Morning in Aurelius was unlike anywhere else Jin Mu had ever known. The crystalline walls of the city refracted light into a thousand colors, painting the streets in shifting brilliance. The air itself felt alive, humming with transcendence as if the city drank from a source the outside world had long forgotten. For all its beauty, Jin Mu felt the weight of last night's breakthrough pressing down on him like a shadow. His hypermind still whispered at the edges of thought, tempting him to dive again into its endless layers, but he restrained himself. He had seen what it could do—and what it could break.
Seraphina was waiting in the courtyard when he emerged, arms crossed, foot tapping impatiently. "You look like death," she said flatly, though there was concern beneath her bluntness.
"Didn't sleep much," Jin replied, forcing a half-smile.
"No kidding. You nearly shook the walls down." She leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "So? What happened in there?"
He hesitated. Telling her the truth—that his mind had split into countless layers, that his pathways had surged into a forced breakthrough—would only raise questions he wasn't ready to answer. Not about regression, not about the fractures in his soul. Instead, he offered a half-truth.
"I pushed too hard in my cultivation," he said. "Found a…new angle. It's like my thoughts moved faster, sharper. But it's dangerous. I'm not ready to explain more."
Seraphina studied him, clearly unsatisfied but unwilling to press harder. "Fine. But don't think you can just break yourself and walk it off. If you're fighting at my side, I need you alive."
Before he could respond, Eleanor arrived, her presence softening the sharp edges of her sister's energy. Draped in flowing silver-blue robes, she carried herself with the grace of Aurelius itself. "You frightened the servants last night," she said gently, her eyes scanning him with quiet curiosity. "The air shifted, as though Aurelius itself stirred. What did you touch, Jin?"
Again, he offered only part of the truth. "A deeper connection to my pathways. It was unintentional, but…necessary."
Eleanor's gaze lingered on him, searching. Unlike Seraphina, she didn't demand answers—only offered silence, an invitation he couldn't accept. He inclined his head, forcing the subject closed. "I'll be fine. For now, I need to see the potion master. I've been gathering materials since I arrived, and it's time to make use of them."
Both sisters looked at him curiously, but Eleanor only nodded. "Then go. But take care, Jin Mu. Aurelius has its own rules. Some doors you open here can never be closed."
The potion master's shop lay near the edge of Aurelius, nestled between two crystalline spires that pulsed faintly with transcendence. Inside, the air was thick with scents—sharp herbs, bitter roots, metallic tangs of distilled essence. The walls were lined with shelves, each filled with vials glowing faintly, their liquids shifting like captured fragments of living light.
"Ah," came a warm, gravelly voice from behind a counter. "So the Black-eyed wanderer returns."
The potion master was an older man, his hair streaked with silver, his robes marked with stains of his craft. His eyes, though, were bright and steady, filled with the kind of calm only decades of refinement could bring. He was no ordinary alchemist. Aurelius would never tolerate mediocrity within its walls.
"Master Orin," Jin greeted with a respectful nod.
The old man chuckled. "Spare me the formality, boy. Sit. Tell me what madness you've brewed this time."
Jin set a small pouch on the counter, untying it to reveal dried petals of a rare blossom, shards of mineralized transcendence, and a vial of condensed essence he had bartered from Seraphina weeks prior. Orin whistled low.
"You've been busy. These aren't ingredients you stumble across."
"They're not for stumbling," Jin replied. "I need something that will stabilize thought. Strengthen clarity. What I've touched is…unsteady."
Orin's sharp eyes flickered over him, and Jin could tell he saw more than he let on. But the man only nodded, gathering the ingredients with the ease of long practice. "I can brew you something. But it will sting, Jin Mu. Potions that tamper with the mind always do."
By the time the potion was ready, the two of them had shared more than just silence. Orin brewed with a steady hand, and Jin found himself speaking—not of regression, not of the fractures in his soul, but of Aurelius, of the strangeness of its transcendence. Orin, in turn, told stories of his youth, of wandering beyond the crystal walls, of barely surviving the crossing back.
When the potion cooled, Orin slid it across the counter. "Drink when you're ready. Slowly. And don't try to force the effect. Let it teach you."
Jin took the vial, but didn't drink yet. Instead, he lingered, and Orin smirked. "Stay for supper. The streets of Aurelius are cruel if you walk them alone in thought. Better to eat with company."
So they did. They ate together in the shop's back room, simple food—roasted meats, bread with herbs, a bitter tea that tasted faintly of transcendence itself. And for the first time since his arrival in Aurelius, Jin Mu felt something like ease.
It wasn't home. It never would be. But it was a thread of warmth in a city of crystal and silence.
And in the back of his mind, the hypermind stirred again, whispering possibilities of what he could become—if he dared to take the next step.
The fire in Orin's back room crackled softly, painting the shelves of potions in shades of amber and shadow. Jin Mu sat back in his chair, the vial of potion untouched before him. Orin sipped his tea slowly, one hand resting on the scarred wooden table, the other occasionally gesturing as though stirring the air itself.
"You're holding back," Orin said, not unkindly. "You came here for more than a potion. You've got something rattling inside your chest that even Aurelius' walls can't contain."
Jin smirked faintly, though the weight in his eyes betrayed him. "You're too observant for your own good, old man."
"Age does that. The eyes sharpen when the body dulls." Orin leaned forward. "So tell me. What gnaws at you? What shape does your cultivation take? Aurelius does not welcome those without direction."
Jin tapped his fingers against the vial, hesitant. Yet some instinct told him that Orin could be trusted—not with everything, not with the unspeakable truth of regression, but with enough.
"I've been…forming something new," Jin said slowly, as though laying stones across a chasm. "My pathways are no longer separate. They've forced themselves into something singular, but fractured. I had no teacher for this. No guide. So I've had to name it myself."
Orin's eyes gleamed with curiosity. "Naming is a dangerous thing, boy. Once spoken, names root themselves into the marrow of a path. What have you called it?"
Jin's voice dropped, almost reverent. "The Black Emperor Pathway was my first. The second…its name hasn't yet settled. But the stages—I've begun shaping them. Not like the sequences Aurelius knows. Mine…mine feel alive."
He inhaled deeply, then began laying out what had formed in his mind during his sleepless nights.
"The first stage," he said, "I call Ashen Root. It is the grounding of self, a stage of survival. It's what I've left behind. The second stage, where I stand now, is Iron Branch. The strength to rise from ruin, to harden against storms. Beyond this…I see glimpses. Crowned Canopy, perhaps, where the self shelters and dominates. And beyond even that, something I cannot yet name. A stage where roots, branches, and crown blur into one whole. Perhaps Eternal Grove."
His fingers trembled slightly as he spoke, not from fear but from the weight of putting thought into words.
Orin listened intently, saying nothing until Jin paused. Then he smiled faintly. "You speak as one who has seen both life and death enough times to grow trees from the ashes. Naming stages like this…you're planting your own myth."
Jin gave a humorless laugh. "A myth carved from scars."
He set the vial aside and leaned forward. "But stages alone aren't enough. My pathways have layers. Before, I called them subpaths and splinters—different ways the core path expresses itself. Subpaths are broader, like rivers running beside the main flow. Splinters are sharper, fragments that cut off yet retain the original's essence. But now…" He hesitated, the word new and untested on his tongue. "Now I see something smaller. Fragile. Twigs."
Orin raised a brow. "Twigs?"
"Yes," Jin said firmly. "They're tiny offshoots, born from choices. They don't shape the whole tree, but they can reach places branches cannot. They're disposable, yet sometimes crucial. I never saw them before. Perhaps…because I hadn't been broken enough to notice them."
For a long time, silence sat between them. Then Orin chuckled, shaking his head. "Subpaths, splinters, twigs…boy, you're trying to turn yourself into a forest."
"Or I already am," Jin muttered, half to himself.
As the words left him, something shifted in his chest. Memories—blurry, jagged—surfaced. Su's voice, her fiery eyes bright with determination. He remembered teaching her of subpaths and splinters, how to navigate their complexity without losing herself. He had not spoken of twigs then; the idea hadn't yet bloomed. But he remembered her trust, her careful listening, her vow to use what he taught wisely.
The memory stabbed deeper than he expected. His hand curled into a fist. "I taught someone this once," he said softly. "A girl. Brave, broken, but unyielding. I showed her the rivers and shards. Not the twigs. This…this I've only just grasped."
Orin watched him carefully, his gaze both sharp and patient. "Then you are not as lost as you think. If memory returns, even in fragments, it means the path still recognizes you. You've not strayed entirely."
Jin closed his eyes, letting the words settle. For a long time, he sat in silence, the potion between them like a question unasked. When he finally spoke, it was quieter.
"I don't know if I'm leading myself into strength or madness."
Orin smiled, a sad sort of wisdom in it. "Often the line is thinner than we admit. But if you can name your stages, define your branches, and still sit here with bread and tea…then perhaps you are more rooted than you realize."
Jin opened his eyes, and for the first time that day, his expression softened. He reached for the vial, lifting it in a steady hand. "Then let's see where this root takes me."
He drank.
And in the silence that followed, his memories whispered—not only of pain and loss, but of the voices he had once guided, voices that still lingered in the marrow of his soul.