Caeden once more stepped out of the Blade Forge, this time with the intent to actually stick around for a bit. With Father able to handle everything, Caeden could confidently stay in his home universe.

With that in mind, he took the opportunity to look at what he was sitting on. The last couple of times he'd returned to the Starry Sea, Caeden had noticed that he wasn’t in the cross-legged meditation pose that he had been in when he left. And that begged the question, why had his position changed?

A question with an obvious answer once he looked around. In fact, Caeden felt dumb for not realizing what was going on when he looked at his throne. Because he was, in fact, sitting in an exact replica of his Blade Forge sigil. A throne of blades with molten seats, the headrest extending up into the visage of a dragon very similar to Noodle, just a lot more steely grey and glowing orange than red, purple, and gold.

Looking at it, Caeden felt stupid. Reaching out, he tried to use Blade Forge, but couldn’t. And that explained so much. Reaching the Blade Forge’s internal space was his Incarnation. Of course it was. Because it was an externalization of his shroud. Just, instead of taking on some sort of form like Sharp’s Toolset, it created an entire reality separate from this one.

That actually correlated with some discoveries that the Bladeborne had made from doing tests in the third depth. They’d found that the Blade Forge existed in an extradimensional space alongside many other concepts. Really, it was just one of an uncountable number. What was strange was the space within the Blade Forge. The other concepts weren’t physical things, instead existing in a similar capacity to souls on the soul plane. Just a timeless, matterless soup of concepts all entangled together.

But if Caeden’s Incarnation was what gave shape to the Blade Forge’s internal space, that would explain why it was so different from other concept domains. Originally, Caeden had hypothesized that the internal physical space was a quirk of his domain being solely owned by him, concentrated in a way that other concepts weren’t. But the Incarnation provided a much better explanation.

That left Caeden in a weird position. Because now he was worried about discorporating his Incarnation. After all, he had no idea what that would do to the Bladeborne.

“I’m in here. It can’t close like you’re thinking.” Father’s thoughts appeared in Caeden’s mind. He nodded. How could the Incarnation disappear if his domain still had him inside it?

Testing the theory, Caeden willed his shroud to return to him. The throne disappeared from underneath him in streams of molten metal, sucking into his chest.

“All good. But the Exit Blade is now non-functional. I think accessing the Blade Forge’s dimensional space required our Incarnation to be manifested.” Father guessed.

“That makes sense. I’m guessing the Incarnation won’t collapse so long as we’re inside it. Either that, or the Incarnation isn’t the space itself, but the ability to access it.”

“So, a combination of our previous theories? The Blade Forge is unique in having a space within it, but the access to it is based on the Incarnation. But the incarnation isn’t the reason the space exists. It’s a doorway, not a house. The house was already here.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. The Blade Forge is the ability itself. Like, the physical space is the concept. It is a forge for blades, a concept of a physical space that exists solely to create blades.” Caeden extrapolated.

“That would imply that there might be other concepts of a similar style. Ones that also created a physical space. Which the Bladeborne haven’t found.”

Caeden understood what Father was implying. His idea went against the evidence they had. But…”So what? Our kids haven’t explored even the tiniest sliver of the dimension outside the Blade Forge. It’s not like our understanding is so complete that we can deny my idea. We literally don’t know what we don’t know when it comes to how concepts actually work. There could be tons of concepts out there that exist in a similar way to Blade Forge.”

“Go ask the researcher. I’m busy in here. Now that we’ve confirmed the Blade Forge isn’t going to just collapse, I’ve got work to do.” Father mentally shrugged.

“Hopefully he can figure out how to fix the time problem,” Caeden muttered. Once he’d left the Forge, the time inside and outside had matched, one to one. Both Caeden and Father thought it was because of them. Being in both places naturally caused the time to fall into sync. Unfortunately, that ruined Caeden’s plans if he couldn’t figure out how to accelerate the Forge’s time relative to the Starry Sea’s.

“Yeah, no kidding. Would have been a lot of wasted effort if we can’t figure out how that works.” Father laughed.

“Honestly, way more important than figuring out the mechanics of the Incarnation. Although now I’m really curious about what our Embodiment would be.” Caeden mused.

“Can we talk about how wild it is that we just found our Incarnation on accident? Like, what in the unshrouded hells is that about? It took us over half a year of training after nearly a decade of constant and dedicated use of Sharp to reach incarnation with that shroud, but we have Blade Forge for half a day, and we already figured out the Incarnation? That’s fucking dumb.”

“No kidding. I hadn’t thought about it yet because of the time spent in the Blade Forge, but it didn’t take nearly as long as it should have.”

“Another question to ask.”

“Yup.”

With his curiosity now propelling him, Caeden left the room he’d practiced in for less than a day but spent untold eons inside. Nonlinear temporal progression made his head hurt. He was having a bad case of cognitive dissonance as he dismissed the piles of blades scattered around the room and piled high in front of the exit. The fact that, on the Starry Sea, he’d done that less than an hour ago, was eating at him.

Probably because he was now focused on how to abuse that difference. Before, he’d just accepted what had happened, but now he actually wanted to try and understand the mechanics. It brought the differences into stark relief. The Blade Forge could not be more different from when he’d first entered it, growing from a barren space containing only half-assed blades of dubious quality to a thriving world in its own right, containing a miracle civilization of sentient, sapient, living blades forged from Caeden’s own soul. Comparatively, nothing had changed in the Starry Sea universe.

Shaking off the clinging unease and almost dream-like surrealism, Caeden went back to the CMS. He needed the researcher’s help, both to fulfill his plan and to better understand what was happening with Blade Forge. Looking up at the swirling mass of ethertech, Caeden had an unprecedented level of insight into the device that was centuries ahead of the Starry Sea.

The Bladeborne had taken the minor understanding Caeden had of ethertech and wildly expanded upon it, taking it further than he was ever willing to try. Their unique physicality let them take risks and shortcuts that would have crippled any unshrouded human, and they were free to explore their discoveries with Caeden’s help and blessing. This saw them rapidly outpacing the growth ethertech had seen on the Starry Sea.

Born in the CA, ethertech had been a tool of the unshrouded to reach for some of the advantages held by shrouded. It had experienced harsh repression for centuries before the Central Council seemed to just…Stop caring about it, for lack of a better term. That, combined with the dangerous nature of ether, and the fact that it was a field solely explored by unshrouded until the last couple decades, had slowed the technology’s growth to a crawl.

Even to this day, ethertech was relegated to a position of sneering contempt by most older, powerful shrouded. Even as they flew around in etherships and used CV monitors to entertain themselves, most decried the technology as a pale imitation of the greatness of shrouds.

With none of those chains holding them back, the Bladeborne had caught up to and surpassed the Starry Sea’s understanding of ethertech, though only in some fields. Luckily, one of those seemed to overlap heavily with the infrastructure that went into the Central Management System hovering above Caeden. The researcher had let slip long ago that the CMS was made to hold together the Pillar, the gargantuan beam of energy that the entire Starry Sea encircled. But now Caeden understood better what that actually meant.

Because the CMS was a vastly more complex and advanced version of Caeden’s Entrance Blade, the counterpart to the Exit Blade.

The CMS managed and controlled the dimensional and planar barriers around the Starry Sea. Which Caeden should have guessed, considering the researcher had been using one as an intermediary to send Caeden’s consciousness to another plane. But he only caught on now that he had a much better understanding of the forces involved.

These masses of ethertech were holding the Pillar in place by creating a narrow tube of dimensional-planar space where power could enter the Starry Sea. Caeden had no idea where that energy was coming from or what it was. Only the researcher could likely answer that. But he now knew that the CMS was the reason the Pillar stayed in place instead of expanding to drown the entire Starry Sea in burning power. They were also the source of the ‘quarantine’ the researcher had described.

The CMSs collectively locked down every dimensional and planar barrier in the Starry Sea. They did so to limit the impact of the Pillar, but this also had the side-effect of completely isolating their universe from all outside forces. There was only one exception.

Shrouds.

Shrouds that inherently had access to another plane or dimension, like Caeden’s Blade Forge or Cat’s Necromancy, could pierce the limits of the CMS net. Caeden wondered why the researcher had left such a loophole. The construction of the entire Pillar and CMS system was so carefully and deliberately crafted, leaving such an obvious gap seemed odd.

At that thought, Caeden could only shrug. He was barely grasping the edges of the construction that went into forming the Starry Sea. It’s not like he could even guess at the researcher’s thinking when he’d first formed this universe from a dead hunk of nothing.

Raising his hand, Caeden didn’t even need to bother with Forged Infinity. His new understanding of the CMS let him use small pieces of his Sharp and Physical Enhancement shrouds to trigger the mechanism that would call down the researcher’s attention.

A moment later, Caeden was back on the soul plane. The journey there was interesting now that he had more experience with shifting planar forces. He wondered if he could replicate it in the Blade Forge.

Hey, kiddo. How’d…your…training…go…Oh my.

So, you noticed. Caeden couldn’t say he was surprised.

No shit. Damn, I never would have expected this. A self-contained dimension as a concept. That’s rare as hell.

Before we get lost in that, I have an important question. Caeden wanted to keep the conversation on his main concern before he and the researcher got lost in discovering the secrets of Blade Forge as a concept.

Fire away. I’ll see what I can do.

Caeden was surprised, as that was a far less cagey response than the researcher normally gave. So, I spent a lot of time in the Blade Forge.

I noticed.

Well, did you notice that I created a second consciousness?

Ohhh, yeah. Nice work. You’re on the path to true power with that.

Well, I have some plans. But now that I have one consciousness here on the Starry Sea and another inside the Forge, the time flows are matching. And I’d like them to not.

Ah, temporal relativity. That’s a bitch and a half.

Caeden couldn’t help but feel excited. So you know what’s going on.

Of course. I’m probably the best time mage you’ll ever meet. It’s kinda my thing. If I’m confident in one thing, it’s my command of time.

Awesome! So, what’s going on?

Well, first of all, you need to understand what time actually is. As a concept, time is the perception of the motion of existence. Things move, and we see it. That is time. Manipulating time means manipulating your perspective of motion. Basically, you need to change how you think about the connection between time here and time there.

I’m not sure I understand. Caeden had never thought about time much. Even when he was experimenting with it in the Forge, he had only thought of it in nebulous terms, willing time to ‘go faster’ or ‘slow down’ without putting any deeper thought into it.

Don’t overthink it. Time is perception. In normal circumstances, that perception is forced on you by the natural order of the universe you occupy. Like the Starry Sea. There is a perception of time built into the underpinnings of the universe, and all those that live there are drawn into its flow.

This is why no time passed on the Starry Sea while you were in your concept’s dimensional space. First of all, saying no time passed is inaccurate. It would be better to say that an infinite amount of time occurred in your Blade Forge while a single instant passed on the Starry Sea.

I say this because you were not manipulating the time of the Starry Sea. Instead, you were manipulating the Blade Forge. The dimensional space it holds had no natural laws, including no law for time. Instead, it relied on your perception. And since your perception wasn’t tied to anything, the amount of time in there was literally infinite. You had no frame of reference, so the default was all time, always.

At the same time, you were outside the influence of the Starry Sea. This meant this universe’s forced perception of time couldn’t affect you. You didn’t perceive any time passing, so it didn’t. It’s literally that simple.

This is giving me a headache. Caeden sighed. He was having a hard time following what the researcher was saying.

No shit. Manipulating time is difficult as hell. You’re messing with something that has been a fundamental part of your existence. It’s not a walk in the park.

Help me understand. If time is all about perspective, then why doesn’t time stop if I go unconscious? I’m not perceiving anything, then.

Because your universe is perceiving time for you.

The Starry Sea is alive?

Not in the way you’re thinking. It’s like a machine. It records data, but it doesn’t feel or understand. All universes are composed of a defined set of rules that govern how they and everything inside them functions. They can do this because of the immense amount of power a universe contains. If you had as much power as a universe, you could literally just tell the Starry Sea to stop, and it would. But you’re not, so it tells you what to do. It tells you, every atom and cell that makes up your body, every ounce of Ki held inside you, to move according to the rules. You don’t have to be conscious for that to happen.

This is actually why you’re having trouble right now. In the Blade Forge, you actually do have that level of control, but you’re not used to it. You’ve spent your whole life having your universe decide how time flows for you, so you’ve never had to think about it. Now that your perception exists in both places, you’re subconsciously matching your perception here to your perception there. The time is just following along with that perception.

Ok, I’m not sure how this helps me. The researcher’s explanation, while enlightening, didn’t tell him what he was supposed to do.

You have two options. One, separate your consciousness here from your one there. Two, mentally overcome your own perception. I’d pick the latter rather than the former, as freeing your mind from the bounds of this universe’s forced perception will help you more in the long term.

Great, that sounds super easy. Caeden grumbled.