The old man had been right; Leo did feel better when he woke up. The problem… was that, according to his watch, he had slept for a full standard day.

His stomach rumbled angrily, demanding food, but Leo put it off. So much had happened when he figured out how to use his soul, and he needed to process it all.

‘What was that vision? How did an entire universe end, and why was there a technocrat? Who is Verin? Why do I keep seeing him? Why does my soul… which he called Existence… bear such a resemblance to him? Am I one of his descendants, maybe?’ Leo thought.

From what Leo could tell… Verin survived the end of a universe, and brought someone else with him, at that. Surely, there was no way that someone like that had died… meaning that it was possible he could meet Verin, sometime in the future.

He had no clue what was going on with his vision of Verin, but it wasn’t like sitting around would help him understand, and so he refocused on his soul.

‘Verin called souls Existence, but I’ll stick with souls.’ Leo thought.

Tentatively, Leo brought a bit of his soul out through his soul sphere. Once he dropped his control over it, his soul stayed near his soul sphere, but didn’t do anything else.

It didn’t hurt, though, which was good. His soul still seemed tired, but it would probably be fine to experiment a little bit.

Leo drew a bit more of his soul out of the spirit realm, and then moved the majority of it away from his body. It needed to stay attached to his soul sphere in some way, though, and so a thin trail was left behind.

None of it was visible to his eyes, but it was as though his soul had nerves; he could feel it and everything within it.

The way his soul worked was strange. It passed through objects with ease, but he only ever felt the outsides of the objects; never the insides, unless there were holes inside; for example, he didn’t feel the insides of all the humans on the ship when he had first released his soul. Yet, he felt the air moving within the area of his soul.

Finally, Leo got around to doing what he had been excited to try ever since he had woken up, and settled his extended soul around a lamp on a dresser. Then, he tried to pick it up using his soul, and…

Its shade collapsed and its bulb exploded. The metal rod and base crumpled, and Leo’s soul felt exhausted again.

“I… didn’t mean to do that,” Leo whispered to himself… he had just wanted to pick it up.

Leo decided to stop messing with his soul until he understood it better, and stuffed his soul back into the spirit realm.

Finally, Leo got up out of bed and changed. He was still wearing his clothes from two days ago, and so he quickly changed into a pair of pants, and as he reached into one of his travel bags to pull out his favorite shirt, Leo realized that...

It looked silly and childish. It was a green t-shirt with a cute turtle on it, and he’d gotten it a few months ago at the aquarium.

Leo recalled the train of thought he’d been about to set down on when he was leaving his family behind in the extravagant hotel; that he had changed drastically in only a standard week.

There was no one cause for it; a lot had happened in that week, after all… but Leo thought that it was primarily the fault of Verin. Leo recalled what one of the first thoughts he had had upon waking up in the hospital had been: that it hurt, but not nearly as badly as it had hurt when Arthur had cut into the back of his neck.

Except that hadn’t been his neck; it had been Verin’s. He still had hardly any clue who Verin was.

Regardless of who he was, though, he was messing with Leo’s perspective. That he had even recognized the change was because of that same change.

…There was nothing that he could do about it, though. Leo decided to wear the turtle t-shirt anyway, and then opened the door to his bedroom and stepped into the hallway.

It was empty except for a small, circular robot cleaning the floors, and Leo slowly made his way back to the entrance slash waiting room slash lounge area. He had been too lost in thought to realize it the first time, but it was just as extravagant as the hotel, with fluffy, comfortable couches and a carpet. The floor in the hallways and his bedroom had been metal, though, which was strange.

Nobody was in there, either, though, and so Leo crossed the lounge and went down a different hallway until he found someone. It was a woman, tall and lanky, with an angry-looking expression and short, dark hair. While she looked angry, she was also the only person he’d seen yet, and it wasn’t like she was going to yell at him for asking for directions.

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“Do you know where the-“

“Fuck off, bastard.” The woman said, walking past him with a disgusted expression.

It was so abrupt and unexpected that Leo didn’t even get angry or sad, even though he probably would’ve been in tears otherwise. Instead, Leo just shook his head and continued his search.

Absent-mindedly, he wondered what had happened to make her so angry. It didn’t take long to find another person, and it happened to be Maxwell.

“Oh! Maxwell! Do you know where I can get food? I’m starving.” Leo asked.

“That way,” Maxwell told him, pointing down the hallway he had just come through, “Take a left, right and then go inside room A-12. Stay out of everyone’s way; nobody’s happy right now.”

“What happened?” Leo asked. Even Maxwell seemed irritated.

“…Nothing you should know about.” Maxwell said, “By the way, I’m not allowed to teach you how to use your soul on my own anymore. The others weren’t a fan of how I did things.”

‘They’re right,’ Leo thought, but said nothing. How dumb was it, though, that Maxwell had given him next to zero warning or instruction before he deprived him of his senses? If not for his strange mental state, he felt it was likely that Leo would be trapped in a cycle of feeling like he was drowning until Maxwell finally freed him from it.

Leo shuddered at the thought.

“Why did you start teaching me to use my soul right then, anyway?” Leo asked.

“Because you need to be able to defend yourself,” Maxwell told him, “This trip’s going to take a month, and a lot of people on this ship dislike you. In the eyes of a lot of powerful people, you’ve messed up everything. There's nothing you can or could've done about it, though, so just ignore it.”

‘Is that something that you should really be telling me?’

“What did I mess up?”

“Go get something to eat. That nobody brought you food after you slept for a full day should tell you that it was important.” Maxwell told him, his tone suggesting that he was done answering questions.

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

Leo found the dining room- which was more akin to a restaurant, it appeared- with relative ease after receiving instructions, but he suddenly felt nervous as he walked inside. It was pretty full, and after what Maxwell had told him, Leo felt a bit nervous.

‘What am I doing? It’s full of people. Nobody’s going to mess with an eight year old.’ Leo reprimanded himself, going and sitting down at one of the tables. A menu sat on the table before him, and Leo only had time to briefly glance through it before a waiter robot rolled up to him.

“What would you like?” It asked.

“Chicken strips,” Leo told it. It had been one of the only foods that he had seen that didn’t seem weird. Who was eating squid of all things?

“How many? What drink do you want? Sides?” The robot interrogated, and Leo’s face went red. Why did the robot seem so rushed? There were dozens of them!

“Uh… Three, water, and … fries?” Leo told it.

“Is that all?”

“Yes.” Leo told it, and the pushy robot rolled away.

Leo looked around, but nobody had done anything more than glance in his direction. He let out a sigh of relief and tried to sit in his seat as unassumingly as possible.

There were a dozen different reasons why Leo felt so nervous and afraid, and Leo recognized them all, but it didn’t help.

‘I miss them…’ Leo thought. It took everything in him not to start crying.

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

Including the day that Leo had spent asleep and excluding the day that he had gotten on, since it had already been pretty late when he had, Leo had spent three days away from his family now, and it was already becoming easier to endure. The second night, Leo had cried for hours, but on the third night, he hadn’t.

That was mostly because he had been exhausted, though. After the second day, or first conscious day, Maxwell and Erich- the old man that had helped him- had begun mentoring him in matters of the soul.

And yet, even though they had spent twelve standard hours being taught, none of it answered any of his questions. The purpose of the lesson hadn’t been to help him actually understand, though, but was to determine the affinity of his soul.

Most souls had an inherent affinity towards certain things- some vague and broad, like emotions, technology or battle, and others concrete and narrow, like swords, fire, or healing. Some had none, though, and were generalists.

For some reason, they had had a very hard time determining Leo’s. The stones that they usually used to determine an affinity simply didn’t work, instead spouting that he had an affinity for ‘the color purple’, meaning that they had to resort to utilizing a series of very complex, thumb-sized machines- and even then, the result had only come back ‘correct’ ninety percent of the time. Maxwell commented that they would need to use the machines at ‘the place’ to accurately determine it.

The end conclusion had been that Leo’s affinity was creation- meaning that his soul was the best at creating things, whether that be lumps of steel or purifying flames. It could still do other things, though.

Like accidentally crush lamps.

The mentoring continued into the next day, but Leo was at least able to ask questions this time… only three, though.

“Why does having an awakened soul make my body stronger?” Leo asked.

“That’s a good question. Whether or not a soul will awaken is determined by two things; the soul’s strength, and the soul’s link with the body. Almost always, an awakened soul is both strong and closely bound to the body. That it’s bound to the body means that the soul ends up strengthening it, significantly.” Erich explained, significantly more patiently than Maxwell would have.

“Other magics exist, right? So why don’t we use them?” Leo asked after a few seconds of thought.

Erich remained silent for a while, and Leo was ready to repeat himself, assuming he hadn’t been heard, when he finally responded.

“Most magics require resources or environments that the Ander Empire doesn’t have. Soul magic is one of the only universal magics in the universe… so the answer to your question, I suppose, is that it’s because the Ander Empire isn’t particularly special in this regard.” Erich told him.

Leo frowned. “But you said that most magics require those things. What about the others? Why don’t we use them?”

“They all either come with downsides, are very weak, or are far too valuable or powerful to fall into the hands of the Ander Empire.” Erich told him. “That counted as your third question for the day.”

“What? That’s stupid!” Leo shouted. “What even are we doing today? We already found my affinity, right?”

Erich smiled at him with a mix of emotions; pity and amusement, primarily.