Sechen rested impatiently on the bench out in front of Hoalt’s manor, her legs folded over one metal armrest while her neck bent awkwardly against the other. It had been almost two hours since she left the mansion, and she was regretting telling Wix she had to be back by the next day. If he’d taken that to heart, she’d be waiting here for a long time.

Which was why the sight of a bright white suit slipping out of the main door brought her to her feet in less than five seconds. Wix jogged over as he noticed her, waving an apologetic hello with an accompanying tight smile.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Sechen, but Vault insisted I bring you this before we leave.” He said, removing a small box from his suit and handing it to her. “She said it wasn’t to be opened until you are under my sister’s watch, which does hurt a little, but I can’t say I don’t understand her mistrust. I had to explain everything that had happened with Paui and Runfree, so I’m in hot water with pretty much everyone right now.”

Sechen accepted the gift with a raised eyebrow. “Why’s she giving this to me? I already got something worth my time.” She gestured at her manifested arm. “You sure this isn’t you trying to get into my good graces because I’m friends with Paui?”

“Oh, no; I know that’s impossible.” Wix chuckled, brushing off Sechen’s words with a wave. “Let’s get you home. Paui has a big day tomorrow that I can’t be there to see, and I want at least one person there to support her. I still have to deal with Runfree, and now all the other manifestations, just in case the people who attacked you decide to invade the rest of the city.”

“I think Brynn just has a grudge with us, but I guess it never hurts to be too prepared.” Sechen said with a shrug. “Oh, by the way, what’s your opinion on this stuff that’s in my arm now? Is it going to screw me over?”

Wix leaned in close as Sechen rolled up her sleeve and removed her arm. His eyes grew wide for a split second, but he recomposed himself as he accepted her offered limb. Trailing fingers along her Issi lines didn’t so much as tickle, but felt cold and distant as if he was appraising a priceless artifact; a murmur of interest escaped his lips as Issi flowed from his fingertips, and that was it. He handed her arm back, and Sechen reattached the golden plates.

“I don’t think it will do anything to hamper your Issi, but I also can’t guarantee that it will grant you any real advantages over your manifestation on its own. It’s certainly aesthetically pleasing, there’s no arguing that, but until you attempt to use your Issi with it present you won’t know if it’s a simple additive benefit or if it’s a complete modifier to any Issi that runs through it.” Wix theorized. “One thing I can feel, though, is that it’s stretched extremely thin. You must have received a very small piece of Vault’s work if it had to work itself into that form to coat your manifestation.”

“Huh.” Sechen murmured, looking at her arm from a new angle. The piece she’d experimented on wasn’t that small, was it? It had held one of her halos plenty fine, and when it was a simple lump, it had been the size of both her fists put together. Maybe even larger than that. So where’d the rest of it gone?

The walk back with Wix didn’t shine any light on Sechen’s newfound mystery, since she wasn’t willing to show him anything that could end up making him hate her. He couldn’t find any trace of the missing gold in her system, which meant it had to have migrated somewhere else. Either her headspace or her container were the prime suspects, but her pathways could be gilded right now and she wouldn’t even know it. Wix had no idea how to discern the qualities of her pathways like Prisoner did, so she’d have to wait until she could see him again to get an answer. Whenever that was, since he was tied up helping Metea/Irric for the foreseeable future.

“Tell Paui I wish her good luck.” Wix said with a sad smile as he opened the cabin door for Sechen, but did not step inside himself. “I have a job to do, so I might not get to see her receive the bond she truly deserves. Be there for her, please.”

Sechen nodded seriously. “She’ll have a friend there, you don’t have to worry about that. And I’ll make sure she comes and sees you before we go back to the pillar. But I can’t promise it’ll be a pleasant talk; I don’t think she’s anywhere close to forgiving you yet, since she’s still gotta forgive herself first.”

“I understand. Goodbye for now, Sechen. Take care of my daughter for me.”

“Again, of course.” Sechen said with a wave goodbye. The door clicked shut in front of her, and within moments Thana was standing behind her. She didn’t hear her step up, or even have any reasonable explanation for her being there, but she was starting to understand how Thana worked. “Is Paui doing alright?”

“She is having slight trouble with force Issi, but otherwise is prepared for tomorrow’s grand trial.” Thana stated, her eyes trailing down to Sechen’s arm as she spoke. “May I ask what happened at Hoalt’s manor?”

“It’s a pretty short story, but there are a few details I want to run by you that don’t really make sense to me.” Sechen said with a stretch, stepping past Thana in the direction of the room she shared with Paui. “Well, as you already know, Paui and I got curious about what happened with Elach…”

“And that brings us to right now.” Sechen flourished her arms, then pushed open the door to Paui’s room. Who wasn’t there yet. “When’s Paui supposed to be done with her training for tomorrow?”

“Midnight is the cutoff I’ve set, and is when I assume she’ll be done.” Thana said absentmindedly. “You took an object into your manifestation, but not in the way a practitioner would a focus, and you can’t feel any obvious effects from it. From something created by Vault’s Issi. A manifestation whose power is magnitudes greater than yours. I find that difficult to believe.”

“I know, but it’s the truth.” Sechen raised her arm and ran her other hand down her forearm. “It just feels like my manifestation. But instead of being a pure gold tube, now it’s gold accents covering a tube of murky light. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

Thana tilted her head to the side. “I don’t follow.”

“Right, you don’t know. Well, up until a few days ago, my Issi was golden. Not a nice gold, either; it was like the gold on a watch someone hadn’t taken good care of for a long time. Tarnished beyond belief.” Sechen grimaced at memories of standing next to Revel’s perfect gold with her pale imitation, then shook her head. “Does Issi have some kind of memory to it?”

“Memory would not be the correct word for it.” Thana said, pausing for a moment to think. “Issi you gain exists in two states at once; the state modified for you, and the state it exists in for the manifestation who bonded you. Over time, the second melts away as you cement your understanding and power, but if you are still in that period of growth, then there is a chance that your bonded manifestation’s Issi could be showing through.”

Sechen nodded; Thana’s words made sense, but the gold on her arm didn’t feel like Revel’s Issi. Or the Issi she’d had before her bizarre breakthrough. It felt exactly like the rest of her Issi. Hells, it almost felt more like her Issi than anything else she had. Like it was screaming out to the world that it existed, and challenging anyone to claim otherwise.

“I’m more concerned that you were the one to have the revelation for Vault’s work. She’s worked on this for decades; longer than you’ve lived, and yet you solved a seemingly insurmountable problem on your first glance.” Thana stared blankly at Sechen, yet she felt as if she was being dissected and observed atom by atom. “You aren’t who you say you are. That much is plain. And yet I cannot sense any ill will about you, nor any hidden power. Who are you truly, Sechen?”

“I’m Sechen. That’s it.” She lied. “What you see is everything I am.”

Thana rolled her eyes. “Ah, yes. Of course. How silly of me to ask another woman her secrets. If you wish to keep them close to your chest, don’t be surprised when people start walking away. I will be back with Paui when we are finished. Think on your secrets until I return.”

A puff of Issi was all that remained of Thana, leaving Sechen alone in Paui’s room. Alone with her thoughts. She walked over to a desk and sat down, leaning on her hand as she stared blankly at the wall. Everything had changed so quickly, yet her headspace was still a blank stain on her mind. A stain that prevented her from moving forward. With all the changes that she’d gone through, it seemed that she’d exhausted all her lateral progress. She could find something to make a focus, and then she’d have one more technique at her disposal, but that was it. No power. The same Issi reserves. And a broken headspace that might make using said focus impossible.

Her hands shook as she came closer and closer to the answer she’d been inching towards for years. All she had left to fix were her hands… and her head. Prisoner’s routine had been pushing her body past the breaking point so she could rebuild it stronger, and now she’d been stuck on fixing her hands for days now. The last step before she had to confront her own mind. A step that she could have breezed past nights ago.

A step that, with a flex of her fingers, and a dismissal of her Issi, she completed. Stretching her muscles and tendons until they nearly snapped, then rushing in with Issi to fill the rips and tears. Leaking into minuscule fractures in her bones and settling in comfortably, building them back far stronger than before. Minutes of straining, painful work that ended anticlimactically with utter success. Her murky light dwelled in every part of her body, not quite flesh and not quite Issi, completing her as the abomination that she was. She drew the empowering Issi away from her eyes, everything going blurry for a moment before a dull glow overtook her vision. Her eyes were fixed.

Issi slid away from her ears, a muffled ringing overtaking all other sounds, then disappearing as she fixed herself. It was far too easy; her new Issi didn’t take more than an intention to work, and she barely had to direct it. Her sinuses, mouth, and throat buzzed with the taste and scent of stale air. Issi washed them clean. Her jaw creaked, locked in place, then adjusted itself to the perfect position. She licked her teeth, looking for anything else she could fix, but there wasn’t anything. All that was left was her skull, her brain, and her headspace. One fix that could kill her, one that was a larger undertaking, and one that scared her more than anything.

Fixing her skull was like putting together a puzzle with broken, missing, and misplaced pieces. She couldn’t have guessed how much damage her long hair was hiding; dings and bumps that went straight from skin to brain without anything in between. She wondered if this was the main reason she couldn’t stand being Issi-less for long periods of time even after she’d fixed so many things, chuckling and shaking her head as she chastised herself. Of course it was the reason.