Dan cycled his mana and shut the rest of the world out.

That was easier said than done because cycling his mana, and doing it as aggressively as he was, left him open to analysing the room around him. A room which did not truly exist, and felt to his mind like an infinite void. It was a horrible, instantly nauseating feeling. Dan’s mana bounced off the powerful magical items, finding no purchase and then fell away, not able to touch the illusory floors and walls.

Dan was gritting his teeth, pushing past that feeling.

Expand your mana, but remove your connection. Dan knew that it was simply his own nature that was keeping his perception linked to the spray of mana that expelled from his core. Other practitioners had no such issues. They didn’t see the world through their energy in the way he did.

Yet as he pondered, sitting in that horrible, empty feeling with his eyes and ears closed to his companions, Dan could feel his new mantra working. Expand your mana, but remove your connection. The density of the mana within his core was growing, giving himself a focal point to centre himself. The mana outside was thin, it became easier and easier to find himself in the waves of mana. The room itself was a mass-scale grand construction. Dan couldn’t even begin to piece together the techniques and artistry that would have been required to shape such a vault. Finding himself in that overwhelming place was like spotting a far off star while watching a firework display.

When Dan was confident that he had surged his mana to the fullest, his core swelling and straining, he finally spoke. “I’m ready.”

The two small sparks behind Dan’s back, burning pinpricks of orange and blue - Hyun Soon and Xiaomei - wavered. Dan could see their emotions more plainly on their core than if he was looking them in the eye. There was a larger flame in front of Dan, a brighter luminescence, but it burned with a blackness that overwhelmed the nothing around it. The soul stone. On the other side of that black voidlight was Guan Fa Lian. The other sparks, the soul stone, even Dan himself, they were all similar in nature.

Guan Fa Lian’s light pulsed like a nebula. A quasar of black, violet, green, red, blue and yellow. It was both glorious and terrible to behold. Dan could see Fa Lian’s gargantuan mana but the vessel containing it was so strained and pressured that Dan was surprised the girl had not exploded simply sitting down.

Like a candle in front of a bonfire, Guan Fa Lian’s mana was smothered by a much larger power. A power that held the same pitch black mana as the soul stone. Would Dan’s mana feel like that after he absorbed the small orb before him?

“Good, because here it comes.”

Without any more warning than that, Fa Lian picked up the soul stone and pressed it into Dan’s core.

Dan experienced a sensation much like his nightmares. A feeling of being torn asunder, ripped from all forms of self and body, tossed to the far flung corners of the world. It was only because he had been warned prior that Dan did not completely lose himself to the annihilation. Additionally, as he had suspected, he had felt a similar feeling before. A part of his mind erected enough barriers in time to keep Dan sane.

“How are you feeling?”

Like an explosion heard through water, the words sounded all around Dan. He didn’t know how to speak, because he couldn’t figure out where his mouth was. As he tried to say, “no, help me,” all that happened was a tightening around Dan’s core.

“You have to push your mana even harder, Dan. A soul stone is meant to be absorbed at the star stage, so you need to reach star right now or you’ll die, remember?”

Not particularly comforting words, booming all around him like thunder. I’m trying, Dan thought, his teeth grinding together so hard he was sure they would snap. He wasn’t able to speak the words, not right now, so he focused on not swallowing his tongue instead. He tried to remember the conversations that had come before this, but right now it felt like everything that had come before was a lie, and the only truth was the inescapable weight of the soul stone within.

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“Breathe.”

Unlike thunder, these words came as a melody from within his very soul. The invincible, phantom hand constricting Dan’s throat loosened, and he gasped in and out, expelling some of the pain and nourishing his screaming brain. He had held his breath since just before the soul entered his core.

“I can’t.” Dan gasped out.

“You can.” The flicker of orange energy said, rumbling like a stone down a hill.

“It’s too heavy.” Dan complained.

“Then let us help.” This time the blue flame spoke. Then, together, orange and blue connected to Dan’s beleaguered, dim white glow. Dan’s mana felt fuel close by and took what it could. Distantly, he heard two sharp inhales, Hyun Soon and Xiaomei both feeling their mana drain without being refilled.

“Thank you.” The energy became his own and Dan was suddenly in control of himself enough to speak. The rage of his mana calmed, and Dan could feel himself again. It really was like holding a boulder over his head, but the weight was becoming more and more habitual. With Hyun and Xiaomei’s assistance, the overbearing intent from the soul stone was pushed at bay.

He had not reached star stage yet, but he had pushed into an equilibrium.

Like the silhouette of an impossibly large giant, the power within the soul stone loomed over Dan imposingly from within his core. The pressure of it stretched Dan’s core but only on one side. He could feel Hyun Soon’s energy, that orange, stoic power that created armour sitting cramped on one of the four sides to his core. Xiaomei’s cool streaks of blue danced and flowed in the small space opposite. One tiny part of Dan’s core was left for his own mana, the bulging mass of the soul stone leaving only a tiny corner.

It was working. The pain in his core was now familiar, he could feel the expansion happening and worked with it. Square to star. Four sides to a core? That wasn’t right, Dan could see now. That was limitation, an innate flinch at the prospect of all that power. Dan needed to see past such small thinking. If he had control of himself, he might have chuckled and said he needed to think outside the box.

Together, the light of Hyun Soon and Xiaomei gave Dan enough space within his core to cycle his own mana. If his core was a square, then each side should have been the same size, but that wasn’t the case.

There was no shape.

“There is no shape.” Dan said aloud, forcing the truth of it into the world. His core wasn’t a container, or a machine by which he produced mana. No, the core was mana itself, and mana has no shape or constraints. Mana didn’t have rules like that, nor did it act the same way every time. Dan himself should have been the most aware of this of anyone. It had taken trusting himself, growing alongside his friends and a lot of risks before Dan could picture forging his own path.

It was simple.

Dan filled his lungs slowly through his mouth before expelling the breath from his nose. Here goes nothing, he thought, praying that the answer he had come to was the right one. Taking one more large breath, Dan let the crushing mana do as it was desperate to.

He dropped the weight, and let it shatter his core.

Much like the wooden floor below him, Dan’s image of his core was an illusion. It had only been given form by his own perception of it. By throwing away that false idea, Dan let the mana be where it wanted. It was still his, all of the mana within was his. The separation between his own mana and the mana of his friends fell away, the distinction lost as all of the mana within spread around his whole body.

In the place that he used to believe his core sat was now the soul stone. Its weight was no longer an issue, like a heavy stone being dropped into the ocean.

Relief spread through Dan just as easily as his mana now did. No longer was he a small spark, but a roaring inferno himself. As the centre of those soaring white flames was the dark energy of the soul stone. Even now, Dan could feel its power and intent, and did not know whether it had been the soul stone or himself that had made that final push into star.

Opening his eyes for the first time since the process started, Dan was met with a confused face. Guan Fa Lian seemed almost upset, and when her eyes met his she stood and turned away before congratulating him. “Guan Ah Dan, you rise to the peak of the Guan family. No one can say that you do not deserve your place any more.” Dan gave Fa Lian’s emotions privacy, keeping his senses to himself. Instead he let himself revel in the warmth that was flowing through him. Not mana, but powerful pride at Fa Lian’s words.

“Thank you, Guan Fa Lian.” Dan rose also, the spot chosen to perform the bonding had been random. Looking around, Dan’s vision blurred. He stumbled and dropped to one knee, catching himself with his hands. Xiaomei and Hyun Soon moved to him, and he waved them off, falling back onto his rear. “I’m fine, just lightheaded. That was a lot.” Dan flexed his fingers on both of his hands, and rolled his head, trying to loosen up.

“We have to move.”

“Give him a minute, at least.” Xiaomei defended Dan from Fa Lian’s impatience. “Don’t you have one of those things too? You must know how it feels.”

“No,” Fa Lian’s voice was bladed, Dan realised in that moment that she sounded a lot like Po Daiyu, “I don’t know how it feels. I’m not star stage. My soul stone wasn’t the same… it’s not important.”

She huffed and turned her back, stalking away slightly before looking intensely at a large suit of armour which had become very interesting all of a sudden.

“She’s not wrong, though.” Dan made sure his voice was loud enough to carry over to the Guan heiress. Dan didn’t know enough to assume upon her emotions, but his absorption of the soul stone had affected her. Dan wasn’t just agreeing because he wanted to bring Fa Lian back to the conversation.

They needed to move because someone was breaking into the vault.