Adrian sat cross-legged in his black desk chair, seven books stacked in front of him under the low glow of his lamp, their covers a deep, worn red that looked almost black in the dim room. He'd carried every single one of them home himself, refusing help even when his arms had gone numb halfway through the walk, and now that they were finally here, spread out and waiting, some small part of him almost didn't want to open the first page.
Behind him, Mr. Clown stood perfectly still, hands folded neatly behind his back like some kind of silent, watchful sentry, his painted grin catching the moonlight from the window in a way that made it look less like paint and more like something carved permanently into his face.
Adrian shivered without meaning to.
There was something about the guy that couldn't place exactly, some low hum under his skin every time he glanced at Mr. Clown for too long, a feeling that didn't belong to fear exactly, more like recognition of something he was certain he'd never actually seen before. It felt familiar and wrong at the same time, like déjà vu twisted sideways.
"You're staring again," Mr. Clown said, voice light, sing-song, entirely too pleasant. "Do I have something on my face?"
"You have paint on your face."
"Ohhh, right, right, the paint. Silly me. Forgot I was wearing it." Mr. Clown's grin somehow widened further, an anatomically questionable amount. "So! Ready to finally use my very generous offer, little Adrian? I read, you comprehend nothing, everyone goes home happy?"
"I told you. I'm reading them myself."
"You said that an hour ago too."
"And I meant it an hour ago too."
"Mm." Mr. Clown tilted his head at an angle that lasted just slightly too long before correcting itself. "Stubborn little thing, aren't you? I do so love the stubborn ones. They're always so much more fun to watch fall apart."
"...What?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all. Continue, continue. Don't mind me." He waved a gloved hand dismissively, though his grin didn't move an inch.
Adrian swallowed and turned back to the books, deciding, very firmly, not to think about that last comment for the rest of his life.
He couldn't read ancient Lumenian. He'd never even heard of Meditation Aura until yesterday, let alone any exposure to a language that had apparently existed since before human civilization had figured out proper plumbing. And yet the moment he'd cracked the first book open earlier that evening, the symbols had simply resolved themselves into meaning, clean and readable with no real effort required at all.
That part, at least, he owed entirely to Mr. Clown.
"Just to be clear again," Mr. Clown had said earlier, crouching slightly to Adrian's eye level with theatrical concern, "what I've done is bent your perception a little. Convincing your mind it already knows this language. Cheap trick, works in the short term and wonderfully efficient." His voice had dropped slightly, losing some of its sing-song lilt. "Long term, though, and unsupervised? Not so fun. Illegibility can creep in. Sometimes lunacy. Sometimes your IQ just... drains out, like a bathtub with the plug pulled. Even loss of control, if you're especially unlucky."
"That's horrifying."
"Isn't it just!" Mr. Clown brightened immediately, delighted. "Which is why I offered to simply read it FOR you. It saves you the whole unpleasant business entirely."
"But then I don't actually learn anything."
"Correct! You'd just... know things. Passively. Isn't that lovely?"
"That's not the same as understanding it."
"No," Mr. Clown had agreed cheerfully, "it absolutely is not."
He'd explained the rest with the same unsettling enthusiasm: how the mind absorbed knowledge best the very first time it encountered something, how reading it himself through Aura-borrowed comprehension would let Adrian consume the words without any of it actually taking root in his world of consciousness and subconsciousness. Reading without understanding was all just input with no real growth.
Adrian had listened to every word of it and still said no.
He was too excited to say yes. Too new to this entire impossible world to sit back and let someone else absorb it secondhand for him. He wanted the real thing, danger and all, and he'd promised, loudly, dramatically, that this would be the only time he ever risked it.
"As if," Mr. Clown had muttered under his breath, not quietly enough.
Now, sitting here with the books finally spread in front of him, Adrian ran his eyes over each cover, reading the titles out loud in his head one by one, something warm and nervous coiling in his chest with every single one.
The Two Inner Realms of the Body: The World of Consciousness and Subconsciousness and the Domain of Emotions.
Okay. Sounds heavy. I am starting strong.
The Legends of the Nine Meditation Masters.
Oh, hell yes. Gimme the lore. Gimme all of it.
The Thirty Legendary Immortal Beasts.
...Beasts, plural. Thirty of them. Cool. Terrifying. Cool and terrifying.
Encyclopedia of Auras.
This one's gonna take a while, isn't it?
Introduction to the Thirty Primary Pathways.
At least I already know one of these personally.
History of the Aura Region.
Please have fewer wars than the last history lesson. Please.
Fundamentals of Relic and Domain Card Forging.
Wait, I can make my own stuff? I can MAKE my own stuff?!
All seven books sat there, dense with knowledge, practically vibrating with everything Adrian didn't yet know. He was eager, genuinely eager, but staring at that much information stacked in front of him, he felt something closer to paralysis than excitement.
He turned to glance at Mr. Clown, who was gazing out the window at the sleeping street below, black eyes catching the moonlight in a way that made them look almost liquid. Something about him had shifted in the last few minutes. The unnerving grin, the manic energy, all of it had quieted into something focused, professional, a stillness that felt genuinely out of place on a man dressed like a walking nightmare.
Adrian caught, just barely, something wistful flickering behind his eyes. Longing, maybe.
Mr. Clown had clearly noticed him watching a moment ago and let it pass without comment. Now that Adrian was actually asking, silently, uncertainly, he moved.
He stepped forward and drew out his Fooling Aura, light red bleeding into crimson, tiny black particles suspended within it like ash caught in smoke. It poured from his left arm in a smooth stream, and with a small, deliberate motion of his wrist, it shaped itself into a chair beside Adrian's, the liquid firming into something solid the instant he sat down.
"All seven of these," Mr. Clown said, tone entirely different now, level and precise, "are far too much for a fresh Nova to swallow whole. Auras, ritual work, forging, history. Every single one matters eventually. For tonight, though, start here."
He reached over and lifted one of the books, the same title Adrian had already puzzled over earlier. The Two Inner Realms of the Body: The World of Consciousness and Subconsciousness and the Domain of Emotions.
"Eric and Max already covered the world of consciousness and subconsciousness with me," Adrian said. "I don't know anything about the domain of emotions, though."
"Good place to start, then." Mr. Clown turned the book over in his hands. "Structurally, they're nearly identical. Both inner realms, unique to every Aura user, shaped by who you are. The difference is location. One sits in the mind. The other sits in the heart."
"So they're just... copies of each other?"
"No." He tapped the cover once, sharp. "The mind holds your thoughts, your memory, your knowledge, your consciousness, your Aura's own subconscious buried somewhere inside it too. It's also your shield. Comprehension happens there, and so does your defense whenever your Aura's subconscious tries to claw its way forward." His eyes flicked to Adrian, steady. "The heart holds something else entirely. Emotion. The memories that actually mean something to you. What you truly feel about the people in your life, whether you admit it to yourself or not."
Adrian sat with that for a moment.
"People spend entire lifetimes studying these two realms," Mr. Clown continued, "and most of them die still finding new layers. What you're holding is the barest surface. Read it. Take what you can from it tonight." He glanced toward the window briefly before looking back. "Afterward, I'll start you properly on ancient Lumenian, so you're not depending on borrowed sight forever. One hour. This book only, nothing else."
"That's it? Just this one for an hour?"
"That's it." A faint, almost approving curve touched his painted mouth. "Depth matters more than volume, right now. You could burn through all seven tonight and remember none of it properly. Better to actually hold onto something small than lose something large."
He set the book gently in front of Adrian, and something almost gentle passed behind his otherwise unreadable eyes.
"If you'd been born into the Emotion Pathway," he added, quieter now, "all of this would come easier. Faster. You weren't. So we do it the slow way instead."
Adrian nodded and pulled the book toward himself, opening the cover carefully.
Before he began reading, he glanced once more out the window, toward the pale, distant moon hanging over the rooftops.
I wonder what Eric's doing right now, he thought, and then let the thought go, turning his full attention to the page in front of him.
…
Eric sat on a small wooden stool by the bedroom window, the moon hanging pale and full above the rooftops, its light spilling in soft, quiet bands across the floor.
Behind him, Ruby slept deeply, curled beneath the covers, her breathing slow and even. The day had worn her out completely, all that walking, the park, the theater, the river, and Eric had let her drift off without waking her when he finally slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb even the corner of the blanket.
He watched her for a moment before turning back to the window, something soft settling behind his eyes.
He drew in a slow breath.
In.
He held it a beat, then let it go, unhurried.
Out.
He kept his gaze on the moon, letting the stillness of the night settle into him properly. Somewhere next door, faint but steady, he could feel Max's presence through the quiet familiarity that had always lived between them, a small, grounding warmth he hadn't consciously reached for tonight so much as simply noticed, already there, already helping.
In.
The moonlight. The breathing. Max, close by, unaware and asleep himself probably, but present all the same.
Out.
Slowly, fully, Eric felt himself settle into something calm and clear, the tension he usually carried without noticing easing out of his shoulders one careful breath at a time.
He looked down at his open palm.
A small silver earring sat there, round and unassuming, catching a faint sliver of moonlight along its edge. It was an Emotion Pathway relic, borrowed rather than owned, on loan from Edward using contribution points Eric had earned from the mission not long ago. He'd walked away from that job with a thousand points total, and the loan on this particular piece had cost him three hundred of them, cheap, relatively, for something only Auri Nova rank, though he suspected the price would have climbed steeply for anything stronger.
Edward had thrown in something extra too, unprompted, a rundown on the domain of emotions itself and how to move carefully within it, framed as a favor, though Eric understood exactly what it actually was. Edward hadn't needed to ask why Eric wanted a relic like this. One look at the request had told him everything.
Eric turned the earring slowly between his fingers, watching it catch and lose the light with each small rotation, and let out one more long, quiet breath before he finally closed his hand around it.
Relics never came cheap, borrowed or otherwise. Four hundred Lumenian contribution points had gone toward forty Aura stones, enough to pad out his dwindling reserves and leave something set aside for whatever came next. The math had worked out, barely. Everything about this had cost more than it should have.
Tonight, he was going in.
Into the Domain of Emotions. To find whatever version of himself lived there and ask it, plainly, without room to hide behind deflection or distraction, what he actually felt about Ruby.
He wasn't going to pretend the anxiety wasn't there. It sat low in his chest, tight and persistent, though it had nothing to do with doubting the answer itself. He didn't fear finding out he didn't love her. He feared the unknown mechanics of the place he was about to walk into. No Emotion Pathway user had ever crossed his path in his entire life, not once, which meant he was stepping into this with nothing but Edward's secondhand warnings and whatever instinct he could scrape together on his own.
He weighed that risk one more time, fully, honestly.
And decided it didn't matter.
He needed to get stronger. Stronger meant tightening his control, and tightening his control meant finishing the steps still standing between him and the next stage of the method. He sat at sixty percent right now. Close. Close enough that the final push toward the third step felt within reach, if he was willing to actually reach for it.
He'd spent too long circling the edges of his own weakness. Tonight, he wasn't circling anymore.
Eric drew one final breath, slow and deliberate, and held it a moment longer than necessary, feeling the weight of the decision settle fully into his chest before he let it go.
He opened his eyes.
The moon hung steady above the rooftops, pale and unmoving, and he held its gaze for one last second, something hard and unshakable settling behind his own eyes in return.
His grip tightened around the small silver earring.
"Let's do this."