The alchemic flames cast their soft blue glow on the dark stones, and the soft tap of steps was the only sound that echoed in the emptiness. Carter, the one making those subtle steps, strolled with broad, aimless strides down the dim corridor, his face showing his boredom with the monotony. He felt as though he had been walking for hours, with no end in sight, the flames flickering and dancing like ethereal companions, showing him the nothingness in front of him. As he continued, he noticed a gradual transition in the color of the flames, from soft blue to a vague blend of blue and green. The change was so subtle that it wasn't until the light had almost entirely transformed into a green that Carter finally noticed the transition.

Turning around to glance back the way he had come, he was baffled to see the hall bathed in a bright green light instead of the familiar blue. The change was so inconspicuous that Carter began to doubt his perception, questioning whether the memory of the blue flames was nothing more than a figment of his imagination or a deceptive trick of his mind.

He wanted to take time to look at the new flames, but there was no telling how much time he had spent here, and he still needed to return to his room before Morin rose into the sky. So, he could only move forward, hoping to find an end to this endless tunnel. As fate would have it, an end to the monotony came with the entrance to a room.

As Carter ran into the room, his thoughts were preoccupied with the end of the monotony, causing him to overlook his impulsive actions of charging into a new room without ensuring its safety. The room he now found himself in was a mess, with papers strewn haphazardly across every free space. The strange furniture in the center of the room seemed to be devoured by the thin layer of papers scattered on top; the desk, the floors, even the walls as far as Carter could reach, didn't have an empty space on them. All seemed to be covered in papers.

Carter didn't know why, but it excited him to see all the papers, and he had no idea where he would like to start reading. He glanced around, looking at the desk that lined the walls and the strange furniture in the center before he noticed that in the very center, there seemed to be a larger pile of papers. In his mind, it made sense; being the center of the room would let you see everything, so whoever was here before seemed to have huddled in the center, and that must be where the most important information was, at least, that is what he would have done.

He tried to make his way to the center, doing his best not to step onto papers that littered the floor, but the difficulty of this was something that his body just couldn't handle, slipping several times as he clumsily made his way, causing more than just a few of the documents to be ripped and folded. Carter justified himself by blaming whoever was here before; it's not his fault that there was a mess here, and if they didn't want to damage anything, they shouldn't have left it on the floor.

Finally making it to the center, he moved his hands through the small pile of paper, enjoying the familiar feeling after a long time before feeling the coldness of the surface below the papers. Initially curious about the cold surface, Carter justified it by thinking it was nothing more than a big desk or surface to work on, blissfully unaware of what it was.

After enjoying the feel of the paper, he eagerly picked up one to read but noticed a critical detail he had forgotten: He couldn't read. To be more specific, he couldn't read any of the languages on Genisis. He could, of course, read Feyrisian, although he was also not taught how to read his native language. He was left with no choice but to be self-taught; after that person came to live with him, Carter's thoughts stopped. Did someone live with him? Wasn't that just a dream?

Carter grabbed his head with one hand and used his other to hold himself up. His head began to bob, and his eyes glazed. His head throbbed as obscure images and strange sounds flashed through his mind. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to get rid of what was happening, but he slipped on the papers, barely catching himself as he fell.

Seeing the drawing of the familiar girl, his eyes grew as large as a disk as he looked at the sketch on the paper below his now bent body. His mind stopped and ran simultaneously, connecting everything in the room without needing to read anything. He stood with wobbly steps and deep gasps for air, his hand about to touch the slab, but the obscure flashing images in his mind caused him to jerk his hand back, sending him falling backward.

His hands shook as they held him up. He stared into space with a more resounding gasp as the faint images flashed in his mind. His stomach churned as he came to a realization.

"The dreams... were real!"

His eyes glazed as he tried to process everything. All the dreams and nightmares he had had for as long as he could remember were real memories, his memories, but they seemed so far, almost ethereal, as if the life of someone else.

Carter stood a husk of what he was just moments ago, his eyes returning to the glazed and dead they had once been as his lifeless eyes glanced around the room. His eyes drooped as they would when he wanted to sleep, but subconsciously, he seemed to know that here was no place to rest. His fragmented mind was unable to remember where he had entered the room, left with no choice but to walk through one of the halls to return to his bed to rest and maybe make sense of his dreams if his mind could return from the brokenness it was at now.

***

Arc watched silently as the mysterious Seedling seemed to fight itself. Its jaws tightened with a crackling sound as it grasped its arms, seemingly attempting to tear them from its body. It clutched its throat as if struggling to breathe through the wisps of green smoke billowing out of its mouth. Its movements appeared unnaturally stiff, as if mechanical or as if its body was frozen, but Arc knew his initial thought was the closest to the truth: it was fighting itself.

As Arc watched, the peculiar creature's movements appeared strangely stiff at first, but after a few seconds, it became noticeable that its rigidity was merely a false perception; instead, its movements were so fast that they seemed stiff. The creature's rapid and erratic movements seemed to blur together, making Arc increasingly concerned about the thing before him.

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With knitted brows, Arc began to take steps backward, trying to escape an unwinnable battle that was this creature. From just the movements he had misjudged, he knew that this thing he assumed was one of the lab's experiments was way beyond his capability, even to scratch, let alone anything else.

The experiment clawed at its bottom lip and chin as if trying to pull them further down. Its breathing also deepened as its mouth moved rapidly up and down, with its clawing fingers still trying to rip it further open. Arc couldn't help but stop his backward movements as he noticed what was happening; his eyes blinked as he tried to make sense of the strange movements.

The glowing crimson eyes glared at Arc as the lips moved slower. When the mouth fully opened, there was a deep huff of breath sending a puff of green smoke, but the mouth movements were strange. The fingers moved from clawing the bottom lip to the sides of their neck, pulling forward from the back of the jaw with enough force that wisps of green lights started to float out of the cuts the sharp nails were creating in the sides of their neck and jaw.

Arc's eyes grew large as he started to realize what the experiment was doing, but before he could open his mouth, it disappeared only to reappear right before him, its fist following through as it made contact with Arc's stomach. The air left his body as the fist made contact with him, sending him basically teleporting further down the hall and sliding against the stone floor and wall before coming to a stop a large distance away from where he originally stood just a fraction of a second ago.

Arc pulled himself to the wall and sat with his back toward it. His head tilted against the wall as he gasped for breath while holding where he was hit. A seldom cough echoed as he continued to breathe. He glanced down at his body, and outside of the damaged clothes from sliding against the stone, his body was fine, something that he didn't expect with the impact and the distance he was sent.

"The old man would be impre... Uck!"

When he tried to talk, Arc lurched with a cough and vomited on the floor. Shaking his head, he looked up to see the experiment moving toward him rapidly, but unlike before, one of its arms dangled loosely. Arc couldn't help but let a deriding smile spread across his face as it got closer.

"If you wanted to ask for help you shouldn't hi..."

A sudden, swift jolting movement from the experiment sent the air in Arc's body retreating as he prepared to be hit once again. Arc's eyes focused on the subtle movements of the experiment's body, trying to notice anything. He couldn't see the movement, but that didn't mean he didn't know where the hit would land, and that was all he needed to use his Path.

The kick the experiment sent moved ever so slightly higher than what its original trajectory would have been. It was so slight, but it was enough. Its foot sunk into the wall and sliced through the dark stone effortlessly like a freshly sharpened knife through flesh before its momentum stopped not far above Arc's head.

"Foolish thing," Arc laughed, holding his stomach, "All I need is to know the trajectory to shift its placement, and with your wide movements, it is child's play."

Arc stared at the experiment with a smug smile, his mind racing through the different sketches, trying to put a name to the face.

"Cassian... A former occupant in the Ambrosia Orphanage, after coming of age, became a guard for the orphanage and later was given the opportunity by the former dean to become a Divine Knight but was later asked to leave to gain other experience when he became the head of village guards he returned to his Divine Knight training. Allisa, Cassian's wife, was Mata's secretary and right hand, often seen with the former matriarch of the race. Allisa held immense sway in the village and was the supposed reason for Cassian's quick rise in position. Supposedly, she was also very close to most of the important Seedlings inside of Ambrosia and several others in Pilosophis. Cassian, Allisa, and their young son Casper were thought to have vanished on their trek to Pilisophis for the birth of their second son, who at the time had no name but would later be called Aster. Your information was detailed, but it never said anything about what they did to you or that you were even here."

The green liquid seeping from Cassian's eyes seemed to intensify, resembling tears streaming down his cheeks. Deep breaths and a huff sounded as if he were trying to speak, but the frantic hurling of his uninjured arm turned the scene from one of pity to one filled with madness.

Arc looked at the leg still stuck in the wall and at the frantic Seedling before him; it was effortless to twist the trajectory of the uninjured arm so it wouldn't hit him. It only added to the pity he felt for this failed experiment. It wasn't a pity for the Seedling Cassian or what had happened to him; it was a pity for the experiment that failed when it appeared to be close. Now, Arc could see what these fanatics were talking about; it was truly interesting to see what they were trying to do, and he could see why they acted the way they did.

"How close were you? Were you the closest, or is there a better one?"

Arc looked at the experiment before him with new interest and amusement, although it was not his Path, who wasn't interested in manipulating life essence.

The experiment, Cassian, seemingly recognizing the intense fascination in Arc's eyes, twisted its body, sending its dangling arm at Arc's head from above as it twisted its body using the leg in the wall to pull itself free. Arc, mesmerized by his thoughts and focus on the uninjured arm, didn't notice the shift in Cassian's body until something as hard as a boulder hit the top of his head, almost knocking him unconscious.

"Stupid thing, know your place!" Arc said, holding his head as he stood up. The three figures dancing in front of him were hard to focus on, and the ringing in his head was jarring.

The experiment opened its mouth as if to scream, but nothing more than green puffs of smoke billowed out. Arc knew now that this green smoke was nothing more than an incredibly dense excretion of life essence leaving the body. The liquid secreting from the eyes was the same, although the density created a liquid form, but that didn't mean that the densities were so different. The more he looked at this experiment the more interested he became, wanting to meet the mind that created such art.

The smile on Arc's face vanished after the experiment's movements began to change. Its erratic and almost mechanical movements ceased and became more fluid. Not only this, but the feral nature that glimmered in the eyes seemed nearly to disappear.

Arc's eyes scrunched at the sudden jolting motion, and just as fast, he felt the pressure of a grip on his upper right arm. Using his left hand, imbued with as much space essence as he could muster in a compacted area, he moved it to grab the experiment's arm. Although he knew you could not change the trajectory of unmoving objects, that didn't mean everything about the object was unmoving, especially something living.

The sound of a dense crack echoed, and the experiment jumped back, holding where Arc's hand had met its arm.

"Thanks to you, I just took another step on my Path..."