Die. Respawn. Repeat.

There's one thing that's been on my mind ever since we encountered it with the Seedmother—one thing I've been ruminating on and trying to work out. The Interface is lying to me about the skill categories. Why? What's the point?

And more importantly, what are those categories, really?

It's not some arbitrary way to designate and separate skills. Considering the similarities in the way the skills in each category are constructed, there has to be something more fundamental to it than that. Everything I've encountered since then agrees, from Virin's imbuement stones to the variety of other skills I've seen used against me.

This feels important. I can almost feel the weight of the lie in my soul, like a physical weight dragging me down and interfering with the formation of the fourth layer.

Maybe that's what it is. A way to weaken Trialgoers and Integrators alike. We're reliant on the Interface to grow, and if the fourth layer requires me to know the world—to define myself in relation to it—then any lie within it becomes an exploitable weakness. It ensures not only that we're weaker than we could be, but creates an instability in our souls that could be used to fracture it.

Just speculation, perhaps, but... It feels right.

It doesn't matter, I suppose. Kauku has told me that I have all the information I need to uncover the truth behind this; I'm still not exactly sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I can find out. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

All I need to do is look.

The evidence is all around me, contained within my soul. If I look very, very closely, I can see the beginnings of the fourth layer trying to form. It's thin, wispy, and insubstantial—unable to properly form without the first three layers fully solidified—but it's enough to see the four pillars I identified in Gheraa's echo. Four barely-noticeable origin points around which the fourth layer is trying to form. They're exactly where I'd guessed they would be.

They correlate, almost perfectly, to the placement of skills within my soul.

Directionality is a barely legible concept when in a space that's better described through metaphor than physical direction, but for lack of a better term, they map to the four corners of my soul. The four points of a compass. My Strength skills lie ahead of me and my Durability skills behind me, north and south respectively; the Speed and Reflex skill clusters mark the west and east points in turn.

Between them, at the center of everything and embedded within the bedrock formed by the first three layers, are my Firmament skills.

I have all the information I need.

Kauku's words ring in my mind, and I stare at the placement of these skills. I could examine the constructs themselves for similarities and try to glean what they really mean through that alone, but somehow I don't think that's what Kauku means. There's something else.

Where else have I encountered the number five before? It's not just the Ritual stages and the Interface categories, surely. There's something else.

The thought strikes me almost out of the blue. I have encountered it before. I'd assumed it to be arbitrary at the time. An artifact of an older time and a weaker understanding of Firmament.

What if it's the other way around? What if the people of the Empty City—of First Sky, as Novi would have called it—understood it better? At the very least, they could have known things that aren't as well known now. Maybe we have different parts of an incomplete puzzle.

I wrack my mind, trying to remember what Novi told me about their Seers.

"You said they're all at the third phase shift, at minimum?" I ask. Novi nods.

"We have only five of them," she says. "Five Seers, each specializing in an Aspect. Force, Body, Mind, Energy, and Spirit."

The Aspects. Five Seers, five Aspects, each corresponding to a so-called skill category. Strength, Durability, Reflex, Speed, and Firmament.

It matches. More than that, even. The names the scirix gave their Aspects might be a little more general, but they're significantly more accurate; those names explain the odd little discrepancies I've noticed here and there with the skills that don't quite match the category the Interface claims it belongs to.

There's Force, representing an application of power against the world. Most of the time they manifest as a skill that increases my physical strength in some capacity, but they don't have to. The fundamental truth of Force is not strength. It's a projection of power. A physical representation of change. Force skills demand that the physical world bend to their whims.

And as I make that realization, something in my soul responds.

My Strength skills shudder. Something in their constructs realign slightly as if to accommodate my newfound understanding of them. They settle after a moment, but even without looking at the Interface I can tell they've changed. The way my Firmament flows through them is... cleaner, for lack of a better word.

I can see the similarities between each skill now. Before, there was too much noise—a complexity to the constructs that made them impossible to parse. It's not that they're simpler, now, but the noise is gone, and more than that, there's a clarity to my mind when I look at them.

Revelations. My earlier thought echoes in my mind. The last few phase shifts have required me to make decisions about myself. This one requires revelations about the world. That's why my core is responding the way it is.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

What I'm doing now is equivalent to a partial phase shift. Whatever I get out of this, it's going to be a measurable, qualitative change in my power.

So I keep going. With everything that happened in the last Ritual stage and the warning I sent myself, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need everything I can get.

After Force comes the Aspect of the Body. That's essentially my Durability skills, but there's more to it than just the concept of durability. If I'm understanding it correctly—and it's harder to parse than Force is—then it's the opposite of Force. Where the Aspect of Force demands that the physical world change, the Aspect of the Body is the use of Firmament to stay the same. To resist all external influence.

The Aspect of the Body makes the claim that my physical self is more real than anything that can be put against me.

Just like before, my Durability skills respond to this realization. They shift and align themselves, and something in their construction becomes clear to me: I see an emanation of Firmament that encapsulates and protects. A self-reinforcing circle.

And then comes something I don't expect. As my Durability skills finish aligning, there's a resonance that emerges—an invisible link that spans the space between them and the Strength skills. I stare at it for a moment, unsure what to make of it.

I might not have seen anything like it before, but it also feels like it's always been there. Like I'm not creating something new as much as I am unearthing something that's always been there.

With the first two revelations complete, the rest come more easily, falling into place like pieces of a puzzle.

Energy. That's the Aspect that the Interface calls Speed, but it's more about... the transference of energy. The displacement of power from one place to another. Speed is the most common application of it, certainly, but it governs any movement of power from one place to another. It's the reason Firmament is so much easier to control when I'm in the Generator Form.

The Aspect of Energy rules over flow. Kinetic energy, electrical energy, the shift from potential energy into one or the other. The Interface calls it Speed, but it's so much more.

My Speed skills react like the others, shivering and realigning themselves. I see the shape of them now: the complex flow of power within them, as if by their very natures the construct of each skill shows off how simple it is to chart the course of power within them.

And last but not least... Mind. The Aspect of consciousness, for lack of a better word. Reflexes are the most combat-practical component of what it governs, but the Aspect is more inherently about that intersection between observation and reality. It is perception, perspective, and connection.

Like before, the Speed and Reflex clusters form a link; as the Reflex skills shift in response to my thoughts, something new snaps into place.

Four revelations. Four pillars. Two currents of power that cross over one another. Even without the fourth layer in place, I can tell this is meant to reinforce it—to give it structure and stability it wouldn't otherwise have.

And more than that, my skills feel stronger now. I can't place a name or a number to it. It's just a feeling. I'll have to test it properly when I emerge from this trance.

There's one final step—the Aspect of the Spirit. The cluster of Firmament skills directly beneath me, resting in the still-incomplete bedrock formed by the first three phase shifts.

But I know instinctively that there's nothing more I can do for now. That final step requires me to use Soul Space. More than that—with the realization that this represents the Spirit, according to the scirix—I don't think I can just pack the bedrock of my soul with dirt and dust.

Which was my first plan, admittedly. If all I need to do is pack myself full of reality, why not use what's readily available?

But no. It has to be something meaningful. Something that represents me, in the way that Tarin's skill represented him when I gave him a shard of Intrinsic Lightning. It's the last thing I need to complete the fourth shift.

The only problem is that I don't know what that is yet.

Knowing what I need to look for is good enough, though. I'm as ready as I can get.

I pull myself out of the trance, blinking against the harshness of the light and the...

Hm.

That's a lot of notifications.

And a very worried-looking Ahkelios. And Guard.

"Uh," I say. "Was I in there long?"

"You weren't responding and you were in there for six hours." Ahkelios manages to somehow project the scirix equivalent of wanting to tear his hair out, not that he has any. Guard's engines are making a low whining sound despite his best attempts to look neutral.

I'm starting to feel kind of bad.

"I couldn't even get to you through our link!" Ahkelios grabs me and shakes me by the shoulders; I let him, because it seems to make him feel a little better. "Ethan! Don't just do that!"

"I have to concur," He-Who-Guards adds. He refrains from grabbing me, which I appreciate. "It is quite stressful."

"I'll do my best," I say dryly. I'm touched that they were so worried, at least. "I didn't do it on purpose or anything, I promise. Must be something about feeling out the soul that causes time to pass differently." I cast about for a different topic, mostly for use as a distraction. "Any update with Naru?"

Ahkelios shakes his head. He answers my question, but the look he gives me tells me he knows exactly what I'm doing. "Not yet. All we know is there's apparently a lot he needs to talk about with his parents," he says. "Something about Carusath."

"Guess he finally figured out that place has terrible management." I try to force myself to my feet with a grimace—absolutely everything is sore, for some reason, and that's after recovering from the effects of yesterday's skill spree and today's surgery. Ahkelios watches me struggle for a moment, then sighs and helps pull me to my feet.

Honestly, he's probably right in that I should be a little more careful with these things. "In my defense," I say, "I've never just lost a chunk of time like that before. Had no idea that would happen."

"I know." Ahkelios visibly tries to calm himself down, and he gives me a look that's equal parts relieved and apologetic. "We were just worried. You think it's going to be like that in the future? Every time you try to access your soul?"

I glance at the swarm of notifications sitting in front of me. "I don't know," I admit. "But hopefully these will tell us more."

Ahkelios stares at them. "What did you find out?" he asks. "It's gotta be something important, considering..."

He gestures helplessly to all the windows. I shrug. Just as a test, before reading them, I activate Amplification Gauntlet.

There's normally a moment of resistance when I activate a skill. A second where I can feel my Firmament flowing into the construct until there's enough, and then the skill bursts into being.

This time, though? I barely feel the skill activating, and yet there's a shining, almost-solid layer of armored Firmament covering my arm. Ahkelios stares at it. "What?" he says, confused. "I didn't feel you activate the skill."

I grin. This feels good. Like my Firmament is flowing more easily than ever. I bounce on my feet, feeling my aches and pains wash away; it's tempting to eschew the notifications entirely and just go on a test run, but I'm not that reckless.

Let's see exactly what it is I just did.