Exhaustion crashed over me like a wave when I finally made it back to the inn and crawled into bed. Deep and dreamless slumber overtook me. By the time I woke, the sun was already well past its zenith, meaning I’d likely slept fifteen or sixteen hours. I can’t remember the last time I passed out that hard.

I rub the sleep out of my eyes, groaning at the prospect of untangling myself from the covers and getting up. I still feel worn out and run down, like a windup clockwork toy that needs to be spun up again before it will move.

My thoughts drift back to my conversation with Avelina last night. Did I really get angry with her just because she was trying to be nice to the [Guards] outside the Menders facility? I’ve always been hotheaded, but never toward my friends. Everything I’ve done has been for their benefit.

Or is that all a lie?

I put off the accusing thought and drag myself out of bed. Morning ablutions—well, afternoon ablutions, now—shock me awake and leave me feeling more like myself. Toweling off, I run through my plans for the day: I need to calm the rage inside, figure out why the influence of violence has persisted so strongly despite not meditating on the concept or imbuing with it, and determine how I can help Lionel. It’s the most important thing on the list, but I leave it last since it’s what I have least direct control over.

But first, food. I retrieve a crust of hard bread and a small wedge of finely-aged, yellowed cheese from the enchanted coldbox and fill up a glass with cold water from the pitcher. Clarity of mind slowly returns to me while I eat and drink. Hydration is crucial after pushing myself so hard yesterday and then not drinking any water during so many hours of intense sleep.

Taking up position in the middle of the common area, I go through a series of stretches and light exercises, limbering up my body and regulating my breathing. Twenty minutes of slow movements and careful meditation leaves me mentally refreshed and more stable.

Everything aches, though. I feel like I wrestled a giant bear for hours yesterday. My tortured muscles and swollen joints haven’t hurt like this in ages. A nasty, pounding headache accompanies the physical pain.

Worst of all is the discomfort of the soul. I have no other way to put it; something deep inside me hurts on a metaphysical level, like I’ve been torn apart, scraped raw, and stitched back together in the wrong order. Something feels desperately off.

Falling inward takes no more than a thought. I float in the magnificent void of inky black and golden power, the vastness punctuated by the silver superstructures of all my new Skills. A river of mana flows in an endless loop, prescribing an infinity symbol around the fractals of the runic arrays.

Close examination doesn’t reveal anything amiss. Even the small incisions I’d made to repurpose some of my spare runes into a brace for Melina’s Skill [In the Blink of an Eye] are healing over. The absences have been replaced by the sea of potential in my soul, which has been converted into the crystalline substance of Skills thanks to an overabundance of mana hastening the recovery process.

Even so, I drift over to my [Arcane Domain], regarding it with deep suspicion. I earned the Skill within the Rift that had been corrupted by the high-level enchantment feeding a sense of violence into the environment. It’s no coincidence that ever since I’ve struggled with anger and a tendency to lash out at the slightest provocation.

No blaming outside influences, Nuri, I tell myself sternly. That particular character flaw was already present long before Mahkaiaraon. Yet it’s undeniable that my ability to manage my emotions hasn’t improved, although I feel more mature in most areas. Even more alarming is the way that my resonance with my concepts have amplified since attaining the [Mage] Class. Whatever’s afflicting me is only growing stronger. Pretending like it doesn’t exist is only going to come back to bite me.

If there’s a connection between my Class and my concepts, and it seems impossible to argue that point, then it stands to reason that I should find evidence of it inwardly. My Class and my Skills are all represented in runes, which are essentially containers for primal truths of the world. Why would concepts be any different?

Yet as the minutes stretch on, my search proves fruitless. Neither my upgraded Class edifice nor my gleaming Skill structures reveal any hints. There’s nothing there.

With a groan, I realize that I’m going about things the wrong way. Hunting for an idea is doomed to fail. Concepts are too ephemeral and flexible to coalesce into a fixed, inert pattern. If I want to find the way that I interact with the exalted realities of the heavens, then likely I need to invoke them first. I can’t follow a trail that doesn’t exist.

In my precarious state, I don’t dare call on violence or even sharpness. I simply don’t trust myself right now. It’s humbling to come face to face with my failures, but I believe Avelina when she says that I’ve crossed a line and need to reevaluate. She’s changed a lot over the last year. Her insight into struggling with the worst impulses of our natures—largely driven by me forcing her into using her gift of flames in a terrible way—gives her the credibility to speak up.

I’d be a fool not to listen.

Innovation seems safe enough. It might even help me find the connections I’m seeking. So, after a moment to steady myself and ensure that I’m calm, I go through the same procedure I’d follow to imbue, although I don’t have a target.

The hum of power fills me, lighting up all around me. Whenever I’ve grappled with runes or concepts in my soul, it’s always been in service of fixing things. Usually, I’m in a rush, with a tight time limit and filled with desperation. I’ve never really just watched the flow of energy as I called upon the axiomatic principles of the universe.

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Golden lines of mana stretch out in every direction, leading away from the nexus of my consciousness. Resonance builds up, firmly established as I guide my will and intent toward the concept I seek. Choosing at random, I follow one of the glowing lines, eager to see where it will take me.

To my surprise, my senses don’t grow closer to the towering monuments of my Class or Skills. Instead, I move in the other direction. Zipping along is exhilarating as I chase down one of the unsolved mysteries of magic.

My inner sight reaches the boundary of my soul, the semi-permeable barrier of my inner world, but the golden lines continue outward beyond me. I skim along the face of the expanse, searching for answers. Try as I might, I can’t pierce the veil.

Wait. That’s the second half of my Domain’s name. That can’t be a coincidence! With growing excitement, I activate my strangest and potentially most powerful Skill, [Arcane Domain: My Eyes Shall Pierce the Veil], focusing on the ability to look beyond the obvious. This time, as I meditate on innovation and examine the golden, glimmering lines again, I truly look.

Light and meaning explode in my mind. No, in my soul. Or perhaps neither of those is quite right. I don’t quite understand what I’m looking at or how I’m perceiving it.

Miniscule runes make up the shifting, effervescent connections, but they’re not like any of the runes I’ve come to know. Less like tethers and more like beams of light, the shimmering connections are wavelike and ever-shifting, and their meaning seems to form, dissolve, and re-form in an eternal dance.

No wonder some imbuing attempts work out better than others. If I don’t have a firm sense of what I’m doing, or if I’m hesitant and mis-time the working of will and magic, then the imbuing lacks power. The more time I spend building up rapport with the concept, the more I’ll harmonize with the truth it exemplifies.

Excitement over my discovery is tempered by the realization that I still have to wrestle with the effects of violence. What if it overwhelms me? What if my new and enhanced view of the true meaning of the concept is too much for my feeble mind and it warps me forever? What if I become everything I’ve hated and fought against?

Then I’ll just have to trust that my friends will wake me up. Avelina can get through. Or my brother will bonk me over the head and knock some sense back into me.

Chuckling to myself at the thought of Mikko smacking me around while telling me it’s for my own good, I drop my connection to innovation and instead seize upon violence.

Instantly, the golden lines disappear. They’re replaced by pulsing, waist-thick, blood-red ropes that look more like oversized arteries than anything else. Something virulent and opaque swirls deep inside them. Despite examining them through the power of my [Arcane Domain], I can’t make out the meaning of the strange, jagged symbols.

I release the connection, but the bloody bindings don’t fade. The feeling of wrongness and hostility lingers, weaving into the fabric of my inner world. That doesn’t seem right; all the other higher-order concepts I’ve ever meditated on evaporated back into the ether, for lack of a better term, once I was done concentrating on them. They’re slick and amorphous, and grasping them is akin to trying to pick up a slippery bar of wet soap; squeeze too hard, and it shoots right out of my hand.

Violence remains, however. I can’t help but feel like it’s laying in wait for me, ready to ambush me as soon as I drop my guard. It’s ridiculous, assigning sentience to an idea, but it’s deeply unsettling the way the mottled gray and black flecks within the pulsing arteries restrict the flow and seem to build up resentment.

I force myself to look more closely, but nothing useful reveals itself to me. If only I could decipher the runes and repurpose it for my own ends. Unfortunately, my Domain isn’t giving me the precise feedback that I hoped it would. All the same, I’m certain that the concept is tainted, somehow. I should avoid it until I can fix things.

Or I could cut it out.

Giving up an entire concept hurts more than I thought, even if all I’ve done is consider the possibility. But the more I mull it over, the more it makes sense. Sometimes, a surgeon must remove a malignant growth, I think with a sudden flash of insight. I suspect it’s an after-echo of the innovation I channeled earlier.

I can always reforge the connection in the future if I need to, but something tells me that nothing good has ever come from the corrupted concept. Defending my friends is noble, and sometimes a fight is the only option left to me, but that’s a far cry from reveling in the twisted destruction that violence seems to demand. It’s driving a wedge between me and my friends, and now my ability to help Lionel or even visit him in the healing ward is in serious doubt.

Action is the burden of a leader. Now that the path forward is clear, hesitation is nothing but weakness. I owe my friends. Responsibility requires that I put the team above myself. So what if my personal power suffers in the short term? I’ve never planned to become a tyrant, just to explore the world, uncover mysteries, and create masterpieces.

Mind made up, I call upon the concept again. At the same time, I flood [Legacy of the Scalpel] with mana, over-charging it and pushing the Skil past its baseline use of runic pruning and combining. Instead of cutting away a rune, I seize hold of violence itself and excise the entire rotten concept from my inner being, relying on the Scalpel portion of the Skill to perform surgery of the soul.

Searing agony rips through me. The bloody cords fight and thrash like serpents, but they are helpless before the might of a [Mage] with a specialized Skill and long experience cutting away the metaphysical. I writhe in anguish, reliving the torture of when Scalpel experimented on my Skills back when we first met.

Temptation gnaws at me. It hurts too much. Giving up my understanding of a concept is too steep a cost. Maybe I should give up, reconsider, find another way.

Yet I swore to do anything to protect my friends. That means keeping them safe from threats without—and within. Whatever it takes. That was my vow. Even if I’m the enemy.

My will is implacable. Despite the pain, I press onward and complete my righteous task, burning out the pestilence from within. I scream within the confines of my inner world at the unimaginable torment, but I refuse to give in. Pain is nothing compared to protecting my friends from the consequences of my failures. I surge forward and bring the Scalpel to bear, purging the evil from within my midst once and for all.