Anand adjusted his spectacles. “I thought I heard a commotion earlier. So, you two are from the Cult of Behemoth, are you? Which of those students leaked the existence of the fragment to the outside world? Give some research and breakthrough opportunities out of the goodness of your heart, and some of the youth nowadays…”

Cyril stared at his father, speechless.

Loras responded first, bowing slightly. “Anand Taraz. I understood you are rather well-respected for your scholarly pursuits, even beyond the desert. It is an honor to make your acquaintance. As you suspect, I am a follower of Behemoth. My name is Loras, an exile from the Great City of Fissure.”

“Ah, yes,” said Anand, rubbing his jaw, “I’ve heard of you.”

Loras bowed again. “I understand a man of your virtues would find my presence abhorrent. I hope I offer no offense. Your research on the integration of spiritual techniques and wider society helped me realize some of the folly of my ways. It is a shame that this world does not deserve your wisdom.”

Anand chuckled. “My wisdom? Most call it my naivete. Why would the elites of this world share their strength and secrets with the unworthy? I merely like to imagine what is possible, if man was not so corrupt and greedy, and some people happen to take me seriously.”

“Don’t be fooled by the false modesty,” Elys added. “He’s going to be insufferable about your compliment for ages. A couple decades ago, he was invited to one of the western academies to hold a lecture, and he’s been mentioning it at family dinners ever since.”

Anand held up a finger. “It wasn’t just a western academy--”

“Yes, yes, Brightholdt Academy, one of the premier institutes.”

“Well.” Anand cleared his throat. “Mr. Loras, I hear you are quite the flutist. Perhaps you’ll play for me and my daughter sometime?”

The suit of ivory armor remained still for several seconds before slowly dipping its head in affirmation. “Of course. It is one of the few talents I am proud of.”

Anand offered Loras a wide smile, then turned toward Cyril. “And you! I imagine you’re the one in charge. All solemn and silent. You send this smooth-talker to wear me down so you can get your hands on my relic. Is that it?”

The absurdity of Loras being characterized as a suave musician broke Cyril out of his fugue. He swallowed and finally found his voice. “I have the ability to Transmute Earth materials. Maybe if I touch the fragment, I would be able to replicate it for you? Probably not now, but in the future…”

Anand furrowed his bushy eyebrows and leaned forward, staring deep into the eyeholes of Cyril’s mask. He blinked several times rapidly, his upper lip trembling. “Your voice reminds me of someone. What was your name, again?”

Everyone remained silent after the question. Cyril tried to dismiss the mask over his face, but found that he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wasn’t quite sure why. He only knew that it felt like he was standing at a precipice, and if he leaned forward too much, he’d fall into an abyss.

“That’s you, isn’t it, my boy?” Anand’s mouth shook, and he wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

After Cyril saw the look of hope on his father’s face, the mask vanished without a second thought. Anand immediately grabbed hold of either side of his head, as if Cyril was a ghost that may disappear as easily as his mask.

“Hey, dad,” he said, before being pulled into a tight hug.

Anand finally released him after a minute. Elys was looking away determinedly, for once having no teasing comment to add.

“When I heard that roaring voice earlier,” said Anand, his voice a mix of wonder and concern, “I could sense it in my bones. Behemoth's presence. But if Loras isn’t the Vessel, then…”

Cyril took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn’t surprised that his father had been playing coy. For someone that had never bothered to focus on his individual advancement, he had delved deep into the Dominion of Knowledge. Last Cyril knew, he was well into the Fifth Sphere. The connection between Cyril’s reappearance and Behemoth’s speech would have been as clear as day to Anand.

His father began to chuckle. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe how insufferable your mother was when she learned that one of her kids was the Vessel for a Titan. Two of them? Oh, no.”

Elys shook her head. “Right, as if mother was the one bringing it up to others at every opportunity.”

“Either way,” said Anand, “we should wake her up from her meditation. There should be a feast and--”

Elys held up a hand. “Uncle Asher’s men are already handling it. It’s best to keep this a secret for now, father. ”

“A secret? Everyone heard Behemoth shout. You saw how much it helped the people of the desert when you came into power. With two Titans, the potential--”

An unexpected heat entered Elys’ voice. “And you’re forgetting about all of the people who have suffered and died as a result. We’re here to see the fragment and, yes, potentially use it.”

Anand swallowed and nodded, looking away. “Follow me, then.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the group as they trailed behind Anand.

Before leaving the room, Cyril made sure to form a new mask. The occasional student lingered within the halls, but once they reached the back of the Scholarium, no more civilians occupied the area. Orange-robed cultivators guarded the research facilities in greater strength and numbers than the Celestial Hall itself. No less than six cultivators between Peak Foundation and Early Nascent Soul stood at attention before one particular vault.

An array of runes sprang to life on the sealed door as their group approached. After registering Anand’s presence, the entrance rumbled, and the reinforced glass dilated open. Immediate pressure blasted outward--a blend of Gravity qi, pure spiritual force, and some other abstract truths Cyril had yet to fully grasp. To his surprise, he was able to enter the room without the slightest hint of resistance. The force washed over him and, after a moment, accepted him. Currents of pressure shifted about, attempting to adjust for his presence.

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The source of the commotion was a single shard of stone, resting in a crater in the center of the room. The blue glass of the floor around it had shattered, turned into a cloud of loose fragments slicing throughout the room. They failed to pierce through his bronze armor, and even those that trailed along his skin were unable to break the surface.

The fragment of Behemoth itself appeared like a basic chunk of granite, roughly the size and shape of a finger. Despite its mundane appearance, it emanated an ancient aura of divinity. It called to his very soul, resonating with the Titan

As he approached, the fragment began to spin, slowly at first. The closer he came, the faster it went, until it whirled in place, a blur of movement.

His thoughts focused solely on the fragment. Nothing else mattered, not even Phoenix or his family. Only the rotating shard existed. Cyril knelt within the crater and extended a finger to touch it. When it was an inch from his grasp, the fragment came to a complete stop.

He made contact.

Sudden agony tore through his prosthetic arm. Blinking, he realized that the fragment had disappeared. No, it had moved of its own accord--past his flesh-and-bone hand, and into the darkalloy construct. A gaping hole filled his palm like a stigmata, delving deep into his forearm. He could feel the fragment vibrating within the gap between his real flesh and the prosthetic, tearing him apart from the inside.

Then, it exploded, thrusting splinters of the fragment deep throughout the limb. The piece of Behemoth existed somewhere between the spiritual and material realm, and he could somehow feel the fragments embedded within both his physical body and his channels.

Until a cultivator ascended to the upper boundaries of the Nascent Soul Stage and began merging their flesh and spirit, the realms remained distinct. A divine relic like the fragment transcended such rules. Though the splinters twisted and burrowed deeper within the meat of his arm, the real pain came from his broken channels.

Cyril struggled to redirect the pieces of divine stone, to somehow congregate them into his core to help fuel his breakthrough into Late Condensation. He had already refined most of the excess energy throughout his spirit, half-filling his core with qi as solid as packed earth, shot through with verdant streaks. If he could use the splinters of divine stone as a framework, the resulting core would be greatly reinforced, forming the skeleton for his ascension to the Foundation stage.

Therein lay the problem. No matter what he did, the splinters only burrowed deeper into his arm. The tearing, itching pain distracted him too much from being able to concentrate his will. He could merely stand there, locked in place, as the limb was shredded apart.

Minutes passed. He could sense the others outside of the vault, their concern almost palpable, but they knew better than to intrude upon a breakthrough. Or an attempted one, at least.

He lost track of time. His only measurement of progress came from the splinters finally slowing down. They settled into place, but he had no idea what to do next. To try and escape the pain, he retreated into his memories. It was easiest to recall how the limb had originally been injured--volcanic qi had melted his unprepared channels and flesh as it passed through.

Based on the placement the splinters had eventually set into, he thought he could figure out what the fragment was attempting: it wanted to reform his channels and empower the arm. The biggest problem was that, after exploding, the splinters had no way of breaking themselves down further to merge with his body. The divine grade of the material exceeded the ability of his body to absorb it. He was right on the verge of being able to do so, but the gap may as well have been insurmountable.

His desperate mind searched throughout the vault, but there was nothing. Only blue glass walls, some of them covered in obscure runescript. He flung his spiritual senses into the room, burrowing his mind into the glass similar to how the fragment of Behemoth had tore into his arm. His will fractured, attention splitting between the tunneling threads of his consciousness.

Finally, it clicked.

Why had he not recognized the glass as a proper earthen material? It was, at the very least, a byproduct of materials such as vitrified sand. Once he had analyzed it with his spiritual senses, the entire building lit up in his mind like a bonfire.

At first, only pieces of shattered glass from the crater responded to his call. They flew toward him, drawn in by the irresistible gravity of his presence, thudding uselessly into his body. But instead of dropping, the glass stuck to his skin.

The ground groaned. Cracks spread throughout the crystalline floor. Chunks began to peel away from the mass, no longer than a hand at first, then growing in size until slabs collided with his body. Soon, the material fully encased him like a chrysalis.

Spirituality leaked from the glass and into his core. Once it exhausted its power, the material shattered into specks, unable to resist the swirling pressures throughout the room. Glass qi surged throughout his channels, sharp and brittle. Groaning, Cyril barely managed to channel Purify, converting the foreign energy into pure spirituality. All of his focus went toward filling his core and completing his ascension.

Agonizingly slow, more solid Earth qi filled his core until it was packed to the brim.

He barely noticed when his soul ascended to the Late Condensation Stage. It only solved one of his problems. But the qualitative increase in power reinvigorated his spirit, reducing the mind-numbing pain and pressure throughout his body. More and more chunks of glass piled on top of him, burying him, until he wondered if he had pulled the entire Scholarium down upon himself.

It’s not enough.

Then, the beautiful, ethereal music of a flute drifted throughout the room. He realized it had been playing this whole time, but he hadn’t been able to focus on it over the clamor within the vault. Though the individual notes sounded happy, they combined into a bright, intense longing.

Sun and Earth qi pumped from his Heart, circulating throughout his aching channels. He forced it to concentrate on his right arm. His screams drowned out the flute, but eventually, the splinters began to melt. His Heart qi burned through his fractured channels, following the pathway of divine splinters to forge new extensions of his spirit atop the old, useless ones.

Finally, the process was complete. The pain vanished as if it was never there, leaving a void of sensation throughout him. Only crushing darkness surrounded him, countless tons of glass rubble. But he had leeched all the spirituality away. Pure, mundane mass would never be enough to keep him down.

And now, he could feel his crippled arm as if it was good as new. He flexed the prosthetic fingers as much as he could, marveling at the sensation.

Cyril circulated his Gravity domain. With his improved core, he could sense the contours of the world around him easily. If he didn’t mind himself, he could have become lost within the infinite topography around him. Empowered by his Late Condensation Stage core, his domain pulverized the glass around him into useless shards. Once his mobility was freed enough, he combined his hands together into a complex mudra--the first time he had been able to do so since his injury.

Multiple Pressure Cantrips exploded outward at the same time, flinging a nova of glass shards around him. Freed from the rubble, he rotated his shoulders and cracked his neck.

That’s a relief.

A light cough caught his attention. Cyril snapped back to reality. A crowd of cultivators in orange robes surrounded him, many of them speckled with errant glass. His sister and father stood at the forefront, arms crossed.

A quick glance confirmed that he had absolutely obliterated the entire research wing, consuming most of it for his breakthrough.

Cyril winced. "Sorry?"