Micah stumbled down a hill of sharp stones and cold ashes. He came to rest in a valley of smog. The charred Tower loomed behind him, a pillar of soot. A smudge of a mountain range lined the horizon. A distant peak rose far above the rest.

He breathed in the poison air and, for the first time in one of these recurring nightmares, he did not cough or choke. Small blessings, though that was about the only blessing here.

Micah wasn’t a religious person. His dad hated religion. He and his Nana used to get into arguments at the dinner table when she had still been alive. And even though he had rebelled against his parents on so much else, Micah had never found an excuse to rebel on that.

Even when she had died, they had offered no explanations as to where she believed she would go—or even where they thought they would go. And Micah, usually so full of questions, hadn’t asked. He had distracted himself by revising his notes on alchemy and doing chores for hours on end.

Now, even Bastion, who had lived dozens of lives through reincarnation, couldn’t tell him for certain where people went. He and Shanty had encountered many different beliefs over the centuries. Many of them held kernels of what they thought might be true based on things they had witnessed—reincarnation, rivers of souls flowing to someplace unknown, powerful entities shepherding souls into personal realms, and people becoming spirits or ghosts to live on after death.

The thing was, many of those kernels of truth contradicted one another.

Perhaps, Shanty had told him, death is what we make of it … or what others create for us.

Micah looked out upon a valley of ash. His bare feet left treks in the grays and black as he shuffled on the spot. He glanced around and went eastward, toward the sunrise, though there was no sun.

He was an [Explorer] now. And a [Warrior] of sorts. He could have sat with his nose buried in the bend of his arm and waited to wake up, as he had done a dozen times before, but part of him hoped there was a solution here that he wasn’t seeing.

So, head held high, he searched the valley of gray and black for landmarks, inconsistencies, movement—anything that stood out.

There was nothing.

He picked up the pace. Slowly at first. Faster. Faster. Micah searched the ground, the hill, the Tower. He switched between his lenses and the world did not change. He tried to blast the ash away with a burst of wind and his magic came out like a whisper in a dream. When he called out, nobody came.

Frantically, he ran until he was stumbling over his leg and panting with exhaustion. The ashes deadened the noises he made like fields of snow.

When he spotted tracks in the distance, that hope rekindled inside him, but then he recognized the anxious circle of footprints and the embers went cold.

He fell.

The soot caked his skin and hair. His body burned from the exertion, the cold ashes bit his skin, and the flames burned, as they always did, in his memories. As if he had never left the Salamander’s Den at all.

“Is this a promise?” he croaked past a lump in his throat. Catching his breath, he sat up and took in the lands that waited for him in his sleep. This brief one, or the eternal one that would follow. “Is this my hell?”

Micah rapped the door knocker, looked up and down the street, and shifted on his feet while he waited. Then he rapped his knuckles on the door directly.

Someone shuffled around inside the house. The noises approached him so he didn’t stop, knocking faster and faster until whoever it was opened up. They said something, but he didn’t hear it.

Then his mom tore the door open and snapped, “What is up with you, child? You spend weeks pretending we do not exist and this is how you come home?”

“Hi.” He forced his nervous smile to stay up and trailed off, “I didn’t have a key …”

“How is that my fault? You knew where you were going. Do you behave this way around other people?”

Maybe he should have climbed in through the window after all, but it was his window. It was no fun if there wasn’t anybody waiting for him on the other side. If only he had a girlfriend …

And wasn’t that a fitting thought for the day he was having?

“Why don’t you keep your keys all together like I’ve seen other young men do?”

“I have a key for my locker, my closet, my room, the dorms, the workshop, my mailbox—”

His mom rolled her eyes with a look he recognized: she had stopped listening three words in. Now, she was just waiting for what she felt were a sufficient amount of words to come out of his mouth before it was her turn to speak again.

He garbled his words, too annoyed to speak clearly because he knew it would happen.

“—it’s a hassle to carry one giant jangling lanyard—”

“Yes, yes. Whatever. I don’t care about your keys, Micah.”

Then why did you ask?, he thought.

She tried to rub her thumb over his cheek. “Tell me, how are you?”

Well, he hadn’t slept much, their teachers had loaded a mountain of homework onto their backs right before the weekend, and he had spotted his friends with his former friends through a hallway window, off to meet Lisa’s family without him because he had to be here.

But of course, his mom wouldn’t care about any of that if he told her. She would just tell him that it was his own fault because he had not gone to sleep early enough, that he better do the homework right, and he could hang out with his friends whenever he wished; hadn’t he neglected his family long enough? That was if she even listened.

He could already hear her dismissing him so he let out an annoyed huff, lifted his duffel bag, and brushed past her.

“I’m fine.”

She grabbed his elbow to stop him and scoffed, “What are you doing? Give your mother a hug.”

Before he could protest, she wrapped her arms around him.

“I am glad to see you. I’m glad you’re home.”

He hesitated, but then he wrapped his one free arm around her and allowed himself to relax into the hug.

Micah was taller now and it had been a while since anyone had hugged him, but that familiar cloud of hair products and perfumes enveloped him, and he thought some things never changed.

“Busy week,” he mumbled with an exhausted sigh.

“You think you’re busy?” she dismissed him and pulled back to look at the living room.

The table, the couches, and half of the kitchen table were covered with paperwork and law books. A large gift basket sat on the table’s other half.

“Shouldn’t you be in your office if you are this busy?” Micah asked.

She had assistants and coworkers, and he thought she even had [Office] Skills that worked best in work environments.

But she didn’t acknowledge his question. “This is nothing. I will be busy starting this Monday. The council called in emergency sessions for the next two weeks, possibly longer, so I might have to stay at an inn. If I do, I would appreciate it if you could visit your father to help out around the house. But I have been receiving documents after documents all week about these aliens in our Tower, including many reports on what you did.”

He opened his mouth but she cut him off with a swish of her hand.

“No. Don’t say it. I won’t ask what you were thinking. We will discuss this once your father gets home.

“Go carry your things upstairs. I bought you some shirts in different sizes; they’re in your room. Try them on and show me. We made reservations for dinner tomorrow with your sister and her husband. It will be something of a belated birthday dinner for your father because none of his children could find the time in their important lives to organize one for him.”

She said that in a miserable tone but shot him an accusatory look, frowned, and leaned in to grip his chin.

There was no hint of the misery in her voice when she asked, “Do you shave?”

Micah scowled and drew back. “No?”

“You should start. Your stubble is very uneven. It does not look smart.”

He ran a hand over his jawline and scowled.

“Your haircut is fine, thankfully. I want us all to look nice for tomorrow. Now go.”

With a sigh, he dropped his hand and marched up the stairs. She called after him when he made it to the top.

“Oh, and come right back down to help me prepare dinner, mister alchemist!”

“I thought I was supposed to—”

“What?”

“I said, I thought I was supposed to try on—”

“What!?”

“I thought I was supposed to try on the shirts!” he screamed and waited. A few seconds passed. She didn’t respond. “Mom? Mom?”

In a distracted tone, she called, “What?” She hadn’t even been listening. Then she snapped, “Don’t shout across the house! If you want to speak to me, come downstairs!”

If he groaned, Micah knew she would hear that just fine. Some things did never change, for better or for worse.

He stormed into his room and found the cat napping on his pillow, surrounded by a circle of cat hair.

He was used to quickly preparing meats and vegetables, and only the largest of the shirts his mother had bought fit him so he would wear it even if she complained it was too long. Micah was pleased. With her annoyance, with the fact that he had put on some muscle so shirts didn’t always fit him, and to be back in his room in less than thirty minutes.

He lay on his mattress and read one of the assigned chapters for his homework while he scratched the cat behind its ears.

Its claws kept catching on the blanket and it leaned so far into his hand that it nearly toppled off the bed. It kept purring even after it had to claw its way back up the blanket.

“Little spider monkey,” he mumbled, “you need to hide away from them sometimes, too, huh?”

Unfortunately, the quiet could not last forever. He heard the front door and reluctantly got up to go greet his father.

The cat leaped off the bed with a loud thump and padded after him. It overshot him at the edge of the stairs, slipping between his feet, and he nearly kicked it. He gripped the banister with a surprised squawk. “Cat! Are you trying to kill … me …”

Micah paused.

He had spent far too much time thinking about how this conversation with his parents was about to go down. Most of the scenarios he imagined ended with him shouting, Fuck you, at them and storming off.

They had been repairing their relationship over the last year, bit by bit—baby steps. All it had taken was for his dad to show up at his school and Micah had known things were bad again.

So what if he’d done something stupid? They hadn’t been there. They didn't have to fight monsters. Their classmates hadn’t been about to die in front of their eyes. Someone had to do it. So screw anyone who tried to make him feel bad about that. Screw them …

… and then he nearly tripped down the stairs, and he thought of Pijeru, and how often had she fought with her parents and her grandfather?

She missed them, he thought, in the end.

He tried to sound friendly when he came down the stairs, but he was still in a bad mood. His greeting sounded neutral at best.

His dad gave him a matching neutral glance as he took off his shoes. Not a smile, but also not a judgmental glare. “Ah, Micah, you’re home already?”

“I said I would be here.”

“Yes, but we didn’t know if you would try to show up as late as possible—”

The cat meowed, and Micah nearly jumped at how loud the noise was.

“Kiara, hush.” His dad twisted to track it as it swam around his leg like a lake monster, tail sticking straight up. “Yes, yes, you’ll get your dinner in a moment. Let me take my shoes off first.”

It meowed again, like a fog horn.

Micah supposed it had to be that loud to be heard in this household. And it served his parents just right that it couldn’t understand a word they said.

He did manage to sound a little happier, then, as he gestured at the kitchen and lied, “I was just about to set the table.” He used the chore as an excuse to go.

“Mom? … Mom? … Mom? … Mom?” he asked from the kitchen, waiting as she gathered her paperwork up. She kept getting distracted rereading the documents before she filed them away.

“Hm? What?”

“Where should I put these?”

“Where should you put what?” she asked without looking to see what he meant.

“These. Your gift basket and the papers?”

She didn’t answer for a minute, and then she stormed into the kitchen with an annoyed huff and cleared the table herself.

His dad put his things aside and fed the cat, in that order, and they finished cooking, and he set the table and washed his hands, then hid away in the corner of the living room where he was out of their line of sight.

He looked out the window while the afternoon darkened into the evening and hoped to see his sister walking up.

She didn’t, and then he was stuck at the dinner table, piling food onto his plate from the pots and bowls while his parents did the same.

He tried to think of something to fill the awkward silence. He was surprised to find a wealth of questions in his head for his mom. Maybe she knew if the situation with the avashay had developed any more behind the scenes?

He read the newspapers but they were full of interviews, discussions about government policies, and wild mass speculation. There had barely been anything new since Wednesday.

“So mom,” he said, “do you—”

“Micah,” she chose that moment to speak to interrupt him again, “what level are you now?”

He bit into his bread, poured himself a glass of water, and only answered when there wasn’t a blatant scowl on his face, “Twelve. And four and two.”

Her brows furrowed. “Did you consolidate? That’s lower than I thought.”

He shrugged and ate.

“Even with the uptick of the average level this last year,” his dad said, “twelve is well beyond the average for your age. It may have even been above average when we were your age.”

“Did you get any new Skills?” his mom asked.

“Yes.”

“Which ones?”

He shrugged. “Alchemy Skills.”

“Do we have to pull the answers out of you? Come, tell us which Skills you got. You aren’t usually this quiet, Micah.”

What do you care?, he wanted to snap, but he thought of a planet turning to sand and bit his tongue.

He was about to speak when his dad almost interrupted him as well, “You are such a high level for your age but we barely know anything about what you do, what your Path is, which fields of alchemy you are interested in.”

That’s honestly your own fault, he thought bitterly, but he took a moment to consider his response, and his parents, miraculously, let him think.

“My Path is uhm, [Essence Path]. You know that, but if I had to explain what it means … It’s basically like if I had a [Periodic Table Path] but instead of studying the world in its base elements, I study magic in its base elements—essences.”

“I was not aware that magic had base elements,” his dad said.

“Have you discovered any yet?” his mom asked with a twinkle in her eye. “Do you get to name them if you do?”

“No. I mean, except for myself, but there isn’t anything there to be discovered. Anything that exists can have an equivalent essence. Light, air, food, this chair. That’s not to say they do have essences, but they can. What’s more important is to categorize essences, figure out which layer of spirit or existence they reside on, how they interact, behave, where they come from … But that’s nothing new. None of this is revolutionary. People as early as the first generation knew essences existed, and the more I look into it, the more essays from places of higher learning I find, like Hedgewall. It just isn’t universally-accepted theory or standardized in lower education yet, and they sometimes use different words than me. That’s why I had such difficulties finding information in the first place. I was searching in the wrong places and nobody would take me seriously.”

He put some emphasis on those last words but his parents continued eating without batting an eye.

“How does this relate to your alchemy? When we asked those people to speak with you, they said alchemy deals mostly with reagents and alchemical formulas, not spells.”

“It deals a little bit with spellcasting,” Micah said, “the same way chemistry deals with engineering, and you can temporarily modify potions with spells. I actually have a course on that this year! But uhm … No, that’s a good question.

“So formulas—I call them ‘patterns’—work by manipulating nature magic. They’re like river beds along which water flows. I can’t see formulas themselves, but I can see nature magic. My Path gives me ‘lenses’ which modify my vision to see specific groups of essences at a time, so I can observe nature magic to infer alchemical properties. That gives me a leg up on my classmates in some ways.”

His parents mulled that over. For a while, the only sounds were the scrapes of cutlery on dinner plates and silent chewing.

An odd tension grew in the air, and it took Micah a moment to switch to his emotion lens and spot the shadow brewing around his father. Flipping through his lenses, he caught a glimpse of something close to a structured aura, too, though he didn’t think his dad had any direct aura Skills?

Was it something new? Something he was on the verge of obtaining? Or a weak effect generated by the interactions within his spirit?

Maybe it was something he had learned to do so he could contend with other auras in his line of work …

Either way, it wasn’t clear enough to subvert, or Micah might have tried simply because screw his dad for using an aura at the dinner table.

He finished his bite, rested his wrists on the table, and said, “So. How does that translate to you wanting to be a [Fighter]?”

“I’m a [Warrior] now, actually. A [Pact Warrior].”

His dad’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, and his mom saw his reaction and sounded concerned.

“[Pact Warrior]?”

“Because of—” he began and couldn’t bring himself to voice the lie. He ducked his head and nodded at the living room. “I thought you said you read the reports?”

“Because you negotiated with those spirits?”

“Micah, that’s ridiculous!” his dad thundered. “I know the situation must have been frightening, but it’s over. You didn’t even accept a boon from them! There is no need for you to have such a shameful Class. Do you even know—”

“Yes! Yes, I know, there are laws and stuff. People explained that to me. I’ll get rid of it. You don’t have to worry.”

His dad’s expression twisted as if he had something to say about that, but he took a sip of water, shook his head in exasperation, and said, “Your alchemy. Tell us about it. How you use it.”

“It’s mostly regular alchemy and nature magic similar to what elementalists or druids do. I drink potions to boost my strength and stamina for a time, and I make glues and poisons to weaken my enemies, and I use a combination of alchemy and my Path to, uhm, modify my spirit,” he mumbled over that part and hurried on, “which gives me a variation on elementalism to help me fight.”

“You do what to your ‘spirit?’”

“It’s, uhm— Lots of noble houses do this. You drink potions to manipulate which Skills you get, improve your body, and stuff.”

“That sounds like what Maya did in school,” his mom pointed out.

“Like Maya did, what?”

“Oh, her school had a collaboration with some dietitians,” his dad said. “They designed personalized diets for choice students. It was supposed to help them level faster and increase their chances of gaining certain Skills over others, or something like that. I understand diets to keep healthy, but the rest sounded like mystical nonsense to me.”

“We didn’t see any harm in it, though,” his mom added with a fond smile. “It was a bit of a hassle to follow a meal plan for her sake, but it was nice to see Maya take an interest in the food she ate, even if some of it came from the Towers. She would go to the market and cook with us like she was little again … Is that what you are doing?”

A sour note entered her voice at the mention of the Towers, but that fondness of her memories remained, and Micah thanked his sister, wherever she may be, for lending him a hand for once.

“Sort of, yes. I mostly use it to give myself Skills similar to affinities. So I drank potions, meditated, and slowly, over months,” he stressed, “developed special kinds of wind and stone magic.”

“That’s how you conjured ‘stone claws’ to fight with?” his dad asked.

Somehow, his parents managed to do what a room full of people watching and commenting on his fight alongside him couldn’t: Micah cringed a bit.

“Yeah, the stone magic is concentrated in my hands so I can use it to reshape stones I touch. It’s mostly just the one Skill, [Earthshaper’s Gloves].”

“Is that not a [Potter] Skill?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“No, I remember. I’ve heard about that Skill a few times,” his dad said. “[Potters], [Masons], and other such Classes can get it somewhere from level ten and up.”

“You said you are level twelve,” his mom said. “When did you get it? Was it recently?”

“I got it from my Path.”

For the first time in their conversation, his parents looked genuinely impressed. They oohed. His dad’s eyebrows wandered up as he gave a small respectful nod. His mom smiled enthusiastically. They both looked like they had filed that away under the ‘Bragging Material’ folders in their brains.

For a pottery Skill, even though he was an [Alchemist].

“My wind magic is way better—” Micah wanted to insist, but his dad interrupted him.

“Is that not a risk?” he said, and Micah panicked before he went on. “Affinities can make it more difficult to cast spells unrelated to themselves, can they not? Having multiple affinities can pose its own challenge, I believe.”

“They’re not actually affinities. They’re separate from my mana.”

“So [Battery] Skills, then.”

Micah could have slapped his forehead. Yes, they were more like separate pools of mana and yet … The dismissive way in which his father said that bothered him, especially after he’d shown appreciation for his other Skill.

“Yes? No? I mean, yes, they’re similar, but they are not mana batteries. This is nature magic I generate so it’s like … my spirit is creating monster crystals, I guess? But more potent and with special properties because my spirit was the one who created them …?”

His parents still didn’t look impressed. They did look grumpy at the mention of monster crystals.

“Hold on!” Micah decided and shot up.

“Micah,” his dad said in a warning tone.

“What are you doing?” his mom asked with an amused, condescending smile.

He grabbed two tea bags four glasses from the cabinet, filled them each with a bit of water from the tap, and set everything down on the table before taking his seat again.

“If all I wanted to do was create fog, I could do it like this. [Shape Fluid],” he said the name of the spell out loud and splashed the water in the first glass around before following it up with, “[Dissettle].” The air and water were forced to mix and filled the glass with fog.

“Because I am only using my mana to hold these two together, this fog will last for up to an hour, maybe, based on the conditions around it. However, if I use my aero, my wind magic, to supplement the spell …”

He held a hand out and poured gaseous green magic into the second drinking glass—tentatively, like moving a muscle he had pulled recently.

There wasn’t any pain, thankfully, but he wasn’t using a lot of aero either.

The fog he created looked more vibrant. It continued to dance even when he stopped moving it.

“Because of its special properties, this fog will last for several hours. And with an alchemical formula to anchor the effect …”

He dropped the tea bags in the third and fourth glasses and repeated the steps to create two glasses of dark brown fog. One swayed with an ethereal green shimmer like a forest in the wind.

“Tea isn’t the greatest anchor I could use. It doesn’t denature easily, but it isn’t very cohesive either. This one should last for up to a day or two, this one for maybe three or four, again, depending on the conditions. I could also use my aero to activate its patterns instead of turning it to fog—because you need magic to power alchemical formulas—and then I could maybe create something to help someone with breathing issues. I can power any basic potion that requires wind or wind-related magic as fuel. I mostly use it to make stamina potions and monster lures but …”

Micah trailed off because his parents were eating their dinner and eying the fog curiously, but with a hint of annoyance as if he had made a mess. They only listened with half an ear for him to tire himself out and still didn’t look impressed.

He wanted to think they were idiots, but the truth was they just didn’t have the context or inclination to understand.

“Compared to the time and money I invested into getting the Skill, and considering I also got this from my Path,” he tried a different tack, “this will save me money in the future because I won’t have to rely on monster crystals as much.”

Finally, that got a hint of acknowledgment out of them.

“If your abilities rely so much on nature magic,” his dad mused, “you would think alchemists with your abilities would be more common. We do live in the City of Druids.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if other people can do what I do, but the Alchemist’s Guild is mostly focused on public health first, research second. They have a weird obsession with formulas, which are much harder to understand, and the magic they use is mostly in an engineering role in labs or medical diagnostics, as far as I know.

“If you think about it, the vast majority of practicing alchemists are mostly interested in serving their customers. So anybody who learned to do what I can do would be more active in the research corners of the Guild … though I’m not sure how much of that holds up after the Changes. Every alchemist had to adapt to the difference in ingredients.”

But maybe that had been a good thing. A rock thrown in a pond to shake things up …

… if you ignored the thousands of people who had suffered.

There hadn’t been a Honey Ant Queen hunt this year, for example, Micah knew, which meant there hadn’t been a batch of greater healing potions for the patients on the waiting lists.

“Every alchemist except Westhill,” his mom commented happily as she tilted a glass of ethereal tea toward herself to peer inside.

“Please, don’t breathe that in. I didn’t pay attention to safety so it might damage your lungs … not mine, though.”

She rolled her eyes and set the glass down but, miraculously, she heard what he had said. “Not yours?”

“That’s one of my new Skills, [Alchemist’s Lungs]. It’s supposed to protect my lungs and offer me some minor benefits to breathing … and also let me manipulate alchemical formulas, but I haven’t had a chance to try that out yet.”

“That’s reassuring. One less thing to … worry about,” his mom mumbled and quickly pushed on. “Did you get anything else?”

“I got a memory Skill, as you know … Oh, and this! [Purifying Flame].”

Nothing happened.

Dammit, Micah thought and lifted a finger to signal them to wait.

[Purifying Flame]. [Candle]? Again, nothing happened. Why? It had worked last time!

I— Micah thought and hesitated. I’m giving you my decaying mana as fuel. It would be wasted anyway? That didn’t do the trick. It wasn’t enough to convince his magic to burn for him.

I need light?, he tried but the room was lit by lamps already. The lie was obvious.

With a defeated sigh, Micah thought, I need fire to convince my family of my worth.

Instantly, a blue flame dipped into existence above his fingertip, shimmering like molten glass. It was [Candle], though it looked a little pudgier, with fewer teeth, and closed eyelids. For some reason, it was always asleep when he used the Skill. Micah had to wake it up.

He poured salt onto a piece of bread and leaned in close, cupping his hand over the flame to whisper into its ear.

It slowly blinked awake as it listened to his words, stared up at him with wide eyes, and jumped off his finger to land on the bread.

“Micah,” his dad repeated in that same warning tone.

“It’s fine. See?” He tilted the bread to show them [Candle] wasn’t burning it.

To them, it must have looked like a small blue flame that was wobbling around. It crackled and popped like the tinniest campfire. Imperceptibly small sparkles shot out from it and landed on his plate or the dinner table.

To Micah, it was using its tiny noodle arms to brush aside kernels of salt or else shove them into its mouth and spit them out with a ‘pwuh!’ sound.

“I can tell it to get rid of things I don’t want in my potions, or even if I’m just cooking and add too much salt—” He gestured at the bread, which Candle was slowly purifying of the salt he had dumped onto it. “It’s super useful.”

His parents watched the flame work. Their annoyance at the mess it was making slowly ebbed … and it continued to ebb right down to boredom.

“It’s slow, isn’t it?” his dad asked.

“Well … yes. But it’s faster if I give it more fire to work with!”

“Fire, huh?”

Micah hesitated, then pressed onward. He didn’t want to have that conversation with his parents. “I got another Skill, too, [Sympathetic Catalysis], but I don’t really know how it works. Every book I checked listed like five different versions of it and I haven’t had the chance to experiment to find out which version I have.”

“You should at least have an understanding of how to use it,” his mom said.

“I do, I do! It has something to do with magic, I think? It’s just— it feels incomplete and finicky. Whenever I feel like I could use it, the moment passes before I can figure out why.”

“What do your books say?” his dad asked.

“I— Hold on.” Micah snuffed [Candle] out, shot up again, and left the kitchen.

“Micah!” his dad called after him. “Can’t you remain seated at the dinner table for five minutes, child!?”

Running up the stairs, he called back, “Just a sec!”

He returned with a book like a cinder block and proudly showed it off to his parents. “I got this from the Registry. They gave it to me as a present.” It was just one book in the collection, but he had bookmarked the relevant entries. He placed the book down on the edge of the table and opened it to the right page.

“Okay, so the Skill is most common with [Witches]. The first entry describes it as being able to echo spells, so if you ignite one candle, you could ignite an entire room full of them at the same time … but I tried it with [Candle] and [Shape Fluid] both. It doesn’t work.

“Some powerful [Witches] apparently can even use it to echo buffs, so if they cast [Haste] on one person, they can echo a weaker version onto a whole group, but I don’t know any buffs. I guess I’m not missing much there … unless I could echo potions …”

He shook his head and moved his finger down the page.

“The second version is a more limited variation on the first where it echoes the effects of a spell on the natural world rather than the spell itself.”

“The third version is super rare and is supposed to catalyze transmutation spells by introducing an example of the end product. I.e. if you want to transmute air into water, use a water drop as a spell component. But I don’t have any real transmutation spells. When I tried it with [Condense Water] or [Freeze], I didn’t feel like I could use the Skill at all.”

“The fourth version deals exclusively with physical objects and can allow you to transfer the properties of one reaction onto another reaction. Like, burn magnesium and a piece of paper at the same time, and you can make the piece of paper burn bright. That … would be super useful if it works on alchemical reactions as well as chemical ones, but it doesn’t sound right to me. And even if it did, it would take a ton of time to experiment and theorize ways to use it, and I barely have enough time to visit the workshop as is, because Principal Denner took my key—”

He broke off when he realized what he was saying.

“Because you got into a fight with another student,” his dad finished the sentence. “We received a letter in the mail, you know?”

He was too frustrated to be embarrassed. He wondered what Ryan and Lisa were doing right now. Were they still at Garen’s house this late? Were they having dinner with her family?

He wondered what Sion and Anne were doing together, and that was the wrong thought to have. Micah slammed the book shut and sat with a scowl.

“He had it coming. And my Skill is useless! What good is it to me if I can’t even figure out how it works!”

“‘He had it coming.’ Is that all you have to say for yourself?” his mom asked.

“It’s the truth!”

“Do not raise your voice at your mother. How about you calm down so we can have a civil conversation about th—”

Micah blinked and nearly stood up again. “What did you just do?”

For an instant, he had felt a spark of something like a burning fuse zipping away from him. His thoughts cleared as if a fresh breeze had passed through his mind.

His father paused with one hand still halfway gesturing toward him. He looked surprised but quickly regained his stern composure. “I used a Skill.”

“To smother my emotions?”

“No, to take some of them onto me. It’s called [Shared Burdens]. It steals stress.”

“I— what? You can’t just do that without asking me for permission first!” Now, Micah was getting angry for an entirely different reason. “Have you used that on me before?”

“Once or twice last year. It doesn’t work on children. It’s not that big of a deal. The Skill doesn’t force you to feel any certain way—evidently.” He gestured at Micah. “I use it on people in the office who are having difficulties with the forms and processes they have to go through. It gives them a minute to think and helps me understand what exactly they are having difficulties with … Did you get into an argument with your friends?”

Micah wasn’t answering that. “How does that even work?” he asked to distract himself. “I think you stole some of my emotion essences, but those are created by feelings, they don’t cause them. It would be like stealing smoke to put out a fire … I think.”

“Why must all of your examples involve fire?” his mom complained. He didn’t answer that either.

“I honestly don’t know how my Skill works, Micah.”

“Maybe it’s like a fusion between a clarity blessing, an essence theft Skill, and an emotional analysis Skill … Can you do any of those things individually or did you get the Skill at a high level or through consolidation?”

“Is it really important right now?”

“Well, yeah. I thought I could use my Skill for a second there! It wasn’t when I was angry, but when my anger suddenly shifted or … when it left me?”

That burning fuse he had felt, had that been his anger essence rushing away from him and to his dad?

Oh! Micah had an idea. He switched to his emotion lens, looked down at his hands, and tried to will some of his frustration essence away from himself the same way he might move mana. It worked. Barely. He got a puff of it to drift away. It rapidly dissipated but while it did, he felt a spark in his awareness like there was a fuse connecting it to his brain.

Tentatively, he used [Sympathetic Catalysis] on instinct and whispered two words like flicking a spark down that fuse: Be frustrated.

And the puff of frustration essence responded, I already am, dumbass!

Oh. Uhm … Micah was embarrassed. He should have seen that coming.

“What are you doing?” his dad asked. This time not in a warning tone. He frowned vaguely over the table as if he could sense something in the air.

“Experimenting. Hold on, I think I almost have it. Maybe it needs something to work with …?” He pushed a bit of mana out and instantly felt a second connection. This one felt like curiosity. Micah sent another spark toward it, Be curious.

Sure!, his mana answered, what are we being curious about?

Uhm. Huh. Lots of things. In this room, though? Micah glanced around the room and repositioned the cloud of mana over one of the drinking glasses.

Be curious about this?

A drinking glass and some fog, his mana answered in a pleasant tone.

His eyes bulged. He leaned forward and, more specifically, suggested, Be curious about … its color?

See-through? It sounded a little uncertain. And white to light gray.

How about its volume?

That seemed like it should have been a more difficult task, but his mana answered happily, It can contain circa four hundred and ten milliliters of water.

“Agh—!“ Micah barely cut off a delighted squawk. He willed another puff of frustration essence away from himself but, this time, he didn’t feel any connection to it. “Huh. I think … I can use my emotions to manipulate magic?”

“Oh,” his mom ‘joked.’ “A new archmage!”

There was that connection again. He seized the opportunity to infuse his frustration essence into one of the tea clouds and flicked a spark down the line, Be frustrated.

The brown fog began to simmer and roil.

Micah let out a giddy laugh. It worked with potions!

His parents shared a look in the corner of his eye, and then his dad sighed and said, “Micah, don’t you think it’s time you moved to another school?”

“Huh? No!”

“Why not? You have proven you can fight. You seem to have a solid grasp of your Path by now. And you are receiving fire Skills.”

“With your talent and enthusiasm,” his mom said, “you could get into any alchemy or medical program in the League.”

“I’m already in my second year—“

“It’s only been a week,” his dad cut him off. “Children change schools before the Harvest Festival all the time. This is the best time to do it. Are you even earning any credits for your license at this ‘school’ of yours?”

“I am.”

“How many?”

“Uhm, I will have almost as many as I would have gotten after a year of being in a dedicated alchemy school.”

“Almost, after two years.”

“Yeah? If I take extra courses when I do go to an alchemy school, or I make it into a summer program at the Guild—and night school! I could have my license a year earlier than my future classmates. That would be huge!”

“You could change schools and simply have your license a year earlier. So you can get started with your life. Seriously, Micah, what does your school have to offer you?”

Micah wasn’t answering that either, and not because he knew the answer and didn’t want to discuss it with his parents. This time, he just didn’t know.

His patrons would understand if he switched schools—they were way too understanding sometimes. Even when he got into fights. They went through the motions of being angry with him, but at the end, they admitted they had seen and done it all themselves before, so they found it hard to fault him without being hypocrites.

Principal Denner would be upset, but she was already unhappy with him.

His friends … Micah would miss Mason the most probably. He could still hang out with the others on the weekends or during break, but everyone in the Workshop? It would feel like a betrayal.

“I’m only doing two years anyway, probably,” he mumbled, “and then I’ll have something to show for it. A diploma. And I’m still learning normal stuff. Grammar, history, math—why not let me do that?”

His mom leaned forward with a pleasant smile. “What will you do afterward?”

Micah hadn’t thought about it that much, but he did now. “I’ll get my license,” he voiced his thoughts out loud, “and I’ll work my way up in the Guild, and … I’ll revolutionize alchemy. Somehow. I’ve been doing research, searching for a project but … I don’t know.”

His mom chuckled. It didn’t sound venomous for once. “After you get your license and make sure your work is peer-reviewed, you could come back home and teach Westhill alchemists your branch of … elemental alchemy. A way to not need monster crystals? You could revolutionize bloodless alchemy. That ‘would be huge.’”

Micah hadn’t considered that, and then he did. It was a great idea, but he still scowled at the thought of it.

“Why do I have to be the one to do it? Sure, I’ll publish my work and if they like it, anyone can adopt it for themselves. Westhill can have its bloodless alchemy. That’s not what I had in mind.”

Micah felt an ache deep inside his chest. It was as persistent as his heartbeat and as demanding as his lungs. A primal yearning.

For a moment, he felt another connection. A thread extending from his mind outward through the walls. It stretched so far it was hair-thin, and he knew exactly where it led. Anyone would have. Every person developed the ability eventually: to turn on the spot, no matter where they stood, and find their way home.

There was no need to flick a spark down this line. The fuse was already burning. It would never stop. When he listened to the whispers of its flames, he heard an echo of that voice that whispered deep inside him from the flames that seared his soul.

PRESERVE.

In the corner of his eye, the first wisps of silver fog descended from the dusk, and Micah spoke the words, “I want to create a potion that lasts forever.”

His mom let out a sigh. His dad halfway rolled his eyes and gave a small shake of his head.

“Son,” he said, “your mother and I want you to know how disappointed we are in you.”

“What?” Startled, Micah stared at the man but his mom spoke next.

“You always hear about other people’s children dying in the Tower, throwing away their lives, ‘sacrificing themselves for some noble cause.’ You read the obituaries and listen to their speeches. You never think it will be your own child who goes next.”

“Did you even think about us? About your siblings? Prisha? When you did that?”

They’d been having something so close to a nice conversation. A civil discussion. And then they stabbed him in the back.

Micah didn’t think of Pijeru, he didn’t think of an empty shelf, a tearful goodbye, a world turning to sand. He laughed, short and quick, and he thought he sounded a bit like his mom then. “No? Of course, I didn’t. Of course, I didn’t think of you.”

“Micah—“

“Because that’s what you taught me to do!”

“We did not teach our son to be suicidal.”

“I wasn’t suicidal! And I didn’t do it to ‘sacrifice’ myself. I did it because that’s what I wanted to do. I was being selfish! That’s what you taught me. How often did you think of us when you were gone, huh? At work, in the office, while we were alone and ate dinner without you?”

“Every day,” his mom said and stared him in the eyes.

Micah scoffed. “Don’t lie. Oh, Councilwoman Stranya, champion of the bloodless farms, the great leader who will represent the voices of her people in the city council—who can’t even listen to her son without rolling her eyes if she doesn’t have an agenda!”

Micah didn’t know when he had stood up. He slammed his book shut hard enough to make the dishes clatter. He tried to say, Fuck you. It always seemed to come so easily to Kyle no matter who he was speaking to, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He grabbed his book and left.

“What are you even saying?” his mom asked as if his words were ludicrous.

“Where are you going!?” his dad demanded.

With his back turned to them, Micah shouted, “Screw you!”

The cat spooked when he stormed past it on his way up the stairs. He grabbed his bags and the shirt and was on his way back down in seconds. “I’m going to Prisha, the only selfless person in this family! Oh, and while we’re on Paths—”

His parents were saying something, yelling at him, but Micah took a page out of their book and just kept talking louder and louder until they were forced to listen to him.

“Do you know why I think Prisha got her Path? Because she had to teach herself to love other people. BECAUSE SHE SURE AS HELL DIDN'T LEARN IT IN THIS HOUSE!”

They didn’t stop.

Micah paused for a second at the bottom of the stairs, then scooped his shoes up and slammed the door on his way out.