“Well, that was unexpected.” Caeden laughed. “I had no idea what was going to happen, but I wasn't expecting that.”

“Obviously.” Lily looked between him and her shroud sigil, eyes wide, “This is real. Oh my shroud.”

“So, you want to test it out?” Caeden couldn’t stop smiling. Lily’s look of complete open-mouthed disbelief made him want to burst out laughing for some reason.

“YES!” Lily jerked to her feet, her expression shifting to child-like glee.

“Ok, come at me.” Caeden spread his arms wide, backing up to his previous position.

Her shroud sigil vanished, replaced by her manifested shroud forming wide arcs between them. Lily started making large chunks of ice inside her shroud, sometimes fumbling and dropping them to the ground, where they shattered. “Ugh, new domain means all my control is gone. This is frustrating.” The open-mouthed smile on her face didn’t match her words. Lily was practically laughing as she made boulders of ice the size of her torso, only to lose control of her shroud and drop them.

Caeden could feel the temperature in the room dropping from all the ice Lily was making. She now had a pile in front of her big enough to come up to her knees and wide enough for Caeden to lay down on. Suddenly, her shroud winked out, the manifestations gone.

“Oh, I still have the same capacity. That’s too bad.” Lily was giggling while staring at what she had made.

“Why don’t you try reabsorbing it?” Caeden suggested.

“Oh, yeah, duh.” Lily shook her head. “Sorry, I’m just really excited. I have options now! This domain has so much more offensive potential than Fog. Oh, I’m so totally going to kick Ander’s ass once I get my control in order.” A borderline feral grin replaced Lily’s elated expression. She had to wait a moment to form a small chunk of shroud that would let her start absorbing the ice she had just made.

“Does it feel different?” Lily gave him a weird look. “Like, I have two shrouds, so I’m wondering how a splinter feels. Is it like a separate source inside you, or what?”

“Um, I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not like what you said.” Lily stared into the air for a long moment. “I guess the best way to put it is that the source I already had now has two openings. If that makes sense? I can switch which one is open and access a different domain.”

“Have you tried that?”

“No, but here.” Lily had finished absorbing all the ice, and now she held her hand out, shroud manifested over it as a solid chunk. Just as before, the colors changed, and the material shifted until a batch of fog hovered where the ice had been. “See. It’s easy. Switching is almost instinctive.”

“Do you want to try again?” Caeden couldn’t help asking.

“What?”

“I still have Physical Enhancement. Want to try and make another splinter? I have no idea what you would get.” Caeden held up his right hand, coating it in shroud.

“I don’t know…” Lily looked contemplative. Caeden didn’t get the impression she was afraid, more that she was giving it serious thought. “I think I want to practice with Ice for a bit to see how much I like it before I worry about another one.”

“Ok, let's get to it!” Caeden was equally excited to see what Lily’s new splinter could do.

The next half hour was a learning experience for both of them, but mainly for Lily. She found that she enjoyed Ice a lot, but there were some drawbacks. Lily explained that one of the advantages she enjoyed with Fog was the low shroud cost. She could fill the entire stadium they had been in for invasion training with fog even at her low IP. Ice was much more costly to make if you measured it by mass. That meant her capacity added up to a lot less when she used Ice.

The obvious trade-off was her vastly increased offensive potential. After a bit of acclimation, Lily was already showing significant improvement in her control. She was making more refined shapes than the vaguely circular chunks of ice she had started with. She started forming spikes and shields, increasing her versatility over the course of a single fight.

“Ok, I’m kinda loving this,” Lily was smiling goofily as she refined an ice shard until she was holding a rough approximation of a knife. “The biggest problem is the low durability.”

Caeden shrugged. He had spent this whole time working on his thorn, using it to shatter whatever Lily threw at him. He had even managed to get a second one going. “Not much to do about that. Ice is fragile.”

“Actually, I was thinking about that.” Lily spoke, thinking aloud, “Ice is my domain now, so why shouldn’t I be able to make it more durable?”

“I don’t know. Is that a thing? I thought object shrouds could just create their domain from nothing. Can you do more than that?” Caeden looked at her ice knife curiously.

“I should be able to. I can’t change this thing,” She converted the knife back into shroud, “But if I focus…” Lily stopped talking, fully concentrating on a slowly growing piece of ice over her hand, her shroud wrapped around it. It expanded until she was looking at a virtual replica of the knife she had just made. “Alright, let's see.”

Lily grabbed the knife from her shroud and chucked it at the ground as hard as she could. It bounced with an almost metallic clanging sound. “Ha! Totally works.” She scooped the knife back up with a shroud-formed hand. “My control is getting way better.”

She inspected the blade, noting that it had chipped along the edge in several places and had a large crack running through it. “It’s not perfect, but it’s worth working on. Though that cost a ton of shroud. Easily five times what it should have.”

“The cost of changing the fundamental properties of your domain,” Caeden smirked. “It’s got to have a cost.”

“Yeah,” Lily nodded. Then her face broke out into a borderline evil grin, “I have a great idea.”

What followed was the most terrifying ten minutes of Caeden’s life.

Lily switched her splinter and flooded the entire room in thick fog, to the point where Caeden could barely see his hands or even his torso. He used aura sense to try and track Lily and any attacks she might throw at him, only to find that difficult. He couldn’t narrow down her presence to any one position. It felt like she was all around him, and he couldn’t sense any incoming attacks. Unnerved, Caeden tried to enhance just his skin, which was still a work in progress. It was at least partially successful, as he didn’t take on his fully enhanced form, only growing a foot. His musculature was partially enhanced, and his skin had shifted from its normal chocolate coloration to the gold with purple highlights that he was familiar with.

Suddenly, Lily’s Ice knife glanced off his torso, right in front of him. It dragged along his skin but could not penetrate or do much of anything other than cut his robe. It still made Caeden jump out of his skin. He hadn’t sensed a single thing. It was like the knife appeared out of nowhere. This process, knife attacks out of the fog, continued until Caeden ran out of shroud. When it dropped, he admitted defeat.

Lily absorbed every trace of her domain in the room, clearing it out. “Well, that was fun.” She wore a self-satisfied smirk.

“What was that? I couldn't tell where you were. You just completely disappeared.” Caeden was in awe. It had been a perfect series of attacks. He was left wondering what he could have done to prevent it. If it wasn't for his own shrouds defenses, he would have been on the ground bleeding.

“My aura class today was about how to hide yourself from aura sense. I liked it a lot. Apparently, I’m very good at it.” Lily then transformed into a cloud of fog, robe and all. “This is how I was moving around.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Right? It’s the only good thing I can do with Fog.” She shifted back. “I got really good with infusion for…reasons.” She obviously didn’t want to talk about it. “Anyway, I can become indistinguishable from normal fog. Then I was just holding the knife and hiding it and my partially solidified hand from your aura sense. Pretty great, right? Though I didn't manage to do anything to you.”

“Yeah, ‘cuz I gave up!” Caeden laughed. “The low cost of your shroud means you have a lot more stamina than most people. I’m assuming that that form is intangible?”

Lily wobbled her hand side to side. “Sort of. Shrouds can still touch me, but basically, all physical objects just pass right through.”

“Yeah, so you become an intangible ghost with a knife.” Caeden shook his head in amazement. “All you have to do is keep your enemy on their guard and consuming shroud until they run out, and then they’re at your mercy.”

“It’s not that simple.” Lily refuted. “I was coming up on my limit too. Fully infusing myself like that comes with a constant drain, just like anyone else. I can’t hold on to it forever.”

“That’s a problem with an obvious solution.” Caeden couldn’t help but point out.

“Yeah, increase my capacity. But that’s a long-term solution.”

“Not that long term. From what the Wolfe’s were saying, we’ll be learning whatever miracle technique the school is holding onto in the next few days. If we use our spare time to get you trained up…” Caeden left that thought hanging.

“Ok, that’s an idea with some merit. But I don’t want you or Erik to be spending too much time trying to help me. You have your own work to do.” Lily gave him a stern glare.

“Helping you helps us too, you know. Plus, based on everything I’ve seen and been told, Erik and I honestly have enough combat ability for the foreseeable future. You’re the one who needs the most help right now.” Caeden kept his tone as neutral as possible. He didn’t want to imply to Lily that he thought she was weak, he didn’t, or that he and Erik were better than they were, they weren’t, but give her an honest assessment of their situation as he saw it.

“That’s pretty fair.” Lily nodded. Nothing in her expression implied that she had taken offense. “But just because the two of you are ahead of the curve right now is a terrible reason not to take this time to solidify that advantage. We have more information about what’s coming next than almost the entire student base. We all need to abuse that until the advantage disappears.”

“You’re right,” Caeden nodded. “I just don’t want you to get left behind because we got caught up in getting ahead ourselves. More than that, I want you to know that. If you’re struggling and we can help, I want you to say so.”

“Is this about earlier, with Ander?” Lily stared at him suspiciously.

“I know it's not my place to ask, and you don't have to tell; we just met after all-'' Caeden started to stumble through what to say, not really knowing what he was actually trying to convey.

“I’m going to stop you right there.” Lily held up a hand. “There’s a lot of messed up things going on with my family, as I’m sure you’ve deduced. I have been dealing with it literally since I was old enough to understand what was happening. I’m over it, for the most part. I really don’t want to talk about it. I appreciate the concern and the help, which I will accept. I trust you and Erik a lot more than anyone else I’ve ever known, but that’s not a high bar to clear, and I met you yesterday. Let’s focus on mutually supporting each other through a stressful and intense curriculum, and if I feel like talking about my brother, or my father, I’ll let you know. Sound good?”

“Yes.” Caeden immediately responded, letting out a relieved sigh. “I didn’t want you to feel like you had to talk about it, but I wanted you to know I was here for you if you did, and I wasn’t sure how to convey that without sounding like a dick.”

“Yeah, figured that out,” Lily stated blithely. “It's kind of you to try and be mindful of my situation.”

“So, did you want to try splintering again?” Caeden offered.

“Yeah, I’m feeling way more confident about Ice than I thought I would, and I’m curious if we can do it again.” Lily nodded, her demeanor shifting with the topic change. Caeden felt like he got his first real look today at the immense will he had noticed in her eyes on that arrival platform. The generally fun and happy girl he had come to know over the last two days wasn’t even the beginning of Lily’s depths.

“Great!”

Caeden wasn’t sure how to go about splintering her shroud again, considering he couldn’t do the same thing he had done with Sharp. Physical Enhancement was a completely different beast, and he was stumped. They settled on just running her shroud over his hand when he had his own infused, hoping to get a reaction. Now that he thought about it, Caeden was much less optimistic about this working.

For a while, that pessimism proved true. Their first attempt was a failure, with Lily’s grey mass wavering around Caeden’s golden hand as nothing happened. The next few attempts after that were duds as well. They finally got something when Caeden decided to summon his shroud sigil. It was a random idea that he fully expected to do nothing, but when Lily moved her shroud over the Golden throne with purple velvet padding, Caeden felt that tingle again. A spark jumped between their shrouds. Or at least, it tried to. To Caeden, it felt like the spark got halfway there and then died.

“Use your sigil too.” Caeden was practically giddy. He liked the idea of splintering, of being able to grow your own abilities. Seeing it in action again so soon after the first time was exciting.

Lily formed her own sigil, the mass of grey with white and blue highlights collapsing in on itself to form a floating flower, all the outer petals grey with the inner petals alternating white and blue. It wasn’t the same flower that her Ice shroud sigil showed. “It’s a lotus, in case you were wondering. I don’t know what my Ice sigil is.”

Something in his expression must have given Caeden away. “I was wondering.”

“I figured.”

She hovered her sigil over Caeden’s hand, and that spark happened again. Suddenly, Caeden’s sigil separated itself from his body and began to float as a fully realized object. Inexorably drawn together, Caeden’s sigil and Lily’s were pulled toward each other. Caeden no longer felt like he was even involved in the process. His shroud was acting through him.

“Caeden, I can’t stop it!” Lily’s concerned frown matched Caeden’s.

“Me neither. I don’t know why it’s different.” That pull fully snapped into place as Lily’s foggy lotus came to hover in the empty seat of Caeden’s resplendent throne.

Caeden felt a surge rush through him as more shroud funneled out of him and into the sigil than he could ever hold on his own. It viscerally reminded him of Forged Infinity's creation. That sense of helplessness and inevitability came back in full force. There was less shroud flowing through him than that time, but it was still a vast amount. Thick bands of purple and gold flowed like liquid velvet and molten metal from his chest, down his arm, and up into the throne. Caeden could see similar bands flowing off Lily; hers rendered in grey, blue, and brilliant white.

There was a snapping sensation of something being completed and no longer requiring more that resounded through Caeden, and the constant flow of energy stopped. The sigils, both his and Lily’s, began to glow in their respective colors, painting the room in a kaleidoscope of shades.

When the glow vanished, Lily’s sigil had changed. It was still a lotus, but it now was primarily white, with the inner petals being the same sky blue, alternating with grey, and new petals of dark black shot through with veins of metallic gold. The texture had also changed, shifting from the ephemeral fogginess to a more solid structure that was almost…fluffy.

“Ohmyshroud ohmyshroud.” Lily was practically hyperventilating.

“Lily? Are you ok? Did something go wrong?” Caeden reached over to her slowly.

Her gaze snapped to him from the empty air she had been staring at. “Oh, Caeden. We are so fucked.”

“Please elaborate.” He answered slowly, trying to maintain his calm.

“It’s Cloud now.”

“So your new splinter is cloud? What’s wrong with that?” He didn’t understand the absolute panic Lily was displaying.

“No! You changed my shroud, Caeden!” Lily shouted. “I don't have Fog anymore; it's fucking Cloud now!”

“This is significant?”

“Yeah, it's significant!” Lily shot back. “You evolved my shroud! That’s like, the magnum opus of the shrouded world! The Church considers it a blessing from the One Shroud when it happens. It’s rare as hell, rarer than duel shrouded or category 0 or anything else. It’s literally less than one in a million! And you just made. That. Happen! On purpose!”

“I wouldn’t say it was on purpose…” Caeden hedged.

“Not the time! So not the time!” Lily was practically shaking, “You don’t get it. If anyone knows you can do this, they will strap you into a box and never let you out. You will spend eternity constantly evolving shrouds endlessly. No one can know. Families would do anything to get a hold of this. You just became the single most valuable asset in the entire Central Authority, maybe the whole Starry Sea. Do you get it?”

“...Can I tell Erik?”

“...You can probably tell Erik. No one would believe him anyway.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”