“From the top, then,” Grey said solemnly, picking up the sack Honoka had given him earlier. Carefully, he withdrew seven items from within it, and set them on a small table next to the ritual area. One remained in his hand. “All things must align with your Terrestrial Affinity. For Northern Fire, we have a splinter of Emberwood. A hardy tree from the icy far north, unexpectedly tinged with fires of the volcanoes it grows upon.” Kneeling, Grey set the splinter of oddly bright orange wood down in the topmost circle.

Next, he picked up a chunk of a familiar black and blue metal. “For Southern Earth, we have a portion of unsmithed Oninite. You seem to have a liking for the metal, and it works well enough,” He said, laying the ore in the bottommost circle. Then, Grey picked up what looked to be a pearl, as well as a black and white feather. “A freshwater pearl from the heart of Lake Lubel for Eastern Water, and the feather of a bearded vulture for Western Air. That last one was a bit hard to decide on, as you recall,” He told me, as he laid the pearl in the rightmost circle and the feather in the leftmost.

Yeah, I remember. The only reason we had settled on that particular feather was because the bird itself had a tendency to roll around in red clay. Because of that, the Aetherial balance of the feather suited our needs for a slight 'Terrestrial' alignment.

Grey stepped back for a moment to inspect the circle, before nodding sharply. “Good, there’s the Prime Elements done. Now for the Secondary. For North-Eastern Light, we have Lumenstone. From experience, I can tell you the Hold Dwarves use it as a source of illumination,” He picked up a lump of jagged, yet almost completely translucent crystal. At his touch, it shone a brief, bright white, before dimming. He set that down in the circle between the splinter and the pearl, and then picked up a jagged length of what looked like jet-black glass. “Indiquan Warrior Obsidian, for South-Western Darkness. We’re lucky to be doing this in Elderwyck, as it would be difficult to find it anywhere else on Vereden. Luckily, it’s not hard to find in these markets, considering the nearness of Tlatec,” This he sat in between the feather and the Oninite, before picking up the final reagent.

A hunk of blue metal, very similar in shade to his own Stellarum. It gleamed in the low light of the abandoned church.

Grey inspected it thoughtfully, turning it back and forth in his palm. “Lunar Basalt. It’s a bit low quality,” He said, inspecting it closely. “But it will do. Even the weakest Lunar Basalt is matched by only the purest of Mithril. And you need it, as the counterweight to your own Terrestrial Affinity. This shall do, for the North-Western Celestial element. Now, notice how there is no circle for a South-Eastern Terrestrial reagent,” He said, nodding in that direction of the circles. I looked and saw that he was right, with the circles containing the pearl and the Oninite resting next to each other with no gap in between. “You are essentially acting at the Terrestrial anchor in this ritual. This is because of your own Affinity with the Element.”

I looked back up at him in thought. “You know,” I mused. “You’ve never talked about the Elements before. I don’t know anything about ‘Terrestrial’ Element, much less the rest of them. Why is that?”

Grey shrugged at me. “Because it’s not terribly important until you’re either a Magi or a Cultivator, that’s why,” He said patiently. “The most your Affinity does before then is decide the ‘flavor’ of Class that you receive at level ten. Yours is Terrestrial, as it says on your Status, and thus was expressed through your own particular thorns. Mine is Celestial, and thus I’ve always possessed Classes that allude to the heavens.”

I nodded slowly. “Then…would Sylvia’s be Light? And Azarus maybe Fire?”

Grey quirked an eyebrow. “Yes, my Sylvia’s Affinity is towards Light, and so she received a Light based illusionist Class. You’re mistaken about Azarus, however. He has an Earth Affinity. It is Honoka who has a Fire Affinity. You’ll learn much more about Affinities once attending the Academy. For now, all you need to know is their positions around the Grand Compass, and their relationships to their Subversions. In your case…Celestial,” He chuckled to himself. “I find it oddly appropriate that your Affinity is Terrestrial, in that way. But enough about the Elements. It’s time to begin, Nathan. Please begin meditating, and I’ll empower the array.”

I nodded at Grey and fully sat down in the circle, crossing my legs as I did so. Then…

I closed my eyes and focused inwards, falling into a very familiar meditative state. This was the same state that I always had to concentrate on, in order to use Aetherial Melding. But because of the Isolation Chamber, I wasn’t able to feel the pulse of Vereden’s Aether bouncing and flowing all around me. It was almost disturbing, but I dismissed such thoughts.

Soon, my mind was as calm as I could make it. I floated in a sea of nothingness for a moment, before I felt a tingle from all around me pass through the circle.

Grey had begun. The distinctive, silvery cool ‘flavor’ of his own Mana had activated the circles.

One by one, I felt them come alive, each of them shaded with the Element that they represented. To my senses, the Celestial Circle was the last of them to come alive, and when it did, something odd happened. I knew to expect it, but I still shivered at the sensation.

Each of them felt as if they had almost magnetized, latching on to something deep inside of myself. The feeling was a bit…unpleasant. It was as if multiple hooks had dug themselves deep into something inherent to myself, individually targeting specific things from different angles.

That had to be the anchors at work.

From what Grey had told me, each of the anchor points of the ritual would target Elementally charged Aether that had latched on to my Soul and infected my Mind. Then, they would drag it out of me in what was supposed to be a violent display, leaving only the Element that I was aligned with behind. That Terrestrially aligned Aether would then be ‘condensed’ inside of my mind and, in Grey’s words, ‘sparked’ into becoming Mana. From there, the Mana would propagate through the whole of my Mind and spirit, and from that point on, it would generate itself naturally.

It sounded like a bit of a…violent process, to be honest.

I grit my teeth as I felt the first portion of waste energy being wrenched from my being. It…well, it didn’t hurt quite as much as Grey had said it would. The sensation was more like a bee sting than a broken bone, like he had told me it might be.

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The elementally charged Aether being extracted had to be of Earth, as I saw the silver of the circle in front of me shine briefly. With wary eyes, I watched as the chunk of Oninite…

Let out a brief puff of bright yellow dust, and then settled back down.

I blinked.

That hadn’t been as violent as I had thought it would be. Maybe this wouldn’t be that bad.

But Grey didn’t seem to be as relieved by that I was. He frowned at the hunk of Oninite for a moment, rubbing his chin. “Odd,” He said aloud. “I would have expected the reaction to be much more intense, for an initial draw like that.”

I flicked my eyes up to meet his, as the circle to my left lit up briefly and the pearl inside puffed out a weak mist. “Maybe I just didn’t have much Earth aligned Aether in my Soul? And…apparently Water Aether too?”

Grey’s brow furrowed. “I have never seen such a weak reaction in an Ascension ritual. The amount of Aether that accumulates as waste product in the Mind and Soul from simply living is miniscule, but it builds up over time. Quite a bit, I would say. This little amount….” He abruptly stopped talking, his lips parting in shock. “I…no…”

“Grey?” I asked, growing alarmed as I felt a burst of heat behind me from the Emberwood. “What’s going on?”

“I’m such a fool…” He breathed, tensing. “Aether builds up over time in the spirit. And you’ve only been here on Vereden for roughly a year. You’ve said your home world doesn’t possess Aether, and so your spirit hasn’t had the time to absorb enough waste Aether. Damn! We rushed into this without considering that.”

“Isn’t that a…good thing?” I said in trepidation. “The goal is spiritual purity, right? If I don’t have a ton of waste energy, then isn’t that a good thing?”

Grey ignored me, getting down on his knees next to the ritual circle and, for some reason, taking out a knife. “No,” He said grimly. “Because you likely don’t have enough Terrestrial Aether either, to catalyze the first spark of Mana. It’s possible the ritual will try and draw on your Soul itself to create that spark. Such a thing is likely to cripple you, in much the same way that it has done to Venix. But you don’t have the foundation he has to recover from that. It would ruin your prospects of advancement for life.”

“Oh,” I said weakly, tensing in the middle of the circle. I tried to move, only to freeze when Grey barked a command at me.

“Do not!” He said tensely, head whipping in my direction to fix me with an intense stare. “Move! You’ll start the reaction early!”

I froze in place, as I saw a brief flare of white light out of the corner of my eye from the Lumenstone.

Grey breathed deeply for a moment. “This is my fault,” He said lowly. “I grew complacent with the sheer number of times I’ve done this in the past. I did not consider how such a common ritual would change with your circumstances. And so I will fix it.” With that, he used the apparently powerful dagger clenched tightly in his right hand to slash at his left arm. A large, deep gash opened up on his pale flesh immediately. Strangely, the cut didn’t immediately start gushing blood, even though I thought I could see bone inside of it.

“Grey?!” I asked in shock, as he tossed the dagger behind him clenched down on the wound. Sluggishly, dark, dark blood welled up from it, which he dipped his fingers in. “What are you doing?!”

“Saving your life,” Grey said grimly, bending over to start sketching runes into a new circle that he drew in his own blood. This new circle was right outside the meeting point of the Earth and Water circles. “I will inject a portion of my own inherent Aether into the ritual, as a new counterweight. The rate will be low, considering it will need to go through a converter. I…some measure of Celestial Affinity bleed through will be inevitable, I’m afraid.” He looked up to give me a deeply apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Nathan. The intensity of my own energies is likely to taint yours. I…don’t know what will happen, but we have no choice. The alternative is unacceptable, and we simply can’t stop the ritual once it has begun.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself, once again missing my middle ring. After a moment, I looked up and nodded at Grey. “Do it.”

Grey returned my nod and finished scribing out his blood-based addendum to the Ascension ritual. He let his hand hover over the still-wet blood, and in the open space, a spark of black and silver Mana bloomed.

The bloody circle of runes glowed to life, and I swear I smelled a brief floral scent infiltrate the circle I sat in.

Next to the chunk of Oninite, the obsidian gleamed a weak, oddly black light before dimming. The Dark Aligned Aether in my soul must have been purified. The ritual was almost done.

Only the Air circle was left.

Grey grit his teeth from outside the circle. “Faster,” He whispered furiously, concentrating. The bloody circle glowed brighter, and I shivered as I actually felt the Aether he was injecting into my soul.

It felt…different from my own. Colder, somehow.

But as soon as that happened, the feather to my right floated up briefly on a weak breeze. When it touched back down onto the stone floor, I felt it.

A spark, originating somewhere deep inside of myself.

My eyes widened as I finally felt the pain that Grey had warned me about. It was like a fire had erupted into being, somewhere deep inside of myself. With the awareness I had of my own soul space, it felt like the crystalline tree of my soul had begun to burn in a raging, two-toned flame.

Some of that fire felt familiar, reminiscent of the bloody thorns that had defined my build. It spoke of the bones of the earth and of the life that dwelled upon it, raging with a ferocity born of instinct. It sang of the bloody struggle that all experienced, as they fought with primal instinct to survive. It whispered of the need to thrive.

But the other half was different. This fire was cold and dark. It felt nothing, and in its depths, eons stretched. It spoke of the vastness that stretched out into the depths of the void, of lightless depths that rang together in eternal concordance. It sang of the mysteries that lurked within the far corners of the cosmos, and of the fundamental, ordered dance that all must adhere to. It whispered of the need to understand.

Within me, that spark bloomed. From it, two separate waves of Mana raged and flowed, immediately filling the empty space of my soul.

One wave was a sinuous crimson and pulsed with the primality of life, thrumming through the space of my soul. Threaded through I could see countless thorny vines, layered over themselves in a twisting, writhing mass. This, I somehow knew, was my original Affinity. That which was Terrestrial to my being.

The other was blue. It flowed and wisped and twirled around the ferocity of the Terrestrial, flickering at the edges like a flame. Within its depths burned deeper pools of what seemed to be concentrated fire, and in those glowing pools I could see the cold, distant light of the stars.

This was new.

It had to be the Celestial that Grey had inadvertently introduced into me.

The flames that had engulfed my crystalline tree were doused in an instant, and the cracks that had formed its glasslike surface mended. New, blade-like leaves that had been scoured from its surface from my struggles instantly bloomed all along the branches.

Cradled in the crown of my tree’s upper branches, a star bloomed.

The core of it was reminiscent of the crimson of my thorns, flowing and grinding eternally against each other. And yet, they glowed almost plasmically with their own malevolent light. Surrounding it was the new Celestial flame of Grey's introduced affinity, which had somehow gained an identity of it's own. Floating over it's surface were those deeper pools of flame, displaying the distant lights of non-existent stars.

This...

This had to be the core of my Mana, cradled within my Mind. The font from which I would now and forever more craft my own Spells.

The pressure and pain that had engulfed my being lifted, and what was left in its wake…

Tears filled my eyes in wonder at the sensation, as I lifted eyes that saw beyond the mere physical. I was barely aware of Grey sitting back in relief at the success of his gambit, because I had discovered that Sylvia had been right, all those months ago.

You truly couldn’t describe what this was like, to someone who didn’t have it.

It was like coming home.