Caeden snapped his fingers, and three spots of molten steel appeared in front of him in an arc. Flicking his fingers, they all rapidly cooled and twisted, becoming ornately carved and filigreed spears that shot across the room to slam into the literal pile of similar weapons that had formed. Caeden had been practicing with Blade Forge for a while.

In that time, he’d discovered several things. His teachers would call it his shroud’s characteristics. Every shroud had certain forms that would cost less to form, certain shapes that took less mental will to create. Caeden had discovered some of them for his new shroud.

First of all, Blade Forge vastly preferred physical motions when creating mnemonics. Caeden hadn’t encountered something like this with Sharp or Physical Enhancement, but some shrouds would create mnemonics much faster if they were done in a specific way. In this regard, his other shroud and splinter were neutral. Caeden preferred verbal mnemonics, but Blade Forge took over ten times longer to latch onto a verbal command compared to a physical gesture, and the mnemonic would cost twice as much shroud when it formed.

So, Caeden had relented. He had created a series of mnemonic gestures for his new shroud, giving up on his previous command style. He’d also shamelessly stolen many of Lily’s preferred gestures, as she had created an entire system for her Ice splinter, which had expanded recently to include her Galaxy splinter as well. Rather than create his own system, Caeden borrowed hers.

Besides the mnemonic preference, Caeden had also found several others. Blade Forge was capable of manifesting in either solid or liquid metal states, but it vastly preferred to start liquid and then be shaped. The cost of forming a solid spear was at least three times that of starting with a liquid mass and then shaping a spear.

Of course, this came with an obvious downside. Time. Shaping the molten metal and cooling it took a few precious seconds, as opposed to just having the weapon already formed. However, Caeden wasn’t upset with this discovery. Rather, he looked at it as more options. If he needed to create weapons quickly, he could pay the extra shroud cost to have the instant resource. But if he had the time, he could be more economical with his shroud.

It would have been nicer if there was no difference in cost overall, but Caeden didn’t exactly make the rules. And this wasn’t the only quirk of his new shroud. In what felt like a blatantly nonsensical outcome, it cost him far less time and shroud to create more ornate weapons than a plain, utilitarian form. When he tried to make an unadorned spear, his shroud resisted, raising the cost and slowing the shaping process. But if he tried to add etchings and meaningless filigree, it raced to follow his vision, taking a fraction of the time.

Overall, in the past half a day Caeden had spent on all this, he felt like he’d made immense progress. At the start, it would take several minutes of meditation for him to pull out some of Blade Forge’s power. And whenever he did, he had a hard time controlling the shape and formation of the metal.

Now, he could grasp specific amounts and form specific shapes with little effort. It was immense progress, growing his control at a rate the dwarfed his previous gains with Physical Enhancement or even Sharp. The researcher’s words had proven true. The integration of his soul and shroud had vastly improved his control and learning speed. Caeden felt as if his whole life he had been carrying hundreds of pounds of weights, and now he had dropped them for the first time.

And yet, despite all that…Caeden couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. From everything the researcher had said, Caeden had been expecting more from Blade Forge. Obviously, it was a powerful shroud, and the amount of raw shroud he held was orders of magnitude more than either of his other shrouds. But all he had done so far with it was create some metal and shape it into weapons. Which felt…underwhelming, to say the least.

With that in mind, Caeden refocused. Ever since his first success with Blade Forge, forming that giant mass of molten steel, he’d worked to perfect his control of it. And while he definitely could improve his manifestation time and the precision of his shaping, he was confident with this ability of his new shroud. It was time to move on.

Because Caeden’s lackluster feelings about his shroud seemed mutual. Every time he wielded Blade Forge like this, he got the vague impression that his domain itself was unsatisfied. Like a wild animal expecting a hunt, only to be taken on a calm walk through the park like a tamed pet. There was a caged ferocity, a deeper depth that Caeden hadn’t touched.

It had become obvious to him after hours of working on his metal manipulation he was missing something deeply important about his shroud, and he was determined to discover just what it was before he left the CMS station. Of course, he hoped that happened sooner rather than later; he had events to get to in the next few days.

With all this in mind, he sat down to meditate again. Unlike when he first started, he immediately felt Blade Forge, just like he would Sharp. It was instantaneous. Gratified with his rapid progress, Caeden attempted to dive deeper, taking a deep breath. He felt the lines of molten metal form around him like a network of veins surrounding his whole body. Another step forward. Unlike his other splinter and shroud, they didn’t recede when he breathed in. Instead, every breath in caused tiny edges, small blades, to protrude outward from the molten veins, only to vanish back in when he breathed out.

The involuntary manifestation was a symbol of just how much he’d improved his connection to his new domain. Caeden could only marvel at how fast that connection had improved. Something he’d worked for half a year to gain with Physical Enhancement he had formed in basically a solid morning of work. His vastly increased training speed, if it translated to increasing Physical Enhancement’s integration, would save him whole months or even years of time.

Focusing back on his current concerns, Caeden attempted to mentally dive into his domain. Now that he’d used it continuously, he was much more familiar with the sensation, and it took only moments for him to touch on its edges. This was where he had stayed the whole morning, tugging at the outer shell of Blade Forge instead of dipping further inside.

Due to his newfound familiarity with this shell, Caeden could grasp what he was experiencing instead of vaguely feeling around. And it seemed his shell metaphor was actually more accurate than he would have thought. This sea of molten metal, swirling and shifting as blades solidified and rose from it in towering spires and massive clouds, was the surface of something much larger.

Caeden’s heart beat faster. It was unreal how much power he could feel running across his mental senses. He’d felt similar things when meditating with Sharp and Physical Enhancement, but there was a fundamental difference.

With the other two domains, he felt like he was touching a vast, unknowable power, but it was like a thin sheet spread across incomprehensible distances. Only the tiniest sliver was available to him. Of course, that tiny sliver was still immensely powerful, as proven by what Caeden could do with it.

He found the whole thing fascinating. He never would have recognized how lacking his access to his other domains was without interacting with Blade Forge. It was like Sharp and Physical Enhancement only had their surface to offer him, while he could feel the depths of Blade Forge that he hadn’t even begun to touch.

All of this matched up, once again, with the researcher’s words. He’d said that the other domains were scattered across all of reality, existing far and wide. Meanwhile, Caeden held onto a domain that had been born from the simultaneous evolution and integration he’d just undergone, so the whole thing was tied to him. He could feel that difference once he looked for it.

Digging in, Caeden tried to pass his senses farther into Blade Forge, looking for more. It wasn’t easy. There was so much raw power here that Caeden found it difficult to navigate. Worse, it was inherently unfamiliar. Domains, or concepts as that was what the researcher called them, were not formed from Ki. Caeden couldn’t recognize what they were made of, as they didn’t feel like Cat’s Mana either. And each one felt distinct. Maybe they were each a power unto themselves.

Either way, Caeden had trouble parsing the sensations his mind experienced. Luckily, he’d spent the last few hours familiarizing himself with this power. It was how he’d learned to control the Ki his shroud produced from mixing raw Ki from his soul’s Ki Gate that drew from the world around him with this domain’s natural energy.

In his search, Caeden started to experience something he hadn’t expected. The domain seemed to react to his mental probing, moving and shifting. He hadn’t noticed at first because the domain felt like it was constantly moving anyway. He’d attributed any changes to its natural motions. But over an hour of constant observation attuned him to the ebb and flow, the shifting currents of Blade Forge.

Sometimes, when he tried to press inward, sense farther, the flow would change in ways that didn’t follow the patterns he’d come to recognize. When he was absolutely certain he wasn’t just seeing a new pattern, Caeden took a moment to think through what could be happening.

He was causing a change in the domain. How was that possible? Shrouds didn’t control domains. They tapped on them to change Ki into a different form, and that Ki was what a shroud controlled. The domain was like flavoring more than anything. Just to make sure he wasn’t going crazy, Caeden tapped on his other shroud and splinter to make sure.

Just as he expected, mental prods did nothing to Sharp or Physical Enhancement. But his mental touch forced a reaction out of Blade Forge every time. Caeden thought back to what the researcher had said. He told Caeden he owned this new domain. At the time, and during his first experiments with the new domain, Caeden had assumed the researcher was referring the domain only being accessible to Caeden and no one else.

But what if he meant more than that? What if Caeden could directly control his domain, not just his shroud?

Putting that thought into action, Caeden stopped tapping on Blade Forge and started shoving. Immediately, the rolling metal currents shifted to make room for his mental presence. His mental probe pushed deeper and deeper, quickly surpassing the depths of his previous attempts.

Surprised and more than a little concerned, Caeden immediately withdrew his senses. Nothing had felt dangerous about what he was doing, but he hadn’t expected such a dramatic response to his probe. There was simply no resistance at all.

Caeden wanted to laugh. Previously, he’d been interacting with his new domain like he had with his others. Observing it, watching the surface, and trying to understand it on a deeper level. And, he realized, that was all he could do. Because of how far spread the other domains were, he wouldn’t have been able to dig into them like he could with Blade Forge, even if he had control over them in the same way.

This was, essentially, something that could only be done by someone like him and the researcher. Someone whose shroud had given birth to its own concept. Taking a deep breath, Caeden steeled himself to dive back in, through his shroud and into Blade Forge’s true heart. It was daunting, taking his mind into the heart of another power. But the researcher had never steered him wrong, and he’d explicitly stated that this domain was his. There was no way it could hurt or damage him.

Dropping back into his meditation, Caeden dove down, extending his consciousness back into the molten swirls and bladed heights of his domain. He Plowed through it all with ease now that he understood what was happening.

Finally, he breached into somewhere new. A hollow, sitting in the center of Blade Forge. Empty space surrounded by molten wall stretched as far as his mind could perceive. Caeden didn’t understand. Was there something wrong with his domain? There should have been something more here. He had felt something more here.

Facing back out, Caeden moved back toward the wall. He needed to talk to the researcher again. This made no sense.

Then, the molten wall, opened by his mental pressure, slipped closed. Caeden felt a pulling sensation from his body, and then there was a pop, like air being displaced.

“What the-” Caeden slapped a hand over his mouth. He looked at his hand. He looked at the glowing walls of molten metal, blades emerging and disappearing like waves.

Somehow, he was physically inside his domain.