Waking up is not a sensation that Guan Ah Dan is used to. He struggled against the drowse but failed for what must have been days. His body felt raw, like he had been rubbed with sand until his skin was no longer his own. Strength was nearly impossible to gather in his eyelids, let alone his useless limbs.

In the unconscious moments, Dan was thankful for the peace he felt. No strange nightmares plagued this rest, no riddles or questions thrown to his mind to make it race. For the confused days that followed the battle with the Ashes, Dan had been allowed actual calm. As he slept, his body recovered. With each hazy lift of his head from the bed that he lay upon, he felt a little stronger.

Until the dream last night, that is. It shakes him, a foggy thing that he cannot remember save for to recall the anxiety. Energy is forced into his phantom limbs and his rebellious eyelids submit to the adrenaline. Something feels missing, a part of the process lost to the fingers of a relentless sleep that was still being shaken.

A deep breath brought the truth to light. As he exhaled, Dan cycled his mana. Starting from his chest, like a series of beacons being lit, a trail of excited magic began to take shape. The flow was sluggish to begin with, as though Dan needed to shake his mana awake just as he did his body. Concentrating, Dan focused on his core.

When he had first begun to understand his own mana, Dan had perceived the core inside of himself in his chest. It was common practice and given the progression most would reach, the clumsy visualisation would be more than enough to perform wondrous feats. Dan knew now that his mana didn’t start in his chest, it didn’t really move through him. It filled him, the vessel was his entire self. When Dan now focused on where he once thought his core was, he felt the soul stone of Guan Shi Ai.

Except it wasn’t her’s any more. Elder Yaya had passed on the heavy weight of her prestigious power and Dan had been the recipient. The dark stone seemed to glisten under Dan’s inspection of it, a dark shine that flash a vibrant purple. He had muted the whispers from the stone in the shadows of the labyrinth, focusing on survival only. He could relax and listen now.

The stone quivered in its spot. Dan knew he could remove the stone with little more than a thought, but chose not to. Instead he deepened his concentration, dropping into the cool water of his own mana and becoming submerged in the flow. When Dan used his mana he could see through it like his own eyes, hear like his ears were everywhere at once, even smell or touch the smallest changes in his area. When Dan simply let his mana be as it was, it churned and roiled instead.

His mana wasted no time.

Within the coursing tickle of his mana, Dan felt memories rising. The magic itself seemed to be asking Dan to remember something. First the nostalgia came in sensations. The feel of a button on an old jacket, nervously thumbed as he worried about the nightmares he hid from the matrons of the orphanage. A soothing stroke of his hair, his head on the lap of Elder Yaya herself after he finally slept on their first meeting. That memory must have been from the stone itself.

It doesn’t surprise me that that would be your lesson, Elder Yaya.

In response, the soul stone within rolled over itself and seemed to warm. Her essence agreed. The lesson was simple.

Have fun?

As though the magic inside of himself were a playful child who finally got the attention of their older sibling, Dan felt the mana within become excited. The crystal clear flow of energy now buzzed with something akin to happiness as the waves inside increased in velocity and power until every fibre of Dan was vibrating with unbidden twitches. A smile grew and never left his lips.

He’d never really tried to do that before. He wasn’t sure he knew how. At the hint of doubt, his mana vibrated its disagreement and forced more memories onto him. Happy laughter after the danger in Sasin forest, the smiling faces of Hyun Soon and Xiaomei. His own smiling face seemed healthier than he had ever seen himself. Maybe he could reach for that feeling.

The meditation did its job. By the time that Dan opened his eyes, he had to blink and squint to avoid even the very dim light of the room. He remembered quickly that was not his only way to see, and returned his mana to its more usual usage. It burst forth from him more quickly than he expected, suddenly flooding his mind with information about his surroundings. Like a swarm of miniscule bees, the particles of mana bounced and ricocheted away from Dan and mapped the building in its entirety. It definitely was a building, not the labyrinth that he had expected to see.

Dan stood from his resting spot, a small flimsy block of wood with comfortable bedding on top of it. He was clothed in a loose fitting shirt, an elastic belt held cool, breathable leggings to his waist. Other than that he was unclothed, and it was cold. His mana trickled outside where it could, to be met with small, casual flurries of snow.

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He sensed people moving around, both inside and outside.

Outside! There was actual space to move around, people to see. He realised he must be in Allusia. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was-

“Lian!” Before Dan knew it, he was shouting. What had happened to his friends? What had happened to himself? Why was he here and where was here? He had a million questions that couldn’t be answered by the grey walls. This material was the same as the labyrinth, right? Where was anyone? He continued shouting and banging on the heavy stone door to his room.

It took some time, maybe as long as an hour, before the truth settled into Dan’s psyche. It wasn’t a “room”. It was a blank and empty place, with bars on the windows and a locked door. With no way out.

He was imprisoned. Again.

His mana moved without warning, a lurching dive from his throat to his stomach before it bubbled in his gut. His thoughts went back to the events that had at one point blinded him. Guan Po Daiyu’s cowardly attack and the stress of the Quiet Combat but more specifically being held captive. He promised himself that he would not let it happen again and yet here he was.

He simply would not let it stay this way.

He sat on the hard, barren floor and did the only thing he could think of.

Dan meditated.

He thought it would be difficult to concentrate but his emotions were more easily felt through work. He channelled the anger and confusion that he was feeling directly into analysing his own mana and improving every aspect of his technique as he knew it.

Dan grabbed every piece of ability he claimed to have: The copied techniques of Xiaomei, Hyun Soon and Fa Lian. His own ability to gather his mana more densely where he liked. He could send his own voice out and communicate through that.

He first focused on the perceptive aspect of his mana. There were a lot of people in this same building as Dan but because the walls were made of the same rock as the labyrinth, it dulled his mana. Instead of bouncing off the walls and continuing onwards, the mana lost energy and quickly fizzled away. Even still, he managed to get a better idea of the layout.

If Dan were just looking from the outside and not currently in a cell, he might have said that the place looked like a mansion or maybe a large school. At five stories tall and at least as wide as it was high, the building was like a large blindspot, right in the centre of Dan’s vision. Once his mana got outside, the sounds became less muffled and the faces more clear.

Standing proud in the middle of a large thoroughfare was Dan’s prison. The building had rounded edges, like the ground had been pinched and pulled into shape rather than cut. There were multiple entrances at the ground level, and some stairs leading to exits at each level on either side of the prison. Most of the people wandering seemed common enough, though Dan was careful not to let his mana get too close. If someone noticed he was doing this, they might come and stop him.

Before that could happen, Dan decided he needed to act. He had found what he was looking for at least. His mana burned as it found the only person with a shell he could feel in the building. They were about the right size, so Dan knew that it must be Shazaar. Whatever this place was, he would not be kept a prisoner again. He had promised himself.

So Dan did just what his heart was telling him to do. The lesson that he had been given by the soul stone was a simple one. “Have fun with it.” With a slow, methodical control, Dan built up his mana around everyone in the building. He made sure to keep a slight distance until he was ready. By the time he was done, Dan was nearly sweating from the exertion but the work was done. He took a deep breath.

Then he screamed.

It wasn’t a much different concept than when he communicated with his allies in the forest, the labyrinth or anywhere else there was chaos. The only difference was the volume of his communication. To Shazaar and anyone else in this large building, it would sound like Dan’s most pure scream of anger was erupting from nothingness. The effect was dramatic, with a slew of other voices joining the chorus by adding their fearful cries to Dan’s own yell of rage.

Dan surprised even himself with the efficacy of this. When a technique is used, mana is drained just like when carrying something heavy, other energies are expended. The cost of this cacophony was nearly nonexistent, if Dan chose he could continue the caterwauling forever. Before he could muse on what else he could do with this control, his captors were approaching.

When the door opened, however, it was not the blue skin of Shazaar that he saw, but a different man. More fierce in his stature, more powerful in pose. He wore a crisp outfit of dark fabrics, pressed trousers and light black leather boots. His clothes’ colours were accenting dark skin, the bright buttons on his uniform combining with his natural tones to make him look like a night sky given humanoid form.

The opening of his cell door allowed more of Dan’s cloud of mana to burst out. Like a curtain being opened and allowing in the sunlight, Dan could see the hallway much more clearly now. As well as the person currently entering the room with the intense looking majaal.

“You?” Dan expelled his voice through his mana unintentionally, the venomous spittle that flew from his own lips echoing through the stone halls. Stalking into his room like a fox which had found a rabbit warren, Guan Po Daiyu’s saccharine smile was flavoured with nothing but malice. Without another word Dan left his half relaxed position and pushed his mana to screaming velocity as quickly as he could.

“Peace,” the murderous viper sat, her sibilance turning from a hiss to a hush, “I am just as surprised to see you here as you are me.” She was wearing ceremonial Guan robes and seemed to be carrying no weapons. Now that there was no dampening from the labyrinth stone, Dan could feel that her mana was calm. Her blade was sheathed, for now.

“What’s going on here?” Dan asked, his own energy coursing through him, ready to erupt as much as possible given a moment’s notice. “Where am I? Who are you?”

“It makes sense that you have questions.” The man’s voice was deep, methodical. It sounded like leather over sand. He spoke with a tense neck, each word slow and seeming like a struggle to maintain composure. “I also have questions. You will find,” he paused and Dan felt a hand grab his throat, though no one moved, “that I hold more weight in my questioning.” Like an invisible hand had squeezed his neck, Dan felt throttled in every sense. His breathing stopped in an instant, as though the man could choke him with a thought. His mana seemed to freeze for a second, too.

Then the feeling passed. Dan gasped and dropped to his knees. His ability to fight, his desire to fight, seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving him feeling weak and cowardly.

“Let us move somewhere more comfortable.” The man said, leaving the room and leading Guan Po Daiyu’s smirking face away as two guards entered.