Her room was completely dark when Yuriko opened her eyes. It was still the Celestial refraction, of course, so nothing much would change until the next midnight. She didn’t know how long she had slept either. The events of the evening lasted well past midnight and staying up that long wasn’t something she did often.

The intrinsic way she could tell time, how long it had been since sunrise and how long until dusk, was missing. Truthfully, it was the thing she hated the most about the Refraction. It untethered her from her schedule by making her unable to accurately track the passage of time. It wasn’t bad when she was awake but it was worst just after waking. The feeling of… loss, was the keenest then.

She knew that her brothers weren’t affected in the same way as she was. Rami in particular had a weak time sense and he often came home later in the afternoon when he was out playing. As for Marron and Kato, they just adapted to it.

Marron later told her that when she entered the Tidelands and beyond, that intrinsic sense stopped working or became strange. And Kato had already been exposed to the Shallows and Mid Marches, so he knew what it was like.

As for Yuriko, she couldn’t imagine being unable to accurately judge the passage of time, and in truth, it was something she dreaded having to face.

She allowed her Anima to flare beyond her skin, shedding as much light as if she was a bonfire.

“Meeooow!”

Hunter Kitty protested the sudden illumination. He leapt away from the corner of the bed and hid under it. From the way his tail suddenly looked like a bottle brush, Yuriko thought the cause of his distress wasn’t just from seeing the unexpected light.

“Hunter?” she called out softly.

“Myaa.”

“Come up here, please.”

Slowly, a pair of green eyes peeked out from under the bed. Then he slinked over to her and rubbed his body against her side.

“It will be fine. We’ll get through this,” she whispered tenderly as she stroked his head and his back. The cat leaned against her arm, circled around her, then got on her lap. His raised fur slowly relaxed as he did a milk tread over her pyjamas for a while then settled on her, effectively trapping her in bed.

With a chuckle, she lay back down. It was a day of reflection and fasting after all. She allowed her Anima to remain flared, letting the pressure from the ambient Chaos press against her.

In the weeks since she achieved her expanded Anima, she allocated nearly an hour every day flaring it against the external pressure. It strained her Anima initially, forming cracks that were healed over by distilled Chaos. The amount of Anima beyond her skin had been an inch if she just kept it unrestrained. Now, it has reached three inches away.

According to Damien, it needed to reach about ten inches before she could advance to the next Anima level, so it seemed as if she had made good progress. Unfortunately, after the first couple of inches, the ambient Chaos of Rumiga no longer pressured her Anima. She could leave her Anima flared all day and it wouldn’t strain at all.

So how was she to grow stronger then? The answer was surprisingly simple, so much so that she didn’t think of it until Damien told her, in that annoyingly superior voice.

Head to a place with denser ambient Chaos.

The Tidelands and the Chaos Sea beyond. Perhaps the Chaos Channel running in the middle of Rumiga City would work too, except there was no way she would be allowed there. For one thing, the quay was still being repaired and, for another, the events of the last Chaos Storm were far from being resolved.

“Any other way to train my Anima?” she asked Damien.

Manipulate it.

“Huh?” had been her answer, but her Ancestor didn’t say anything else. At least he wasn’t peeking through her eyes and saying anything impertinent.

She remembered one time in Martial Science class, right at the end, when he suddenly shouted in her mind to go down the hall and through a door. The urgency in his voice spurred her to follow his orders and she practically ran inside.

The room was the shower room, the girl’s showers thankfully. And her classmates were there in various forms of undress. Damien hooted and leered in her mind, laughing uproariously.

“Hyo ho ho ho!” his laugh went and it was all she could do not to turn scarlet.

Well, it wasn’t as if she had no right to be there, but she could feel his glee bleeding through whatever barriers kept their minds separate, along with some other feelings that she’d rather not examine. Or remember.

Manipulate it.

He meant her Anima, of course. Her Anima, not her Animus. Something she had never done before and didn’t even know was possible. It took her those intervening weeks to realise what it meant.

Her flared Anima was like a flame, meaning it had a shape similar to a fire. Thick near her but tapering away in tongues and embers above. Extending her control beyond her body and into the extended part was like moving a third limb. Her Anima shrank and became denser. Not solid by any means but more like steam. Considering that it was ephemeral--like light--before, that was quite a change.

From three inches away, she could condense it to a steam-like quality but it only exuded a third of an inch past her skin. At that point, she was surprised when the steam billowed when a breeze hit it. She didn’t feel the breeze which caused the curtains in her room to move.

It was strange and she wasn’t sure of the implications at all, but she did feel a tiny bit of strain. She would have to keep it condensed for hours before cracks would again form in her Anima. It was slight progress where there was none to be had.

Yuriko opened her eyes when she felt Hunter Kitty shift on her lap. He padded up to her belly, then over her chest, making her wince when he tread on her bosom. It was weird. His claws couldn’t even pierce her skin no matter how he tried but her budding breasts were tender even to the slightest touch.

Her Anima, which had been condensed, reverted back to flames when she got distracted. Hunter sniffed her nose and licked it, his coarse tongue tickling her. She patted his head before she picked him up and placed him on the mattress. He meowed in protest, of course, but she couldn’t just lie in bed all day.

Besides, she was hungry.

A hand against the wall panel activated the lights. She did her morning ablutions and got dressed for the day. She wouldn’t do any physical training today and would stick to meditation and reflection instead. No studying either despite how close the end of the first term was. Not today.

She had reached into the coldbox to pull out some food when she remembered that she was supposed to fast. With a sigh, she returned the snack and drank some tea instead while thinking of all she’d accomplished the past Season.

A few days ago, Damien had judged her ready to use Body Forging. The first thing she had to do was gather as much ambient Chaos as she could and distil it. As soon as her Anima was saturated, she started the pattern for the technique.

Apprehension had filled her heart as she recalled the last time she tried it and experienced only pain. But she need not have worried. Her Animus circulated between her body and her Anima, taking motes of distilled Chaos at every pass.

The strands dug into her bones, cracked and repaired them continuously. The pain wasn’t as bad as she expected, with her mind feeling numb more than anything else. Other strands went around the rest of her body. The first pass damaged and broke down the fibres, the next one repaired it. It was an ongoing cycle of destruction and creation that went mind-numbingly long.

It was towards the end that she noticed something though: the way the strands broke her muscles, fragmented her skeleton, and the way they repaired it, left a strange pattern. At first glance, it looked like runescript was being etched into her body, but those weren’t any runes she recognised.

It also made her sweat blood and some sticky black substance through her pores. It was a good thing Damien reminded her to do this naked in the bathtub. All she needed to do afterwards was pull the drain and scrub out the remaining ick that managed to cling to the sides.

And because she was forewarned, she hadn’t ripped any of her clothes while putting them on. Well, she still needed to buy new stuff anyway since she had grown taller and, er…wider. At the hips anyway.

“You need to buy brassiere,” Krystal pointed out the morning of the cotillion. “I suppose you can keep wearing your chemises but when you’re active, I can see them bounce.” Krystal snorted. “And I’m not the only one who noticed.”

“Eh, but... “

“When will you decide to do it on your own? Hmph!” Krystal snorted. “After the Refraction, we’ll go and buy you new underthings.”

“...alright.” Yuriko sighed.

Well, they got tender when her bosom bounced around when she trained. But maybe she should just bind her chest? No, too much bother to do every morning. She supposed buying bras was the fastest and easiest way around the problem.

It was probably noon by the time she had her fill of reflections and fasting. And she was really, really hungry! Grumbling to herself, she left her suite. The hallways were dimly lit by the light panels, shedding just enough light to make avoiding the walls and furniture easy.

The lounge and the cafeteria were well lit though, and mostly full of dormers, both male and female. She saw Krystal at the lounge reading a book, a pocket novel with a well-worn cover. Mikel was sitting next to her reading something else.

Yuriko headed to the cafeteria where she was fed a modest meal of bread and stew. She ate quickly and returned to the lounge to sit with her friends. Both of them welcomed her with a smile, though they didn’t speak much.

“The Runaway Bride” was the title of Krystal's book. And as usual, the cover art was of a half-naked man with a finely sculpted body, the same bronze complexion as Heron’s, and a scantily-dressed blonde woman. The woman was running away with a coquettish look.

“Where did you even find that book, Krys?” Yuriko snorted.

“Gobble-dy-Book. Down on Crafter’s Lane,” Krystal answered absently. There was a faint flush on her cheeks as she read and her lips twitched into a grin every now and then.

Hah! Your friend’s got excellent taste.

Yuriko rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. Mikel just grinned and gave Krystal a sidelong glance, and Yuriko a rather pointed one.

“Did you enjoy your evening?” Mikel asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Yup.”

“Hoh, so it’s Braden?”

“He’s not an excellent dancer.” Yuriko shrugged. “Just good enough to forgive the flaws.”

“Heh, just dancing?”

“Just about, yeah.”

“Hmm, poor boy. Anyway, you’re not returning home over the break, yeah?”

“Probably not.”

“Volunteering?”

“Or training. Or reading, I guess. Besides, Kato won’t go home either so it’s not as if I don’t have family here. You?”

“I’m not sure yet, actually,” Mikel shrugged. “I think Agaza forces us to intern during breaks but I’m not sure it’s applicable in the first year.”

“Do you have a choice where you’ll go if you have to intern?”

“I guess? But probably only if the quota for that location isn’t full.”

“Want to head to the same place?”

“Sure, that would be nice.”

“Great!”

“Any idea where that’ll be?”

“Not at all!”

Mikel blinked at her then rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“Ehehehe.”

The rest of the Celestial Refraction passed easily. Most times, nothing happened during this day, but there hadn’t been a major catastrophe in the Empire that didn’t occur during Refraction. Like the night before, everyone stayed up well into the ‘night’.

The Clock Tower in the middle of the city suddenly became much less superfluous when it chimed the hour.

At midnight, the heavens returned. The Half Moon and the Chaos streams illuminated the skies. A sigh of collective relief from all the people living in Rumiga sounded. At least nothing had happened, and that was honestly the best thing to start the Two thousand and ninety-eighth year After the Founding of the Empire with.