After Interface’s exclaimation that it cracked the cultivation technique, it stopped talking.

“So?” I asked after a minute.

[This can’t be right. I don’t think I have it. But I’ve simulated it dozens of times.] Interface said.

I paused.

“You sound like you’re having fun.” I said, laying down on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. Every time there was a creak from wood twisting as it cooled or the distant noises of the city, I flinched.

I was used to sleeping in packed in Void-Ships, always ready for the next deployment, the warmth of a hundred bodies contributing to a heady heat. I didn’t know if the silence or the occasional disturbance of it aggrieved me more.

[Fun. I think I am.] Interface replied. [I’m made of information, you know? An Arcane construct, like your Interface was before you hijacked it. I had spent hundreds and hundreds of years alone in that dark, damp basement before you rescued me.]

“Lots of portals inside you.” I said.

[Attached to that Artifice, yes, but they were all fixed destinations. I stared out of those for years, too, watching animals scurry about. Unable to affect the world at all. It was something other than stagnating in the dark. But this, exploring an entirely new world? You’re right. It is fun.] Interface said. It hesitated oddly at the end of its sentence, voice taking on a tone I hadn’t heard before.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

[This cultivation technique — every simulation says it will slow your own mind down by twenty percent.]

I frowned.

“Maybe there’s something about the local magic we don’t understand.” I said. “Let’s try cultivating it.”

Interface hesitated.

[This is one of the only manuscripts that didn’t have that odd world bending Truth around them.] Interface said. [But I don’t think it’s so simple.]

I shrugged, picking the book up off the floor and tabbing through it in the dark. Then I tabbed it shut.

“Well?” I asked. “I think I’m ready. Let’s go.]

The qi, highlighted to me only by Interface’s ability to perceive it, rushed toward me, flooding into the Arcane halo. It moved from the base of the Artifce that ran through my neck, flooding into my body. Interface deftly controlled it, swirling it within my mind.

[Technique — Heralding Dawn.]

My mind slowed. It felt like I dropped a pile of bricks on it. My vision blurred as I leaned back into the bed. My emotions, the constant danger I was in, fell away.

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My muscles, which had been tense, ready to jump up at a single noise, fell slack. I gripped onto my consciousness, trying to listen to Interface as he talked. My perception was entirely blurred as the qi in my head burned up.

I closed my eyes, bracing to ride it out, even as Interface continued talking intermittently. Relaxed, blinded to the world, I fell into sleep.

When I woke, it was with a start, throwing myself to my feet, circling hellfire. The room glowed orange.

It was still night, moonlight drifting in the window.

[You’re awake.] Interface said.[I thought about waking you, but that was the first night I’ve observed you sleep without nightmares.]

“You can see my nightmares?” I whispered. I had drawn my sword without realizing, looking wide-eyed around the room.

[No, but I can see you toss and turn and cry in your sleep. Plus your elevated heart rate, biochemical and adrenaline levels are all telemetry recorded by the Hellfire engine augmentations inside you.]

I put the sword away, sitting on my knees in the room.

“How long was I out?”

[A few hours. Until the technique wore off.] Interface said. It sounded strange and withdrawn, like there was something it wasn’t saying.

“That technique didn’t permanently slow me down or something did it?” I asked. “I know they said their movement technique wouldn’t give me goat legs… is this different?”

[Yes.] Interface said.

“What are you not saying?”

[That Technique seems dangerous. We should be careful if we choose to cultivate it.]

“What did it do?” I asked.

[It permanently improved your information processing ability. Just by, I don’t know, point zero-zero-one percent. And maybe your ability to control qi.]

I stared at the book on the ground. It had gotten knocked over while I slept.

“Let’s do it again.” I said.

I ended up cultivating it a second time, this time clinging to consciousness. I was less exhausted. My body relaxed, leaving me in place to think calmly and slowly. It was like weight training for my mind. The last day fluttered through my memories, distorted as I struggled to recall them.

A new world. Even here, inside of a prison city at the edge of the world, I had more freedom than I ever dreamed of in my wildest fantasies. In my wildest fantasies, I died carving through my supervisors.

I never even dreamt of escape.

When the fugue state inflicted by the cultivation left me, the sun was just rising over the valley.

“Dawn’s Herald…” I said aloud. “Is dusk. The darkest moment.”

[Impressive. Did you use all zero-zero-two percent of your increased processing power to come up with that?]

I frowned, but not at Interface. Instead I frowned at the light in the window. The book was on the ground in front of me, and seemed to finally be asserting a little bit of its truth.

The square of lighting hitting the floor curved, bending around the room to hit the book.

I touched the book, opened it, and put it in the light of dawn.

It glowed furiously, every page burning with light that hurt to look at, mirroring the strength of the sun. I tried to read the first page, but failed entirely, closing my eyes.

It left sunspots in my vision.

“Ow.” I said, blinking. “Wait.”

As I tried to blink them away, they resolved into text, burned into my eyes. Just a single pages worth. I read it.

[This is… another Technique hidden in the book? Written entirely into its Truth? Is that possible?]

Interface recorded the second technique hidden in the manuscript, at least from this page, and I flipped to the next. When I tried to observe it, the sunspots collided, making a blurred page of text. I waited a few minutes before trying again. We recorded a second page of the technique.

Then, as the sun rose further, the book stopped asserting its Truth, growing dim. We were only able to record the first two pages of the manuscript.

“I told you there would be more to it.” I said.

[I’m not convinced this new page isn’t entirely nonsense. Ramblings about the Sun’s all destroying nature, how fire comes before unending darkness… I mean, it sounds a little evil.]

I held the book to my chest, then turned, burying it under the blankets of the bed.

“If I have to get a little evil to get strong enough for revenge, I’ll do it.” I said. “Let’s go see about breakfast. And getting a job.”