When Gust woke up, he was in the same spot Saith left him, on the cold wood floor, in a bed made of loose sheets of paper. The immediate area had been cleaned, but the walls remained covered in notes and drawings.

Gust blinked a few times and started rubbing at his right eye. At first, he thought it was swollen shut, but it was wide open. When he closed his left eye, instead of seeing a library, he saw almost perfect darkness. The only bit of light he could detect was emanating from himself. His gut, in fact.

There was a faint maroon aura that Gust first associated with his wound. It was the color of blood, and near his abdomen, so he frantically thought of the knife that was… no longer in his ribs. Gust ran a hand over the spot and found only a scar.

He pulled his robes open and saw a streak of pink skin where he expected to find stitches, or at least a bandage. The red light was coming from somewhere closer to the center of his abdomen, however. “Strange,” he thought.

Weakly, Gust sat up and clenched his eyes shut while rubbing the right side of his head. Even the thought of standing was too much for him. He had heard of concussions causing temporary blindness and assumed he’d hit his head at some point.

Saith suddenly appeared at his side. It was almost silent; Gust only noticed by the wind created by Saith’s motion. The man’s long black hair and purple-starred robes remained still but a few papers lifted into the air. Gust would have been surprised if he weren’t too tired to react to anything.

“How do you feel?” The man asked, his gray eyes wide and clear.

“Like a rag that’s been used up and rung out a few thousand times.” Gust’s entire body felt weak and unclean. Deep-rooted pain covered his skin, but it was a spark compared to the bonfire he had just experienced.

Saith laughed and clapped a hand on Gust’s back like a proud father. When that elicited a small groan, Saith cringed. “Sorry, it’s just… I’m glad it worked. I almost thought you were gone.”

Gust nodded and wasn’t sure what to say. He thought back on the state he found Saith and his library in. They were both a mess. He wanted to ask what the soul sliver had been doing but thought better of it. If the man was growing desperate over his limited life span, now was not the time to remind him of it.

Saith gripped one of Gust’s shoulders. He was more stable than before, but Gust still hadn’t looked up at him and Saith was growing worried. “I assume you haven’t changed your mind?” He stuck out his hand.

Gust finally released his head, though it still pained him, and grabbed Saith’s hand. The man pulled him to his feet and Gust looked into Saith’s eyes. “After you saved my life, what kind of person would I be if I didn’t? …What’s wrong?”

Once Gust was on his feet, he noticed the look of horror on Saith’s face. It was like the man had seen a ghost. He released Gust’s hand and retreated a step before pointing an unsteady finger at Gust’s face. “Y-your eye…”

Suddenly, Gust worried that something was very wrong. He was in pain, but it wasn’t the sharp kind of pain he might feel if his eye had burst. Instead, it was dull and deep, like a sore muscle but several magnitudes worse. He reached up and cupped a hand over his right eye as panic filled his gut. “I can’t see out of it, but I hoped it was temporary. What’s wrong?”

Saith walked away and returned with a mirror, which he held up to Gust’s face.

Slowly, the boy removed his hand, one finger at a time.

The blood drained from his expression. Gust took a step back, then an abrupt step forward and gripped the mirror by its silver edges, hoping there was some kind of trick. But, no, they were his very own eyes looking back at him.

One of them, anyway.

The other was a sphere of pure darkness. No pupil, no iris, just smoky black.

Gust felt a mixture of disgust and confusion. Something like vertigo filled his head and Gust’s vision swam. Dark clouds filled his gaze as his brain struggled to combine the mismatched images his eyes provided. “What the fuck is that!” he eventually asked. The world returned to normal as he held the dark eye shut.

Saith clenched his jaw. “I don’t know. The ones I fought… didn’t have this. Aspects are known to alter one’s body, but your affinity shouldn’t be this deep so soon.”

“Aspects?”

Saith nodded. “Qi takes on the aspects of its surroundings. Your forest is filled with wood qi, which fuels the Mother’s and Pestilence’s paths,” he explained quickly. “Do you feel alright? How about that eye? You say you can’t see out of it?”

Gust nodded. “Not sure I’d use the word alright, but I think I’ll live. And no, nothing but a bit of maroon aura.” When Saith asked him where it originated, Gust put a hand over his stomach. “There’s this dark red thing in my soul emitting it.”

Saith looked startled. He squinted and Gust felt a slight brush against his soul. It was like a shiver that originated in his gut. “I see no such thing. I thought I’d let you rest before mentioning this but… Augustus, there is a piece of your soul missing. At the very center. I’ve never seen anything like it, but with this elixir, that was the least you could have lost,” he sighed.

Gust stared back, blinking. “Missing?” He checked again, but what Gust saw was like a ball of solidified, maroon mana. “You’re telling me you don’t see anything?”

As Saith shook his head, he tilted it. “This thing appears red to you?”

Gust nodded. “Like a solid core of energy, the color of blood.”

Both cultivators, young and old alike, paled as they failed to understand what was happening. Saith’s brow furrowed, and his teeth bared. He checked Gust’s soul again, not bothering to keep his touch light, and the young mage groaned under the pressure.

Still, Saith’s qi sense only detected a dark void in the center of Augustus’s soul, and shadows around it. He was reminded of the core his original body formed so many years ago, but that was silver and sharp. This was nothing.

And yet, it was not. Saith knew this young mage relied on him, trusted him. Gust wouldn’t lie about this. If he said he saw a maroon core, Saith believed him. It was strange, but so were many things in the world of cultivation.

“I will try to keep this simple. A core is a vital step in cultivation. My path uses sword qi, and so I was forced to search out locations dense with such qi. As the aspects get more abstract, they also grow more rare and more powerful. Swords don’t occur in nature, but the basic elements are everywhere.

“Until they form a core, a cultivator must find the type of qi they wish cultivate. Afterwards, they can cycle qi through their core to create your own aspect from within.”

Saith paused as he pivoted toward a different point. “As you may have noticed, sword qi has some effects on those who pass through it.”

Gust’s expression darkened as he thought of the dead boy covered in gashes.

“Your own core,” Saith explained, “must work like any other, but its aspect is a mystery to us both. The powers I encountered were dark and poorly understood, even by those who used them. We called it void qi because it utterly destroyed anything it touched, returning the victim to utter nothingness. Think, Augustus… if we don’t even know what kind of qi you produce, we can’t fully understand what effect it might carry.

“That is why you must never activate this core and keep that eye closed until we know exactly what they can do.”

Fear boiled in Gust’s chest as he listened to the man’s somber words. It seemed like every day made his life more complicated. Just as he was settling in, and his cultivation was going smoothly, Gust had jumped ahead two levels, become all but blind in one eye, and learned that the power in his soul might mysteriously kill him if he ever used it.

The young man wanted to throw up all over again. If this was only the start of his journey, how much worse would it get?

Gust buried his head in his hands. “What am I supposed to do?” he muttered. “How can I even explain this? The Masters ask too many questions already, and they hate all my answers! They’ll probably cut my eye out just so they can learn something! How am I ever going to fight the Patrons if I can barely survive here?!”

Saith straightened his back and seemed to grow sure of himself. “Don’t you worry about that. Tell them about me, in whatever poor detail you can manage,” he laughed. “Just make sure they believe you. Let their fear overwhelm their thirst for power. Even if they see your eye, just say it is a power I have begun working into you.

“Remember, Augustus: Cultivation is filled with ups and downs. It is only perseverance that prevails. You’re my only hope, Gust, I wouldn’t send you out there without the confidence that you would return. This… changes things, yes, but not in such a way that we cannot fix it. You ask what we need to do? Well, something I’ve been giving much thought for the past few weeks.

He formed an uncharacteristically warm smile. “We’re going to teach you a new cultivation method. Two, actually.”