The night is crisp, clear, and beautiful.

One of the new things that comes with her changes, with the fact that she can actually allow herself to experience things now, is that she can push herself. Not always, not every time… but sometimes The Want, guiding the Mask, guiding the Flesh. And on nights like tonight, she can choose how.

She’s sitting at the edge of the pond, at the deepest part of their little valley. Far, far behind her, if she really pushes herself, she can hear Li Shu, Qen Hou and Hao Nera, the occasional moan, but they’re far enough that if she doesn’t listen for it, it’s not there.

She lays the kid down on the ground, in a dry spot, and sets a small Flame near him. It’s a bit comedic, using True Flame, devourer of all things and transmutator of all it consumes, as a little campfire for some kid to be warm as he sleeps. She can’t help but chuckle at the sight of it, quiet enough that she knows he won’t hear.

And she looks up at the night sky to see the stars.

If you look really, really close, you can see the night.

It took her a while to figure it out. A lot of different moments of looking up into the night, trying to understand what it looks like, what she can see there, if she can see it at all.

Her vision can go for miles and miles. If she got high enough, she’s fairly certain she could see the blurry outlines of at least the mountains from one end of the third ring to another. The sky, unfortunately, goes much higher than that.

But not that much higher.

She can see, vaguely, where it ends.

Looking straight up at the night, she sees the stars. From here, they look like little holes in the world. They blink sometimes, like eyes. On-dark-on. On-dark-on. Almost all of them have heat. Superficially, their edges even look similar to the sun in the sky, now drifting apart along the horizons of the fifth ring in the nightless lands. Not quite, though. They shimmer and writhe, flames feeding on (or feeding into?) reality around them and blazing with many-hued fires along their edges… but their centers are all hollow. Like holes in three dimensions, like worms eating an apple but in every direction at once. Some are perfectly round, some jagged, some even seem to have strange curves, but always… hollow.

She can’t see through them. She imagines if she could, it would hurt very, very much. But she can see them, the empty things, pale and impossible and glowing. Twisting holes to… something. Sometimes it feels like they’re looking back.

And in the black between them, beyond them… she can see it. Like fog. Like water. Like shadow. Like twitching, rotting flesh. Like distant, crackling lightning. Like a million things, all of them one, none of them all. She sees the Night. And it is… it is beautiful. And obscene. And horrifying.

She lets her eyes relax, the Flesh sending in signals that they’ll have to build new ones now. They’re fine for casual use, the damage subtle, but she can tell that they’ll only get worse. She wonders if others see things like the Night. Like the Stars. If astronomers and cultivators of the stars feel them, if they see them in their truest forms… or if they look like twinkling lights in the dark. If she somehow has “True Sight” to go along with her “True Speak”. If by changing her senses, she’s experiencing something completely new. If she’s simply mad, even now. She doubts many have seen them. There are stories, of course. Old poems and wives’ tales about the people in the stars, how the stars blinking means that they’re interested, how if they stop blinking you live in truly interesting times. That the gods watch through the stars.

She’s fairly sure that if they could see as she does when she pushes herself, they’d be much more intense, and much more common, those stories. That there’d be a touch more fear to them.

Sometimes, the most beautiful things in life are horrors. Sometimes, the most horrible things in the world are beautiful. But looking up at the sky and seeing the things that hide behind the sun, that look down on the world in impossible ways from holes dug into that shattering, mind-altering, pitch black abyss…

The stories would be darker, she thinks. And people would be a fair bit more afraid.

Maybe that’s why they don’t tell anyone. Maybe all the high-level cultivators can see it. Or maybe not.

As her flesh melts and is reborn, her eyeballs squelching into existence anew, she looks down at the three books in front of her.

Supreme Body Art.

Truth Comprehension.

Core Construction.

The names are wishful things. Hopeful ones, that the theories within them might somehow, someday lead to the lofty heights they propose. Less instruction manuals and more theorems.

By far the weakest and least complete of them is Truth Comprehension. Mainly just Raika’s own thoughts with Hao Nera’s input (who, surprisingly, seems like the closest of the group towards a Truth of his own). It’s ideas for comprehension, as the title states, an exploration of what they might mean, how interpretation shifts them, how one might potentially go about finding or creating one. Every time she’s created or found a Truth, it’s felt like a crystallization of something, neither a wholesale invention nor some hidden secret. It’s like… realizing something she’d always known, deep down, and setting it into reality. Things can bleed, space has space, time moves forward- and I Can Change. Every time those Truths were challenged, most of them came away smaller, or more damaged- but not always. I Am Me, I Am Mine, still her least understood of her two Truths, feels like it no longer quite fits after having her will subverted by Taurus and Zhoulong both- but it didn’t break. She is herself now, and perhaps it would be harder for that same type of harm to occur again. It’s… unclear, and it's obvious there’s a cost. Theoretically there’s even ways for a Truth to be not just harmful, but overwhelming, like with Project 13’s Everything Is Sharp And It Hurts. Literal edges of strange material were growing from its very body, even though its Truth didn’t exactly say “knives grow out of my meat”. There’s a lot she still doesn’t understand, and it’s possible that every Truth is wholly and explicitly unique, even with identical wording, and might shift dramatically with one’s perception of said Truth.

The second book is by far the most technical and precise. Supreme Body Art. Weeks worth of Li Shu’s notes and ideas, codified and made kinda-sorta into something coherent. More specifically, several deeply independent coherent somethings, vaguely tied into each other.

Between her own theories and ideas and her exploration of the beast tide that Raika left behind her (and wasn’t that a hell of a coincidence), she’s set up dozens and dozens of pages of notes on anatomy. Some of it’s familiar, talking about muscle groups, bone density, even some things that Raika herself already figured out- but not exclusively. There are different ways of looking at things, and Li Shu focuses on how different bodies are optimized, how blood flow is required from them, the most efficient forms of the nerves and blood and bone all together. There’s notes, serious ones, on different organs, different mechanics in each of them. She got to learn what a liver is, what it actually does, the detoxification process and the creations of proteins and materials. A hundred different detailed adjustments happening on the fly, constantly; fat, acids, sugars, proteins, chem storage. How there are certain universal chemicals dedicated to controlling and manipulating the many systems, not just adrenaline but far more. A hundred pages worth of detailed, close work; the strange branch-like structures inside a lung, the variable number of lobes they can possess, the twisting, winding tunnels of a digestive tract and their independent musculature and chemical saturations, and, of course, notes on all the impossible variations of the heart and its many valves.

Interestingly, not much about Qi structures. Some, sure, especially in spirit beasts, but to properly see a creature’s meridians and Dantian requires specialized sight or incredible senses, and what little notes Li Shu has jotted down focus on how what little remnants there are tend to grow through gaps between lobes and joints, how they mimic the biological curves of the spaces between biological organs and tools. Wrapping them and growing through them both, like the roots of a strange tree, only its dissipating tubes visible as death and bodily damage breaks them apart. She has a lot further to study them, but the possibilities in this one book feel almost as limitless as the possibilities in Truth Comprehension.

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The third one, however, is her focus for tonight.

Core Construction.

She lost her Dantian. A metaphysical, meta-biological, central part of the self. Within it, all Qi that is connected to a person’s mind and soul flows and is stored. Once one advances high enough (into Core Formation realm, to be precise), that Qi is then focalized, concentrated and purified until it is made into an orb within the dantian, flavored and altered by prolonged contact with the soul and conscious will. It is within that core that a Soul is created, a higher being born of a cultivator’s whole self, ascended into higher form.

She has no Dantian in which to form a core. Ergo, as things stand, there should theoretically be no way at all for her to ever even begin to generate a Soul. Her growth is unique, true: “body” cultivation should, in theory, be the point in which one fuses their physical form with their ascended Soul. You can technically classify strengthening and training the body before then to be body cultivation, but… well, it’s like calling mining black powder to make a bomb the same as building the bomb itself.

So… this is theory.

Qen Hou was pretty integral for this one, but it remained mostly Li Shu. As the only one of them to reach Core Cultivation besides Raika herself, way the fuck back when, his insight is crucial, but Li Shu’s theories, her ability to improvise said theories into applicable concepts like curses and rituals, has even more bearing.

Raika has no Dantian. It’s not broken, or shattered, or damaged. If Feng Gui had been in the Nascent Soul realm, maybe that would’ve been as bad as it got, but, in retrospect now, he was likely in the Warrior realm. He reached into her soul, violated the deepest parts of her existence, and unmade what he found there. Every enlightenment, every moment of introspection, every resource she’d consumed, every drop of Qi she had painstakingly drank deep of- gone.

But… she’s done other impossible things. Even if it doesn’t end up a “traditional” core, it may still have benefits. So why not try?

Supreme Body Art will take months to master, and that’s without thinking through every possible interpretation or potential mixing and matching of the ideas in it. Truth Comprehension is effectively a meditation guide at this point.

But Core Creation… that’s something she can look into here and now, with clear and direct effects.

As she’s been thinking, she’s been reading. Flesh looking, Mask recording, Want remembering and exploring and thinking through the why of it.

Step one: a critical, direct inventory of supplies.

Step two: sources of fusion.

Step three: Implementation.

So. On to step one.

She sits across the lake from the kid, making sure that the fire is both contained and has enough fuel it won’t try to escape. Here, beneath impossible skies reflected in still waters, she sits, facing towards the home they’ve made over the last few months, looking out at the world at Night.

What she has:

Blacksteel, a material of semi-living, predatory End, manifested from a partial truth and pieces of the Cold Sun.

Raw Qi of genuinely terrifying potency, enough to infuse her biology with alchemical and mutated properties, which can already be “fused” with Blacksteel to incite predatory hunger into raw, existential motive force to create True Flame.

The aforementioned True Flame, a fusion of hungry death with ever-changing life and energy to approximate a version of a truly divine element. Likely imperfect, but, well, what isn’t.

Bio-manipulation born from her Truth. The ability to shape her body into whatever mechanical forms she can think of. Apparently, while still currently outside her direct control, she can also modify and infuse strange properties into organs and new biomorphic constructs.

Last but not least, two Truths, both of which allow her to alter and cement her perceptions of self, adapt to changes, and effectively bridge the gaps between all her impossible pieces. Both of them with vastly more potential than she’s utilized so far, and both with room to gain new interpretations and new manifestations.

She may not have perfect and precise Qi control like a “cultivator”, may not have the metaphysical weight and ability to fuse concepts together that a Witch has, or have pre-existing soul organs and the ability to instinctively use them, not like beasts or even regular people. Hell, there are probably plenty of other advantages she doesn’t have that others do. She still hasn’t met a Daemon, still hasn’t seen the truly strange things of the fifth ring or the first… but so what? She has things they don’t, that many of them never will. And she’s survived this long, grown powers she never imagined beforehand, because she didn’t give up, even torn apart and nearly unmade from within and without.

The only way that she can’t Change is if she ends her struggle here. And every part of her agrees that that’s not going to happen.

Raika, out of habit, enters a lotus stance, seating herself facing both the pond and Night above.

Slowly, step by step, she opens a hole in her chest.

The Want says what they need, the Mask classifies the pieces and requirements for their plan, and the Flesh takes the commands and builds what is asked of it, while informing the others of what won’t work or can’t be made.

The Flesh gets to work, dozens of pieces instinctively and programmably altering each other. The Mask keeps track of some of the parts of how things feel, recording the sensation to later try and put a name to the chemical reactions occurring, but that’s not the focus right now. Each part guides each other, Raika trusting the selves that she is and the whole self she is making to do what must be done. Her spine is reinforced once, then again, gradually fusing its bone structure into itself again and again until it’s the heaviest bone in her body. Her ribcage comes second, not quite as heavy, but made now of interlocking plates, blocking any gaps with that responsive nano-scale armor she built for just beneath the skin as layered protection, this time as much of those plates and scale-weave facing inwards as out. She moves her organs, setting each one separate from where it was before and adrift in pockets of flesh and form that branch off from her. She has to widen her veins and airways, expanding her lungs to almost triple size and setting up two additional hearts to offset the spaced-out biology without needing to use her Truths as a crutch.

In the empty cavity she’s made of her chest, armored and as dense as she can make it (to the point she needs to strengthen her sockets and other bones to hold the weight), she begins to move things together.

She has plenty of Blacksteel in her left arm now, having concentrated all the materials together into one central mass rather than leaving it all as just sharp implements spread through her body. She can still move into those forms if needed, and can feel how it would be… more comfortable that way? Better suited to be shaped into harsh edges and hungry tools. This way, however, it’s kept concentrated, better stored… and potentially less self destructive than keeping it next to her organs.

So she moves some of it back where her organs usually are.

It takes a while. It doesn’t want to move this way, doesn’t want to be shaped as she is shaping it. It wants to be sharp edges, to be mold and coral and End made into Death- but it is hers, and She Can Change. And in the end, she is, like, at least two and a half wills at this point.

She changes, and it changes with her.

Slowly, she forms a sphere in her chest.

And fails.

It’s not entirely on the Blacksteel. She can’t quite picture a perfect sphere. Not yet. Her mind continues to change, her biology and neurology shifting, but she’s not yet at the point of imagining new colors or impossible geometries, not yet.

Balance, then. She can’t quite give it the perfect shape, and the Blacksteel has shapes it prefers. There are ways to mess about with both.

She rebuilds the core, taking the Blacksteel and once again moving it through her flesh to the cavity at her center. She shapes one, singular shard into a flat, three-sided piece. Having such a thin, blade-like edge helps, allows the Blacksteel to mold itself more freely into a shape “befitting” its concept. Then, one by one, she aligns the pieces against each other, trying to create an orb out of them.

Doesn’t quite work. She can’t keep them stable when small enough, for one.

Less complicated for now, then. Larger pieces rather than a multitude of more complicated smaller ones. It takes a while to find the right fit, the right geometry to get things together, but eventually she settles on five-sided flat planes again.

This time, it fits.

She spends an hour or two watching, careful as can be, making sure every edge aligns perfectly. It takes her another hour after that to bind them together. In the end, she has to cut the Blacksteel pieces into each other to get them to fit solidly.The shavings left over ache, even in the parts of her that can use them, but some of the pieces are just too small, and she goes to push them out…

No. Waste not, want not. Instead, she carves a larger piece of Blacksteel into a sort of pyramidal shard, shaping it into place around the shavings. Now she has a small canister of Blacksteel shards in a larger Blacksteel shard. Not terrible.

Either way, she has a… “core”. An empty thing inside an empty cavity. But despite the way she built it, making it effectively airtight, she can still manipulate its contents.

She can literally feel I Am Me, I Am Mine change, expand the tiniest amount. Are the empty spaces within her not also herself, after all? Are not the inside of her mouth, the contents of her lungs, the space within her stomach, not a part of herself? In some ways it’s stretching the definition, but in others, it’s just… well, it’s True.

Slowly, she adjusts her flesh so that it is enveloping the Blacksteel core once again, pressing it tight and locking it into herself. Slowly, she weaves her veins against it, washing it in blood and eventually forming a new strata of flesh around it, and connecting that strata to her wider system.

And now, for the empty space inside the Blacksteel “orb”, she prepares to shift her Qi into it- and runs up against a wall.

Right. Can’t actually touch or control Qi anymore, not directly. Not truly. She can feel there’s… something, the instinct didn’t come from nothing, but she can’t figure out how to do whatever it is she just tried to do.

So. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Slowly, she carves away little holes in the core, filling the connections with a thick mucous and then thicker scar tissue, formed purposefully using her Truth and biomorphic abilities. She feeds thick, centralized veins into it, builds a sort of quasi-cluster of veins and and mutable tissue inside the improvised core.

There’s every chance the open gaps might mean she explodes if this works, but… work with what you have, not what you wish to have, isn’t that the saying?

Taking a piece of her Blacksteel, fresh from her reserves, she molds it into the center of the core, letting it form itself into a many-pointed star… and sparks her Qi against it.