Elias did not answer.
The question lingered between them, hanging in the air like a blade suspended by a single thread.
What are you?
Not who. What.
As if Elias was a category, not a person. Elias stared at Ortis for a moment, his expression confused, but his thoughts moved rapidly beneath the surface.
'What does he mean by that?'
There were many ways to interpret the question. Too many.
Was Ortis asking what kind of person he was? That seemed unlikely. Ortis was not the philosophical type who asked vague existential questions without reason.
No. Ortis meant something specific.
Something literal.
'What… am I?'
Elias felt a cold ripple crawl down his spine as the implications began to unfold.
His eyes widened slightly.
The dinner. The vision. The moment Ortis had shown everyone a glimpse into the strange, silent world of Flow and Anti-Flow, the Astral Plane.
He had seen them all—the Trait Sigils of each person in the room. But that meant they had seen his as well.
Elias had led everyone to believe his Trait was 'The Magician'. It had been a convenient lie that could be backed up with a little explanation. But Ortis had seen their souls through the Astral Plane, felt them by extension through the shards he had given them—the shards of his own being.
And if he had seen the infinitely interlocking circles of the world...
Elias felt his chest tighten slightly.
'If Ortis saw that…'
Then questions would arise.
Why would a child hide his Trait?
Why would a child deliberately deceive everyone around him?
Why would a child possess the awareness necessary to manipulate the projection of his own soul?
Elias took a slow breath and shook his head slightly.
'I'm overthinking.'
Yes. That had to be it.
Ortis was odd by nature. He likely asked strange questions constantly.
Elias's shoulders relaxed slightly.
Ortis was suspicious by nature. He likely asked strange questions constantly.
'Calm down.'
Elias's shoulders relaxed slightly, but the doubt remained, cold and heavy in his chest.
"What exactly do you—"
"Hmm."
Ortis tilted his head slightly.
"You're taking too long."
Pain exploded in Elias's chest. For a moment he did not understand what had happened. The sensation was sharp, sudden, and strangely distant.
Elias blinked.
Then he looked down.
There was a hole in his shirt. A hole in his skin, perfectly circular and about the size of a marble, punched clean through flesh and muscle out the other side.
Elias stared at it.
"…Huh?"
Behind the hole, the distant forest was visible through his body. With a confused expression, he looked at Ortis, who had a trail of steam rising lazily into the air from the finger he was pointing at Elias. The flesh around the wound began to move.
Muscle twisted. Blood reversed its flow. Bone knit itself together with faint cracking sounds.
Within seconds the hole closed completely, leaving only a faint smear of blood on his shirt. Though only the look of confusion remained on Elias's face. He blinked.
Ortis let out a low whistle.
"Well, that's impressive."
Elias blinked again.
Ortis leaned forward slightly, studying him with open curiosity.
"That healing ability of yours," he said, "is quite remarkable. More impressive than anyone I've seen."
He placed his hands casually in his pockets.
"And I've seen quite a lot of freaks."
Elias slowly raised his hand and touched his chest.
The skin was smooth.
He looked up at Ortis.
"…Did you just shoot me?"
Ortis blinked.
"Obviously."
Elias brow furrowed.
"…Why?"
Ortis placed one hand on his waist and glanced upward thoughtfully.
"Well," he muttered, "you didn't turn into a vegetable when I moved you here."
Elias frowned.
"…What?"
"And I move way too fast for a normal person to survive the friction."
"Then why did you move me here in the first place?"
Ortis waved a hand, dismissing the question.
"Moving that fast after you had just experienced my presence should have done something to you. Either the weight affected your psyche in some way, or the speed shifted your brain. Both of these would either cause temporary effects like paralysis or permanent ones like, as I said earlier, you entering a coma."
He tilted his head.
"You didn't, thanks to that absurd healing ability of yours. Also, why not?"
Elias's confusion deepened. He opened his mouth to say something.
Before he could speak, however, several impacts tore through his body. Pain exploded across his torso, his arms, his legs. Blood sprayed as the force of each impact knocked him backward toward the edge of the hill. He stumbled and caught himself, dropping to his knees. He felt the blood soaking his clothes as he knelt dangerously close to the edge.
The wounds began closing, but far slower this time.
Ortis spoke calmly, light and conversationally, as if he hadn't just turned his nephew into a block of cheese.
"When I peered into your soul yesterday," he said, "I saw nothing."
"Nothing," Ortis repeated. "Which shouldn't be possible. Every soul is marked with a sigil. Every soul. Even mundane people with no awakening still have something there."
He tapped his temple lightly.
"But yours?"
He smiled faintly.
"Empty."
He tilted his head.
"I noticed something weird about you, all that time ago. When I first arrived. But I didn't view your soul like I did at dinner." Ortis's eyes sharpened. "Now I have. And what I found concerns me."
He took a step forward.
"So you're going to have to explain what you are."
"Unless you give me a convincing explanation..." He let the silence stretch. "I might have to terminate you."
Another unseen projectile fired.
The impact struck Elias directly in the head. His vision exploded into white light as the force launched him backward off the hill. Air rushed past him as gravity seized his body.
Normally, someone falling like this would panic.
They would reach desperately for roots, stones, branches—anything to slow their descent.
Elias did not. Instead, he relaxed his body.
Distance.
That was the priority.
Ortis was a monster.
Putting space between them was the only chance he had.
Elias fell.
Wind roared past his ears as he plummeted.
Then the air around him thickened slightly, slowing his descent.
But his concentration was fractured, so his influence on the parameters wasn't as effective.
Most of his Flow was already engaged elsewhere.
Accelerated Heal was working, but slowly. Too slowly. The shards were disrupting his Flow, making it difficult to concentrate.
He struck a massive boulder halfway down the slope.
The impact cracked stone and bone.
Pain flared through his ribs as his body bounced and slid downward into a brittle patch of grass.
Elias forced Flow through his limbs. His vision blurred.
He pushed himself up and ran.
The fractures were healing as he moved. Bones knitting. Flesh sealing.
Elias's teeth clenched as he felt foreign shards embedded deep within his body.
They burned.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
Fragments of Ortis's soul.
Even as small shards, they were absurdly dense, like fragments of a collapsing star lodged inside his flesh.
He reached inward.
His Soul Predation seized one shard.
It resisted.
For a moment Elias felt as though he were biting down on a piece of metal.
Then—
CRUNCH.
The shard dissolved.
Behind him, at the top of the hill, Ortis walked to the edge. He looked down at the spot where Elias had landed, then at the trees where the boy was already disappearing. He put his hands in his pockets again.
"…Hmm."
He tilted his head slightly.
"So he chose the fall instead of climbing back up to face me."
He felt it, then closed his eyes briefly.
Inside Elias's body, the remaining shards of his soul began shattering one by one.
Ortis's eyebrows rose.
"Well now, that's unexpected."
He extended his Flow perception outward.
The forest lit up in his awareness like a map of glowing veins.
Two kilometers away, a small figure moved rapidly through the trees.
Fast.
Very fast for a child.
Ortis smiled.
"I didn't know the little mouse could do that. Even if they were just fragments… mine are still top quality."
He lifted his hand again.
This time he did not fire a projectile.
Instead, he closed his fingers.
His soul fractured.
Dozens of shards broke free.
They twisted midair.
Stretching.
Morphing.
Then they fired into the forest, taking shape as soon as they touched the ground.
Wolves.
Lean predators with bodies made from pale crystalline soul matter, as if made from fractured light.
Above them, other shards formed.
Birds of prey.
Dozens of them.
Ortis pointed lazily toward the forest.
"Get."
The pack surged forward.
Elias moved through the forest like a hunted thing.
He was using his resonance to manipulate parameters—thinning air resistance, reducing his own inertia, pushing his body beyond its natural limits. The trees blurred past him. Branches whipped at his face. He did not slow.
'Two kilometers,' he calculated. 'Maybe more. He's not following. Yet.'
Elias did not know where he was going.
He did not have time to plan.
The only logical approach was distance.
If he continued moving in a straight line, eventually he would encounter someone.
A traveler.
A hunter.
Anyone.
Then he could ask where he was.
But first—
The final shard inside his body resisted violently as Elias consumed it.
"Ugh."
He grimaced and spat blood as the shard finally broke apart.
"Feels like chewing metal…"
The forest suddenly erupted. The wolves had found him first.
They burst from the undergrowth—six of them, their eyes burning. They did not howl. They did not warn. They simply attacked.
Elias dodged the first. The second clipped his shoulder, sending him crashing into a tree. He threw up an ice wall—a desperate, instinctive gesture—and scrambled to his feet.
The wolves clawed at the ice. It held. For now.
Above him, the birds descended.
They were smaller than the wolves, but faster. Their talons were shards of compressed presence, sharp enough to tear through flesh. Elias raised his hand and fired a blast of pure Flow.
The birds flew through it.
'Of course-,' he thought bitterly.
He dodged. Weaved. A talon raked across his arm. Another scored his cheek. He couldn't concentrate enough to form a proper attack—the shards had messed up the flow of energy in his body, leaving him scrambling for scraps of power.
He reached behind his back, instinctively reaching for his daggers. His hand closed on empty air.
Elias cursed under his breath and kept running.
'Of course. I didn't have them on me.'
He made a mental note: *Get a spatial artifact. Store the daggers. Never be caught without them again.*
He blew the birds away with a burst of wind—not Flow, just air, just physics. A tree blocked his path.
He blasted it down.
The trunk splintered, crashing into the undergrowth.
He slid beside it and snapped two branches free.
Each roughly the length of a short sword.
'Good enough.'
He forced his breathing to slow.
Flow Suppression.
His presence vanished.
High above the forest canopy, Ortis floated silently.
His eyes scanned the terrain below.
"…Hmm."
The boy's energy signature had vanished.
He folded his arms thoughtfully.
"Well now."
His voice drifted through the forest.
"Oh, Elias…"
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
Silence answered him.
Down below, hidden within a cluster of fallen branches, Elias remained perfectly still.
His hands worked quickly.
He bit his thumb.
Blood welled up immediately. He used it to draw—quickly, precisely—Reinforcement and Binding arrays on the branches. The wood groaned as he infused them with his Flow. Red shards formed along the edges, creating jagged blade-like structures.
Two crude swords that caught the light of the afternoon sun.
Above him, Ortis noticed the glint and spoke again.
"You wouldn't run if you had nothing to hide."
Elias finished the final line of the array and stood.
He released his suppression.
Flow surged outward.
"I wouldn't run," he shouted back, "if my uncle wasn't trying to kill me."
He reached into his pockets.
Several leaves filled his palm.
Each one carried small overlapping wave patterns drawn in blood.
Sensory Arrays.
He scattered them outward.
The wolves burst from the trees.
Elias flung the leaves forward.
"Manifest."
Illusions erupted across the forest floor—copies of himself, scattering in every direction, their footsteps echoing through the forest. The wolves snarled, confused. The birds wheeled, uncertain.
Elias ran.
Behind him, Ortis floated above the treeline, his eyes scanning the chaos below. The illusions flickered. Shifted. Multiplied.
He smiled.
"Very interesting," he murmured.