The core felt cold in my hand. Bone powder dusted my fingers white. Blood runes traced the lines of my skeleton like a map—knuckles and wrists, ribs and spine, hips and legs all marked and ready.
I put the core in my mouth.
Heat rose first, then a pulse. The runes lit along my arms and across my chest, a slow tide running bone to bone. The white powder drank the red and turned pale again, as if it sank into me.
Pins and needles woke inside my hands. Not on the skin—inside. The feeling crept up the fingers, through the knuckles, into the wrist, and kept going. An itch followed it, deep as the marrow. It was not pain. It wasn't pleasant either. It felt like a thousand ants were walking through my bones, carrying tiny sparks.
I breathed through it. In on the set, out on the count. My feet found the center of the floor. The attic was quiet. Only the tank's soft hum and the light tick of ash on the window kept me company.
The sensation spread to my forearms. A slow, steady prickle moved along the radius and ulna, then up the humerus to the shoulder, across the collarbone, down the ribs, and along the spine. Every path I had traced lit in order, like lanterns on a road. When it reached my hips, my legs joined the chorus—thighs buzzing, shins singing, ankles and toes waking with that same crawling itch.
'This is so weird.'
I wanted to scratch inside my body. I couldn't. I stood and breathed and let it happen.
Sweat rose on my skin, but the arrays kept it from running. A breath of cool air slid down from the ring above my sleeping place, then faded. My jaw ached from holding the core, so I shifted it with my tongue. The runes around my cheeks tugged energy from it and sent that current to the red-white lines across my bones.
Time stretched. The pins-and-needles feeling grew, crested, and held. Then, slowly, it dimmed. The glow along the runes fell from bright to low. The itch shrank to a warm hum, then to a dull echo.
I spat the core into my palm. It was a shade dimmer than before.
I sat down hard and wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist. My muscles felt used but not on fire. My bones felt… thicker? Not heavier, exactly. More there.
'That was nothing like the muscle one.'
[Less pain. More discomfort. This ritual is less efficient.]
I rolled the core on the cloth and watched it turn. My breathing slowed.
[You can repeat the bone ritual once per day without harm. It will consume one core every six uses.]
Once per day. One core per six. That math I could live with.
Night pressed at the window. The attic sat in a dark that felt safe. I blew out the lantern and lay down on the bedroll. The tank hummed. The house creaked in small ways.
I should have slept, but a question pushed forward.
'What are we doing to me—exactly?'
[Body Tempering.]
The words settled in the dark.
[You are at the first level. It has three parts: muscle, bone, organ. You have begun muscles and bones. Organs come last.]
My shoulders tensed without asking me. A cold wave ran across the spot where my ribs met my stomach.
'Organ refining.' I swallowed. 'That sounds… bad.'
[It is serious. It requires care. But done well, it strengthens you in ways the other two cannot. Stamina. Recovery. Toxin resistance. Energy flow.]
I stared at the roof beams until they blurred.
'So Body Tempering is one path. There are more?'
[Yes. Three main paths most people use. Body. Soul. Core.]
He didn't crowd the words. He let them breathe.
[Body Tempering makes the vessel stronger. Your hands hit harder; your frame carries more force; your organs endure strain.]
[The Soul path is different. It changes how you think and feel energy. It lets you move it with will. You must reach Soul Manipulation. Without that, you cannot remove the mask safely. The madness is still in you.]
I turned my head and felt the mask against the cloth. It had been so quiet lately that I sometimes forgot it was there until I touched it.
'Soul Manipulation.' I tried the words in my head. They fit like a new shoe: stiff, not yet mine.
[The Core path creates a new organ for storage and flow. A core inside you. It can hold much more energy than a loose core. It also distributes it with less waste.]
'So: Body for the vessel, Soul for control, Core for storage.'
[Correct. They can be trained together, but each has costs. Time. Energy. Materials. Risk.]
The attic dark made shapes out of the beams, then turned them back to wood. I listened to wind slide ash along the glass. The itch in my bones faded to a memory. The skin on my knuckles felt tight and clean.
'What if I only trained Body?'
[You would be strong. Faster. Tougher. But you would be limited by control and by how much energy you can hold.]
'Only Soul?'
[You would have fine control with little frame to carry it. You would burn out or break.]
'Only Core?'
[You would store power you could not use well. Or power that harms you when you try.]
I huffed a soft breath. The plan wrote itself: do all three, slowly, in order. Or at least don't skip the important steps.
[We start where you are. We finish what you began. Then we build the next.]
I realized my eyes had been closed for a while. The words came to me like a story told near a fire. I pictured diagrams I had seen in Owl's books: circles and lines, tiny notes in a careful hand. I pictured new ones I hadn't seen yet, with signs for bones and organs and more.
'If I reach Soul Manipulation, I can take the mask off and not go mad?'
[Yes.]
A knot I didn't know I held loosened. Not all the way. Enough.
'And the Core path… one day I could make my own core.'
[Yes. That would change much.]
Silence, but not empty. The kind that lets the mind put pieces together.
My hand drifted to the cloth where the loose core rested. It felt different now. Not just a thing I used, but a model of something I could one day grow.
My bones hummed a little in the cold night. Not pain. A reminder.
[Sleep. Repeat the ritual tomorrow. We will hunt for bones and food in the afternoon.]
'One per day. Six for a core.'
[Correct.]
I shifted on the bedroll. The floor was hard in familiar places. The mask warmed where it touched the blanket. My breath evened out, slow and quiet.
'Body. Soul. Core.' The words climbed a small hill and sat there. 'One step at a time.'
I listened to the tank hum and the wind tick ash against the glass. The itch was gone. A calm weight settled in my chest, like a stone in a river, water sliding around it.
My eyes closed the rest of the way. The dark turned soft.
I fell asleep listening to the paths.