"So, what exactly did you see during your awakening?" Visie asked, her earlier playful tone giving way to something more careful and precise.
"What I saw?" Adrian repeated, tilting his head slightly. He didn't ask why she wanted to know. Somewhere over the course of the last few hours, he'd quietly learned not to question the reasons behind things people asked of him in this world. If any of them had actually wanted to hurt him, he figured, they'd have had plenty of chances by now. Honesty seemed like the safer bet, so he settled into the memory and started talking.
"Okay, so. I touched the ring, and it was instant: There was this painful, splitting headache, like someone was drilling straight through my skull. Everything around me just... stopped. Frozen still in place. And then the whole world started turning into these colors I'd never seen before, blue and black mixed with stuff that didn't even have names as far as I know." He paused, remembering. "I closed my eyes because it was honestly too much to look at, and when I opened them again, I wasn't in the café anymore. I was still sitting at the table, technically, but everything around me was this sky. This huge, insane sky made of all these different colored regions."
"Go on," Visie said quietly.
"It was terrifying, honestly, but also, I don't know, kind of beautiful? I was scared out of my mind and also couldn't look away." Adrian's hands had curled slightly in his lap as he spoke, reliving it. "And then, out of nowhere, this purple string came from somewhere really far off, some region I couldn't even fully see, and it just... hit me. It went straight through my chest. Didn't hurt at all, weirdly; it just felt like I was suddenly connected to wherever it came from."
He hesitated there, and something in his voice shifted, quieter now.
"But then these three white strings just appeared out of nothing and wrapped around the purple one. Breaking it apart completely. The purple region made this sound when it happened, like a roar- angry, I guess- but it couldn't do anything about it. And then the three white strings twisted together into one, and one end went into some black region, and the other end came straight into my chest instead. The white turned black as it touched me, and then this black light came out of that region and went into my body. And then I opened my eyes, and Eric was just... there. Staring at me. That's everything I remember."
Silence.
"White strings?" Visie and Max said the same words at almost the same moment, both of their expressions shifting from casual curiosity into something considerably sharper.
Eric, across the table, said nothing at all. His face gave away absolutely nothing, unreadable in a way that somehow felt worse than an obvious reaction would have.
Adrian glanced between the three of them, confusion creeping back in. He didn't understand what he'd said that had landed so heavily.
"Wait." His brow furrowed. "Isn't that how it's supposed to happen? Is that not normal?"
Nobody answered right away. Max's easy grin had vanished entirely, replaced by something tighter, more focused. Visie's fingers had gone still against the table's edge, her earlier warmth cooling into quiet concern.
"Isn't this how it's supposed to go?" Adrian asked again, louder this time, his own nerves starting to creep in now that he could tell, unmistakably, that something about his answer had unsettled everyone at the table.
It was Eric who finally spoke, his voice level, deliberate. "No. It isn't."
Adrian's stomach dropped slightly.
"When a person connects to the Layer of Natural Aura," Eric continued, "if they've got the right affinity, the right potential, a single pathway reaches out and forms that connection. One string. One pathway. The person awakens according to whatever's already sitting inside them, comes back, starts their life as an Aura user. That's it. That's the entire process, every single time it's ever happened, as far as anyone actually knows." He paused, letting that settle. "There's no recorded case, none, of a second pathway's strings interrupting a connection already being made. What happened to you wasn't just unusual. Something actively severed your original connection and replaced it. Forcing you into the Apocalypse pathway instead of whatever you were originally meant to awaken into."
"Wait." Adrian's voice came out thinner than he wanted it to. "So the purple thing, that was supposed to be my actual pathway? And something just... took it away from me?"
"Looks that way."
"Is that—" Adrian swallowed. "Is that bad? Was I supposed to be something else?"
"We don't know," Visie said, quieter now, some of her usual playfulness entirely gone. "That's what's concerning about it."
Eric continued, his tone unchanged, though something in his eyes had sharpened. "You were fortunate, whatever else is true here. You happened to have enough natural affinity with the Apocalypse pathway that the forced connection actually took. If you hadn't, if there'd been no compatibility there at all, that black light entering your body with nowhere stable to root itself, you likely wouldn't have awakened at all. You'd have become something else instead. Something closer to a monster than a person."
The room went very quiet.
Adrian felt something cold settle low in his stomach, the full weight of exactly how close he'd come to something unnamed and irreversible finally landing properly. He thought of the vision again, the city in ruins, Lily's still body, and wondered, suddenly, whether that vision had actually been some warning about what he might have become instead, if things had gone even slightly differently.
"The white strings," he managed eventually, forcing the words out despite his throat feeling tight. "I saw a whole bunch of them coming down from this white region too, not just the three that grabbed me. What were those?"
Eric didn't answer immediately. He sat with the question a long moment, something calculating behind his expression, weighing exactly how much to say.
"From what I know," he said finally, "those are called the Strings of Fate. The white region you saw belongs to the Overseeing Pathway. The Overseeing Region."
Max let out a slow breath through his nose, exchanging a glance with Eric that carried something unreadable in it, some silent understanding neither of them bothered saying out loud. Visie's eyes had drifted toward the crystal ball at the center of the table, her expression gone distant, working through something she clearly wasn't ready to voice yet.
Adrian's heart was hammering now, loud enough that he could hear it in his own ears over the silence pressing down around the table. He looked between the three of them, and the weight of that unbroken quiet told him more than any answer had so far.
"So I wasn't supposed to be an Aura user of this pathway?" His voice cracked slightly on the question, something hurt and small creeping into it despite his best effort to keep it steady.
Eric lowered his gaze, resting his chin against his hand. "In a way. Yes." A pause. "But don't chase this thought down. It won't help you. Let it go, and be grateful you're sitting here at all."
"How am I supposed to just let it go?" Adrian's voice rose, sharper now, the fear finally breaking through the surface. "You're telling me something reached across an entire sky and rewrote what I was supposed to become, and I'm just supposed to shrug and move on?"
"For now, yes," Eric said, unmoved.
Adrian's hands curled into fists against his knees, and he opened his mouth to argue further, but Visie spoke first, her own voice tight with something between fascination and unease.
"As far as any of us know," she said, leaning forward, "there's never been a single recorded case of one region interfering with another region's connection to a person. Not once. And not just interference, redirection. Forcing a completely different awakening entirely." Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Is this how some people end up becoming monsters when they awaken? Is that what almost happened here?"
Adrian's stomach turned over at that, the word monster landing somewhere ugly and cold in his chest.
Max, for all his usual easy humor, had gone entirely serious now, arms crossed as he leaned back in his chair. "It could be a high-rank Overseeing Pathway user messing with things directly. None of us have ever actually seen anyone above Hypernova in person. We've got no real idea what they're capable of. To us, that's basically legend territory."
"Sure," Eric said, "but why would someone that powerful bother? Even assuming that's even possible right now, which it isn't, what would they actually gain from it? If they wanted this hidden, truly hidden, they could've erased the strings, messed with Adrian's memory, and made sure none of us ever found out any of this happened, but they didn't. Why?"
"He's got a point," Visie admitted, chewing on her lower lip. "A high-ranking Aura user doesn't exactly have free time lying around to personally hijack one random kid's awakening in Paris. And I don't buy some lone rogue is just wandering the Layer messing with people's connections for fun either." She tapped a finger against the table, thinking aloud. "Unless it's tied to some kind of ritual. Something with an actual purpose behind it."
"There's something else worth considering too," Eric said, flattening his palms against the table's surface. "The strings Adrian described were pure white, untainted. That shouldn't be possible. Every seer and prophet who's studied the Overseeing Region agrees on one thing: the white strings coming down from it now are only ever projections. Basically echoes. They are not the real thing."
Adrian's breath caught. "Wait." His voice had dropped to something barely audible. "So what I saw... wasn't even supposed to exist?"
No one answered him immediately, and the silence that followed felt heavier than any of the ones before it.
Adrian sat there, small and out of his depth, watching the three of them communicate through glances and half-finished thoughts he had no way of following. He felt himself slipping to the edges of the conversation, invisible almost, still shaking from everything he'd just relived out loud, and nobody seemed to be paying attention to that part of it at all.
Eric noticed. He turned his head toward Adrian, something in his expression softening slightly, deliberately shifting the weight of the conversation back toward him.
"Listen," Eric said. "During the Dystopian War, the fourth Meditation Master fought the God of Fate directly and won, eventually. He cut the God's Divine Blessing of Fate clean in two in the process. That split is why the strings of fate exist as two separate things now: the strings of fate and the strings of karma. No Aura user alive has ever managed to merge them back together, not without the original Divine Blessing being whole again, and both halves of that vanished a long time ago. As far as anyone knows, it's simply not possible anymore."
Adrian blinked, processing that slowly.
"Wait." He sat up straighter. "So there's an actual God of Fate? Like, a real god, not just a story?"
"Was," Eric said. "Defeated during the war."
"Defeated how? Is he dead? Can gods even die?"
"Nobody knows for certain. Records from that far back are incomplete."
"Okay, but the fourth Meditation Master, that's like, one of the nine, right? The legendary ones? He fought an actual god and won?"
"He did."
Adrian's mouth fell open slightly. "That's insane. That's actually insane. How does someone even do that? Is there, like, a story about it somewhere, can I read it—"
"Later," Eric said, not unkindly, cutting the momentum before it could fully run away with him. "Right now, none of that actually answers what happened to you tonight."
That landed like a bucket of cold water, Adrian's excitement deflating almost as fast as it had risen. Right. He hadn't actually gotten anywhere close to an answer, just another dizzying piece of history stacked on top of an already unanswered question. Who had redirected his awakening. Why. Whether it even could happen the way it had happened to him. None of it made any more sense now than it had a minute ago, and the fear that had briefly quieted came creeping back in.
Across the table, Visie had pulled the crystal ball closer to herself without anyone noticing at first, her fingers hovering just above its surface.
"Visie." Eric's voice cut sharply through the quiet, immediate and unmistakably a warning. "Don't."
She froze.
"You know exactly what happens every time you go digging for something above your rank," Eric continued, quieter now but no less firm. "It's already cost you advancement more than once. Don't take that risk again. Not over this."
Visie's hand jerked back from the crystal ball as it had burned her, and she sat back hard in her chair, breathing out slow and shaky, clearly only just now realizing how close she'd come to reaching for it entirely on instinct, some old, compulsive itch overriding her own better judgment for a moment.
"Sorry," she muttered, mostly to herself. "I got carried away."
Adrian watched the whole exchange with wide eyes, the tension in the tent thick enough to taste. Whatever had almost happened, it had clearly scared even Eric a little, which somehow scared Adrian more than anything else that had been said tonight.
Eric let out a slow breath, glancing around the table at each of them in turn. Nothing but confusion staring back at him from every direction, no answers anywhere close, and the longer this conversation dragged on, the closer it edged toward territory none of them were equipped to survive poking at.
"That's enough," he said finally. "We drop this. Now. If we stumble onto something we're not supposed to know, that's not curiosity anymore. That's danger, and it doesn't care how careful we think we're being."
Max nodded slowly. Visie followed a beat later, still looking faintly shaken. Adrian, uncertain but trusting them more than his own judgment at this point, nodded along too, even though every unanswered question was still sitting there, unresolved, itching at the back of his mind.
He didn't understand, not fully, why simply knowing too much could apparently hurt someone. But looking at Visie's pale, rattled expression, and the rare, genuine concern that had flickered across Eric's face a moment ago, he believed it completely.
All of them let out slow, unsteady breaths at once, the tension gradually loosening its grip across the table. It was probably for the best, none of them said aloud, that they hadn't managed to dig any further into something none of them were equipped to actually understand.
Once it was clear Adrian had finally run out of questions, at least for the moment, Visie turned her attention toward Eric. Her expression shifted, slow and deliberate, into something distinctly playful, one eyebrow lifting, her lips curling into a small, knowing smile that lingered a beat too long, holding steady across the table like she was waiting for him to catch up to what she was silently offering.
Eric caught it immediately. He'd seen that exact look enough times over the years to know precisely what it meant.
"I have a wife now," he said flatly, not even bothering to dress it up.
Adrian, watching the exchange with wide, curious eyes, leaned sideways toward Max and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Wait. Do they have, like. A thing? Did they used to have a thing?"
"Used to," Max whispered back, entirely unbothered, not even glancing over. "Years ago. Long before you were even in the picture, kid."
Adrian's jaw actually dropped. "WHAT."
"Shh."
"THEY DATED?"
"Inside voice."
Adrian slapped both hands over his own mouth, eyes practically bulging as he stared between Eric's flat, unbothered expression and Visie's amused, entirely unrepentant smile, his brain visibly struggling to reconcile this information with everything else it had absorbed today.
Visie's smile finally faded into something more genuine, if a little wistful, and something in her eyes flickered as the word wife seemed to jog loose an entirely different thought.
"Well, I will bide my time then." She said. "Oh! That reminds me, I completely forgot to mention this." She sat up straighter. "Elizabeth's getting married."
Eric's reaction barely registered, a small, neutral nod, nothing more. Max, on the other hand, lit up immediately, practically bouncing in his seat.
"No way. She actually did it? Finally married Kevin?" He shook his head, grinning. "About time, honestly. Those two have been through more together than half the couples I know combined. Feels right that they'd finally make it official now." He glanced around the table. "That just leaves you out of the four of us still unmarried, Visie. Anyone catching your eye other than Eric these days?"
Adrian, still completely lost on who any of these people were, decided the smartest move was to stay quiet and just absorb it all. He'd already learned enough today to know that the less he interrupted, the smoother things tended to go, and honestly, the more he simply let the concepts wash over him instead of panicking about understanding every single one immediately, the less his head actually hurt. Maybe that was what comprehension actually felt like.
"No one," Visie said, a brief flicker of annoyance crossing her face at Max's question before she smoothed it back over. "But you're right, this is good timing for them. They're planning to hold it at the Loriel Sphere, not far from here, actually."
Eric's brow furrowed immediately. "In the Meditation Realm? That seems like an unnecessary risk. This place is protected, sure, but criminals still move through here freely enough. Have their heads gone completely soft over this?"
"I said the same thing," Visie admitted, sighing. "But you know Elizabeth. She grew up here, same as Kevin. This is home for both of them, where they actually met, where all their best memories together happened. They want to start their next chapter somewhere that actually means something to them." She shrugged. "Once she's decided something, arguing with her is basically pointless. Trust me, I tried."
She reached into her sleeve and withdrew two small envelopes, one pink, one purple, sliding them across the table toward Eric and Max respectively. Each of them opened theirs carefully, pulling out a folded letter tucked inside alongside the invitation itself.
Adrian watched quietly as both men read in silence, their expressions softening the further they got. The letter, apparently written jointly by Elizabeth and Kevin, thanked them warmly for everything: their friendship, their guidance, their steady presence through what the letter itself described as a world too often filled with misery and decay. It closed with a simple, heartfelt hope that they'd both be there to celebrate the beginning of this next chapter together.
Max let out a soft laugh once he finished, something warm and nostalgic behind it. Eric's expression eased into something gentler too, a small, genuine smile settling there that looked entirely unfamiliar on him compared to everything Adrian had seen of his face so far tonight.
After a moment, Eric folded the letter carefully back into its envelope and looked up. "We should get going soon," he said, glancing toward Visie. "Before that, though, can you set up the connection? Between Adrian and the two of us. So we'll know if he's ever in danger."
Adrian didn't hesitate, didn't so much as consider refusing. If anything, something warm settled in his chest at the request, gratitude for people who barely knew him going out of their way to make sure he'd have some kind of safety net at all. He nodded immediately, giving his consent without a second thought.
"Alright," Visie said, rising slightly and raising both arms. A stream of white liquid, threaded through with tiny, glasslike silver particles, poured out from her palms, swirling faintly in the low light of the tent. Her Connection Aura, taking shape now, shifted from liquid into something closer to a semi-solid state as her hands moved with practiced precision, weaving it into delicate strands of light.
Her black eyes began to glow, slowly overtaken by a soft, pale white, until it looked as though her entire gaze had been swallowed by her own Aura. Around each pupil, a glasslike symbol formed, four interlocking loops turning slowly in place, catching the tent's low light like something carved from ice.
"What are those eyes?" Adrian asked, finally working up the nerve to voice the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind since the very first time he'd seen Eric's face shift like that back in the café, that strange, glowing overlay that had unsettled him so much he'd never dared to bring it up.
Visie didn't look away from her work, hands still moving through the air, shaping the pale strands of her Aura with slow, careful precision. "Abyssal Eyes," she said. "You unlock them around Nova rank, assuming you keep training and stay disciplined about controlling your Aura. They boost your sight, mostly, and sometimes assist directly with how you channel your Aura, depending on the pathway. The higher you climb, the stronger they get." A faint smile touched her lips. "We'll get you started on unlocking your own soon enough."
Adrian nodded slowly, though his attention had already drifted back to simply watching her work. There was something genuinely mesmerizing about it, the glow behind her eyes, the delicate, practiced way her fingers moved through the strands of white and silver light, weaving them longer, more intricate, with an almost ceremonial precision to every motion. For a moment he forgot to be scared of any of it and just watched, quiet, captivated.
Once the threads were finished, she willed them forward. Three fine strands split off from the rest and shot out, one toward Max, one toward Adrian, one toward Eric, settling into each of them with barely a flicker of sensation.
Adrian braced for something, some jolt, some feeling, and got absolutely nothing at all. No tingling, no warmth, nothing. His intuition sat silent. His new premonition ring didn't so much as twitch. If Visie hadn't told him what she was doing, he genuinely wouldn't have known anything had happened.
"Alright," Visie said, lowering her arms and letting the remaining Aura dissolve back into her skin, her eyes fading slowly back to their usual black. "I've set it up, so if Adrian's ever in real danger, the two of you will feel it immediately. Doesn't work the other way around, unfortunately; he won't sense it if either of you is in trouble. And this connection stays active until someone deliberately breaks it, or I die." She rolled her shoulders, exhaling. "This took way more out of me than I expected, honestly. Specific requests like this always cost more Aura than the standard version. But don't worry, I'm not charging you for it." She planted both hands on her hips, puffed her cheeks out slightly, and let out an exaggerated little huff through her nose. "You two better be properly grateful, though!"
She was, unmistakably, being deliberately cute about it, and doing a genuinely excellent job of it too.
Eric, entirely unmoved by the performance, simply rose from his seat, pressed a hand to his chest, and bowed slightly. "Thank you, Visie."
She waved him off with a small, satisfied smile and turned toward an old wooden closet tucked into the corner of the tent, one that had clearly gone untouched for years, judging by the thick layer of dust coating its surface. She wrenched it open, coughing as a cloud of dust billowed free, and dug around inside for a moment before pulling out several thick, weathered books, their covers a mix of cracked black and worn brown leather.
She blew a fresh layer of dust off the stack, walked back over, and set them down in front of Adrian.
"Here. Everything I promised you." Her voice softened, something warm and genuinely maternal creeping into it now. "You awakened today, learned an entire hidden world exists right alongside the one you already knew. That makes you basically a newborn right now, Adrian, just finding your feet. There's a lot still ahead of you to learn, plenty of basics you haven't even scratched yet. But if you stay consistent, follow the steps for your rank's method of control properly, you'll grow into someone strong. Someone good." She reached out and gently ruffled his hair, the gesture entirely unguarded, entirely sincere. "I'm glad I got to help you today."
Adrian ducked his head instantly, face heating, mumbling something incoherent in response, though he didn't pull away from her hand either.
Visie straightened, glanced toward Max and Eric, and got two small nods in return. With that, the three of them rose and made their way out of the tent, back into the market's low hum, Max scooping the stack of books out of Adrian's arms without asking, clearly noting how heavy they actually were despite Adrian's newfound strength making him reluctant to admit it.
They walked in comfortable quiet for a while, the market noise washing gently around them.
"Y'know," Max said eventually, glancing sideways at Adrian, "It's kind of wild, honestly. I had never actually thought of meeting another Aura user whose awakening got diverted by the strings of fate before tonight."
Adrian stopped walking entirely, staring up at him as Eric had just confessed to murder.
"Wait. There have been others?"
Eric, already a step ahead, glanced back with the same calm expression he used when discussing the weather. "Don't repeat this to anyone," he said, "but mine was diverted too. I was supposed to awaken to the Deceiver Pathway… but ended up on the Energy Pathway instead."
Adrian stood frozen in the middle of the crowded market, mouth hanging open. Several unrelated aliens shuffled around him without a second glance, one of them bumping into his shoulder and muttering something rude in a language that sounded like angry bees.
"…I'm sorry, WHAT?"
His voice cracked so hard it practically changed species. A nearby vendor selling glowing fruit actually turned to stare.
"You too?! Is this just a thing that happens now?! Is everyone's awakening secretly rigged?! Am I gonna find out Max's was diverted too?! Was Visie's diverted?! Is there some universal committee out there just sitting around a table going, 'Hmm, today I feel like ruining someone's destiny for fun'?!"
"Lower your voice," Eric said, completely unbothered, as if they were discussing lunch options.
"I WILL NOT LOWER MY VOICE, ERIC!" Adrian's arms flailed slightly. "THIS IS THE KIND OF INFORMATION YOU DROP ON SOMEONE IN A PRIVATE ROOM WITH EMOTIONAL SUPPORT PILLOWS, NOT WHILE I'M STANDING NEXT TO A GUY SELLING SPACE MANGOS!"
A small alien child nearby dropped its snack and started clapping, clearly enjoying the show.
Eric simply kept walking.
"You coming?"
Adrian made a strangled noise that sounded like a dying kettle, then hurried after him, still whispering (very loudly), "I need a minute. Or a therapist. Or both."