Sun sat by the window thinking about mortals.
He had noticed something recently, They seemed to believe, without ever saying it out loud, that white meant good and dark or red meant evil, Not as a rule. Not as something anyone decided. Just a quiet assumption baked into the way they talked and thought and decorated things.
Both were colors.
Neither had done anything to earn the reputation.
Mortals had an impressive ability to attach meaning to things that had no meaning and then forget they were the ones who put it there.
He was still thinking about this when the memory of the clapping returned.
It had happened yesterday. He and Eli had attended some kind of public performance. Everything was going normally until the performance ended.
Then the sound started.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Sun turned instantly, alert.
Everyone around him was striking their own hands together. Repeatedly. With enthusiasm.
Eli was doing it too.
Sun stared.
Why are you hitting yourself?
Eli paused mid-clap. "What?
You are repeatedly colliding your hands together,Sun said, watching closely. With force.
It's clapping.
Yes. I can see that. But why?
It means we approve.
Sun looked around at the crowd, all of them hitting their own palms with alarming commitment.
So when something pleases you, he said slowly, you respond with self-inflicted impact?
We are not hurting ourselves.
That is not the point. The behavior remains deeply concerning.
Eli sighed. It is just how humans show appreciation.
Sun went quiet for a moment.
Then cautiously, he brought his own hands together.
Clap.
He paused.
I felt that.
Yeah. That is normal.
He tried again. Slightly harder.
Clap.
His eyes narrowed.
There is an optimal force threshold.
Eli stared at him. Please do not-
CLAP.
Several people turned around.
Sun straightened slightly.
They are responding, he noted. "This is clearly a communication signal.
That is not-
CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
More people were looking now.
Sun nodded, satisfied.
Volume increases attention. This is effective.
"Stop clapping like that.
He ignored him.
CLAP.
Someone across the room clapped back.
Sun froze.
It responded.
That is just a person!
He raised his hands slowly.
We are establishing contact.
NO WE ARE NOT-"
CLAP. CLAP.
The other person clapped again.
Sun turned back to Eli, completely serious,
I have initiated a long-distance conversation using hand collisions.
Eli covered his face.
Sun still did not understand why Eli was embarrassed, The experiment had been a success by any reasonable measure,
But that was yesterday's problem,
Today's problem was the system merger ceremony,
He had been thinking about it more as the day approached,The system was not what most people believed it to be. He knew that better than anyone. It was not a blessing or a gift from the High Gods, It was a chain, Elegant and well-disguised, but a chain, Everyone went through it at age five, Everyone received their authority through it. Everyone believed it was the beginning of their power.
It was the beginning of their leash.
Without the system a person could not awaken their authority, Without an authority they could not climb, Without climbing they had no power, no protection, no future worth speaking of in this tower.
Sun wanted revenge,That had become clear over the past few days, growing quietly beneath everything else like a root finding its way through stone. But revenge required strength, Strength required climbing. Climbing required the system.
He had broken free of it once, with the help of the seed. But the seed had barely reacted to anything in four years, He had tried everything he could think of and gotten nothing.
Except when Kael walked in,
That was the thing he kept returning to.
The seed reacted to Kael. Consistently. From the very first day Not loudly,Not dramatically. Just a shift. A pulse, The specific attention of something that recognized something else.
He needed to understand why,
He was still thinking about it when the door opened.
Not because he heard the door,
Because the seed shifted first,
Kael walked in a moment later,
Sun watched him settle into his usual chair and arrange his materials with the same practiced steadiness he always had, Hands calm. Movements unhurried. Nothing unusual on the surface.
Sun noted all of it.
Today's lesson was about essence and will.
Will is a primordial force," Kael began. It existed in living things before the gods arrived. Before the tower. Before the seven laws. It is the foundation everything else is built on.
Sun listened. Or appeared to.
Will is like a force with no direction,Kael continued. It is not quite desire, because desire knows what it wants. Will simply exists. Raw potential with nowhere to go, What gives it direction is the system. What powers it is essence.
He moved on to essence.
Essence is the energy that activates will,It fuels both your will and your authority, Without essence your authority is just potential, It cannot move,Cannot act. Cannot change anything.
Sun thought about this.
He had been trying to gather essence since he arrived in this body. From the very first week. He had tried every approach he could think of, every method that made logical sense, every technique he had observed in others.
Nothing worked.
It was not that the essence was out of reach. It was more like his body refused it. Like something in him, the seed perhaps, simply would not allow it. For a being who had governed a divine concept for thousands of years, the situation was genuinely baffling.
Authority is the expression of will made real, Kael said, It requires essence to activate and it alters the rules of the world in specific ways. Every authority is different. Every one reflects the person who developed it.
He explained the authority grades.
Awakened, Special, Golden,Sacred,Divine.
Sun filed each one and returned to his thoughts.
The essence problem bothered him more than the system merger did,He could work around the system eventually,He had done it before. But essence was something different. Something more fundamental, If his body or the seed was rejecting it, there was a reason,He just did not know what it was yet.
One hour later, Kael packed his materials and said his farewell.
Sun watched him go.
The seed pulsed once as the door closed behind him. Softer this time. Like something settling back into patience.
Sun sat with it for a moment.
Then he made a decision.
Kael was not just a retired climber doing private tutoring. He was certain of that now,The seed did not react to ordinary people. It had not reacted to anyone else in four years.
Whatever Kael was, it was worth finding out.
He added it to the list without a name.
Then he picked up the chair, moved it back to its position by the window, and sat down to think.