Ash stared at Zhao's hands still on his shoulders.
"Right," he said. "Sure."
Zhao laughed and stepped back.
"You don't believe it," Han Wei said.
"I believe something happened on that ship," Ash said. "I believe my Core woke up and whatever was in that vault was valuable.What I'm struggling with is the part where that makes me the one to complete some ancient orb that nobody alive has ever seen in one piece."
"Understandable," Zhao said. He sat back and reached for his beer. "But you know, we've seen what a fragment looks like and its exactly as you described."
"It feels impossible," Han Wei said. "I know how it sounds. But the power itself that's inside you right now is more than what me and zhao combined"
Rhea made a quiet sound from across the table.
Ash rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the table. "Okay. Let's say I accept all of that." He looked up. "You said you need all four fragments to complete the orb. I've only absorbed one. How does any of what you're describing even apply to me right now?"
Han Wei and Zhao looked at each other.
"We don't know," Zhao said.
Ash waited. Nothing else came.
"That's it?"
"Everything we know comes from records and legends" Han Wei said. "As i said, nobody alive has ever seen the orb completed."
"So nobody knows how it's supposed to behave," Ash said.
"No."
Ash leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
"Fantastic," he said.
"What isn't negotiable," Han Wei said, and something in his voice shifted slightly, "is that you need to learn to control it. Now. Without control you're a danger to yourself and everyone near you.
"Ash." Rhea's voice was quiet. He glanced at her. She just looked back at him. "Listen to them."
He didn't argue.
"We'll train you," Zhao said. "As much as we can with the time we have."
"Don't you have a business to run?"
Zhao grinned. "My business right now is this." He gestured at Ash.
"So we start right now".
Han wei lead them to the basement of the Jade Lantern. It's large area used to stock crates but most of it are cleared out now.
Rhea stood against the far wall, arms folded.
Ash stood in the middle of the room. Zhao and Han Wei a few metres apart facing him.
"So what do we—"
They let their power out.
No warning or build up. Just a shift in the air so complete and sudden that Ash's brain took a second to catch up. Zhao's presence expanded outward like something vast and overwhelming. Han Wei's was different. A deeper pressure that started at the walls and moved inward from every direction at once.
Ash thought he had felt strong surges before. He thought he had a reasonable picture of what higher tiers would be like .
He had not.
His Core answered before he could think to stop it. Pulse surged upward hard and exploded through his chest and the pain came with it was the worst kind. His whole Core straining against itself trying to match what it was feeling in the room. His vision went white at the edges.
"Make it stop." His knees hit the floor. "Make it stop."
The pressure dropped immediately. Zhao and Han Wei pulled back. The room returned to normal.
Ash stayed on his knees and breathed.
"That," Zhao said, not unkindly, "is your problem."
Han Wei crouched to his level. "You didn't choose that, but it decided on its own. Basically its like a mechanism that perceived a threat and responded to it and quiet violently as well. Every time it does that, it pushes against the walls of your Core from the inside." He paused. "Those walls won't hold forever."
"How long do I have?"
Han Wei looked at him for a moment. "Not long enough."
Ash exhaled. Rhea hadn't moved but he could feel her watching him.
"What we're about to do is going to hurt," Han Wei said. "Normally we'd spend months on foundations before attempting this. You don't have months though, so we're skipping ahead."
"How far ahead."
Han wei didn't say anything.
Ash laughed once. "Of course."
"I'm sorry," Han Wei said. He meant it and that somehow made it worse.
Zhao stepped up beside Han Wei. They exchanged a look a brief look.
Zhao glanced at Ash. "Try not to bite your tongue."
"Deeply unhelpful," Ash said.
They placed their hands on his chest at the same time and let loose their powers.
What came through wasn't pain at first. It was pressure, like his Core had been a sealed room his whole life and both doors had just been kicked off their hinges simultaneously. His own power surged up to meet it and that was when the pain hit, cracking through his sternum, sharp enough to take the air out of him. He heard himself make a sound and Rhea said his name somewhere behind him. Then the basement and all of it dropped away entirely.
White.
Flat and edgeless. There was No ceiling and no walls. The ground under his feet felt soft and floating.
Then he heard a voice.
"Oh. Fucking Finally."
Ash stood very still.
Ash looked around at the flat white nothing.
"Are you the fragment?" he asked. "Of the Primordial Orb?"
A pause.
"No, I'm your childhood imaginary friend. The one you stopped believing in at age six. I've been waiting to have words with you about that actually."
"I'm just trying to understand all this..." Ash said.
Do you have any idea—" A pause then the voice continued like it was collecting itself. "No. No, I'm not doing this out of order. Welcome. Greetings. Hello. I am so unspeakably glad you're here."
Ash closed his mouth.
"Good," the voice said. "Now. We have a lot to talk about and I have been waiting quite literally forever, so if you don't mind, let's start."