Mitch had done the math. If he lived for eighty years and had started killing at birth, never rested or slept, and killed someone every 20 seconds during that entire time he still could not have doomed as many people as that decision had. Somehow though he no longer felt torn by the choice. He felt calm. It was a weighty, dark calm, but calm nonetheless. He may never think of himself as a good person again, but there was no regret: he had made his choice.

If he was going to sacrifice by proxy all of those souls, then it was imperative that he survive: not just survive, thrive. To do that he needed to progress in both strength and his ability to control his energy. Mitch had been able to affect his energy, but only on the most basic level. If all you could do was punch your energy, then control was virtually useless. From the way Kanshou acted when he talked about control, Mitch did not believe this to be the case.

Kanshou did say a shit ton of practice was needed. Not in those words, but the idea is the same. Therefore, what he needed to do now was find a way to manipulate his energy in a much more granular way.

The first decision he made was that needing to have one's consciousness present within one's energy channels in order to manipulate one's energy was far too burdensome to be practical, and there was a near zero chance of that being the best way to go about things.

Mitch had read, in the book he had kept as a reference on ritual magic, that a circle could be activated in one of two ways. The first, for beginners, was the method he had been using so far; dropping some blood, which naturally carried some of one's energy, on the circle and or formation to cause a cascade that activated the circle. The more advanced method was to apply energy directly from within to initialize the configuration.

He went back and reviewed the description of the second method in that book. This method involved making oneself "one with the circle" to the point where your energy became the energy the circle used to activate. This implied, or confirmed - depending on one's required burden of proof, that it was possible to extend the energy contained within oneself beyond the confines of one's body to affect things externally.

Seeing how being able to affect things externally was what he hoped for anyway, Mitch decided to give this method a try. It would help him progress in controlling his energy and also make using the formation somewhat less painful if he was successful.

With nothing to lose and no time to waste Mitch repaired his formation from the last use and stepped inside. The text had given minimal direction on exactly how to accomplish this merge they were talking about. The only thing it had really said was to visualize both the circle and what you wanted to happen within your mental space and to the push your energy into the image to make it activate.

He knew his formation very well by now and picturing it as it appeared in his apartment was pretty easy. Getting his energy to do anything was a different matter entirely. He sat for a while not sure what to do. Just visualizing the energy doing what he wanted unequivocably not enough, so he needed another strategy. Not sure what his other options were he sank his consciousness into his body.

When his perception manifested in its typical awareness-ball form, he realized that this would not give him the kind of information that he needed. He wanted a high-level view of his body and the energy within it so that he could see how everything worked in concert. Working on a hunch, he started reaching out from his globe of psyche almost like he would have if he were trying to touch one of the solid seeds within one of the vortexes in his channels but in all directions instead of one. His reward was a bizarre sensation of expansion. He now knew what it might feel like to be a balloon during its inflation.

Luckily this seemed to be giving him the perspective he wanted and as the ball expanded more and more of his body fell within it. The larger it got, the less detail he had access to, but he was able to see more and more of his body; organs and energy flow combined. Once again he was reminded that his energy seemed to flow in counterpoint to his heartbeat; the flow increasing when his heart relaxed and decreasing when it pumped. Mitch wasn't sure what that meant, but he was on the lookout for anything and wasn't going to ignore anything.

As his mind-ball expanded beyond the confines of his torso it began to take on the shape of his body; extending down into his legs, out into his arms, and up into his neck and face. Finally, after a period of sustained effort, his senses encompassed his entire form. Mitch pushed to see if he could go further, reach beyond his body, but was greeted by a shooting pain in his head at the attempt.

Since he had reached his limit, he turned his focus inward once more and began to examine at the macro level things he had only observed at the micro level before. He saw the small branches off of the main channels that he had never been able to enter, and the even smaller branches that came off of those. His energy channels honestly looked a lot like his blood system, splitting into smaller and smaller vessels and spreading out into every nook and cranny of his body.

The next thing he noticed was each of his cells sucking up tiny amounts of the energy from the nearest channel. Actually, now that he was looking at it, it seemed that his energy was almost forcing its way into the cells against their will; if single cells could be said to have a will that is. Under his now watchful inner eye, he saw several cells which he could somehow tell were older get a jolt of energy after which they suddenly seemed young again. Did the energy have anti-aging properties? This sight, combined with the external changes he had noted previously, seemed to indicate that this was the case.

He also noticed a distinct concentration of energy, which he perceived as an orangeish glow, surrounding a specific point in his right arm. It looked like it was clustering around the bone-scar from when he had broken his arm playing on the playground in kindergarten. Not having a reference, he couldn't tell if there was any difference being made, but he resolved to keep an eye on this in the future.

His joints also seemed somewhat brighter with energy than the average tissue; in particular his cartilage. He cast about for other bright spots finding some in his veins centered around what looked like the plaques they always warned you about any time they talked about heart health. There were even some bright spots in his brain, although these looked a bit different. He couldn't quite place how they were different though. Was this the shit that was making him have weird thoughts and see strange visions?

He focused his mind in on one of these energy groups in his brain tissue, bringing the consciousness he had spread out in his body back together to investigate. When he got close enough it to get a good look, he could see countless threads cascading throughout his brain. Denser in some areas than others, but always seeming as delicate as spiders silk. These threads, for lack of a better term, were originating and terminating in various cells of his mind, sometimes intersecting and passing through intervening cells.

As he examined these connections, he could feel when a brain cell that was connected to one of these filaments fired, the electric potential, rather than transferring down to a synapse and resulting in a chemical exchange with adjacent nerve cells, would follow the energy strand connected to the cell until it's terminus, whereupon the cell at the other end would fire.

Thoughts are what makes a person who they are, and he could come to no other conclusion than that his thoughts were being at least rerouted, if not overridden or overwritten. Mitch did not like this at all.

Grasping one of the strands with his consciousness, he attempted to pull it out or break it, or something. As soon as he tried that though all of the connected brain cells fired simultaneously. The electricity raced down the thread too quickly for him to pull away and the voltage hit whatever he was currently like Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle.

Goddamn, TASERs suck.

His current form somehow convulsed and involuntarily flung itself as fast and far from the livewire as it could. Almost skipping the intervening space, his mind slammed into the wall his perception had found at the edge of his body, and then it broke through. Sharp, acidic pain shot through Mitch's entire being, more intense than anything he had felt before. His perception was utterly whited out by the searing agony.

When he came to, he was no longer a ball, but rather a ghostly image of himself, more blue than white but definitely somewhere in between.

Mother Mary sucking seven nuts; did I just kill myself?

He seemed to be restricted to a forward-only viewpoint as if this manifestation had physical eyes and he could not see his body. He was off of the floor, evidently not bound by gravity. He flopped around for a bit like a frog in zero-g somehow managing to turn himself gracelessly to see his hopefully-not-corpse.

His body was collapsed on its side, his eyes were open but rolled back into his head, so all you could see was the whites, and his mouth was open. There may or may not have been some drool dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Not usually the type of look he typically went for, but after a gutwrenching moment he saw his chest slowly rise and fall.

Now that he had confirmed he was not some wraith, he saw there was an infinitesimal strand of the same blue-white whatever-it-is that his current form was made of. He stretched a single finger to touch the thread.

"Do not touch that."

Mitch froze in place and turned his head over his shoulder, flopping around a bit more to get a better view. Standing behind Mitch, arms behind his back, was Kanshou. But, this was not regular Kanshou. This was blue-white ghosty Kanshou.

"A single untrained touch on your lifethread will kill you immediately."

Adding strangeness to weirdness, Kanshou's voice had no accent. It was at this point that Mitch noticed that Kanshou had never moved his mouth, and never actually made a sound; Kanshou's voice had been heard in his mind in much the same way that the Messenger's voice had.

"You must come visit me immediately as soon as the curfew ends."

Ghostshou walked forward towards Ghostichell and stopped only inches before him.

"I do not know how you managed this but do not attempt it again."

"No shit," Mitch attempted to say, but of course was not able to make a sound due to the complete lack of vocal chords, or lungs for that matter. Kanshou looked at him, face as severe as always, but what seemed to be a mildly amused glint in his eye as though he had understood anyway.

"What you have done here has advantages, but is exceedingly dangerous. You have no idea how vulnerable you are like this. Anyone able to take this form could snap your lifethread with barely an effort."

Mitch's incorporeal heart froze at that.

Kanshou lifted one hand and extended it towards Mitch. After the content of Kanshou's last monologue, Mitch started to freak out and try to move away from Kanshou but only managed to spin himself around. If he had had a stomach, he would have been throwing up by now.

"Come tomorrow," Kanshou said before giving Mitch Phantom a backhanded slap in the chest shooting him back towards his meat suit.

Mitch heaved a massive gasp of air and sat bolt upright, after which he collapsed back immediately and began twitching. It felt like his body was almost rebelling against having someone back in the driver's seat, but it calmed down after a moment or two.

Holy fuck that is not what I expected to happen when I woke up this morning.