Die. Respawn. Repeat.

The first Road.

Tarin and Naru both lie on little nests of twigs and leaves in front of me. Mari stands nearby, her usual confident demeanor marred by an anxious wringing of her wings—she knows what this means. Knows what we're risking. There's a decent chance that if I give Naru the ability to remember, he'll... well, he'll have the chance to use it against me.

But I've already decided what to do. The only thing that's right. If it backfires, if he tries to betray me, I'll deal with it then.

For what it's worth, I don't think he will. What he did to try to remember...

I shake my head. All kinds of extreme.

"Are you ready?" I ask. Tarin nods. Mari doesn't speak, although I can tell she's worried. She's trying her best to suppress that worry, to be the pillar of the family in a time of need.

It's unspoken, but we all know that there's a chance this could go very, very wrong. I'm already prepared to pull back and abort on the off chance that I'm not yet strong enough to do what I need to do. If it looks for even a moment like Tarin or Naru are breaking, I'll have seconds to fix whatever happened and repair it or reverse the procedure entirely.

The question is more for myself, really. Ahkelios and Guard stand by at the side, in case something goes awry and they need to help, but the main factor in all this is me. Firmament Control, the Abstract Crown—those things have to be enough for me to figure out what's wrong with Naru's core and repair it. They have to be enough for me to move a piece of the Interface, a Firmament construct so complex I've barely even scratched the surface of what it can do.

I take a deep breath and begin.

"That feel weird," Tarin complains almost immediately. I shoot a look at him and he quiets, though not without shooting me a half-grin that tells me he's messing with me.

I'm going to miss the old crow. No going back after this.

His core is... strange. I feel it out first with my senses, and then with Firmament Control. It's so vastly different from my own that it's hard to even recognize that it's a core at first—it takes me a moment to realize that that's because he's a layer or two beneath me, and his soul isn't quite as clearly defined as mine is.

It's still very much him. I can feel static and lighting sparking against my power as I reach into him with a mixture of Firmament Control and the partial affinity granted by the Abstract Crown. I can feel the Interface shard lodged inside of him, and just looking at it with my senses tells me my instincts were correct.

It isn't just Firmament. Firmament is a bulk of it, yes—the Interface is acting almost like... a receiver? I can't tell what it does, but I can tell that it's a shard of my Interface, and that there's a sort of identifier associated with it. Something that says that this is not just a Trialgoer but the Trialgoer, the center of the loop; something that says that when all of time is reset and rewound, this person's memories must not be touched.

And then accompanying that, there's a Concept. What that Concept is I'm not entirely sure. It takes a moment or two of examination, of trying to pinpoint exactly what it encapsulates, but it makes sense the moment I grasp it.

The Concept of a Fixture. A fixed point in the world as time moves around it. No doubt that same Concept is within me, rooted in every part of my core in just the same way.

In Tarin, though? It's wound around the shard of Interface and digs roots into his core, beating in time with every pulse of Firmament from the Interface. Almost like a heart, actually.

Now that I look more closely at it, it resembles the kind of damage that's been done to Naru. I frown a bit—the pattern of the roots resembles the pattern of the cracks in Naru's core. Surely that's not a coincidence?

The difference, of course, is that the roots do no damage to Tarin's soul. If anything, they create a region of strengthened soul-stuff, around which Firmament seems to be gathering.

A thought strikes me and I pause. I narrow my eyes, examining what's happening more carefully, trying to understand. What if—

"What?" Tarin squawks, looking at me, then at Mari, then at me again. "What happening?"

"I'm still just looking," I say, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. As much as I understand the anxiety, Tarin keeps twitching in a way that's distracting; I'm starting to worry that he'll talk at the wrong moment and distract me. Maybe we should have put Tarin to sleep for this; I'd suggested it earlier, but Tarin had staunchly refused.

But Mari's got to have a few herbs we could feed to him. Even if she doesn't, Akar almost definitely does. I'm willing to bet she's had to do all this before. "Listen, Tarin, maybe we should just let you sleep through this—"

"No!" Tarin says immediately. "I want see!"

Of course he does. It's the same thing he said before. I sigh, though not without a bit of fond exasperation, and turn my attention back to that region of strengthened soul-stuff.

I'm going to just... ignore the way Tarin twitches at me.

It's hard to put into words exactly what a soul or a core is. It isn't just Firmament, though Firmament makes up a large part of it. It's something more fundamental than that. I struggle to find the word for it. A container?

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It's the best word I can think of, though it still doesn't feel... right, exactly. It's a form of Firmament that can create and hold other types of Firmament. It's Firmament that's uniquely yours, that generates and distills and interprets everything else you come into contact with. Ṛ

Your soul, in other words. Soul Firmament, maybe?

That feels about right. Not perfect, but right. It might be more accurate to simply replace the word "Soul" with the name of the practitioner; Tarin's core is made of Tarin Firmament, for instance. And that shard of the Interface is reinforcing that base layer of Firmament. Reinforcing the element of the soul in one area over all the rest, making one section more... Tarin.

I'm going to stick with the "Soul" term, I think. Mostly for my own sanity.

Either way, that area of reinforced soul is causing all the rest of the Firmament within Tarin to slowly collect around the Interface shard. Around the center of his soul. It's almost like—

[Thread of Insight activated!]

—almost like a proper, fully-formed core.

Like mine.

The Interface helps Trialgoers achieve phase shifts. Is this how it does it? A passive soul-reinforcement that accelerates the gathering of Firmament over time? If I'm right, this makes Tarin a second-layer practitioner, and the action of the Interface shard is slowly nudging him toward the third layer. It'll take time for him to get there, at this rate, but it is helping him.

The notification about the Thread barely registers to me. I blink once to dismiss it, then turn my attention to figuring out how to remove it. If it's so deeply entrenched within Tarin, if it's actually helping him shift to the third layer, then it's going to be even harder to remove. Maybe if I can reinforce it myself, somehow, thread a Concept through those roots to replace the Fixture...

I move away from Tarin for a moment and examine Naru instead, trying to understand the differences, and almost immediately understand what I couldn't before.

The cracks are only cracks because the Concept that once filled them has been withdrawn. I can sense a remnant of them, a sort of residue left behind—Naru's appears to have been Destruction. The Interface fragment within him, however, is a dead thing; it remains connected to the greater constructed, but it doesn't pulse the way mine does.

It's keeping him contained.

That's the first thought that comes to mind. Naru and Versa have both talked about their ability to gain credits from helping in the Trial, but neither of them have talked about progressing in their phase shift—and why wouldn't they, if phase shifts are so important? If a phase shift represents a change in power so drastic that it bridges the gap between skill rarities, then why wouldn't they chase that instead of more skills?

The answer has to be that they can't phase shift anymore. At the very least, it has to be difficult, if the Interface no longer supports the process. Withdrawing those Concept tendrils does a sort of permanent damage that would interfere with any future attempt. It'd be easier to phase shift if they'd just never made contact with the Interface at all.

So... what picture does this paint, exactly? Trialgoers are gathered up for Trials and offered the chance at power. If they succeed, they become leaders on their home planet, nearly unbeatable because of the sheer power they possess compared to the rest of the population. Even when everyone has access to Firmament, the advantage given to the Trialgoers by their skills is insurmountable unless you're a layer or two above them, and without the Interface, no local population is going to be able to reach that point.

But in exchange, those Trialgoers also give up the opportunity for any future, meaningful growth. They can't grow enough to become a threat to the Integrators. Or whoever's behind the Integrators, which I'm beginning to suspect more and more is a thing.

They can keep gathering skills. They can try to save up their credits to acquire a Rank SSS skill, even.

But then there's a whole new rank of skills inaccessible to the average Trialgoer. Imbued skills, like Primordial Foray and Great Filter; skills I haven't seen anyone talk about. Skills even Gheraa didn't mention. I think back to the automatic imbuement offered by the Interface the moment I achieved any sort of proficiency with imbuement.

It doesn't want us to figure out imbued skills, I realize. That's why that function exists—it's a shortcut for imbuement that makes everything easier. It's a shortcut that's meant to prevent me from realizing that skills themselves can be imbued, one within another, in a way that amplifies their power exponentially.

"Ethan."

I blink and look up.

He-Who-Guards and Ahkelios are both standing in front of me, looking concerned. Guard's hand rests on my shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asks. "You seem... distressed."

"I'm—I'm fine." I shake my head, blinking a few times to try to clear the weight of my thoughts.

This isn't exactly a huge revelation. I already know that the Interface is lying, that the Integrators seek control; this is just another layer to the manipulation. It's realizing how detailed it all is that makes my head ache. It's the way a half-dozen things are suddenly connected in my mind.

I try to clear my thoughts. All these things are important, but none of them are the problem at hand.

"I just... realized a few things," I say when I realize Guard and Ahkelios are still staring at me; I clear my throat and offer a weak smile. "I'll tell you all about it later. Need to figure out how to fix Naru. And how to do this without hurting Tarin."

"I trust!" Tarin declares almost immediately, even though I'm not looking at him. I laugh.

"Yes, I know. Thank you, Tarin."

Revelations aside, I'm reasonably sure I now know what I need to do.

First, extract the shard of the Interface from Tarin. I reach out with Firmament Control, grasp it with the mental equivalent of delicate tweezers—

—and almost immediately, Tarin seizes on his bed. The slightest tweak of that shard has the crow crying out in alarm, and the reason why becomes very quickly clear.

The Interface has a defense mechanism. The moment I touch it with Firmament Control, it lashes out, threads of its Concept trying to fight me off; the Fixture roots all throughout Tarin's soul quite literally rip through it to try to tear through my control. My eyes widen with panic—I try to suppress it, to force that new sense of Concept to hold the roots back, but there are so many of them, each one squirming around every thread of control establish, every foothold I assume, and even when I withdraw it continues, flaying through his soul—

The Road Not Taken ends there, and I jerk forward as the visions slam into me; I keep my eyes held tightly shut as I work to establish control over my breathing. Calm. None of that happened. The knowledge I gained is real, but the situation is not. Tarin remains in front of me, his soul intact.

I'm suddenly very glad I decided to do a trial run with The Road Not Taken. It's... costly, in terms of Firmament. Even just choosing to start the surgery an hour earlier blows through a good portion of my Firmament. I'll need to take a moment to recover.

But with this, at least, I'll have as many tries as I need to get it right.

I'm not going to risk Tarin's life. Not for anything. I have the tools to make it work, and I'm damn well going to use them.