Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 188: Book 3: The Four Pillars

There's one thing that's been on my mind ever since we encountered it with the Seedmother—one thing I've been ruminating on and trying to work out. The Interface is lying to me about the skill categories. Why? What's the point?

And more importantly, what are those categories, really?

It's not some arbitrary way to designate and separate skills. Considering the similarities in the way the skills in each category are constructed, there has to be something more fundamental to it than that. Everything I've encountered since then agrees, from Virin's imbuement stones to the variety of other skills I've seen used against me.

This feels important. I can almost feel the weight of the lie in my soul, like a physical weight dragging me down and interfering with the formation of the fourth layer.

Maybe that's what it is. A way to weaken Trialgoers and Integrators alike. We're reliant on the Interface to grow, and if the fourth layer requires me to know the world—to define myself in relation to it—then any lie within it becomes an exploitable weakness. It ensures not only that we're weaker than we could be, but creates an instability in our souls that could be used to fracture it.

Just speculation, perhaps, but... It feels right.

It doesn't matter, I suppose. Kauku has told me that I have all the information I need to uncover the truth behind this; I'm still not exactly sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I can find out.

All I need to do is look.

The evidence is all around me, contained within my soul. If I look very, very closely, I can see the beginnings of the fourth layer trying to form. It's thin, wispy, and insubstantial—unable to properly form without the first three layers fully solidified—but it's enough to see the four pillars I identified in Gheraa's echo. Four barely-noticeable origin points around which the fourth layer is trying to form. They're exactly where I'd guessed they would be.

They correlate, almost perfectly, to the placement of skills within my soul.

Directionality is a barely legible concept when in a space that's better described through metaphor than physical direction, but for lack of a better term, they map to the four corners of my soul. The four points of a compass. My Strength skills lie ahead of me and my Durability skills behind me, north and south respectively; the Speed and Reflex skill clusters mark the west and east points in turn.

Between them, at the center of everything and embedded within the bedrock formed by the first three layers, are my Firmament skills.

I have all the information I need.

Kauku's words ring in my mind, and I stare at the placement of these skills. I could examine the constructs themselves for similarities and try to glean what they really mean through that alone, but somehow I don't think that's what Kauku means. There's something else.

Where else have I encountered the number five before? It's not just the Ritual stages and the Interface categories, surely. There's something else.

The thought strikes me almost out of the blue. I have encountered it before. I'd assumed it to be arbitrary at the time. An artifact of an older time and a weaker understanding of Firmament.

What if it's the other way around? What if the people of the Empty City—of First Sky, as Novi would have called it—understood it better? At the very least, they could have known things that aren't as well known now. Maybe we have different parts of an incomplete puzzle.

I wrack my mind, trying to remember what Novi told me about their Seers.

"You said they're all at the third phase shift, at minimum?" I ask. Novi nods.

"We have only five of them," she says. "Five Seers, each specializing in an Aspect. Force, Body, Mind, Energy, and Spirit."

The Aspects. Five Seers, five Aspects, each corresponding to a so-called skill category. Strength, Durability, Reflex, Speed, and Firmament.

It matches. More than that, even. The names the scirix gave their Aspects might be a little more general, but they're significantly more accurate; those names explain the odd little discrepancies I've noticed here and there with the skills that don't quite match the category the Interface claims it belongs to.

There's Force, representing an application of power against the world. Most of the time they manifest as a skill that increases my physical strength in some capacity, but they don't have to. The fundamental truth of Force is not strength. It's a projection of power. A physical representation of change. Force skills demand that the physical world bend to their whims.

And as I make that realization, something in my soul responds.

The only problem is that I don't know what that is yet.

Knowing what I need to look for is good enough, though. I'm as ready as I can get.

I pull myself out of the trance, blinking against the harshness of the light and the...

Hm.

That's a lot of notifications.

And a very worried-looking Ahkelios. And Guard.

"Uh," I say. "Was I in there long?"

"You weren't responding and you were in there for six hours." Ahkelios manages to somehow project the scirix equivalent of wanting to tear his hair out, not that he has any. Guard's engines are making a low whining sound despite his best attempts to look neutral.

I'm starting to feel kind of bad.

"I couldn't even get to you through our link!" Ahkelios grabs me and shakes me by the shoulders; I let him, because it seems to make him feel a little better. "Ethan! Don't just do that!"

"I have to concur," He-Who-Guards adds. He refrains from grabbing me, which I appreciate. "It is quite stressful."

"I'll do my best," I say dryly. I'm touched that they were so worried, at least. "I didn't do it on purpose or anything, I promise. Must be something about feeling out the soul that causes time to pass differently." I cast about for a different topic, mostly for use as a distraction. "Any update with Naru?"

Ahkelios shakes his head. He answers my question, but the look he gives me tells me he knows exactly what I'm doing. "Not yet. All we know is there's apparently a lot he needs to talk about with his parents," he says. "Something about Carusath."

"Guess he finally figured out that place has terrible management." I try to force myself to my feet with a grimace—absolutely everything is sore, for some reason, and that's after recovering from the effects of yesterday's skill spree and today's surgery. Ahkelios watches me struggle for a moment, then sighs and helps pull me to my feet.

Honestly, he's probably right in that I should be a little more careful with these things. "In my defense," I say, "I've never just lost a chunk of time like that before. Had no idea that would happen."

"I know." Ahkelios visibly tries to calm himself down, and he gives me a look that's equal parts relieved and apologetic. "We were just worried. You think it's going to be like that in the future? Every time you try to access your soul?"

I glance at the swarm of notifications sitting in front of me. "I don't know," I admit. "But hopefully these will tell us more."

Ahkelios stares at them. "What did you find out?" he asks. "It's gotta be something important, considering..."

He gestures helplessly to all the windows. I shrug. Just as a test, before reading them, I activate Amplification Gauntlet.

There's normally a moment of resistance when I activate a skill. A second where I can feel my Firmament flowing into the construct until there's enough, and then the skill bursts into being.

This time, though? I barely feel the skill activating, and yet there's a shining, almost-solid layer of armored Firmament covering my arm. Ahkelios stares at it. "What?" he says, confused. "I didn't feel you activate the skill."

I grin. This feels good. Like my Firmament is flowing more easily than ever. I bounce on my feet, feeling my aches and pains wash away; it's tempting to eschew the notifications entirely and just go on a test run, but I'm not that reckless.

Let's see exactly what it is I just did.