A/N I retconned the mentions of essence to mana with Ser Loran's group as there is a delineation between the two of them. Most adventurers will never attain {Essence Sight} and only {Mana Sense} is what they can expect. Thank you for reading!

Morning came with a briskness that belied the gentle swaying of the trees. A soft wind brushed across the canopy overhead, stirring leaves the color of emerald and olive. The branches rattled like chimes in the gloom, accompanied by the sleepy whistle of distant wildlife within the rift. At first light—if one could call it that—an opaque haze still draped the horizon. Here in the rift, the sun’s presence was only a diffused glow filtering through thick air. Normally, James would have expected to see pink or orange rays creeping along a forest floor at dawn, but in this place, the sky and the land defied the usual rules.

A firm hand shook his shoulder, dispelling the last lingering shreds of dream. Groaning, James forced his eyelids open and registered Elia’s face looming over him. Her expression was serious, brow creased with impatience, but there was a kindness in her eyes that kept her from seeming harsh.

“Mmmm… what time is it?” he asked, voice dry and papery from disuse.

Elia snorted softly. “How should I know? We’re in a rift.” Her tone carried both exasperation and resignation. “Time is almost meaningless here. Best we can do is guess by our internal clocks—and by the looks of you, yours is broken.”

With a grunt, James sat up, blood rushing from his head and leaving him slightly dizzy. Joey, who had been snoring noisily just an arm’s length away, murmured something incoherent in his sleep but did not stir. James carefully pushed himself off the bedroll, trying not to rattle or rouse his younger companion.

He scanned the camp to get his bearings. Lying beside a faint, smoldering fire was Marcus, arms folded across his chest, still sound asleep. The embers of the night’s blaze glowed faintly, leaving only a dusty ring of ash and a memory of warmth. He saw no immediate sign of Ser Loran or Jackson, which was hardly surprising. One or both of them were must be on watch—vigilant shadows guarding the small group.

Elia tugged on James’s sleeve, motioning for him to follow. “Come on,” she whispered, “we’ll talk away from camp. No need to wake the others.”

Though curious about her intentions, James complied without protest. With a heavy yawn, he lumbered behind her. The land around them was like a warped version of an ordinary forest: thick vines and twisting undergrowth, moist soil dotted with bizarre mushrooms, and roots protruding in unnatural loops. Everything here had a faint shimmer under the influence of the rift’s essence, as though it were part of a half-forgotten dream.

At length, they came to the small stream Elia had mentioned the previous day. Crystal-clear water tumbled over rocky outcroppings, gurgling and bubbling in a sweet lullaby. Despite the surreal, off-kilter nature of the rift, the stream felt somehow pure, an oasis of normalcy in a dimension where nothing was guaranteed to follow the laws of nature.

Elia walked right up to the edge of the stream, tilting her head in a gesture that said pay attention. “Loran wants me to teach you to hide your aura,” she said in a hushed voice, as though the woodland creatures around them had ears for secrets. “Once the rift waves start cycling in earnest, you’re going to be like a giant beacon to every beast and creature in here. You’ll be a pyre lit up for the whole rift to see at this rate.”

James frowned, rubbing his eyes. “A pyre? I don’t get what you mean.”

Elia’s gaze fixed on him, disbelief etched into her features. “You’re flaring your mana. You don’t see that?”

Immediately, James activated {Essence Sight}, the skill he had grown more and more familiar with. At once, his vision shifted: the world took on richer shades of color, revealing drifting motes of raw Essence swirling in the air. He observed how those motes seemed drawn in little eddies toward the plants—especially the more exotic ones that thrived in the rift’s environment.

He noted the deep green glow around the flora, the gentle blue gleam of the nearby water, and even faint flickers of pale gold emanating from living creatures in the distance (probably small animals). But aside from that, he saw no overwhelming blaze of power around himself. If anything, the aura that he perceived around his own body was faint—practically nonexistent in his mind.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I really don’t see it,” James said, scanning up and down his torso. “I see, well, motes. But that’s normal with {Essence Sight}.”

Elia pressed her lips into a thin line and resumed pacing along the water’s edge. “You really don’t, do you?” she muttered. “This is not what I signed on for.” With a frustrated sigh, she swung around to face him. “Let’s start from the basics. What skill do you have to sense mana?”

“I, uh, I told you,” James replied, uncertainly. “{Essence Sight}. I can see motes of Essence when I turn it on. I learned it in the rift that Joey and I were trapped in.”

For a moment, Elia stood rooted to the spot, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. The soft rush of the stream became the only sound between them. She seemed to be turning over his words in her head, as though they refused to settle into an order that made sense. Finally, she closed her mouth with an audible smack—and winced immediately, a flicker of pain crossing her face.

“Sorry,” she managed, letting out a small hiss while touching her tongue. “Did you say {Essence Sight}? Essence, not mana?”

James nodded, feeling the uncomfortable tingle of scrutiny. “That’s right. It’s, uh, Saffron Rank, if that means anything.”

Elia’s eyes grew wild with excitement, and in the next instant she darted forward and grabbed his shoulders. The move caught him off-guard, and he stumbled backward, only to be steadied by her grip. “Saffron? Are you serious?”

Her voice, once hushed, had become a hiss of fervor, and James felt a spike of concern. She seemed… intense, almost frantic.

Her questions came like a barrage of arrows: “How old are you? Who taught you? Did someone help you rank it up? Are you sure it’s truly Saffron Rank and not just some weird offshoot? Where did you learn it?”

Before James could stammer out a response, a voice cut through the trees.

“What’s all this?”

Jackson emerged from between two gnarled trunks, his grayish cloak blending seamlessly with the gloom. From his point of view, it must have looked like Elia was making some rather forward advances on James.

He raised an eyebrow. “I know his body has matured, Elia, but he’s still just a boy, y’know.” The mischievous twinkle in Jackson’s eye made it quite clear he was enjoying the awkwardness.

Elia’s face flashed a mingled combination of disgust and embarrassment. “Jackson, ew, no.” She gave James an apologetic glance before letting go of him. James just stood there, wide-eyed, unsure whether to laugh or protest.

Jackson shrugged lightly, unaffected by her glare. He gave James a slow thumbs-up, waggling his eyebrows. Then, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he vanished. It was as though the forest itself consumed him, his figure dissolving into shadows.

“Argh, I hate when he does that,” Elia mumbled, stomping back across the mossy ground. “Makes it impossible to argue with him if he just… disappears.”

James lifted one hand in a half-wave, feeling even more off-balance, but Jackson was gone. The forest gave no sign that he had ever been there.

Elia exhaled a long breath and refocused her attention on James, her earlier frustration tempered by a tinge of genuine intrigue. “Right. Sorry about that. Now, you were saying you actually have {Essence Sight}?”

James nodded, a bit warily this time. “At Saffron Rank… that’s what the system says.”

She cocked her head to one side, studying him with almost clinical focus, as though reevaluating every assumption she’d made about him since they met. “James, I’m going to ask again. Are you sure it’s not just {Mana Sight}? Most people call it ‘essence’ or ‘energy’ or something else, but the real skill is mana sight. Right?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s definitely listed as {Essence Sight}. I can see… well, I can see the swirl of Essence in living things, in the air, everywhere.”

For a moment, Elia said nothing. She ran a hand through her dark hair, eyes flicking this way and that as though searching for a cohesive explanation. “And you said Saffron Rank, yeah?”

“Yeah,” James affirmed. “Look, I really don’t see why it’s such a big—”

He paused. The expression on Elia’s face gave him pause, a sudden fear that maybe he’d revealed something that put him in danger.

Elia chewed her lower lip for a second, as though weighing her words. “James… you might not realize it, but that’s an extremely rare skill. People usually start with something called {Mana Sight} At best, and they only dream of pushing it to a variant that sees deeper—like Essence. Seeing the actual building blocks that compose the magical structure of the world around you? That’s advanced, often an end-goal for arch-wizards, high-level clerics, or specialized alchemists, not novices.”

James’s stomach twisted. “I… had no idea.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said, letting out a half-hearted chuckle. “And you said you learned it yourself” She paused. “Well, it doesn’t matter right now. Let’s just say that typically, if someone starts with {Mana Sight} at Saffron Rank, they might eventually refine it to Viridian or Cobalt, if they devote themselves to it entirely. But skipping straight to a more specialized or deeper version? That’s… unusual.”

She let the gravity of her words sink in.

James shifted his footing on the bank. “So what does that mean for me, exactly?”

“It means—” Elia began, but she cut herself off, chewing her words for a moment. “It means that your aura might be more intense than you realize. It might be that you’re passively drawing in more of the world’s energy, or giving off waves of it, because your skill is bridging the gap between your internal spirit and the external Essence fields. In short, you’re flaring your mana like a torch.”