I have no idea how Ash discerned that the six embers over my head would react to souls. Before I had Beginning affinity, I would have written it off as inexplicable black magic and taken Ash’s conclusions for granted.

But I have Beginning of my own, even if my affinity is weak. I know that answers don’t just pop out of nowhere.

When I looked at the fiery diadem earlier, I could almost feel the affinity trying to dredge information out of my mind, trying to gain context. What was the crown, where had it come from, and had I ever witnessed its like, even in forgotten memories? The affinity found my experience and knowledge lacking, and drew limited conclusions about the artifact.

Now that Ash’s experiment has revealed the crown’s nature as a soul-compatible artifact, my fledgling affinity has received a second wind. I have seen artifacts that interacted with souls before. I’ve created them. My foundation in necromancy is a mix of raw intuition and Soolemar’s hands-off instruction.

The funny thing about Beginning–as I am still only just discovering–is that it organizes and makes more efficient the subconscious mind. It doesn’t exactly improve my memory but instead gives me an instinctive understanding of relevant details. If I read a glossy programmatics manual, I won’t remember the contents word for word, but the concepts and overall information will be at the ready.

I think of it as a form of compression–taking in information from the world, then translating it into some latent state that my Beginning affinity can store and access rapidly. The quality of compression improves with growth of my affinity, increasing the fidelity and speed of recall.

“Hello?” Ash says, interrupting my thoughts. He gestures to the net filled with souls. “You should siphon the rest up.”

The last time you did what Ash said, you ended up in a coma, Maria says.

I know.

I shake my head slowly. “I’m going to experiment with one soul first.” I don’t even know if it’s possible to remove a soul once it’s been absorbed by a floating ember. I want to properly experiment before I do something irreversible. Ash’s intuition is better than mine, but it isn’t infallible, especially when working with an artifact with indeterminate properties.

I walk into the large geode where Beginning confluence is concentrated and float myself into the center of the crystals, sitting cross-legged with my head bowed forward. I close my eyes since without a mirror, I can’t see the crown atop my head nor the single turquoise ember. But I’m used to manipulating souls by feel–I can’t see them when they’re invested in a construct or embodied in a person.

I raise my fingers to the top of my head, Death energy surrounding them like ink suspended in water. I feel the embers shimmer around my fingers as they pass through–all except one that reacts to my Death energy as though repelled. I cage the ember with both hands, filling the space with Death energy. Trapped between my palms, the turquoise fire begins to rotate.

My Beginning affinity whispers suggestions into my mind, calling upon my necromancy experience. I weave a web of black threads around the ember, feeling it out, coaxing it. I try to invest it with intent.

After several minutes, the soul ember is still relatively inert.

Time to go back, Maria transmits.

I emerge from the crystalline shelter and stoop by the net of souls, scooping a second soul up. An ember absorbs the soul and turns yellow. I return to the Beginning confluence to experiment again, but can’t get either ember to respond to my practice.

When I bring the last soul up to my head to be absorbed, Ash returns his focus to me, abandoning the flower petals that he’s been arranging into a silhouette of Crystal.

The last ember absorbs the red soul, turning an unnatural ruby color. It’s then that I finally feel something different. The embers vibrate and rotate in a circle, rapidly accelerating.

Maria, do you have any idea what’s happening? I ask, raising my hands to either side of my head. Viscous Death energy swirls around them.

They’re resonating, she explains. I can’t tell much else.

I peer into the mirror while probing the rotating embers with tendrils of inky darkness. They’re converging. I pause. Melting.

In a flash of multi-colored light, the embers become one–a black flame that hovers directly over my head.

“What is this?” I ask, frowning. Before Ash can respond, the fire sinks into my head. I curse as my vision goes white. A few seconds later, my sight returns. When I turn to look at Ash, I perceive a yellow organism inside of him that looks like a cross between a plant and a parasite. In the mirror, I look the same. But when I turn and peer down at myself, I see roots strewn throughout my body that attach to a blue tumorous mass in my chest. Throughout my body are smaller, circular tumor growths, all the same pale color.

Stunned, I realize what I’m looking at. Embodied souls.

—

Seeing souls is cool, but I don’t see how it’s immediately useful when I’m in a plane without ensouled inhabitants. I’ll have to experiment more when I return. For now, I focus on familiarizing myself with wielding the bracers, coordinating with Maria to create End arrays and oaths. My Beginning affinity hastens my learning speed.

“If your affinity were higher, you’d be able to memorize her lessons in an instant,” Ash says offhandedly. He’s been watching us practice, apparently having nothing better to do. I miss the days when he’d leave to coach Maria for a few hours, leaving me alone. Now that Maria and I are together, he’s with us constantly.

“You know I’m working on it.” At the highest levels, the affinity effectively provides perfect recall. Who wouldn’t want that? Unfortunately, even with the boost to initial progress, grinding Beginning is a slog. Remorse comes a bit easier; I suspect it might be related to my familiarity mentally conversing with Crystal and Maria.

Maria has opined that while my initial affinity is lower in Remorse, I may have more natural talent for that affinity than Beginning. I’m not sure I can agree given my long history of failing to defend myself against Remorse practitioners.

Every few hours, Maria reverts to her lich form. I struggle through the resulting lethargy and fatigue, fighting to remain conscious.

“Is this even doing anything?” I whisper, my body slumped on the ground.

Maria just looks at me sadly while Ash speaks: “If you increase your affinities or the robustness of your body–and soul–your condition should improve.”

—

Even though I feel no appreciable difference in my condition from day to day, I grind exercises to increase my affinities and practice staying awake without using transformed Maria as a crutch.

Every month, we leave the dilated rift for a few hours. I always make time for a call to Euryphel. From his perspective, I call rather frequently. Despite this, he always has much more to talk about.

When I appear, Euryphel is walking down a hallway I recognize from the labyrinths beneath Ichormai originally built as part of the palace’s dungeons. The heatless torches lighting the halls give the place a slightly ominous ambiance. He moves slowly, but I know it’s a habit learned from his days living with severe injuries. It’s a noble, almost gliding stride, graceful and leonine. It’s the unhurried walk of a sovereign.

“Eury,” I say, announcing my presence.

“Ian!” He turns around, smiling. “Just the place to talk.”

I grin back. “It’s been a while.” Sometimes I appear at inconvenient times when the former prince is in public locations or places where glosscams are recording video or audio. Like Euryphel’s room and office, these restricted labyrinths are private. If there are any recordings, he has the authority to destroy them.

Euryphel chuckles and smooths down his hair with his wrist, intentionally avoiding the use of his fingers. Another new-ish habit. “You’re looking better than last time.”

“Ash is being less of a taskmaster. He’s not paying attention to me and Maria as much.”

Eury cocks his head. “Is he getting bored?”

I shrug. “He’s been stuck with us for a while in the rift. Now that we’re running up against diminishing returns in our progress...”

Euryphel nods in understanding. “How do you feel about your time with Ash coming to an end, then?”

I sigh and cross my arms as I follow Euryphel down the hallway to his intended destination. “You know how I feel about him.”

Euryphel gives me a look. “Do I?”

“Can you hate someone for being a monster?” I ask.

“Definitely.” Euryphel opens the door with his elementalism and steps in. It’s an empty interrogation room and he slides down into the chair across from me. I remain standing.

I frown. “Can you hate a natural disaster?”

“Of course.”

I roll my eyes. “Eury. Do you really believe that? A storm isn’t alive.”

“Being alive isn’t necessary to be an object of hate,” the executor retorts. “I don’t hate storms, but ask the people in the Adrilli Isles how they feel about the seasonal typhoons. You can hate someone who’s dead. You can hate something just for existing. Toward humans, we call that bigotry.”

“For me, the intent is most important,” I explain. “Maria was your enemy, but you understood her. You knew why she moved as she did and that she wasn’t acting malevolently. She brought you endless frustration, but you didn’t hate her.”

Euryphel turns the question back my way. “Who do you hate, Ian?”

“Achemiss, I guess. He’s selfish. He kills countless people for his own empowerment. He’s willing to destroy our world to ensure his immortality, removing his last point of weakness.”

Euryphel shakes his head. “You don’t even hate Achemiss. It’s amazing, really.”

I scowl. “I just said I hated him.”

The executor’s words are icy. “But you don’t mean it. I have truly hated people, Ian. When you hate someone, you don’t speak like you do, calmly and reasonably.” He shakes his head. “You don’t justify why you want a person you hate to die. You just kill them. I passionately despised the prince who killed my father and that hate dominated my life.”

“I guess you’re right.” I pause to consider. “I might hate my mother.”

“Really?” His tone is skeptical.

I wither. “No, I guess.”

“Seriously, Ian–who, or what, have you hated?”

“I think Cayeun Suncloud showed me who I hated,” I reply.

He shakes his head. “You’re not allowed to say yourself.” He gives me a small sardonic smile. “Everyone hates themselves a little. People with power, like us, tend to hate a little more strongly under the weight of our failures and disappointments, but that’s par for the course.” He stands up and walks up to me until we’re face to face. “Who do you hate? Or who have you hated?”

Who, or what? In a way, the answer is obvious. “The loop. Past tense. I’m not stuck in it anymore. And like I said, the intent is important. When I didn’t know the loop’s purpose and viewed it as a prison or instrument of torture, I hated it passionately, with the same kind of fervor you described. The loop needed to die. And the loop’s creators?” I laugh bitterly. “I promised so many times that I would unmake them, that I’d give them a taste of the suffering that they made me feel. But how could I hold onto that hate once I learned the truth–that the extent of my suffering was, essentially, an accident, born of negligence? Knowledge and understanding killed my hatred.”

“You’re too good for this world, Ian,” Euryphel says seriously. “Let’s return to the original question. How do you feel about Ash, now that your time together is ending?”

“Relieved, but also...” I struggle for the right words. “Wistful? I can’t hate Ash. He’s done terrible things to people, but apathetically. He doesn’t seem to understand how horrible the things he’s done are, even with his Beginning affinity improving his mental acumen.”

“Well, it didn’t improve his empathy,” he says. “That’s why you call him a monster.”

“Monsters can still be charming, in their way,” I reply. “If they’re nice to you.”

“If they don’t see you as prey.”

I chuckle darkly. “I think that man sees everyone as prey. He’s like a shark trying to befriend fish. It’s awkward and oddly endearing. But we fish are swimming on the edge of the shark’s teeth.”

Euryphel’s expression is sour. “How can you not hate this man?”

I shrug. “He’s made me strong.”

The executor raises a finger. “He’s also made you dependent on a dagger artifact. How fun.”

“Maybe I really should hate him.”

He bursts into laughter, holding his sides. “Y’jeni, Ian. I can’t wait for you to come home. Seeing first-hand the hell I’m living trying to destroy the Infinity Loop technology will make a hater of you yet.”