“Don’t search for me, Rook.”

“Sarah?” I called out. I was lost in a field of mist, the cold, damp air clinging to my skin. “Sarah? Where are you!?”

“Don’t Rook.”

I could hear her voice. I was sure she was so close, just beyond the wall of mist.

“Don’t torture yourself this way.”

“Sarah, please!” I was desperate. Knowing she was so close, but somehow so, so far away.

“We’re never going to see each other again, Rook.” Her voice was sturdy, but I had known her long enough to know when she was putting up a front. “Just… let me go. Live your life.”

“But Sarah!”

“Don’t.” I could hear her scoff, just out of sight. “You’ve always been pigheaded, but just listen to me for once. Soon, I’ll forget my life as it was, I think. Every day, the memories grow dimmer and dimmer. But, before I forget it all, I’m happy I got to talk to you one last time.”

“Sarah…” I wanted to say something more, but what was there to say?

The landscape hidden within a sea of mist stirred, and before me, the fog parted just long enough that I could make out a figure standing in the distance.

“Sarah!”

The figure turned around, and there was no doubt about it.

It was Sarah. She was wearing clothes I was unfamiliar with, but it couldn’t be anyone besides her. I ran with all my might toward her, a sad smile crossing her face as she watched me. Before I could reach her, though, it was as if I had slammed into an invisible wall.

“Sarah? What’s going on?”

“I told you already.” She shook her head, still smiling sadly. “But we won’t be seeing each other again.”

I pounded on the wall with all my might but couldn’t break through the invisible barrier.

“Rook.”

I looked up, tears streaming down my face, to see Sarah pressing the palm of her hand against the wall. I wiped the tears with the crook of my arm before slowly raising my palm and pressing it against my side of the invisible barrier.

So close, and yet, she may as well be in a different world entirely.

“Thank you, Rook.”

“Yeah.” I snuffled, my heart hurting. “Yeah.”

I pressed my forehead against the invisible barrier, the sensation cold to the touch. On the other side of the wall, I saw Sarah copying me.

“I’ll miss you.”

“No,-” Sarah whispered. “-you won’t.”

-------------------------------------

When I woke up, I reached to feel my face, my heart hurting.

Tears. There were tears on my face.

Was I crying in my sleep?

I put my face in my hands, the aching in my chest slowly fading.

I’d had a dream. A sad one, I was sure.

But of what?

I lost someone.

I was sure of that. I must have lost someone special to me in my dream.

But who?

The only people in my life I cared so for about were my mother and –

-and who?

I couldn’t figure it out. Whenever I grasped at the fading memories, all that remained was a black mist in the shape of a person staring back at me until it disappeared like it had never been there.

What was I doing?

I rubbed at my eyes, and as I did, even the thought of the black mist in the shape of a person from my memories faded until I was squinting out the window, staring at the sun’s morning rays shining through a faint morning mist.

Wouldn’t expect mist in the desert, but what do I know?

I stood up, stretching as I thought about my plans for the day. We would set out for the Ring Gate, but I still had to pick up my clothes from the thread shop before that.

That’s right. The wacko tailor kicked me out.

I grabbed my travel clothes, taking a moment to reminisce over them as I looked down at the tunic in my hands before I quickly got dressed.

This would be my last time wearing them, and something about the thought hit me harder than it should have.

Whatever Rook. It’s just some clothes.

Perhaps I was feeling overly sentimental today. Maybe the desert air was doing something to me; I wasn’t sure. I quickly changed, grabbing my sword from where I had laid it beneath the cot I had stayed on for the night.

Oooh. That’s not great.

Inspecting my blade, I noticed knicks lining the edges, the sword dearly suffering under strenuous wear and tear.

The thought frightened me. Not because I expected my blade to last forever but because it hadn’t suffered enough to be in this state by all rights. Something had caused my sword’s degeneration to accelerate.

But the only thing different was-

Was that I’d taken a recent trip through an unknown dimension of horrifically powerful mana.

If this is what it does to a sword, then what does that mean for me?

I shook my head, shelving the sinister thoughts. Pondering things that I had no hope of answering would lead me nowhere fast; I’d only end up harboring self-doubt

Let’s just focus on the day for now.

Changed, and with my sword belted inside my cloak, I made my way toward the room where the Red Foxes were lodged, giving the door a quick knock.

Nothing.

Must be out taking care of stuff already.

I turned around, making my way to the stairs. I took them two at a time until I was back on the main floor, where I looked about; the pub portion of the adventurer’s rest was empty, save for a single man drinking at the bar.

Isn’t that the same guy from yesterday? How early did he start? Wait, did he ever even stop?

It was impressive in a sad sort of way but nonetheless unimportant. I had already paid for my cot for the night, so I was free to leave as I wished. Walking outside, I took a moment to let the early desert rays shine down on me uninterrupted. The way the air shimmed was mesmerizing, an uncommon sight back home, cold as it was. Still early in the morning, even the usual ruckus of the city was quiet and subdued, only adding to the peaceful atmosphere.

Taking one last deep breath of the fresh morning air, I braced myself for my task.

Now, where was Sinbad’s again?

-----------------------------------------

The good news was that it took me far less time to find Sinbad’s than yesterday.

The bad news was it was closed.

You’re kidding me, right?

I stood in front of the shop, staring at the sign that had been left outside.

Closed until noon.

Noon. I stared at the sky, looking for the answer I already knew.

Noon. Otherwise known as a good six hours from now.

I sighed, looking for a place to sit. It was my fault; I hadn’t taken the time to find out when they opened, and here I was, out too early. By leaving my room at the inn, I had forfeited my rights to it, so I was out of luck unless I wanted to pay for another night. Unable to return, I considered the rest of my choices.

Plan A. I go to… you know what, on second thought, I’ve got nothing.

I wasn’t familiar with the area, so it wasn’t as if I could explore without getting lost. As I looked around, it was clear that no places were open at this time in the morning either.

Returning to the inn is out of the cards, as is exploring, so I might as well be productive with my time.

Before long, I found a nearby sandstone block slightly shorter than waist height. I had no idea what it was intended for or why a block of sandstone would be left randomly strewn about in the middle of a city, but I sat down upon it anyway. Settling in, I crossed my legs, closing my eyes.

And… breath.

The great thing about early mornings is that they are one of the best opportunities to be left undisturbed. During the day proper, you deal with the everyday activity of daylight hours. At night, you risked running into less than favorable individuals or being mistaken for one.

But in the morning, the world was for you alone.

Breath.

My eyes closed, and my senses stretched as my mind stilled, active but calm.

Breath. Feel the mana around you.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Deep in concentration, I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The world seemed to extend in every direction, another dimension of perceptional depth as I sensed the mana of the immediate vicinity.

Good. Now, what do we feel?

As with last time, much of the mana was of earthen or thermal nature, but early in the morning as it was, I could sense a greater degree of mana with a more fluid-like feel to it, akin to dewdrops in the morning.

Now that that’s taken care of, let’s begin.

I stretched my arm out, slowly pulling the earthen mana into my body through my arm, condensing it and sorting it piece by tiny metaphysical piece.

Crystallization is the act of taking mana from around us and giving it physical form. All rings of a Sage must be created through the primary crystallization of mana into the material world. Of the rings, the foundational ring requires crystallization of the most basic degree.

I had read those words within the pages of the Living Tome. Even after reflecting on them, the practice they spoke of, of taking mana and creating a physical form from it, seemed… alien. It wasn’t the same as simply using mana to create a spear of stone or metal; that was temporary. What I was looking to do was much more permanent.

Put the mana together like building blocks, and then use those to build up from. Easy.

Sure. Just as easy as waving your arms to fly.

I continued imagining the earthen mana forming into the tiniest of beads within my mind before rearranging them in neatly ordered rows. Credit where credit was due; unlike the last few times where my mental capacity had failed after only a few neatly ordered rows, this time, I made it nearly four dozen lines before I gave out, the beads of earthen mana breaking down and escaping my body with a pained groan as I opened my eyes, bent over as I clutched at my right arm where I had been trying to form the foundation of the first ring.

“Ow,” I muttered, gritting my teeth as my arm felt like it had been battered by a hammer.

I’d made progress, but the thought was of little comfort. I had managed a few dozen lines of organized structured mana, but I would need thousands more to begin forming the ring.

Damnit. If just a few dozen lines of mana escaping causes me this much pain, suppose what will happen if my mental concentration fails with several thousand.

I was stuck. Without a core to store mana in the first place and a body that wouldn’t reject external mana, I would be forced to create the ring in complete segments rather than gradually adding to it in progressive intervals. If the progress of the Sages of the past could be measured as a gently sloping line or hill, I would be like an erratic stack of blocks from which you would be forced to jump from one plateau to another.

Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

The worst part was that the foundational and second sage rings were supposed to be the easiest, which had been made almost painfully clear to me. Thousands had obtained their foundation ring in the time of the Sages. Still, the higher one climbed upon the mountain of ascension, the long and arduous path to becoming a Great Sage, the fewer there were that could claim the prestige of reaching the very pinnacle of ten rings, an achievement that had only been done selectively over their thousand years of lost history.

Or at least that was what my master had told me. For all I knew, he could have been exaggerating.

Still, whether exaggerated or not, his point stands all the same.

I was stuck, lost, and clueless. I had no mentor, no ancient tome of the past, nothing.

Just me, myself, and whatever I had picked up from the Living Tome in the short time I had with it.

Damnit.

I closed my eyes again in frustration. I may not have known the answer, but if there was one thing I’d picked up over years of practicing with my sword every day, it was that there was no such thing as wasted effort.

“When in doubt, try until you can doubt no more.” I quietly mouthed words that my mother’s old party member had taught me as a child, laying the foundation upon which I built my sword skills.

Feel the mana.

I once more felt my perception stretch outward in every direction as my awareness of mana redoubled, disrupted after I had opened my eyes.

I was about to repeat my earlier process, but I stopped myself, holding my hand close to my chest as I thought about it.

I get trying until you can doubt no more, but just testing the same means and expecting something different is no different than trying to bust through a brick wall headfirst.

My method was flawed somehow. That much I was confident. The question was how?

When you build a house, do you go straight to throwing up the walls?

No, of course not.

You must lay the foundation first.

If crystalized mana was required to build the skeleton of my foundation ring, I needed something to form that structure’s blueprint and construct the frame upon it in the first place. Pulling my hand back down to my side, eyes still shut, I continued taking slow, rhythmic breaths.

Feel it.

If I wanted to do things differently, it would start with how I drew upon the mana around me. Rather than focus on the dense, heavy mana of the earth, I focused on the almost dew-like mana within the desert that would only gather in such concentration during the early morning hours.

Focus.

I began to feel as if I were floating away, the aqueous mana threatening to rip my sense of self from my body. Where earthen mana was heavy and slow to move, fluid mana was the opposite, free-flowing and challenging to keep from moving too much.

I needed a way to help reinforce my focus.

Think!

Scrambling through the innermost parts of my mind, it was as if it came to me in a moment of panicked self-preservation, the diagram of the human body charted out by the magical words of power.

Aulous. Water. Fluid. That’s it!

When it came to aqueous mana, one didn’t manipulate it directly, at least not at my current skill level. I had to focus on guiding it, like how blood was pumped through the veins rather than freely flowing through the body.

Storing the mental image of miniature channels just below my right wrist, I pushed the fluid mana I had drawn in through my mental image. The mana responded, rushing to accommodate the mental image I held firmly within my mind. Instantly it began to circulate faster and faster, eroding a gulch below my wrist. Swirling and rotating rapidly, I had to resist the urge to open my eyes and scratch at my arm, the feeling of the mana rapidly sawing away at the metaphysical level irritating me like a physical itch.

I let the mana work away for as long as I could mentally hold it together. Still, I inevitably hit my wall, unable to withstand the arduous mental effort any longer. When the mana invariably rushed free from me, rather than the painful hammering feeling that accompanied the escape of earthen mana, I felt as if I were gargling water, my lungs filling up.

Then it was gone, leaving me awkwardly clawing at my throat.

Well, that was…. Something.

I stared down at my wrist. Physically, it appeared the same, but focusing on my perception of mana before it completely faded, I could picture the tiniest of carved tracks, the beginnings of a place where I could build the foundational structure of my first ring.

It was barely anything.

But barely anything was still something.

“Someone seems pleased with himself.”

I jumped in surprise, the source of the voice sneaking up on me from behind.

‘Sneaking up’ implies I had been paying attention in the first place.

Turning around, I was greeted by the smiling face of the thread store owner.

“Sinbad?”

“Considering you’re parked in front of my store, who else would you expect?”

“I thought you weren’t open until noon?” I questioned, squinting my eyes in confusion.

In response, the man merely pointed up toward the sky. My eyes followed the path of his finger until I was shielding my eyes as I looked up.

“Oh.”

I had lost track of time.

Again.

What had felt like no more than an hour had turned into six, the sun high in the sky directly overhead.

“Would you like to see your clothes?” Sinbad chuckled as I struggled to smother my look of shocked apprehension after losing track of so much time.

“Umm…. Yes?”

“Good.” The man gestured me to his store, flipping the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open.’ “In truth, I’ve been done since this morning.”

“And you’ve seen me outside this entire time?”

“Yes.”

“And you couldn’t… I don’t know… Give me them so I could be on my way?”

“Well,” Sinbad shrugged. “I was enjoying watching you struggle.”

“I wasn’t struggling.” I lied before realizing it sounded awfully like I was admitting to something. “I was just, uh, sitting there.”

“If that is what you wish to say, then that is what I shall pretend to believe, my dearest customer.” The man gestured me toward the back of the store, leading me to what looked to be a small closest.

“And here we…. Are!”

Thrusting the door open, I was greeted by the sight of a small table with needles and threads strewn across it. Directly next to the table was a mannequin roughly my height, wearing what could have only been my clothes.

“And how do we feel?” Sinbad poked me forward, prompting me to step closer as I inspected the garments.

“I….” I was at a loss for words, unsure what to say. The clothes were beautifully made, day and night, compared to the run-of-the-mill garments hanging from the hangars and racks of the store’s main floor. “How much do these cost?”

“Free of charge.” The man proudly exclaimed.

“Free of- what?”

“Free. Do they not have free things up north?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I just- never mind. Why give them for free?”

“Because you are an interesting case.” The man circled around me once before gesturing toward the clothes. “Clothes should reflect the wearer for most, boring clothes for boring people. But you, you are no boring person. I can see that much.”

“You think I’m somehow going to bring you more business or something?” I questioned with my eyebrows raised.

“Bah.” Sinbad shook his head as if tasting something sour. “To those who appreciate clothes, it is an art, a story written of threads, not paper. My goal is to write the greatest story, which can only be achieved by finding the proper tapestries for my paintings.”

“You know you just mixed metaphors?”

“Do you want your clothes free, yes, or no?”

“Thank you for the clothes.” I bowed instantly, with no intention of talking myself out of free stuff. I still had two golden rosts left over from what my mother had left me, but I doubted two rost would be enough for garments as fine as these. As with the general fashion of the desert, they had the same billowy pants that tightened around the ankles. They were pitch black, and he brushed me aside before I could point out to Sinbad that black was probably unwise for a desert.

“I know what you may be thinking. ‘Oh, great Sinbad, why dark garments in the desert.’”

“I don’t know about the ‘Great’ part,” I murmured.

“The answer-” He continued, never hearing my comment or simply choosing to ignore it. “-is in the threads. Go on, give it a feel.”

I reached out, grazing the material as my eyes widened.

“Ahah, you see! Yes, these are no ordinary threads. Desert Silk is light and loose flowing but without trapping the heat. In fact, the Desert Silk draws heat in from one direction and exudes it out the other side.”

“That’s amazing. But, uh, what’s with the shirt.”

Or rather, the lack thereof. The upper half of the mannequin was covered only by an unbuttoned vest the color of evergreen pines that clung rather snuggly to the mannequin’s chest.

“Ahh, yes. It is made of the same silk, so it does not matter whether it clings tightly. You will remain cool all the same.”

“I meant, why is it so…. Showy?”

“Art!” Sinbad put his hands on his hip as if hurt that I would even ask such an obvious question. “True art, true storytelling, is a blend of the threads and the person wearing them. Just as I must make the clothes stand proudly, they must accent the wearer. Though-” He gave me a quick once over. “You will grow into it eventually.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Now, no worries. As you seem fond of the cloak style, I also have this.”

Grabbing something I hadn’t noticed from a rack behind the door, he threw another garment onto the mannequin, a grey cloak of a considerably gruffer-looking material.

“Stone Wool,” Sinbad answered before I could question it. “Temperature-wise, it functions much like ordinary wool, but the wool fibers react to physical trauma, helping to disperse the energy of an impact.”

“And what makes you think I need something like that?” I questioned.

His answer was to merely raise his eyebrows at me.

“Fine.” I couldn’t deny that I did enjoy the look of the cloak. It wasn’t overly showy, but even in its simpleness, there was a refinement capable of being brought forth only by a master threader.

“Anything else?” I asked after a moment of admiring.

“My, aren’t we just demanding.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” I raised my hands in pleading.

“Relax, I jest. But yes, in fact, there is one more thing.” Pulling something out from a desk drawer, he showed it to me.

“Are those… arm wraps?”

“Extend an arm, would you?” Sinbad pointed toward my right arm.

“Hey, what are you-” Sinbad cut me off as he quickly wound the cloth around my arms, wrapping everything from my wrists to my elbows.

“Why?” I questioned, prodding the fabric.

“I’ll answer that in,” The man tapped a finger against his cheek. “-about fifteen seconds.”

“What happens in fifteen- ” Once again, before I could finish my sentence, he stuck a hand in my face.

“You’ll see. Now hush.”

Begrudgingly I did, counting down in my head.

Three…two….one.

Right on cue, the cloth wrapped around my arm began to warm, the fabric melding together until it was a single uniform fabric maintaining the outward appearance of a roll of simple cloth.

“What just happened?” I stared at him with a look of tentative concern.

“It formed a soul tether.”

“It- what?”

“A soul tether. Divine hand wraps. Only able to be cut by a select few things in the world. Not just that, it can mask mana beneath them. You wouldn’t believe how long it took to get my hands on that. Not just that, send some mana into them.”

“What do you me-”

“Let’s not play stupid for a moment.” The man rolled his eyes at me. “Just do as I said.”

Reluctantly I nodded, letting the few sparks of mana within me travel from my body toward the hand wrap.

The first thing that surprised me was that the clothes felt like part of my body, what little mana I did have capable of traversing from me and into the wrap as if it were any other part of my body.

Still, it paled compared to my shock when the cloth vanished, turning invisible as my mana entered it.

“With just a little practice, you can manifest or disappear them at will, but I suggest keeping them out for the time being.”

I narrowed my eyes, staring hard at the man.

“What?”

“Who are you?” I finally questioned. “I thought it was strange that you could make an entire outfit in a single night, but now this.” I waved toward my arm as the wrap reappeared. The man had shown an uncanny degree of intuition, boarding on precognition of things he had no right to know and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that he was giving this all away for free.

“I am the simple thread weaver.” Sinbad’s eyes twinkled.

“The?” I didn’t miss the strange phrasing. “Not a simple thread weaver, but the thread weaver.”

Sinbad was still smiling at me as he looked past me.

“I do believe you have places to be, young Rook. I’ll tell you what, return once you begin on your sixth ring; I will prepare a second divinity wrap for you.”

My jaw dropped.

He even knew about the rings.

Meaning he knew about Sages.

Just who, or what, is he?

“Time to go.” Sinbad clapped, and just like that, I was outside, falling on my butt as the door slammed shut behind me.

“I think,” I murmured as I got up, dusting my butt off and looking over my shoulder at the tightly closed door. “I just ran into someone or something incredible.”