Hajin read the hostile comment twice without answering it.
'Can they hear me if I talk,' he thought with his eyes on the panel, 'because if somebody on Earth is watching this, the sound has to be going somewhere.'
Speaking to a floating screen felt ridiculous, though the day had already spent whatever capacity for surprise he owned, so he leaned toward the light anyway.
"Hello," he said to the panel hanging in front of his face, "my name is Hajin, so tell me whether you are from Earth."
Nothing happened for long enough that he began to feel foolish, then the comment section jumped.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] ???
Three question marks were not an answer, though somebody beyond that panel had bothered to type them at him.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] AI is getting out of hand lately lol
He leaned in toward the words, 'AI,' he thought, 'which is either an insult or a place.'
Another comment arrived before he answered the first.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] nah but even for AI this is a bit...
The sentence hung there unfinished while he waited for a person he could not see to go on with it.
"A bit what?" he asked the trees around the burned-out fire, "finish the thought, it costs you nothing."
The viewer kept typing, though a different notice slid over the comments before the answer came.
[ New Function Unlocked ]
[ Veil Connection ]
He touched it, so the chat folded aside for a darker panel, while cold came off the black and gold surface until the low fire behind him gave up most of its light.
[ The Veil holds souls unable to complete their interrupted reincarnation. ]
The line carried more weight than a menu had any business carrying, so his ability did not make disposable creatures after all, because it reached people stranded outside the living world.
'So the Goddess of Reincarnation part was never a metaphor,' he thought while the cold worked its way into his fingers.
[ The Goddess's fall severed the deeper cycle of reincarnation. ]
[ Souls stranded within that cycle gather in the Veil. ]
He read it through again before more lines arrived.
[ Those souls are female. ]
[ Male souls continue through the remaining standard cycle. ]
He went still, "female?" he said to the panel with the cold still on his hands, "only female souls?"
[ Your summoning authority connects to the Veil. ]
[ Your authority may retrieve only the female souls trapped there. ]
Hajin stared at the word retrieve for a while, then wondered what arriving felt like from the other side of it.
'That is an absurdly specific restriction,' he thought while rubbing his face, 'and no, that is not the part of this I should be stuck on.'
[ Souls within the Veil vary in memory, temperament, and stability. ]
[ Some remember their lives clearly. ]
[ Some have drifted so long that parts of them have worn away. ]
"Worn away," he said quietly, reading the line again from the top, "so what comes out when I pull on that."
Trapped was the word that stayed with him.
[ Connection to the Veil has been made. ]
[ Summon your first soul. ]
'Right,' he thought after looking from the dark panel to the comments blinking away beside it, 'because today needed one more thing in it.'
The prompt sat there without any of the caution a thing like that deserved, so he accepted it on one resigned breath with every question he had raised still unanswered.
[ First Summon: Open your palm, channel mana into the Veil and focus upon one soul. ]
His hand went out toward the display because no better plan had presented itself in the last hour, then mana moved through him with an ease three years of failed attempts had never once produced.
It entered the dark gold circle, where cold gathered across his palm before sinking into the new channels that ringed his wrist.
The connection felt distant and personal at the same time, as though a crowd of sleeping voices waited behind a wall thin enough to hear through.
The moment he pushed, the lines widened into a circle that turned slowly in the air in front of him.
'So it is the Veil or nothing,' he thought while the light gathered itself, 'which means no monster summoning at all, ever, on a summoner.'
'And only women,' he thought with the tiredness catching up to the rest of him, 'so this is going to be awkward in a way I cannot fix from here.'
The circle brightened until a shape started to rise out of it, no more than the outline of a body held above the ground, then the more mana he fed it the clearer that outline came.
Silver strands turned around it while the wind in the trees bent inward toward the center.
A heartbeat sounded once inside the light, then again, then in a rhythm that steadied while he watched.
He made out long ears first, then hair, then a girl with wolf features settling together inside the light.
Light rushed inward while skin and fur closed over the soul, then a wolf beastkin girl dropped out of the circle, struck the ground on her knees, then tipped sideways into the leaves.
Every coherent thought in his head stopped at once, because she had nothing on at all.
"What the fuck?" he asked the empty clearing, turning his head to face a tree instead.
Faint scars ran along her arms and her side, while exhaustion had hollowed out the face under all that hair.
She looked less conjured than delivered, at the end of a journey nobody should survive.
[ Summon manifested ]
[ Designation required ]
[ Name your summon to establish insignia and stabilize form ]
He looked at her once, then away, then at the comments, which were the safer thing to look at.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] ayo????
The text was the only thing in this clearing wearing any clothes, so he kept his eyes on it.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] wait wait wait, is she breathing
Watching a stranger lose composure in writing improved nothing about the girl lying in the leaves behind him.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] and shes naked?? come on, that is just bait
'There it is,' he thought with his face going warm despite everything else the day had already done to him, 'the exact awkwardness I was worried about, delivered inside a minute.'
[ Name required ]
[ Warning: unbound summons are unstable ]
The warning made the drift visible along her shoulders and fingertips, so whatever he felt about her state of dress could wait its turn.
"Right, okay," he muttered while keeping his eyes on a trunk six feet past her, "a name, then."
'I cannot call her wolf girl for the rest of her second life,' he thought with one hand over his eyes, 'and I cannot stand here negotiating with myself while she comes apart at the edges.'
"Juna," he said before the second guess could reach his mouth, "your name is Juna."
[ Designation accepted ]
[ True Name established: Juna ]
[ Insignia forming ]
A sharp golden mark opened at the center of her chest, drawing the loose mana around her body inward until it held, so her ribs rose on a breath that had not been there ten seconds before.
'So that is what stabilizing a form means,' he thought, 'and she breathes, which answers a question I had not worked up the nerve to ask.'
[ CringeSlayer91: ] bro named her instantly
The same handle posted again underneath, so his entire audience was still one person with a fast keyboard.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] named her that fast? tell the writers to work on the pacing
"She was falling apart," he said toward the chat with his jaw tight, "so forgive me for skipping the ceremony."
[ CringeSlayer91: ] nah this stream is insane
He gave up on the comments, looked back at the girl, then dragged his eyes up to her face halfway there.
"Uh," he said with one hand still half raised toward her, "Juna, can you hear me?"
Her eyes opened gold for a second, then sharpened, then found him.
She took in his face, then the sword at his hip, then the dead fire between them, before something very close to alarm went through her expression, so she got her feet under her.
"Wait," he shouted, putting the hand out flat, "I am not the one who..."
She was gone before he finished half a step, tearing barefoot through the trees at a speed nothing about her had advertised.
"What?" he asked the forest, letting the hand drop.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] lol, valid reaction
A thread of gold ran out of the mark on his wrist and pointed away between the trunks she had gone through.
[ Bond active: Juna ]
[ Distance: increasing ]
'Of course there is a leash,' he thought while following the thread with his eyes, 'and of course I am the one who has to walk it.'
"Fine," he said, picking his sword up off the leaves and starting after her at a pace his legs agreed to, "I named you, so you can tell me what I did wrong on the way back."