Amyra’s astral soul was very different from Amara’s cold wasteland.

There were no cracked plains, no ice, no silence heavy enough to drown thought. Instead, there was warmth—gentle, constant, and comforting. The ground glowed beneath Kai’s feet, coated in a soft silver sheen that reflected the astral mana like moonlight on calm water.

It gave the realm an ethereal beauty, not unlike the feeling of standing inside a memory one didn’t want to forget.

Above, her mana circle spun in the sky—a golden ring swirling slowly like a controlled vortex of light. It pulsed with power, more refined than he’d seen from most at her stage. With every slow rotation, it exhaled winds of mana, and Kai felt each one as it brushed against him—warm, steady, pushing gently at his robes, as if the soul itself was breathing.

He stood still, eyes scanning the edges of the soulspace. The boundaries were clear, and already, they extended well beyond what was normal for a novice. Most Mages struggled to stabilize even a fragment of this space, yet hers stretched wide, stable and full of promise. He knew it would only grow—if she was trained properly, if she survived what was coming.

A voice broke through the stillness.

“…Is this my astral realm?”

He turned.

Amyra stood a few steps behind him, barefoot, her white hair catching the soft light as if it too belonged here. Her golden eyes were wide, uncertain as they darted around, taking in the silver glow, the warmth, the spinning ring in the sky. She looked more like someone stepping into a dream than a Mage stepping into their own soul.

Kai nodded. “Yes, it is.”

She hesitated, as if unsure of how to react.

“I know it feels strange,” he said. “But take it as a lesson. With your inclination toward the healing arts, you’ll be walking through astral realms more often than you think. Some of your patients will carry their wounds deeper than the flesh.”

She blinked, clearly still processing it all.

Over the weeks they’d spent together—days of diagnosis, minor procedures, and quiet observations—Kai hadn’t just been testing her mana flow or understanding her innate abilities. He had also been studying her aptitude that had led him to one conclusion.

She wasn’t meant to be an offensive Mage.

When he asked what kind of Mage she wanted to become, she hadn’t spoken of fireballs or dominance or duels. Her words had been quiet, thoughtful—filled with concern for others rather than power for herself.

And she was already good. Her affinity leaned naturally toward light, and her healing spells were steady and focused, even before any formal instruction. That alone would’ve been enough. But what sealed his judgment was the way she looked at people. With empathy. With real compassion.

The kind no technique could teach. Because of that he’d already decided to teach her more about the three mana organs and their surgeries to better prepare her.

Although he hadn’t come here to teach her, he figured this was still a good opportunity for her to learn—if not through instruction, then through observation. The soul had its own world, and sooner or later, any healer worth their mana would need to learn to explore it.

She gave a slow nod, still glancing around the shining silver plains, then looked back at him. “So… what are we going to do next?”

“Explore,” Kai said simply. “There should be a spell inscription here—something we talked about. If we find it, I might be able to tell whether it’s a purification aid or something more complex. There might even be multiple inscriptions.”

He turned his gaze toward the distant horizon. The realm was larger than most, and searching it could take hours if not more. “It’ll take time. Let’s split up. If you see anything strange—especially monsters—let me know.”

Her brows shot up. “Monsters?”

Kai gave a slight shrug. “Manifestations of fear. They show up sometimes. Or they don’t. Depends on the person. But if they do appear, I’ll deal with them.”

Amyra didn’t look entirely convinced, but she nodded nonetheless and headed off across the silver field, her figure soon blending with the ambient light.

Kai watched her for a moment, then muttered the incantation and lifted into the air with a soft rush of wind, his flight spell activating. He turned toward the boundaries of the astral realm and shot forward, scanning the landscape from above. His eyes flicked from one glowing ridge to another, watching for any unnatural symbols or disruptions in the mana flow.

But no matter where he flew, the realm remained the same—pristine, cohesive, and whole. There were no cracks, no anomalies, no lurking distortions. Everything felt like it belonged. If anything stood out, it was just how stable the realm was. Stronger, even, than many full-fledged Mages he’d encountered. It was compact, fortified—not artificially, but naturally, like a soul that had unconsciously chosen to protect itself from within.

It was impressive. But admiration wasn’t his goal here. He needed to find the soul inscription.

And unfortunately, no matter where he looked, he wasn’t able to find the damn thing.

Maybe I’m just looking at this the wrong way, he thought, slowing his flight. It could be hidden with a spell… or carved so minutely that I can’t even see it.

Both ideas, however, felt far-fetched.

Hiding a soul inscription behind layers of spellwork would require extra mana, and no one in their right mind would waste that kind of energy. Astral spaces weren’t easily invaded to begin with—soul spells were rare, difficult, and incredibly volatile. Not to mention, he doubted any Mage from this current era had the finesse to manage such soul-layered deception.

As for the possibility of it being etched in microscopic detail?

Also unlikely.

Soul realms were delicate—inscriptions had to be placed with care, and the more complex they were, the higher the chance of shattering the host’s soul entirely. If someone had tried to embed something that intricate, Amyra’s soul would have imploded the moment the spell was completed.

And according to her, the man who’d done it hadn’t only done it to her—he’d done it to everyone

in her village. She hadn’t mentioned any accidents, any collapse, not even a single failure. That ruled out both theories. So then why the hell couldn’t he find it?

He let out a breath, scanning the quiet silver plains again, the golden circle above casting soft shadows as the winds of mana continued to swirl.

No… it has to be here.

Somewhere in this realm, the answer was hidden—he was sure of it.

But half an hour later, he’d found nothing. Not even the smallest hint of a trail. The more he searched, the more he began to wonder if maybe… maybe he was wrong. Maybe her astral soul didn’t hide the mechanism behind her ability to purify dead mana. Maybe it was just a rare, passive trait. An anomaly of the body.

Except that didn’t explain the spell she’d used during the beast wave—the one that hadn’t just purified dead mana but had actively destroyed the fiends. That had been no accident. It had been structured, guided. Designed. And he still hadn’t found the soul inscription responsible.

Another fruitless loop later, he sighed and veered off toward Amyra. She was standing near a rise of smooth silver terrain, her expression troubled. Clearly, her own search had been just as disappointing. He flew down and landed softly on the glowing ground.

“I’m assuming you found nothing?” he asked.

Amyra shook her head. “No… What about you?”

Kai exhaled sharply through his nose. “I’ve searched the boundaries. Every inch. It’s not here. Not visibly, at least.” He paused, running a hand through his hair. “I’m leaning toward the possibility that it’s been hidden somehow. But… I’d have to verify that with a spell. And frankly, I don’t even have a spell that can detect inscriptions inside an astral realm.”

Amyra blinked. “Wait, that kind of spell doesn’t exist?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Kai muttered. “Soul spells are… narrow. They’re either for attacking the soul directly—soulfire, severing techniques—or for entry and surgery. Nothing more. There’s no real variety.”

There was a pause before she asked, “Then what are we going to do?”

He looked at her, mind racing as he turned over possibilities. But nothing came to him. Every idea collapsed under its own weight—too complex, too dangerous, or too impractical. His eyes flicked across the glowing field again, but it was like trying to find a whisper in the wind.

Then he looked up.

And something clicked.

The circles.

He had looked everywhere—across the plains, the edges, the flow lines—but not once had he thought to check the mana circles itself. It didn’t even occur to him. After all, a soul inscription placed near the circle risked destabilizing it. That alone should’ve disqualified the idea. But… maybe that assumption was wrong.

Maybe whoever carved the inscription wanted it hidden—wanted it precisely where no one would think to look.

He turned to Amyra.

“I’m going to inspect the circle,” he said. “It might be near it. Maybe even behind it.”

She gave a small nod, clearly unsure but trusting him enough not to object.

Kai muttered the flight spell again and soared upward, heading toward the golden circle that rotated slowly above the realm like a radiant wheel. The moment he approached, a wave of pressure hit him. The mana here was dense—compressed to the point where it felt almost solid, the sheer weight of it pressing against his skin and lungs.

Mana circles don’t look like much, but they are a very compressed source of power, he thought. A self-contained storm.

But he ignored the resistance and forced himself closer, eyes scanning every inch of its edge, searching for any flicker, any deviation. He didn’t need to look long.

Just behind the circle, nearly buried in the light it gave off, something glowed.

A soul inscription— carved into the very air, floating just behind the rotating ring of mana. It shimmered with radiant threads, pulsing faintly in rhythm with the circle’s spin. Kai hovered there, staring.

It wasn’t hidden. It was cleverly hidden—positioned in a place where the natural radiance of the circle would cover its glow completely unless someone looked at it from the right angle.

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Whoever carved this… knew the astral realm well. Too well. It would’ve taken not only an understanding of the circle’s flow but also precision on the level of soul-weaving. But that was a mystery for another time. Right now, he focused. And studied.

The inscription floated motionless behind the golden circle, suspended in the air as if the astral realm itself was holding its breath around it.

A rectangular plate of glowing script—etched with hundreds, no, thousands of lines—interwoven, curved, layered, branching off into patterns and loops. Shapes and symbols twisted through the lattice, some glowing brighter than others, each line brimming with a purpose Kai couldn’t immediately grasp.

His brows furrowed as he drifted closer, the glow of the inscription painting his face in pale light.

It was—without question—the most complex and impressive soul inscription he had ever seen. Nothing from the Sorcerer’s Tower, no spellbook or relic or a Magus’ thesis, came close to this. The sheer intricacy of it made his breath catch for a second.

Immediately, his eyes landed on a segment near the left corner—part of the pattern looked familiar. A spell structure. Yes… that spell. The one Amyra had used during the beast wave to kill the fiends in one move. It was embedded into her soul, fixed there like a permanent brand. Unlike the rest of the array, that segment seemed added after everything else—lighter in etching, less integrated, like someone had patched it on as an emergency safeguard.

But everything else? It was foreign.

Kai wasn’t a novice. He had studied soul inscriptions, seals, and internal spell architecture more than most ordinary Mages ever dreamed of. But this… this was something else entirely. The lines looked like they belonged to a living mechanism.

A machine.

That idea struck him hard, and it changed the way he looked at it. Instead of approaching it as one unified spell, he broke it down—dividing the structure mentally into sections, imagining each as a different cog or engine, meant to serve a unique function. A regulation system here. A redirection path there. A storage conduit.

That made things easier. Slightly.

He threw himself into it, slowly studying segment after segment, trying to recognise what each part did. It still didn’t make sense. The functions didn’t align with known spell forms. Some segments seemed like they had nothing to do with magic at all—as if they were meant to translate something else entirely. Every time he thought he had a thread to pull, it split into something more complex, or doubled back into itself, twisting logic into a knot.

Time stretched.

He sent a quick message spell to Amyra so she wouldn’t worry, then kept at it, not even noticing the shift in the realm’s lighting or the toll on his body. Midway, he stopped registering how long he had been at it—he just kept comparing the lines to every memory, every book, every margin sketch from his years in the Sorcerer’s Tower.

He’d trace one line mentally, only for it to morph, slip into another form, or fold into a deeper layer of meaning. The worst part was that it wasn’t just complex—it was intentional. Every line was there for something. There was no fluff, no wasted mana, no overlapping structures meant to dazzle or confuse.

Whoever made this knew how to engineer them. And slowly, painfully, Kai came to a realization. This was likely the pinnacle of soul inscription work.

Not just the most advanced he had ever seen—but possibly the highest level that even existed. Because every single part served a reason. Kai stared at it, mind humming.

Even if he couldn’t understand it all… this was worth preserving.

Because if he ever hoped to learn how Amyra’s body purified dead mana… this was where the answer lived. There was no wastage in any of the lines.

Even if he couldn’t decipher the whole inscription, he could say that much with absolute certainty. It wasn’t just a gut feeling—it was a fundamental truth about soul inscriptions. They were difficult. Painstaking. Grueling to construct. No one who etched them would leave in anything unnecessary. Every stroke cost something, and no sane inscriber would pay the price for nothing.

Still… the question remained.

Who had made this?

Amyra had said someone in her clan had inscribed it. But had that person actually designed this?

Kai seriously doubted it.

This was the work of someone at least at the sixth circle—maybe even seventh. If Amyra’s clan had access to a Mage like that, they wouldn’t have been defeated, wouldn’t have fallen. Power like that didn’t just vanish without consequence.

As the minutes bled away, Kai’s brow furrowed with unease.

It wasn’t just the complexity that troubled him now—it was the time. He couldn’t linger in Amyra’s astral soul indefinitely. Astral realms weren’t built to contain two minds for extended periods. The longer he stayed, the more strain it would place on her subconscious. Left unchecked, it could even fracture parts of the realm itself—maybe not now, but over time.

Grinding his teeth, he made a decision.

Just one more pass. He’d trace the inscriptions one last time, from start to finish. If he couldn’t learn anything new, he’d leave. But as his eyes followed a strand near the upper-center edge—something flickered.

His breath caught.

For a moment, he thought it was a trick of the light—some distortion caused by the mana circle—but when he leaned in, his eyes widened.

A jagged triangular formation, partially buried under overlapping lines, pulsed faintly. Three circles sat inside the triangle like nested glyphs, etched in sharp, clean patterns. A summoning inscription.

Kai blinked hard, then narrowed his eyes. It was small—so small he’d missed it before—but unmistakable. He remembered seeing something similar in one of the older tomes from the Tower’s archives, buried deep in a volume on ancient summoning rituals. But what the hell was a summoning formation doing inside a soul inscription?

Is it throwing the dead mana into another realm? he thought.

It could be a gateway spell—one that redirected corrupted mana into a void space. It was clever, if true. A permanent solution to a persistent problem. But it didn’t explain the gain. Amyra didn’t just purge dead mana—her body became stronger afterward, her reserves fuller.

If the inscription was ejecting the mana out of her system, she wouldn’t be getting more energy. She’d simply be cleaner. But she wasn’t just cleaner—she was richer.

And if this formation was a gateway to another realm, it should’ve shattered her soul by now. Her astral realm would’ve cracked from the strain of maintaining it. But everything here was… stable. No signs of stress. No degradation.

All of it just raised more questions.

Kai exhaled slowly, frustration gnawing at the edges of his thoughts. He had taken one step forward, only to discover he was standing at the base of a mountain with no peak in sight.

Still, it was something.

He leaned in, preparing to examine it again—

And the world trembled.

The silver plains rippled. The sky above dimmed for a split second before returning to normal, and a deep pressure pressed down across the realm. Kai’s eyes snapped wide.

No. Time’s up.

The realm was reacting. It had held steady for longer than most, but it was still trying to purge the foreign presence—him. Another few minutes, and it would start collapsing segments to push him out.

He clenched his jaw, unwilling to leave, but he knew better than to risk it.

With one last look, he closed his eyes and began rapidly etching the patterns into his memory—line by line, shape by shape, until the image was burned into the inside of his skull.

Only once he was sure he had it all did he let go of the spell and drifted downward.

Amyra sat curled on the ground, knees hugged to her chest, face pale. She looked up the moment he landed, eyes wide with panic.

Seeing him come closer, Amyra visibly relaxed, the tension in her shoulders melting as she slowly got to her feet. Her eyes were still wide, uncertain, but the panic had faded now that she wasn’t alone.

“We need to get out of here,” Kai said, his tone quiet but firm.

Amyra blinked. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he replied, already weaving the exit spell between his fingers. Threads of light coiled and shimmered in the air around them. “It’s just… an astral realm isn’t meant to hold two people for too long. We’ve stayed longer than we should have. If we don’t leave now, it might start fracturing.”

Amyra’s eyes widened slightly at that, but she gave a small nod, trusting his judgment.

Light pooled around them like rising mist, forming a glowing cocoon. The mana reacted instantly to Kai’s command, wrapping around their forms. As it tightened, Amyra let out a startled shriek—reflexive, more from the pressure than pain—

—and then they were out.

The light shattered like glass, and they blinked into the real world.

Kai was the first to open his eyes, breath steady as he adjusted to the chamber’s ambient mana. Around them, the Enforcers and Mages were watching—half-guarded, half-curious—but their presence barely registered to him.

His mind wasn’t in the room.

It was still in the sky above that silver realm, staring at the jagged triangle, the circles within it, and the impossible complexity etched into Amyra’s soul.

One thought echoed in his head, relentless.

What is the inscription… and how do I replicate it?

***

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