Chapter 52

  Raime could feel time moving. The air had thinned, its density of thought less oppressive than the night before. Neimar stood motionless, his radiance muted to a quiet hum — while Raime sat in front of him, legs folded, mind humming with the strange dual rhythm that had taken root inside him.

  It was still disorienting, that constant hum of multiplicity. Two lines of thought moving in parallel, never quite aligned, never quite separate. He could feel the slower one tracing the edges of his mind, grounding him, while the faster half itched to act, to reach beyond and test the limits of its new freedom.

  Neimar had told him that learning to deal with this fracture would take time. But Raime was impatient. He wanted to use it.

  “Teacher,” he said finally, voice steady but distant, “how do I train it?”

  Neimar’s gaze lifted to him, pale light coalescing in the air around his form. “You already are. But if you mean how to refine the Shear, that requires balance. Today you will not use it to fight, but to learn.”

  Raime nodded slowly. His awareness split again — one half listening, one preparing to observe. The sensation felt almost natural now, like focusing both eyes on different depths of the same scene.

  Neimar extended a hand. “To cultivate the soul, is to perceive the self,” he began, his tone smooth, unhurried. “And to perceive the self, you must learn to sense the soul. While not all types of energies are filtered through that essence, the ones you’re going to manipulate are. Your mana, your psionic current, even your will — they are only expressions of its state.”

  As he spoke, faint filaments of light shimmered between his fingers, forming a sphere of dull violet luminescence. “This is the soul’s echo — what lesser beings perceive as aura. It is the imprint left by continuous thought, condensed and given texture by the body’s flow of mana.”

  Raime’s first mind focused entirely on the lesson, watching how Neimar’s energy folded and unfurled like a living diagram. His secondary mind instead, tried to form a question — but the words tangled halfway through the attempt.

  “Teacher, if… the, hm… if the soul echoes—”

  The rest dissolved into mental static. He winced. The act of speaking through a fragment of himself felt like trying to talk while holding his breath underwater.

  Neimar’s expression didn’t change, though Raime could sense the faint trace of amusement. “Uneven division,” he said simply. “It will take you time to divide your mind in the most appropriate ratio,. Thought is a finite resource — you cannot yet give both equal focus.”

  Raime inhaled slowly, steadying himself. He redirected most of his awareness toward Neimar, but this time reserved just a bit more for speech. The difference was immediate — his comprehension sharpened, the words he was able to speak to the Sovereign were much more articulate now, not yet perfect, but it was a start.

  Neimar’s voice filled the space again. “To sense the soul, close your eyes. Forget the body. Forget breath. The soul does not breathe; it pulses. Trace the rhythm behind your cognition — the vibration that existed before awareness had a name.”

  Raime obeyed. The first layer of his mind sank into focus, following Neimar’s words, tracing the silence between his thoughts until he could almost feel it — a dim resonance humming beneath perception, as though the air inside his skull carried its own heartbeat.

  The lesser half of him, the one still clinging to articulation, whispered hoarsely into the space of his consciousness: “Is… this my aura, or something deeper?”

  The question came out fractured, slower than intended.

  Neimar answered without opening his eyes. “Deeper. Aura is an echo of the soul, like I said — the soul is the origin of intent. One flows because the other exists.”

  The words settled like gravity inside Raime’s mind. He let them unfold across both streams of thought, trying to hold them steady, but his attention slipped again — and with it the two streams of thoughts became one again. Time itself seemed to tilt. The seconds between Neimar’s sentences compressed, or perhaps his perception stretched; he couldn’t tell. What felt like minutes passed in the space of a breath.

  He blinked, disoriented. “Did… time just—?”

  “Your perception accelerated,” Neimar said calmly. “Time doesn’t flow slower — it’s you who became faster than your previous self. You were already thinking at higher velocity before you divided your consciousness.”

  Raime frowned, the revelation sinking in slowly. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “Naturally,” Neimar replied. “Your own speed is relative to your awareness. When you first arrived, you spoke twelve percent slower than before choosing your new path. That increase is natural. It will continue to rise as your cognition refines itself.”

  “Twelve percent,” Raime murmured. “So it’s measurable.”

  Neimar inclined his head. “Everything is measurable — until it surpasses measure. Do not focus on the number. Focus on stability. A faster mind that cannot align with itself will not help you.”

  Raime steadied his breath, feeling his mind pulse in his rhythm for a moment before sliding apart once more. The greater portion remained fixed on Neimar’s lesson, drinking in each nuance, each ripple of thought. The smaller one stirred again, struggling to form coherent questions through the haze of divided attention.

  “I— I wanted to ask something else,” he said, his words halting, dragged through mental resistance. “About… the attribute points I’ve stored. I still have many left, and I don’t know if using them would—”

  He lost the thread for an instant, vision blurring. With a wave, Neimar’s energy filled his perception again, dragging his focus back.

  Neimar did not chastise him. He simply spoke. “You sense correctly that the stored potential within you is unstable. You ask what will happen if you invest it without structure. The answer is already known to you, mutation.”

  Raime’s secondary mind faltered. “Mutation?”

  Neimar’s tone was calm, but there was a weight beneath his words that pressed against the edges of Raime’s mind. “Yes. Not the kind that brings power, but the kind that brings decay. You are infusing raw, unfiltered essence directly into your soul, and your soul—being what it is—tries to adapt. It strengthens, refines itself, and in turn, pushes the body to follow. But your body is still bound by material law. It is limited, fragile. To bridge that distance, it will change itself to match your soul’s progression… and change without guidance is corruption.”

  Raime tried to keep both streams of thought steady, but the words carried such gravity that even his primary mind wavered. He could feel the truth in them — the vague imbalance that was created when he crossed the attributes thresholds, and the cascading errors effect that nearly killed him if not for the Administrator intervention. His body, though stronger than ever, sometimes felt… uneven.

  “So that’s what I’ve been feeling,” he murmured, voice soft but sharp at the edges.

  Neimar nodded. “Your instincts are correct. What you sense is not pain or exhaustion — it is your flesh’s protest. It was never designed to contain the growth of a soul that evolves beyond it. Without balance, that dissonance will only deepen.”

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  The smaller part of Raime’s consciousness, the one responsible for speech, struggled to form the next question. Words blurred, tangled with thought. “If I… keep doing that, keep pushing it… will it—hurt me?”

  “Not immediately,” Neimar said, folding his hands. The sphere of violet light in his palm dissipated into thin air, leaving faint threads that curled and vanished into nothing. “But yes. If you breach another threshold as you are now, your body will begin to warp. The essence that floods your soul will force your cells to adapt — sometimes imperfectly, sometimes fatally. Tumors, ruptures, uncontrolled evolutions… you were lucky the first time it happened. And you already experienced the consequences.”

  The Sovereing’s words lingered like ash on Raime’s tongue. He drew in a breath, grounding himself through the hum of his twofold awareness. His primary mind tried to dissect every phrase, every concept Neimar still was imparting him; the secondary one tried to grasp what raising his attributes again meant for him, for what he had already done.

  He had always thought of his growth as linear — points spent, thresholds reached, strength earned. But the truth was far more intricate. Each point he had poured into his being hadn’t simply made him stronger — it had strengthened his soul, while leaving his body scrambling to catch up.

  “And if I stop using them?” he asked slowly, his tone steadier now though the smaller half of his mind still stumbled over the rhythm of words. “If I hold onto the points until I can handle it?”

  “That,” Neimar said, “is wiser. But not enough. Unused potential still exerts pressure on your soul. Imagine a spring compressed beyond its limit — even if you refuse to release it, tension builds, subtle and dangerous. Eventually, your soul will seek an outlet, even without your consent.”

  Raime frowned, the image settling uncomfortably deep. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  Neimar’s light pulsed faintly, a rhythm that reminded Raime of the earlier meditation — the pulse behind thought, the heartbeat of awareness itself. “You learn control. You guide the growth before it guides you. The System you once depended on evolves the body first, precisely because the flesh can fail and recover; the soul cannot. But you have no System to help you now. You are an anomaly. Your path is reversed — your soul strengthens first, and your body is forced to follow.”

  “That’s… dangerous,” Raime said, his secondary thread flickering with strain.

  “Of course it is,” Neimar answered. “But the danger is also opportunity. Starting your soul cultivation this early will allow you to progress at an exceedingly fast pace, and the key to that is ensuring that your body doesn’t deviate from his normal development. We can attain that through reinforcing it with mana.”

  The greater half of Raime’s mind was still absorbing the lessons about cultivation, each idea complementing the ones he studied in the night clicking into place like pieces of a vast mechanism. The lesser one lagged behind, overwhelmed by the constant duality — one side listening, one side thinking, the two threads out of sync. His breath slowed as his focus slipped, the two streams of consciousness threatening to collapse back into one. The room around him seemed to blur, the lines of the temple dissolving into soft gradients of light and shadow.

  “Focus,” Neimar said quietly, though his voice cut through the haze like a blade.

  Raime exhaled and pushed his thoughts apart again. The imbalance stabilized, though faintly.

  The smaller thread of consciousness pulsed weakly — still wanting to ask, still trying to find rhythm. “If… the System guided the body first, does that mean… it feared what happens when the soul grows faster?”

  Neimar’s gaze lingered on him for a moment, and a trace of satisfaction crossed his otherwise stoic features. “A good question. The answer is yes — though not fear, exactly. The System is not alive, but it has learned from worlds that perished when their souls outpaced their flesh. When awareness evolves too quickly, the mind shatters. When the soul grows too vast, the vessel breaks.”

  Raime absorbed that in silence. A faint tremor ran through his fingers, unnoticed by the part of him that was still listening intently to Neimar other stream of lessons.

  “Listen well,” he said, voice lowering to something that hummed beneath the surface of consciousness. “The stockpile of points you hold,” Neimar continued, “is more than the System’s gift. It is essence — condensed fragments of what remains when a life is extinguished. The System repackages them as numbers, simplifying the complex into something manageable. But their true nature is far more intricate. They are the echoes of other souls, refined and made compatible with yours through the System. That is why they empower you so deeply.”

  Raime exhaled slowly, feeling the edges of his divided awareness tremble. “Then… if those fragments strengthen the soul, I could use them to refine mine — instead of my body?”

  “Precisely,” Neimar said, faint light spilling from his palms again, this time forming concentric rings that hovered between them. Each ring glowed a different hue — pale white, deep violet, faint blue. “The System imbibes that essence into the flesh because it is the safer path. For that it uses cores and channels as the medium, strengthening them and the body in turn. The body grows, adapts, heals. The soul, however, resists direct tampering. But this doesn’t apply to you.”

  His fingers flicked through the rings, and the colours began to merge. “You, Raime, walk a reversed path. You are already strengthening your soul. The time will come when you must consolidate that strength — compress it, focus it. That is the purpose of a soul core.”

  Raime’s greater mind caught the term immediately. “That is why you proposed this as the best path?”

  “Yes,” Neimar said, and the air rippled with his tone. “Every being that transcends the limits of instinct learns to focus their essence into a singular construct — a core that defines their identity. The System’s Awakened do it through the paved progression provided. You, however, must do it consciously. You will forge your core through intent.”

  Raime’s smaller thread flickered faintly, slow and uncertain. “And… the attribute points… that’s what I’ll use for it?”

  The Sovereign nodded. “Those points — your spoils — will serve as your material. Each carries a memory of force, a trace of existence. When gathered and refined, they will stabilize your soul, condensing the scattered energies you have been carrying. Once the core forms, your growth will cease to fragment you further.”

  Neimar gestured, and the rings of light collapsed into a single pulse, hovering above his open hand. “But that is only the first part. To balance the soul, the body must not be left hollow. You will need to cultivate a mana core — a reservoir of raw energy anchored in the flesh. It will serve as the bridge between your inner essence and the material world, ensuring that your body remains aligned with your soul’s expansion.”

  Raime could feel the idea forming in both halves of his consciousness — two versions of the same comprehension merging uneasily. His thoughts flickered between awe and apprehension. “And the psionic energy?”

  Neimar’s eyes brightened faintly, the answer already there before he spoke. “The psionic core will govern both. It is the mind’s construct — the throne from which Will directs the whole. From thought comes control; from control comes harmony. It is the link between the intangible and the tangible. The soul is the essence, the body vessel, and the mind dictates their motion. When all three move in rhythm, balance is achieved.”

  Raime’s breath caught. The structure Neimar described was beautiful in its precision — elegant, complete. But also terrifying. Three cores… each connected. And I can’t make any mistakes or the imbalance will end me.

  Neimar nodded slightly, as if sensing the hesitation. “You are uniquely suited for it. The trait that marks your kind — Mind over Body — amplifies your control. For others, forcing alignment between essence and flesh would be extremely hard. For you, it is natural. You will be able to weave a linked system, when most will fail.”

  The air around him shimmered faintly as he spoke, each word carrying the resonance of certainty. “However, this path cannot be imposed. I can guide, but not shape it for you. The design of one’s future must come from within. The arrangement of your cores, their resonance, their flow — only you can determine that.”

  Raime’s twofold awareness pulsed unevenly again. The greater mind was busy memorizing what the other Neimar’s consciousness was imparting him. The smaller one, trembling under the strain, whispered, “Then… what do I do for now?”

  Neimar’s light softened, the radiance dimming to the calm hue of dusk. “For now, you learn. You listen. You practice. Only when you can start to sense your soul we can proceed with the first attempt at manipulation. Do not rush.”

  Raime exhaled deeply, feeling the words settle across both minds like ripples converging in still water. The lesson was his foundation. His future path, the architecture of his being, was beginning to take shape in the abstract.

  Raime bowed his head slightly, out of respect, as the light of Neimar’s form dimmed. “I understand,” he said, though the words came from both halves of his consciousness, layered over one another — one calm, one trembling.

  “Good,” Neimar said simply. “Now, breathe. Let the two halves merge — slowly. Control the fusion, do not let it consume you.”

  Raime obeyed. The two streams of thought, once parallel and distant, began to converge, spiraling inward until they met at the center of his mind. The sensation was blinding — not in pain, but in intensity, like light collapsing into itself. His perception of time slowed, his heartbeat fading into a calm beat.

  When his awareness settled again, he found himself breathing quietly, the temple silent, Neimar’s form a calm glow before him. The lesson lingered in his mind, etched deeper than any memory.

  “Now, again”