Intention. Intent. The purpose behind an action. What you meant to do, dressed in philosophical bullshit about will and determination.
Basic concept, really. You intend to grab a cup. Your brain fires signals. Your hand moves. Cup acquired. Intention realized.
In this world, an Intention worked the same way when dealing with powers beyond human comprehension, except now you walked half the normal path, mixed those thoughts with grains of Fissure and chaos, and there it was.
Nalla had never heard of a Restriction path in the Fissure Caelum. You could always use other Fissures, and your proficiency depended on how much you studied and your talent for them. But he was restricted to Caelum, and one of the Intentions he'd received was about restriction itself. A barrier. A barrier protects, was this some form of protection? He couldn't say. But he felt castrated now, and staring at his first Intention was something he could barely stand to examine.
He focused on the iron rings carved into his Heart of Intentions and drew power from Caelum.
Air changed. Strange but familiar scent spread through room, cinnamon, pepper, and incense blending into something that made his nostrils tingle. Smell of Caelum itself. Each Fissure had its own signature, and this one was distinctly architectural. Structured. Like walking into a well-built library where everything had its place and nothing ever escaped.
He felt internal reservoir shift. Twenty-seven grains total capacity, and he pulled ten from that well, converting precious energy into raw potential. He lets his thoughts run, intending to shape chaos into meaning.
"Barrier."
Translucent wall materialized in front of him, hovering in space between two beds. It shimmered like heat distortion, catching afternoon light and refracting it into strange patterns on moldy walls. Faint chains wove through the barrier's structure like veins of silver light, pulsing to a rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
Nalla stood and walked around construct, studying it from different angles. He picked up chaos sphere from table, one of six remaining, and threw it at barrier from outside.
The sphere slowed as it approached. Not violently. Gently, like hitting membrane instead of wall. The pressure increased incrementally, resistance building as it got closer, until it finally stopped half a handspan from the surface. Suspended. Held.
He pushed with his hand. Barrier felt like pushing into water, yielding but immovable. Pressure constant. The more force applied, the greater the proportional increase in resistance. Perfect elasticity without penetration.
He stepped to other side of barrier and picked up the sphere. Threw it outward, toward window.
It passed through without resistance. No pressure, no resistance. Just free passage.
He tested different angles, different force levels. Always same result. Pressure from outside increases as the attempted breach progresses. Inside, complete freedom.
Ten grains to create it. More than a third of total capacity.
He could feel a steady drain now, two grains per minute flowing out of the system to maintain the construct. With current capacity of twenty-seven grains, he could maintain this single barrier for about nine minutes, less if he had to create it first.
Or create two barriers and maintain them for roughly three minutes each. Or three barriers for two minutes.
He made notes, documenting discovery. Drew diagrams showing resistance mechanics. Calculated maintenance costs versus capacity.
What if I could reverse this? Trap enemy inside while remaining free to attack from without? Or create series of barriers in retreat, buying time while enemy wastes energy trying to break through?
The barrier faded after two minutes as he released the power sustaining it. Where it had been, fine dust settled onto floorboards, glittering briefly in afternoon light before becoming ordinary grime.
Caelum dust. Curious side effect.
Stop planning five steps when you can barely manage one. Test second Intention.
Nalla sat back down and closed eyes, focusing on second symbol carved into heart. This one was peculiar, refusing to maintain single configuration. Forms shifted like smoke given momentary substance. As he concentrated on it, symbol seemed to absorb energy like hungry wound.
Staring at it was like looking through dirty glass, distorted images dancing at edges of perception.
And then, something changed.
Hunger hit him. Not physical hunger for food, but something deeper. Gnawing need for expression, for release through words. Like pressure building behind dam, water desperate to flow.
His hands tingled. Not with numbness, but with urgency. Fingers twitched toward quill, toward paper, toward anything that could translate internal chaos into external form.
Emotions shifted without warning. Joy flooded through him, sharp, bright, beautiful, then crashed immediately into sadness so profound it made chest ache. Anger followed like wildfire, hot and consuming, before drowning in fear that tasted like copper and helplessness.
What the fuck.
He saw it. Just for moment, like glimpsing shadow at edge of vision. Movement that was his but wasn't. Hands that were his but weren't. Running, no, fleeing, no, pursuing.
His own emotions spiraled faster. Melancholy so deep it felt like drowning. Rage that made vision blur. Grief for losses he couldn't name.
And through it all, that hunger. That need to write, to pour this chaos onto paper before it consumed him from inside.
Writing Intention. Of course. Universe acknowledges my one actual talent. Only took two lifetimes and countless hours of scribbling for universe to notice.
Nalla grabbed quill with hands that shook, not from fear, but from pure need. He drained Caelum again, feeling larger chunk of energy convert into purpose. Fifteen grains this time. More than half his total capacity.
Expensive. Very expensive.
Scent of cinnamon and incense filled room once more. Slight headache formed behind temples, pressure building like storm approaching.
He pressed quill to paper and wrote.
Words flowed like water breaking through dam. But they came wrong, tangled, desperate, bleeding into each other. Sentences fractured mid-thought. Metaphors twisted into something unrecognizable. Beautiful descriptions curdled into raw anguish.
The ache of missing something that was never yours, the hollow space where happiness should have been, the bitter knowledge that some chains can never be broken because they are forged from love itself.
He wrote of abandoned dreams. Of choices that led only to smaller choices. Of terrible beauty found in accepting that some prisons were worth keeping.
But the words weren't controlled anymore. They poured out like hemorrhage. Each sentence more chaotic than last, each word fighting against the others. The grief wasn't being channeled, it was being vomited onto paper, raw and unfiltered.
His hand cramped. He didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
Outside, afternoon shadows lengthened. Sounds of village shifted, vendors calling final prices, children being summoned home for dinner.
Nalla was so absorbed in writing that he barely noticed when door opened.
Samara returned, arms laden with packages and thick woolen blanket draped over shoulder.
The moment she stepped into room, the air changed.
It was subtle, not wind, not temperature. Pressure. Like stepping from lower altitude to higher. Like the space itself had become heavier. The cinnamon-incense scent spiked suddenly, overwhelming, and the light from window bent strangely around nothing visible.
Samara's arms went rigid. Packages tumbled. Blanket hit floor like dead weight.
Her face contorted. Not from physical pain, but something deeper, as if something inside her had suddenly recognized what she wanted most and then showed her she could never have it. Her mouth opened to scream but only strangled gasps came out.
Knees buckled. Not dramatically. Functionally. Her body simply stopped supporting her weight.
She caught herself with one hand against doorframe, fingers scraping down wood. Breathing shallow and rapid, quick little gasps that sounded wrong, too fast, like someone drowning on dry land.
The hand slid down, down, until she was kneeling on floorboards. She curled forward, forehead pressed to wood, and didn't seem to care about anything except that she couldn't breathe right, couldn't think right, couldn't be right.
Sobbing started quiet. Just hitching breaths at first, shoulders shaking. Small tremors that built into something larger. Sounds escaped, small, wounded noises from somewhere deep in chest.
Her whole body convulsed with each sob. Hands clutched at floor like she was trying to hold onto something. Anything. Fingers pressed white against wood, nails catching in gaps between boards.
Nalla's quill slowed.
He hadn't expected the power to radiate outward like that. Hadn't considered spillover. The Intention had been internal, emotion made into words made into chaos crystallized on paper. But something had escaped the words themselves. Something had turned the act of writing into broadcasting.
The air still felt thick. Samara tried to uncurl once, hand reaching toward dropped packages as if completing the task might anchor her to reality. But the pressure held her. Movement faltered halfway. Hand fell back to floor. More sobbing, deeper now, as if she had found new well of grief to draw from.
Minutes passed. Time felt elastic, distorted by misery.
By minute nine, Samara had stopped making sounds. Just laid there, breathing in shuddering gasps, tears still streaming down face but voice apparently exhausted. Her eyes stared at nothing, hollow and empty like abandoned houses.
The pressure faded. Not because Nalla released it, he wasn't maintaining it consciously. It simply dissipated, like water evaporating in the sun, leaving only a residue behind. The air lightened. The scent faded.
Samara gasped for air. Her breathing slowly normalized from frantic to ragged to something approaching human.
Paper beneath quill dissolved.
Of course it did.
Ink faded first, words disappearing as if they'd never existed. The paper itself crumbled, disintegrating into dust and memory. Fragments drifted to the table, then to the floor, becoming indistinguishable from ordinary grime.
Nalla's quill resumed movement across paper. But his focus had shifted.
Range: approximately twenty meters. Duration: nine minutes before natural dissipation. Effect: severe emotional disturbance, incapacitation, psychological overwhelm. Spillover uncontrolled. No targeting mechanism observed. Power radiates through physical space. Intensity increases with chaos energy expenditure.
He recorded it all with clinical precision.
Samara set down quill and flexed cramped fingers. Made herself look at her, really look, at what his test had done.
Her dress rumpled, twisted around her body in unflattering angles, hair falling in messy strands around face. All the careful presentation destroyed. Young suddenly. Vulnerable in way that wasn't performed. Just broken.
"I..." she started, voice hoarse from crying. Throat sounded raw, damaged from wails she probably didn't remember making. "Young master, I... something happened. I felt..."
She shook head, unable to find words for experience that was already fading like dream upon waking. Tried to smooth down dress with trembling hands, restore some order to appearance, but movements were clumsy, uncoordinated.
"Felt what?" Nalla asked, tone carefully neutral.
"Like I had lost everything that ever mattered to me." Her hands trembled as she slowly gathered scattered packages, movements mechanical. "But I don't understand why. It felt so real, so..."
She looked up at him, eyes searching his face for explanation.
"Have you ever experienced something like that?"
"Emotions can be strange things," Nalla replied, not looking up from fresh paper where he was making notes. "Sometimes they come from nowhere and leave just as mysteriously."
Samara nodded uncertainly, but eyes kept darting to him. She busied herself organizing supplies she had brought, dried vegetables, rice, some kind of preserved meat, but movements remained unsteady. Her hands shook so much that she nearly dropped the pottery jar twice.
She kept trying to restore her appearance between tasks. Tucking hair back, smoothing dress, wiping face. Rebuilding mask piece by piece.
She caught him watching, hesitated, then spoke without her usual careful cadence.
"Young master, I... may I ask something?"
"Ask."
"What do you need from me? I mean..." She gestured vaguely at room, at herself, at situation. "I know I'm here as servant. But you're not like other young masters. So what do you want?"
Direct question. No performance. Just practical inquiry from someone trying to figure out rules of game that had suddenly changed.
Nalla considered her for moment. Exhausted girl in rumpled dress, asking honest question because she'd run out of energy for anything else.
"Competence," he said simply. "Do what I ask, when I ask it, without questioning or spreading information. Adapt to changing circumstances without complaint. That's all."
"That's all?" She sounded skeptical. "Most men want..."
"Most men are idiots," Nalla interrupted. "I have limited resources, limited time, and enemies I haven't identified yet. I need someone who can function independently, think practically, and keep her mouth shut. If you can do that, we'll get along fine. If you can't, leave now."
Samara studied him, weighing truth of his words.
"I can do that," she said finally. "Thank you. For being honest."
"Don't thank me yet. This arrangement won't be comfortable."
"Comfort is overrated." Almost smiled, small, crooked thing. "My mother used to say people who chase comfort end up trapped by it."
"Your mother sounds smart."
"She is." Something vulnerable flickered. "That's why I need to... why this matters. Getting out. Moving up."
"Then we want the same thing," Nalla said. "Different reasons, same goal."
Samara nodded, then returned to organizing with renewed focus. Less performance, more purpose.
"Young master," she said quietly. "The blankets. I bought two. Good quality. Warm." She paused, held out coins with hand that still shook slightly. "The market had good prices. I got everything on list for three spheres and half. The extra is here."
No performance in gesture. Just straightforward task completion.
"Keep the change," Nalla said. "Consider it payment for competent service."
Samara blinked, surprise breaking through exhaustion. "I... thank you, young master."
She tucked coins away, then continued organizing with mechanical efficiency. But she kept glancing at him when she thought he wasn't looking. Trying to figure out what had happened, why she'd lost control so completely.
Outside, sun continued setting. Village continued living. Merchants closed their shops, families gathered for dinner, and children were called in from the streets.
Nalla set down quill and looked at papers covered in notes. Diagrams of barriers. Calculations of grain costs. Observations about emotional manipulation. Questions about third Intention still untested, still locked away.
One year to master vocabulary he didn't speak. One year before uncle decides he's more valuable dead than inconvenient.
He looked at Samara one more time, recovering but shaken, organizing their meager supplies in cramped room. She had spread out new blankets on both beds, arranged food stores in neat rows on table, made space functional through sheer determination. But she moved carefully, like someone nursing invisible wound.
She caught him looking, hesitated, then spoke softly. "Young master, if you need anything... anything at all tonight..."
She trailed off, uncertainty making offer ambiguous.
"Rest," Nalla said. "Tomorrow we start figuring out how to survive here."
Samara nodded, relief crossing her face. She moved to her bed and simply stopped performing. Shoulders slumped. Hands folded in lap. Just sitting, exhausted, processing.
Nalla lay back on bed, new blanket was warmer, Samara had chosen well, and closed eyes. By morning, he'd figure out third Intention, mystery locked behind whatever barrier Upstream Drifter had created.
He could hear her breathing across cramped room, rhythm gradually evening out. Real sleep, not performance of rest.
Three Intentions. Twenty-seven grains. Six and half chaos spheres. One year.
Let's see what I can build with that.