Ryan didn’t show up for their evening run on Monday. Micah waited under his windowsill for him to climb up until his parents called to ask if he was still there. “He probably canceled and you forgot,” his dad said.

Maybe. He had disappeared yesterday and left a message with Lisa for him. More likely, Lisa just couldn’t have been bothered with getting the message right. He didn’t mention anything the next day and Ryan acted like usual, so he assumed that must have been it. But when he was late again, Micah didn’t wait nearly as long before he went to find him.

“He’s holed himself up in his room,” Noelle whispered when she opened the door for him. “It’s cute. He’s acting like he’s thirteen again.”

Thankfully, Micah only had to furrow his brows for her to explain.

“You didn’t hear this from me,” she said, glancing up the stairs, “but Ryan had this phase when he was younger where he would barricade himself in his room at any moment. One second, we would be eating dinner or sitting in the garden and everything is fine, the next we’d only hear his door slam shut. He always ignored us when we knocked, too. He quickly grew out of it, though. Actually, now that I think about it, he stopped when he got his Path. Huh, I guess it’s true what they say.”

“Uhm, that getting your Path is the first step to adulthood?” Micah asked. If so, he felt like he hadn’t taken a single step since.

“Exactly.”

Noelle happily let him in to go pester her son, but Micah took off his shoes and snuck around the back anyway. There, he climbed in through the window. That was sort of their thing, after all.

He found Ryan meditating on his bed surrounded by a corona of heat essence and promptly had no idea what to do. Even if Ryan had learned how to be aware of his surroundings during meditation, Micah didn’t want to interrupt him. What if he was getting a new Skill? So instead of poking him, he paced around the room and poked around his things, waiting.

“You meditate an awful lot,” he mumbled eventually, rolling an old alleyball between his hands on the floor. At least four times a week, Micah knew, for half an hour or longer each time.

Ryan did have about five or six Skills from his Path already, where Micah only had two, so at least he was making progress, but … he didn’t even look peaceful when he was meditating. His face looked slightly strained like he was thinking about something complicated. Maybe he was? Micah wondered what kind of secrets Ryan was discovering, what kind of secrets he himself was avoiding …

He quietly sat down on the bed next to Ryan, checked three times to make sure he had mimicked his posture perfectly, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly, he thought of [Essence—

The bed shifted beneath him and he immediately opened his eyes again, worried he would fall into the void, into a sea of flames. But it hadn’t been that at all. Ryan had just woken up and put a hand down on the mattress. The moment they noticed each other, they both shouted from fright.

Micah fell off the foot of the bed hit the floor with a grimace. Ryan hit the wall instead.

“Micah?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you!” he insisted, getting up. “We were supposed to go running, remember?”

“What? Oh, I— What time is it? I must have lost track of time. I’m sorry.” He looked earnest enough. Maybe he really had just forgotten? “Wait, were you just trying to meditate? Did I interrupt you?”

“What? No, I was just ... playing a prank on you,” Micah lied. “But, uhm, you woke up too early and—Yeah.”

“A prank?”

“What were you even meditating on?” Micah asked to switch topics. That had been a stupid excuse. He knew schools put a lot of effort to give students a secure space to meditate in. He didn’t want Ryan thinking he was untrustworthy. “You just got a Skill two days ago.”

“And?” he asked defensively. “Some people can get three Skills from their Path in one day.”

“Did you already have something in mind?”

“Huh? Uh, no. I mean, yes. Sort of. I was just trying to figure out [Lesser Vitality] …” he trailed off and glanced away.

Micah thought he might be lying, which ordinarily would have made him happy, as it reassured him. But Ryan was lying to him. Why?

“Wait, are you still upset that you didn’t get a healing Skill?”

After a moment, Ryan nodded.

“Don’t be,” Micah told him, sitting back down again. “That’s what I’m for, remember?” Was he getting impatient because Micah still hadn’t made a middle-grade healing potion? Ryan was always worried about safety … He was probably just too polite to say anything or didn’t want to hurt Micah’s feelings.

“How about this,” Micah said as much to him as to himself. “I promise I’ll make as powerful a healing potion as I can make for the next time we go into the Tower.”

“... Alright?” Ryan frowned at him.

Micah had been expected a better reaction. Then again, he already had made the most powerful healing potion he could make.

“I mean a middle-grade one,” he pressed on. “I’ll buy the ingredients if I have to, or if not, I’ll just buy one that’s already made. You don’t have to force yourself to become a healer, Ryan. Just say something and I’ll do better. I promise.”

Ryan’s frown only deepened. But suddenly, he ruffled Micah’s hair and shot up. “Alright, you little heartbreaker,” he said with what looked like a genuine smile.

“What?”

“Don’t think you can hide it from me,” Ryan went on as he walked over to his window. “Lisa told me all about Anna.”

“Anne,” Micah corrected him.

“Yeah. Her.” He started to climb out and glanced back at him. “Do you want to go running or not?”

Micah got one foot off the bed before he paused. “Only if you promise to never call me that again.”

“Hm,” Ryan considered for a moment. “No. You can wait here, then. See you in twenty.” He flashed him a smile and disappeared down the house wall.

Micah waited a moment, just in case he was joking. But of course, he wasn’t. So he scowled and followed him down.

He was not a heartbreaker. If anything, Anne would probably end up breaking his heart, if he ever asked her out, which he didn’t know how to do, if he even made it into that school, which he might not, if he ever saw her again … Couldn’t Ryan have given him a little more hopeful nickname?

At least, Noelle gave him two thumbs-up as they went to get their shoes.

It was the last week before graduation then, when the classroom barely paid attention to what the teachers had to say and the teachers didn’t really bother in the first place, unless the students were behind on any subjects. Which, of course, they always were. Micah spent his noons working at the bathhouse and his evenings studying or training despite the tests being over.

Friday was a half-day and they got their report cards. As always, they spent an hour afterward talking with friends, making promises to hang out in the summer sometime or to meet up during the festival in two weeks. Micah made a loose promise with Camille and Darren, and a less loose one with Lang, Billy, and Finn, who wanted him to drag Ryan to the bridge or regular alleyball matches lest he forgot about them.

He was a little distracted, though. He kept on thinking of his report card and deeply regretted not studying earlier. He had mostly “B’s”, two “A’s”, and a “C” in geography. It was better than what he’d gotten last time. But for school?

Micah really had to get his levels up and study for the entrance exam … and further at least one of his Paths. There was no way around it. So he dragged Ryan away from his friends with their blessing (“Take him!”—“Get rid of him!”—“We can’t stand his ugly face anymore!”) and discreetly asked him about other ways to further either of his Paths without meditating … without actually using the word “meditating.”

Ryan listened patiently for a few minutes before he dragged him off to his school, where they snuck into the library.

“If you want to further your [Warrior Path]—” he started with a whisper.

“[Of the Warrior Path],” Micah corrected him. Even he knew that it was rude to get someone else’s Path wrong.

“[Of the Warrior Path],” Ryan said. “If you want to further that without … y’know ...” He paused in between the bookshelves and turned to frown at Micah. He kept on frowning until it got awkward.

“Ryan?” Micah poked him.

“You know you can meditate around me, right?” he asked. “I’ll keep you safe, I promise.”

Micah nodded hesitantly and told him something similar, to make up for Tuesday, if a little more awkwardly. It wasn’t about that at all, though. Where he went when he meditated, nobody could follow. He made a flimsy promise to try someday, just to move on from the topic.

“Alright. Well, for combat Paths the other half is repetition,” he said and handed Micah a book with the subtitle A Study of Fighter Skills Levels 1-19. “Pick out a few Skills and we’ll try copying and then practicing them until you get one.”

Micah lit up and bobbed his head in thanks. He cracked the book open as he sat down, skimming the foreword and notes to get to the lists of descriptions and names. Some of them he knew already, from classmates or studying for the entrance exams. There were lots of simple Action Skills, Enhancement ones, or Proficiencies, like [Power Strike], [Heavy Hits], or [Knife Proficiency: III]. As far as he understood, Action Skills were supposed to be the easiest to get from repetition. The others ran deeper than that.

Other Skills were a little more … eccentric.

“This one is called [Rhino meets the Tiger],” Micah whispered.

Ryan peered down from where he was both reading something else above him and acting as a look-out.

“Huh. So it is. Some kind of charge Skill? Oh, a tackle followed up by a throw. That actually looks pretty cool. I bet you can do it with a shield, too ... Might be dangerous to practice on rough ground, though. Maybe in the park?”

“I don’t want the Skill,” Micah clarified. “Just … [Rhino meets the Tiger]. What kind of name is that?”

He imagined someone yelling that during combat—if it was a Class Skill—and barely kept himself from laughing. Yelling Skills out during combat at all seemed pretty weird, but maybe that was just him.

“What kind of name is [Of the Warrior Path]?” Ryan asked back.

“What kind of name is [Exemplarism Path]?” Micah countered.

Ryan scowled and he imagined the expression say, Touché. “Go back to studying, you cheeky little player.”

He did so with only half a smile and quickly found some simple, yet versatile Skills for daggers that he liked: [Piercing Strike], [Pointed Throw], and [Sever]. He could have thought of the first two on his own, and admittedly, he’d picked them all thinking of the Honey Ants. Since he was going to fight them routinely for making various healing potions, they were the perfect Skills for getting past their shells and keeping them from running off with their sweet, precious healing slime.

He was having a little trouble seeing the difference between [Sever] and just cutting, though. The book talked about it as if were somehow better.

[Pointed Throw] on the other hand was supposed to make sure he always hit with the pointy end when he threw something.

“Hm, I guess we can try out severing things, like taut strings or branches?” Ryan asked. “I can ask Gardener. The first will probably be the easiest to get since you’ll just have to do the same, perfect movements hundreds of times for a few weeks until it clicks …”

Micah blinked. Hundreds…?

“... The other we’ll need a target dummy for and maybe some space to train, but that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Maybe I can convince Gardener to let you train with me in the school field?”

“Yeah,” Micah nodded. “Uhm, sure. Thanks.”

He was suddenly a little less interested in repeating skills until they turned into Skills. Apparently, he would also have to spend just as much time thinking about doing the actions instead of actually doing them, to emulate meditating on them. And even then, he needed to test it in lots of different scenarios and meditate on those to broaden its effects. “Combat Paths require a lot of work, huh?”

“Everything does,” Ryan said.

The next day, Ryan taught him the various movements that could lead to [Piercing Strike] and brought along a bundle of strings that they could set up to have him practice severing things with since they didn’t have access to much else right now.

Tying the strings on furniture around Ryan’s room took forever, though, and the method was just a stop-gap, so Micah gave up after the first two batches. He had more pressing concerns.

He asked Ryan if he knew anything more about mana.

“I actually asked a teacher about it on Monday,” Ryan admitted. “To check up on what Lisa told us. Apparently, people have always thought that mana, or at least a part of it, comes from without us. The first generation thought it came entirely from the world around them. Now, they think it’s only a small part. Their biggest clue was that [Permeability] increases mana regeneration, since that implies you’re becoming more permeable to something from the outside coming in. But mana regeneration might even be a side-effect, like how people misunderstood [Vitality] for making you a more energetic person when it’s really just a consequence of healthy body, healthy mind, and, uhm …” he trailed off as he ran out of things to say. “That’s kind of it, really. Was any of that helpful?”

“It was,” Micah assured him … but not very. He trusted Lisa a little more than Ryan did—or at least, her knowledge—and he’d had the idea that Tower essence might be a part of mana on his own, so he hadn’t doubted it. But that didn’t help him with figuring out the third ingredient. Everything mana could do seemed to be covered by a mixture of mind essence and Tower essence. What was he missing?

He also asked Ryan if he’d figured more out about his [Mimic Beast] Skill, since he probably would have asked about that, too.

“It’s unchanged,” Ryan said. “My cap. It’s the same. But the teacher got curious and suggested I take a mana manipulation class, either in the new year or privately. I could also try buying a mana ring or an enchanted item that uses mana to get a sense of it on my own, but … that’s nothing you need to worry about, Micah. Still, thanks for asking.”

“I’m not worried,” Micah assured him. “I just want to know.” He knew Ryan would figure it out in his own eventually.

He then waited for Ryan to do his routine mediation session before he dug out one of his school textbooks and found a section explaining a little bit about meditating on a Path in general. Apparently, there were many ways to go about emulating it for a new Skill, but the top three were visualization, memory, and simple reasoning, like when Micah answered questions for himself.

He copied Ryan’s posture again against the bed frame beneath him and started with that, what he knew. He asked himself questions about mana and answered them, but ... nothing happened.

He then tried a mixture of memory and visualization, and imagined casting [Infusion] as he remembered it. But that didn’t help either, so he switched over to just visualization and imagined a rain cloud pressing water essence together, like Lisa had told him was a spellscript for [Condense Water].

Still, nothing happened.

Finally, he just imagined what he thought his own nervous system looked like and added a blue stream of energy flowing alongside it. It’s just mind essence and Tower essence, Micah thought. It’s right there. He could easily imagine what other people saw mana as and he had seen Tower essence before, so why couldn’t he see mana? What was he missing?

He had “energy” and “flow” from essences, both again from electricity essence, and a third time over from Tower essence, how it manipulated forces. He had purity and the chaos of colors from human thoughts. He had taint from the same place, specifically from perception. And mind essence was just like Tower essence in a certain way. They were two minds coming together. He could almost imagine seeing the other, the one he hadn’t before, if he looked.

So what was he missing?

He kept going over that question for what felt like an eternity until his head hurt and his whole face scrunched up from frustration. Eventually, Micah just gave up and hugged his knees. This was pointless.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see.

He took that in with a short breath. The world looked like he was looking through one of those warped glass windows. Everything was blurry and bloated into round edges. Whenever he tried to focus his eyesight, it would make his head hurt. He tried squinting his eyes then, but it didn’t help.

He looked around and it stayed that way.

He rubbed his eyes, but it stayed that way.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, but when he opened them again, it still stayed that way.

“Ryan,” he groped around the bed until he found the other guy’s knee and shook it gently. “Ryan, I can’t see.” Then he shook it a little less gently. “Ryan, wake up. I can’t see.”

He turned around a bit, using his other hand to steady himself on the bed frame, and gaped when he spotted Ryan. He wasn’t as blurry as the rest of the world. His body was, but he was surrounded by outermost silhouette made of a pure, almost silver light. The rest of his arms, where they overlapped with his body, were a little more blurry. They only had an echo of that silhouette. His legs were the same. Micah still found his arm and shook it.

“Ryan.”

“Wha— Micah?” he asked, finally waking up. The light around him expanded a little.

“Ryan, I can’t see.”

He immediately shifted. “What? What do you mean you can’t see?”

“Everything’s blurry. I think— I think I don't have my [Essence Sight]. I can’t see essence anymore.”

“You lost the Skill?”

He was gripping Micah’s shoulder now and pulled him up on the bed.

“No, no, I turned it down or something. You can make Path Skills weaker, right? I think I did that. I need glasses without the Skill. How do I turn it back up? Everything’s weird.”

The world he had gotten used to in the last two years was gone. Everything seemed a little less vibrant, less colorful than before. Where was the motion?

And now that Micah noticed, Ryan’s skin was burning. Out of reflex?

He was probably radiating heat essence. Micah could almost imagine seeing it around him, instead of that weird silhouette of light. It was a rare sight nowadays as Ryan kept it down, probably because it was summer and the Skill didn’t do enough to make him stand out from the season’s heat. But Micah had seen it just last Tuesday and sometimes, Ryan’s control slipped.

His skin was burning now, but the essence of it was missing. That wasn’t … right. Micah should have seen heat essence there. He could almost imagine seeing it there.

And then, as if flipping a page, he could.

Pure light became distortion. It gave off a ripple that washed over the world. The floor came to life beneath him, wood dancing and cheering as Micah spotted it, and the wind glowed for a second as he could see every single mote of scent on it. He even saw hints of wavy light and a subtle difference around the window where the room shifted in temperature. Wind swirled in, the bed was made up of a thousand sheep sleeping in fields of cotton, and the Salamander chest of shifting scales of wood and heat.

Ryan, of course, glowed like the horizon sun.

Then it all faded back to its normal intensity again and Micah sighed in endless relief.

“You need glasses?” Ryan asked, completely off-topic.

Micah practically sagged down on the bed. “It’s back. My [Essence Sight] is back.”

“... How?”

“I don’t know. I just focussed on your Skill.” When he said that, the heat essence around Ryan immediately started dimming and his hands cooled. “I guess I tried to see nature essences again and it went back?”

Did that mean he could only see one or the other?

Ryan rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Then got up, crouched down in front of Micah, and slapped him in the face a few times lightly, saying, “Don’t scare me like that, man. I thought you had gone blind or something.”

Micah smiled a little. “Sorry.”

“‘I can’t see.’” Ryan got up and chuckled tiredly. “You gave me a heart-attack, Micah. What were you even trying to do?”

“I tried to meditate,” Micah said. “I was trying to maybe get something like [Mana Sight]?”

“Oh.” Ryan paused and turned around. “That’s great news. And it was … fine?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it was basically just me with my thoughts.” He hadn’t even felt like he was meditating at all. Maybe he hadn’t been?

“Right … Right.” His voice cracked as he walked around the room and stretched. “That’s good. And did you figure anything out?”

“A little bit,” Micah admitted. “I think I saw mind essences or something similar surrounding you like an outline. It seemed to hug you tighter when you were meditating … But it wasn’t mana. I’m sure of that.”

“Maybe ‘mana essence’?” Ryan joked.

Micah smiled up at him. “Mana can’t have an essence of its own. It is essence, just made up of three different …” he frowned and trailed off, “... types. That isn’t right, though, is it? If it were made up of essences, even ones that aren’t of nature, then my [Essence Path] should question mana more. Especially when I use it, right? But it doesn’t.”

Even when Micah had thought of how [Infusion] worked, that was just information that he was putting into words. He had known it already.

“Uhm, yeah?” Ryan said.

It dawned on Micah then. “The third ingredient isn’t essence at all.”

“What is it then?”

Micah looked at him. “I have no idea.”