Agh… what was… I tried to push myself up after getting hit, but my body pulsed with intense dysphoria, buzzing and crackling like I was lying in a bath of low-voltage electricity. What’s… going… on…?

I rolled over and saw the canopies doubling, multiplying even, moving back and forth like some hallucinogenic sway. Then, an orange blur flashed across my vision, and I felt something get knocked off my stomach.

The momentum forced me to roll, and I saw Kline biting through a lignan bug, putting his paw on it and ripping its head off. It was a powerful attack—but Kline didn’t look powerful. His stomach was punctured, and the white spots of fur were crimson—the orange the color of historic rust. He could barely stand.

Kline… I turned, trying to move. Get up… I told myself, but my body didn’t move. It wouldn’t respond. I put my hands on the ground, but everything felt wrong. Disjointed. Get up…!

Kline collapsed to the ground, and tears welled in my eyes. It felt so cruel. I had healing balm in my backpack, a miracle river twenty feet away, and superhuman strength—but I couldn’t save him. What type of joke was that? My parents would pity me so much right now—pity me because their fears had come true.

I know you want him, but… you won’t be able to care for him, Mira, my mom had said when a friend offered us Kline,

I’m not ten anymore, I said at seventeen. Who walks Gatsby? Who feeds him? I get that it's a chore, but it's still made me responsible.

It’s not a matter of responsibility, honey. You just can’t afford him.

He’s free!

No, he’s not. There’s costs for caring for a cat.

The younger, more idealistic, and naive version of me laughed. Money… it always comes down to money with you two…

Mira… My mom turned to my father, who was reading on his recliner, pretending that he couldn’t hear us. He was the “cool dad”—especially to his daughter. He refused to be the Grim Reaper.

My mom folded her arms. Doug!

I, um… He sighed, putting down his book and looking at me. You’ve researched male calicos, right?

Of course, I have.

Then you know they’re sick at birth.

Klinefelter Syndrome. Yeah.

He grimaced and looked away. So… uh… did you also look up the cost of surgery?

Have you looked at the cost of surgery for Gatsby? I shot back.

He nodded a few times solemnly. Yeah.

This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Do you know what’ll happen to him if someone doesn’t adopt him? They’re gonna euthanize him.

That’s also what’s gonna happen if you can’t afford the bills. He looked away when he saw my aghast expression. You know we’ll support you—

My mom’s eyes widened in shock. Doug!

But! He said loudly. If you do this… we’ll only help you once you sell everything we’ve paid for. Your car. Your growing equipment. Everything but your college fund. If you want this responsibility, you’ll have to face the consequences.

I will! I said back then—but now I truly meant it. Seeing Kline broken and bloodied and breathing shallowly, I wanted to give it all. I’d sell that fucking car and the bike and the garden…. I’d…. Anger and passion and rage overtook me. Mental shielding.

I activated the mental shielding, fighting past the dysphoria, trying to remember Yakana taking over me, feeling my soul, and keeping it together. Then I crawled to Kline, barely reaching him and putting my hands on his broken ribs.

Seal.

A magic spell meant for closing preservation stopped the blood gushing onto my hands. Crude, yet better than nothing. The river was gurgling and popping twenty feet away, creating a flowing, steady sound that kept blending with the symphony bugs.

Hold in there…

I fumbled for the soul repair elixir in my pocket, but my hands didn’t work. They could make big motions, but if I tried to hold a small bottle—let alone unscrew it—I would just break it. I needed to get to that river and pray.

Sorry, little guy…

Brutish as it was, I grabbed Kline’s thigh the best I could and started crawling to the river, dragging him along. It was ripping open his wounds, but I couldn’t stop. If I didn’t do this, his death was guaranteed.

Twenty feet.

Nineteen.

Break.

Seventeen.

Thirteen.

Break.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Nine.

Ten.

I almost made it but found that the patch of ground cover separating us from the river was highlighted neon purple—something new but had popped up three times. I checked it. Huge warning. Death within twenty minutes of contact, ten if it enters wounds.

I chuckled when I read it, turning my head. It was a huge patch, five feet wide and fifty feet across, acting like some sick and twisted Rubicon—a permanent threshold where there was no return. Either I would make it to the river ten feet ahead, or I’d die—there was nothing in between.

Yet if I made it, it would cleanse the toxins. Death, rebirth.

Knowing my energy was running out, I took it without hesitation, praying that the pain would keep Kline awake as I pressed my forearm against the yellow-leaved ground cover and pulled. My body immediately seized from the sensation. The plant was like Urtica dioica—stinging nettles—fuzzy, with each hair causing intense stinging like fire.

“Fuck you!” I cried as I pulled forward, trying to ignore Kline yowling as I dragged him five feet through the ground cover. Words cannot express the relief I felt when I grabbed a fist full of sand and heard the river louder than ever. The dysphoria lessened under my mental shielding, and I clutched at that hope to keep going, ignoring Kline’s pleas.

Hang in there!

Despite hitting the ground, five minutes passed, and I still hadn’t hit the water. Kline was silent and seizing—two more minutes would kill him.

Come on…

The water rolled in front of us, drowning out the sounds.

Just a little more…

I thrust out my hand and touched the foggy water. My mind exploded with the sounds of animals and the feeling of dysphoria, but my mental shielding was already cranked, so the cacophony was muted. My hand healed as well. I cupped some and threw it on Kline, making his stomach sizzle. I wanted to do more, but my arm was shaking too much.

I pushed myself into the water, letting my cheek crash into it. I drank, cleansing the poison and pain—not getting any energy back. My soul was damaged—that was something this water wouldn’t fix. Yakana was also silent—one ear wasn’t enough. Still, it’d have to do.

I grabbed Kline’s paw, increasing my mental shielding even further, summoning all my power. “Please…” I gritted my teeth, bent my arm, and yanked with all the power I had. It pushed him into the fog. The moment Kline touched, he howled and stumbled and fell into the water.

Thank God, I thought. Kline had survived the river once—he’d do it again. Soon, he would be healed… soon…

My eyes were drowsy as I fished into my pocket, hoping to pull out the soul repair elixir now that the poison had lessened. Yet I couldn’t grab it. I had even less strength than before.

Hah… I chuckled bitterly, feeling the river’s gentle caress against my cheek. I was so tired, so very tired, and while I was still fighting—my body refused to move. It couldn’t move. I drifted into sleep.

2.

Elana’s body was tense as she watched Mira. Kori was leaning in as he watched Kline.

“Why do you keep watching that cat?” Elana asked, appalled that he was more worried about Kline than Mira.

“‘Cause the thing’s evolving—obviously,” Kori said, swigging the elixir. “That girl’s not gonna save herself, is she?”

Elana’s eyes snapped onto the screen as if she was seeing it for the first time. Kline had already clambered up the embankment and collapsed, taking deep breaths as he accepted the Guide’s chant. His body was radiating with a powerful aura as Diktyo River’s water acted as a catalyst within him.

Wind whipped around his body, pushing back the souls and ground like a small tornado, and the ground was denting and cratering under his body.

“This’s wild,” Kori said, leaning back. “His core’s so pure that it’s inflatin’ like a balloon. Plus, he must’ve learned something crazy from that awakening whatever, too. ‘Cause he’s makin’ this look easy.”

Elana between Kline and Mira, feeling hope welling within. Kline would soon obtain an ethereal body, and he could definitely save Mira. It was just a matter of when. Normally, it would take a nobody a day, but Mira and Kline weren’t normal people. They learned mana circulation from Yakana, cleansed themselves of impurities, and feasted upon intense soul mana reserves. Kline’s core would be far smaller because he hadn’t done much threading, but his night with the awakening elixir alone would put him vastly ahead of even the richest of unevolved mortals. There was raw power in his hands.

Evolving was no different than what he had already done. He received a chant to expand the core in a certain pattern—now he just had to do that. Along the way he had to clear out blockages and impurities, but he drank the Diktyo River’s water—one of the most powerful raw catalyst ingredients in the Multiverse.

It wouldn’t be surprising if he expanded it in minutes—

—but that was wishful thinking.

Ten minutes passed, and he was still evolving, and Mira was still unconscious. It was lucky that neither of them was hit by a stray lignan bug or carried away by some beast. That luck only improved when twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. Forty minutes passed before Kline opened his eyes again—

—and by that point, he feared for her life.

He jumped to his feet and pressed down. A paw print far larger than his own indented the ground. Then the other paw—and his right legs. He pressed into the dirt with an ethereal form—a body of manifested mana built over his to match his soul force—and bent down.

Kline blinked out of existence, reappearing beside a tree a hundred feet again. Then another and another and another. In five seconds, he had covered a quarter mile, only stopping once he saw Mira. He panicked and ran as fast as he could, skidding in the sand before her.

He put his head on her chest, and his shoulders slumped in relief before grabbing her by the shoulder with his teeth and dragging her to the water.

“Don’t do it, cat,” Kori said.

Kline took a step backward, hitting the soul fog, and howled, clamoring forward, pawing at his chest.

“Told you,” Kori said. Kline had undergone a soul expansion, which would allow him to accept vastly more soul force—but it also meant that he could absorb souls directly now without a soul core. That’s why spirit beasts couldn’t drink from the Diktyo River—the souls from the river could invade their bodies and feed on their souls like parasites.

“He can’t hear you, you brute,” Elana said.

“Yeah, yeah…” Kori paused when Kline hopped over Mira and started pushing her feet and legs and thighs and hips and anything he could find purchase with. “Why does he seem so certain? That river doesn’t repair souls. Does it?”

“It will if you have a soul core,” Elana said.

“Well, she’s fucked then,” Kori said. “Cat’s practically sending her off to drown, and he can’t pull ‘er out.”

Elana smiled bitterly. “If she dies because of this…” She paused. Kline had proven himself so she wouldn’t condemn him. Still, she viewed his attempts as suicidally foolish.

Yet what neither she nor Koir knew was that Mira tuned into Yakana’s frequency in the river, and Kline—after speaking with Yakana—could hear him as well. So, while it all looked like an act of desperation—Kline knew that Yakana could help her. He believed. So he pushed Mira into the water, then followed her alongside the river as she floated away.

3.

I awoke underwater, disoriented, panicked, and horrified. I couldn’t move, and the only thing saving me was the mammalian diving reflex, which forced me to hold my breath. I figured something pushed me into the water, praying that it was Kline, wishing he was okay—

—because I still couldn’t move.

But right then, deep within the flowing river that sent me crashing into rocks and rolling on the sandy bank, I heard Yakana’s voice.

Hurry, he said. Chant with me.

I couldn’t move, and I was desperate to survive, so I used Moxle Dilation to slow time. It didn’t affect Yakana’s voice, which still reverberated in my head.

Okay… I said.

Then let’s begin. I zória arkhízoun na milán, dídoun epístoles…