A couple of ideas that had been thrown around had stayed with me. One was the idea that the complexity of the human brain could be both a blessing and a curse. It was true that there was much for mana to consume, but it was also true that there was much inside of it mana could make a reality out of.

It was true that mana was incredibly corrosive, but in theory, it hadn’t been designed only as a power of destruction, but also as a force of creation. It was a newborn fundamental force, the fifth one after gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong; still, differently from the other four, it acted in response to final causes like ideas, aims and purposes, and not mechanical ones. It would have been reasonable for many humans to be able to make use of this to change their bodies in a way suited to the new environmental conditions.

Secondly, there was the fact that maybe the humans finding themselves in the midst of a reality-shifting scenario would be able to take advantage of that and create a space of freedom for themselves from the laws of the world and survive against all odds and logic. Indeed, if the laws of the world were being questioned, there was no reason why people couldn’t do the same and live on as actual anomalies.

Such a state would have most certainly been highly unstable, but it should have been capable of keeping humans alive until the stabilisation of the new world and the birth of the first geogenais. They would have protected the surviving remnants of humanity by keeping mana at bay and giving humanity the chance to adapt and evolve.

Nevertheless, I didn’t know what the actual explanation to the question of the survival of humanity during the Age of Sorrow was. It could have been either the first, the second or a mix of the two.

Anyway, it was irrelevant.

The only thing that mattered was the understanding that anomalies could exist in this world. After all, I had enough proof for it. The proof had been with me for all this time and I hadn’t even noticed it, as I had always played this world by the rules, without ever questioning them. The proof that anomalies could exist was with me even now or, better said, it was me.

I was the continuity error. Although this was my world, it wasn’t my world, the one I was born in. For all this time, I had forgotten that I was a foreigner and that the body I had been wearing wasn’t my actual body. I had just assumed I had become an integral part of this reality, which followed a different set of rules with respect to my previous one.

I had been playing with the cards I had been given, without ever questioning if I had to play this game. I was stuck here, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t cheat or add some cards to the deck. The idea of disregarding the laws of reality was certainly absurd, but even archumans were quite known to do this regularly: spellcasters regularly distorted the logic of this world and the archumans who visited the outside disregarded to various degrees the laws of those lands. There was no reason why I couldn’t do the same but in reverse, especially considering who I was.

From the smallest pebble you could see on the side of a road, to the brighter star shining in the infinite sky, everything in this world had a common origin. I consciously knew it, but I never truly understood what it meant. Today, it finally settled in and I could finally affirm it with actual cognition.

‘I am this world maker.’

The world I had designed had tried to make me bow down to it, but I didn’t yield. From the depths of my being, far beyond my flesh and bones, a scream surged. It was a curse against the cosmos, a scream of defiance against the world, a declaration of dominion. The flesh I had been donning began to boil and fall off and my bones began to shatter and rearrange themselves.

It was now time to mould a new body, one who could properly be called my own, and will it into existence. The dirt surrounding me began to morph, moved by nothing besides my volition, and mixed itself with the little remaining blood inside the carcass that contained me.

I was certain that normally I would have needed an in-depth understanding of human anatomy and physiology to make a functioning organism, but this situation was an exceptional one and my mind had gone beyond what it was usually capable of; which, to be frank, was not particularly remarkable.

With the new amalgam, I moulded new organs, from the heart to the smallest gland, and placed them inside the trunk of the soon to be disposed of carcass. I broke the bones and rearranged the fragments, compressed them to the limit and, warping them according to my will, put together new ones.

I spread the flesh, the muscles and the corroded skin thin, making them into threads which were weaved in new patterns resembling the old ones. Once they were finished, the newly produced meat was worn over the remade bones.

I trapped the dust floating through the air and compressed it into crystals which were used to realise a pair of eyes which replaced the blinded ones. I carved ears into the side of the head and laid out the nervous system, the circulatory system and the others.

This entire process required a long time, how much I couldn’t tell. After the long agony, I could finally open the new pair of eyes I had built. My eyes. I savoured the cool night breeze blowing against my skin and turned my gaze to the starry night sky.

I was human now, one of the old world, but I could return to be more. The last step of my evolution was still missing. I exposed myself to air and mana and I let them inundate my body. Mana dug in the otherworldly flesh and gnashed its teeth at it. In response, my flesh, under my guide, laughed at the invader and warped. An explosion of aura surged from it, annihilating every single strand of mana.

My aura expanded towards the outside, generating a vacuum where not even air could exist. This lasted only for an instant, as I had reign only over myself and not over the world I had turned away from. Mana retaliated quickly against the intruder. Atmospheric pressure rose suddenly and shoved my aura back under my skin. Before my aura could withdraw inside my body, I felt the presence of “something” else now intimately mixed together with it. It was similar to what I had felt while traversing the time anomaly.

I was born anew and I finally felt comfortable in my body. I smiled. For the first time, I felt truly alive. I was joyful, even if soon I would have to abandon the realm I had just reached.

There where I was looking, beyond the stars and between the threads of space and time, rested a pair of eyes, fixed on me. I stretched my hand towards them, to pluck them out of the sky. Before I could reach them they disappeared, and the sky returned serene.

When the morning came, I had regained my bearings. The experience of the previous days, although still vivid, was slowly becoming less defined. My previously liberated essence was now residing in a body of flesh and blood, which came with severe limitations.

It was unavoidable: even after all that happened, I was human in origin and my body was an integral part of my being. I needed to cultivate it. I couldn’t wait to show Faye my masterpiece and ask her help to further improve it. There wouldn’t be any more risks now regarding forming procedures, as I could now simply revert back to a previous state and move my inwards around freely, had any error been made.

Enjoying my newfound state, I waited for the morning to come.