As soon as he was standing on the dark staircase in the blank world, Randidly froze. The dream wooziness vanished. Did I seriously just activate my Fatepiece in a dream?

Only about a day had passed since he had made the last sacrifice to his obsession, losing his ability to control when he was taking breaks. And honestly, the time off from work had just served to distract him and frazzle him, rather than enriching his efforts. So Randidly was not keen on losing something else so quickly.

However, he could feel the Visage of Obsession laughing around him. The steps beneath his feet hummed. One could only advance or pause through this tool, never retreat. So Randidly shook his head and stomped down the over six and a half million stairs to reach the next barrier of shadow that was waiting to chop off a portion of him.

Randidly’s skin prickled as he arrived at the end of his spinning journey; this time, the projection had taken the form of Shal. His teacher looked at Randidly with a frown on his face. “Do you have a problem with this form?”

“No,” Randidly said quietly. Different thoughts swirled through his heart, different sentiments he wanted to express to the man who had altered his life. His mood quickly soured. Of course, he kept his mouth shut; saying those thoughts to his own subconscious wouldn’t absolve Randidly of the guilt he felt.

But Shal was definitely correct when he explained the world to me all those years ago in the Dungeon. Randidly looked down at his forearms. Life does not become simpler when you grow stronger. You need to continue to advance always, or you will be crushed by the weight of the world.

“You’ve been distracted,” Shal interrupted Randidly’s thoughts. “It is time for that to end. Your next sacrifice will be your ability to contact the outside world. Until you accomplish your Obsession or are forcefully knocked out of it, no more communication with anyone unrelated to your task.”

He pressed his eyes shut. Randidly knew it would be pointless to point out that most of the relevant distractions came from his own emotions rather than any external contact. His only communication had been with Alana, and it had taken all of ten seconds for him to put it to the side and continue to work. He simply descended and allowed the shadow to pass over him.

Then next twelve hours of work passed with almost agonizing slowness. Yet at the same time, even Randidly had to admit that he was doing excellent work creating a constant oppressive ambiance of cold, despite the fact that he couldn’t feel temperature. And in a way, he began to see the shape of what the Fatepiece was doing.

It isolated him completely, blinded him to faces, and even took away his body. Then it took away control of when he could do what. Very directly, it forced him to remember some of the worst times in his life when he had been in similar situations. Those memories brought out truly unpleasant emotions, but ones that were relevant. Through his dreams, the Fatepiece made him swim in those horrible moments.

Now Claudette’s image world possessed an inescapable grey dreariness even on the rare occasions when the sun pushed aside the cloud cover. The heavy chill existed beyond the spectrum of temperature. The heavy mountain range around her core area was cast from stones so dark that their total absence of light was visible even at night.

Congratulations! Your Skill Conviction of the Celestial Cataclysm (T) has grown to Level 507!

Congratulations! Your Skill Grand Perspective (R) has grown to Level 188!

Yet that didn’t mean Randidly enjoyed the experience. His emotions curdled in his chest, leaving him sour and vaguely nauseous. Every glance toward the core of the image reminded Randidly of his still insistent impulse to coopt this refinement to his own purposes. Each self-condemnation pressed him a little deeper into a morass of guilt.

And his dreams…

Some were old stress dreams, others were moments of reprieve (although he now took care not to look at the Visage of Obsession even in his dreams), but the most common refrain was that room with the dark corner. Randidly held the frigid sword that was Claudette transformed into a weapon and his images urged him to thrust it into the body of the bearman with the covered face.

Congratulations! Your Skill the Grey Creature Witnesses Providence (P) has grown to Level 397!

Can’t you feel it? The Grey Creature whispered. This is the answer! Why do you hesitate? Did Helen truly mean so little to you?

Randidly’s grip tightened on the sword and his jaw ached, but he did not thrust the sword into the bound individual’s chest. Until he decided how to handle the situation, he refused to be pressured. He simply stood, listening to the Stillborn Phoenix howl in the background and feeling his Nether Core churning out thick darkness.

Influence +47!

When he awoke that day, he did not go back to the details; Randidly sensed that he would go insane if he continued to perfect the area around the core. He had done basically all he could. Any more would be tinkering. He now needed to address the core area, despite how much the abscess on his heart wept at the thought.

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Perhaps because of that internal rejection, Randidly began to work directly with Claudette’s thin layer of Nether. There wasn’t a significant enough layer to create anything grand, but Randidly reached within Claudette’s base of memory and connection and began to draw a small pattern of isolation.

Congratulations! Your Skill Nether Sensation (L) has grown to Level 354!

Congratulations! Your Skill Left Hand of the Nether Oracle (M) has grown to Level 362!

Very quickly, the Nether present that already had some sympathetic connection to Claudette threw its energy behind the pattern that Randidly made. What he created was quite a bit less than even the barest Nether Core, but the pattern would still act as a focus for her significance. As long as she gave it time, her hidden advantage would steadily accumulate.

And now-

Randidly paused in his work and examined the gloomy surroundings. A feeling of lethargy crept up through his body, so he turned away and focused on the next task before he could be dragged into another emotional black hole. But as Randidly turned away, he started; the Claudette spirit guide was standing before him, her expression solemn.

Her manufactured features rippled and clacked against each other.

“Randidly…” The empty mouth opened with obvious effort. Claudette’s eyes were unfocused, but he could immediately tell something was different. The spirit guide had changed. “I… this is Claudette. I wanted to… say something. I can sense your grief and hesitation. I’m putting all my energy into reaching through the projection because I have to watch your actions from the outside. And the changes you are making-”

Randidly’s stomach dropped out of his bodiless existence. The horrible guilt sizzled through his mind, sapping his Willpower and weakening him to grief. But as Claudette continued to speak, Randidly blinked.

“-are done to make me powerful. I can feel them working. So don’t worry so much.” Claudette whispered. The hinge of her jaw creaked as she moved it. “I can feel you wrestling with something. I sense your indecision. You’ve prevented yourself from changing anything too central in my image. Change me as much as you need to, shape my image into the tool that can give us both peace of mind. Because if I’m being honest-”

The puppet Claudette attempted to smile. Whereas the original would have made the expression bright and charming, this version of her could only reveal a lopsided and hollow simper. “-I don’t really like the current me very much.”

The wind of this desolate image howled around him. His carefully curated grey world spread out in every direction, devoid of life. And Randidly examined this broken and mechanical puppet for a long time, even after the spark of consciousness faded from its eyes. His mouth twisted as a thought occurred to him. What if I was wrong the whole time? I assumed that the spirit guide functioned in such an eerie manner because of the way Neveah adjusted the projection Engraving to focus on the actual projecting. But what if this puppet is just the way Claudette sees herself?

And if this stuttering being is the source of this horrifying loneliness-

Gradually, heat returned to Randidly. But he didn’t allow everything to flare up into a dangerous conflagration. He kept the heat low and constant, pulsing out through his mental space and filling him with energy. The fires seared shut the wound he had allowed to fester on his heart for the past two days.

“I was being a bit self-absorbed, wasn’t I?” Randidly said out loud. He pivoted and looked toward the central area. Then his spectral body drifted forward into the central area. The dirt was stained blue-black by the strange corruption that spread from the blade. “I let my grief engulf me completely. But I don’t need to feel guilty about what we do here. I let myself forget the desperation of both of our existences.”

Warm hatred galloped through Randidly’s mind. Those emotions began to bleed out from him as he neared that small field where the core of Claudette’s image sat. He had approached the emotional spectrum in the past, but the physical realm was also warped by the glacial influence of this weapon.

Truly, the core of Claudette’s image was powerful.

Its aura attempted to slow him, but his hatred flared, keeping its restrictive influence at bay. Even if the chill made use of this entire world he had provided for it, still it wasn’t enough to reach him; being an architect of the image had some natural perks.

Randidly floated closer to the blade sticking out of the hoarfrost. “If I don’t improve, Commandant Wick will run out of patience and bind me to him with his horrifying image. If you don’t improve, your father will sell off your body and soul to the highest bidder, in order to prepare for his own attempt to reach the Pinnacle. I felt like I should be bettering your image. But that’s not why we are here, is it? That isn’t why you chose me to be your image refiner.

“You picked me because I dared to stand against the aftershocks between a Nether King and the Speculum,” Randidly continued to talk, that need for revenge rising in contrast to the constricting energy of the sword. “And because I managed to do it. I cannot do everything, but what I can do, I do well.”

Hatred and abandonment warred in the image projection. The violence of the clash between the emotions warped the air as they neared one another. Randidly felt crackles of potent discharge spreading throughout Claudette’s image, but he didn’t care. He could shore up the details later. For now-

His mental energies seized upon the hilt of Claudette’s heart sword and drew it from the ground. Almost instantly, a new layer of slate grey clouds condensed above this central valley. Thick strands of corrupting blackness writhed off of the pale blade. Randidly looked at them and saw a touch similar to the influence of the original Vualla, driven so far by grief that she destroyed everything she touched.

I can work with this. Randidly thought.

Claudette did not have the power or perseverance of the original Vualla yet, but he could feel that her image would eventually lead her to that same place of deep darkness. Randidly’s grip on the blade tightened.

He didn’t have a body, but the weapon was lighter than he had been expecting. The leather grip, the pale blade, the tentacles of darkness… all of it moved easily within his grasp, once his hatred neutralized the demanding desolation of this weapon. The sword was almost insubstantial.

He raised the blade and eyed the edge. For now, he needed to make a weapon that could wound the Nexus.