Evan adjusted himself in the center of the room, being careful to keep his breathing even and measured. He discarded all thoughts of anything but his own soul, reaching inward to find it sitting there in all its lumpy glory, a glowing bastion against the Void he knew to present all around him. Doing his best to retain focus on his soul alone, he studied it.

This wasn’t a particularly difficult exercise – his soul was new to him, after all, and he was deeply curious anyway. The exact reason wasn’t understood, but one could only access their own soul, and therefore cultivate or see Substance, after coming of age. It was popular belief that this was either for the soul’s own protection, or that this was some sort of great equalizer beyond mortal understanding.

Evan sat firmly in the former category – nothing about life was fair, and it never had been. That was just the way it was. In a way, he preferred it that way. He had no great calling or familial obligation – everything he had he had built with his own two hands through blood, sweat and tears. One day, he promised himself he would sit on the other side of the fence – his kids would be the ones starting ahead, because life wasn’t fair, and he liked it that way.

Using that determination, he attempted to will his soul to open, and as easy as breathing, it did. The chamber had already been cleared of any lingering Substance, and so nothing happened – thankfully. A small part of him had been worried about polluting his soul because of some error in the room’s imbuement and a mistake in his perception, but everything was working as it should.

He had yet to open the Substance container, wishing to familiarize himself with the process before he started cultivating in earnest. Looking at his soul, he found that it did not seem visibly different in any way, although the lumps had begun to move. It looked as though his soul was roiling in place, straining to contain something it could not.

That was strange, but he knew little of the soul and assumed it was typical. Why would his soul be so different from anyone else’s?

Opening his eyes caused him to immediately sense that his soul was no longer “open”. He could still see Substance, though, and looking around he only saw what was held within the building, with nothing drifting in the air.

While the chamber went to some length in order to ensure that there was no Substance floating about in the air, the truth was there rarely was much even outside the city. Substance was the key to immortality, it would be ridiculous if such a thing was just… present in the air, free for the taking.

No, any Substance that was scurried away in the air had long since been extracted, and there was no natural phenomenon that returned it. It took alchemy or a formation to return Substance to a material, and why would anyone do that?

Accidents could happen though, and no matter how small, nobody wanted random, mixed, unprocessed Substance in their soul. Once it was absorbed, it was there to stay – in this respect, the soul was akin to a starving animal, refusing to give up any meal no matter how small or terrible.

He wasn’t really sure why unprocessed or mixed Substance was viewed so negatively, only that it was, and that he should never absorb it.

Now knowing the feeling of having his soul open to Substance, he reached for the Substance container. It felt nice in his hands, and seemed to have more weight to it than he expected. Gripping the nozzle he took a deep breath and released it.

Evan turned the nozzle, expecting some kind of noise or other physical reaction. Instead, he saw a steady but small amount of Substance begin to leak out along with some particulate. It seemed more diffuse than other types of Substance he had seen, and wondered if that was done on purpose somehow or just a side effect of being contained as it had.

Slowly, it began to fill the room. His heart seemed to be pounding in his chest as he shut his eyes but could still feel the Substance – a first for him. In a hurry, he tried to return his focus to his soul, and while he was already lightly sensing his soul for his Substance-sight, it still took him several minutes to reach the focus necessary to open his soul.

Once again, he was surprised by how… anticlimactic it was. His soul seemed to roil even more intensely, and he felt something change, as if his soul had become some great weight.

Back in the physical he saw a very, very slight pull begin to effect the Substance closest to him, It began to fall towards him, and his sense for Substance seemed to tell him it was also falling deeper somehow, closer to the Void where his soul rested.

When the first of it reached his soul and seeped inside, a horrible pain wracked him immediately. Instantly his focus shattered as he lost sight of his soul and the Substance surrounding him vanished from view. Despite this, he could still feel his soul, and the pain only increased. Substance continued to trickle into his soul, and the pain only increased.

He had no time to process this as he toppled over, adrenaline flooding his system in a misguided attempt to help him and failing. All that occupied his mind was a terrible pain that would ebb and flow like a wave, refusing to allow him to even attempt adjusting to the sensation.

Insensate, he laid on the floor, his soul still absorbing Substance despite being unable to retain his focus, though he could continue to feel the mind-numbing pain that originated from it.

After what felt like an eternity, he lost consciousness.

***

Evan came to slowly, his mind almost afraid of what might lurk beyond the sweet relief of unconsciousness. For an unknowable period of time, he laid there, simply luxuriating in the lack of pain.

He winced. Just the memory sent shivers down his spine.

What even happened? I’ve never heard of something like this…

Gently he began to get up from the floor. It felt strange – other than some light bruises from his uncontrolled fall, he felt fine, despite the agonizing pain he had just gone through. That it left no physical reminders made him feel strange, even knowing the pain wasn’t related to his body.

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Should he sense his soul? He didn’t want the pain to return, but he needed to know where he stood. Cultivation was essential to his future – he couldn’t avoid it forever, or even for the next few days. He was expected to cultivate the Substance he had been provided in order to be more useful in the military.

While he had a lot of room for improvement when it came to crafting his intent, without the enhancement this Substance would provide him, the space for his intent was limited. In order to raise that ceiling, he would need Substance – he simply wouldn’t have the “bandwidth” in his intent in order to make something worth keeping otherwise.

He set his shoulders – there was no use putting it off, and it might have been a one-off. Maybe it was a perfectly normal thing, and it just wasn’t discussed? No, that didn’t make any sense. There’s no way that pain was normal and not spoken of.

Rubbing his head, he realized that if it was a normal occurrence, they would have given him some kind of mat or pillow for when he fell, even if they assumed he was aware of the pain. Nobody else had something like that, either.

Shaking out all of his limbs for good measure, he sat down and resumed his meditation, seeking his soul. This time the exercise was much more difficult, constantly on the watch for that crippling pain to return.

Eventually he managed it, his soul coming into focus as before. It was very different from before, but this he had expected.

Whereas before it was lumpy and writhing, with a stretched appearance akin to a wrung-out rag, now it appeared as a perfectly smooth sphere, completely still. It was larger, but not by much. It was also dimmer, which was a little strange – he had heard it should be brighter. Looking more intently at his soul, he swore he saw… something deeper within, but it vanished just as quickly as it had arrived.

Suddenly an intrusive thought entered his mind. It felt like it belonged to him, but it definitely not one he had… thought? Nothing made sense.

Myth – 0.00%

What?

The thought was incredibly intrusive, sending his mind spiraling among a path of other erroneous thoughts. A hunter slaying a powerful monster with an imbued sword, another recovering from the brink of death through an ordinary looking healing potion – her heavily damaged and bloodied body seeming to inflate with health and vitality. Another showed him a soldier deploying a shields imbuement, a shimmer settling over himself and his squad, protecting them from an impossibly fast series of arrows, each slamming into the invisible barrier with enough force to kick up the soil just outside.

As he shook his head to dislodge the strange scenes, a final one came over him, leaving him in a flash. A tower, reaching high into the sky, a solid white that spoke of boldness, intricately made. Spreading out from the base was a city, though it clashed with the grandiose design of the tower. Inside the city he saw all sorts of hunters coming and going from the tower, some carrying beasts. The vision ended and left him confused. What had he seen?

Evan smiled – he would like to build the things in those visions one day, and wondered at the purpose of the tower. But what was all that about? He needed to survive his service before he could fantasize about building works of… myth. His smile turned stiff as the implications flashed through his mind. Was it trying to tell him something? There had been a number attached, a percentage.

The one thing all the scenes had in common was the presence of some object, large or small, that had saved the day. No, the last one wasn’t like that. Just an object or building of incredible power? An incredibly strong imbuement then?

Inspecting his soul again, he found nothing. There was no pain, but his soul felt strained, like it was filled to bursting trying to hold something it couldn’t.

Looking around the room for Substance, he saw that it was far more filled than it had been before. How long was he asleep? It must have been at least several hours…

He vaguely remembered that his soul had continued absorbing Substance without his input, but it appeared to have stopped shortly after he lost consciousness. Did that have something to do with the word that had appeared in his mind? It seemed likely, but then was his soul containing the source? And it had tried to escape?

Worriedly he analyzed his soul. It didn’t seem like it was about to burst, or that anything was trying to escape, but he couldn’t shake the feeling this was only the beginning of his troubles.

Realizing there was nothing that could be done about it right now, he decided to try continuing to cultivate. He didn’t want to be the last to finish cultivating. In addition, he decided that telling anyone about the pain or the scenes in his mind was a bad idea. Everyone knew that it was basically a crime to keep a treasure you lacked the strength to defend – he had heard a few children’s stories about that, and perhaps whatever seemed to be lurking in his soul was an incredible treasure – if the words and vision were to be believed, he needed to craft things that could qualify as “myths”, and he might be rewarded.

His decision was also motivated by the fact that even if it was simple soul damage for one reason or another, it was so far beyond his means to fix as to be not worth considering. If it came to light he had soul damage, things could only get worse. The military might be more likely to throw his life away, for example, or renege on their contract.

As he mused about the implications, he opened his soul and witnessed the same scene from before repeat itself inside the room, and while he couldn’t sense it, he knew it would be incrementally faster given his larger soul.

The change in its shape also meant the way it reacted was different from before. Now a small, perfectly smooth sphere, it had begun to rotate as he took in Substance. Staring at its changed form made him realize he had become a cultivator!

Between the unbearable agony, waking up to thoughts that weren’t his own, and the visions, he had nearly forgotten! It saddened him a little that his first step towards immortality had proven so painful, but so be it. At least the pain hadn’t returned, even if just the memory of it made the entirety of his being ache.

Settling in to his first real cultivation session, he watched his soul as it grew incrementally moment to moment, enjoying the tangible progress he was making. It made him question the nature of his soul, and souls in general.

With imbuements, intent was laid down upon the Substance, using it to fuel an effect related to the aspect of the imbued Substance. What the intent could accomplish was dependent on the talent of the crafter, enhanced by their related cultivated Substance. Regardless of the strength of the intent, some amount of Substance was used up in this process. Yet, any Substance that entered the soul would permanently enhance the cultivator, allowing them to make use of that Substance at the same effectiveness for their entire lives, however long that might be.

How could the soul do this? It somehow used the Substance to grow larger before reaching its limit, at which point the soul could undergo a Collapse, reducing the size of the soul while retaining all the benefits of its consumed Substance, and simultaneously allowing it to grow larger before requiring another. Somehow, it was able to do this supposedly infinitely, while always being able to exert the full force of all the Substance it had ever absorbed, despite the ludicrous amount that would eventually result.

Nobody, to his knowledge, understood how the bright speck of something that everyone possessed, floating in the Void, did all these miracles. Wasn’t that fascinating? To think, civilization as a whole was built around the soul, and nobody had even a vague idea of how it worked.

That wasn’t to mention the miracle that was mana, which was also produced – from nothing – and stored inside the soul. Mana was unique in that unlike Substance, it could hold an infinite amount of intent, the only limit was the rate at which someone could imbue it with intent.

Anyone could imbue their mana with intent, but mana had limited effectiveness, meaning that unlike intent imbued into Substance, what mana could accomplish with any given amount was universal.

Mana could be told to do almost anything, and it would try. It also began to decay the moment it got too far from the soul, decaying exponentially faster as it got further away. A stronger soul and Substance helped, he knew.

Evan could accomplish nothing simply musing at the mysteries of the soul, he knew, so he turned his mind towards something more productive. He thought of the books he had read the night before, a chronicle of the wars Starspire had fought in the past.