Leon dreamed of fire. He’d known several kinds in his short life, from the normal fires that he used to make back in the Northern Vales to cook with when he and Artorias spent the night away from their compound, to magical fires made with runes or spells, and even the demonfire that he’d gained access to from his contract with Xaphan.

But he dreamt of none of these. Instead, his mind was filled with visions of black flame, a dark, shadowy fire so omnipresent that it was only by the heat and the light given off by the occasional dull red spark that he knew it was there.

That wasn’t all, though. Within that flame he could sense… something watching him, something out there that was more powerful than anything he could fathom. Stronger even than the remnant of the Thunderbird that resided in his soul realm.

Within that thing’s attention, Leon felt smaller than he’d ever felt. He’d been nearly killed on multiple occasions, but this powerlessness was something that even those experiences couldn’t hold a candle to. Compared to whatever was out there, he was nothing.

He searched for whatever was out there. He felt as if he could only see it with his eyes, then some of its presence might be diminished, some of the terror that filled him now would disappear.

And then, within the flames, a light appeared. It was a strangely familiar red-orange light, shaped somewhat like an eye that had been turned ninety degrees, and exuded so much power that Leon was completely unable to focus on it. Behind that light lay something massive, something moving, but Leon could only see it in the corner of his eye, for the red-orange light obscured it almost completely.

Leon did his best to see past the light, to focus on the thing behind it, but it was difficult. He squinted, stared as hard as he could, tried channeling magic into his eyes, and for the briefest of moments, it worked. He saw scales as black as night that sparkled as if they contained all the stars in the sky, he saw four gigantic wings, the first pair slightly smaller than the second, and he saw three pairs of ivory horns curling back over a long scaled neck like a ribcage.

Then the light pulsed, and Leon saw no more. The flames disappeared, the light went out, and he fell.

---

Leon awoke, gasping, in his soul realm. His magic body was sprawled out across the marble tiles at the foot of his throne. His thoughts were still consumed by his vision of black fire, and it took a moment for him to realize where he was, and when he did, he simply lay his exhausted body back down on the cool marble. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, ignoring everything else around him.

“You’re finally awake,” Xaphan observed, his deep, resonant voice grating on Leon’s ears.

“No I’m not,” Leon irritably replied.

“My mistake, I guess,” Xaphan drily replied, “You’re clearly talking in your sleep. Yes, that’s what you’re doing. Certainly not turning away from me as I speak, not a chance! That’s just a coincidence! And holding your hands over your ears, that’s exactly what sleeping people do!”

“All right, shut up! I’m awake Ancestors damn it!” Leon shouted.

“Of course you are,” Xaphan smugly said.

Leon took a deep breath and sat up. He was momentarily surprised to see that the palace he’d worked so hard on for almost two years was nowhere to be seen, until he remembered that he’d torn it down completely with the intent to start over.

“Terrible time to have done that…” he muttered to himself, wishing that he’d at least saved a bed, for he was hardly in any mood to create one now, and he felt like it would do him some good to lay down in something comfortable. His magic body in his soul realm felt exactly like his physical form did in the outside world, and he could use some creature comforts.

“To have done what?” Xaphan inquired.

“Doesn’t matter. Why’d you bother me? How long have I been out?”

“I’d say about three or four days. Time kind of blurs in this place, so it’s hard to say for certain.”

Leon sat back up, his physical and mental fatigue momentarily forgotten.

“Three or four days?!” he asked in shock. It had felt like barely even an hour since he’d been fighting Duke Duronius, and as he started to recall more of what he’d been doing before the vision, he started to panic and struggle to his feet, intending to collapse into his throne and return to the waking world.

“Don’t overdo it, young human,” Xaphan cautioned. “Your body is fine, it’s currently resting in a room set aside for your use. That Paladin and little Princeling had your injuries seen to, but the healing hasn’t been completed, yet. Probably better to stay here for a while and let your body rest. Shouldn’t take too much longer, anyway.”

Leon collapsed onto the stairs in front of his throne and stared back almost incredulously at his demonic partner. He didn’t recall taking so many injuries… but then he remembered the strange fires that he summoned that scorched his body from within and without.

“Dear me, is that concern I hear in your voice, demon?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow in surprise and trying to refocus his attention on something else.

“It is,” Xaphan readily replied, not a trace of playfulness or sarcasm to be found in his voice. “You called upon some strange powers before you lost consciousness, you know. I’m fairly sure you did it before following the death of that giant friend of yours, but I’d barely gotten a chance to notice before it stopped, so I’d thought it a figment of my imagination at the time. But now it’s undeniable. You called upon something within you, something that even I’ve never seen before, let alone understand.”

“I don’t suppose you could be a little more specific?” Leon asked.

“No… something was blocking me from getting a more detailed look at… whatever you were doing…” Xaphan muttered.

“And you have no idea what it could be…?” Leon asked.

“None.”

“How about the Thunderbird? Any idea of her location?”

“Out in the Mists.”

Leon stifled a groan as he pushed himself to his feet.

“What was it like on your end?” Xaphan asked. Leon was mildly surprised to hear genuine curiosity in his question.

“Remember not long after we first met and you said there was the possibility that I might have inherited some kind of power from my mother?”

“I do,” Xaphan admitted. “However, I’d since put it out of my mind. Didn’t seem like there was anything else here, especially after the Thunderbird made her presence known. Couldn’t ever imagine that one sharing this space. I figured you just inherited some kind of affinity for fire magic and nothing more. Nothing too special compared to what some ambitious families with penchants for experimentation can do to their families in the Nexus. Why? Have you discovered something to the contrary?”

“… Maybe… I was hoping to question the Thunderbird first, because… I’m not sure what I saw…”

Xaphan went silent as he contemplated the issue. Leon felt the demon’s power probe his soul realm a few times, concentrating mostly on the empty outskirts closer to the Mists of Chaos rather than the bare island that Leon had reverted his proto-Mind Palace to.

The silence was long enough for Leon to properly compose himself.

“So, you said that my body was injured?” he asked.

“It’s your own body, why don’t you tell me?” the demon replied.

Leon gave him a bitter smile and turned his attention to himself. Overall, he felt fine, but he figured that was because he was currently primarily inhabiting his magic body rather than his physical body. Still, they were connected, and it didn’t take too much concentration for Leon to get a good idea of how his physical body was doing.

For the most part, he felt dull pain and the itching that came with rapid healing. As a sixth-tier mage, his natural healing abilities were already quite robust, but if he were still healing even after several days, then his wounds must’ve been grave indeed.

“Well, it seems that I might be stuck here for a little while longer. Might as well use this time for something.”

With that, Leon took off, rising into the air above his island and rather unceremoniously leaving Xaphan sitting in his pavilion alone.

“Leaving just like that, huh?” Xaphan mumbled to himself. “That’s fine, I’ll just sit here by myself. No problem, really.”

Leon, however, heard none of that. Instead, he reached out into the Mists of Chaos with his will and grabbed a ‘handful’ of it. When he erased his previous Mind Palace, he’d come to the realization that he couldn’t plan out what his Mind Palace needed to be. Instead, he had to let it come to him in the moment, or rather, to let his instinct guide him.

And he’d just realized what he had to do first. He gathered up the enormous amount of requisite mist and let it fall upon the island. In but a moment, the plain of dirt and bare stone was transformed into a relatively more lush field of bright green grass.

But that wasn’t enough, not by a long stretch.

Leon smiled and let his unconscious mind take over, letting his natural instincts do the work of painting the image that was forming in his mind.

The island was quite large, and huge swathes of grass began to change color. Some of it turned blue, some turned dull red, and some turned a vibrant shade of darker purple. It was one of these purple swatches that Leon surrounded the center of the island with.

Not stopping there, Leon continued with more vegetation. First were smaller bushes and flowers, all with brighter and more varied colors than would be seen just about anywhere in nature.

Then came the trees. Half of them had bark almost as black as obsidian, while the other half’s bark was pale white. The darker trees had leaves brighter and greener than anything seen in the Bull Kingdom, while the lighter trees were even more alien, with leaves the same shade of dark blue as the sky in the last few moments before the sun set.

Once that was finished, Leon forced the island to expand. The stone and dirt at the edges burst outward, rapidly moving to the very edges of his soul realm. By this point, Leon had lost himself in the act of creation. He didn’t even realize that as the island’s edges approached the Mists of Chaos, the mists were being pushed back, causing his soul realm as a whole to rapidly expand, rather than just the island that would serve as his Mind Palace’s foundation.

After a few minutes, the island began to feel right, so Leon ceased its expansion, but his eyes were closed, so he had no real idea of how big it had become. He simply ‘grabbed’ the edges of it with his will and began curling them up. These folds in the land then bent and wavered, splintered and broke apart, forming a ring of tall mountains around the thick forest that Leon had created.

With little more than another thought, he cut through this vale and created several long, deep rivers, one of which ended in a deep, dark, terribly foreboding lake.

Without opening his eyes, Leon turned his attention now to the area immediately around what remained of his old Mind Palace, that of his throne, the vault, the red and white tiles, the giants’ tomb, and Xaphan’s pavilion. First, he took the tomb and lifted it like it were nothing more than a paperweight. The massive tomb holding the remains of Lapis and ninety-nine other giants flew through the air like a piece of paper, covering miles in minutes. It came to rest in the shadow of the mountains far behind Leon’s throne, which he had arbitrarily designated ‘east’.

Next, Leon caused four great wooden walls to spring out of the ground around his throne and the rest. In the center of the walled off area was his throne, behind which sprang a huge four-sided granite obelisk capped with a pyramid and covered in runes. On the northern side, Leon put his vault, which quickly dissolved and immediately reformed into a wooden storage shed of considerable size. To the east went Xaphan’s pavilion. In the south sprung forth an underground tunnel leading outside into the purple grass field, the entrance of which was surrounded by the red and white tiles.

Finally, in the west Leon willed into existence a small three room wooden cabin, whose layout was a perfect replica of the shack he’d grown up in. Behind the cabin was a small bath built in the manner of a hot spring.

His final touch were a few decorative plants and trees spread throughout the compound, giving himself a semblance of privacy which he then made more tangible with a series of stone rings buried in the ground that blocked magic senses surrounding both the compound as a whole and his cabin. He wasn’t sure if the rings would work in his soul realm, but he figured it was better to try and it would make him feel better to have, which was far more important in these matters than actual practical concerns.

Still, he was not complete. He had one final touch to make before he could say that he was.

Over the tunnel entrance leading out of the compound, a pair of stone pillars shot straight up, then bent about thirty feet off the ground until they met in the middle, forming the perfect arched perch for the Thunderbird.

Only once that was complete did Leon open his eyes and survey his works. The compound, at least superficially, greatly resembled his childhood home. The forest outside, despite lacking the incredibly dangerous fauna, was a near-perfect replica of the ironically named Forest of Black and White.

With a smile on his face, Leon slowly descended down to the ground, and he stood on the edge of his throne’s platform, using his magic senses to look out upon his creation.

And he felt… complete. He felt safe and comfortable. He felt like he’d returned home, even though he knew that the home he’d based it on was long gone.

His soul realm shuddered. The entire island shook as if some titanic being had taken it into its hand and thrown it through the air.

But Leon didn’t panic. Not only was this his realm, where his word was law, he could feel that this wasn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it was quite possibly the best thing that could happen, full stop.

The edges of the Mists of Chaos had already been pushed back by his creation, but now they were receding like they were being repelled by something far more powerful. The light-emitting clouds that perpetually surrounded his Mind Palace fell away, leaving what appeared to be empty space, but in reality, was just more space that Leon’s soul realm took up.

In just over a minute, Leon’s soul realm had expanded to a mind-boggling ten miles in diameter. What was more, Leon could feel his physical body strengthening, his ability to hold magic power in his blood rapidly growing, and the connection his physical body shared with his soul realm being reinforced.

He could now store far more magic power in his soul realm than ever before. He could call upon more magic through his strengthened connection to his soul realm. He could use more powerful and more mana-intensive magic for longer periods of time with his greater ability to store that magic power in his blood.

He had just finished his Mind Palace and stepped into the realm of seventh-tier mages.