The room was tense with a cloud of silence. There was no light by which to illuminate it in the darkness of the aging night. Its black walls did nothing to help with this, seeming to emphasize the darkness like mirrors reflecting light, a characteristic no one had been able to decipher since arriving at the seminary. Still, it is to be noted that in the discomfort of the silence, the darkness seemed the good force.

“You should not have allowed him,” Fin said from where he lay on his bed, speaking as if into the darkness.

Seth’s lips pursed in nonchalance. “Perhaps.”

“At least you should’ve told him he was wrong.”

“Perhaps.”

They were in their room now, turned in for the night. They’d been lying down for near an hour before Fin had broken their silence. Seth did not care for conversation, but he was in no hurry to shirk it.

Three of their brothers were currently absent. Forlorn, Timi, and Barnabas. While Forlorn’s fate was unknown, Barnabas was clearly in the safe but painful hold of the infirmary and Seth wondered if his care would be reia infused or simply natural. Timi, however, needed no medical care. His brief but demanding interference with Barnabas’ attack on Seth had left him unscarred, untainted, unharmed. It spoke a lot of his skill. One of many, Seth knew it was. Instead, Igor had come for him at the conclusion of their evening bath as they pooled into their room.

His display of power against his brother outside of lessons was, apparently, deemed something worthy of punishment.

None of them knew what the punishment would be, so they lay here in their room, in their individual mattresses, pondering things only they knew.

“What is happening?” Josiah spoke into the darkness. “Why are we becoming so violent?”

Seth had a hypothesis. He kept it to himself though, his eyes staring at the darkness in front of him, tracing swirls in it he was certain were nothing but figments of his imagination. One looked like a spiral, constantly breaking and preventing him from tracing anything far enough to be true. He discarded that one like a farmer would discard a particularly useless weed and went on to another. In the silence of a night pierced only by the sound of breathing, he drew a bunny in the dark with nothing but his eyes and imagination.

When Josiah finally got an answer, it was in Jason’s voice. “I believe it’s the fragments,” he said. His voice was still weak but there was an undertone of strength there, a good sign.

“Why?” Josiah turned on his mattress, evident in the sound it made. “I’ve never heard of violent tendencies in the bound.”

“Seen a lot of beginning souled, have you?” Fin asked with a touch of mockery.

“Mockery or banter?” Josiah returned.

There was a thoughtful pause before Fin replied. “Not sure.”

Jason sighed. “Have you learned any of your skills, Josiah?”

“No. But I can feel one of them. It’s there, just a step away from my mind.”

“Yes, it feels that way at first.” Jason coughed lightly. “Then you learn it. Then you use it.” A quiet pause followed. “Then you use it again... I hope you learn it soon, brother. But I also hope you possess greater control than the rest of us, because the power that comes with it is intoxicating. It leaves you feeling like…”

“… Like a god,” Fin finished for him.

“Yes. Like a god.” Jason cracked his fingers and it resounded through the room. “I attacked Forlorn because he did not obey me when I asked for silence. Not because he’d done anything wrong.”

“But he rarely ever obeys you, though,” Josiah pointed out.

“True. So why did it anger me so much? I felt like a god being disobeyed by a lowly human. I assume it is the way the Barons feel when we disobey them. That they have killed none of us is a testament to their control. I felt worse when Forlorn was able to stand his ground against me. He shouldn’t have been able to, so why? Then he shot me. Me.” An anger rose in Jason’s voice. “By what audacity did he think he could go against me so aggressively and survive.”

Seth chuckled at that. “I don’t think that last part’s the fragments talking, brother. I’d act the same way if my brother shot at me.”

“I am not you, brother. My control is better.”

“Says the person who broke his brother’s fingers with a gust of wind.”

Fin chuckled derisorily. “It seems you have not touched the helm of your skill set, yet.”

Seth’s minds laughed as one. He’d be really surprised. Seth left the thought in his mind and said, “And have you discovered your skills, brother? Do you feel like a god?”

Fin’s displeasure was a physical thing. It carried a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a groan and Seth was unsure how much of it was truly displeasure.

Slowly they fell back into silence, plagued by their individual thoughts. As the night darkened Josiah’s inevitable mumblings began, keeping Seth moments more awake. It was his nightly ritual, and when asked, he had informed them it was a nightly devotion. A prayer to the Christian God to keep him safe through the night. To forgive him his sins and that of his family.

“What of us?” Salem had once joked, to which Josiah had answered.

“Hell is inevitable for those who do not believe.”

Seth had said nothing on the topic at the time. He didn’t know much of the rules of the Christian cults, but he did know some transgressions that led most to hell. Killing was one of them, and the path the seminary was treading for them was one that would have more than enough killing involved. So why will he need prayers when they will not work.

Into the darkness he mumbled. “Everyone needs a comforting lie every now and again.”

Timi returned to them at the death of seven days. During those days they learnt little of anything. Their training continued at the hands of their instructors and their use of skills did not wane. Josiah broke his first skill during this period. It was a fine skill, not unique as soul arts go, but fine nonetheless. It was a skill bound by an elemental affinity, basically giving him command of explosive fire that burst from his palm. In essence, fireball. Which unsurprisingly was its name.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

After Timi’s return, they learned the reason it took a while to know their skills even though it was innate to them, already bestowed; why its name was all it took to know it.

It was a tiring Monday evening spent suffering at the hands of Igor. They spotted bruises and cuts courtesy of the Baron, groaning and moaning like the weaklings he never stopped reminding them they were when Jason had ventured the question.

“Reverend,” he groaned after Igor had dismissed them.

Igor returned his wooden sword to its place before turning his attention to him. “Yes, boy.”

“Why is it that we have to learn these things but not our skills?”

Igor scratched his jaw with a tired finger. “Use more words, Jason.”

“All we need is the name of our skill and we know it. We don’t have to learn it or practice it. Somehow, once we know its name we know the skill.”

Igor nodded slowly, understanding the question now. “John’s usually better at this than I am,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck in a rare display of nervousness.

After a moment, filled by the soundless act of a few more scratches, he said, “What makes you think you don’t spend time learning the skills?”

In response, Jason raised a hand to the sky. “Wind Burst.”

Seth watched the world bend around his hand. It wasn’t something really physical, more a sense than something visual. It was like his hand pulled some element of the world he did not understand to it. The coalescence was slow but sure. A moment later it became a gust of wind in the shape of a trembling orb then it shot from his hand like an arrow from a bow. It traveled for a meter, maybe more, before dissipating into nothingness, stripped apart by the world around it.

Jason looked back to Igor. “I have no idea how I did that.”

“Sure you do,” Igor shrugged. “You called on the skill.”

“But how did the skill happen?”

“Oh, that.” Igor scratched his jaw. “You know the liver?”

Jason nodded.

“What does it do?”

“Detoxifies the blood.”

“So it is an active action correct.”

Jason thought for a moment before nodding. “Correct.”

“Do you know how it does this?”

“Blood goes into it…” Jason’s words trailed off, guttered out like a flame without fuel. “Then it… it…”

Igor nodded sagely, as if he understood perfectly. “In summary, you don’t know.”

Jason looked down. “I do not.”

“But your body does. It didn’t suddenly learn it. You weren’t born with a liver that knew how to detoxify your blood. Your liver learnt it after years of practice. That’s what skills are like. When you absorb a fragment, your body gains something you can go ahead and call a new organ.”

“A core,” Josiah offered.

Igor turned his attention to the boy and sighed. He walked up to the boy and reached behind him and pulled out a stick as long as his arm. “Thank you very much, Josiah. A core.” Then he struck him with it.

Josiah was still writhing on the ground when he returned the stick, vanished as if it had never been present. “Like I do not know what it’s called.” Ignoring a groaning Josiah, he returned his attention to the rest of them. “As I was saying before the helpful assistance. Your body gains a new organ.” He shot Josiah a glass to emphasize the last word. “When it does, that organ begins the process of learning just as the liver does. Now that your body has reia, thanks to this organ, the organ processes this reia to hone these skills.”

“So we do not have these skills from the moment we get our fragments?” Jason asked.

Igor turned tired eyes on the boy and sighed. “No, we do not.” He walked in the boy’s direction. “We are given the ability to create skills based on the fragments.” He reached behind him and reproduced the stick. “When our new organs are ready, they inform us of it.” He stood before Jason now and the boy braced for impact. He brought it down on his shoulder with the force of a lumber jack bringing a tree down.

In Jason’s favor, he barely made a sound, only grunting at the pain.

Igor nodded, slid the cane back into nonexistence behind him, then asked, “Does anyone else intend to interrupt me?”

There was silence.

“If there is,” he continued. “Let me know now so you can receive the necessary punishment before you do. Think of it as a prepaid service.”

Another round of silence. Fin went the extra mile of shaking his head.

Igor nodded at this and continued. “The part of your mind that is informed of its readiness is always your subconscious. The part you are not completely aware of. when this part is aware, however, your conscious mind needs this piece of information to be communicated to it… does anyone here talk in their sleep?” he asked abruptly. “Show of hands please.”

Jason pointed a hand still shaky from his pain at Seth.

Seth opened his mouth to protest, thought of Igor’s disappearing cane then shut it immediately. In response to Jason’s claim, he shook his head.

Igor tilted his head to the side as if thinking then shrugged. “You may speak, Seth.”

“I don’t talk in my sleep,” he said.

“Just last night you said something about a heart of winter in your sleep,” Fin said, matter of fact, then caught himself a moment too late.

Igor sucked in a long breath between his teeth as someone who just missed something narrowly would, then turned to him. “So close, wouldn’t you say, Fin?”

Fin’s nod was stiff as Igor approached him. Again the cane made an appearance. Again it cut through the air, struck flesh and left pain. Fin shouted in pain, then swore, then cussed as the source of it vanished.

Igor turned his attention to Seth, smiling like someone enjoying himself. “What’s the heart of winter?”

We don’t know, his minds warned him immediately.

“Paranoid much,” Seth mocked them. He met Igor’s narrowed eyes and disappearing smile a moment after and apologized immediately. “Sorry, Reverend. I have no idea what that is.”

Igor nodded. “I did not expect you would. Chances are you were dreaming of something that could’ve had nothing to do with winter at all.”

Seth did not reply, not by words, not by action.

He remembered what he’d been dreaming of as clearly as he knew the color of the sky. It had been one of the few nights when Natalie presented herself in his dream. One of the few nights were his dream was plagued by ghosts of a past life. The dream had angered him upon waking simply because it hadn’t been lucid. He had been forced to go through the rondo of emotions the girl always invoked in him. The sense of love. The sense of peace. The sense of longing. The sense of need. The crushing oppression of betrayal. Her lies.

He’d gone through them all without any authority over them. It had been, in a word, excruciating.

“Now Seth could’ve been dreaming about any number of things. They may have included winter; they may not have. The point I’m trying to make is that ‘heart of winter’ was his mind’s interpretation of an event or even a statement in that dream that may or may not have any relationship to winter or a heart.”

Jason raised a hand and Igor chuckled.

“This is not some trumped up royalty’s class, Jason,” he told the boy. “We don’t raise hands to ask permission to speak. It is a seminary. And you are seminarians.”

“Then how do we know when to speak?” Jason asked, cautious.

Igor’s smile was predatory. “Hazard a guess and hope it is right.”

“Noted.”

“Good. So what’s the question?”

“Seth’s verbal interpretation of his dream did not need to be related to what was happening, but all of ours are related in some way to our skills. My wind burst is a literal burst of wind. I do not remember the name of Timilehin’s skill but it was related to the skill itself. Josiah’s fireball is an actual fireball. So there must be a correlation.”

“Do you agree that I should produce the stick for no more reason than you stating the obvious quite dumbly?” Igor asked.

He waited a moment and when Jason gave no answer, continued nonetheless. “When I spoke of the dream and sleep talking, it was an example of the conscious and unconscious mind communicating. The unconscious mind was dreaming of something that could be anything and Seth’s conscious mind interpreted it as ‘heart of winter.’ It does not have to make sense to anyone else. All that matters is that as incorrect and unrelated as it was, Seth’s mind understood something of the dream enough to interpret it. A poor interpretation, though it might have been. Your skills are very much similar to your chants because your conscious mind understands your unconscious better than Seth’s understood his while he dreamt. Is that clear enough?”

They all nodded.

“Good. No more questions. You will one day have a lecture on the nature of cores. When you do, ask your questions then.”

With that, he turned and left them.