Now that he’d found a way to see, movement was the next obvious step.

Considering how it likely wasn’t going to be that easy, perhaps ‘goal’ would have been a better way to put it.

After all, despite experimenting with the sub-soul, Martin had never found a method to make it move by itself, instead having to push it around by contorting his soul around it. That wouldn’t work for his main soul.

Thinking of his options, Martin quickly tried a few simple things.

First, he tried to contort part of his soul’s membrane in one direction, move the opposite end towards it, and repeat, moving vaguely like a caterpillar would. The method worked, but unless he was willing to push the limits of how roughly he was willing to treat his own soul’s exterior, he wasn’t going to be moving fast enough to reach anywhere in a very long time.

Considering how he’d discovered how his soul’s exterior seemed to be dense enough that he couldn’t begin to perceive the specifics, he perhaps was willing to push those limits, but not quite yet.

The second method he tried was using his link with the mysterious cosmic entity to link to a certain location away from him and pull himself towards it, but it didn’t work. He was uncertain whether the reason was because it was truly impossible or because he simply wasn’t experienced enough yet, but whatever the reason, the result was the same.

For now, it seemed the link was best suited as a tool to deal with the metaphysical, not the physical –although the physicality of a soul was debatable.

Third, he used the fact he could sense the particles of concepts using his soul and tried to vibrate his soul in those places as a way to ‘push’ himself off them. He still couldn’t exactly understand how something moving through a finite space translated to a location in infinite space, but he was beginning to get ideas.

Unsurprisingly, considering how makeshift the solution seemed, it didn’t seem to work. Whilst it managed to slightly destabilise the concepts’ paths, it succeeded in nothing else.

Considering how limited his options for interacting with the outside were, Martin wasn’t left with much choice. Whilst his abilities were constantly developing, unless he had another breakthrough that happened to specifically assist in movement, it would take a long time to get them to a point he’d move even close to the speed he needed to get... he wasn’t sure where he needed to be, exactly.

That wasn’t to say he was clueless; with his ever-improving sight, he’d already spotted countless planets, and had even found some that could potentially house life. He couldn’t say for sure yet, but it would only be a matter of time until he could.

For a moment, Martin wondered whether he’d even need to find a habitable planet if he kept evolving at the same rate, but his need for companionship reminded him immediately; it had been less than a day so far –he guessed, but was mostly certain- but the more he developed, the faster time became dilated for him.

To him, it had felt like it had either been the thirteen or so hours since he’d died, or several days. The desire for interaction would only continue to grow. Martin still had a long time before it truly affected him, but he didn’t know when he’d be able to satisfy it.

For that reason, he decided to experiment further with moving. The methods he’d initially suggested were ones that posed least risk to him. He was now willing to at least consider some more experimental ones.

Most of these methods involved recreating certain bodily functions using his soul. Considering the difference between a soul and a physical body was quite big, he had avoided the majority of such methods.

The one that currently seemed most attractive was, ironically enough, breathing. Something he’d rejected so fervently earlier, was now his best option.

‘It’s rather ironic to turn to something I rejected so eagerly earlier, but I’ve come a long way since then. To the point it would be difficult to call me the same person.’

That was true; Martin had grown exponentially every moment since his death. Whilst his personality, memories, likes, dislikes, relationships and more were the same, he’d become an existence on a fundamentally different level.

Nevertheless, before committing to it, Martin analysed what ‘breathing’ would entail.

To his understanding, the sea of concepts seemed to be the only thing outside; for whatever reason, the void of space was devoid of all matter or energy aside from them.

At first, Martin had assumed this to be because he was merely unable to sense them. However, the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Obviously, souls somehow had to interact with physical matter. Otherwise, they’d simply stay in place constantly and would leave someone’s body the instant they moved –and that was disregarding whatever interactions the laws of physics would have had with them.

If the existence of souls hadn’t been proven in all of civilisation, that link would be far more subtle than machinery could measure, but it must have influenced something about a person.

Since the functioning of the body had been understood, that likely meant souls were linked to the mind –something Martin had more than sufficient evidence for.

On one hand, that meant the connection between souls and the physical would be much harder to pinpoint precisely. On the other, unless people who experienced brain death and were resuscitated lost their souls in the process, souls would still need to be linked to physical matter in some way.

It was possible that souls were lost in the short window someone died, but given how personality changes didn’t always happen and how the idea of life being able to exist without a soul would make souls redundant, it was unlikely.

Overall, everything pointed to the notion souls should have some way of identifying physical matter or energy. The fact that, no matter how hard he tried, Martin couldn’t, meant that the most likely explanation was that there simply was no matter to detect.

If that was truly the case, the only thing that could possibly endanger him were the countless pieces of concepts. He knew they would not affect his consciousness, but how they’d interact with something like his soul was something he had no idea about.

The knowledge that they didn’t damage his soul’s barrier, at least not to an extent he could notice despite the immense level of focus he was constantly directing at it, meant that the particles of thought weren’t immediately catastrophic to the soul.

The fact the inside of his soul was far thinner than its membrane, however, meant he couldn’t tell what level of exposure was safe. If Martin was going to use the method he’d thought of, he knew the volume of thoughts absorbed would be immense; he’d have to ensure there was no risk regardless of their concentration.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He smiled slightly at the unintentional pun.

Returning to his chain of thought, he decided employing the help of his sub-soul again was the likely best choice.

Martin began to move it to his outer edge and, after a moment of hesitation –he was against putting any part of him at risk of death, regardless of how small or replaceable it may be- he pushed it outside, into the void.

He’d done this for obvious reasons, since he wasn’t keen on finding out what would happen if it tried to breathe while still inside of him –it sounded like an easy way to get soul damage, and not the kind that’s felt like a gentle pinch.

Before beginning, he noted that he couldn’t entirely see the sub-soul now that it had left him. By that, he meant he could still see it through the link he had to the area around him courtesy of the mysterious cosmic force, but the vision he’d developed based on sensing the concepts on his membrane was almost completely blind to it.

Considering the fact many of the particles of thought were somehow affected when they passed his membrane, it meant there should be some telltale signs in the concepts reaching him that there was a disturbance –in this case, a soul- in that direction.

Martin immediately identified the feeling of blurriness in his first form of sight, then compared it to the location of the sub-soul he knew from his second, and quickly developed a routine that would allow him to both detect and see through souls more easily in the future.

‘Now that’s over with...’

With the feeling of a small part of him being severed, the link to the sub-soul was gone, and the first step to the first ‘step’ of his journey had begun.

Immediately upon disconnecting, the sub-soul sprang into action. Before beginning his task, the inferior version of Martin used his connection to the unknown force to link himself to the area in and around him, then, aiming to get his task done with as quickly as possible, began.

As he did so, Martin could feel his link to the surrounding area grow weaker, his link to the cosmic entity temporarily affected by his acceptance of death as a possibility.

Nevertheless, he concentrated on the feeling of breathing. He had no lungs to fill, no mouth to open, and no air to breathe, but the concept of breathing remained constant in his mind.

His entire self would be the lung, the entire membrane surrounding him would be his mouth, and the inexhaustible sea of thought filling the void would be his air.

As his confidence grew, Martin felt his link grow closer to its previous state.

‘So self-suggestion would work? It’s funny being able to clearly see how thinking I’ll survive something will make me more likely to survive it.

Fine, if that’s what it takes:

I’m not risking my life because I know it’s disposable. I’m risking my life because I know I’ll survive. I’m not risking my life; from the beginning, success wasn’t a question, it was a guarantee.

The only prerequisite for my success is my involvement. As long as I will it, the world would bend to my will. No matter the situation, no matter how unlikely, I will survive regardless.

Between the heavens and the Earth, I alone am the eternal one’

Managing to proudly say something that would have ordinarily made him laugh out loud from how over-the-top it sounded, Martin successfully managed to deepen the link in both a temporary and permanent way, as he’d lightly touched upon the concept of ‘unwavering life’ within his speech.

Knowing his existence itself had been reinforced, Martin began the process.

First, he tried to open a single hole in his membrane, only barely wide enough to allow an individual particle to pass through. Thanks to his expertise in its manipulation, this came naturally to Martin.

To his slight surprise, although he could see particles enter the hole, they didn’t pass into his soul, and instead continued in the same manner they would if they’d encountered the barrier to his soul instead, passing through the physical, not soul, plane through him.

Closing the hole after several more unsuccessful attempts resulting in small parts of his entrails drifting away, Martin accepted that no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get the particles to enter. It seemed he couldn’t cheat; although he was hesitant to rely on his soul’s instincts, he had no other choice in this situation.

As he tried to breathe in the same way he would have with his regular lungs, he watched with awe as the input was translated into a series of steps within his soul.

First, he felt countless holes roughly the size of the one he made earlier open over his entire membrane. Rather than gaps in the membrane, these felt different –as if his entire membrane was intact, but something about it had been modified to altered it, allowing it to pass things through itself.

Next, he felt his entire soul contract itself towards the centre, as if setting up a diffusion gradient to pull in the atmospheric thoughts more easily.

Finally, through his link to the surrounding area, he could feel a mysterious force guide all the concepts from the surrounding area towards him.

These happened almost at the same time, and the instant the final step was complete, Martin could feel a flow of thought directly into his soul. The feeling was strange, and trying to understand what had just happened was stranger. On one hand, he knew he could recreate the process if he wished, and even slightly alter it, but on the other, he had no idea how the first step of the process worked.

‘How it works aside, this is a pleasant surprise’

While he’d expected all manner of suffering, other than the now relatively small amount of effort required to keep track of the massive volume of thoughts and separating them from separating them from his own consciousness that he had to do when broadcasting his mind outside his soul, there appeared to be no new difficulty associated with having the concepts inside his soul.

As they gravitated towards his centre, they seemed to act exactly the same as they would in the world outside, but now lost in an infinite space.

Martin found that, with minimal effort, he could control them. His current proficiency wasn’t particularly high, but for what he needed to do, it was good enough.

Within a few moments, he gathered the particles of thought to one end of his soul –considering how the space inside was infinite, Martin wasn’t sure exactly how he managed this- and expelled a few at a low speed. To his relief, he felt his soul move very slightly through space.

Next, he did the same with a larger amount, and expelled them at a higher speed. This allowed him to move faster. The best part was that, after checking again with different speeds and quantities of particles ejected, it seemed there was nothing like air resistance acting to stop him –in other words, unless there were some yet undiscovered laws of souls that stopped him- he'd be able to move as fast as he wanted without issue.

This was only made better by the fact the speed he ejected particles was realistically limited to how fast he wanted to eject them, considering the level his soul control had reached, and the availability of thought particles, which, after simply willing to breathe in harder greatly increased the number coming in, didn’t seem to be much of a problem either.

Martin decided it was almost safe to rejoin with his main soul, despite the fact it had barely been more than a few minutes. He’d take a short amount of time to check everything was alright, try to see if he could stop breathing –which sounded more dangerous than it was- and try a few experiments beforehand, but other than that, it was almost time.

Within a few minutes, he found that he had no problem with stopping breathing, with any thought particles still within him simply floating aimlessly until he began to breathe again and he could let them out. He’d also found that he could only breathe in or only breathe out, and that even much higher intensities of breathing, pulling in enough of the surrounding concepts and at such a rate that his vision had become distorted for a moment before he accounted for it mentally, put apparently zero strain on him.

He’d also checked that higher movement speeds wouldn’t have detrimental effects on him and, after managing to reach speed close to a hundred metres per second, something that again required acclimating his vision to, he was fairly certain he’d be safe; this test in particular wasn’t as relevant, as it was something that could be done after he’d reunited with his main soul.

During this time, he’d also checked as thoroughly as he could that the bits of thought floating through him had absolutely no effect on any of his soul’s functions. Now that everything was confirmed reasonably safe, Martin decided it was time.

A knock sounded on the dormant link between the two souls.

A new chapter in his life was about to begin.