not perceive him.
Lyn suddenly felt his eyes begin to burn. Only then did he realize that he had forgotten to deactivate the Light Cat Eyes Shard. Although it consumed very little essence while merely maintaining its effect, keeping it active for so long had placed considerable strain on his eyes.
He immediately cut off its essence supply, and the shard's glow faded within his Sea. Rubbing his temples, Lyn frowned at his carelessness. Even such a small loss was unnecessary.
In the distance, the ashrain still hung over Vale Ridge. It remained far from his position and moved in an entirely different direction, posing no immediate threat to his journey toward Hazelrun.
A Rank One shard could provide only so much.
Someone with greater natural gifts might have suppressed those weaknesses, but Lyn possessed no such talent.
Hunger tightened through his stomach as Hazelrun's gate emerged faintly in the distance. Whatever danger came with selling the fragments, harvested materials could be exchanged for Contribution Tokens, and Contribution Tokens could be exchanged for food.
Lyn had nearly reached the gate when a faint vibration passed through the ground and entered the soles of his feet. The sensation was too deep to have come from footsteps. He held his breath and turned his attention instinctively toward the sky behind him, where a golden glow had begun spreading through the clouds.
The radiance spread rapidly, growing brighter until the entire heavens shone with golden light. Pressure descended with it, and warm blood slid from Lyn's nose across his upper lip. He attempted to wipe it away, yet the command never reached his arm.
The force bearing down upon him intensified until pain entered the roots of his teeth. It pressed from every direction at once, holding his body beneath an invisible weight while wind roared across Hazelrun and dragged dust, straw, and loose debris into violent spirals.
Lyn forced his gaze upward through the pressure. Symbols of many colors had begun emerging across the golden sky. Something beyond Lyn's understanding had turned its attention downward.
What is this?
He tried once more to move, but his legs remained fixed beneath him while tremors passed through his ribs and joints. The pressure had not merely restrained his muscles; it had made his body irrelevant to his own will.
More symbols continued to emerge. They possessed no stable shape, yet each seemed older than existence itself, as though they had preceded the world and would remain after it was gone. Their meaning lay beyond comprehension, but their presence filled Lyn with pure dread, forcing his body to recognize them as something terrible long before his mind could understand why.
Screams spread through Hazelrun as the villagers reacted. Some attempted to flee, only for their movements to slow as though the air had thickened around them. A few managed several stumbling steps before their bodies collapsed beneath the pressure, while others froze where they stood, imprisoned before they could understand why their limbs had failed.
Several died without ever understanding what had occurred. Soon afterward, all movement across Hazelrun began to slow. A thin, unbearable screech tore across the village, like a broken violin forced beyond the limits of its strings. The sound seemed to drag against the world itself, stretching each instant until time began to unravel.
Color drained from the surroundings like water leaving cloth, leaving only the symbols untouched. Then a bell rang somewhere beyond the visible sky.
At its first toll, time stopped completely across Hazelrun. Lyn and the symbols alone remained outside the stillness, though his body was still bound by the force controlling it.
People froze between movements. Falling bodies stopped before reaching the ground, screams hung unfinished in open mouths, and dust remained suspended in the air.
The symbols continued their descent. They turned in perfect silence, every angle carrying a precision that made the laws of the world seem less like natural truths and more like commands reality had no choice but to obey.
Something within Lyn reacted before he could form another thought. His right arm rose without permission, and a Shard Gate flickered into existence before his hand. Lyn drove his intent toward it, attempting to close the opening or interrupt the Essence sustaining it, yet the Gate ignored him. Neither his fingers nor the muscles of his arm responded when he tried to pull away. Whatever had opened the Shard Gate was acting through him rather than with him.
A single golden symbol separated from the others and descended toward Hazelrun.
Its edges sharpened as the pressure surrounding Lyn deepened, until a continuous ringing filled his skull. Blood spilled from his ears as the strain clouded his sight, yet even through the blur, he saw the symbol surge forward and disappear into the Gate.
Silence consumed the world for what felt like the span of one breath.
Then a burning pain seized Lyn's chest with such violence that he believed something had pierced his heart. His awareness plunged into his Vessel Realm, where every trace of color drained away, reducing everything to dull gray.
A single golden star appeared above the Sea. Its radiance spread across the entire inner Sky, turning the heavens gold while everything beneath them remained colorless. The Sea began to boil beneath that light, its surface churning violently before the water evaporated from the Vessel Realm. Emptiness opened beneath the golden star, but it did not remain for long. Golden liquid began falling from the Sky in immense, heavy masses, each descending like a blazing meteor.
The liquid gathered within the emptiness and replaced the vanished Sea. Entire galaxies appeared across its surface, each stretching farther than Lyn's awareness could follow. The new expanse flowed endlessly toward the north, carrying their reflections.
Color returned to the rest of the Vessel Realm as abruptly as it had disappeared. The golden star remained suspended above the newly formed Sea, whose surface reflected entire galaxies and no longer resembled anything that had existed within Lyn before.
The broken violin screeched across Hazelrun once more, followed by the distant toll of the bell.
Time resumed.
Color rushed back into the village while the wind continued from the exact instant at which it had stopped. Dust fell, bodies completed their collapses, and interrupted screams carried on without any awareness of the silence that had divided one breath from the next.
Hazelrun stood in stunned confusion. Villagers staggered beneath the returning motion, while others touched the blood beneath their noses and ears without understanding when or why it had appeared. None of them knew that time had stopped.
Lyn gradually regained control of his raised arm and lowered it to his side. The golden star remained within his Vessel Realm, hanging above the transformed Sea without sound or movement.
Problem after problem.
Blood still covered part of his face, but his expression revealed little beyond a faint weariness. Fear required some understanding of what ought to be feared, and Lyn possessed none. For the moment, irritation was simpler.
He wiped away as much blood as he could before suppressing the Essence within his body. His presence faded beneath that restraint until he appeared no different from a Rootless villager returning home late. In such a state, even a Rank Four Dao Chosen might overlook him.
Voices rose beyond the gate as sect envoys hurried toward Hazelrun to investigate the disturbance. Lyn adjusted his clothes and entered the village without changing his pace, preserving the appearance of someone who had noticed nothing beyond the confusion surrounding him.
He would claim that he had overslept. His plan required no alteration. While moving deeper into Hazelrun, Lyn directed his awareness inward once more. He avoided reaching toward the golden star and instead focused upon the Light Information Heavenly Shard in the depths of his "Sea".
Its glass surface remained still, suspended within the vast darkness between the countless galaxies of the transformed Sea. Lyn directed his intent toward it, and the shard began absorbing his Essence. Golden light spread across its surface, making it shine like a solitary star amid those distant celestial formations.
Light Information. Question: What entered my Vessel Realm?
The shard offered no response.
Lyn was surprised. Even when he lacked sufficient context, black words would usually appear across its glass surface, informing him that he did not possess enough knowledge. This time, however, nothing was engraved upon it. The shard remained completely blank.
Light Information. Question: Is it hostile?
Nothing.
Light Information. Question: What are its properties?
The silence persisted without even the faintest pulse of recognition. Tension entered Lyn's jaw as he changed the structure of the question.
Light Information. Question: Is it even a Truth Carving?
The shard stirred. Cracks spread through its surface like lightning trapped beneath ice, accompanied by a thin grinding sound that echoed painfully across the Vessel Realm.
If it were a Truth Carving...
The question pulled at the fragments of knowledge already available to him, forcing them into an arrangement the shard could barely sustain.
...then it is different. A Truth Carving is a dwarf star, compact, dense, and contained. They gather within the Sky like families, with dwarf stars orbiting other dwarf stars.
Light Information trembled as the cracks widened.
A Truth Carving is the understanding of a Path, yet the golden thing stands alone. Is it something else? It cannot be a dwarf star. It is too large.
A second fracture cut diagonally across the shard from one corner to the other. The divided sections shifted apart, held together for only a moment by the fading golden glow of the Heavenly Shard's remaining power.
Then the light went out.
Lyn withdrew the Essence he had used to activate it, but the damage had already passed beyond recovery. Light Information crumbled within the surrounding darkness, releasing a small burst of force as its fractured body collapsed.
The fragments were propelled outward and began drifting farther into the vast space between millions of galaxy-like reflections, floating through the darkness as though cast into an endless night sky before vanishing.
He sighed. In truth, Light Information had always been of limited use. Lyn needed to understand most of a subject before the shard could provide anything of value. He had destroyed it without receiving the answer he needed. Light Information could not create knowledge where none existed. It could only organize information already concealed within the patterns, and Lyn possessed no context through which to understand the golden symbol.
Lyn had only one option: to monitor the symbol and try to learn more about it. Mourning the destroyed Shard would not restore it. A numb expression settled over Lyn's face as he remembered how much he had paid for the shard. Even so, he told himself that its loss was acceptable.
Lyn continued into Hazelrun Village with dried blood upon his face and a golden star suspended within his Vessel Realm.