Thane placed his hand on Kai’s shoulder. “Why don’t you take those books to your room. I think that we’ve done enough for today.”

With that Kai quickly made his way up to his room. After looking around Kai ended up putting the spell book in the drawer next to his bed but kept the history book. Rushing back down stairs Kai found the others sitting around a table with a couple glasses of some kind of alcohol.

Silently Kai sat down at the table. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Athena had told him that the true purpose of his eye was not to enhance his senses. Channeling mana into eyes Kai felt it start to enhance his senses. Ignoring the enhancement he continued to channel more and more mana into them. Sound, smell and taste crashed into him. The amount of information flowing through Kai was overwhelming. Yet as he channeled more and more mana into his eye he found it starting to get easier to process everything.

A new feeling started to rise up in his eyes. It was a strange burning sensation. Kai allowed even more mana to flow into his eye. Causing even more information to stream into his head and increasing the burning sensation. Yet again Kai increased the mana going into his eyes. The burning increased, and sensory information was now flooding him. His head began to hurt as it all came in.

Yet there was something else that was coming in that he had not previously felt. It was strange and affected each of his senses. In his ears he could hear a strange buzzing and his tongue tingled slightly. When running his hand through the air he felt small, nearly imperceptible impacts on his skin. Kai could smell something new that he couldn’t quite describe. Kai opened his eyes and was taken back by the beauty of what he saw.

The room was flooded with small glowing specs. The air was filled with white nearly colorless and iridescent specks that Kai immediately recognizes as wind mana. The wind mana is constantly moving about the room in strange and chaotic ways. While their movements are free and chaotic they also stay together in groups like currents of wind. Turning the chaotic mess into something beautiful to watch.

He watched the mana particles as they floated through the air in mesmerizing patterns. As Kai watched them he quickly realized that their movements weren’t actually that chaotic. They just seem to be chaotic. There was a pattern to their movements that was influenced by the nature of their element.

Looking around some more Kai spotted a couple more types of mana that were floating around in the air. Four of them had a strange ephemeral quality to them. They weren’t ever truly there but they were ever present. Quickly Kai realized it was the time, space and fate elements. There were also traces of light and fire mana in the air. Though most of it was focused around the windows.

Looking around Kai saw something strange. The table was made up of two different kinds of man. The first one was strange. It was a dull and muted green. The mana was still and unmoving. Looking at it a bit longer Kai started to imagine giant dead trees in the middle of the forest.

Kai changed his focus from the nature mana to the other mana. The mana was a deep ominous black and as Kai looked at it he felt a pervasive cold emanating from it. Yet despite all of this Kai instantly recognized the mana and felt a strange belonging. Running his hand over the spots where it was more concentrated he examined the death mana.

As he observed the death mana Kai noticed that there was something wrong with it but he couldn’t tell what was wrong. More and more he watched and observed it trying to figure out what was wrong. Yet no matter what he did he couldn’t figure it out. Kai felt a small growl of frustration escape his throat he just couldn’t understand why it felt off.

Kai snapped his fingers as he finally figured it out. Closing his eyes Kai grabbed a small amount of mana and with a small act of will changed it into death mana. Comparing the two Kai nodded to himself having just confirmed what he had just figured out.

The mana in the table was impure and diluted and while it was death there was something strange and wrong about it. As Kai studied it trying to understand it he noticed one final thing. The mana wasn’t moving at all, it was unnaturally still. Looking around Kai noticed a small potted plant sitting on the receptionist's desk. Studying the mana in it he noticed that the mana was a vibrant and iridescent emerald green that was constantly moving through the plant.

Kai continued to study everything in sight that he could. He came to the conclusion that the mana of everything but that which was dead was moving at least a little. Even the metallic silverware was moving a surprising amount. There were only 2 other types of mana that came close to the death mana’s stillness.

The small but ever present traces of space mana in the air. The mana was completely still. Not moving unless something else hit it at which point like a rubber band it would return to its original position. The second mana was time mana. Its movements were strange, always moving forward at a steady pace no matter what happened.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The final mana was fate mana. Fate mana was simultaneously every color and no color. When looking around he noticed how everything had a small concentration of fate mana around it. From people to objects. The mana around then was almost completely stagnant. Only the tiniest of changes could be seen. There were only two exceptions to this. The first one was Nixie. The fate mana around her was weird. It seemed almost undecided. Half of it was completely still and unmoving. While the other half was constantly moving and smashing into the stagnant mana.

The second exception was himself. The fate mana around him was like a raging storm. Pulling mana in and then spitting it out. The only mana that wasn’t affected by Kai’s fate mana was space and time mana. A man walked past Kai, his fate mana was almost completely stagnant with only the tiniest movements. Yet the moment he got close to Kai. Kai’s mana pulled in and then spat out the other man’s fate mana. Causing a cascading effect of movements that eventually stopped.

Looking down at the book in his hand Kai found something stranger than anything he had yet seen. The book in his hands was one solid piece of mana. Yet it wasn’t mind mana as he would have assumed or at least not entirely.

Looking at it Kai was fascinated by the complexity of it. Looking at it a bit longer Kai realized that there was something off about how it was being held together.

“Kai.”

Kai looked up to see everyone staring at him with varying looks of concern and curiosity.

“Are you ok Kai?” Nixie asked Kai, her face full of concern. “You’ve been just sitting there for a couple hours, we were starting to get worried.”

Kai just looked at Nixie stunned by what she had said. “Has it really been a couple hours?”

“Yes, it has. What were you doing?” Nixie asks as her concern shifts to curiosity upon realizing that Kai was fine.

“I was trying to find out if I could do anything else with my eyes. Athena told me that the true purpose of my eyes isn’t to enhance my senses. It’s something else and the enhanced senses is a side effect of that. So I was trying to figure out what it could be.” Kai frowns to himself as he finishes talking. “Though I was only able to come up with something else related to enhancing my senses so it’s probably not the real purpose.” Looking up Kai noticed that the others are just staring at him. Their faces are a mix of confusion, horror and amusement. “What?” He asks, confused.

Tom is the first one to talk, his voice leaning more towards amusement than horror. “Who is Athena?”

“Oh I decided to call Knowledge Athena.” Kai states. “Having Knowledge as a name would be like calling me mentally insane human child with blood, lightning and fire magic. It's not a name, it's a title. So I’m calling her Athena.”

“You're not insane.” Nixie snapped at Kai. “you’ve jus-”

Kai cuts her off before she can say anything else. “Yes I am insane.” Kai says “I’ve gone through too much to not be.” He says his voice is going quiet.

“Kai you can’t just give a goddess a nickname.” Thane said clearly wanting to change the subject away from that conversation.

“Why not?” Kai asked him. “If she doesn’t care, what does it matter? And if she does care then I will just stop.”

“You should just be giving a god a nickname. She’s a god after all. And it matters since you can’t go around acting like that around a literal god. You're lucky that Knowledge doesn't care. Most gods would have named you a heretic for acting like that if they didn’t outright kill you. And you don’t want to be named a heretic since you would be hunted down and killed.” Thane said.

Kia shrugged. “So what if I give her a nickname. If she tells me she doesn’t like it then I will stop. Or are you saying that you know a goddess better than she does. To me that sounds a little heretical.”

“We-”

Kai cuts Thane off, not letting him continue. “As for the heretic stuff. I didn’t get the impression that she would mind so I did. Of course I wouldn’t have done that to someone who does care. It's called common courtesy.” Thane seemed completely dumbfounded at Kai’s words and unsure of what to say.

“Well he’s got you there.” Bear mutters before downing a glass of liquor. “Hey Kai.” Bear says his voice taking on a slightly hesitant tone. “Knowledge mentioned something about your mind not being completely of this world.” Bear paused for a moment to watch Kai's reaction before continuing. “I was wondering if that was something you wanted to talk about. Though if you don’t you don’t have to talk about it.”

Kai’s head fell at Bear’s words, his face becoming pained.

“Like I said you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Bear quickly said not wanting to bring up painful memories.

“You were told that my mind was broken.” Kai’s words came out forcibly calm yet it couldn’t hide the pain. “That was literal. When they forced Arthaya to bind with me I tried to resist. But it wasn’t enough. The process shattered my mind but Arthaya was able to mostly put it together. But I have memories that aren’t mine. They are memories of a strange man that I don’t even know the name of who lived in a completely different world. Though the memories aren’t whole and I mostly only have impressions. The most solid memory I have from him is his death.” Kai tells them. “I didn’t tell you because it’s just so much stranger than anything else that has happened to me. And I wasn’t sure what you’d think.”

Arms wrapped around him surrounding him in a comforting warmth. “It’s ok Kai. We don't care about something like that. You are Kai no matter what and we like you so this changes nothing.” Kai turns and wraps his arms around Nixie. For a couple minutes Kai sits there content with life more than happy for nothing to ever change. “Now why don’t we get you some food.

Nixie ended up moving her chair closer to Kai allowing him to lean his head against her. The rest of the night was spent happily eating and talking. Kai ended up eating a little more than normal and after their meal he, Nixie and Sarah got a slice of cake each to eat.

Eventually Sarah noticed Kai starting to get tired and took him up to their room. Where he immediately fell asleep.