Nearly three months into his time at the school, the first official contest was announced. Though no Archcrafter materials were being offered, the lower vaults would be opened and the winners would be offered a selection of the rarest first tier sublime materials. Despite claims about family, everyone would compete in teams, so excitement rapidly mounted.

Except with Magnafor, who Theo still saw from a distance on occasion. The other Earth-born human was scheduled to participate, but Theo didn't think that he cared about a few materials. Magnafor still intended to break through the barrier to the Landguard tree and steal everything there, which would make the contest prizes pale in comparison.

At the moment, however, he was blocked by Nanjuma's presence, so Theo thought he had more time. For now, the Tatian environment was good for his growth, so he intended to continue it. Soon enough it might grow stifling, and at that time he'd need to try to steal the resources from out of Magnafor's hands, but that was a future concern.

Since the contest would pit all the young soulcrafters against one another, it was finally time for him to complete his preparatory work and establish his blueprint. After so long waiting, he found himself making excuses, but he'd done everything he could in his soulhome without a central chamber.

Unfortunately, his concerns weren't entirely imaginary. By far the biggest problem was that every tree he'd attempted to plant at the center of his soulhome had either shriveled and died, or grown so stunted that it generated little cantae. He'd been checked repeatedly by various healers, none of whom saw any problem with his health, body or soul.

That meant that he had no choice but to skip the introductory step: instead of bothering with a tree at all, he'd jump to the true form of his blueprint and develop a central chamber with more powerful sublime materials. Doing it all at once would be tricky, but far from beyond his abilities.

Theo entered his soulhome and looked over all his preparations one more time. It had taken months, but he'd fashioned hundreds of solarstone blocks and built the core structure of his soulhome: a square of nine rooms, three on a side. All of them were empty, leaving him with no special abilities or traits, but his capacity to store cantae was now considerable, for a first tier soulcrafter. On top of that, he had perfected his vestibule and door, and had even set up a crude fence with leftover hearthtree wood. Few had similar advantages.

Currently, the roof was the weakest point, just simple wooden planks. But he didn't need the roof at all for his blueprint, so he could replace it with stone when he was ready to ascend to Archcrafter. What mattered now was igniting a powerful light in the core of his soulhome, which would channel cantae to the eight other chambers, giving him plenty of space to build all the abilities he'd imagined.

He slipped back to the real world for a moment, confirming that the sun was just beginning to rise. Time of day wasn't critical to soulcrafting except in certain superstitions, but this would be a major undertaking and he wanted everything to be perfect. The first rays of the sun would strike him soon, his mindset was perfect, and he had all the sublime materials he needed.

This was it: the culmination not of three months of soulcrafting, but of forty years of planning.

When he returned to his soulhome, he entered the vestibule and closed the door behind him. No distractions. Slowly he walked through the outer rooms, clearing his mind as he made sure that they were completely bare. The magnigem, the demonic materials, and sublime fruit he had left all over were stacked outside so they couldn't react. Not that they would cause major problems, but they would slow down the reaction and weren't needed until the foundation was complete.

Finally he walked into the central chamber. Unlike all the others, which were bare stone, he'd taken care to polish the walls and floor. At the very center he'd inscribed a circle with the pattern of the sun, and his final materials lay within it.

A few remaining pieces of hearthtree wood remained around him and he recalled his plan to build a final defensive structure. It wasn't part of his blueprint, just a precaution in case there was excess energy from the process. He didn't think it was necessary, but propped up the defensive walls around the edges anyway, just to get himself in the right mental space.

Then he sat down and set to work. The ignition materials were fairly simple, just a spirit flint he'd bought in the market. It was highly potent, only affordable because this one would consume itself after a single use. All it needed to do was light the solar core until it created a reaction.

That solar core was the reason he had been chipping away at the noonstone boulder for so long. Eventually, it had cracked open to reveal a brilliant gem, one of many sublime materials that could ignite into a miniature sun. It wasn't the most powerful possible, but it was more than sufficient, and in the future, he'd be able to feed stronger materials into the blaze. He'd covered that aspect excessively during his years away.

There was nothing else to do. Theo took a deep breath, raised the solar core, and struck the flint against it.

Somehow he slammed against the outer wall of his soulhome, blown through the door by the explosion. If it had been his real body, he would have been incinerated, but he staggered up, his entire soul smoking. Shouldn't there be a sun ahead of him? He stumbled forward, part of him hoping that he had exceeded his wildest dreams, but a dark voice said that it couldn't be...

The heart of his soulhome lay empty.

Instead of a sun blazing in the air, supplying him with raw power, the central room had been devastated by an explosion. His eyes ran over the details repeatedly, refusing to take them in. The once pristine white walls had burned a glassy black, as if the stone itself had melted. His floor had been torn apart, leaving nothing but a small amount of rubble over barren earth. The flint and solar gem were gone, of course.

How the hell had it happened? Theo dropped to his knees, fumbling with the fragments as if he would find some mote of dust that would explain it all. But no trivial flaw could have caused such a catastrophic failure, it simply wasn't possible. All his careful plans...

To prevent himself from choking on despair in the central chamber, he forced himself back to his feet and struggled to the door. The outer chambers were mostly undamaged, though some of the roof had been torn off. Could the roof have been at fault? No, he dismissed that possibility almost immediately: the explosion had been instantaneous and the roof had been merely another victim.

In fact, he bitterly realized that it could have been much worse. The perfunctory defenses he'd put in place had blunted the explosion, preventing it from leveling his entire soulhome. Except as he stared at the empty white rooms, he wondered if that almost would have been better. Whatever the explosion had been, the heat of it had fused all the blocks together, leaving his foundation incredibly solid... and permanently flawed.

"Why?" Theo screamed his question into the uncomprehending clouds overhead, just as he'd bitterly asked for so many years on Earth. He stumbled outside, suddenly struggling to breathe. When he fell to the ground, he struck it angrily as if he could beat his own soul into submission.

There had to be some flaw that he could find, because that meant he could fix it. He carefully checked the demonic materials to see if they reacted, but they lay inert, just as theory would suggest. Nothing seemed to be out of place except the ugly hole in the center of his soulhome.

It had to be the fundamental elements of his soul, because everything he had soulcrafted had been perfect. One thing he hadn't planned on was awakening during the demon attack, and he fixed on that as the likely explanation. Though it hadn't weakened him in any way, it had drained the grass in the field and he hadn't adjusted for that in his initial blueprints. That had to be the reason.

After taking several deep breaths, Theo walked back to the center of the chamber to consider his next step. The floor could be rebuilt, but the blackened walls were a problem. His failure had altered the fundamental nature of the solarstone and he might need to replace it. Unless the black coating was very thin...

He took out his chisel and chipped at it, but to his surprise he couldn't put a scratch on the dark surface. It glistened like volcanic glass, which wasn't something he knew very much about. Sublime materials like that existed in other worlds, but it wasn't generally created by processes.

By the time his fingers were numb, he still hadn't accomplished anything, but Theo bitterly told himself that he wouldn't give up. It would require more powerful tools, but he'd eventually eliminate the evidence of his failure and start again. He wasn't back to the beginning, just taking a detour.

Those words were no comfort at all. When he left his soulhome, he could still taste the scorched ash in his mouth.