Alex noticed the crow perched on the branch of a tree. She had feathers black as night and pure white eyes that saw farther than any living creature. Yes, the crow was alive. The chill down his spine made Alex entirely certain. Their eyes met. Her limbs shifted. Her wings rustled as she took off into the mists. There was little else that had to be said—the purple smoke trailing behind her in the night sky made everything clear. He understood. The crow was the messenger of Omen.

Gloomy stood some twenty paces ahead, staring at the smoke signal. The supply drop was close, hardly a mile from their path.

"Do I need to remind you how the last one went?" he asked, walking up to her.

She clutched the bracelet he'd given to her close to her chest. Her other hand went to her dagger. Her eyes were distant, glazed over in that desperate hunger he would recognize anywhere. Then she returned to herself.

"As if. These two relics already suck too much mana. Let's just go."

"Yes, let's," Alex agreed. "I want to make fast ground. Maybe put some miles between us and anybody straying too close to our path."

She snorted. "You think you can handle that, ya' old ox?"

He rolled his shoulders, exaggerating a wince. "Yeah. I'll manage for a short distance."

Gloomy just rolled her eyes. "If you slow me down enough for the assassins to catch us, not even death will save you from me killing you. I hope you know that."

She turned her back, kicking off at a fast jog.

Alex started after her, sensing that—although her words made no sense—she'd meant them. In a way, she'd warmed up to him over the last few days. The death threats only came every so often, and they were now only about him and not his mother, whoever that woman was. It was progress.

And it meant almost nothing because he'd also come to know Gloomy a little better. The things he'd suspected about her were true, and more severe than he'd thought. She was the kind of girl who—if she didn't like you—would rather go to the grave than let you get your way. To hell with sense or logic. It was an attitude Alex might respect if he didn't have to be the one putting her there.

Unfortunately, she hated him. He'd fucked up their very first encounter, and now it was unfixable. He'd tried everything these past few days—dug out all the gen-z to gen-alpha slang he could recall—and it had done nothing. He could offer her his Path-forger's Stone in exchange for the quest and he wasn't sure she'd care.

He'd since made his peace with that. Negotiations were unlikely. Extortion was beyond that. And torture… he wasn't foolish enough to torture Gloomy and let her live afterward. That would only end poorly. Killing her was his only option.

"Seriously? Hurry the fuck up, Alex! A straight week, I near-killed myself to stay ahead of my assassins. Do you want these sorry cunts to catch us or what?"

He would, actually. He'd like them to make short work of it too—so he could make short work of them, and then short work of everything else he needed to accomplish to get his revenge.

However, he knew that vampires might not be the only interlopers crossing their paths this close to a purple drop. And despite his want for armor, he felt no need to put himself at increased risk to get it. That was backwards thinking, unless…

"Alex! Don't make me angry!"

Crouching down, Alex yelled back, "Give me a sec!"

He pulled a wooden slate from his inventory, where he'd inscribed a formation with two runes—"Detect" and "Warn." A runic circle was drawn around them, with a small notch in the wood at its center. It was his first attempt at making an enchantment that technically had two separate functions:

Detect the intruder and then warn Alex.

Despite that he'd had a mostly-intact core for a while now, it was also his first time trying this.

Alex focused his attention inward, and began to cycle. But instead of drawing in and refining Essence, he began drawing mana from his mana pool—using his Vital Essence to guide it—and centered it in his core. Some of the mana still leaked through his cracks, but the rest was condensed to the point it was almost tangible. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Light-headedness set in. Then finally, he held out his hand. A small crystal, shaped like a pearl, materialized there.

His first mana crystal.

He'd felt pretty damn smart when he'd figured out he could do that. Only people with inhuman mana control or Mages were capable of forming mana crystals. And some machines. But the way Mages did it was by using their Aura to guide Essence, to then guide mana. It was one step removed from Alex, who could simply use his Vital-Essence itself to guide mana.

He smiled, then pulled out some elmers glue and stuck the crystal onto the small notch he'd engraved on the wooden slat before setting it down and enchanting it. This… was probably several steps removed from the proper method, but he didn't know how to imbue his mana directly yet.

In any case, it worked. Partially thanks to his high Arcane stat, the first rune, Detect, shone with light, as it was continuously powered by the crystal. The true test would be whether it would activate Warn if the rune's threshold was triggered.

Alex wiped his brow and looked up from his craftsmanship. By that point, Gloomy looked like she could have steam rising off her from the way she was glaring. He sighed, faking a slight limp as he rushed to catch up.

Not making her angry… it was a little late for that, wasn't it?

* * *

Congratulations! You have thwarted a Kill-Quest!

+10,000 Essence Crystals

Alex frowned down at the body. It was a man, not a vampire, which was why he lay dead on the ground instead of tied by linen sheets to a devouring tree. He'd been ten levels beyond Alex, but having a dangersense ability, a recovered stealth skill, an unbreakable sword, a teenage decoy, and a whole world of mists to hide in evened things out. He couldn't really say it had been a fair fight.

"Hey! Who said you could use me as a decoy?!" Gloomy shouted.

"You're still alive, aren't you?"

"That's not the point! Who said I needed your help in the first place?"

Alex sheathed Nychta, scratching at an itchy scab on the back of his head. "Well, that was kind of the whole point of the contract, wasn't it? My protection?"

Gloomy stood with her fists balled, a mere meter from Alex and the blade-wielding corpse. He'd made a mistake in mentioning the contract. She sighed in that sort of growly, furious screaming-groaning way she had to her, then snorted.

"Not against this limp-dick," she muttered.

Alex frowned at her verbiage. Opening his system, he learned what she'd really said was closer to: rooster without a comb. He should've known trying to be hip with the lingo wouldn't earn him any brownie points.

He overlooked it when she then knelt to loot the man's inventory. Traditionally, the person who dealt the killing blow earned first-looting rights, but he didn't want to press the issue. Not when the man had all this armor for the taking—gambesons, clean greaves, tassets, a metal chestplate. He tugged the man's boots free, sizing them up against his feet. After seeing that they fit, he tossed his own blood-soaked boots into the mist. And then went and retrieved them for his inventory. Baking soda had only done so much for the smell.

He smiled when he saw the iron arming sword then began undressing the corpse for anything else he could add to his inventory. There wasn't much for someone who'd been going around killing his fellow men for spoils. Based on how many paths he'd amounted, they'd clearly been one of his first marks.

"Anything good on your side?" he asked.

"Why would I tell you?" Gloomy looked at him with derision. "Looks like your shitty enchantment didn't work."

"No," he sighed. "I suppose it didn't."

By the time Alex was done looting, the man lay buck naked in the dirt. Necessity necessitates, but it wasn't a fair sight, so he suggested they move on, and Gloomy was amenable to that.

As they walked, he began puzzling out why the enchantment had failed. There were a few possible reasons which frankly meant it probably wasn't a very good test. He'd tried copying down the exact formation built into his home security system in Dykriest, but given that it hadn't worked, he must have made a mistake. He just didn't know where. Alex let out a deep sigh.

"Why didn't it work?" Gloomy asked.

"I'm not sure… I forgot the first lesson they taught us in school. Always test using the scientific method—" He paused. "Wait, you actually care?"

"No, stupid. I just like seeing you miserable."

Yeah, that tracks.

Gloomy's insults had never really gotten to Alex, but now it was like he almost didn't register them. Somehow, worming his way into a position of power over her while harboring homicidal intentions had a way of numbing any offense he might feel.

She's going to die anyway, he reminded himself.

Even if he let her be, that fate was probably written in stone. Not a lot of good things had happened to the Crucible of Sun quest-holders. In Gloomy's case, picking a fight with the vampires would only make it worse. But even if it was true, it was nothing more than an excuse. He would do what he had to. But fuck being a hypocrite about it.

And she could insult him all she liked if it kept her talking to him.

"So Gloomy," he said eventually, "What's your hobbies? Or, uh, aspirations in life?"

"Again? I told you to stop asking those questions."

He scratched his head. "Well, we've been traveling together for a bit now. Just feels like we should've made more proper introductions already. Would asking what your favorite is food be less invasive—"

She gave him a look that could gut. Right, he should've known that was also the wrong thing to say. She was skinnier than she should be at that age, and she completely refused to eat in front of him. Except for that one time, and he was still mourning the loss of his brie.

But honestly, it was hard to judge what was a sensitive subject with her, since she treated almost all his questions as though he were after her darkest secrets. Movies, shows, sports, books—even fashion, which he thought might've been a hit. Even before the apocalypse, it'd been a long time since he'd seen Alyssa, and he'd never asked about these things when he'd had the chance. Gloomy was her age, and he just didn't know how to connect.

"I… guess I can start then," he continued. "For hobbies… Well, I like wood carving a fair bit, same as you. Hey, I guess that's one thing we have in common, isn't it? Where did you learn to carve?"

Alex chuckled heartily. Gloomy just ignored the question.

"Ah—for me, I just kind of picked it up out of boredom. And necessity. My technique was pretty bad, but it was relaxing, so I stuck with it. It was only later found some texts and instructions on how to carve properly. Do you have a favorite thing to carve? Or is it just dolls?"

Okay, now she just wasn't listening.

Alex redirected his focus to… well, nothing, really. Looking at the pebbles sprouting in the dirt or stepping over the occasional fallen tree was about as interesting as the Misting Valleys got. And… hmm, maybe they were making a little too much progress for his injuries to be believable.

"Ah— Ah—" He moaned. "I think I pulled a rib. We should probably take a break soon."

She glowered. "You were the one who said you wanted to put some distance between us and the supply drop."

"Ouch… you're right," he winced. "I… I'll manage for now."

Gloomy harrumphed, kicking a rock into a tree as she stomped off. She wasn't the most talkative person in the world—something likely having to do with having him for company; he knew he was shit at this. But he reckoned she must be as bored as he was if she was willing to waste her breath on insults.

And make no mistake, Alex was bored out of his fucking mind. He couldn't say his memories from the first time he'd tackled the third scenario were well-cherished ones, but they had certainly been more eventful. There was nothing more monotonous than hiking twelve hours a day, and most of his skills were beyond the stage where idle practice would increase his proficiency. He was so bored he'd attempted to figure out how to cycle Nightmare's essence while moving, and it'd gotten him nowhere.

Boredom was good, he told himself. It meant he was staying out of too much trouble.

But the silence was deafening.

Silence is also good, he told himself, You don't actually miss the voices. That's called Stockholm syndrome.

He shivered, then sighed. "Fine. If you really want to revel in my misery, would you mind if I talked out the issues I'm having with my enchantments?"

She glared.

"Or, I could just talk about them out loud to myself. You know, the same way I monologued that master class on wood carving technique—"

"Go to the Devil, Alex! If you're gonna blab either way, then just do it!"

"So… how much do you know about enchanting, Gloomy?" Alex asked. "Ah— right, no questions. Then, for the sake of explanation, I'm just going to assume you're a novice…"

She glared harder. Alex vowed never to have kids.

"...Or, moderately intermediate. Anyway, the basics of enchanting have to do with inscribing runes, which are sort of like the physical symbolism of an Aspect."

"A Manifestation," Gloomy corrected. "I'm not stupid."

Alex raised his brow. Maybe she did have some knowledge on this after all.

"Sort of," he said. "A manifestation would imply a more abstract correlation. The runes themselves are just—"

"I know that. I apprenti—"Gloomy huffed, catching herself. "Just don't treat me some girl who knows fuck all."

"Ah… sorry." Alex tried not to sigh. "Well, right. Since you know a bit, I'll skip the surface-level stuff. I'm still going to assume you're not a practitioner, however, so you might not know the difference between runes and runic formations. You see, it's a bit like cooking. Do you like to cook for yourself, Gloo—"

"Get to the fucking point."

"Okay," Alex said. "So, you've probably noticed I use a Fire enchantment to keep warm at night."

He summoned a prepared slate into his hand, setting it alight as an example—then quickly threw it, shaking out his wrist as he remembered people weren't supposed to be able to hold fire in their hands. That finally got a smile on Gloomy's face. Or a smirk, more like.

"Idiot," she called him.

Alex had to agree. He'd thrown it a bit far in his panic, and as fire tends to do in arid environments, it quickly caught on the twigs and dead leaves, spreading. Gloomy's laughter died, and Alex's heart dropped as he looked up and saw the beginnings of a forest fire that could end California.

New Achievement! [Pyromaniac]

Congratulations! You've been here all of ten days and you've already started two uncontrollable fires!

+500 Essence

Well… fuck. If anyone had been struggling to find their path before, they'd definitely find it now. Gloomy screamed in rage and stomped onward. Though… honestly, this was a good thing. Power didn't come without risk, and he'd been settling into old habits lately—underestimating himself. This would be a good opportunity to test and refine his alarm contraption.

"Alex… are you trying to kill me?" Gloomy asked.

"I… look, I know, I fucked up. I'm sorry about that. But I already swore on my soul—"

"Then swear on it again! You're the one who said you could change your mind!"

"Gloomy, you know how much these things hurt! I'm not doing it again to ease your doubts about something I've already told you."

Her rage simmered and she stomped ahead with even heavier steps. Shit. He never should've told her that. He was really fucking this up, wasn't he? There had to be some way to fix this.

"Anyway, it's like cooking," he said.

"I swear to fucking God, Alex! I will fucking kill you, and your mother! I'll find your dad and castrate him like a pig, and if I learn you have siblings—"

"Gloomy! You say another word and I—"

"You'll what? Slay me with that pretty little sword you got there?"

"No. I'll backhand you across the face like your father—"

Alex quickly cut himself off, unclenching his fists. But it was too late. Her eyes widened and she stepped in close to him. "Oh yeah? Then fucking do it. Sibling's a sore spot for you, eh?"

He raised his fist. Oh gods, how he wanted to. Then he closed his eyes, took a breath, and when he opened them again, he rustled her hair instead. "Learn to take a joke, Gloomy. Do I look like a child abuser?"

Her face turned red with fury. Shit.

"Anyway, as I was saying, enchanting is a little bit like cooking—"

"Devil's mother! What if more invaders like that fucker from earlier appear? Don't brush this off, Alex! You know what you just did?!"

Alex shrugged. "Then there's more loot for us, and fewer assholes in the world. You didn't seem so scared of him earlier. And I won't use you as a decoy again, okay?"

She seemed like she had more to say, but urgency took her, and she turned, muttering, "Better fucking not."

Devouring Tree has been burned unalive!

+0 Essence

Devouring Tree has been burned unalive!

+0 Essence

Devouring Tree has been burned unalive!

+0 Essence

Devouring Tree has been burn—

Alex muted his notifications. He assumed this was the reason the System didn't reward killing plantlife—to avoid incentivizing what he'd just done. He imagined the Architects had guardrails in place to prevent the fire from spreading too far, though he probably wouldn't be able to open his notifications for a few hours regardless.

He put the issue out of mind as they marched at a quickened pace, and Alex didn't try to make small talk again. Eventually, Gloomy slammed her foot down, and with a scream, punched the nearest tree with all her strength. It cracked. Waliling ragefully, she shook her wrist, then shifted her anger to Alex and yelled at the top of her lungs, "How is it anything like cooking?!"

She stood there, heaving. The forest crackled. Alex had burned enough bridges in his life to know he was on thin ice now.

"Well, my fire rune was an 'instant enchantment'," he said. He opted to forego the example this time. "The effect is spontaneous, and the enchantment doesn't need to be continuously powered. In enchanting, runes are like ingredients, and formations are like a recipe. Since 'Fire' is just a single rune and there's not much nuance to starting a campfire, there was no need for me to draw a formation around it. It's the equivalent of just going into the produce section and finding an apple as your meal."

Gloomy stared at him in disbelief as a tree groaned and fell in the distance. Yeah, the metaphor was starting to sound stupid to him too now. "But say you wanted something more complex, like a baked apple. Or, more accurately, if you wanted to add ingredients—a bit of cinnamon, for example—" Alex coughed. "Or a whole pie. That's like adding additional runes. Uh…"

He trailed off, coughing as they rushed out of the billowing smoke. On the bright side, the wind had just shifted down-path, meaning anyone trailing them was going to have a hell of a time of it.

Gloomy choked. "Do you have more to say?"

They broke into a jog to get ahead of the fire in case of another change in wind. A few minutes passed before Alex spoke again. "Right, so, the more instructions or ingredients you have—or the more complex the enchantment—the more intricate the formation is required to be. The enchantment I attempted earlier used two runes, and was meant to trigger each other in sequence, so I had to draw a formation. The lines—the little scribbly things I drew in chalk—create a conduit for mana to follow. I placed my mana crystal directly on the rune for "Detect," and it was supposed to flow to "Warn" once…" He hesitated. "Well, you know."

"Christ! You're the fucking novice, Alex!"

They stopped, slightly out of breath, and looked down the mountain at the havoc. Well, it was true Alex's knowledge was more generalized than deep. He gestured at the scene. "Pretty good for a novice, huh?"

Gloomy's eyes widened. Too soon… yeah.

In a miraculous twist of fate, she swallowed her anger. "It probably just didn't work cause you fucked up the runes. Looks like that's your specialty, fucking everything up."

"No, it's not that. I practiced both individually."

"Individually?" She laughed. "And it was supposed to Detect what?"

Alex frowned. "The intruder…?"

She just laughed harder. That was… good, right? Laughter was a good thing.

"On my soul! You're an idiot, Alex! You old ox! You just copied the formation down exactly, didn't you? From what, some book? And you think you can mouth off to me about cooking?! You moron! Haha!" She clutched her side, then mimicked his voice, "'Formations are a conduit for mana to follow'—ha! You're like a pig with your snout in the mud! You have no clue, do you?"

Okay, now his feathers were getting a little ruffled. "And I take it, you do," he said brusquely.

Gloomy scowled at him. What's one more life to the list anyway?

…Except it was nothing so light that it could be joked about. Over the years, Alex had grown desensitized to killing. But killing children was different. No matter how many times, taking a child's life was never made easy. Whether he had a choice in the matter or not.

He glanced at Gloomy, tightening his fists. That aside, he knew he hadn't sounded nearly as stupid as Gloomy had made him out to be. Right?

Screw her. They walked the rest of the day in silence.

* * *

By the time Gloomy let Alex call a stop, it was already dawn. He looked around. His immediate surroundings had everything a wandering vagabond could want in an establishment: a smooth rock for sitting, a tree that accommodated the curve of his back, and bushes thick and far away enough for him to do what he had to do. Satisfied, he began assembling his stick rack. Gloomy dug a fire pit, filling it with tinder. They still weren't talking.

As Alex hung his pillowcases of clay on the rack to sun-dry, he tested their firmness with his thumb. When he reached the smallest pillowcase, the slightest smile tugged at his face. The clay was firm but not hard, yielding slightly under pressure.

Finally, something workable.

He slung the pillowcase over his shoulder and walked over to the rock, slamming it down beside him. Then he soaked a cloth and wiped it clean. A fine establishment this may be, but the rock was still very dusty, and he wouldn't risk contaminating his hard-earned clay in the final stages.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Once the rock was clean, he dumped the clay from the pillowcase. It was a deep, dark brown—almost black. His knowledge of other worlds' river sediment was limited, so he couldn't say why, but from his first life, he knew by experience that it would fire well enough to hold at the temperatures he needed. He played with it, ensuring the innermost portion wasn't too-too wet and that it was somewhat pliable.

"What do you even need all this clay for?" Gloomy asked.

"Trade secret," Alex answered.

"Hah? What gives you the right to be short with me?"

He ignored her.

The inside of his clay chunk was still a bit wet and gooey, while the exterior was a little rough and crumbly. He grabbed some and watched it break into smaller chunks in his fist. Before anything else, he needed to knead his block into a cohesive whole, giving it a consistent, shapeable texture.

Weighing the clump in his hands, he estimated it at about ten pounds. Kneading it was as difficult as one might expect at that weight. He pushed the drier clumps inward towards the center. Even with his heightened strength stat, it felt like folding miniature mountains in on themselves. Ten pounds was a lot to knead at once. After fifty repetitions, he could still find inconsistencies in the texture. But slowly, it became more uniform—flexible, yet resistant enough to give his muscles a satisfying burn. Moist, yet not so adhesive that it stuck to his hands. It peeled away like stickers off paper, and by the time he was finished, the calm, earthy smell had inundated his nerves, and the clay was his to mold however he wished.

Gloomy sat by the unlit fire pit she'd dug, glaring as she did. Just because she could not harm Alex didn't mean he could not feel her ill intent. But it didn't bother him as much as it once might have. After traveling three weeks with Camilla, enduring a few days with Gloomy was hardly an ordeal.

"I'm cold, Alex," she said bitterly.

"I see."

Now that the clay was sufficiently kneaded, Alex summoned the bucket of sand and placed it on the rock beside him. The clay had reached a uniform plastic consistency, but for it to survive firing without developing cracks, he needed to add back temper—a non-plastic substance like sand that will allow moisture to travel and vapor to escape the clay body when heated.

Unfortunately, he hadn't had the sense to bring a scale, so he poured the sand he'd prepared onto the rock, trying to eyeball what about twenty percent of his clay body would look like by volume. He might have overshot it a little, but it was within margin. Then he lifted his kneaded clay and slammed it down on the sand, pushing and folding it inward again. It required more kneading, of course, for uniform incorporation.

"Ugh! I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear?"

Alex's eyes widened. He turned to face Gloomy, honestly a little shocked.

"I mean, your parents share responsibility for how you turned out, I can't spare them. But your siblings did nothing wrong, and I shouldn't have threatened them. I was wrong, okay? I know that now. And I said I was sorry! So can you please light this damn fire already?"

Alex thought for a second. But "please" was already such a rarity from her mouth. He walked over and enchanted the fire.

"Apology accepted. I'm sorry as well for threatening violence against you."

"Finally," she snorted.

Alex sighed. This confirmed one thing. Regardless of her knowledge on enchanting, Gloomy was not an enchanter herself. So whatever detail he was missing had to be something simple.

Gods, he couldn't count how many times he'd listened to Aashay ramble about his Enchantments. He wished he'd asked more about his process. Or maybe Alex had asked. He recalled the man could be hard to follow sometimes, and more so when he was drunk.

But as Alex continued kneading his clay, he tried to recall anything that was of use. He remembered Gloomy had looked at him like he was stupid then asked what the rune was supposed to Detect. Obviously, it was supposed to 'Detect' the intruder, then 'Warn' Alex, right? That was just how it worked. Did he know exactly how the formation he'd drawn made that possible? No. But he had copied it exactly as he'd seen it, and every time he'd powered a formation, it had acted as a conduit for his mana. Was it really that stupid of a thing to say?

Alex used the clay as a conduit for his leftover frustration at being mocked. By the time he was done kneading, his wrists were refreshingly strained and his temper was tempered once more. But while the temper for his clay was now fully incorporated, his kneading also introduced a lot of air bubbles that could warp the clay when fired. The next step was to wedge the clay, which was an equally strenuous process. He shaped it into a brick and folded it inward, twisting slightly as he did. He could hear the faint pop of air escaping with each repetition.

Then he remembered something else Gloomy had said—or rather, something he had said that she had laughed at. If he wanted to find nuggets of advice in her words, he should probably focus on where she was most derisive toward him. And that had been when he said he practiced both runes individually.

And she'd also been particular about calling the runes 'Manifestations', hadn't she…

He thought on that for a bit, wiping his brow. Once all the air was expelled, he tore a chunk from his clay and slammed it onto a completely flat wooden surface. He spread it into a six-inch-diameter circle, then twisted thin coils from the main block. He placed the first coil along the circle's circumference, then placed more layers on top. Smoothing out the edges, he shaped a rough bowl. Finally, he inscribed another rune he'd been learning in the center: Water.

Then another rune beside it: Collect.

He'd tried this out before on a wooden slate. It hadn't even gotten the slightest bit soggy. He'd been hoping that inscribing it onto a bowl would help attract the water aspect, but now he wasn't so sure it would be enough. Regardless, he began tracing the formation exactly as he remembered it, using the roundest stick he'd shaped, and being careful not to leave any imperfections in the carving.

The problem with this method was that he couldn't test it before firing the bowl. Because if it did work, the moisture from the water would undoubtedly ruin the clay. And if it didn't… then maybe he would have to waste Essence on an enchantment manual, if he couldn't figure this out on his own. He wanted proper instruction of course, but 30,000 EC for just basic enchanting knowledge? Highway robbery. And thanks to the imprint the Lost Souls left, he already had to spend more Essence than he'd planned on purchases. Over the last few days he'd had the opportunity to fulfill a few quests while Gloomy was away doing the same, and even so, he had little Essence leftover to level up with.

Alex sat down next to Gloomy by the fire, "Hey… If you're really sorry, would you mind telling me what I'm missing? Why have my multi-function rune formations not been working?"

She snorted, not even looking up from the doll she was carving. Yeah, no luck there.

He sighed, setting the clay bowl down on a clean surface. Every five or so minutes, he rotated it by the fire, preheating it evenly to drive out moisture. Nightmare's arid climate would dry it soon enough even if he just let it sit, but he wanted to get good sleep tonight. He'd been valuing his sleep a lot more as his body finished recovering, and he wished Gloomy would do the same. From what he could tell, she refused to sleep while he was awake, and in the morning glow, she looked beyond unhealthily pale now.

He looked down at her hands.

"You're getting a lot better at carving," he said.

Gloomy scowled. Alex dragged a hand down his face. "Goddamn it Gloomy, I'm trying to extend an olive branch here. Why won't you just take it?"

"You wouldn't extend no fucking branch if you didn't want something," she spat.

"Like what? Come on, it's just the two of us for company here. A little chit-chat never hurt anyone, did it?"

"Try me."

"Well, do you like any video games?"

She snorted.

"Mario? Dark souls? No? How about Animal Crossing? Wasn't that pretty popular?" Alex scratched at his left eye. "Okay, how about music?"

"I can play the fluir," she said glumly.

The fluir? Alex hadn't exactly been asking about instruments, but that was something. What was a fluir though?

She mimed with her hands in front of her, positioned sort of like a clarinet. "Ugh. What do you call that one thing?"

She moved her hands out to the side.

"A flute?" Alex asked. "So, a fluir is a wind instrument?"

Gloomy's expression suddenly turned abashed, and she went back to her carving.

"Forget it," she muttered.

Alex let out a low hum. "No, no, that sounds pretty nice actually. I'd like to hear you play it sometime."

For a second, Alex thought he spotted a slight turn of her lips. But he must've imagined it.

He rotated his bowl once more. When it was dry enough, Alex removed it from the fire's circumference and stood up. Rusty shovel in hand, he began digging a separate fire pit a few meters away from the one already going.

"What, do I reek that bad?" Gloomy asked.

"We both do," he told her. "But no, this is to fire my pottery."

"You mean that lump of dirt over there? Good luck."

"You know, my mother once said—"

"Your mother's a dead woman, remember?"

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, Alex finished in his mind. She hadn't really said that though. "By the way, I appreciate you being open about your interests earlier, Gloomy. We're in this together, and each step we make toward getting along is progress toward—"

"Stop trying to be all nice," She said. "I can tell when you're being fake. It's uncomfortable. And disgusting. You're the type of guy who thinks women will fall all over themselves if you show a little interest, aren't you? Don't flatter yourself. They're just humoring you. Inside, they think you're a dumbass and are laughing at your limp-dick attempts at gaining their favor. Stupid."

…Yeesh.

"Your carving really has improved, though," he added.

She harrumphed.

Once Alex was done digging, he lined the bottom of his fire pit with coals. He placed three large stones on top of them, then balanced his clay bowl between the stones to allow for airflow underneath. That done, he nestled a bed of dry twigs over it to create a sort of roof, then started stacking bigger sticks in a final layer, arranging them to come to a point over it all, like a teepee fire.

Enchant.

Before long, the air above shimmered in a haze. Since this pit fire was shallower than what he usually dug, and because he had a bad habit of starting wildfires, he had cleared all flammable material from the parameter. His Bloodline's Thermostat ability gave him the fire's temperature—1,326 degrees Fahrenheit. He added more sticks, aiming to get it closer to 2,000 and the flames a deeper orange.

As the fire continued to burn, the teepee formation of the sticks resulted in them collapsing on top of the bowl as they turned to charcoal. They formed an additive layer of heat, trapping it in like an oven and oxidizing the clay. The temperature was coming down now, but slowly, giving it time to bake.

And giving Alex time to think.

Runic formations created lines for his mana to follow. He definitely recalled his friend saying they acted as a conduit… but did he specify it was for mana or had Alex just assumed? That was certainly what they did when he'd powered them, but maybe formations served a different purpose during the Enchantment itself. It wasn't as though he hadn't gotten any of his formations to work. When he had practiced both runes individually, he'd drawn singular function formations that pretty much accomplished what he'd asked of them earlier: One had warned him when he'd activated it, the other had shimmered a little when it detected his movement…

Gloomy's words rung in his mind again. 'Detect what?'

Movement. He had told her it was to detect the intruder… but that wasn't exactly right, was it? It was meant to detect the intruder's movement. And if it detected movement above a certain threshold, it would warn him of danger.

But he hadn't been thinking of that earlier. He'd never really pondered exactly what the formations did. If it worked, it worked, and if it didn't why would people even use those formations? Runes were the physical symbolisms of Aspects, and formations were there to imbue the runes with additional context for more complicated functions. But gloomy had instead called runes manifestations of Aspects.

"But a manifestation would imply a more abstract correlation," he'd replied.

Maybe runes were a more abstract correlation then. Now that he thought about it, it did seem a little weird that a symbol drawn on a surface would directly symbolize something like fire. And there were more Aspects than Alex could ever memorize, but… were 'Detect' and 'Warn' one of them? He knew Vigilance and Noise were common Aspects, so why did most variations of this Enchantment use 'Detect' and 'Warn' instead of those?

Rather… runes like 'collect' feel more like an instruction in and of itself. Could there really be a 'Collect' aspect out there? And why did this train of thought feel so…

A memory resurfaced in his mind. "No, no, you don't gettt-iit, Alex! It's a runic languaaage! It's an art! You treat words like blunt tools. To communicate meaning—then you wonder why people can't understand you?! But words can mean so many different things! it's the way you string them together that matters! It's important the way you speak them! So you should really be more considerate choosing your words the next time you're talking to your—"

Alex frowned, recalling some stuff his friend Aashay had said about Enchanting. The man said a lot of non-sense sometimes, so it was hard to know what to listen to and what to tune out, but he'd often stressed the importance of runes as a language. He was a genius Enchanter, afterall, and Alex was beginning to think he might be onto something.

No, definitely—the correlation between runes and Aspects had to be abstract. Because there were multiple runic languages in the world, so there could never just be one symbol representing fire. Then from that perspective, his single rune enchantments were like… saying a single word? Maybe it didn't matter how he "spoke" it because a single word could only have so many interpretations, and that's why they worked. But try "stringing words together" in a multi-rune Enchantment and suddenly it doesn't work.

…And Aashay was also the one who'd told Alex Enchantments were tethered to the physical realm by intention. Alex knew that to be true, because intention is what caused the fire aspect to be more attracted to wood. Languages exist to communicate meaning, afterall. But as far as languages went, by "speak", did Aashay mean to imply that runic languages weren't just written languages? Maybe it was just one of his poeticisms.

Or maybe not. Alex was still thinking of Enchantments as conveniences, from a consumer's perspective. But they weren't things that could be mechanically replicated, otherwise Gloomy wouldn't have laughed so hard at the fact that he'd just copied the formations. If runic formations could have their meaning communicated solely through writing, then that should mean their patterns were pre-affixed—and he knew that couldn't be true. Refine. Bind. Affix—that was the order to all formations of power. So if Alex's Enchant skill bound his Essence to the enchantment upon activation, then that meant the Essence-Pattern was also only finalized during activation, after the binding process.

So, if formations weren't a conduit for mana, then…

Alex chewed on the thought as the fire died down and the minutes ticked by. It grew in his mind until he'd developed a theory he absolutely needed to test. Then he shoveled aside the collapsed charcoal and twigs to reveal his ceramic bowl. It had fired successfully.

But that didn't mean it was ready. Ceramic often needed upwards of a whole day to cool and settle after being fired, and normally, rushing that process would just send it into thermal shock and crack it anyway.

Normally, that was. Alex glanced at Gloomy. Oh, fuck it, he'd already shown her Nychta anyway—what was this in comparison? He reached into the dying fire with his hands, feeling them turn black as smoldering coal as the heat touched his skin.

"What the—?!" Gloomy exclaimed. "You can do that?"

She gasped. "Then you started that forest fire for nothing!"

"Cool, right?"

"A little," she grumbled.

Alex turned the bowl over in his hand. Good—there were no cracks or protrusions. You could never be entirely certain using a firing method like this, and since he was using it for his enchantment, even the slightest flaw could ruin everything.

Speaking of which, he was dying to test his theory. Even if he had time to, he wouldn't have wanted to wait a day for it to cool. So instead, he closed his eyes, focusing inward. He twisted his essence in a familiar pattern, and the System responded, granting him one of his favorite skills.

[Heat-Transfer]

Allows one to transfer heat from one source to another, controlling their internal temperature.

Alex smiled. Some skills had uses that belied their usefulness. For Alex, this was one of them. To be fair, for almost everyone else on earth, it really was useless. Having been developed by a race of golems, impervious to heat, Alex figured he might be one of the humans actually capable of using it.

He held the bowl in his hand, and his bloodline ability gave him its internal temperature in a measure of degrees celsius. But he knew the figure it fed him was a gross oversimplification. Temperature didn't naturally slot into artificial metrics like degrees, and internal temperatures were never uniform across the board—these things were simplifications by part of the System for his sake. Because behind every metric and number, every label and category, this universe held enough information to drive a lone mind mad.

But right now, Alex needed that information. So he shut out all else and focused his senses intently on the ceramic, on the makeup of its molecular compound. Objects are never just one temperature, and now, he searched for every variation that his bowl could give him.

Even just one second, and it felt like his brain was splitting. He pulled his senses away as soon as he got the information he needed. Then he set his mind instead to recognizing temperature variations in the ceramic's grain that fell outside of a certain margin for error, since that was less taxing on his mind.

There were none—yet. Ceramic naturally cooled evenly. That was why people just let it happen instead of rushing the process. Alex didn't have that kind of patience right now.

Alright. One hour, he decided.

He was out of practice with this method, and with that rate of cooling there'd be enough margin for error for his mind to process the temperature fluctuations in time, then adjust the rate at which he sapped heat. His right hand on the bowl, he put his left hand back in the fire, activating the skill.

Heat-Transfer

Immediately, fluctuations began to crop up everywhere in the ceramic—on a scale that might've been impossible for his mind to process if Thermostat were a skill rather than part of his bloodline. He drew heat from the ceramic with his right hand, feeding it back into the dying fire with his left. The fire didn't experience any immediate changes—it was already out of fuel to burn—but with time, the charcoal began to positively sear, and it would only continue to do so. He stayed in his position, sapping a few degrees of heat from the bowl every minute.

Whenever he sensed a fluctuation in the bowl's rate of cooling across its molecular grain, he adjusted the way he drew heat from it, sapping more or less heat from whichever areas fell outside of his margin for error. He listened to what his Thermostat ability told him and fine-tuned his process until no alarm bells were ringing in his head.

To normal, mundane senses, the areas where these fluctuations occurred weren't even distinguishable. It wasn't as though he could point to a particular spot and say that's where he needed to increase the temperature. Changes occurred on a much smaller scale, and his mind was working on a much more instinctual level than he could even comprehend.

After thirty minutes, he was already sweating heavily but decided he could handle a slightly faster rate of cooling, and a narrower margin for error. He focused even more intently on evening out the process until, ten minutes later, he held a relatively smooth, room-temperature ceramic bowl in his hand.

He lay back, breathing heavily, letting the fire die without his aid.

"Whatever the fuck you just did," Gloomy said, "it wasn't worth it."

"Oh, believe me, it is."

He turned the bowl over in his hands, tracing the rune and formation he'd engraved. The more ingrained and harder the process of engraving an enchantment, the higher its odds of working. Or so Aashay had once said.

"I've figured it out, you know," he told Gloomy. "Where I went wrong with my earlier enchantments."

"Did you?"

Alex could practically hear her rolling her eyes, but he didn't care. He was certain. The more runes one strung together, the harder it became to communicate their meaning. Just like how it was in any other language. Thus, a formation was drawn—not as a conduit for mana—but a conduit for intent.

And at that moment, Alex thought of nothing more than how badly he wanted to splash himself with a bowl of water.

Enchant

So, he did.

"Hey Gloomy," he called to her, half soaked. "If you're still afraid you reek, I've got just the thing."

She scowled at him. Ah. Yeah, he realized now how that sounded. It would've been nice if there were formations for English too.

* * *

The sun set in the sky above, and Alex wiped the bleariness from his vision, having just gotten some decent sleep. Every day now, he woke up wondering just when those damn assassins would come. He was beginning to worry they never would. But Gloomy certainly didn't think so, and that was reassurance enough to keep him on his toes.

Speaking of Gloomy, she was up as well, watching him. The bags under her eyes had deepened; she looked pissed as usual, and Alex decided not to talk to her until he'd had some breakfast. Their discussions were not a first-thing-in-the-morning kind of chore. That, and today was going to be difficult enough as it was.

Today, he was finally going to do something about those Lost Souls. All the work he'd put into learning how to enchant had been for this—to remove their imprint. Learning that they'd left one on his soul put some things into perspective. They must've done the same in his first life, and even though they couldn't leave Nightmare, the imprint had remained. He was certain he could attribute at least half of his troubles with spirits later in life to that gift they'd left him.

After forcing down a can of baked beans, Alex had been just about to begin—until he remembered he was technically sharing this space and decided to be considerate. "Hey Gloomy, I'm about to do what you call 'weird shit' again. Just a heads-up."

"Ugh. What is it now?"

Alex sighed. Then he pulled out his knife and began carving runes. Not on wood. Not into clay. But as sharp lines across the flesh of his stomach, right at the center of his solar plexus, where his core was rooted. He winced in pain, struggling to keep his knife work steady. He really didn't want any do-overs.

"Oh! Oh!" Gloomy leapt to her feet in a cheer. "What are you doing? Do you need any help?"

"What—"

"Christ, you're making it crooked. Give me that!"

She snatched the knife from him, and Alex immediately sensed ill intent in her gaze—a sadistic sort of pleasure. "Give me the knife," he said flatly. "I'm not letting you carve bloody lines into my goddamn flesh."

"Come on, Alex! You can't even see yourself from that angle."

"Doesn't matter. I'm not handing my knife to someone who wants nothing more than to see me dead."

Gloomy hesitated but handed the knife back with a huff. "Was I going to enjoy it? Duh. But I'm good enough to at least get the lines straight."

Alex frowned. It wasn't the quality of the inscription he was worried about—he was certain she'd do an excellent job. Beyond requested, even. He turned the knife in his hands, ignoring the steady throb of pain as he looked back at his handiwork.

Well shit. It was crooked.

"Fine," he muttered. "You can do the carving. Just don't go too deep."

She shot right back to her feet, reaching for his knife. He held it just out of reach.

"Gloomy," he warned.

"Obviously, dimwit. You were the one who put me under this stupid contract. You think I enjoy spasming pain? Well, I don't. So, what am I carving?"

Alex cautiously handed her the dagger, suppressing the shiver that crawled down his spine. These were not the team-building exercises he'd been envisioning.

"It's going to be another multi-rune enchantment," he said. "Though it's a single function this time. The first rune is going to be 'Expel,' and the second is…"

He trailed off, opening his shop, then scrolled through the single-rune department until he found the one he needed. It was a hard rune to find records of, and if Alex was going to get robbed anyway, he was going to spend his essence on something he actually needed rather than something he could figure out himself.

"And the second is?" Gloomy prompted.

Purchase rune for 50,000 Essence Crystals?

Alex hit yes.

"Soul."

Instantly, Gloomy's demeanor changed. She almost drew a pinprick of blood where the knife rested, and Alex felt real danger from his trait. There was something deeper in her expression—a darkness that hadn't been there when she was just angry.

"You actually are a Warlock, aren't you?" she said.

Alex thought about that for a second. Vampires and other Warlocks consumed Essence directly from other life forms, but they couldn't separate that Essence from their previous host's souls the way planets or the System could. In result, Warlocks ended up with having their own souls tainted by the imprints of other beings. By technicality, the Lost Souls had made Alex a Warlock.

"I won't be one if this succeeds. So, do you want an opportunity to inflict pain on me or not?"

The eagerness in Gloomy's smile told him all he needed to.

"Then I'll have you practice the runes on wood first, thank you very much," Alex said.

Gloomy lifted the knife from his skin with about the same level of hesitance he'd had giving it to her in the first place. Alex showed her the formation's design from his journal and was immediately grateful he'd made her practice not-on-his-flesh first. Watching her first two attempts, he realized how badly she could have butchered it and the contract definitely had its gray areas in what constituted "harm." He was certain that intentionally messing up the design wouldn't end well for her. But what about accidentally screwing it up and needing to redo it? That, he was less certain of.

Several minutes later, Gloomy cursed and threw a wooden slat aside after Alex rejected her eighth attempt—her typical reaction to failure. Still, this time, she seemed eerily motivated to improve. By the fifteenth slate, her work was good enough that he had no choice but to hand her the knife.

He had been hoping it would take her longer, to be honest, but he hadn't been giving lip service when he'd praised her carvings earlier. Her knife work had improved. She held the knife back up to his skin. "What does this formation do, anyway?"

"You care?" he asked.

"Yes, I care! If I'm helping you summon the fucking devil, then forget it!"

"Relax," he said. "It's nothing so sinister. There just happens to be a leech on my soul, and I want it off so I can talk to it."

She stared blankly at him. Then he felt a sharp pain as the knife jabbed into his flesh.

"Your grave, then," she muttered.

Alex gritted his teeth to keep still. Pain was something you learned to tolerate, but it was never something you became impervious to. Oh, how he wished he could've done this any other way instead.

But it couldn't be helped. He knew the runes would work together, but he didn't know shit about creating his own runic formations. This formation was just one he'd seen on the Dykriest equivalent of a vending machine in the 10th Layer Adventurer's Guild—the one that dispensed his favorite tea. That was where he'd memorized the rune for Expel from. Expelling a drink from storage… expelling Lost Souls from his own… the concept was similar in essence, but the correlation was tenuous at best.

Hence, the necessity of pain.

Enchanting had proved to be linked to intent far more than he'd initially realized, and he couldn't think of a clearer way to establish intent than carving the runes directly into his own flesh. He had done all he could to increase the odds of success, and he was fairly confident it would work. If it didn't… Well, he was reasonably certain it wouldn't kill him, but this hurt being in vain would likely be the least of his concerns.

"And… done!" Gloomy declared.

Alex groaned, looking down. He had to wipe the moisture from his eyes and clean the smear of blood from his stomach to see clearly, but—yes. The formation was correct.

"Ahh," she sighed. "That felt good. Really let out some steam. Good luck with the enchantment, Alex. I hope it kills you."

Alex hoped otherwise, so he summoned the aspect-pure aura Elixir and unstoppered the plug. "Thanks, Gloomy," he grunted. "If it does, then I'm sorry for the grief I've put you through."

Gloomy halted. Her expression darkened, then twisted into anger. For a moment, he thought she was going to launch into another tirade. Instead, she stomped off, leaving him to it.

He looked down at his stomach, surprised to see not just clean lines but true artistry. He wasn't sure how to feel about that—even if it did improve his odds. Still, there was one other reason he was comfortable improvising this much. As far as his soul was concerned, there was one other method at his disposal to alleviate the burden on the enchantment itself. He reached out—

"It won't work," Gloomy said. "Just so you know."

Alex turned to face her when something hard smacked into his face.

"What—"

He looked down. It was a doll. One carved suspiciously in his image. It had his exact shade of—no, those were his hairs. When the hell had she gotten those?! And why was he dressed in… wait, was that the basil from the ramen she'd kicked?!

"You're a witch," he realized.

She scowled. "An herbalist. I won't take shit from a fucking Warlock."

"Why are you…?"

"I'm only helping you because this won't backfire enough to cause you serious harm. It won't work, though. A soul without a body must be tethered to something. You can't just expel it! You think exorcism is so easy? If you want it gone, you need to tether it to something else, instead."

Alex looked down at the doll again, and suddenly all those threats she'd thrown around about killing him no longer sounded so hollow. He had thought of her as just some young brat. He'd let his guard down.

"That still doesn't answer why," he said.

Gloomy walked over, kneeling so they were eye to eye.

"Listen closely, Alex. You helped me with my woodcarving, you gave me water and soap to clean myself with, and as much as it wasn't worth it, you also gave me this."

She shook the wrist that she bore the bracelet relic. Then, when Alex met her gaze once more, a slight shiver ran through him. Her voice took on a dark tone.

"And now we're even," she said. "I'll help you with your fucking soul leech, and from now on, you won't be nice to me. You won't talk as if we're friends. And—Devil fucking help me—you will not comment on my woodcarving! Because I want you to understand just how fucking little your 'sorry' means, Alex. I need you to know that I never forget a grudge."

Alex watched Gloomy go and knew, for certain this time, he would have to kill her. He'd done what he could; it was unavoidable. Still, there was an order to these things. So he reached out, summoning Nychta to his hand and unsheathing her in a smooth motion.

Gloomy turned in alarm. "Now you reveal your true colors, you—"

But Alex ignored her, impaling himself through the gut.

Enchant

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