I waited for the day which your race died with bated breath, mortal. Every moment that you continued to blight the universe with your stink was another day recorded in the Anele Bashara, a black mark against your kind.

But that day has, at long last, come. Pay the price for your divine transgressions, vessels of hate.

* Last recorded entry of Prophet Endel’s Musings of the Dead Peoples. Interrogated spirit’s identity unknown.

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I knew when I had succeeded immediately. My weave snapped into place with a hum that made my mouth-bones tingle. The effect was immediate and pronounced. My weave – a titanic working of thread, will, and time – utterly encapsulated the flow of the spring, the weave thick enough to fully block the flow as it passed through the clear waters. I felt the electricity as the route was siphoned away, the roots of my construct eagerly absorbing and drinking in the flow even as it trapped it, the sheer power present rendering my once-mental weave fully visible to my eye.

My lifebringer burst when the energy hit me.

I collapsed immediately, my mind wavering as I approached a long sleep, the kind necessary to recover from such horrid injury. Yet the pain did not abate. Even as my thoughts became cloudy, greater and greater energy flowed into me, my bones creaking and cracking as they failed to contain the energy of the world itself. I tried to direct it to my seed, hoping the vessel made for soulwater specifically could handle this outpouring, yet knowing it was pointless.

The seed could handle much, yes, but there was no way it could handle it all.

I knew what that meant, my fading mind acknowledging the price to be paid for my meddling. I would lose dozens, maybe hundreds of summers to this mistake, my body broken until it was strong enough to remain together. Even then, I would survive.

I would always survive.

I let oblivion take me, the blessed dark taking the pain with it as I faded.

I awoke later, my breath wet as water surged into my lungs. All around me was darkness, my eyes failing to pierce the deep waters I found myself in. My body felt like I had been crushed by a mountain, every pop and shift birthing a wave of agony unlike anything I had experienced – before my mistake.

Now? It was a minor agony, as opposed to absolute agony.

My mind felt oddly free, like someone had slotted something new into it. It was not a foreign feeling, more akin to having a puzzle completed, every proper piece in its place...

A puzzle?

A word I had never spoken. Despite that, I knew of them and their many forms, as well as many of their purposes. What else had my punishment gifted my mind?

I thought back on my past self, how I thought and spoke. The foundation was right – I was always introspective and reserved – but new facets had emerged. I knew of the sun, the celestial body that brought life through heat. I knew of my teeth, my lungs, heart, and many other organs that drove my body to continued function. Day and night, the passing of years, so much new knowledge simply took the place of the old, seamless in its integration and unchallenged in its truth.

I coughed, the action bringing me back to the moment. Right, I was drowning, likely in the spring I had mistakenly tapped all those years ago. I shifted, seeking to position my feet below me. I pushed off the hard rock beneath my feet, driving myself ‘upward’ despite no senses telling me I was going in the right direction.

It felt right, which meant I had senses other than my old ones now. I had been thrown into water before, the terrifying event etched into my memory. The lizard creature – now a crocodile to my mind – had chosen our prey over me, meaning I only fumbled in the dark waters for moments before being pulled free. Yet those moments stayed with me: the frothing waters, the blur of color as I flailed, and the certainty of my own death as my breath faltered. Yet now I pierced the water with a certainty that even the crocodile lacked, my path as certain as the sunrise.

Was my memory always this clear?

I ignored the oddity. There would be more before my awakening was done, that was a certainty. I chose to adapt first, analyze later.

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The cerulean waters broke quickly, revealing the same oasis I remembered, though changed in the details. It was closer to a lake now, thick streams of water vanishing into it from the rocky walls of the valley. The waters ran deeper as well, the walls higher than they had even been in the past. I had once climbed down them easily, no difficulty present in scaling the broken earth. Now? Now a hole seemed ripped from the ground, the lake welling blood in a gaping wound of rock. Yet it wasn’t rock that greeted my gaze, nor the harsh silvered sands of the dunes above.

It was scorched white, prismatic glass that greeted my eyes, the shattered mirror lining the walls of the once-majestic oasis.

Had I done this? The energies within that stream of soulwater were considerable, so much I doubted I got them all directed to myself. Could such an outpouring of energy reshape the very land? Easily, really. Sand produced glass when exposed to incredible heat. How I was certain of this I wasn’t sure, but it made sense to me that the soulwater could, when released unexpectedly, manifest as raw heat akin to that of a star. Heat was life, so soulwater could be heat, simple.

My gaze found my little abode, tiny fragments of scorched wood all that remained. It was once little more than a lean-to, my skills insufficient to produce anything more remarkable, yet seeing it reduced to ash hurt more than expected. This place was my home, had been for centuries. I could remake it bigger and better now if the warmth within my chest meant anything. I poked at the warmth, my gaze inward as I gazed upon where my ‘seed’ of soulwater once lay, instead finding three orbiting spheres, each a deep well of soulwater.

I needed a new name for soulwater.

Nothing immediately jumped out to me, leaving me to dig through my memories of a life forgotten. A thought came to me of the old faith I followed, of the power that we believed all life to possess thanks to the Allmother. All had a spark, a kindling of mahana within themselves, that very spark the source of their life. It was a gift from the Allmother and would always return to her upon death, the same spark used to bring another to life.

Mahana.

Mana.

As good as any name, I suppose.

I had three wells of mana within myself now, each outstanding in their own way to my senses. The first was the most prominent, the searing brightness it exuded dominating my sight. It was a perpetually shifting ball of glass, each fragment radically different in color, shape, and opacity. They bubbled in and out of existence as the ball shifted and popped, the light it reflected a kaleidoscope of color.

That answered the question of the glass being my fault.

The second was smaller, harder to notice in the cacophony brought on by the glass. It was a small, life-red bubble of flesh that pulsed, a wave of red fluid emerging from it after each. A heart? I understood that, but why...

Ah.

It seems my past would never truly leave me. I had spoken of lifewater before, the great fuel for mortal beings, yet now it was anchored evermore in my soul, a part of me until the end. Be it a minor blessing from the Allmother or a whimsy of fate, I smiled. Staying in touch with your mortal self was humbling if nothing else.

The last well was strange. So strange, in fact, I could not decide what it represented. It had no shape, merely an outline where something was – or was meant to be. I had a faint sense of... Togetherness? It was like touching the stream of mana again, everything coalescing into a oneness that defied understanding. It would require further investigation, likely long periods of meditation and testing, but that was okay. My knowledge of the world had grown by leaps and bounds in mere moments when I awoke, the mysterious merely an opportunity to learn.

On that note, I returned to the first, seeking to feel some sort of bond between me and the glassy landscape surrounding me. If I had truly produced such a mess, it made sense that the mess was mine, the bond of purpose and mana giving me... there it was. A slight tug at my mind led me to reach a palm out, the sight of it startling me briefly. My skin was pale and clear, odd splotches of rocky texture visible across the surface of my palm. It seemed that, although still human, my mistake had changed me in some fundamental way, leaving a sign of the change across my flesh.

I returned to my task; my eyes closed as I jostled the link to my core. I grasped at it, looking to reach out through that bond, to make the glass an extension of my will. A pop and crackle greeted me, a numbing headache knocking me to the floor. I coughed, crimson leaking from my lips as my lungs were squeezed in my chest.

But I felt it.

The link was set, a pulse of agreement trickling across my mind even as I retched. The glass – however such a thing could do so – agreed with my plea, agreeing with my assessment of responsibility. I looked up across the mirrored valley, my face resting against impossibly hot desert glass. I felt no scorching burn against my cheek as I reached my fingers out, invisible tendrils emerging from them like threads of cloth. With an effort, I felt the glass warp and shift, a section deforming as it became a perfect sphere of utterly pristine glass, as solid as stone. It snapped free of the earth with a crack, rolling towards me as a stupid grin broke across my face. My mistake had shifted the landscape in ways I may never understand, but that meant this area – desolate and forsaken as it seemed – was thoroughly mine. I had ruined it for the normal residents, so that meant I had to do my best to adapt to it myself. Abandoning such a monumental scar on the land felt... wrong in a way I could not describe. It was like trying to stay in my home village all those years ago. I could do such a thing easily, yet there was something within me that found such a lie, such a betrayal of self utterly horrific.

Regardless, it was time to get to work.