Caeden's mind crashed back into his body. Unlike moving into the soul plane, which felt like everything was falling away, this felt like the world was crashing down on him. As the researcher had warned, Caeden immediately got a splitting headache. At the same time, the memories of his years spent on the soul plane immediately and rapidly started to fade.

He could remember the beginning and the end quite clearly, but the middle portion disappeared in moments. After only a few seconds, Caeden felt like he had spent maybe two months there instead of years. Luckily, he hadn't forgotten anything important. He thought. At the very least, he remembered all the pertinent instructions on how to avoid further soul damage. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that the entity had known about this rapid onset amnesia because he had repeated those instructions multiple times when they knew they were approaching the end.

Now Caeden was coming down from several intense and rapid changes in his cognition. At the same time, he was experiencing the full effects of his Sharp integration. Many things were happening at once, but one pressing need pushed aside all the others.

Deep inside, Caeden felt his understanding and connection to Sharp intensify and change. The connection he had formed on the soul plane exploded with power. A crimson knife dripping blood formed on the skin of his left, maimed hand. Shroud poured through it, infusing his body in ever-intensifying amounts. It flooded through him, overwhelming his body.

In that wave of power, Caeden began to change.

His body broke down, his physical substance shifting into an expression of raw power. His flesh and bones melted into strands of crimson. He underwent a fundamental shift, and as his body was pulled back together, it was in a new form.

He had a long, sinuous, scaled body. Sharp fangs, a sensitive nose, and fluffy wings. Caeden had achieved Embodiment. He was a winged snake, a Couatl with blood-red wings and bright crimson scales. He had reached the pinnacle of a shrouded's transformation, achieving the vaunted rank of True Shroud.

He was also about a foot long, with a wingspan of three feet. Noodle was bigger. The baby dragon had him beat on length by over a foot. His Embodiment was one of the smallest monsters Caeden had ever seen. It was incredibly underwhelming.

But that was to be expected. Caeden's worries about his crappy Incarnation and Embodiment had been laid to rest. The reason why Toolset was so weak, one of the weakest kinds of Incarnation possible, and the reason why his Embodiment was a lame 10 IP monster was all due to his malformed soul. Once he achieved complete integration, his actual higher forms would be revealed instead of the weak ones he had now.

That didn't make this moment any less disappointing.

Before his friends could comment, Caeden shifted back to his human form. Once again, his body was swept up in a rush of power as his body shifted to energy before returning to his familiar form. Well, almost the same.

The moment he was back to his traditional form, Caeden remembered Samantha Soarise and her obsidian arm. Lily had once said that it was an artifact of her Embodiment. That, before she reached that higher form, she had lost her arm. And reaching it had brought it back.

It was something he had kept in the back of his mind and the reason he'd never had his hand fixed. Samantha had encouraged him not to. And now he was seeing the fruits of that decision. More than he ever expected. Looking at his left side, all the injuries he sustained from the fight with Jawrule and Kevin, as well as his missing fingers, had been healed. He was whole again.

But the missing portions were not normal dark-toned flesh like the rest of him. Instead, his fingers and large portions of his musculature were covered in red scales. His pointer and middle finger, newly regenerated, had claws! A part of his Embodiment had leaked into his form, just like Captain Saoirse. Now he was interested to see what would happen when his integration was complete and he gained the proper versions of his higher forms. Would his Embodied parts shift to reflect that or stay the same?

Even these changes weren't the only reward from his decades in the soul plane. Caeden felt his Invasion Pressure skyrocket. He felt like the world was clearer and everything was easier. Sharp responded to his will in a way it never had before. With a flicker of thought, Caeden created a dozen thorns without even using the mnemonic. Before, he had only managed three. It was like he had spent his entire life living with weights on his shroud, and now they were gone.

System confirmed access. Reinstating control over forms 100-899. Further restrictions lifting due to integration. New schematic unlocked. Integration and soul damage monitoring now accessible. Please stand by. Processing necessary to remove further restrictions due to integration. Estimated time: One week.

Caeden heard Forged Infinity going through a list of changes. It seemed reaching fifty percent integration with Sharp right off the bat would pay off immediately. Well, not immediately. But soon. If Caeden had to guess, his shrouded weapon needed time to measure and adapt to the immense changes his soul and body had just undergone.

System message: Access to facility 83420 has been expanded by administrator.

And there was the gift he had been promised. It seemed he was an extra-dimensional entity of his word.

Administrator message received. Relaying now. Hey, feel free to take whatever you find. No one's using the place anymore, and all the stuff in there is just sitting around. I don't need it, so go wild. Take care, kiddo.

Well, that was decidedly more emotional than what Caeden was expecting. Maybe the researcher wasn't so cold-hearted. He was just super awkward. Either way, Caeden was thankful for any help he could get. The last twenty-two years, or half a second depending on where you were, had been a cavalcade of revelations.

"Cae?" A concerned, warm voice came from behind him, "Are you ok?"

Immediately, Caeden spun around and swept Lily up in a hug. "You have no idea how much I missed you."

Lily froze in surprised confusion before returning the embrace. "What do you mean you missed me? You didn't go anywhere. I was worried because it seems like you reached Embodiment. It seemed intense, especially with so much of your body as damaged as it was."

She drew back to look at him, an eyebrow raised in amused bewilderment. "Care to explain?"

Caeden laughed and, unable to stop himself, dropped a kiss on her lips. "You have no idea. I have so much to tell you." He looked back at Erik, Cat, and even Asherta. "You guys better listen too because it's a lot."

{}

"That's…" Lily dropped off. Caeden had spent nearly an hour covering everything he had learned. "This raises so many questions about your birth parents. You have no idea who they are?"

"None." Caeden shook his head. "My adoptive parents left their home continent years ago, according to my uncle. When they came back, they had me with them. He never really cared where they got me, so he never asked. Honestly, they could have come or gone anywhere. No one's going to care about or track two unshrouded. They had enough time to cross most of the Starry Sea. I could be from anywhere."

"Man, that sucks, though." Cat huffed. "Some asshole performed experiments on you as a fetus. Who does that? And your parents had to have known. How could they not?"

"Considering the high likelihood that at least one of my birth parents was shrouded, yeah, they would have known." Caeden acknowledged. Most shrouded were born to shrouded parents. Only a fourth of the students at the Academy came from unshrouded. The disparity was even starker once you considered that the unshrouded population was ten times the size of the shrouded population in the CA. Statistically, he was very likely to have at least one shrouded parent. Which meant they had to have known that some other shrouded was messing with their unborn child.

"You don't seem all that torn up about it." Erik was looking at the lack of emotion on Caeden's face.

He shrugged. "They already gave me up for adoption, so it's not like I was under the illusion that my birth parents cared about me, Erik. They gave me to unshrouded. Which, considering how most shrouded think, was the same as throwing me into a monster's gullet. Ever since I knew how most shrouded were, I also knew that my birth parents didn't exactly think very highly of me."

Erik looked floored. "Still, that's…"

"Kinda depressing? No shit. But the idea that I was some kind of failed experiment honestly lines up with my life, so this isn't all that surprising to me. At least not on an emotional level." Caeden shrugged again. Was he hurt? Maybe a little. But it didn't compare to the loss he felt over his adopted parents. They had actually cared about him. Learning his birth parents were probably scum wasn't all that big a deal in perspective.

"All this really means is that now I actually want to meet them, unlike before. I'd love to know what they were trying to accomplish with me. If they gave me up, it stands to reason that I'm some kind of failed attempt at something else. I'm curious as to what that something else is." Caeden could also acknowledge that some part of him wanted to rub his success in their faces. He might have been a failure to his birth parents, but he was now the top student in the entire CA with powers that literally defied reality according to the being that started life in this universe. So he felt he had done pretty well.

Lily gave him another hug. "We'll figure it out. I'm glad that person helped you fix your soul problems."

Cat laughed, loud and long. Everyone turned to look at her. "Sorry, man I feel stupid. When I first figured out my aura, I thought my soul was special because the only comparison I had was yours. Turns out, your soul is special, and mine's the normal one. Obviously, I have a lot to learn. Especially if that dude had to fix you up after I tried to. Apparently, I didn't do as good a job as I thought."

Caeden chuckled. "Yeah, I think I made some assumptions too. When I first started to notice the soul damage, I thought it was because I was overloading my reserves. Turns out, evolving Lily's shroud was probably the start of the problem. I need to limit how much I do that before I stabilize my soul completely."

"Oh no." Lily frowned. "I'm sorry."

"Lil, neither

of us even knew what we were doing." Caeden ran a hand through her hair. "It's not your fault or even mine. It just happened.

"I still feel bad." She pouted.

"Thanks for caring." He smiled down at her.

"Ugh, you two need to stop!" Cat exaggerated a gag. "Can we move on before you start ripping each other's clothes off?"

Both of them turned to glare at her for the unfair and unwarranted objection. They had been talking to each other, not making out. Her comment was both inaccurate and exaggerated. Which, of course, was her point. Cat smirked right back at them, soaking up the glare.

"Whatever, we can take a look around. I apparently have access to more of this place now. Let's see what we can find. Cat made some kind of extra-dimensional storage, so we can take whatever we want." Caeden decided ignoring Cat was the better option. Any response would just encourage her.

"Oh sweet, loot!" Erik whooped, running out of the room.

"...He does realize I'm the one who has to open stuff, right?" Caeden watched his roommate rush away.

"It's Erik; I'm sure he didn't think at all." Lily rolled her eyes.

"Fair."

They all followed after him, seeing Erik just in time to watch a stack of crates nearly collapse on him as he tried to pry one open. Nearly, because before they could fully tip over, strand of Stitch pulled them back upright.

Caeden mimicked Lily and rolled his eyes, "Erik, buddy, I have to open them."

"Oh, that makes sense," Erik said, giving up on his attempt.

Caeden walked up and waved Forged Infinity in front of the crate that Erik had pulled from the stack. It clicked, and the previously featureless chest revealed an invisible seam near the top. It opened, revealing hundreds of vials of swirling color. Gaseous ether. A lot of it. "Oh, shit."

In the end, Cat dropped the entire storage room into her Shadow Storage. Most of the crates held rare ether and magical materials. A deluge of forging materials that made Caeden's ethersmith heart sing. He desperately, desperately wanted to stop everything and find a forge so he could scratch that itch. He hadn't forged anything in months. It was killing him.

But he didn't. Instead, the team started exploring the facility in much greater detail. They found many interesting things, mostly stuff they didn't understand. Other floors were completely empty. Caeden resolved to come back here when he was finally done with the Academy and the military and explore more. But they were currently looking for a way to leave the continent. Caeden and Lily agreed that a place this advanced had to have some kind of transportation options. They hadn't found any living quarters, but people obviously used to work here. That meant they had to get between here and wherever they lived.

That search eventually reached dozens of floors down. After hours and hours of searching, they entered a massive cavernous room filled with etherships of every size and description. They had a way out. Sort of. The room had no immediately obvious way for the ships to actually leave. Not everyone was concerned about this.

"Which one do we pick?" Erik began darting around the room like a kid in a candy shop, poking at all the ships and generally having the time of his life. They were a bit spoiled for choice. Not that it matter if they couldn't find a way to get the ships out.

Lily and Caeden split up. Lily went with the rest of the group to look for a suitable ship, while Caeden took Forged Infinity to figure out how the ships left this cavern. It took a while, but along a wall, Caeden found an irregularity in the flat grey surface. Waving his shrouded weapon around it on a hunch, the square indent lit up to reveal an array of controls. None of which were in Central Common.

"Uh," Caeden had no idea what to do. Communication sense only worked on spoken words, not written language. Luckily, he was baled out.

Translation text controls. The panel flickered, and the controls reappeared, perfectly legible. Front and center was a command, 'Open Bay Doors,' that looked promising. Selecting it, a hum filled the vast space before the far wall of the room began to move. Sections peeled away, folding back into themselves and revealing a familiar view. He was looking out at the open desert. Somehow, this door opened on the side of a stone pillar, dozens of pillars away from the one they had entered. Spacial infusion on a level Caeden had never heard of.

"Well, that worked." Caeden couldn't even muster up any surprise anymore. He was just happy they had an exit and their pick of transportation.

"Hey! You got it!" Caeden looked up at the voice to see Erik walking on the ceiling far above, Stitching himself to the surface. "Sweet, we got a kickass ship picked out, so come on." he gestured across the room.

Caeden formshifted and took an enhanced leap into the air, looking in that direction. He saw Cat and Lily standing on the deck of a ship. He landed and jumped again, this time in that direction. Landing on a ship, he took another jump. Moving like that, he reached the deck in moments.

"Great, you're here. I think you're going to love this one." Lily smiled.