"Hello Damien," was the first thing Damien heard upon opening his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision, but it wouldn't go away. His vision remained foggy.

  Just as panic was beginning to set in, the voice came in again, calm and reassuring.

  "Give it a little while," the voice said. "Any second now, your vision will return to normal."

  Through the slow awakening of his mind, Damien recognized the voice that spoke as male. Old, if his daddy radar was correct, and not by a small deal either.

  The voice was right, and within ten seconds, his vision returned, clearing enough to give him a good view of where he was. The moment his eyes were fully opened, he had to shut them back close again from the sharp piercing light that stabbed down into him like the wrath of some higher realm being.

  The room he was in was painted a deep royal gold and white, with a sterile and crisp atmosphere. But that was where the niceties ended. Attached to the wall behind his bed and hovering over him like the eyes of a titan were magnifying glasses of different sizes, with the highest—which hung back behind the rest and closer to the ceiling —large enough to encompass his entire body.

  "I see your eyes are finally working now. Good."

  As he'd guessed, the person who'd spoken was a man, an old man to be exact. He looked middle-aged, but given that higher realm Essence wielders knew how to modify their physical appearance, Damien didn't really put much stock to the appearance. The truth was in the way the man spoke, and his bearing. There was no doubt this man was a powerful person.

  Spirit King at the latest.

  A yellow robe with golden trims on the arms and sides clothed his six foot frame, hugging the upper half of his arm like it was made from rubber.

  A single silver rimmed ocular construct rested on the bridge of his nose, its handles lost under a dense blanket of white hair.

  He approached Damien as soon as he made to sit up, gesturing for him to lay back down. Obedient boy that he was, Damien did as instructed, and then hesitantly collected the cup of green liquid handed over to him.

  Having done this before, Damien downed the liquid in one swift gulp and then blinked in surprise when nothing bitter assaulted his taste buds. Shaking his head, he looked toward the windows that lined the left side of the room—his left side, and unsure what time of the day it was, since it was bright outside, he greeted. "Good day, sir."

  The man smiled at him and collected the empty glass back, chuckling all the while. "I wouldn't take the windows in this room too seriously if I were you... Any of the windows in this estate, to be exact," he said. "But yes, it is a good day."

  "Why do you say that, sir?... About the window."

  "These are illusory windows," the man gestured. "For safety reasons, the Verrille's have decided not to have windows at their abode, or even doors. That is the reason for the token I assume you must have been given."

  "Ahh," Damien slowly nodded. "But this is their seat of power; who would dare attack them here?"

  Again, the man chuckled. "You would be surprised how often a sovereign is slain at their seat of power. To answer your question on who would dare attack the Verrille's, well... Shadow Hall comes to mind."

  Hearing that, Damien jolted upward in surprise, and then anger clouded his mind.

  "I see you've had an encounter with them, eh?" The man nodded. "Can't say I'm surprised. That organization is like cockroaches: they are everywhere."

  Damien grunted. He couldn't exactly say he knew Shadow Hall since, prior to the whole debacle that was the climax to the grand war, Shadow Hall had only been a name to Damien, whispered of but never seen. He'd heard of the organization, heard of their deeds, but he had never come across them, until that day.

  What surprised Damien the most was that they were known here. He'd always thought that Shadow Hall was just a small fry based only on Ra. Now hearing that they were more than that, with reaches stretching beyond his comprehension, Damien sighed...

  "How powerful are they?... Shadow Hall, I mean."

  The man paused from the second concoction he was mixing and turned to face Damien, absent the formerly cheerful expression.

  "I do not know, and I'm being truthful in telling you that." He said. "All I know—all anyone knows—is that their reach extends beyond comprehension. Maybe there's someone out there who might have a full grasp on the full might of the organization." He shrugged. "We might never know."

  Damien sighed, suddenly tired. He lay back down on the bed, marveling at the soft and squishy pillow. A mental look on his body told him how hale and healthy he was, physically. But Damien didn't have to look at his mind to know the answer to that side... the mild migraine he was feeling was clue enough.

  "What happened?" He asked. "One minute i was up, fighting against a Spirit King monster intent on taking over my mind, and the next, I'm waking up here."

  The man nodded and then approached again, handing Damien a glass of yellowish liquid. Damien took it and, this time, took in a good sip. He regretted it instantly.

  "Urggh!" He gagged from the heinous taste in his mouth. "What is that?"

  The man chuckled, and then telekinetically tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. "You should finish that," he gestured at the half-emptied glass in Damien's hands.

  Damien grimaced. He'd been so close to 'accidentally' spilling the drink, but given that his caretaker seemed to be eyeing him with rapt attention, he had no other choice but to consume the dreadful thing.

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  "Here," the man said, handing Damien another glass of clear liquid, which Damien looked at with obvious suspicion.

  "No need for that," his caretaker smiled. "It's just water."

  Damien didn't believe him, but he did bring the thing to his nose, and when he smelled nothing, took a tiny sip. Registering that it was clearly as the man said, he downed the entire thing in one single gulp, lapping his tongue to drive off bitter taste.

  "You suffered from a mild case of soul injury," the healer explained.

  "Soul injury?" Damien looked up sharply.

  "Yes, soul injury. Luckily, it was mild, just a few hairline cracks on your spirit, else your coma would have been longer than this."

  "Coma?!"

  "Don't worry, it wasn't that long. Barely two days. Your mental clash with the Desolate monster wasn't without any clapback on your part. Namely, the blurry vision you had upon awakening."

  "What does a blurry vision have to do with Soul injury?"

  "The body is a projection of the soul, a container, so to speak. Your mind, like the Spirit, is a link tethering the body to the soul. I took a cursory scan at the soul injury of your brother—"

  Damien's heart skipped a beat, and his eyes widened. Quickly, he forced down his expression back to normal, hoping that the healer didn't take notice.

  "—and found his injury almost similar to yours. The only difference is that yours came majorly from an overwhelming strain on the mind, while your brother's derived from that of the Spirit. The blurry vision you had was a result of that injury."

  Damien blinked when he realized his right hand was already up on his ears.

  "Yes, that too," the healer nodded. "You were lucky your mental strength was above average, else your mind would have been nothing but mulch."

  Damien nodded, suddenly feeling grateful. Of all the injuries to incur, a spiritual one was the most dreadful, in his opinion. He still shuddered whenever he thought of what Keilan must have gone through when he awakened his ascended technique.

  "Take this," the healer said, handing Damien a potion bottle sloshing with some kind of golden liquid dotted with white particles.

  Damien looked at the potion with suspicion and then turned that suspicious gaze to the hand holding it.

  "What's that?"

  "A life water."

  Damien frowned, a memory suddenly cropping up in his mind. He'd heard of it before, and it only took a bit of searching to find what he was looking for.

  Looking up at the healer, he asked. "The Nature Cult's super secret healing elixir?"

  The healer smiled, flicking the bottle over to Damien without waiting for him to catch it. "More the Life cult than Nature, but you aren't wrong in that the Nature Cult also possesses Life water. They're extremely rare and can only be found in the territory of the life cult."

  Damien frowned, remembering that the Nature priestess, Desane, had said the same thing back then when Keilan had gotten his soul all jumbled up from awakening an Ascended technique.

  Back then, she'd told him that permission from a high ranking Spirit King would have to be acquired for them to bathe his brother in the liquid, but that was there, in a world where the highest in the cult hierarchy were Spirit Kings. Damien knew that in a place such as this, which was ruled by a powerful Ascendant to boot, no cult would be foolish as to send a Spirit King to head the temple stationed here. So permission for this had to have come from two realms above his.

  He looked at the man Infront of him, who was already in the motion of arranging and mixing some another potion. "Um... Mr? Not that I'm rejecting it, but I'm a nobody. Why would an Ascendant gift me an elixir as precious as this?"

  The man turned back with a perplexed look which morphed a second later into amusement when he seemed to realize something.

  "Oh no," he chuckled, the sound coming out warm and relaxing. "This wasn't from an Ascendant."

  Seeing the confused look on Damien's face, he continued. "Let me explain. Yes, this elixir is rare and precious, but not so precious that the Cult hoards it for themselves. After all, the Cosmic task of the Life cult is to see to the propagation of Life everywhere. All life. While the Life water elixir is rare, rarer than something an ordinary house of lese would be able to easily acquire, it isn't that much of a task for a Sovereign House of Lese to grasp, and much less so when it comes to the High houses, especially one of Verrille's caliber."

  Damien nodded, unsurprised that the Verrille's were amongst the upper echelons of the Lese World Cities. With two Ascendants at their disposal, anything less would have been beyond frightening.

  "Foreigner or not, I'm quite surprised at your lack of general knowledge of the World Cities," the healer said with a questioning gaze at Damien.

  This caused Damien to stop cold. What was he supposed to say? He couldn't just come up and tell the man where he'd come from and his sudden arrival in the region. Merak had clearly warned of what might happen should someone somehow acquire knowledge of his origins. In the end, he settled for something true, but vague enough for the man to form his own opinion.

  "I didn't exactly arrive here as I'd planned," Damien said. "Keilan and I arrived much earlier than anticipated, which left us little time to study up on the world cities."

  The man nodded. "That's understandable, but now that you're here, I'd advise you to studied up and shore up those missing knowledge. Lack of knowledge is a danger in itself."

  Damien nodded, cursing Gray internally for his situation. But even as he did, he felt suddenly guilty and childish. The fact that Gray hadn't given him much information about where he'd be heading didn't mean he shouldn't have gone out to acquire it himself. For a moment, he'd almost become one of the things he hated the most: Self entitled. He wasn't a child to be spoonfed everything.

  Firmed up on his next destination, he moved to stand up when the healer pinned him with a look, which Damien followed down to his hand, still holding to the elixir filled bottle.

  "Right," he said, and then uncorked the cap, and with a silent prayer that it wasn't bitter, he downed it all at once.

  Surprisingly, the liquid wasn't bitter. Infact, it had zero taste at all, with a near resemblance to water. Had it not been colored, Damien would have suspected the healer of conning him into drinking an ordinary water.

  A warm feeling suddenly erupted in his throat, going down into his stomach and then his limbs, like he'd just taken in a very delicious warm meal. Damien felt his muscles relax, followed by a sudden jolt as his meridians were touched. He didn't remember when last he felt anything from them.

  His head suddenly went clear and his thoughts sharp, that was how he was able to recognize the subtle power wrapped around him, wrapped around his spirit.

  He looked up at the healer with a questioning gaze and a little bit of apprehension hidden within. With the power wrapped around his spirit, he knew instantly that the man could end him with a simple thought. The only thing keeping him from going full on panic mode was that the man could have killed him anytime before. Why give him all those expensive and rare elixirs only to kill him after?

  Maybe he takes a kick out of crushing strengthened souls. A voice in his mind whispered

  As soon as he noticed it, the feeling disappeared, and a weight lifted off his chest as the cocoon wrapped around his spirit dissolved.

  "That was to hold back your spiritual receptors from giving you the brunt of their minds" the man smiled. "Now that I'm sure you won't suddenly start screaming like a raving madman, you're free to go."

  Damien nodded, grateful for all the help. He stood up, rising precariously to his feet. It took a second for his balance to set in, and then he moved for the only door in the room.

  Reaching the door, he opened it into a white and gold painted hallway, just like the room. There was a long red carpet lining the hallway from one end to the other, and tiny twinkling lights running along the ceiling, delivering a soft white glow below.

  With a nod at the healer, he stepped outside. Following the illusory arrows lining the top half of the wall, with the word "exit" written above it.

  It was time for him to visit a library.