Caeden, it seems we have quite the problem on our hands. And I’m not sure how to fix it.

Oh, shit. What now? Caeden felt, more than anything, an overwhelming exasperation with the situation. Logically, he should probably be more scared or cautious. The last time he’d talked to the researcher, the entity had explained that Caeden was essentially a time bomb waiting to blow up the universe. Likely, this conversation wouldn’t have a much better tone.

In the immeasurable amount of time Caeden had spent with his consciousness on the soul plane, the researcher had repeatedly and angrily stated how much he disliked doing this. As in, talking to Caeden. Not because he found Caeden unlikable but because the extradimensional being hated interfering in a test. According to him, it was the equivalent of opening up a sealed chamber to the outside world, introducing thousands or millions of unforeseen variables, tainting his test results.

To the researcher, a best-case scenario would have seen him introducing a single element at a time to the Starry Sea in a controlled way and only doing so after the researcher had thoroughly extracted every ounce of data he could from the pure, untainted simplicity of the Starry Sea.

So, Caeden was more than aware that the only thing that could have him talking to the researcher again would be a failure in their original plan and one that he couldn’t fix from a comfortable distance. But, Caeden was finding it very hard to care like he knew he should. The weight of the universe was exhausting, and the more time Caeden spent dwelling on it, the harder he found it to care.

So instead, Caeden had decided that he'd treat the whole thing as a commissioned smithing project. Set goals, break it down, and make sure the customer was happy with the result. Much easier to mentally handle than the literal fate of the world. That shit was scary.

Before we get into that, I’d like to know why my ship had a hidden doorway back to the CMS station, and I didn’t know about it. That legitimately bugged him. Being able to just hop back over here was a major boon for multiple reasons, not the least of which being the absolute flood of materials Caeden could access in the expansive facility. He and the team had brought back some of what they found, but not even close to all of it. Plus, access to the dragon continent on demand was amazing. Caeden wouldn’t mind dealing with some more half-dragon monsters for more dragon materials.

Oh, the portal. Yeah, all the ships we built had portal points set on them, but I locked them down. Portals are dangerous for the untrained. And your whole situation would have made using them a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

I still would have rather known about it.

You don’t get it, kiddo. Look, portals and teleportation are pretty common across all of reality, but they work differently in different places because the natural laws are different. The Starry Sea is particularly rough on the things being moved. Basically, anyone or anything that goes through a portal here gets a pretty rough shake, and that includes your soul.

Letting you use the network out of convenience would have been a bad idea. Tests we ran indicated that multiple rapid shifts could induce some nasty symptoms, even soul damage. Now, shrouded are in a much better situation because both their bodies and souls are protected by their shrouds. But your soul wasn’t anywhere near ready for that last we talked. You were barely ready for it now.

Ok, ok. Still, feels ridiculous that you couldn’t have even told me about it.

It wasn’t something you could use. Telling you about it served no purpose.

I mean, I couldn’t use it, but that doesn’t mean my friends couldn’t have.

…

…You didn’t think of that, did you?

No. No, I did not. My bad.

Caeden sighed. He very much did not feel like dealing with this. What’s the problem?

Right, the problem. Take a peek at your soul.

Following the instruction, Caeden pulled his sightless view in the soul plane around to look at his soul. Immediately, he noticed a stark difference from how it had appeared before. Last time he had his friend's souls nearby as a reference. Back then, his soul had been smaller and completely undefined, while everyone else’s had a distinct shape. His soul had been nothing more than a white pea-sized sphere with red and golden-purple spheres orbiting it.

By the time Caeden and the researcher had finished remodeling his soul, the red ball representing his Sharp shroud had transformed, changing his soul along with it. His soul had changed from a sphere to a ring, with a crimson lattice surrounding it.

Now, his soul had changed again. The gold and purple ball of Physical Enhancement was unchanged, but the Sharp lattice had actually shrunk. It closed in around the white ring, leaving no space in between the two structures. But that wasn’t the interesting part.

Every few seconds, the lattice and soul would flicker. The interweaving strands of red would shift even tighter. As they dug into the white ring, the interaction morphed to look almost like scales. A thought reinforced by a section of the ring flickering, a ghostly afterimage of a snake’s head eating its own tail, taking shape only to fall apart an instant later.

Ok, I assume I’m seeing what you’re seeing. Something is definitely happening. Care to clue me in? Caeden had no frame of reference for what he was supposed to divine from the situation. Something was happening to his soul, but beyond that, he had no clue.

What you’re looking at is the moment a soul and shroud merge into a complete whole. But it's failing every time it tries. Your integration officially reached the point of completion, but it's not working for some reason.

Neat. Got any guesses as to what went wrong?

Not particularly. This should be working. The process itself has been executed flawlessly. Good job on holding off with straining your shrouds, by the way. Getting to this point with minimal interference was highly beneficial. I just wish you hadn’t evolved your friend's shroud. But then again, that in itself provided some useful data, and since your other friend basically immediately performed repairs, the interference was minimal.

We basically reached this point in the most optimal way, excluding the one instance. But that leaves me with little recourse to figure out what actually went wrong. The only viable explanation is that it has to do with your unique circumstances, but that’s a broad enough spectrum on its own.

I’m not sure I follow. It’s because of Physical Enhancement being artificial in some way, isn’t it? That was the only truly unique thing Caeden had. Every other aspect of him was something someone else on the Starry Sea could claim.

I wish it were that simple. In the first place, Physical Enhancement’s artificiality isn’t your only unique circumstance. You are also the only other shrouded with a non-integrated shroud as an adult. Now, that almost certainly stems from whatever was done to give you a second shroud, but we don’t know if the artificial nature of Physical Enhancement is what’s causing the problem or the lack of integration at your age.

I agree that Physical Enhancement’s existence is ultimately responsible, but that doesn’t help us come up with a solution because we don’t know if that specific element is the cause. It could be your nature as a Throne interacting with your soul’s lack of integration, or maybe a combination of your dual shrouds and your Throne interfering with each other. Or any permutation and combination of these elements.

So, what? We spend another eternity here figuring this out?

Ha, funny, but no. It shouldn’t take that long, considering how much work we did last time and how much data I’ve collected in the intervening time. Not to mention the separate experiments I’ve run to shed some light on your situation.

Ok, where do we start? Caeden was pleasantly surprised by the idea of a swift solution.

Well, that's the sticking point. I needed you in here to give feedback and help me work through this. As I said, what’s happening to you is inherently contradictory to my previous experience, and I’m not sure what exactly is going wrong. This will still take some time because we’re shooting blind. It just won’t take as long as last time since we already have that established knowledge base to work from.

Dang, and I was starting to get my hopes up. I don’t think you understand how disorienting it is to spend so much time here.

Oh, I do. I’ve just done it for so long that it doesn’t affect me anymore. Maintaining one's consciousness in that soul plane is always a task. You’re lucky I’m doing all of the heavy lifting for you with the Central Management System.

Yeah, I’m sure it wouldn’t be fun for me. I’m just saying I’d rather not stay here if I could avoid it. Why don’t you just come to the Starry Sea?

Nope, out of the question. Contacting you through an intermediary plane is bad enough. Actually manifesting in a test universe is just scientific malpractice. Completely messes up the experiment, exposing it to my existence. Not happening. So just suck it up and get used to it.

Ugh, let’s just get started.

Ok, I’m going to need you to do some exercises to see where your soul is at…

{}

Despite what the researcher had said, it took a long time to make progress. Or maybe it didn’t. Caeden had somehow forgotten how warped his sense of time became on the soul plane. Or maybe his consciousness couldn’t handle remembering, so he forgot. Either way, he rapidly lost his perception of time, and the passing moments ceased to have a hold on him.

Is this what it feels like to be immortal? Live for a really long time? Caeden knew, logically, that he was immortal ever since he’d achieved his Embodiment. But he hadn’t lived nearly long enough for that fact to have a meaningful impact on his life. But the way time disappeared out from under him on the soul plane felt the way he thought living for thousands of years would feel.

Why are you assuming that I’m immortal?

Somehow, Caeden managed to convey his skepticism without a face.

Yeah, ok. I’m immortal. The entity from outside Caeden’s universe that had, by his own admission, contributed to and designed the origins of said universe had the decency to sound embarrassed. I guess that was pretty obvious.

He paused for a moment, and Caeden shifted his full attention onto the mysterious being.

Let me put it this way. There are as many ways to be immortal as there are people; no one reacts to it the same way. Those that are born immortal versus those that cultivate that power tend to react very differently. But every person has their own relationship with their eternal life, just as those without that gift have a unique relationship with their mortality.

You’d be surprised how much overlap there is. Many mortals live in denial of their inevitable death, and many immortals just as strongly deny their endless life. Living forever can be very lonely, and many reject that reality.

Funnily enough, they’re mostly right. As much as immortality seems endless, no one is immune to death, myself included. What’s the saying? There’s always a bigger fish. Basically, no matter what anyone might think, there’s always something or someone out there strong enough to kill you in spite of whatever safeguards your life might have, immortality included.

That’s not even beginning to talk about the different kinds of and levels of immortality that can be achieved. Lots of folks want to live forever, and they’ve been pursuing about as long as death has been a thing. Which, by the way, is also forever. Reality has never existed without death in it.

So, with so many people looking to slip the ol’ reaper, they’ve come up with a multitude of solutions, some better than others. And that variance also leads to different perspectives on immortality.

To answer your question, a lot of immortals properly feel what you’re feeling, the time slipping away and ceasing to matter in the same way it once did. But just as many feel the passage of time even more keenly than mortals, or they might even stop considering time to be something that exists. Met a couple of those, very weird. Kinda culty. Also dumb. Time flows, even if you think its passage doesn’t affect you. If there’s one lesson I can impress on you, kid, it’s this. Respect time. Yours, others, the concept itself. Whatever. If you don’t, it has a nasty habit of biting you in the end.

Caeden ended up mulling that over, thinking about time and immortality as they tested and retested, looking for a way to complete the process Caeden’s soul and shroud were falling at the last step. He was vividly reminded of the pictures in Damon’s office.

The Headmaster was obviously one of those who felt the passage of time keenly, considering one of the defining features of his office was essentially a timeline containing the most important people in his life and the record of their loss. Caeden wondered how some of the other True Shrouds saw their immortality and if maybe that explained some of their ridiculous behavior. If they were as detached from reality as what the researcher had described, it would explain a lot.

I think some of our people aren’t dealing with immortality very well. Caeden finally commented.

No, no they don’t.