489 Upon the Anvil of Time

Perhaps the worst thing about time is the revelations it brings. I once thought that time would grant me enlightenment before I transitioned into being a Philosopher.

My assumption was wrong. There is no end to enlightenment. There is an end to humanity, to society, and to the individual, but there is no end to enlightenment. Enlightenment will extend forward and onward, eternally. Enlightenment is the accumulation of understanding and knowledge, and as we are but droplets upon time, so too are we droplets upon knowledge and understanding. The past cannot hide forever. The future will not be barred forever, but when these moments arrive, when what is and isn't are revealed in equal measure, you will find enlightenment a bitter potion to swallow.

The fact that you have to swallow it still is what separates most from being a philosopher.

—Legend-Philosopher Melaia Kelhaus

489

Upon the Anvil of Time

The faintest of ripples emanated forth from both Helix and Ekkihurst. They weren't Chronomancers, but that didn't mean they allowed themselves to be defenseless. The wards they wore upon their persons projected anti-temporal waves that made approaching them difficult, for to linger in their vicinity would see one's mana field shredded to the point of impotence.

Yet, as Shiv was caught within the temporal cage, the counter-Chronomantic eddies moved with such languor they practically crawled across the world. And he instinctively knew that even this was only because Melaia Kelhaus allowed them to do so. With a languid motion, she reached out and brushed one of the waves with a finger, and Shiv saw its edges break upon her person as if moving panes of glass greeting an immovable object. She was a mountain upon the current of time, a solid point that could submerge beneath the waters' surface upon a whim. Her magic was not defined by resplendence or other manners of aesthetic splendor. It was simply a feeling of unyielding fortitude that emanated from her. As true as the wards, she imposed a pressure on the world. Shiv heard his Harbinger creak and slowly began to crack as he suffered the suffocating presence of a far superior practitioner. He realized then, to his dismay, that if she simply applied a bit more force, he would burst inward like an underwater vestibule that had dived in too deep and was pressed upon by the weight of an entire ocean.

But what ocean could compare to the woman before him? What ocean indeed?

She stayed her hand from Shiv's destruction and stuck true to her words. She did simply want to observe him, but beneath her gaze, he felt like he was being dissected. Worse than all the failed biological constructs he made. Worse than all the rats he hewed open to gauge what went wrong when he was trying to weave their insides from his Biomantic magic.

Her vision alone was piercing, causing him to ache like someone was pressing a boot against his throat as a Pathless. Pitch-black fire spilled out from him like overflowing steam through the cracks of a kiln. He found himself on the verge of bursting, yet more resolute than ever to stay intact. His pride was aroused and pulled upon by a power not his own. His anger was incensed, fanned by a presence he couldn't see. His Harbinger stood taller, burned brighter in defiance of a greater mirror. Even if another was greater, it didn't mean he was nothing at all.

He bore the Philosopher's weight with silence and dignity, and he tried to peer back into her the same way she did him. The two of them traded gazes in an ineffable duel. There was no dominance in play, simply jockeying for enlightenment. Where she spotted flaw and fracture in their multitudes and by the thousands, he found himself lost amidst her enormity. That word took shape in both meanings. Her interior was vast and dark. She had committed deeds that stained her soul with the bleakness of atrocity and sought the heights of heaven along a path even saints could only dream of walking.

Then came the form of her mind, and it was a thing of layers. Shiv thought of Uva at first, but the Philosopher's mind was not a scattered hive of interlinked and asynchronous intellects. Rather, it was a stacked umbrella, with every layer holding up another, each performing separate actions in coordination and artistic cooperation with what rose above and all that fell below.

She was, in effect, a tower in intellect and consciousness. But more than that, there was a symbolism to her form in flesh, soul, and mind. There were exactly 108 layers to her. Her bound mana field was made up of that many plates, from the inside out. Her emotional core had that many sections, from the innermost confines to the outermost crust, and the ladder that formed her mind rose that many stories high and reached that low.

There was a meaning here, a meaning that Shiv intuited to be something almost sacred—so close to being divine, yet heretical at the same time. Deliberately chosen so by the Philosopher to brush the glory of the gods, yet to spurn it at the last minute.

“For there is a power in such defiance. For there is a power in being capable of seizing power, yet choosing to reject power all the same. For it is a contaminated power, a power not our own. For absolute power, even if it is truly absolute, might see you deprived of relative advantage. And it is of relative advantage that enlightenment flows. How else do we understand the world if we do not allow the world to act upon us? How else do we exist in a place that we are unmoored from?”

The speech trickled into Shiv's mind from a Harbinger—but not his own.

Her words were soft but far from gentle. The juxtaposition was jarring and tearing, and he found its source in the myriad sea of her emotions. At the same time, a tunnel manifested over Shiv, a golden pathway that emanated forth from the Philosopher's body and slotted over him like a keyhole.

As Shiv struggled not to be drowned by her entirety, he pushed back with the emotion he knew best: the fury he'd internalized through his Sage of the Enkindled Heart and then his Harbinger.

Rage alone was not enough. It was a singular thing, and only a minuscule fragment of the greater whole of her core. He quickly realized his mistake. She wasn't trying to drown him; she was trying to smelt him, to forge him into herself, to consume him in mind, in flesh, in heart, until there was no difference between the Philosopher and the Deathless. He feared what might happen if that were to follow, and as his fear grew, so did his struggle, so did his defiance, so did his urge to reach for that Unique Skill that had preserved him so many times before from adversaries far beyond his peer.

Then, just before he made his decision, she halted her advance and took a half-step back. The relief came with such suddenness that he staggered forward—and was caught by a palm anchored across the currents of time.

At some point, in the present or future, the Philosopher had extended a hand in anticipation of his loss of balance. As he righted himself, he found her looking back upon him with a measured gaze, and her empathetic core began to cycle with warring emotions.

On one end, there was the negative. She judged him deeply. She remarked upon his flaws internally:

His impatience.

His ignorance.

His lack of awareness.

His general disregard for consequence, especially that which was inflicted upon himself.

Yet that lack of consequence bled over into the positive, as he noticed her approval of his consideration. He cared much for the world around him, for the people that inhabited its boundaries. She took note of his tenacity, of his indestructibility in spirit, and capacity to return from harm. She saw him as a phoenix more than a Tarrasque, for he rose from ashes and he sought renewal and experience more than destruction, by this point, even if destruction was part of his nature.

The flaming bird was an avatar of fire, but flame was simply an aspect of its rebirth—a redefinition of its original form, or perhaps a conceptual evolution unwilling to be bound by what was in search of what could be.

All this information passed through Shiv like wind whistling through a crack in a wall.

The Philosopher surfaced once more. This time, her face appeared out from the golden scales of her Harbinger. As her skill emerged from the currents of time, she emerged from the currents of her skill. A metaphor and an action in one, a double metamorphosis—a mockery of the System's “evolutions.”

While Shiv inhaled unwilling dosages of higher gnosis, merely by being in this woman's presence, he found her literal form to be muted and tame. She was average in stature and not defined by any other magical fields, though perhaps she simply hid them from his sight to confer upon herself a greater advantage should they come to blows. Her eyes and other organs held no signs of altered biology. He couldn't tell how great her Awareness was, and her skin was just that: human skin, not evolved to mimic any sort of gem or alloy. Its hue was of a subtle tan, almost bronze but still closer to pink—and she chose to wear her age in parts and parcel.

Half her face was withered by age, gnarled like an ancient tree, the ravages of time inflicted upon her the same way it would savage a Pathless. The hair along the right side of her scalp was thin and bone-pale. It flowed in streams and patches, with little in the way of style. Along her left, however, the motif of duality endured. She was a dichotomous person, for she clung to her youth as well—in the most literal of ways; she chose to embody the babe and the crone, and ignored the woman in between. She seemed childlike, her features far too soft, her eyes far too bright and round, her ear stub-like, not fully grown. It made her seem deformed in a way, but also whole, like no one else could be.

She was a clash upon herself. It was like two ends upon the spectrum of time, turning inward and closing in a battle between the start of life and what waited at the end. A deadlock had been met, and an impasse endured upon her person. Here, away from her Harbinger, she was an anvil forged by time itself, but more than time, of experience, of a life yet to be lived and a life long lived a thousand times over, all colliding into one oxymoronic whole.

A slight twitch shuddered across her face. The movement was so minute that he'd have almost missed it. The corner of her lips twitched upward, curving into a near smile. Near, for he couldn't read her expression, while her emotions and mind were maelstroms, and he was a sailor lost amidst the tides.

“I cannot tell if you are a perfect vessel for philosophy or a pre-ruined effigy that can never truly grasp any meaning at all.” Even her breath carried a bifurcated emotion: half sigh, half exhalation of appreciation. “Poor Omenborn child, blessed monster of eventual victory. One who will never learn that final lesson of death, disciple of life enduring unto eternity. I see you now, as I have seen you in the future, though I have yet to see you in the past. And all at once, you seem far too small, far too broken, yet at another point, far too vast and too complete to describe. I am at a loss with you. More than anything, I'm at a loss as to how you managed to achieve this evolution at all.”

Shiv knew in his bones that she was speaking about his Harbinger—but with the way she spoke, he realized she saw no difference between him and the skill itself.

"You know, I think you might just be confused," Shiv replied, trying to keep his voice clear of any tension. "I think you're having a hard time figuring out where the person here begins and the perfect skill ends. The Harbinger is a preening peacock of a bastard, so I wouldn’t be surprised if between his bright pieces, you catch glimpses of me.”

The Philosopher came close to laughing, but seemed to decide otherwise at the last moment. “There is, in actuality, no difference between you and the skill. Perhaps it is an ideation of who you might become, but right now, no difference at all. It is simply an expression of your ability, made manifest through repeated failure and the intersection of all you have achieved and all you yearn for. Same as I. The only difference is that I knew what I was yearning for. I made sure I was on this predetermined path.”

Her posture and enkindled flame shifted ever so slightly to the right. The way she cut that angle reminded him of Jessica's stances. The way she would twist slightly to adjust her angle of attack.

Rather than a conventional blow, he felt her strumming his emotions. In that, he recognized the vector of her approach: time. She was reaching into him using it. Her enkindled flames were thin, almost vaporous, but they were still there, and they were passing through him. As he noticed, he responded. He shrouded himself in a density of rage. He guarded his mind. He sealed himself as best he could, pressing the edges of his cracked Harbinger together so that he could mimic her wholeness.

The moment he did, she stopped her ministrations and lowered her head in acknowledgment of his action. “And so you show me how your scale tilts. More the man that mantles the beast. Just as well, and all the better.”

She extended her hand and twisted her fingers upward in a receiving gesture. It took Shiv a few moments to realize she was asking for her book. Now, as Shiv held it tighter than ever before, he realized its weight had been amplified thrice over.

When he looked upon it once more, he suddenly flinched. He wasn't holding a book anymore. It was more like an anchor of some kind. Yet it was also something substantially more than that. It was a temporal construct that was connected to something else.

A key, Shiv murmured in his mind.

The pages were still there. He could still flip through the contents within. The density of knowledge had flourished in concert with the growing shape of the supposed tome, but the tome itself had been altered in dimensions and was a means of accessing another dimension unto itself. Its tip, once dense with twin links of enchanted metal, had now extended forth as a key head meant to turn time itself.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He hesitated. He didn't know why she wanted him to relinquish the book, nor did he understand how it had transformed so dramatically. Another question followed: How could no one else have encountered this situation? He wasn't the first Chronomancer to pass through Phoenix Academy, and these books were copied in enchantment and content by existing Chronomancers for distribution. It wasn't so rare that its secrets remained undiscovered by an amateur like him. There must have been something more.

Then he looked to the Philosopher again, and things began to come together in his mind. He wasn't the deciding factor here—at most, he considered himself the lesser variable. She was the one who acted. She likely sensed his Harbinger through the book, and if she was such a master of time, then she likely felt him, or at least his rare mana field, across time.

Letting go of both the tome and his apprehension, Shiv relinquished the book-turned-key back to its author, and she casually twisted it, a locking sound rattling through the world. Time churned and grew dense. Golden streams of mana spiraled around them until, all of a sudden, a loud clicking followed, and then there was an opening. The transposition spell he was casting transformed as it widened. One doorway extended out from Shiv, and then another followed as the Philosopher projected her own path. Their layered emanations expanded as more transposition spells burst free from their conjoined beings, marked and anchored by the book. Things grew chaotic in that instant. Shiv remembered casting these spells in retrospect, yet he couldn't tell when or if he had done this at a certain point in his past or future. Everything blurred together; all things were done and undone at the same time.

“You do it in the future,” the Philosopher said, though she didn't sound quite sure herself. "The past is not an action. The past is done. It is frozen. It is stone. It is a sculpture made complete, whether it is fine or ill. Everything is performed in the present, but all perspectives point forward into the future. We don't last long enough in the present to truly grasp it, for it is forever bleeding out from us, leaking into the past. The future is always coming, an eternal horizon chasing us rather than something we walk toward. As such, we have very little agency in the end, even as Chronomancers. We simply alter the conditions upon the treadmill of existence. We live in time. We live upon time, and we live relative to time and one another. But should such a thing once drown itself in the currents of time, then certain possibilities will arise where the world cannot affect you, and you exist only relative to the progression of existence. There comes a purity of future—and a means of control.”

She strode past Shiv, gesturing for him to follow. It was only then that he realized she was barely larger than Jessica. The mana field she projected was glorious and titanic, but once more, as a person, she was human, so extremely, feebly human.

“And it is a point of pride, is it not, to remain mortal even if one can be a god? It is a point of enlightenment to stay in the throes and boiling conditions of the world rather than escaping and knowing nothing, finding power but suffering ignorance beyond.”

These words came from her Harbinger as well. Yet they sounded from afar, like they had been spoken through the gap she was trying to walk through. The transposition tunnel ahead of her widened, and the echo of her words repeated time and again, like they were rebounding off a set of narrow walls.

“Follow and speak with me. The transposition spell will remain active until we are done. However long that takes, however far I must elongate your present, you will be returned in the span of a quarter heartbeat. Your fellows will not notice; they cannot notice, not when you are so entwined with my eternal present and galloping future.”

He stared at the Philosopher's vanishing form for a few seconds, or what he felt were a few seconds. Her figure now became less than a shadow in the golden light of the spell, and he followed after her with awkward footsteps—shooting furtive glances at Ekkihurst and Helix, where they remained petrified in that forsaken present.

Part of Shiv wondered what kind of nonsense he was about to get into, but another section of him was aroused with interest. He had many capable magi teaching him an assortment of lore, but a highly competent Chronomancer was a rare thing to access. In the Republic, Guildmasters and Legends were protective of their own art form, while personal allies like Gone, Kura and Tulveg were even more intuitive casters than he. Though they held more knowledge, they also possessed fused skills, and their magic was tied to their actions in a way that diluted their mastery of a singular magical lore by itself.

As Shiv followed the Philosopher through that Chronomantic pathway, he found himself squeezing through a cavern of discomfort. There wasn't any pressure here, like passing through a spatial gateway. Teleportation disturbed the geometries and dimensions of a world, and the sudden shift of the existential architecture that held everything in correspondence disrupted atmosphere and force. Time didn't function the same way. Rather, it was like Shiv was being accelerated further and further. A friction swelled over his body, a heat staining and gnawing at his Harbinger. He was, in essence, being boiled or forged. He was walking down this golden path, but more and more, the pitch-black flames of enkindlement greeted him, flames left by the Philosopher to paint his being and guide him to her stead.

At some point, he emerged from the transposition spell to find himself in another place, or perhaps another time.

Here, there might not be so much difference in between.

The first thing he noticed was the stalagmites. They rose from the ground like frosted teeth, each one gleaming bright, casting reflections of bitter black-gold. He saw his own shapes there, but they were fractured, distorted expressions of him. Some leading back, some forward. A younger instance of him dressed in a chef's outfit, another clad in his own remains, wearing bone and skin as a means of intimidation.

Ahead, there was another instance of his person, one that was even larger than he, one that swelled with unmatched force. One who stood as a juggernaut of power and one who horrified him, for there was a strand piercing the center point of his supposed future self's skull. Shiv recognized that strand for what it was: Excaliburization.

Though he stood tall, this instance of himself had been cut down by Avalon. He had been subsumed, powerful though he might be in that future. He wasn't his own person anymore. He'd be lost in that ever-expansive paradise, and per the words of the Great One, he would never return due to his nature of endless potential.

A kaleidoscope of past and futures unveiled itself around Shiv. He found himself surrounded by what seemed to be a frosted cavern, the bowels of a snow-crusted mountain. Yet the moisture in the air was time, the glaciers and the walls forged from solidified time. Scales were applied to the environment, akin to the same substance that defined the Philosopher's Harbinger. Flames of emotion rose from these scales. The air was hot, not cold, despite the aesthetic, another moment of internecine displayed by the Philosopher.

Her voice emanated nearby, and as he looked up and toward it, he saw a path leading to a small shack amidst this desolate place. A series of torches hung outside the wooden hut, and the abode, though humble and Spartan in its decoration, was practically a palace in this place of primal time.

Shiv followed after her. He passed along the walls, along other jutting lengths of solidified time, and at several points, he heard susurrations from the past and potential futures. They bade him to turn, to look, to not make mistakes that he had already made and he was yet to make.

To flee from this place or stay. To beware that the Philosopher was to be his greatest guide or absolute damnation. It was a constant conflict.

Is it not? Can it not?

Then he caught sight of something that made his footsteps come to a sudden halt. This aspect of his recent past was not a mirror of him, but rather a shadow of someone else. Shiv caught a glimpse of a ghostly visage.

Valor, clad in his Undying vestments, was being followed and enshadowed by a towering figure woven from the substance of Necromancy and Animancy. Where corrosive mana painted his exterior, and a faint blue substance of soul defined his core, his features were still human.

And he was more than a ghost, more than Valor himself.

Impossibly, the towering figure turned and looked upon Shiv. And though he said nothing, though he could say nothing, though he was little more than an artifact glimpsed by this kaleidoscope, this grand dimension forged of time alone, Shiv realized that the Thief of Lost Acheron had noticed him. And it was then that Shiv understood that even submerged, even partially drowned and scattered in pieces, the Thief was never unconscious, merely dormant.

Something inside Shiv's bones screamed. He was looking at another predator, one far superior to him and his, one that regarded him not as a person, not even as a monster or an enemy, but simply a fascinating weapon-to-be. The Thief of Lost Acheron twisted away from Valor, ignoring his fragmented self, to bestow unwelcome attention upon Shiv, and his eyes and expression took on the faintest measure of avarice.

Shiv knew that he would never accept the Thief as a master, nor would the Thief view him as anything more than a tool, at best an acolyte of his philosophy, a fellow worshipper of the System.

Stay around,and I'll see you dealt with, Shiv threatened the Thief of Lost Acheron.

The true form of his mentor didn't respond. He didn't even regard Shiv's words as the warning they were. He simply continued watching and dissecting.

Through it all, the Philosopher observed Shiv's reactions, who, after a few more heartbeats, broke eye contact with the Thief and took a hurried half-step into the room. Shiv wasn't shaken, but still he looked over his shoulder, anticipating a falling blade that never came. But he still felt the terrifying presence that lingered in his shadow, that would always and forever be coming for him.

The inside of the Philosopher's hut was a miserable place. It was practically pitch-black, and the heat was borderline unbearable. He could feel his Harbinger cooking. He hadn't realized it could burn at all, but right now, the skill was being scalded. Shiv felt scabs forming along its exterior, and where his enkindlement spilled free, a deluge of invasive emotions began flooding him, overwhelming his heart with a nexus of hostile feelings.

He lost track of the Philosopher in a short time, but behind him the exit remained open. With a few steps, he could retreat back outward. He could flee through the transposition spell and return to where he was, but he ventured deeper into the darkness. He ventured deeper into the black fire, and he let himself be stained with every following step.

The pollution built inside of him, filling his Harbinger's many wounds and cracks with an infectious crust. There was an inflammation of clashing feelings, feelings he couldn't name, feelings he'd never enjoyed nor endured before. Feelings that the Philosopher likely harvested from many, many people. Feelings far too complex and far too specific to be sourced from a single individual.

When he finally found her as the blackness cleared, she was making a bowl of soup. The water was limpid, and its surface was oily and dappled with gold as well. Like all things here, it held a substance of time to its essence. Drinking it might see Shiv nourished in a way that went beyond the physical. It helped that it didn't smell half-bad either. She stirred her pot, and Shiv imagined her to be some kind of witch. He came to a halt on the other side, watching her churn the waters over and over again: clockwise, then counter-clockwise, counter-clockwise twice, then clockwise once, then half a revolution, before breaking the pattern. Again, there was little order to what she did, but a great feeling of meaning she couldn't grasp behind her behavior as well.

“The juxtaposition endures in you,” she said. “I sensed you across time from within this place. I sensed you like I sensed most Chronomancers who have the potential to walk the Tripartite Path when they touched this book. A portion of your emotions were projected across the pages, and my surprise and my ire were demanded when I sensed your Harbinger's existence.”

She lifted the ladle to her blue lips, but took no sip from her brew. She poured it back down, and a golden waterfall spilled forth. In those streams, Shiv saw the shape of familiar creatures. These were Uva's Terrorspawn, and they were blossoming. They were changing. They were expanding. They grew ripe with corrosive energy, with the substance of soulstuff. They began to sprout limbs and bones and aspects that made them seem kindred to Valor's current form, rather than the rawness of phobia they used to be.

“We are both contradictions, but I have tempered my juxtaposition. You are many parts slamming together. Most who I bring here, who develop the Harbinger of their own accord, collapse when all those emotions spill into them. Most are fractured in so many ways. That is why I am uncertain about you. You, perhaps, have the narrowest emotional affect among all us fellow philosophers. But that narrow affect serves you well. Rage is known to you, as are many other emotions, but your spectrum is shriveled, bordering on crippled. Yet you are unaffected by the same traumas, the same fears, the same deficiencies, and in that negative respect you are more potent than any other I have seen, for your heart is something worse than stone.”

Once more, she lifted the ladle, but this time she offered it to Shiv. She wasn't going to feed him. She wanted him to choose if he was going to drink, if he was going to reject her, if he was going to do anything at all.

Shiv took the instrument from her and casually poured a spill of that bubbling golden water down his throat. It was almost like chicken soup, carrying close to the same nourishment without a similar taste. But the feeling was there, and the warmth was there. His insides began to glow while his cracks started to harden as filigrees replaced the fissures that were.

For the first time, she laughed in truth, surprised by his reaction, yet shaking her head in dismay. “What possessed you to drink the soup, Philosopher?”

Shiv shot her a slight grin. “Well, I wanted to see if it tasted good.”

“And you're not worried you would be destroyed, that it would be poisoned?”

“No. I'd just get levels from that.”

“And so you are deprived of enlightenment in one way, yet so rich in understanding in another.” This time, the Philosopher truly did sigh. “I suppose you will be a peculiarity among us. I find you to be unique, strange, rare, but our experiences are too divorced, and you are too estranged even from yourself to have the same understandings I do. This is not a bad thing. This might just be to your benefit, and mine. So let us begin upon this new endeavor. Would you like to seek enlightenment alongside me? Would you accept me if I seek some enlightenment in your shadow as well?”

Shiv blinked. He wasn't sure what kind of pact was being struck here, but it was an arrangement. That much was certain. He shrugged, as he wasn't sure how else to act. So far, he wouldn't even call her semi-hostile. She came, she tested him, and now he was in a fever dream of an existence.

But think of the Chronomancy she can teach. Hells, think of what she can show us about the Harbinger.

And Shiv did think that way, but when he did think that way, his mind turned back across time, beyond time, to the Thief of Lost Acheron just a few moments ago. The Thief that viewed him as an instrument, the same way he was regarding her.

Once more, the sound of a lock being opened rattled through the world, and the Philosopher smiled upon him. “Most acceptable. Your heart might be narrow, but you aren't blind to what your heart might not know your mind might make up for.”

Before Shiv could ask her what she meant, the transposition spell called him back, and suddenly he jolted across time, along his own timeline, to arrive where he still stood, tome and temporal key in hand. But this time there was a shape beside him, a shape lingering over him. A second Harbinger fused around his own. As time remained still, the Philosopher lingered close.

“Tell me what you are trying to do, Deathless. Tell me, and we shall commit to this endeavor together. And when this is done, I ask you to take me through your Gate and show me your life. I wish to come to know of your nature and nurture. And in return, I wish for you to do me a service.”

Shiv struggled to keep up with everything. “What kind of favor?”

“Maria Corcusa,” Kelhaus declared. “She is no longer who she was. I wish to meet with her. I wish to be known to her, and I wish for her to be known to this instance of me. You will make sure this happens. You are on the path of collision in the near future, after all. She was but a Chronomancer before, and I want to know how she stepped onto the Tripartite Path. She has walked it, but her journey was not known to me. It eludes me how this came to be.”

Shiv opened his mouth—but a sharp, cracking sensation tore through him. After a moment of surprise, he realized that the shattering within came not with pain, but a blossoming of time, thought, and emotion.

Harbinger of Tripartite Ruin 477 > 501 (Skill Evolution Reached)

“What… what is this?” Shiv breathed, unable to understand how he'd gained so many levels—and why he wasn't sinking into a Delve.

“The present lingers and extends. The future strains to arrive. I have given you both haste and time. And now I am known to you and you to I, you will Delve only when you are prepared to wrestle with your own nature along the path, and not before. And you will not be prevented from Delving by material matters such as power or achievement. You have been raw for too long, Philosopher. But just as well. You are empty, and emptiness is pure. So let us see if we can balance your lack and elevate your substance.”